For no charge, college students can now get their hands on advanced Microsoft development and design tools—the DreamSpark suite of programs—without the software giant or any other outside vendor getting their hands on students’ personal information.
The company said today that it would join the InCommon Federation, a “one-stop shop” that lets a college student access dozens of different outside resources, such as journal archives or Microsoft programs, with just one log-on, rather than remembering different passwords and log-on names for every site they need to access. The first approach, with the single log-on controlled by InCommon and the university, is the cutting-edge in identity-management on the Internet. That second approach, of course, is a royal pain.
InCommon, which is administered by Internet2, the high-speed networking consortium, serves more than 80 higher education institutions and service providers, with close to 2 million users. The idea behind it, as The Chronicle has reported, is that all a student needs to do is provide their university credentials. As long as that university is part of InCommon, the door is opened to a world of resources. Now that world includes Microsoft’s Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition, Expression Studio, Windows Server Standard Edition, and Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Developer Edition.—Josh Fischman
Developing online and blended learning programs requires research and collaboration. Learn how top technology companies are partnering with campuses across the country to advance online learning as it becomes an increasingly important aspect of higher education.