IT Trends :: Thursday, February 15, 2007

• 02/15/07

Opinion

Putting Student Communication in Con-TEXT

By Terry Calhoun

Colleges and universities are struggling with or are beginning to realize there is a growing problem with their communications with students. Living "in the moment" as they do, many students are beyond regularly checking e-mail, so sending their important and timely communications that way is increasingly fruitless.

Even in my own family, I cannot remember my 18- and 21-year-olds' e-mail addresses, if they even continue to use them, because when I do send them e-mail I never, ever hear back, and often do not ever find out if they even received my message. Despite my own utter dependence on e-mail, I have not received an e-mail message from either one of them in more than a year, even though I hear from their grandmother, my 81-year-old mother, by e-mail at least weekly.

At some institutions, administrators are negotiating with local pizzerias to implement "on time, on demand" communications stickers containing official university information that can be slapped onto the top of pizza boxes before they leave the store. It may be possible, even, for pizzeria customer databases to communicate with institutional enterprise systems to individualize student messages, right down to communicating deadlines for class papers and projects.

Okay, I made that last part up, although students do eat regularly, so communicating with them in some way that connects with one of the few things we know they will do no matter what we want them to do is an intriguing concept....

IT News

Princeton Libraries Join Google Book Scanning Project

By Mary Grush

The Princeton University (NJ) library system will participate in Google Inc.'s controversial project to scan the most famous literary written works in the world and make them searchable over the Internet....

Bowling Green Prof Warned for Using Net Anonymizer

By Paul McCloskey

Paul Cesarini, an assistant professor of technology education at Bowling Green State University, was warned by campus network security officials that he was violating the school's network acceptable use policies by using Tor, an e-mail anomymizing system....

Pittsburgh Art Institute Launches Social Network

By Paul McCloskey

The Art Institute of Pittsburgh will open an online social network to facilitate collaboration among students and between students and faculty....

Knight Gives Miami $10 Million To Develop New Media

By Paul McCloskey

The James L. Knight Foundation will give the University of Miami $10 million to build the Knight Center for International Media, a media laboratory for developing global news techniques....

Carnegie Mellon Students Develop Networked Mood Ring

By Paul McCloskey

Carnegie Mellon computer science students have invented a software application that represents people's emotions in words and in bands of color. Called Moodjam, the software can be used to create a cross-media diary that can be played on the users' home page....

MIT Profs Claim Breakthroughs on 'Optics on a Chip'

By Paul McCloskey

MIT researchers said they are close to bringing "optics on a chip" to market. The MIT team said their work could enable photonic integrated devices to be mass-manufactured for the first time....

U. Missouri Automates Support Operations

By David Nagel

The University of Missouri said it will be automating many of its help desk features with the use of Unified Knowledge Suite from RightAnswers. The system will be implemented across four campuses to "drive self-service initiatives for various Help Desks and respective end-user communities they serve."...