http://www.informationweek.comInformationWeeken-usCopyright 2012, UBM LLC.2013-05-23T13:00:00ZMicrosoft's cloud data centers get direct peering with Internet2, the high-speed network for education and research. This gives schools faster access to data.http://www.informationweek.com/education/campus-infrastructure/microsoft-cloud-gets-internet2-expresswa/240155475?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Smartphones_mobility<!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <div class="inlineStoryImage inlineStoryImageRight"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/online-learning/inside-eight-game-changing-moocs/240152508"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/976/MOOC_canvas_01_tn.jpg" alt="Inside Eight Game-changing MOOCs" title="Inside Eight Game-changing MOOCs" class="img175" /></a><br /><div class="storyImageTitle">Inside Eight Game-changing MOOCs</div><span class="inlinelargerView">(click image for larger view and for slideshow)</span></div> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE -->Students, staff and researchers at campuses taking advantage of Microsoft cloud services will see better performance and lower costs because of direct "peering" between Microsoft data centers and Internet2. <P> <a href="http://www.internet2.edu/">Internet2</a> is a high-speed network operated by a consortium of universities, which also makes services available to some other educational institutions including some K-12 school systems. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peering">Peering</a> is an agreement between network operators to exchange traffic directly and without exacting tolls. This agreement will allow Internet2 to provide its members with expedited access to Microsoft cloud services, bypassing the public Internet. The deal also could give Microsoft an edge over Google, it's biggest rival in offering cloud services to higher education. <P> "Number one, it's a performance advantage because we'll be connecting on arguably the highest-performing network around," said Khalil Yazdi, program developer for cloud service partnerships at Internet2. For example, universities that are accustomed to operating their own Exchange servers for email also want to make sure they can get comparable performance from Microsoft's cloud service. Second, institutions that make routine use of Office 365 for email and collaboration applications will get access to bandwidth-hungry applications at the best pricing, he said. <P> <strong>[ Is it easier to cheat online? Read <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/security/when-education-gets-too-virtual/240153557?itc=edit_in_body_cross">When Education Gets Too Virtual</a>. ]</strong> <P> Meanwhile, researchers who are interested in taking advantage of Microsoft's Azure infrastructure as a service product for storage and processing on large amounts of data need to be able to move data in and out of the service as efficiently and economically as possible, Yazdi said. "Now is the time to make sure the network connections are up to carrying the load of expected activity," he said. <P> Through its <a href="http://www.internet2.edu/netplus/">Net+</a> program, Internet2 has been developing a catalog of cloud service offerings available on favorable terms negotiated by the consortium on behalf of educational institutions. <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/instructional-it/vidyo-videoconferencing-coming-to-intern/240153355">Vidyo videoconferencing</a> was one recent addition. Azure and Office 365, Microsoft's <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/software/productivity-applications/microsoft-office-365-steps-on-google-ent/240154836">most successful cloud offerings</a>, are also part of the program. Microsoft proved willing to negotiate many of the same compliance-related terms and conditions for Azure that it agreed to for Office 365, Yazdi said. <P> University of Washington CIO Kelli Trosvig said that the Internet2 negotiations with Microsoft have paid off in many ways, starting with the aggregation of demand for services from many institutions that allows access to services at the best possible pricing. Also, because hers is a major research institution with a need to handle medical research data and other sensitive information, she wouldn't have been able to take advantage of Microsoft cloud services at scale without the Internet2 deal, she said, both for compliance reasons and because the pricing wouldn't have paid off. <P> Although the peering deal will have a positive impact on University of Washington's access to email and collaborative applications, Trosvig said improving access to Azure storage, processing and SQL Server instances is more significant. "I have literally hundreds of researchers who want access to quick, scalable research infrastructure in a HIPPA-certified cloud," she said, referring to the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. Scientists doing big-data analysis in fields such as molecular physics and astronomy will get a particular benefit from the ability to create more sophisticated models and "not have to be slowed down by commercial packets and network traffic," she said. <P> Of the Net+ services, a few others like Box file sharing also have direct peering with Internet2. Google does not. There is an existing peering relationship with Amazon Web Services, "but not at the level we'd like," meaning it's not equally available to all members, Yazdi said. "With all the cloud services, we have made it part of our expectations for the Net+ offerings that we'll route traffic wherever and whenever we can through the network." <P> <em>Follow David F. Carr at <a href="http://twitter.com/davidfcarr">@davidfcarr</a> or <a href="https://plus.google.com/113166369746212246457/?rel=author">Google+</a>, along with <a href="http://twitter.com/IWKEducation">@IWKEducation</a>.</em>2013-05-21T16:40:00ZExamSoft app not only makes the Web off limits, it creates new possibilities, such as med school tests in the morgue.http://www.informationweek.com/education/mobility/ipad-exam-app-takes-testing-offline/240155320?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Smartphones_mobility<!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --><div class="inlineStoryImage inlineStoryImageRight"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/online-learning/inside-eight-game-changing-moocs/240152508"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/976/MOOC_canvas_01_tn.jpg" alt="Inside Eight Game-changing MOOCs" title="Inside Eight Game-changing MOOCs" class="img175" /></a><br /><div class="storyImageTitle">Inside Eight Game-changing MOOCs</div><span class="inlinelargerView">(click image for larger view and for slideshow)</span></div> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE -->The Ohio State University College of Medicine has been doing computerized testing since 2002, but this year an iPad app is allowing the technology to go where it's never gone before: into a room full of dead people. <P> Eric Ermie, program manager for assessment and evaluation at the Ohio State University College of Medicine, said the <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/softest-m/id630498475?mt=8" target="_blank">SofTest-M</a> app from <a href="http://learn.examsoft.com/" target="_blank">ExamSoft</a> worked well enough in testing this year that next year it will be employed much more extensively. "Next year, we will be giving an iPad to every single student when they walk in door," he said, partly so they can be tested this way. The devices will be purchased for first-year students and second-year students who don't already have one. The plan is that as students move into the third and fourth years of the program, they will swap their full-size iPads out for iPad Minis, which have been deemed more appropriate for their use once they move out of the classroom into hospital-based training. <P> The SofTest-M iPad app is designed to provide the security and reliability required for high-stakes exams, operating offline so that it is not dependent on a network connection, while blocking access to the Web and to reference materials or notes on the device for the duration of a test. The recently released iPad app joins ExamSoft clients for Windows and Macs, all of which work with a common Web-based administration system for test setup and analytics. Medical schools are a strong market for the company, along with law schools and some professional testing programs. <P> <strong>[ Take a tour of education technology from its humble beginnings to electronic tablets: <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/leadership/tablets-rock-on-education-tech-through-t/240149241?itc=edit_in_body_cross">Tablets Rock On: Education Tech Through The Ages</a>. ]</strong> <P> Ohio State University College of Medicine switched to using ExamSoft on laptops about four years ago, replacing another computerized testing program that proved unreliable, sometimes failing just as the testing was completed, Ermie said. Although he can't endorse products, he said having the software available on the iPad made a significant difference. Over the course of this year, the medical school has experimented with using the iPads for testing, originally using a pre-release version of the software and only for relatively low-stakes quizzes. By the end of the year, the iPad app was judged trustworthy enough to be used for 150-question final exams. <P> Then the program started branching out, exploring scenarios that only make sense with the greater mobility of an iPad, such as practical anatomy exams carried out in a room full of cadavers. In this mode of testing, students walk from station to station around the room examining bodies, where the challenge is to identify the particular organ marked with a pin or answer questions about it. Medical students traditionally have provided paper-and-pencil answers to these questions, which sometimes turned grading into a handwriting analysis exercise -- perhaps proving what they say about doctor's handwriting. <P> With an iPad in hand, students were able to provide more precise answers to each prompt, Ermie said. The iPad also could be used to present information such as X-ray images to go along with the in-person examination of a cadaver. <P> <div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject" style="background-color: #eee; padding: 10px; width: 590px; font-style: italic; margin-top: 15px; margin-bottom: 15px;"><img itemprop="image" src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/education/2013Q1/examsoft.png" alt="SofTest-M iPad app" title="SofTest-M iPad app" height="442" width="590"><br />SofTest-M exams can include videos to illustrate a question or concept.</div> <P> What the iPad adds is "flexibility and versatility," Ermie said. "The anatomy example is a huge one, but it's kind of the tip of the iceberg. This opens up possibilities for doing vetted, solid high-stakes assessment in a multitude of arenas where we weren't able to before."Another important element of the ExamSoft platform is the analytics it provides to make it easier for instructors to see patterns in the topics individual students are struggling with, Ermie said. "That's kind of amped up our usage and changed our intentions for what the software was good for," leading to an increased emphasis on measuring student performance "in more different ways, more frequently" to help them develop into competent physicians, he said. <P> Although the cadaver exam is a colorful example, the more typical scenario for ExamSoft testing, whether on the iPad or a laptop, is for proctored testing in a classroom or at a test center. Students are often encouraged to download the exam in advance, so as to avoid overloading the network with everyone downloading it at once. The file is encrypted, preventing them from starting or viewing an exam until the proctor gives the code to unlock it. In the case of a timed test, unlocking the test also starts the timer. When the test is complete, the app packages up the student's answers and sends them back to the test server. <P> This mode of delivery means the computerized tests are not "online" in the sense of requiring continuous network access and won't be interrupted by a glitch in a school building's Internet access. ExamSoft VP of business development Jason Gad said that's often the hardest part of his sales pitch, given that people have become so used to thinking of all interactive applications being Web-based. Skeptics are often halfway through explaining that Web-based testing won't work for their purposes when he finally gets his point across. "You can almost hear the sigh," he said, when they realize network access won't be an obstacle after all. <P> In fact, it's possible to give these examinations in locations with no wireless network access as long as students remember to download the exam in advance and upload the results afterward from home or the nearest Starbucks. <P> Instructors create tests through the ExamSoft Web application, which lets them enter a "question bank" of questions they can assemble and reorder for each test they give. Questions can include images, such as diagnostic imagery for medical students to evaluate; video; or PDFs. Including a lot of multimedia will also include the size of the download file for an exam. The ExamSoft software also helps instructors balance out their tests using <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom%27s_Taxonomy" target="_blank">Bloom's Taxonomy</a> to determine whether they have the right mix of different types of questions, such as those requiring straight recall of facts versus others requiring synthesis of information. <P> Simply by checking a box, an instructor can require that the test be delivered in secure mode, which locks down the iPad or laptop to display just the testing application, with network access and access to other applications disabled. It's also possible to use the software for an open-book test, which might still be timed but allow students to search the Web and other resources to their heart's content. About 96% of the time, instructors choose the locked-down mode, Gad said, although that's starting to change as more instructors begin to use the software for early, proactive assessments rather than only for exams. <P> <em>Follow David F. Carr at <a href="http://twitter.com/davidfcarr">@davidfcarr</a> or <a href="https://plus.google.com/113166369746212246457/?rel=author">Google+</a>, along with <a href="http://twitter.com/IWKEducation">@IWKEducation</a>.</em>2013-05-21T11:13:00ZSocial task management tool Jive acquired last year becomes free as a standalone app. Integration with the Jive platform to follow.http://www.informationweek.com/social-business/news/project_management/jive-scales-producteev-app-now-free/240155274?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Smartphones_mobility<!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <div class="inlineStoryImage inlineStoryImageRight"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/software/10-must-have-wordpress-plugins-for-busin/240153363"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/982/WordPress_01_tn.jpg" alt="10 Must-Have WordPress Plugins For Businesses" title="10 Must-Have WordPress Plugins For Businesses" class="img175" /></a><br /><div class="storyImageTitle">10 Must-Have WordPress Plugins For Businesses</div><span class="inlinelargerView">(click image for larger view and for slideshow)</span></div> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> Jive Software is launching a revamped, and free, version of Producteev, the social task management tool it acquired in November. <P> After 11 months of work, Producteev "has been rebuilt from scratch using a lot of scalable technology, so it is really a brand new product," said Ilan Abehassera, founder of Producteev and now a senior director of product management at Jive. "We're trying to change the way work gets done, and we've decided tasks are the best route into the enterprise," he said. <P> Producteev was originally designed for use by relatively small teams, but the new version makes it possible to break a large organization into smaller networks of employees who collaborate on tasks, Abehassera said. Producteev always had a free version for individuals, which remained free if you introduced a single collaborator (perfect for mom-and-pop businesses) but charged a per-user fee for any organization with more than three users. With Jive's backing, Producteev will now be free for organizations of any size. <P> Tuesday's announcement of a free standalone version of Producteev came as Jive continues to work on a new task- and project-management module that will be integrated with its enterprise social networking platform. Abehassera said he has been working on that integrated task-management capability in parallel with the retooling of Producteev. While there is already a Producteev app in the Jive Apps Market, it's only a first step, he said. <P> <strong>[ Want to know where enterprise collaboration is heading? Read <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/social-business/news/industry_analysis/social-business-not-dead-just-business-a/240154840?itc=edit_in_body_cross">Social Business Not Dead, Just Business As Usual</a>. ]</strong> <P> Jive currently provides a basic task-management capability as part of its core social software platform, but it's not as slick as some others on the market. Better task management will help Jive align its sales pitch with the message that social collaboration is good for helping companies get work done, not just for fostering discussion. <P> When Producteev becomes more deeply integrated, Jive's task management features should be "more on par with those available in collaboration platforms like IBM Connections, Traction Teampage and Podio," said Alan Lepofsky, VP and principal analyst at Constellation Research, who has a put a particular spotlight on the <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/social-business/news/project_management/social-task-management-tools-gain-clout/240008230">rise of social task management</a>. <P> In an email, he highlighted two important aspects of the announcement. "First, they put a great deal of engineering into making the code more scalable for enterprise size deployments, thus laying the foundation for the future Jive/Producteev combo, but I believe that is still a few releases away. Second, by offering Producteev for free, Jive is hoping to create an additional onramp into Jive while at the same time keeping customers away from competitive vendors like Asana, Do, Mindjet and Wrike. That's a smart move, but I'd like to see more details around what an upgrade from a standalone use of Producteev to the full Jive infrastructure will be like." <P> In addition to updating its Web app, Producteev is introducing updated apps for iOS and Android, while providing an application programming interface that should allow third parties to create apps for BlackBerry and Windows phones. Meanwhile, Producteev also provides a desktop software app for Mac computers. It used to have desktop app for Windows, too, and it will again, once the developers finish rewriting it to work with the latest version of the cloud service, Abehassera said. <P> I can't help seeing some irony in the Producteev giveaway, given that Jive CEO Tony Zingale once told me Yammer's freemium business model amounted to a strategy to "hand out a bunch of drugs at the schoolyard, and we'll come back and charge you for them later." Since then, Jive has introduced free trials of the cloud version of its social collaboration platform, but there is still no version of the core product that you can use indefinitely for free. <P> The Jive folks insist offering Producteev for free isn't the same sort of thing at all, given that it is a narrowly focused app rather than a broad collaboration platform. As a promotional tool, the free Producteev app is supposed to generate interest in social software and Jive as a company, eventually bringing in some new customers for the social platform. Jive does plan to charge for the forthcoming integrated task management module for its enterprise social network, which will be based on Producteev, according to spokeswoman Amanda Pires. <P> Social task management products provide a lightweight form of project management based on task assignments made through the employee social network, with progress tracking accomplished through social status posts. In Producteev, tasks can be categorized using hashtag-style labels included in the task description. Users who need to monitor a project for which they have not been assigned specific tasks can follow the project rather than joining it. <P> <div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject" style="background-color: #eee; padding: 10px; width: 356px; font-style: italic; margin-top: 15px; margin-bottom: 15px;"><img itemprop="image" src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/education/2013Q1/Producteev.png" alt="" title="" height="230" width="356"><br />A task in Producteev shows assignments, followers, deadline.