Last week at CeBIT, in addition to new multi-tasking phones introduced by Siemens, Nokia, BENQ, and a host of other announced new phones with advanced features. Add to that RIM’s new BlackBerry 6200 Wireless Handhelds with voice data integration for European customers and it’s quickly apparent that, while 2002 was the year integrated phones were supposed to make a splash, 2003 will be remembered as the year they actually arrived. Continue reading ‘Smart Phones Will Demand Smarter Information’
Archive for March, 2003
While I was growing up, my father was moving up. Born to poor share croppers in Central Texas, and with nothing more than a high school education, my father became a bookkeeper, accountant, and then executive for a large home building company. The fact is, if you live in or around Austin, Texas, chances are my father was involved, in at least some form, in the land purchase, development, or construction of your home. I guarantee you he say the land and thought about what it might look like as a developed housing area before you even knew it existed. Continue reading ‘Why Don’t We Capture and Share Our Knowledge?’
Ellen Haynes from the University of Colorado gave a nice presentation this past weekend at the 2003 SOCALLT Conference on what needs to be improved regarding electronic workbooks and lab manuals in Higher Education language products.
She mentioned online products by McGraw-Hill and Prentice Hall, and provided some insightful and interesting conclusions. I will list a couple of the negative conclusions below to make my point that follows. Continue reading ‘Reusable Objects? — You Must Have Misunderstood What I Meant’
Who can forget Stanley Kubric’s funny and disturbing portrait of the Cold War and its logical conclusions — Dr. Strangelove, Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964). His presentation of a centralized, irrational controlling government certainly seems just as apropos today, particularly if we apply the same vision of control to networks of information.
Think about it — news journalism, book publishing, corporate releases of product information — all of these came of age when the current technology practically mandated centralized control of creation and distribution. The average person lacked both the resources and knowledge to “do it themselves.” Today, however, the technologies that make information distribution possible have become accessible, understandable and affordable for almost everyone. As a result, and because of a free distribution network called the Internet, a big struggle between centralized and distributed information frameworks has developed. Continue reading ‘How I Learned to Give up Control and Learned to Love the Blog’
Spring is in the air. That must mean that security will once again take center stage for university networking.
Three years ago it was the major DoS attack against major Web sites using university networks as relay stations. Two years ago Napster was the buzz, and last spring institutions began realizing the problems with wireless network deployments. This year we have seen a rise in identity theft and we are watching as universities attempt to deal with the problem. Continue reading ‘Security is Still a Major Concern for Universities’
I’m sitting in a cool presentation watching convergence in Tech Ed happen right before my eyes. For decades, students have been taking language placement exams.
In the old days, this meant a multiple-choice exam on grammar and reading comprehension, accompanied by a listening comprehension section administered via tape recorder. In recent years, universities have migrated to Web based exams but with uneasiness. These options generally abandon listening comprehension sections and have been unable to handle speaking assessments. Continue reading ‘A Nice Example of Convergence from Rice University’
The demand for mobility in education is picking up. It is certainly outpacing the education mainstream’s ability to meet the demand and develop courses/systems that would allow learners to be entirely mobile and flexible.
Last week, Western Governors University (WGU) was granted its accreditation accreditation from four regional accreditation agencies. WGU is a virtual university, conceived by the governors of 19 Western states, and grants degrees based on subject competency rather than on course credits. Because WGU lacks a single physical presence, it is the only institution to be accredited by more than one regional agency. Continue reading ‘Developing Mobile Universities – What Must Happen for the Dream to Come True’
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