California Virtual Campus

“In less than three weeks, the unthinkable will occur: the browser wars will officially begin again. The event that’s launching this digital Battle of Bull Run? The Mozilla Foundation, a nonprofit organization spun off from Netscape, will release version 1.0 of its open-source Firefox browser on November 9.

Over the past two years, Firefox has grown from a concept to a full-featured browser that has been downloaded more than five million times. Along the way, Firefox users have grown to a mass of vocal advocates. How vocal, you ask? Well, they’re currently taking up an online collection to buy a full page ad in the New York Times to tell the world an alternative exists to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. Chris Messina, a Web designer and one of the people behind the movement at SpreadFirefox.com, says the release of version 1.0 is “our Tea Party. We’ve been handed these other Web browsers and they haven’t been innovative. We want to show people there is an alternative.”

“Release 1.0 is the biggest Internet news in terms of browsers in a couple years,” says Rob Davis, executive director of PlayPolitics.org and the man behind the New York Times ad campaign.

Of course, the open-source community is masterful at the art of hyperbole. But it’s also pretty masterful at building products that users…”

Entire article by Eric Hellweg is at http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/04/10/wo_hellweg102204.asp?p=0

“The labels associated with security-computer, network, information, information assurance-have multiple implications for higher education. As colleges and universities attempt to ramp up the security of their computer networks, a common strategy has been to employ dedicated security staff and establish a central IT security office. Additionally, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act1 requires the development of “a comprehensive information security program.” And there has been an increased emphasis on personal safety, physical security, and the protection of critical infrastructures since 9/11. Yet, a diverse set of job titles, an array of segmented job functions, a range of reporting relationships, and a plethora of organizational models are found in colleges and universities to describe how they are approaching the privacy of data and personal information, security of computers and networks, and protection of intellectual property or other assets of the institution.

According to an October 2003 study by the EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research,2 22.4 percent of higher education institutions have a chief IT security officer or the equivalent. Of those, 95 percent report to a senior administrator in the IT office, including 50 percent who report to the CIO. The ECAR study revealed a clear, steady pattern of growth for the creation of IT security officer positions in higher education beginning in 1994. It is not surprising that this evolutionary process sees campuses struggling with job titles and reporting structures for the newly conceived positions in IT security. In fact, similar dilemmas face industry and government. The Global Council of CSOs has established as one of its objectives to “define the proper role, background, and reporting arrangements for CSOs within business organizations.”3

The issue of nomenclature is compounded in institutions of higher education because academic programs designed to educate the next generation of security professionals increasingly fall under the label of “information assurance” education and training. For example, more than 50 colleges and universities have been designated as Centers of Academic Excellence in Information Assurance Education by the National Security Agency.4 Combined with the confusion generated between the title “IT security officer” and the role traditionally assumed by campus public safety or police departments (often staffed by security officers), campus telephone operators must be puzzled when they get external requests related to “security.”
Different Viewpoints

What lies behind the evolution of these terms? What implications do the varying titles and terms have for the related academic disciplines and operational roles? How can colleges and universities collectively get ahead of…”

The entire article by Rodney Petersen with Ronald Larsen, Corey Schou, and Lee Strickland can be found at EDUCAUSE Quarterly site http://www.educause.edu/apps/eq/eqm04/eqm0430.asp

“State Treasurer Phil Angelides on Tuesday urged creation of a $5-billion endowment for California higher education through the development and possible sale of state-owned properties, including urban land and unused warehouses.

With public funding for the state’s colleges and universities slipping even as their enrollments grow, Angelides said his proposal could ultimately provide an extra $300 million annually for scholarships, counseling and academic preparation efforts. He said the money should supplement, not replace, existing state funding.

“Today, the hurdles for young people who want to go to college in California are getting higher and higher at a time when we need more to enroll in college in order to compete in the global economy,” Angelides said at a Sacramento news conference.

Several education advocates, including former state Secretary for Education Gary K. Hart, lauded the proposal as an innovative effort. Others said the idea would probably face hurdles in the Legislature and elsewhere.

“Certainly, state real estate could be managed better and…”

Entire article by Rebecca Trounson, L.A. Times Staff Writer can be found at http://www.latimes.com/news/education/la-me-students20oct20,1,4265845.story?coll=la-news-learning

"As I hung up the phone I thought, ‘Wow, that wasn’t the impression I had of her from reading her e-mail message.’ On the phone she seemed confident, articulate and decisive. She impressed me as someone who was friendly but had no time to waste, the kind of high-powered person who knows how to get things done.