</div> <P> For organizations that use Jive, the virtue of an integrated version of Producteev is that it could take advantage of the Jive social graph and user profiles rather than establishing its own parallel system of employee profiles. Abehassera said the demand for the integrated project is coming both from Jive users who want better task management and Producteev users who would like access to a broader social collaboration platform.Although Producteev offers a more complete task management system than Jive currently provides, it does not aim to support the kind of formal project management that might be required for a major engineering project such as building a bridge. For example, Producteev is good for representing deadlines and schedules of tasks, but it does not attempt to model dependency relationships where one step must be completed before the next can begin. <P> "The only level of dependency we have is subtasks," Abehassera said. "That's done on purpose because we don't want to add more complexity." <P> One potential complexity Abehassera seemed not to have thought through is the potential that the free service will prove more wildly successful than anticipated, leading to adoption by employees in large companies and conflict with company leaders. Part of Yammer's story, at least in the days before its acquisition by Microsoft, was that employees or individual departments would use it to start collaborating right away, without waiting for approval from IT. <P> Once Yammer usage took hold, the use of the cloud application would come to the attention of IT. In conservative organizations, this sometimes provoked a backlash once company leaders realized employees had been discussing company business on an unsanctioned cloud service. A CIO would then find himself in the position of either paying a per-user fee for the Yammer service to get administrative control or seeking to get the unauthorized company network shot down. Although the nature of the Producteev app is different, exposure of the details and schedules of company projects could provoke just as big of a reaction, it seems to me. <P> Abehassera said he doesn't see the parallel. "Until we have that issue, I don't think we will have it as an issue," he said. Producteev will be taking a grassroots approach rather than marketing to CIOs at large companies, he said. "At the beginning, we won't be targeting companies with thousands of employees." <P> Some of those larger companies might start experimenting with the free version of Producteev, which is now capable of managing tasks across larger organizations, but Jive won't start seriously courting those larger companies until the integration between Producteev and the Jive platform is ready, Abehassera said. <P> <em>Follow David F. Carr at <a href="http://twitter.com/davidfcarr">@davidfcarr</a> or <a href="https://plus.google.com/113166369746212246457/?rel=author">Google+</a>.2013-05-17T14:59:00ZSchools CTO who picked iPad in his last job says things have changed.http://www.informationweek.com/education/mobility/texas-school-district-picks-dell-windows/240155158?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Smartphones_mobility<!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <div class="inlineStoryImage inlineStoryImageRight"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/k-12/learning-from-robots/240152041"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/971/FIRST_Robotics_Competition_01_tn.jpg" alt="Learning From Robots" title="Learning From Robots" class="img175" /></a><br /><div class="storyImageTitle">Learning From Robots</div><span class="inlinelargerView">(click image for larger view and for slideshow)</span></div> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> The Clear Creek Independent School District in Texas has chosen Dell Latitude tablets running Windows 8 as the basis for a one-to-one student technology program that will begin in the fall. <P> Clear Creek ISD, located near Houston, plans to eventually provide the tablets to 30,000 students, teachers and staff members. "We'll do the first large wave of 5,000 devices to staff and administration over the summer," school district CTO Kevin Schwartz said in an interview. The rest of the implementation will be phased in over two years, starting with a couple of model schools, then all of 9th and 10th grade, then the rest of the system. "We also have a couple of campuses that will be undergoing major renovation, so we'll probably roll out a little faster there. The construction will knock out walls, so mobility will be an absolute bonus to the schools," he said. <P> In a previous role as technology director for the Eanes ISD in Austin, Texas, he led the choice of iPads for a similar one-to-one technology initiative, where every student would get access to a device. That was the right choice at the time, but things have changed since he moved to the job at Clear Creek in 2012. "At the time, there were really only a few Android devices out there, and the iPad. It wasn't a difficult decision to see the iPad as the best device out there," he said. <P> As Schwartz arrived in the Clear Creek schools, the system was "addressing lingering technology issues under a budget crunch," he said. "The district wanted to strive toward a one-to-one program, not so much for the devices as for the access to personalized learning" they would enable. <P> <strong>[ Not so sure about Windows 8? Reac <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/windows/operating-systems/8-things-microsoft-should-fix-in-windows/240154570?itc=edit_in_body_cross">8 Things Microsoft Should Fix In Windows Blue</a>. ]</strong> <P> In the technology bakeoff competition he ran this time, which included student representatives as well as faculty and staff, the Dell devices emerged as the favorite because of the availability of software like Microsoft Office, he said. The students were probably biased toward the iPad at the beginning of the process. <P> When the students first saw Windows 8, they were disoriented by the new user interface, but "it took them about five minutes to get past that," Schwartz said. Then they started asking questions about things like warranties ("these are smart kids: they were using terms like total cost of ownership") because if they were going to be responsible for a school-owned device, they wanted to know it would be durable, he said. <P> Meanwhile, Schwartz saw the potential for the devices to also function as the desktop machine for many teachers, with the addition of a docking station. The Dell tablets also had clear advantages in terms of manageability because they ran standard Windows software, he said. "We got to do all those things directly on the Latitudes that were workarounds on the iPad." <P> This is one of several recent educational deployment wins for the Windows platform. <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/mobility/siu-freshmen-will-get-dell-windows-8-tab/240151183">Southern Illinois University</a> will also be giving out Dell tablets to the freshman class this fall. The State of <a href="https://www.informationweek.com/windows/microsoft-news/windows-8-wins-maine-schools/240154021">Maine recently switched to Windows 8 on HP laptops</a> as its preferred technology standard for students in place of Apple products. <P> <em>Follow David F. Carr at <a href="http://twitter.com/davidfcarr">@davidfcarr</a> or <a href="https://plus.google.com/113166369746212246457/?rel=author">Google+</a>, along with <a href="http://twitter.com/IWKEducation">@IWKEducation</a>.</em>2013-05-17T09:44:00ZAll the reasons to be suspicious of the political-industrial conspiracy against public education and public universities.http://www.informationweek.com/education/online-learning/ed-tech-privatization-and-plunder/240155089?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Smartphones_mobility<!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <div class="inlineStoryImage inlineStoryImageRight"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/online-learning/inside-eight-game-changing-moocs/240152508"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/976/MOOC_canvas_01_tn.jpg" alt="Inside Eight Game-changing MOOCs" title="Inside Eight Game-changing MOOCs" class="img175" /></a><br /><div class="storyImageTitle">Inside Eight Game-changing MOOCs</div><span class="inlinelargerView">(click image for larger view and for slideshow)</span></div> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> As much as I love the revolutionary potential of technology in education, I understand why some of those who care about public education and public universities worry about privatization and plunder. <P> Where I want to see the potential for <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/instructional-it/hope-battles-fear-over-student-data-inte/240151687">intelligent use of data to drive better student outcomes</a>, others see <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/data-management/education-data-privacy-backlash-begins/240153668">an unnecessary invasion of student privacy</a> driven more by profit motives than quality concerns. I listen to <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/instructional-it/bill-gates-to-sxswedu-education-change-i/240150249">Bill Gates speak about productive uses of educational technology</a> and can't help but be impressed by his turn to philanthropy, through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Others seem to see the foundation as a front for corporate and political interests determined to undermine public education and steer profits to private entities, including Microsoft. <P> It would be easier for me to maintain my optimism if not for some ugly facts, like the recent cynical moves from the Florida legislature. "In 2011, the Legislature made it a requirement for all high school students to complete at least one course online, creating a guaranteed market for online learning services," <a href="http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/05/10/3391244_p2/bill-would-allow-online-vendors.html" target="_blank">explains the <em>Miami Herald</em></a>, and now the other shoe is dropping as the state cuts back per-pupil funding for the publicly operated Florida Virtual School while <a href="http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/05/13/3395730/fred-grimm-boondoggle-hey-its.html" target="_blank">creating opportunities for private businesses</a>. <P> <div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject" style="background-color: #eee; padding: 10px; width: 497px; font-style: italic; margin-top: 15px; margin-bottom: 15px;"><img itemprop="image" src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/education/2013Q1/gates.jpg" width="497" height="375"><br />Bill Gates speaks about technology and education reform at SXSWEdu.</div> <P> I've written before about putting my younger kids in a <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/online-learning/the-education-lab-inside-my-house/240148305">virtual school program</a> run by the Broward County public school system. The Broward Virtual School operates as a franchise of the Florida Virtual School but also offers some programs through K12.com, a private firm. One of the things disturbing things we've noticed about K12.com is that it seems to invest more in marketing and lobbying than in the actual delivery of educational services. For example, the online tools it offers for taking tests and quizzes don't work properly with modern browsers, and rather than fix the problem they direct parents and students to downgrade their software. On the other hand, the public marketing site looks bright and shiny in any browser. What does that tell you about their priorities? <P> Political disclosure: For the past several years, I've been active in Democratic politics, which is rarely a conflict with technology reporting per se but does mean you're entitled to take my views about the Florida Legislature with a grain of salt. For the record, I do think Gov. Rick Scott bears an uncanny resemblance to Voldemort. I wasn't a big fan of former Gov. Jeb Bush, either, but count the creation of Florida Virtual School as one of the positive things he did. On the other hand, I recognize that some of the motivation for this came from the same place as his promotion of charter schools and various voucher programs aimed at distributing public money to private and religious schools. Bill Gates also tends to be a fan of charter schools, which is one of the reasons some educators distrust him. <P> Did I mention we also had our kids in a charter school at one point? See, I'm not necessarily a <em>good</em> Democrat, according to the teachers union wing of the party. My wife and I made a date night out of seeing the <a href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/waiting_for_superman/" target="_blank">"Waiting for Superman"</a> movie a couple of years ago and got all riled up over its depiction of public school dysfunction, union protection of incompetents and the cruelty of those lottery systems used to decide which students will be allowed to escape from a crappy regular public school to a superior charter one. <P> One of the criticisms of the movie was that it depicted charter schools in a way that might lead you to believe all charter schools are superior, led by enlightened principals who succeed because they are freed from bureaucracy and the interference of teachers unions. Unfortunately, while those schools exist (we saw them in the movie!), charter schools are just as likely to be uninspired operations operated by corporations who see siphoning off tax dollars as an easy way to make a buck. Some of them eventually mismanage themselves out of existence, like one local charter school that evaporated mid-year, leaving parents scrambling.The relationship between education companies and politicians is a bit like the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military-industrial_complex" target="_blank">military-industrial complex</a> President Eisenhower warned about in his 1961 goodbye address, "the acquisition of unwarranted influence" by the business interests with something to sell over those setting policies that shape the market for that product. <P> There is a conservative <a href="http://jonathanturley.org/2013/03/03/a-look-at-some-of-the-driving-forces-behind-the-school-reform-movement-and-the-effort-to-privatize-public-education/" target="_blank">agenda that consistently favors charter schools and other privatization measures</a>. Much of this is guided by <a href="http://www.alec.org/">ALEC</a>, the American Legislative Exchange Council, a powerful non-profit also known for promoting conservative model legislation such as voter ID laws and pro-gun "stand your ground" laws. Education blogger Audrey Watters connects the dots by pointing to <a href="http://hackeducation.com/2012/10/08/alec-and-ed-tech/" target="_blank">ALEC's funding from education technology companies and other firms</a> that stand to benefit from privatization-powered reforms. <P> For some, that same suspicion <a href="http://eduoptimists.blogspot.com/2013/02/predatory-privatization-exploiting.html" target="_blank">extends to the rise of the MOOCs</a>, the massively open online course platforms that have recently become such a sensation in higher education. <P> As someone who once worked for <em>Internet World</em>, a magazine that cheered on the disruptive innovations brought on by the Web right up until they helped drive the magazine out of business, I have no words of comfort for those who worry about the commoditization of education. In other words, get ready for the <a href="http://moocthulhu.com" target="_blank">MOOCpocalypse</a>. <P> Salon staff writer Andrew Leonard was initially inclined to <a href="http://www.salon.com/2013/02/08/the_internet_will_not_ruin_college/">defend the role of MOOCs</a>, drawing the same parallel to media and music and concluding universities ought to get ahead of the wave of change rather than pretending they can ignore it. But he was subsequently inspired to worry about <a href="http://www.salon.com/2013/02/22/conservatives_declare_war_on_college/" target="_blank">conservative governors declaring war on college</a>, particularly public higher education and funding of anything in the humanities lacking an immediate ROI. In MOOCs, some politicians see a tool to replace college classes with a mass-market alternative. Leonard writes: <P> <em>"After some reflection, it's become clear to me that there is a crucial difference in how the Internet's remaking of higher education is qualitatively different than what we've seen with recorded music and newspapers. <em>There's a political context to the transformation</em>. Higher education is in crisis because costs are rising at the same time that public funding support is falling. That decline in public support <em>is no accident</em>. Conservatives don't like big government and they don't like taxes, and increasingly, they don't even like the entire way that the humanities are taught in the United States. <P> It's absolutely no accident that in Texas, Florida and Wisconsin, three of the most conservative governors in the country are leading the push to incorporate MOOCs in university curricula. And it seems well worth asking whether the apostles of disruption who have been warning academics that everything is about to change have paid enough attention to how the intersection of politics and MOOCs is affecting the speed and intensity of that change. Imagine if Napster had had the backing of the Heritage Foundation and House Republicans? It's hard enough to survive chaotic disruption when it is a pure consequence of technological change. But when technological change suits the purposes of enemies looking to put a knife in your back, it's almost impossible.</em> <P> Despite all of this, I still believe most of the people working in education technology and online education are inspired by the vision of making a positive difference in the quality and availability of education. They may also be inspired by the vision of making a buck, and that is okay. Yet when their companies try to engineer success through political influence, they undermine the credibility of the whole enterprise, as do the influence-peddling politicians trumpeting a message of reform. <P> <em>Follow David F. Carr at <a href="http://twitter.com/davidfcarr">@davidfcarr</a> or <a href="https://plus.google.com/113166369746212246457/?rel=author">Google+</a>, along with <a href="http://twitter.com/IWKEducation">@IWKEducation</a>.</em>2013-05-15T15:25:00ZDuring a life-changing year in the Arctic, former enterprise software CTO created a life-changing mobile app for disabled users.http://www.informationweek.com/education/instructional-it/text-to-speech-for-disabled-at-app-store/240154944?