August 18, 2009, 04:33 PM ET
Social Media May Be Banned at Southeastern Conference Games
At University of Florida sporting events, you can cheer all you
want, but don’t even think about tweeting.
This month the Southeastern Conference, an organization of 12
top-ranked collegiate sports programs, notified its members that it
was updating its social-media policy, effectively banning fans from
taking video, photos, or updating Facebook or Twitter accounts
during games.
But as the
St. Petersburg Times points out, the conference is not
changing the rules to get its fans to pay more attention to the
action, instead of their phones. At the end of the day, it’s all
about money.
"A conference spokesman said this policy was meant to try to keep
as many eyeballs as possible on ESPN and...
June 10, 2009, 02:00 AM ET
Arbitrator Rules That Google E-Mail System Does Not Violate Faculty Agreement at Canadian Campus
An arbitrator says Lakehead University, in Ontario, had the right to switch its campus e-mail service to a free program offered by Google and did not violate the collective agreement with the Lakehead University Faculty Association.
The union objected to the switch because it feared that e-mail messages could be opened by the FBI or CIA under the USA Patriot Act since Google is an American company, subject to that law. The arbitrator acknowledged in his ruling that "the likelihood of such incursions by U.S. authority into a private e-mail system (Lakehead’s own former system) was marginal compared to what might occur in the presence of the Google system." However, he...
Read MoreApril 30, 2009, 09:39 AM ET
Research and Education Network Leaders Look for Lessons in Inauguration-Day Traffic Spike
Arlington, VA — It has been about 100 days since Barack Obama took office, but this week college networking leaders were talking about what an Inauguration Day spike in Internet traffic means for the role of high-speed research networks on campus.
A session here at the annual meeting of Internet2, a college high-speed networking group, focused on what it called “the Obama effect” on campus networks. On January 20, the day President Obama was sworn in amid record-setting crowds and an onslaught of media coverage, Internet use on campus networks spiked to record levels as people on campuses watched video of the speech on their computers or sent Facebook updates about the event, according to a college officials who spoke at the session.
That spike caught some officials off guard. “All of us were a little surprised by the impact of...
Read MoreApril 16, 2009, 03:21 PM ET
Tech Therapy: A College Leader Talks About Outsourcing E-Mail
Paul Turner, manager of academic technologies at the University of Notre Dame, discusses his university’s decision to outsource e-mail on the latest edition of Tech Therapy, recorded live at The Chronicle’s Technology Forum last week. Students had been unhappy with the e-mail system’s performance, and officials at Notre Dame wanted a solution that would be more secure and possibly save money.
The university investigated a number of e-mail companies and ended up going with Gmail. “The students got a much faster and smoother e-mail experience,” Mr. Turner says. “To move students to Exchange, it would have cost us $1.5-million. To go to Gmail cost us nothing.” By outsourcing e-mail, the university IT staff is able to concentrate on other things.
... Read MoreMarch 25, 2009, 04:26 PM ET
'Idaho Education Network' Cut Out of State Budget
A plan to connect public schools, universities, and business in Idaho with a high-speed broadband network may be delayed after the State Legislature cut the project’s seed money out of its annual budget, the Associated Press is reporting.
The Department of Administration had requested $3-million from the state for the 2010 fiscal year—a sum it hoped to more than triple with federal matching funds and private foundation money—to increase broadband access across the state. This would involve building an “Idaho Education Network”—similar to one in neighboring Utah—that would allow learning institutions to swap interactive videos, among other things.
... Read MoreMarch 23, 2009, 04:33 PM ET
U. of Virginia Plans to Phase Out Public Computer Labs
The University of Virginia has begun a three-year process of shutting down all of its public computer labs as part of an effort to cut costs.
In an explanation published on the university’s Web site, information-technology officials say that students’ changing habits have rendered the public labs obsolete. A survey conducted last fall revealed that 99 percent of new students brought their own laptops to the campus. And while the labs are still heavily used (students spent 651,900 hours in the labs last year), internal data indicated that 95 percent of the time those students used the lab computers to surf the Web and read and compose text documents—tasks that officials say they could easily do on their own computers.
“In these budget times, we have to distinguish between...
Read MoreMarch 19, 2009, 01:25 PM ET
U. of Manitoba Researchers Publish Open-Source Handbook on Educational Technology
Technology is changing the way students learn. Is it changing the way colleges teach?
Not enough, says George Siemens, associate director of research and development at the University of Manitoba’s Learning Technologies Centre.
While colleges and universities have been “fairly aggressive” in adapting their curricula to the changing world, Mr. Siemens told The Chronicle, “What we haven’t done very well in the last few decades is altering our pedagogy.”
To help get colleges thinking about how they might adapt their teaching styles to the new ways students absorb and process information, Mr. Siemens and Peter Tittenberger, director of the center, have created a Web-based guide, called the Handbook of Emerging...
Read MoreMarch 17, 2009, 12:18 PM ET
Australian University Decides to Outsource Its Entire IT Department
The University of Canberra is axing some 50 information-technology jobs and moving them to India as part of institutionwide cost-cutting measures, The Australian newspaper reports.
University officials said sending its IT systems, administration, and payroll services abroad will save about $5-million over the next five years. Wipro, one of the world’s largest IT outsourcing firms, will take over services beginning this month.
The move was part of reforms that began two years ago that are aimed to reduce the university’s large deficit. Officials said the decision was not related to the economic downturn. In all, 150 jobs have been cut since layoffs began in 2007.
The decision has been criticized by local labor unions, but union officials said they...
Read MoreMarch 10, 2009, 12:08 PM ET
Travel Costs for Tech Meeting Draw Fire at U. of Massachusetts
In the middle of a fiscal crisis, a decision by the University of Massachusetts at Amherst to spend $50,000 to send nearly 30 information-technology staff members to a software-training meeting in California has created a backlash on the campus.
The trip, coming on the heels of a 15-percent hike in student charges, is seen by some as wasteful, reports The Republican. The university is also seeking federal stimulus money to avoid program cuts or layoffs, the newspaper says. UMass recently notified 60 nontenured faculty members that they would not be reappointed next year as the institution struggles with a projected $46-million deficit, The Chronicle...
Read MoreMarch 06, 2009, 09:52 AM ET
Facebook Gives College Officials Better Tools to Reach Alumni and Students
San Francisco — Facebook announced new features on its Web site on Wednesday that will allow colleges and other organizations to create a centralized public profile and publish a live stream of announcements for their followers.
The changes expand the tools available to college administrators to communicate with students, alumni, and others who have Facebook accounts. Previously, the central pages for a college or university on Facebook were essentially walled off from the rest of the site, making it difficult for administrators to know whether any announcements or content that they posted were being seen.
Campuses will soon be able to create their own central public profiles, where they can post announcements and multimedia to a live, public feed. Students and others who choose to...
Read More