But her writing was a different story.

Her e-mail message seemed awkward and halting. Her information was presented as a single block of text rather than organized into coherent paragraphs. Her sentence structure was basic and monotonous rather than varied and emphatic. Although there were no misspelled words, no errors in grammar or punctuation, her writing was … well, ordinary. It didn’t give me the assurance I feel when I’m in the presence of someone who exudes competence.

Am I describing someone you know?

Few people distinguish themselves by their writing skills.

Few take pride in their writing and do it with confidence, and even fewer take pleasure in writing.

As reported by The Associated Press, "A majority of U.S. employers say about one-third of workers do not meet the writing requirements of their positions, according to a survey by the College Board’s National Commission on Writing."

If one out of three workers fail to meet minimum standards, how many are exceptionally strong? One out of 20? One out of 100?

What about you? Are you…"

The entire article by Stephen Wilbers can be found at Orange County Register stie http://www.ocregister.com/ocr/2004/10/18/sections/business/business_columns/article_278317.php

Before we start a discussion of usability of online content, it is wise to
offer a definition of the term usability.

From Rednet we find that
‘Usability’ includes the capability to be used by everyone and includes
interface [...]

“Some of the real estate coveted most by the Internet giants isn’t on the Internet at all. It’s on your computer hard drive. Google Inc. unveiled a free software tool Thursday that lets searchers tap into the files on their PC desktops when they hunt for information on the Web. For instance, a Google query for “Lakers” will return not only Web pages but also every e-mail, instant message or Word document on the searcher’s computer that mentions the basketball team.

The move is expected to unleash a flurry of similar products from rivals seeking to create new territory for advertising.

But Google’s biggest adversary may well be the king of the PC desktop – Microsoft Corp.

“There’s billions at stake now,” said Danny Sullivan, editor of SearchEngineWatch.com. “The battlefields are expanding.”

And overlapping. Google and Microsoft are moving more aggressively onto each other’s turf.

Microsoft is planning to release its own Web and desktop search engines by the end of the year in an effort to head off up-and-comers like Google. Longhorn, the version of Windows expected in late 2006 at the earliest, is expected to let users search the Web and the contents of their computers without having to even open a browser.

So Google is trying to …”

Entire article by Chris Gaither, LA Times Staff Writer, can be found at http://www.latimes.com/technology/la-fi-google15oct15,1,6191478.story?coll=la-headlines-technology

“One of the more significant challenges we face in online learning is climbing the wall that blocks our view of learners responding to a course. In a classroom we can see who is making eye contact, nodding in agreement, or sighing with frustration. Above all, in a classroom, you can (usually) tell if somebody is tuning out. Without these cues, we are really just speaking into the void, hoping somebody hears us.

This problem is made all the more critical by the fact that there are so many more distractions online than there are in a traditional classroom. In addition to the classroom options of staring out the window or daydreaming, distractions for the online learner include emails, phone calls, piles of paper, colleagues, friends, and family. Multitasking is not only common-many practice it with pride. As instructors, we don’t know who is paying attention and we have good reason to suspect that many are not. The easiest and most typical solution to this problem is to frequently prod the learner for an overt response: Answer a poll, respond to a question, choose an option. However, this sort of frequent artificial interactivity as an attention pulse-check can become tiresome for learners. Luckily, technology advances and people adapt. And, although there are no clean solutions to this problem yet, instructors are learning to subvert current tools to help them better monitor student attention, even as monitoring technologies improve. It’s worth taking a moment to consider where we are and where we are going with all of this.
Sneaky teachers trump clumsy technology
Some online technologies provide a way of indicating when a participant is confused or if…

The entire article by By Lisa Neal and Michael Feldstein can be found at http://www.elearnmag.org/

“Some colleges turn to automated services for repairing defective software, while others opt out. When faculty and staff members at Hillsborough Community College go home in the evening, their computers aren’t done with their work for the day.

After hours, each computer on the Tampa, Fla., campus runs a program called BigFix, which checks if the computer’s software contains any newly discovered security holes. If so, the program automatically downloads and installs a patch to repair the hole. When the computer’s user arrives in the office the next morning, the improved computer is ready to go.

Manually distributing patches to the college’s 5,000 computers would require a half-dozen technicians, says R. Bruce Judd, vice president for information technology. BigFix costs annually only about as much as one technician and does the job more quickly than six. ‘In a single night we can patch all the systems,’ Mr. Judd says.