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Smartphones_mobility<!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <div class="inlineStoryImage inlineStoryImageRight"> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/online-learning/12-open-educational-resources-shaking-up/240150477"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/961/creative-commons_tn.jpg" alt="12 Open Educational Resources: From Khan to MIT" title="12 Open Educational Resources: From Khan to MIT" class="img175" /></a><br /> <div class="storyImageTitle">12 Open Educational Resources: From Khan to MIT</div> <span class="inlinelargerView">(click image for slideshow)</span> </div> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE -->In the Arctic darkness, during a transformative year away from his work as an enterprise technology executive, Winston Chen began coding what became an empowering educational app for students with learning disabilities. <P> His <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/voice-dream-reader-text-to/id496177674?mt=8">Voice Dream Reader app</a> for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch reads books aloud, while simultaneously highlighting each word on the device's screen. <P> As a former CTO of the enterprise data management firm Kalido, Chen originally envisioned it as a tool for busy executives to read books and reports while driving or otherwise engaged. Instead, it has turned into one of the most popular assistive technology apps for the blind and partially blind and for students with many other disabilities that affect their ability to read independently. <P> "There is a large group of people out there for whom text-to-speech is life-changing," Chen said in an interview. "The quality has gotten really good over the last five years, but it's still not perfect. It turns out busy executives are far less tolerant of text-to-speech than someone who depends on it." <P> "For students who really need it, it is a game-changer," agreed <a href="http://www.voicedream.com/?page_id=730">Karen Janowski</a>, an assistive technology specialist with a private practice in the Greater Boston area who works with the Newton Public Schools, and serves as an adjunct faculty member at Simmons College. "It highlights every word, so you can read it as well as get audio input, and you can change the font size, font choices, and color choices." <P> On an iPad, she explained, the app can go up to 70-point type fonts, which is enough to allow some students with low vision or visual processing difficulties to follow along with better reading comprehension. <P> <strong>[ Can predictive analytics help make better learners? Read <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/online-learning/desire2learn-predicts-students-best-clas/240154683?itc=edit_in_body_cross">Desire2Learn Predicts Students' Best Classes</a>. ]</strong> <P> Most importantly, the app has allowed students to read independently and take grade-level tests that require reading without being dependent on someone reading the material to them. For example, a 4th grader with cerebral palsy and other learning disabilities who previously couldn't read independently has been able to work his way up to reading a book or two a week, Janowski said. "He's so excited to be reading books that his friends are reading, and reading them on his own. That is empowering." Another student, an 18-year-old who was essentially a non-reader, was able to begin reading by making the text as large as the app would allow on an iPad screen and displaying only one line at a time to avoid distractions. <P> <div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject" style="background-color: #eee; padding: 10px; width: 270px; font-style: italic; margin-top: 15px; margin-bottom: 15px; float: right; margin-left: 5px;"><img itemprop="image" src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/education/2013Q1/voicedream.jpg" alt="" title="" height="480" width="270"><br />Voice Dream Reader highlights words as it reads them.</div> <P> "Also, it's only $9.99, compared to some very expensive software programs that do similar things," Janowski said. "Can you tell I'm excited about this?" <P> The Voice Dream app is the byproduct of a sabbatical adventure Chen and his family took on an island north of Greenland and Iceland. As chronicled in a recent feature from <a href="http://www.wbur.org/2013/03/11/arctic-app-adventure">Boston NPR station WBUR</a> and on Chen's own <a href="http://arcticdream.me/">Arctic Dream blog</a>, the idea was to spend a year doing something completely different. While his wife, who is from Norway, taught school to the children of the island, Chen amused himself by blogging, painting, reading -- and coding. <P> "In the winter when it was dark outside, I needed something to do to keep myself occupied, so I decided I would go back to programming and write an app," Chen said. At first, teaching himself iOS programming was just a hobby, like learning oil painting. But once Dream Voice Reader made it into the iTunes App Store and began to garner strong positive feedback from people with disabilities, he got hooked on developing it to its true potential. <P> Running as a one-man operation for coding, product development, and customer support, Chen said he has translated the app into enough money to live off. "Plus, it's extremely gratifying work to know my product does something positive in people's lives rather than helping my company sell a few more widgets," he said. <P> Text-to-voice technology has a long history. The famed technologist Ray Kurzweil created an early reading software product in 1976, which in 1996 led to the founding of <a href="http://www.kurzweiledu.com">Kurzweil Educational Systems</a>, a leading maker of reading software for PCs and Macs. <P> However, the Kurzweil software costs as much as $1,500 a seat, while some of the other PC-based text-to-speech products cost $50 to $70, Chen said. "We charge $10 for the app, plus $2 or $3 for a voice," he pointed out. He hasn't actually written his own text-to-speech software, instead taking advantage of commercially available software for mobile devices that is approaching commodity pricing, combined with his own user interface. Alternate voices for the app are sold separately."It helps that nearly everything on an iPad is available through voice and touch," Chen said. To make the app more usable for the blind, he said, "I literally had to blindfold myself and learn to navigate through it." <P> The app is also designed to read from common text formats such as PDFs and pull content from widely used iOS apps such as Dropbox. Visually disabled readers can also take advantage of the <a href="https://www.bookshare.org/">Bookshare</a> program supported by the U.S. Department of Education that makes copyright-free ebooks available to people with disabilities. <P> Voice Dream Reader has become well-known throughout the community of assistive technology specialists. Janowski said in addition to recommending the app to parents, in some cases she can get the school system to provide an iPad with the app installed as part of a student's federally mandated Individualized Education Program. <P> Chen said he sees school systems ordering licenses in blocks of 20 in order to get the 50% discount Apple provides for volume purchases. "I'm always thinking about an Android version, but I'll probably wait a bit," he said. "The iPad pretty much dominates in education." <P> Voice Dream Reader has also attracted some users who are not disabled -- such as busy college students who have it read to them while they walk between classes -- and from users who may never have been formally diagnosed with a disability but still find reading difficult, such as those with attention deficit disorders or dyslexia, Chen said. <P> His original target audience of busy executives may come later. "I use this occasionally when I'm in the car. The sound quality is tolerable; I can tolerate it. From a company standpoint, I'm reluctant to openly market this as a product for the general population. A year or two from now, that may be different -- I'm finding some fantastic text-to-speech voices." <P> <em>Follow David F. Carr at <a href="http://twitter.com/davidfcarr">@davidfcarr</a> or <a href="https://plus.google.com/113166369746212246457/?rel=author">Google+</a>, along with <a href="http://twitter.com/IWKEducation">@IWKEducation</a>.</em>2013-05-15T09:57:00ZSalesforce.com's new Chatter mobile app makes browsing and searching files easier on phones and tablets.http://www.informationweek.com/social-business/news/file_sharing/salesforce-improves-mobile-access-to-cha/240154925?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Smartphones_mobility<!-- Image Aligning right --> <!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <div class="inlineStoryImage inlineStoryImageRight"> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/thebrainyard/slideshows/view/240005778/enterprise-social-networks-musthave-features-guide"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/853/Chatter-Influence-_tn.png" alt="Enterprise Social Networks: Must-Have Features Guide" title="Enterprise Social Networks: Must-Have Features Guide" class="img175" /></a><br /> <div class="storyImageTitle">Enterprise Social Networks: Must-Have Features Guide</div> <span class="inlinelargerView">(click image for larger view and for slideshow)</span> </div> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <!-- / Image Aligning right --> Users of the Salesforce.com Chatter mobile app will find it easier to search and share files using an update coming to market Wednesday. <P> Chatter is the enterprise social network for the Salesforce platform, which provides a global activity stream as well as social style discussion group capabilities, often used side-by-side with Salesforce CRM and other business applications. Previous versions of the Chatter mobile client let users view and participate in the stream of social posts, which can be used as a way of sharing file attachments. The latest version adds a files tab to the mobile user interface, making it easier to browse and search files independently of the stream. <P> "You can find any file in Salesforce and share it. You can also easily connect files to any sales opportunity or marketing campaign," Michael Peachey, senior director of product marketing, said in an interview. By default, the files tab shows the most recent files accessed, shared or shared with the user. The search capability finds files according to file name, file content and metadata. <P> <div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject" style="background-color: #eee; padding: 10px; width: 118px; font-style: italic; margin-top: 15px; margin-bottom: 15px; float: right;"><a href="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/brainyard/news/iPhonefile.png" target="_blank"><img itemprop="image" src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/brainyard/news/iPhonefile.png" alt="Chatter mobile file access" title="Chatter mobile file access" height="248" width="118"></a><br />Chatter mobile file access</div> <P> Users still have the option of searching the stream as an alternate way of finding files; keywords might occur in the comments about the file rather than the file itself, Peachey said. However, in general the mobile file search should be a faster way to find needed content in the "micro-moments" workers spend on their phones, trying to accomplish a task while in the coffee line or at the airport, he said. <P> The Chatter mobile files capability is separate from ChatterBox, a file sharing and cross-platform file synchronization product <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/social-business/news/social_networking_private_platforms/chatter-in-the-air-everywhere/240007663">announced at Dreamforce</a> last September and expected to be <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/smb/services/salesforce-chatterbox-4-facts-smbs-shoul/240007872">roughly competitive with products like Box and Dropbox</a>. <P> On a tablet such as the iPad, files can be listed on the left hand side of the screen with a file preview shown on the right. On a phone, the file listing is more compressed. <P> ChatterBox is supposed to be generally available in the <del>second</del> first half of 2013. The upgraded version of Chatter with mobile file access is available now <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/salesforce-chatter/id404249815?mt=8">in the Apple App Store</a> for iPhone and iPad, and will be available soon on the Google Play store for Android. Peachey said Salesforce's strategy for making Chatter files and ChatterBox work together will be revealed later. <P> <em>Follow David F. Carr at <a href="http://twitter.com/davidfcarr">@davidfcarr</a> or <a href="https://plus.google.com/113166369746212246457/?rel=author">Google+</a>.</em>2013-05-13T08:55:00ZLatest edition of learning management system makes educational recommendations "like Netflix," while giving early warning on struggling students.http://www.informationweek.com/education/online-learning/desire2learn-predicts-students-best-clas/240154683?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Smartphones_mobility<!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --><div class="inlineStoryImage inlineStoryImageRight"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/online-learning/inside-eight-game-changing-moocs/240152508"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/976/MOOC_canvas_01_tn.jpg" alt="Inside Eight Game-changing MOOCs" title="Inside Eight Game-changing MOOCs" class="img175" /></a><br /><div class="storyImageTitle">Inside Eight Game-changing MOOCs</div><span class="inlinelargerView">(click image for larger view and for slideshow)</span></div> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE -->What do you get when you cross learning software with predictive analysis more often seen in movie rental sites? You might get something like the latest release of learning management system (LMS) Desire2Learn. <P> The upgrade, released last week, brings predictive analytics to both students and instructors, says <a href="http://www.desire2learn.com/">Desire2Learn</a>. For students, it offers Amazon.com-style "if you liked that course, you'll probably like this course" recommendations to help them choose classes they are most likely to succeed in. For instructors, it offers feedback on which students are in trouble. <P> One of the leading vendors of LMS software, Desire2Learn has been one of the beneficiaries of the <a href="https://www.informationweek.com/education/education-tech-investments-surpassed-1/240147042">surge in investment in educational technologies</a>, picking up $80 million in funding in September. It also has been one of the pioneers in <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/big-data/news/big-data-analytics/can-big-data-analytics-boost-graduation/240147807">using analytics to improve educational outcomes</a>. <P> <strong>[ Business data coming out your ears? Read <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/big-data/news/big-data-analytics/big-data-professors-want-your-data-sets/240153785?itc=edit_in_body_cross">Big Data Professors Want Your Data Sets</a>. ]</strong> <P> Desire2Learn also has been focusing attention on the analytic needs of school administrators. For example, <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/daytona-state-college-adapts-lms-to-impr/240152718">Daytona State College's performance improvement program</a> is using Desire2Learn analytics partly to help it maintain its accreditation. <P> In January, <a href="http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/desire2learn-acquires-course-suggestion-software-inspired-by-netflix-and-amazon/41831">Desire2Learn acquired Degree Compass</a>, a program designed by Tristan Denley, provost of Austin Peay State University (APSU), in Tennessee, with the goal of improving graduation rates and improving retention by helping students choose courses. The software has proven 90% accurate in predicting whether students will pass a course, according to Desire2Learn. <P> APSU, which has been using the system the longest, has been able to show that students who use the software when picking classes saw a statistically significant 1.4% performance improvement. Subpopulations such as African-American students and Pell Grant recipients showed a larger effect, 2.1% and 3.9%, respectively. <P> This shows that "creating an online component of a brick-and-mortar course is very important -- it gives us the data to analyze and allows them to get the data back," Desire2Learn VP of marketing and business development Jeff McDowell said in an interview. The result is "almost a Netflix experience" where the software knows enough about you to make intelligent recommendations, he said. <P> Although the original Degree Compass application focused on guiding students, Desire2Learn is extending it with a module for instructors called the Student Success System, which provides predictive data visualizations that compare and contrast at-risk learners with their peers. Here, the goal is to allow the instructor to intervene early and change the predicted outcome. <P> <div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject" style="background-color: #eee; padding: 10px; width: 500px; font-style: italic; margin-top: 15px; margin-bottom: 15px;"><img itemprop="image" src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/education/2013Q1/d2l.jpg" alt="Desire2Learn's analytic dashboard for students" title="Desire2Learn's analytic dashboard for students" height="355" width="500"><br />Desire2Learn's analytic dashboard for student performance.</div> <P> "We're providing teachers with tools that allow them to look at students in their courses individually," McDowell said. "In a large class, it's really tough to manage the individual needs of all the different students. This will allow an instructor to really work closely to the people who might be at risk of failing a course. At the same time, there might be three or four people in the course who should be accelerated because you want to keep them challenged, keep them engaged." <P> Then there are all the people in the middle who shouldn't be ignored. "This lets you have a personal, individualized teaching plan for everyone in the course -- not just selected individuals, but the whole class," said McDowell. <P> Some of the excitement about applying analytics to education focuses on adaptive learning software that autonomously adjusts to each student in the most effective way. Desire2Learn's approach is different: it provides the analytics to a teacher, who can then make informed decisions about how to alter a student's learning plan, McDowell said. "D2L's position is that if you remove the human element, you're missing out on a lot of the experiential element of learning." <P> In addition to the new analytics, the platform update also includes improvements to the mobile client. In addition, Desire2Learn is expanding its ePortfolio solution, which lets students create an online, interactive resume showcasing their educational achievements and archiving digital work products. The new version, which works with the myDesire2Learn portal, will be an "ePortfolio for Life" that students retain access to after graduation, including 2 gigabytes of free storage. <P> <em>Follow David F. Carr at <a href="http://twitter.com/davidfcarr">@davidfcarr</a> or <a href="https://plus.google.com/113166369746212246457/?rel=author">Google+</a>, along with <a href="http://twitter.com/IWKEducation">@IWKEducation</a>.</em>2013-05-13T08:00:00ZThe cybersecurity challenge on college campuses lies as much with the students as with malicious outsiders.http://www.informationweek.com/education/security/hacking-higher-education/240153558?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Smartphones_mobility<!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <!-- May 2013 InformationWeek Digital Issue--> <div id="inlineGreenPromoTop"> <div class="greenBand"></div> <div class="inlineGreenPromoContent"> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/gogreen/051313edu?k=axxe&cid=article_axxe_os"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/edu/002/smallcov.jpg" alt="InformationWeek Green - Mar. 4, 2013" title="InformationWeek Green - Mar. 4, 2013" align="left" class="greenIssueImage" /></a> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/gogreen/051313edu?k=axxe&cid=article_axxe_os"><img src="http://twimgs.com/infoweek/graphics_library/misc/Green_leaf_88x88.jpg" alt="InformationWeek Green" title="InformationWeek Green" align="right" class="greenLeaf" /></a><br /> <div class="greenPromoText"> <strong><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/gogreen/051313edu?k=axxe&cid=article_axxe_os">Download the entire May 2013 issue of <em> InformationWeek Education</em></a>, distributed in an all-digital format (registration required).</strong><br /><br /> </div> </div> <div class="greenBand"></div> </div> <!-- / May 2013 InformationWeek Digital Issue--> <br /><!-- leave as a br to not interfere w/ the insights boxes --> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/edu/002/002Coverart4_110.jpg" width="110" height="110" alt="Hacking Higher Education" title="Hacking Higher Education" width="110" height="110" class="artInlineTopImage" /> When a faculty member at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, logged in to the university's grade book last fall, she realized something was wrong: The grades in the online system didn't match her paper records. She was alert enough to see this was no mere glitch.</p> <P> In March, after months of investigation, police charged two students with hacking the system to inflate grades. Police maintain that Beckley Parker, 21, of Weston, Conn., had changed his own grades for 17 classes since the spring of 2011, and also changed grades for 50 other students, according to the Dayton Daily News. David Callahan, 22, of Cambridge, Mass., reportedly changed his own grade once and two other students' grades. Although the facts are subject to interpretation, it seems the two were either trying to help fraternity brothers or other friends at the same time they were improving their own grades, or they may have been trying to cover their tracks by changing more than one grade in each case.</p> <P> All it took for them to make the changes was an inexpensive keylogger device, inserted between the keyboard and the computer it was attached to, which allowed them to record the actions of teachers entering their passwords for the grading system. They were then able to access the system at will.</p> <P> After cooperating with investigators, the students avoided being charged with a felony, instead accepting dismissal from the university and pleading guilty to multiple counts of "attempted unauthorized use of property," a misdemeanor.</p> <P> Miami University's information security officer, Joe Bazeley, says an attack on the university's learning and grading systems is actually worse than the sort of attacks, namely information theft and exposure, that used to keep him up at night before the keylogger incident. "We produce knowledge and identify that via grades and a diploma," Bazeley says. The grade book hack "challenges the integrity of those grades and diplomas," he says.</p> <P> <strong>Learn From The Hacks</strong></p> <P> <!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <!-- inline Report Promo --> <div class="inlineReportPromo right"> <div class="reportHeader"><a href="http://reports.informationweek.com/abstract/104/8608/Government/strategy-education-s-technology-dilemma.html?k=axxe&cid=article_axxe?cid=pub_analyt__iwk_20130613" target="_blank">Strategy: Education's Technology Dilemma</a> </div> <img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/edu/002/002ED_CSreportcover.jpg" width="175" height="111" alt="Report Cover" title="Report Cover" class="reportCover" /> <div class="reportInfo"><center><strong> Schools Do More With Less</strong></center><br />Technology advances are providing new tools for learning. The challenge is how to take advantage of the opportunities when resources are stretched thin. <a href="http://reports.informationweek.com/abstract/104/8608/Government/strategy-education-s-technology-dilemma.html?k=axxe&cid=article_axxe?cid=pub_analyt__iwk_20130613" target="_blank">Our report</a> is free with registration. <center><strong><a href="http://reports.informationweek.com/abstract/104/8608/Government/strategy-education-s-technology-dilemma.html?k=axxe&cid=article_axxe?cid=pub_analyt__iwk_20130613" target="_blank">Get This</a> And <a href="http://reports.informationweek.com/">All Our Reports</a></strong></center> </div> </div> <!-- / inline Report Promo --> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <P> Unfortunately, examples abound in higher education of the other kind of security breach.</p> <P> An undergraduate at the University of Nebraska last year was able to break into a database associated with the university's PeopleSoft system, exposing Social Security numbers and other sensitive information on about 654,000 students, alumni and employees. According to our sister website Dark Reading, the university was lucky enough to detect the breach and shut it down quickly. An IT staffer picked up on an error message that seemed like evidence of something amiss, and a recently installed security information and event management system helped network managers sort through system logs and collect enough evidence to allow police to get a warrant to confiscate the computer of the student believed to have been behind the attack.</p> <P> In March, Salem State University in Massachusetts alerted 25,000 current and former students and staff that their Social Security numbers may have been compromised in a database breach. If the pattern of the last few years repeats itself, expect higher education institutions to experience another half dozen major security breaches by the end of 2013.</p> <P> <!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <center><strong>To read the rest of the article,<br /><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/gogreen/051313edu?k=axxe&cid=article_axxe_os">download the May 2013 issue of <em>InformationWeek Education</em>. </a></strong></center><br clear="all" /></p> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <P>2013-05-13T08:00:00ZStudents can use technology to undermine the integrity of education.http://www.informationweek.com/education/security/when-education-gets-too-virtual/240153557?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Smartphones_mobility<!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <!-- May 2013 InformationWeek Digital Issue--> <div id="inlineGreenPromoTop"> <div class="greenBand"></div> <div class="inlineGreenPromoContent"> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/gogreen/051313edu?k=axxe&cid=article_axxe_os"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/edu/002/smallcov.jpg" alt="InformationWeek Green - Mar. 4, 2013" title="InformationWeek Green - Mar. 4, 2013" align="left" class="greenIssueImage" /></a> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/gogreen/051313edu?k=axxe&cid=article_axxe_os"><img src="http://twimgs.com/infoweek/graphics_library/misc/Green_leaf_88x88.jpg" alt="InformationWeek Green" title="InformationWeek Green" align="right" class="greenLeaf" /></a><br /> <div class="greenPromoText"> <strong><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/gogreen/051313edu?k=axxe&cid=article_axxe_os">Download the entire May 2013 issue of <em> InformationWeek Education</em></a>, distributed in an all-digital format (registration required).</strong><br /><br /> </div> </div> <div class="greenBand"></div> </div> <!-- / May 2013 InformationWeek Digital Issue--> <br /><!-- leave as a br to not interfere w/ the insights boxes --> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/edu/002/002Coverart4_110.jpg" width="110" height="110" alt="Hacking Higher Education" title="Hacking Higher Education" width="110" height="110" class="artInlineTopImage" /> <P> The visions of how technology can help students learn are promising. The reality of how students can use technology to undermine the integrity of education is already here.</p> <P> The <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/gogreen/051313edu?k=axxe&cid=article_axxe_os">cover story of the new issue of <i>InformationWeek Education</i></a> begins with a recent news item about two students at Ohio's Miami University who used keylogger devices to capture professor passwords and gain access to an online grade book. They were arrested and expelled after admitting to changing grades for themselves and others. </p> <P> In a similar case at California's Palos Verdes High School in January 2012, three students were charged with first breaking into the janitor's office to steal a classroom master key. They reportedly planted keylogging devices on multiple computers, mined passwords, and used them to alter scores on tests and homework just enough to bump grades up a bracket. The three students set up a commercial operation, charging $300 to boost a grade from a B to an A, according to the Los Angeles Times. They were charged with burglary and conspiracy to commit burglary.</p> <P> My 12-year-old son has been known to do a little shoulder surfing to capture the "learning coach" password his mom and I use on the online educational website K12.com. He and his sister are in a virtual school, so getting the password let him grade some of his own schoolwork. The good news is that he isn't as clever as he thinks he is and routinely gets stopped when he tries a tactic like this one. My hope is that as he matures, he'll learn the lesson that it's more rewarding to actually do the work.</p> <P> The Palos Verdes High School students were apparently smart kids, taking honors and AP classes. It's unclear whether they needed to inflate their own grades. None of the news stories I've read reports how they were caught, but it seems likely that news of their "enterprise" got back to school officials. At Miami University, a professor noticed that the grades in the online system didn't match her paper notes. To make such exploits easier to detect, the university's technology team is modifying its grade book software to send an email notification to instructors whenever grades are changed so they can confirm the legitimacy of those changes.</p> <P> Academic cheating is nothing new. Like many of the ills associated with unauthorized use of computer systems, digitization just provides new techniques and temptations.</p> <P> Do online education tools make cheating easier? Maybe, but in all of the examples cited above, cheating was thwarted by people who care about education and were paying attention. Should my son's grades get an inexplicable boost, or his latest essay show better spelling, grammar and vocabulary than he has produced before, his mom will know and have a talk with him. The Miami University students apparently tried to cover their tracks by changing grades for other students in addition to themselves. However, once investigators started looking at the pattern of grade changes across multiple courses, it wasn't hard to see a couple of students turning up as the common denominator.</p> <P> As the digitization of education continues, "auditing a course" may take on a whole new meaning, as educators seek better ways to verify that grades reflect actual learning.</p>2013-05-09T09:06:00ZSDN aims to make networks easy to configure in software rather than hardware. The goal is to provide data centers with added flexibility.http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/infrastructure/interop-cloud-experts-debate-sdns-future/240154473?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Smartphones_mobility<!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --><div class="inlineStoryImage inlineStoryImageRight"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/smb/network/9-bandwidth-hogs-reality-vs-myth/240147041"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/941/01_Intro_tn.jpg" alt="9 Bandwidth Hogs: Reality Vs. Myth" title="9 Bandwidth Hogs: Reality Vs. Myth" class="img175" /></a><br /><div class="storyImageTitle">9 Bandwidth Hogs: Reality Vs. Myth</div><span class="inlinelargerView">(click image for larger view and for slideshow)</span></div><!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE -->Software-defined networking (SDN) has been in the "coming soon" category for many years, but an Interop keynote panel discussion on the topic showed room for debate over what it ought to look like when it finally gets here. <P> SDN is too often spoken of as a single event that will wipe away all current networking technologies, when in fact "the underpinnings are already in place," said moderator Eric Hanselman, chief analyst at 451 Research. <P> The point of SDN is to make networks easy to configure and reconfigure in software rather than hardware, with many more networking functions migrating from being embedded capabilities of a network appliance to being defined in software. Network systems are migrating incrementally in that direction as networks follow the same path toward virtualization as servers and storage, he said. Ultimately, the goal is to provide every data center with the flexibility associated with cloud computing. <P> <strong>[ Open-source network switches? Read <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/big-data/news/hardware-architectures/interop-open-compute-project-to-tackle-network-switching/240154452">Interop: Open Compute Project To Tackle Network Switching</a>.]</strong> <P> Huge data centers operated by the likes of Google and Facebook "already look like what we attribute to SDN," agreed Martin Casado, chief architect for networking at VMware. "The big guys did it first because they're big," he said, not because they're the only ones who would value the flexibility promised by SDN. <P> Microsoft has been learning the same lessons through cloud services such as Azure, said Rajeev Nagar, group program manager for Windows core networking. "Scale changes everything," he said, adding that "when you're provisioning and de-provisioning thousands of networks a day," it's impossible to do that all manually, making automation essential. <P> The third member of the panel, Rajiv Ramaswami, executive VP and general manager of infrastructure and networking at Broadcom, sees a need for "faster and flatter networks" to support the fast-growing demand for machine-to-machine communications. Networking chip designers like his firm are at "the bottom of the food chain" in an ecosystem that will be increasingly stratified, with more hardware capabilities made accessible for manipulation through software, he said. <P> Just how much access software applications should have to basic network functions proved to be one area for debate, with Casado arguing, "the less the application has to know about the network, the better it is for everyone." Although system software for networking can make networks more flexible, application design is simpler when it is protected from the complexities of the network, he said. <P> Microsoft's Nagar said that might be true in general but applications such as Lync can get real performance benefits from the ability to dynamically reconfigure the network. Big-data analytics applications also could benefit, given their requirements for large-scale data movement, he said. For that reason, he argued in favor of providing "deep visibility" into the network infrastructure where needed. <P> Of the three, Casado was most willing to admit he is uncertain how SDNs will develop and how they will affect the IT organizations that must support them. He believes the decoupling of logical switching functions from hardware is inevitable, following a pervasive pattern in IT of systems architectures becoming less monolithic so that individual elements can evolve independently. "Anything after that is anybody's guess," he said. <P> <em>Follow David F. Carr at <a href="http://twitter.com/davidfcarr">@davidfcarr</a> or <a href="https://plus.google.com/113166369746212246457/?rel=author">Google+</a>.</em>2013-05-08T15:10:00ZOpen Compute Project initiated by Facebook sets its sights on network switching as the next target for open innovation.http://www.informationweek.com/big-data/news/hardware-architectures/interop-open-compute-project-to-tackle-network-switching/240154452?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Smartphones_mobility<!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --><div class="inlineStoryImage inlineStoryImageRight"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/hardware/data-centers/a-visit-to-facebooks-desert-data-center/240149810"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/957/21_tn.jpg" alt=" Facebook's Futuristic Data Center: Inside Tour" title=" Facebook's Futuristic Data Center: Inside Tour" class="img175" /></a><br /><div class="storyImageTitle"> Facebook's Futuristic Data Center: Inside Tour</div><span class="inlinelargerView">(click image for larger view and for slideshow)</span></div><!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE -->Since Facebook kicked off the Open Compute Project by donating its overall data center design, the OCP Foundation has been chipping away at open sourcing designs for all of the critical components that go into the data center. Next up: network switches. <P> In a keynote speech at <a href="http://www.interop.com" >Interop</a>, Facebook VP of hardware design and supply chain Frank Frankovsky reviewed <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/hardware/data-centers/facebooks-frank-frankovsky-open-compute/240154184" >two years of progress at expanding the scope of the project</a>, which now includes open designs for server racks and cold storage designs based on how Facebook handles your old photos. <P> These designs are geared for very high performance and scalability, but also for energy efficiency. The industry average is that a data center will consume about 1.9 times as much electrical power as actually makes it to a server delivering compute services because of waste in the process, including electrical conversions and air conditioning demands. By minimizing the need for conversions and eliminating air conditioning, Facebook has been able to reduce that factor to about 1.07, Frankovsky said, which translates into an operational cost savings of about 38 percent. The design also reduced the capital expense budget by 24 percent. <P> <strong>[ For more on Frankovsky's Interop keynote, see <a href=" http://www.informationweek.com/hardware/data-centers/facebooks-frank-frankovsky-open-compute/240154184?itc=edit_in_body_cross">Facebook's Frank Frankovsky: Open Compute Debate</a>. ]</strong> <P> In addition to sharing its plans for how to build a cloud data center from scratch, Facebook has published optimizations from an earlier stage in its growth when it was doing "everything the landlord allowed" to maximize its use of colocation data center facilities. OCP has also come up with a rack design for colocation spaces. Those colocation designs have become some of the most popular OCP assets because they can be applied by many more companies, Frankovsky said. <P> As a company that has been heavily involved in using and contributing to open source software projects, Facebook wanted to see the same principles applied to hardware, Frankovsky said, as a way to "move forward the pace of innovation as fast as we can." Many other sorts of companies, such as financial services firms, have joined with the effort out of their own frustration that vendor product roadmaps don't always match their requirements as well as they could. <P> Hardware vendors who are beginning to see it's in their best interest to participate are starting to become some of the project's best contributors, Frankovsky said. <P> The networking layer of a data center operation has been the last on the list for OCP to tackle. That's starting to change, with Intel recently contributing an optical interconnect design for server racks and taking some preliminary steps toward open designs for software-defined networking. The last big empty spot on the architecture slide Frankovsky shared was an <a href="http://www.opencompute.org/2013/05/08/up-next-for-the-open-compute-project-the-network/">open design for network switches</a>, which today are uniformly delivered as appliances with proprietary hardware and software. <P> You should be able to buy bare metal and program the switch to operate according to your specifications. Work on that next phase of the project will begin at an <a href="http://www.opencompute.org/events/ocp-engineering-summit-mit/">OCP engineering summit</a> scheduled for May 16 at MIT. <P> Frankovsky invited members of the Interop crowd to contribute their own knowledge and requirements to making it a success. "The more people we get to work on these really hard problems, the better," he said. "Openness always wins." <P> <em>Follow David F. Carr at <a href="http://twitter.com/davidfcarr">@davidfcarr</a> or <a href="https://plus.google.com/113166369746212246457/?rel=author">Google+</a>.