Faced with a constant barrage of software patches — many of which are urgently needed to protect campus computers from attack by worms and viruses — many college information-technology administrators are turning to products and services that automate downloading and installation of patches. But officials at other colleges say the products are expensive and fear that the programs compromise privacy or academic freedom.

Using automated patching systems with student-owned computers is particularly complex because of licensing issues and the wide variety of ways in which students’ computers connect to a college’s network: some through a residence-hall network, others through wireless or dial-up connections, and still others through commercial Internet providers.

Some patches are issued only after attacks by worms or viruses on campus computers have brought a software defect to light. Other times defects are identified, and patches issued, before a hacker has done anything, even though experts warn that issuing a patch can start hackers racing to exploit the security hole before computer users get around to applying the fix.

Last month, for example, Microsoft Corporation issued a patch for its Windows and Office products to repair a hole that allowed hackers to take over computers surreptitiously by…”

The entire aritcle by Vincent Kiernan can be found at http://chronicle.com/prm/weekly/v51/i07/07a03101.htm

“Since 2002, attendees at the annual Game Developers Conference (GDC) have included 150-250 academics there to develop their professional interest in video game technologies. This participation may surprise and even appall those who think of American higher education as intellectually elevated and serious and video game culture as trivial and ephemeral. For a number of years, however, the boundaries separating these two spheres have been blurring; the result is a shared domain in which video games are as acceptable a subject for scholarly study as Vygotsky’s learning theories or Shakespeare’s sonnets.

This movement is happening for several reasons. First, a significant number of professors are active and long-time video game players themselves. Some in the fields of psychology, history, cultural studies, sociology, and computer science have recognized that their professional work can accommodate a research focus on some aspect of video game culture. Second, the screen-based interactive products spawned by the video game industry are competing successfully with print media for students’ attention. Having spent many hours (often thousands) playing at “twitch speed,” students are bored by conventional media and likely to be attracted to courses that address their deeply imprinted interest in video games. Some universities have reacted to these trends by developing and actively supporting new courses, programs, journals, scholarly books, and academic conferences on the educational applications of video games.

Reflecting upon these conditions, Peter Raad, director of the Hart eCenter at Southern Methodist University and a regular attendee at the GDC, envisions a future in which we will find a…”

This article by Joel Foreman was originally published in Innovate (http://www.innovateonline.info/) as: Foreman, J. 2004. Video Game Studies and the Emerging Instructional Revolution. Innovate, October/November 2004. http://www.innovateonline.info/index.php?view=article&id=2 (accessed October 8, 2004). The article is reprinted here with permission of the publisher. You must have a login to access the article. Simply registration is required but worth the effort.

“Our two main presidential candidates are offering progressive, however wishful, ideas to help advance education in America. What will the presidential candidates actually do regarding education if elected? It’s anyone’s guess. All we know for certain is what they say they will do. It should come as no surprise that both parties are presenting strategies, perhaps better termed ‘wish lists,’ with which anyone however remotely or intimately interested in education would have to agree.

Perhaps a more interesting article would be to review previous campaign pledges and contrast them with the agendas actually promoted once the candidate was in office–so that we could determine if history supports our taking the time to pay attention to the proposed planks–but we’ll save that one for a later day.

In the meantime, here’s a quick glance at the current campaign promises.

George W. Bush proposes:

To strengthen teaching by offering rewards to teachers whose students achieve at high levels.

To fund $250 million annually for increasing the amount of state assessment in reading and math for grades 3 through 11.

To use 8th grade test data to help establish “performance plans” for entering high school students.

To encourage low-income students to take a demanding high school curriculum by providing them with up $1,000 in additional Pell Grant funding to augment funding from the State Scholars program.

To provide additional funding for community colleges that offer dual enrollment programs that enable high school students to earn college credit.

John Kerry proposes:

To initiate a “School’s Open ‘Til 6″ program to provide an estimated 3.5 million youths with after-school activities.

To offer a College Opportunity Tax Credit on up to $4,000 of tuition for four years of college.

To create a National Educational Trust Fund to give education programs the full amount of funding they have been promised.

To provide teachers in troubled schools with better training and better pay.

To allocate $24.8 billion in school modernization bonds for improving old schools and constructing new ones.

Any discussion of Bush’s agenda on education is not complete without mention of the…”

The entire article by Ben Goldfein can be found at http://www.xplanazine.com/archives/2004/10/and_a_chicken_i.php