</em> <P> <i>E2 is the only event of its kind, bringing together business and technology leaders across IT, marketing, and other lines of business looking for new ways to evolve their enterprise applications strategy and transform their organizations to achieve business value. Join us June 17-19 for three days of 40+ conference sessions and workshops across eight tracks and discover the latest insights in enterprise social software, big data and analytics, mobility, cloud, SaaS and APIs, UI/UX and more. <a href="http://www.e2conf.com/boston/?_mc=MP_BTMEDIWKAXE">Register for E2 Conference Boston today</a> and save $200 off Full Event Passes, $100 off Conference, or get a FREE Keynote + Expo Pass! </i>2013-05-08T12:20:00ZAt Interop Las Vegas 2013, University of New Hampshire CIO Joanna Young and Seton Hill University's Phil Komarny discuss blossoming wireless bandwidth demands.http://www.informationweek.com/interop-higher-ed-cios-focus-on-bandwidt/240154454?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Smartphones_mobility<!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --><div class="inlineStoryImage inlineStoryImageRight"> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/mobility/muni-wireless/new-england-patriots-winning-technology/240146529"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/940/01_GilletteStadium_tn.jpg" alt="New England Patriots' Winning Technology Plan" title="New England Patriots' Winning Technology Plan" class="img175" /></a><br /> <div class="storyImageTitle">New England Patriots' Winning Technology Plan</div> <span class="inlinelargerView">(click image for slideshow)</span></div><!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE -->A university might be judged by the strength of its faculty and the accomplishments of its graduates, but these days it is also increasingly judged by its network, particularly its wireless network. <P> That was the message I heard after meeting CIOs from two very different schools at <a href="http://www.interop.com" target="_blank">Interop</a>, a UBM conference focused on networking, infrastructure, and technological innovation. As University of New Hampshire CIO Joanna Young put it, ubiquitous wireless access has become a universal expectation. "It's not just students, either," Young said. "When parents come on campus, if they can't get on the Wi-Fi for the mobile app for the campus tour, they're highly annoyed." <P> Young and Phil Komarny, CIO at Seton Hill University, came to Interop as guests of <a href="http://www.enterasys.com">Enterasys Networks</a>, which has them speaking in a series of <a href="http://pages.enterasys.com/Interop2013_CIO-Innovations-Sessions.html">education sessions</a> on the expo floor. I connected with them for lunch thanks to a Twitter introduction by Vala Afshar, the Enterasys chief marketing officer I know as a <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/social-business/news/strategy/in-search-of-social-business-excellence/240144543">social business enthusiast</a>. <P> UNH is a public university with about 15,000 students. Seton Hill is a Catholic university in Greensburg, Pa., with only 2,500 students, but both spoke highly of Enterasys as a technology "partner" as well as a vendor. <P> <strong>[ Sketchy Internet access plagues more campuses than you might think. Read <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/campus-infrastructure/can-colleges-tame-the-bandwidth-monster/240150686?itc=edit_in_body_cross">Can Colleges Tame The Bandwidth Monster?</a> ]</strong> <P> A university campus that covers a large geographical area and includes a lot of old buildings is a challenging environment for networking in general, Young said, much less reliable, high-density wireless coverage. It helps that Enterasys also provides technology for other demanding venues such as the New England Patriots stadium, she said. <P> The overall demands on the campus network are on a "hockey stick" curve, Young said. "Bandwidth had been doubling every year, but now it's tripling or quadrupling." As more educational content is delivered online, "I've got to make the network a positive differentiator," she said. <P> In addition to supporting its own campus, UNH is now delivering digital learning content -- often with a heavy dose of video and interactivity -- to community colleges around the state, she said. So far, UNH has steered clear of involvement in massive open online courses, or MOOCs, typically offered for free but produced by elite private institutions. However, this summer UNH will offer what it calls a <a href="http://www.unh.edu/news/releases/2013/mar/lw25potter.cfm">MOCK -- Massive Online Course for Kids -- on Harry Potter</a>, with English professor and Potter devotee James Krasner. Although not free, the $200 course is intended to help students entering grades 4 to 8 maintain or sharpen their language skills over the summer. <P> Another model UNH is exploring would provide the first course in a certificate program for free, but charge for the remainder of the courses required to earn that credential, Young said. An introductory course in geographic information systems would be one candidate for that treatment, she said. <P> Komarny runs a much smaller operation, but one that has distinguished itself by providing iPads and Apple laptops for students, faculty and staff. Full-time undergraduates entering the school in 2013-2014 will receive an iPad Mini, as well as a 13" MacBook Air. Because some faculty didn't want to switch to the Mini, Komarny plans to offer faculty who are due to receive a new tablet the option of choosing a 10" iPad instead. As a result of this wholesale move to mobile devices, 98% of the traffic on the campus network is mobile traffic. <P> The mobile device program, which dates to 2010, got off to a rocky start because initially the university "didn't consumerize the network completely," Komarny said. Early on, mobile devices were forced to authenticate to a different Windows domain depending on where they were on campus, he said. Now, students authenticate through a mobile Web portal connected to the university's LDAP directory for a unified directory that follows them around campus, he said. <P> Before joining Seton Hill in 2009, Komarny had run his own Web design firm designing websites for entertainment firms and sports teams, so he is particularly proud of the design of the university portal. Although it's essentially the latest implementation of a Web portal he previously had implemented for several other universities, it comes to life when users can "touch the data" on a tablet, he said. <P> The portal is continually refined with new features for students and faculty alike. One recent addition makes it simple for a professor to look up a student who might be failing to attend classes or turn in assignments and raise an alert with other faculty members who have that student in their classes. The idea is to get the faculty collaborating to intervene early if a student is at risk of dropping out, Komarny said. <P> Komarny has also been serving as a university design partner for the development of <a href="http://www.openclass.com">OpenClass</a>, the <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/instructional-it/cloud-based-lms-wins-over-abilene-christ/240151876">cloud-based learning management system offered for free by Pearson</a>, and he is enthusiastic about its approach to offering a built-in market for educational apps. OpenClass is tightly integrated with Google Apps, which dovetails with another technology Komarny has been promoting, the use of Google+ Communities for student and faculty collaboration. <P> Standardizing on Apple mobile technology to support access to all these online resources has greatly simplified technical support, Komarny said. Although the mobile device program for students is a good recruiting tool, "the reason we do this is for faculty," he said. Because the instructors all have the same familiar setup, they can help each other, he said. "And that's priceless." <P> <em>Follow David F. Carr at <a href="http://twitter.com/davidfcarr">@davidfcarr</a> or <a href="https://plus.google.com/113166369746212246457/?rel=author">Google+</a>, along with <a href="http://twitter.com/IWKEducation">@IWKEducation</a>.</em>2013-05-08T09:06:00ZProliferation of commodity IT services makes it ever more important to rigorously account for the costs and value of internal IT.http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/infrastructure/interop-expert-advice-on-it-roi-chargeba/240154399?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Smartphones_mobility<!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <div class="inlineStoryImage inlineStoryImageRight"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/online-learning/inside-eight-game-changing-moocs/240152508"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/976/MOOC_canvas_01_tn.jpg" alt="Inside Eight Game-changing MOOCs" title="Inside Eight Game-changing MOOCs" class="img175" /></a><br /><div class="storyImageTitle">Inside Eight Game-changing MOOCs</div><span class="inlinelargerView">(click image for larger view and for slideshow)</span></div> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> With commodity IT services proliferating in the cloud, IT organizations are under more pressure than ever to prove their value. <P> While their peers were off studying the latest trends in wireless and software-defined networking, one group of <a href="http://www.interop.com" target="_blank">Interop</a> attendees was exploring the challenging art of budgeting for technology and accounting for its value. <P> "If you're doing things well, you should be able to compare your costs to outsourcing," said John Custy, principal consultant of the JCP Group, as part of his lecture for a class originally developed for the <a href="http://www.thinkhdi.com/" target="_blank">Help Desk Institute</a>. Often, the comparison will show that internal IT services are more economical and effective -- but only if you have a good cost model, he said. "Shame on you if someone says they want to do comparison of costs and you can't pull out the last cost comparison that was done." <P> <strong>[ See our related Interop story: <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/hardware/data-centers/interop-las-vegas-10-cool-products/240154110">Interop Las Vegas: 10 Cool Products</a>. ]</strong> <P> Custy's two-day class on "Financial Management Skills for the Technical Manager" was offered as part of the workshop program leading up to Tuesday night's opening ceremonies and Wednesday's first keynotes for the Interop conference. Many technology leaders still budget on the basis of their experience -- their best guess of what their real costs are and will be, Custy said. The problem with that approach is your superiors can guess just as well as you can. The only way to make your case for an appropriate level of funding is to have a more rigorous approach to costing and funding IT services. <P> Attended by a couple of CIOs as well as network managers, project managers and people from technology services firms, the class addressed the need to come up with more complete cost models that go beyond the original hardware and software purchase costs to long-term maintenance and support. On the other hand, it's important to provide a complete picture of the services provided, particularly when company leaders are tempted to compare IT services to cloud services that are free or close to it, Custy said. An example would be corporate versus cloud email, and all the help desk, archiving and e-discovery services IT provides to make email reliable and meet regulatory requirements, he said. "You're doing a whole lot more than that free service, but who knows that?" <P> Although it's possible to use this accounting to charge departments for the services they get from central IT, it's better to "stop pretending" that everything can be handled as a chargeback, Custy agreed. The point of tracking the cost of technology services implemented on the behalf of the business, as well as the value of basic services delivered by IT, is to ensure they are funded appropriately to allow IT to continue delivering quality service, he said. Meanwhile, the goal of providing the organization with a complete catalog of IT services can only be achieved if the organization has a firm grasp of the real cost of those services. <P> Jim Smith, senior VP of innovation and trends at PDX Incorporated, said his organization is currently pushing for greater internal accountability. PDX makes pharmacy management software used in retail stores. Smith said one thing he took away from the class was that PDX should be careful about how far it pushes its efforts at financial accounting for technology services because "it's very possible to overdo it -- the killer is the billing process," he said. <P> To show the value of IT, Custy recommended a variety of approaches including looking at the cost to the organization of a service not being available -- for example, dollars lost for each hour that the checkout function on an e-commerce site is offline. When valuing productivity, it's good to translate hours of labor saved into dollar savings -- good, but not always necessary. <P> "In a lot of cases, you don't have to go there," Custy said. If you can show that an improvement to company systems is saving the sales team 400 hours per month, the executive overseeing that function can probably translate that into a dollar value more quickly than you could "and will probably give it a much higher dollar value than you would ever equate to that," he said. <P> In other cases, the business side of the organization may provide the metrics. For example, one university participant mentioned the organization had calculated the cost of losing a student, making it easier to put a value on technology initiatives aimed at boosting retention. <P> Bill Hrabik of State Farm Insurance said he sat in on the session to learn alternate ways of approaching this sort of analysis, although it's nothing new to him. "Budgeting is something we do every day," he said. However, in his organization Custy's suggestion about valuing IT improvements in terms of hours doesn't work, he said. "Our business partners don't care about hours," he said, but they do care about dollars. <P> State Farm has experimented off and on with different methods of charging departments back for their access to IT services, but lately has concluded that it's more trouble than it's worth, Hrabik said. The overhead of implementing a comprehensive system of chargebacks defeats the purpose, he said. <P> <em>Follow David F. Carr at <a href="http://twitter.com/davidfcarr">@davidfcarr</a> or <a href="https://plus.google.com/113166369746212246457/?rel=author">Google+</a>.</em>2013-05-02T16:05:00ZCitrix's task-focused social business tool adds real-time collaboration to online workspaces.http://www.informationweek.com/social-business/news/social_networking_private_platforms/podio-adds-im-video-chat-coming-soon/240154099?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Smartphones_mobility<!-- Image Aligning right --><!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --><div class="inlineStoryImage inlineStoryImageRight"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/thebrainyard/slideshows/view/240005778/enterprise-social-networks-musthave-features-guide"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/853/Chatter-Influence-_tn.png" alt="Enterprise Social Networks: Must-Have Features Guide" title="Enterprise Social Networks: Must-Have Features Guide" class="img175" /></a><br /><div class="storyImageTitle">Enterprise Social Networks: Must-Have Features Guide</div><span class="inlinelargerView">(click image for larger view and for slideshow)</span></div><!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --><!-- / Image Aligning right -->The Podio social collaboration platform from Citrix is adding real-time collaboration for the first time, with a Podio Chat feature that launched Thursday and video chat to follow soon. <P> "At the end of the day, Podio is a collaborative workspace, and we're adding a more real-time aspect to how you'll be able to collaborate there," said Bernardo de Albergaria, vice president and general manager of software-as-a-service products at Citrix. <P> Last year, <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/social-business/news/social_networking_private_platforms/citrix-buys-podio-for-go-to-social-colla/232900167">Citrix bought Podio</a>, a startup from Denmark, adding it to the family of online applications that includes GoToMeeting. The video chat feature will be based on a browser plugin derived from GoToMeeting technology and should be available by the end of May, de Albergaria said. The press release says it will be available this summer. <P> <strong>[ What should you look for in a collaboration tech developer? Read <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/social-business/news/social_networking_private_platforms/8-ways-to-judge-collaboration-technology/240148272?itc=edit_in_body_cross">8 Ways To Judge Collaboration Technology Vendors</a>. ]</strong> <P> The goal is to add support for synchronous communications to Podio, which until now has supported asynchronous communications in the form of social posting and commenting on items. Otherwise, Podio distinguishes itself with an emphasis on task management and the ability for users to create simple "apps" for structured collaboration. The Podio visual app builder aims to make the creation of form-driven Web applications as easy as working with a spreadsheet -- which for decades has served as the lowest-common-denominator tool for organizing information when more sophisticated applications aren't available or aren't flexible enough to the demands of the moment. <P> <div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject" style="background-color: #eee; padding: 10px; width: 160px; font-style: italic; margin-top: 15px; margin-bottom: 15px; float: right;"><img itemprop="image" src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/education/2013Q1/podioch.png" alt="Podio chat for iPhone" title="Podio chat for iPhone" height="284" width="160"><br />Podio chat for iPhone.</div> <P> Although some other social collaboration tools, such as Yammer, also provide an integrated Web-based chat tool, de Albergaria said Podio's version is different because it makes chat available within a specific workspace associated with a set of tasks, making it more valuable for getting work done. <P> One limitation of this form of instant messaging is that a user must have the social application running in a Web browser in order to get alerts, unlike IM through a desktop tool such as Microsoft Lync that can be left running in the background all the time. However, Podio Chat will send the same message as an email alert if the other recipient is not online, de Albergaria said. The Podio mobile client for iPhone, iPad and Android also supports the chat feature. <P> The Podio video chat option is intended for quick face-to-face conversations. Customers who also subscribe to GoToMeeting can already schedule meetings through Podio, which can include video as well as screen sharing. <P> <div style="width: 560px; padding: 15px; background-color: #eee; "><iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/1fXXI8Da8tw" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br />A Podio chat tutorial</div> <P> <em>Follow David F. Carr on <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/davidfcarr">Twitter @davidfcarr</a> or <a href="https://plus.google.com/113166369746212246457/?rel=author">Google+</a>.</em> <P> <i>E2 is the only event of its kind, bringing together business and technology leaders across IT, marketing, and other lines of business looking for new ways to evolve their enterprise applications strategy and transform their organizations to achieve business value. Join us June 17-19 for three days of 40+ conference sessions and workshops across eight tracks and discover the latest insights in enterprise social software, big data and analytics, mobility, cloud, SaaS and APIs, UI/UX and more. <a href="http://www.e2conf.com/boston/?_mc=MP_BTMEDIWKAXE">Register for E2 Conference Boston today</a> and save $200 off Full Event Passes, $100 off Conference, or get a FREE Keynote + Expo Pass! </i>2013-05-02T14:05:00ZWhy Wesleyan embraced Coursera, Amherst rejected edX, and Rollins is going its own way.http://www.informationweek.com/education/online-learning/moocs-what-university-cios-really-think/240154120?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Smartphones_mobility<!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --><div class="inlineStoryImage inlineStoryImageRight"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/online-learning/inside-eight-game-changing-moocs/240152508"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/976/MOOC_canvas_01_tn.jpg" alt="Inside Eight Game-changing MOOCs" title="Inside Eight Game-changing MOOCs" class="img175" /></a><br /><div class="storyImageTitle">Inside Eight Game-changing MOOCs</div><span class="inlinelargerView">(click image for larger view and for slideshow)</span></div> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE -->Can a university dependent on convincing students and their parents to part with tuition dollars afford to participate in a movement that says online education should be free? On the other hand, can a university that wants to stay relevant afford not to? <P> Those were the questions in the air when CIOs representing about 40 institutions gathered to discuss massive open online courses, or MOOCs, at the <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/leadership/higher-ed-cios-cant-ignore-moocs-or-poli/240153841">The Higher Education Technology Forum</a> in San Diego, an invitation-only event organized by <a href="http://www.consero.com">Consero</a>. <P> The panel on MOOCs included three CIOs: David Baird of Wesleyan University, Gayle Barton of Amherst College, and Patricia Schoknecht of Rollins College. Each school has a different approach to MOOCs. Wesleyan is active in Coursera, the for-profit MOOC that has so far accumulated the longest list of university partners. Amherst was recently in the news after <a href="http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/04/19/despite-courtship-amherst-decides-shy-away-star-mooc-provider">faculty shot down a proposed partnership with edX</a>. Rollins will offer a MOOC-style course, but do it independently. <P> <strong>[ Source of friction: <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/online-learning/distance-learning-regulation-needs-simpl/240152835?itc=edit_in_body_cross">Distance Learning Regulation Needs Simplification, Officials Say</a>.]</strong> <P> "When I started last July, online education was the last thing on my mind," Barton said. Amherst is a small liberal arts college in Amherst, Mass., known for small class sizes and faculty-student research collaboration. Yet after Amherst was approached first by 2U (formerly 2tor) and then Coursera, she felt responsible to investigate other options. She approached edX, the non-profit started by MIT and Harvard, that so far supports a relatively exclusive club of a dozen universities, as well as Udacity, which like Coursera is a for-profit company. 2U offers a cloud-based online education platform that allows schools to charge tuition. <P> "Those of us working on it felt that edX was the best fit because of their focus on very high quality courses and helping people do that," Barton said. She figured Amherst needed the help coming up to speed on online education. In addition, she thought it would be valuable to get access to the assessment and analytics tools built into the edX platform. <P> As negotiations continued, Amherst president Carolyn Martin publicly supported a partnership with edX but left the final decision of whether to participate to a faculty committee, which in April rejected the plan. Barton said she was disappointed but takes heart from the fact that about 40% of the faculty voted "yes" and many of the others agreed the college should do more to experiment with online education -- just not with edX. Although some press accounts made it sound like they feared online education would be a threat to their jobs, faculty concerns had more to do with surrendering control to a consortium with an undefined business model, she said. The discussion about what Amherst should do instead is continuing, she said. <P> Other CIOs at the forum wondered aloud whether those pursuing MOOC partnerships had really thought things through, particularly the potential damage to the brand of a "high touch" school that charges $50,000 a year or more based on the value of the on-campus experience. As one man put it, how can a small liberal arts school like Amherst make the case that it is worth the money while at the same time saying, "Oh, by the way, you can also get this Amherst lite experience for free?" <P> On the other hand, those who refuse to become involved "may come to regret it" as larger players shape the MOOC movement, another participant said. "If these courses wind up having the same weight as brick-and-mortar classes, then we have problem to contend with." <P> Yet Wesleyan, a private university in Middletown, Conn., is willing to take the risk, Baird said. "We decided we'd be better able to position ourselves if we're involved than if we're standing on the sidelines." <P> Wesleyan president Michael S. Roth was in the process of closing a deal with Coursera when Baird joined the university in August. Although Wesleyan also consulted with faculty as part of the decision-making process, the deal was cut over the summer when many professors were away, Baird said. A six-week course on <a href="https://www.coursera.org/course/hollywood">The Language of Hollywood</a> recently wrapped up, and the film studies professor who offered it is so enthusiastic he plans to do it again in the fall. <P> Wesleyan president Roth personally taught a philosophy and great books course on <a href="https://www.coursera.org/course/modernpostmodern">The Modern and the Postmodern</a>. Wesleyan's Coursera offerings have been averaging an enrollment of about 30,000, although a <a href="https://www.coursera.org/course/socialpsychology">Social Psychology</a> course to be offered this summer has attracted more than 100,000 signups and counting. <P> The professors who have tried the MOOC course format tend to be "flattered by the idea that students in (pick your country) would meet in a coffee shop to talk about Nietzsche," Baird said. Others are inspired by the vision articulated in <a href="http://www.ted.com/talks/daphne_koller_what_we_re_learning_from_online_education.html">Coursera co-founder Daphne Koller's TED talk</a> about making high-quality education available in places around the world and to people who would never be able to access it face-to-face. <P> In addition, distribution through Coursera gives Wesleyan alumni an opportunity to take classes they weren't able to get into during their time on campus, Baird said. There is also the recruiting value of reaching "students around the world who we want to give an inkling of what a Wesleyan education is like," he said.Schoknecht said Rollins College will offer its first MOOC-style course this summer, but on its own terms. Rather than partnering with a MOOC company or consortium, Rollins plans to host the course on Blackboard, without quite the same emphasis on the "massive" part. Based in Winter Park, Fla., Rollins is a liberal arts college much like Amherst and wanted to operate under its own brand, she said. "We're going to advertise this first to our students, our parents, and our alumni," Schoknecht said. <P> Although the course will be open to anyone who wants to register, Rollins will promote it primarily through the Associated Colleges of the South, a consortium of 16 institutions whose members will also be encouraged to make it available to their students, parents and alumni. <P> Most of the other schools represented in the room were still evaluating what, if anything, they will do with MOOCs. On the other hand, Rice University is working with both Coursera and edX, largely because of strong faculty interest in innovating with online education. Rice is also a hotbed of activity in the <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/instructional-it/open-education-take-back-the-curriculum/240150758">open educational resources</a> movement, with its <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/instructional-it/wiley-openstax-team-on-college-biology-t/240150451">OpenStax textbook initiative</a> and other projects. <P> Because both Coursera and edX have branded themselves as offering access to courses from elite universities, not everyone has even been invited to join. <P> Many of the university technology leaders mentioned 2U as the company most aggressively beating down their doors, offering a platform that would allow them to charge tuition for online courses -- although some CIOs who had investigated it as an option complained that it takes too big a cut of the profits. 2U has mostly focused on supporting <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/online-learning/2u-helps-masters-degree-programs-go-onli/240151164" >graduate school programs</a>, although just this week it opened registration on a <a href="http://www.semesteronline.org">semester online</a> program it is offering in partnership with Boston College, Brandeis University, Emory University, Northwestern University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, University of Notre Dame and Washington University in St. Louis. Modeled on semester-abroad programs, it allows students to take a semester away from the on-campus experience, but not for free. <P> Justin Sipher, VP of libraries and information technology at St. Lawrence University, said the liberal arts colleges who have so far been lukewarm to the MOOC phenomenon might be making a mistake by "sheltering students from an experience of lifelong learning" that they ought to be exposed to. Even if an institution is concerned about diluting its brand with online offerings, students probably ought to be required to learn how to learn in an online course "just like you must learn a lot of other things as part of a liberal arts education," he said. <P> At the same time, Sipher said the MOOCs getting all the press now are probably "at the peak of inflated expectations" -- a term from the technology advisor firm Gartner's "hype cycle" model of the technology boom-and-bust cycle. Some of these enthusiasms turn out to be fads, he noted, like the idea of creating learning experiences in the virtual world Second Life, which was popular a few years ago. <P> Former Massachusetts Institute of Technology CIO Marilyn Smith said there is a bigger issue of meeting the expectations of "students who have been brought up in a different world," accustomed to highly interactive experiences such as gaming that have their own learning value. Universities should embrace the opportunity to discover new ways of learning and measuring learning, both online and off, she said. <P> "This is also about blended learning and how to enhance the residential experience, not so much just the MOOCs. Capturing data we've never captured before through assessment is a really critical part of this," Smith said. One way or the other, "the undergraduate experience is going to change." <P> <em>Follow David F. Carr at <a href="http://twitter.com/davidfcarr">@davidfcarr</a> or <a href="https://plus.google.com/113166369746212246457/?rel=author">Google+</a>, along with <a href="http://twitter.com/IWKEducation">@IWKEducation</a>.</em>2013-04-30T09:11:00ZNow more than ever, a higher education CIO's job hinges on both surviving the academic politics of the institution and mastering bleeding-edge technologies.http://www.informationweek.com/education/leadership/higher-ed-cios-cant-ignore-moocs-or-poli/240153841?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Smartphones_mobility<!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <div class="inlineStoryImage inlineStoryImageRight"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/online-learning/inside-eight-game-changing-moocs/240152508"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/976/MOOC_canvas_01_tn.jpg" alt="Inside Eight Game-changing MOOCs" title="Inside Eight Game-changing MOOCs" class="img175" /></a><br /><div class="storyImageTitle">Inside Eight Game-changing MOOCs</div><span class="inlinelargerView">(click image for larger view and for slideshow)</span></div> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE -->The job of a higher-education CIO is changing, partly because of disruptive technologies for online learning, but that doesn't mean the basic challenges go away. Perhaps now more than ever, a CIO's job hinges as much on surviving a brutal schedule of meetings and the academic politics of the institution as it does on mastering bleeding-edge technologies. <P> These are some of the themes I heard in the opening sessions of the <a href="http://www.consero.com" target="_blank">Consero</a> Higher Education Technology Forum, which kicked off Sunday in San Diego. As the only journalist at what was otherwise a small, invitation-only event intended for peer-to-peer interaction among higher-education technology leaders, I had to agree to some ground rules, meaning I can't reveal here everyone who participated by name or institution. Some attendees gave me permission to quote them on some of the things they said, but no one wanted to be on record complaining about the politics of their institutions. After all, that would only lead to more politics. <P> Trust me, though, the theme about having to navigate and nurture relationships with institutional leaders, deans and department heads came up more than once. As one man put it: "what consumes your day, what you really do, is politics." <P> <strong>[ What are the education IT gotchas? Read <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/leadership/informationweek-education-your-new-guide/240145815?itc=edit_in_body_cross">InformationWeek Education: Your New Guide To Higher Education IT</a>. ]</strong> <P> Every CIO must manage the intersection of technology and organizational change. In particular, a higher-education CIO has to be a master at building relationships and making sure as many interested parties as possible feel they were at least consulted on the decision before implementing, killing or changing a system. <P> That consultative process is important, but at some point technology leaders must also have the courage to "deal with the non-friendlies who will never change," said Andrea Ballinger, associate VP and chief technology officer at Illinois State University. If a system change is important enough, the institution has to be strong enough to deal with the resistance and move on, she said. Like a military campaign, success in change management requires "boots on the ground" and "being willing to take the arrows" of the opposition, she said. <P> One of her priorities is creating a service catalog of every function the information technology organization provides, including the associated costs. The tendency is for a system once launched to never be retired, Ballinger said. With a service catalog, it's easy to see what's obsolete or redundant or a commodity service that could be outsourced at a lower cost, as the range of things that can be treated as commodity expands. Meanwhile, the catalog helps document and communicate the broad range of services IT provides. <P> When someone in the audience complained that this characterization contributes to the perception that IT as a whole is a commodity, former Massachusetts Institute of Technology CIO Marilyn Smith disagreed. The idea of a service catalog is an important tool for identifying where IT adds the most value, she said. She always encouraged her staff to remember that their job was "not to do IT but to help people do education and research," she said. <P> One of the best ways of winning over skeptics is to involve them in the process of figuring out how a technology should be implemented, Smith said. "People appreciate being asked for help, and they usually have help to offer." <P> The theme of technology-driven change radically altering the nature of education was less prominent in this crowd than at events more dominated by startups and professional revolutionaries. Yet it was not far beneath the surface. <P> Pam McQuesten, VP and CIO at Southwestern University, said she believes university leaders recognize the inevitability that there will be "fundamental, massive change in some way over the next 15 years, tied to technology," even if they can't foresee quite how it will play out. The phenomenon of the MOOCs -- massive open online courses typically offered for free -- is just one manifestation of the disruptive potential. "I'm using the MOOCs as a way to think about that and start the conversation over what promise does it bring, what fears does it bring," she said. <P> One of the exciting aspects is a change in focus toward using technology to advance the central educational mission of the university, McQuesten said. Until recently, administrative and academic computing were often managed separately, and administrative computing tended to be treated as more strategic to the business of the university, she said. "Academic computing really wasn't strategic for our institutions, and now it is." <P> Meanwhile, McQuesten said she would happily get rid of her data center in favor of cloud computing alternatives. "I don't think a liberal arts college has any business running a data center." <P> Frank Sirianni, VP and CIO at Fordham University, said he expects his data center operations to be gone within five years, leaving only "front office" functions for IT to manage directly. He also agreed that teaching and learning technologies will become a bigger focus. "We've been mired in administrative computing, and it's time to put the academic hat back on," he said. <P> Another CIO worried that although outsourcing basic technological infrastructure might be fine, contracting with MOOCs was too close to the core mission of delivering academic content. "Coming from the liberal arts college sector, if we're going to think of outsourcing that, what is left? We're outsourcing not just our core mission but our bread and butter -- putting it out there. So are we contributing to a disruption that's going to disrupt us right out of existence?" <P> While acknowledging the peril, McQuesten asked, "could we stop it if we stopped being part of it? No." Instead, she sees her job as working with senior staff to "identify the part that makes us different" from any commodity replacement and show "where technology may help us achieve this strategic goal." <P> There is nothing new about the challenge posed by <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/online-learning/2u-helps-masters-degree-programs-go-onli/240151164">online education</a>, disconnected from traditional universities, Ballinger said. Even before MOOCs, "we knew that was coming -- University of Phoenix was provoking us into thinking about that model," she said. If universities are to survive this challenge, "I don't believe we can keep doing the exact same things we have been doing," she said.2013-04-29T11:05:00ZMaking collaboration and community technologies speak your language is just one example of the still-untapped potential of global social business.http://www.informationweek.com/social-business/news/social_networking_private_platforms/explore-frontiers-of-social-business-at/240153749?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Smartphones_mobility<!-- Image Aligning right --><!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --><div class="inlineStoryImage inlineStoryImageRight"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/thebrainyard/slideshows/view/240062675/the-brainyards-7-social-business-leaders-of-2012"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/900/350F2_ChrisLaping_tn.jpg" alt="The BrainYard's 7 Social Business Leaders Of 2012" title="The BrainYard's 7 Social Business Leaders Of 2012" class="img175" /></a><br /><div class="storyImageTitle">The BrainYard's 7 Social Business Leaders Of 2012</div><span class="inlinelargerView">(click image for larger view and for slideshow)</span></div><!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --><!-- / Image Aligning right -->Will I see you at the <a href="http://www.e2conf.com/boston/">E2 Conference</a>, June 17-19 in Boston? I hope so -- I always learn a lot from those pushing the boundaries of social business, and I have stories to share as well. The focus of this year's event goes beyond social and Enterprise 2.0, recognizing that it is one component of the <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/software/enterprise-applications/attend-e2-conquer-your-enterprise-challe/240153654">broader trends</a> changing the way business gets done. Yet social remains a major element, along with cloud and mobile. I'm convinced the social revolution is just starting, and there is a lot to learn from those who are maximizing its uses. <P> On that front, I'm still looking for a few more nominations of enterprises to be recognized as the E2 <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/social-business/news/strategy/seeking-social-business-leaders-for-2013/240149387">Social Business Leaders for 2013</a> (deadline extended to May 1). One of last year's honorees was Ford Motor Company, and on Tuesday Ford's Ed Krebs will speak on <a href="http://www.e2conf.com/boston/schedule-builder/session-id/1">Information Streams -- Going Beyond The Activity Stream</a>, a topic that touches on user experience design as well as advanced information architecture. <P> One panel discussion I'm really excited about focuses on <a href="http://www.e2conf.com/boston/schedule-builder/session-id/2">conducting social business on a global scale</a>, across platforms, devices and languages. <P> One of the speakers who is currently pushing for a more truly global implementation of social collaboration within her company is Gloria Burke, director of knowledge and collaboration strategy and governance at Unisys Corporation. Instead of having a separate collaboration network for each country's operations, all are being combined into one global implementation of Microsoft SharePoint and NewsGator Social Sites. To do it right, Unisys is also investing in making translation technology available to allow its professionals around the world to express themselves in their own language and consume content in their own language, with Spanish and Portuguese as the priorities. <P> "It's really an all-in proposition -- you can't be just a little social," Burke said in an interview. "[Otherwise,] all you're really doing is exchanging content silos for social silos." Each nation's organization will still have its own view of the collaboration system, along with nation-specific news feeds, but the content needs to be managed through a common system, or, Burke explained, "you lose that transparency social was supposed to bring to the enterprise." <P> <strong>[ Your name here: <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/social-business/news/strategy/seeking-social-business-leaders-for-2013/240149387?itc=edit_in_body_cross">Seeking Social Business Leaders For 2013</a>.]</strong> <P> I've been interested in the challenges of multilingual collaboration for a long time. More than a decade ago, while writing about multinational military and humanitarian operations, I came across <a href="http://www.mitre.org/work/tech_papers/tech_papers_03/condon_error/condon_error.pdf">research on the translation of instant-messaging collaboration</a> that I found fascinating. Conducted by the MITRE Corporation, a federally funded R&D organization, it showed that participants in an interactive chat could enter messages in different languages and still communicate productively using machine translation (that is, fully automated translation based on statistical understanding of linguistic structures). <P> In particular, the research showed how they were able to work around errors caused by the software's imperfect understanding of language. If something came through garbled, a participant could immediately ask for a clarification, allowing the person on the other end of the chat to rephrase a statement in clearer language that the software could handle better. The U.S. Army currently supports technology based on this approach known as <a href="http://www.cerdec.army.mil/about/c2d_ccl_video.asp">Coalition Chat Line Plus</a>. <P> This sort of technology is also finding its way into business, although so far the Unisys example is an exception to the rule in applying it to internal collaboration. Another of our panelists, Vishal Agnihotri, is the global adoption leader for enterprise and social collaboration at KPMG International. She told me one reason she would be wary of automated translation is that KPMG operates in regulated industries where its communications must be very clear. <P> More commonly, translation technology is being applied in the context of sales and customer support communities, according to Keith Laska, CEO of SDL Language Technologies, and the third member of the panel. The pattern is that businesses invest in applying the technology to "what is going to help a company generate the most revenue first, moving down towards internal transactions," he said, pointing out that Intel has been able to deflect more than 40% of requests for Spanish language content using machine translation. <P> Automated translation can be applied to interactive customer chat applications, allowing for the same kind of synchronous error correction used by the military, but it is also starting to be applied to asynchronous social streams. For example, Telligent's collaboration and social customer community platform now offers an integration with the <a href="http://www.lionbridge.com/solutions/geofluent/">Lionbridge GeoFluent</a> cloud service. <P> "The idea is you will be able to go into any one of our communities and ask a question in English, and someone in China can see a translated version of that question in their native tongue," Telligent chief technology officer Rob Howard said. As a result, you get access to knowledge that may exist only in the Chinese community, and members of the Chinese community get easier access to content in English and other languages. Scenarios like community-based service and support seem to be the most logical match for the technology because "you may be willing to sacrifice preciseness to get the information," he said. <P> Previously, the pattern has been to set up separate communities for people who speak different languages, but the disadvantage to that approach is each group gets access to a smaller pool of knowledge. The offering is relatively new, and Telligent is now just in the process of applying it to its own operations. "A significant portion of business has been coming from outside the world of English-speaking customers, particularly in Western Europe, over the last 4-5 years," Howard explained. "We've benefitted from the fact that most of those individuals can also speak English, but we think we'll be able to provide them a better customer service experience if they can ask questions in their own language." <P> Multilingual collaboration is just one of the frontiers in social business, but it gives you an idea of how many more possibilities remain to be explored. I hope to see you at E2 so we can map them out together. <P> <i>E2 is the only event of its kind, bringing together business and technology leaders across IT, marketing and other lines of business looking for new ways to evolve their enterprise applications strategy and transform their organizations to achieve business value. Join us June 17-19 for three days of 40+ conference sessions and workshops across eight tracks, and discover the latest insights in enterprise social software, big data and analytics, mobility, cloud, SaaS and APIs, UI/UX and more. <a href="http://www.e2conf.com/boston/?_mc=MP_BTMEDIWKAXE">Register for E2 Conference Boston today</a> and save $200 off Full Event Passes, $100 off Conference, or get a FREE Keynote + Expo Pass! </i>2013-04-24T08:45:00ZEllen Borkowski's CIO responsibilities at small liberal arts college include her twin technology objectives: make teaching and learning more effective.http://www.informationweek.com/education/leadership/cio-profiles-ellen-borkowski-of-union-co/240153482?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Smartphones_mobility<!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --><div class="inlineStoryImage inlineStoryImageRight"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/online-learning/12-open-educational-resources-shaking-up/240150477"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/961/creative-commons_tn.jpg" alt="12 Open Educational Resources: From Khan to MIT" title="12 Open Educational Resources: From Khan to MIT" class="img175" /></a><br /><div class="storyImageTitle">12 Open Educational Resources: From Khan to MIT</div><span class="inlinelargerView">(click image for slideshow)</span></div><!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE -->Since Ellen Yu Borkowski became chief information officer at Union College in November 2010, she has had to broaden her focus to all the things a CIO must care about, such as security and bandwidth and budgets and winning "a seat at the table" for strategic discussions. Yet the thing she cares most about is making technology more useful to the academic missions of the university: teaching and learning. <P> Founded in 1795 in Schenectady, <a href="http://www.union.edu">Union College</a> was the first institution of higher learning chartered by the New York State Board of Regents. Today, it's known as a small liberal arts college that happens to include an engineering school and that supports a strong study-abroad program. Borkowski earned an bachelor's degree in computer and system engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in nearby Troy, but she spent most of her career at the University of Maryland working to improve academic computing systems, particularly their usability. <P> The key turning point in her career came almost by chance, she said. After graduating from RPI, she worked for a couple of years in industry. As a programmer for a defense contractor, she created software to support engineers who were designing engines. One day in the library, she happened to notice an advertisement on the back cover of a magazine for the User Interface Strategies conference organized by Ben Shneiderman, a computer science professor at the University of Maryland and founder of its <a href="http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/">Human-Computer Interaction Lab</a>. <P> "I thought, wow, you could actually study how to create interfaces that make it easy for people to use computers! That was one of my interests in the job I'd been in, which was how to make it easy for these engineers to use computers to do their jobs," Borkowski said in an interview. <P> She went to study with Shneiderman, who later got her a job at the university working on the design of a "teaching theater" funded with a grant from AT&T. The concept was to put a computer on every desk and "change the lecture from a passive activity to an interactive one," Borkowski said. "I quickly became engaged with the idea of using technology to make teaching and learning better. The funny thing for me is a lot of what we worked on then is coming back. It's different technology now, but it's the same concepts." <P> <div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject" style="background-color: #eee; padding: 10px; width: 300px; font-style: italic; margin-top: 15px; margin-bottom: 15px; float: right; margin-left: 15px;"><img itemprop="image" src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/education/2013Q1/union-college-cio.jpg" alt="Union College CIO Ellen Yu Borkowski" title="Union College CIO Ellen Yu Borkowski" height="265" width="300"><br />Union College CIO Ellen Yu Borkowski</div> <P> "It was very clear back then that the killer app was the network," she added. "It was the ability to connect students and share information in an instant, which is now something we do every day on the Internet." At the time of those early experiments, it was necessary for her team to create its own custom networked learning tools. For example, one was a "one-minute" assessment tool that prompted students to quickly type in the answer to an instructor's question. The responses would then be displayed to the entire group, anonymously, allowing the instructor to quickly divine how many of the students had learned that particular topic and how many were confused. <P> Today, similar quick-assessment challenges are often handled with commercially available clickers, Borkowski said, and it's no longer necessary to build a special room to enable basic interactivity. "Now we have networking in the classroom, so all you need are the collaborative tools," she said. <P> Yet a basic challenge that remains is designing instructional technologies that make it easier for teachers to teach, rather than getting in the instructor's way, she said. <P> <!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --><!-- GLOBAL CIO GLOBE --><div style="margin:0; padding:0 0 10px 15px; width:244px; float:right;"><div style="margin:0; border-top:1px solid black; border-bottom:1px solid black; padding:6px;"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/"><img src="http://twimgs.com/infoweek/1217/217ID_GlobalCIO_75.jpg" width="75" height="75" border="0" align="right" alt="Global CIO" style="margin:0 0 6px 6px;"></a><div style="margin:0 0 6px 0; font-size:1.3em; font-weight:bold; color:#113e53;">Global CIOs: A Site Just For You</div><span style="font-size:.9em; font-weight:bold;">Visit <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/">InformationWeek's Global CIO</a> -- our online community and information resource for CIOs operating in the global economy.</span></div> </div> <!-- /GLOBAL CIO GLOBE --> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <P> Borkowski worked her way up through a series of increasingly senior posts at the University of Maryland related to instructional technology and academic systems, ending up as director of academic support. Along the way, she also picked up a master's degree in education policy, planning and administration. "I wanted a better grounding in educational theory," she said. <P> Becoming a CIO has forced Borkowski to change gears. At each stage of her career, she worked with higher-level enterprise systems, she said, "but now it's not just for teaching and learning -- although that's where my heart is -- it's for everything. I'm looking at business processes and how we can be more efficient using technology. I want to look at [whether there] are better ways to help with advising, not just in the classroom but outside the classroom. There are all these other aspects of the institution that I was not involved in when I was at Maryland."She sought out the CIO role partly to advance her career but also because she wanted to move back to the Northeast for family reasons. She liked the idea of serving as CIO at a smaller institution and the character of Union College appealed to her, with its mix of liberal arts, engineering and multidisciplinary programs. She replaced a CIO who had retired after 23 years and whose leadership style was very different. <P> "I bring much more focus to the teaching and learning side, whereas the prior CIO was focused more on the administrative computing side," Borkowski said. Whether the search committee that hired her was specifically looking for that different focus, the timing was good, she said. "There are so many things that are commodity services and that we can easily outsource. The one thing that I think we can't outsource is that teaching and learning piece." <P> In general, Union College is nowhere near as aggressive in the use of instructional technology as her former employer, but it doesn't need to be because class sizes are not as large, she said. She just wants to make sure those it does use are effective. <P> <strong>[ What's so great about online learning? Read <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/online-learning/inside-eight-game-changing-moocs/240152508?itc=edit_in_body_cross">8 MOOCs Transforming Education</a>. ]</strong> <P> I asked Borkowski about the research study that found professors are <a href="https://www.informationweek.com/education/instructional-it/classroom-technology-faces-skeptics-at-r/240148217">highly skeptical</a> of the value of classroom technologies. She said she wasn't surprised. <P> Although there have been great leaps forward in the availability of technology and ease of use, "it's still a pretty large time commitment to get started," she said. "The faculty have a lot of responsibilities. Some of them are actually interested in new technology, but what they don't have is time. The problem is when you start using a new technology, that's what you need, is time. You can only make the technology so easy. There's a tradeoff, where the interface can only become so easy before it becomes complex. If you give them something that's easy to get them in, then it doesn't have the deep functionality they want." <P> The best compromise often is to present the faculty with templates that simplify the delivery of educational content, Borkowski said. A learning management system (LMS) is a complex collection of tools, and it's a mistake to push instructors to learn every feature of the system at once, she said. It's better to get them managing a few simple daily tasks through the system and introduce more complex functions later. <P> "For me, it's about understanding where [students'] struggles are, because that's where you want to help. It's a mistake to start with the tool, when really you should start with the problem," Borkowski said. For example, she said, if a professor reports that every year students struggle to understand one particular concept, maybe that's a topic where new technology could help. <P> At the level of instructional technologies such as online tutorials, the choices are usually faculty driven, based on experts selecting the products that make the most sense for their fields. However, Union's I.T. department expects to be consulted on issues such as hardware requirements, licensing, and integration issues such as compatibility with the LMS. <P> "That's the challenge for IT -- we can only keep up with so much. We have to be generalists in many ways," said Borkowski. "So mostly they come to us from their own niches with products their colleagues are telling them about. Then the question is: is this just for you, or will this benefit other people on campus?" <P> If others have a similar requirement, the IT group will try to drive the selection of one product or maybe a couple of alternatives -- but not 10 products because that would be impossible to support, Borkowski said. Often the choices have to be framed as recommendations, rather than requirements, but faculty members who choose to ignore the recommendations can't count on support from the IT staff, she said. <P> Although the current surge of entrepreneurial interest in education technology is exciting, Borkowski can't help noticing there is a lot that hasn't changed since the time of her teaching theater project in Maryland. "I still hear a lot of the same phrases being thrown around," she said. "Move from the sage on the stage to the guide on the side -- we were saying that in the early 90's! How come that hasn't changed? The flipped classroom is just another name for something people have been trying out in classrooms for years."Still, the potential of that approach is something she has been talking about for years and still finds exciting. The argument she makes to instructors is, "You can actually do in the classroom the thing you do best. As an expert in whatever field, you show the students how exciting it is to do your job ... rather than lecturing to them, you spend the class time doing what you do. You know, applying it to something. Getting them to do it. Don't spend the valuable face-to-face time talking at them for an hour." <P> And yet it's not as easy as that. If professors are going to present material that they used to deliver via lectures as a series of videos, quizzes and interactive tutorials, they need time to produce all that. Maybe they would experience a productivity gain in year two or three, as they begin to reuse that material, but first they have to survive year one. <P> "They need the investment of time that they don't have up front, unless they were forced into it," Borkowski said. She tells the story of a University of Maryland hybrid class success story that only came about accidentally. This was the case of a professor who had arranged to spend a semester traveling in Brazil when another member of his department became ill, and he was her backup for a particular course, obligated to cover for her. Rather than canceling his travel plans, he taught the course online. <P> "When he came back, he realized, hey, I have all these lectures on video. Maybe I should try this hybrid thing everybody is talking about. So he told his students don't come to class on Mondays, but come to class ready to discuss the material on Wednesdays. What he found was the level of discussion went up. He didn't have to think of all the examples anymore because the students came with questions. So now he loves it. But it was one of those things where he was forced into this situation. He couldn't come back from Brazil but he had to teach the class, so he had to put the time in," she said. <P> <strong>[ Teachers' best friend? Read <a href="HP Unveils Online 'STEMx' Courses For Teachers?itc=edit_in_body_cross">HP Unveils Online 'STEMx' Courses For Teachers</a>. ]</strong> <P> "That's an example of where it's still not easy to get in the game. Even though the technology is easier, and it's easier to make the videos, faculty members still have to make the videos and frankly be thoughtful about the videos" to produce something useful, she said. "It's not like you take whatever you do in class and stick it online." Where these programs have proven successful, faculty are often given stipends or release time, she said, or else they have enough enthusiasm to "carve out the time." <P> Union College is so far merely monitoring the rise of <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/online-learning/inside-eight-game-changing-moocs/240152508">MOOCs</a> -- massive open online courses -- produced by startups such as Coursera and Udacity, as well as the non-profit edX. Borkowski said she spends most of her time on more basic issues. For example, prior to her arrival one of the complaints about the IT group was lack of communication about what it was doing and why. She has tried to change that, while also combining what had been separate teams for academic and administrative computer support for better overall coordination. <P> "What I'm happy about is I'm 'at the table' in the strategic planning discussions" with university leaders, Borkowski said. "The staff felt the prior CIO wasn't at the table. Well, we're updating our strategic plan, and I'm at the table. I want the community here feeling we're working with them to help solve problems -- we're not the problem." <P> One of her biggest challenges at the moment is the state of the college's network infrastructure, which threatens to set limits on what's possible with flipped classrooms and other bandwidth-hungry applications such as videoconferencing. For example, many university buildings have old cabling that won't support anything more than 100 Mbps. "Some of what the faculty would like to do and what we'd like to enable them to do in the future won't be possible unless we fix it," she said. <P> In addition to access to learning tools, there is a growing research demand for big-data analytics, which requires the ability to access and download and transfer that data. Unfortunately, the network was never really designed, "it just sort of grew," Borkowski said. Senior leaders at the university were never given a complete picture of the network's strengths and weaknesses and design tradeoffs, and so they didn't know how bad it was, she said. <P> Fortunately, after conducting a network review and presenting the options, she has been able to secure the funding to start a network redesign -- not all the money she hoped for, but enough to start the process. Once the leadership team understood the situation, it was easier for her to lay out the options for doing the upgrade all at once or in stages and say, "Now, how long would you like to wait?" <P> <em>Follow David F. Carr at <a href="http://twitter.com/davidfcarr">@davidfcarr</a> or <a href="https://plus.google.com/113166369746212246457/?rel=author">Google+</a>, along with <a href="http://twitter.com/IWKEducation">@IWKEducation</a>.</em>2013-04-23T10:25:00ZTeambox, as a task-oriented, cloud-based social collaboration tool, is a flexible option for collaborative learning and other campus projects.http://www.informationweek.com/education/online-learning/higher-education-taps-teambox-for-social/240153396?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Smartphones_mobility<!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <div class="inlineStoryImage inlineStoryImageRight"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/online-learning/inside-eight-game-changing-moocs/240152508"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/976/MOOC_canvas_01_tn.jpg" alt="Inside Eight Game-changing MOOCs" title="Inside Eight Game-changing MOOCs" class="img175" /></a><br /><div class="storyImageTitle">Inside Eight Game-changing MOOCs</div><span class="inlinelargerView">(click image for larger view and for slideshow)</span></div> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> The higher education market is emerging as one of the best success stories for the social collaboration and project coordination tool <a href="http://teambox.com/">Teambox</a>. <P> More than 60 institutions have adapted Teambox for everything from administrative task management to strategic planning and coordinating activities within online courses. Teambox cites as prominent educational customers Auburn University, Colgate University, Cornell University, Harvard University, Rice University, Stanford University, University of California Irvine and University of Michigan. <P> "We deliberately built a platform of collaborative tools that applies to any vertical, but we've gotten particular traction in a couple and education is one of them," said Teambox CEO Dan Schoenbaum. Founded in 2008 and headquartered in Barcelona, Spain, Teambox has established a U.S. headquarters in Redwood City, Calif., and is working to capitalize on the interest in <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/thebrainyard/news/project_management/social-task-management-tools-gain-clout/240008230">social task management tools</a>. Teambox provides social profiles and comment streams in a manner similar to Facebook-for-business products like Yammer, but it is organized around projects rather than discussion groups. Teambox can be used for file sharing but also integrates with cloud file sharing services like Dropbox and Box. As a result of a partnership announced in December, <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/thebrainyard/news/file_sharing/teambox-bundles-box-storage-with-social/240144578">Teambox also bundles in 15 gigabytes of Box storage</a>. Those integrations are available with a paid subscription. Teambox also provides free accounts for up to five users and five projects. <P> <strong>[ A teacher's best friend? Read <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/instructional-it/edmodo-social-collaboration-for-teachers/240152473?itc=edit_in_body_cross">Edmodo: Social Collaboration For Teachers</a>.]</strong> <P> While there is nothing education-specific about the Teambox product, the nursing program at Western Wyoming Community College uses Teambox to support online learning, rather than its learning management system, Blackboard. <P> "We're using Teambox where others would use an LMS," said David Bodily, assistant professor of nursing and architect of the online program for nursing. That choice was driven partly by the non-traditional, flipped classroom structure of the nursing program, which clashed with an LMS approach "fundamentally designed for the sage on the stage," he said. Rather than fitting his instruction into a structure imposed by an online tool, he wanted something flexible enough for him to configure however he wanted, Bodily said. "An LMS is very much not that." The social collaboration features in LMS products have gotten stronger since he first looked at them, but he still doesn't see them as the equal of Teambox in that respect. <P> Most of Teambox's other customers in higher education are using it for behind-the-scenes applications. <a href="http://teambox.com/case-studies/penn-states-ag-sciences/">Penn State University's Agricultural Sciences program</a> adopted Teambox to support a strategic planning project, and it has since been picked up for use by other departments. <P> Aaron Pompei, director of multimedia strategy and development at Savannah College of Art and Design, has been using Teambox to support the production process for video lectures to be included with online courses. The school's Virtual Lecture Hall program started in 2005, and as it has grown "we had a growing need for project management," he said. <P> In particular, he needed a very flexible tool for coordinating projects between faculty, staff, and the students who do most of the actual production work. "The thing is, we're never going to be in the same place at the same time, except when we're on production," Pompei said. The university's information technology department did have other project management tools available under enterprise licenses, but nothing that could easily be made available to students as well as university employees, he said. <P> Teambox was a good fit because it wasn't as complicated as many other project management tools, which tended to be "far too robust," but it was still more sophisticated than task management products designed primarily for individual users, Pompei said. <P> Pompei said he has also looked at Yammer, "but I haven't found a use for it." Meanwhile, Teambox provides some of the basic social networking functions -- such as the ability to @mention other users Twitter-style as a way of bringing them into a discussion -- that help it meet student expectations for how software ought to work, he said. Projects and discussions can also be categorized with social media-style tags so they are easier to track or find in a search. <P> Teambox went through an IT review before it was approved for use, and it is finding other uses at the college; for example, within a collaborative learning center and a careers and alumni relations team, Pompei said. <P> <div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject" style="background-color: #eee; padding: 10px; width: 590px; font-style: italic; margin-top: 15px; margin-bottom: 15px;"><img itemprop="image" src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/education/2013Q1/teambox-nursing.png" alt="A nursing course employs Teambox" title="A nursing course employs Teambox" height="615" width="590"><br />Nursing students at Western Wyoming Community College use Teambox to collaborate on coursework (student names obscured).</div>The use of Teambox has been transformational for Western Wyoming Community College, Bodily said, allowing it to do a much better job of addressing its entire service area, which is the size of the state of Rhode Island. Putting the nursing program online has made it possible to serve many students who could not have found time to drive hundreds of miles, sometimes in dangerous weather, to attend class in person, he said. "This has opened up an opportunity for people who had no opportunity before." <P> Before the college could make distance learning practical, however, it needed a tool that matched its teaching strategy. The nursing program follows a methodology called <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem-based_learning">Problem-based Learning</a> that was developed for use in medical schools but can also be applied to other professional disciplines. This is a student-centered approach intended to focus on developing problem-solving skills, which forces students to define what they need to learn to solve a problem under the guidance of the instructor, who acts as a tutor and coach rather than a lecturer. <P> "It's been around since the 1960s, but it's not commonplace," Bodily said. However, his college has found it to be effective, he said. <P> An example of a problem-based learning exercise would be to present students with the case of a 57-year-old truck driver who stumbles into the cab of his truck, sits down slowly and falls over backward. A bystander calls 911, and the man is brought into the hospital as a suspected heart attack victim. As Bodily explains, the problem for the class is to make sure this man will be treated for the right thing: "Not so fast -- how would you know if someone's had a heart attack? What are your responsibilities in the emergency room? <P> "The process itself is absolutely collaborative," Bodily said, but until recently the teaching methods to support it were only available in the classroom. Now, more of the discussion about the right way to respond to this incident can take place online, he said. Meanwhile, Teambox's task management and file sharing capabilities allow him to manage course assignments and deadlines, as well as the distribution of course materials, he said. <P> Students with more social media savvy may pick up on how to use Teambox a little faster, but those who have made regular use of any Web-based application, such as online banking, get the idea pretty quickly, Bodily said. "The people who have trouble with this technology would also have trouble with the LMS," he said. <P> <em>Follow David F. Carr at <a href="http://twitter.com/davidfcarr">@davidfcarr</a> or <a href="https://plus.google.com/113166369746212246457/?rel=author">Google+</a>, along with <a href="http://twitter.com/IWKEducation">@IWKEducation</a>.</em>2013-04-22T12:45:00ZInternet2 member universities will soon be able to add Vidyo to their subscriptions for high-speed network access.http://www.informationweek.com/education/instructional-it/vidyo-videoconferencing-coming-to-intern/240153355?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Smartphones_mobility<!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --><div class="inlineStoryImage inlineStoryImageRight"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/online-learning/inside-eight-game-changing-moocs/240152508"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/976/MOOC_canvas_01_tn.jpg" alt="Inside Eight Game-changing MOOCs" title="Inside Eight Game-changing MOOCs" class="img175" /></a><br /><div class="storyImageTitle">Inside Eight Game-changing MOOCs</div><span class="inlinelargerView">(click image for larger view and for slideshow)</span></div><!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE -->Internet2 member universities and thousands of K-12 public schools will be able to add videoconferencing from Vidyo to their subscriptions later this year. <P> <a href="http://www.vidyo.com">Vidyo</a> is the first videoconferencing product approved for distribution through the <a href="http://www.internet2.edu">Internet2</a> NET+ initiative, which seeks to make broadly useful cloud services available while making sure they match the requirements of educational institutions. Internet2 is a nonprofit group, owned by its member universities, that provides high-bandwidth connections between institutions while also promoting network and application standards for research and educational organizations. <P> In an interview prior to last week's announcement, representatives from Internet2 and Vidyo said their agreement was based on proving Vidyo's performance on the Internet2 network as well as negotiating standard contract terms and a roadmap for meeting some items on the higher education requirements list. For example, one of those items was enabling students and faculty to use their university login credentials rather than a separate cloud service password to access the service. This could be accomplished using the <a href="http://shibboleth.net/">Shibboleth</a> federated identity specification defined by Internet2 technologists. <P> <strong>[ Could a free service be superior to your learning management system? Read <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/instructional-it/cloud-based-lms-wins-over-abilene-christ/240151876?itc=edit_in_body_cross">Cloud-Based LMS Wins Over Abilene Christian University</a>. ]</strong> <P> "None of the products meet 100% of everybody's requirements," said Shelton Waggener, a senior VP at Internet2, but for Vidyo, the percentage is a lot higher than it used to be. The exact details of the roadmap are protected under a non-disclosure agreement, but the schools participating in the technical review signed off on it, indicating they believe Vidyo is on the right path to meet their requirements. Meanwhile, those who decide to move forward with the technology are coordinating directly with Vidyo, Waggener said, "so they don't have to wait for perfection." <P> Vidyo is also working to address some of the accessibility challenges educational technologists have laid down for making the technology available to the disabled, according to Amnon Gavish, Vidyo's VP of vertical markets. Working with Internet2 is very much worth the effort, he said, given the size of the educational market. "This will be the first time high-definition videoconferencing has been offered at that scale as a cloud service, to basically thousands of institutions." <P> Vidyo's technology is known for making efficient use of bandwidth and scaling from high-bandwidth connections that support high-definition video to more limited ones that must be supported with lower-resolution streams. Its video routing and mixing software can be delivered either in the form of a dedicated appliance or in cloud services, as it will be in this case. Institutions will have the option of using Vidyo hardware for additional optimization, but doing so is not required to take advantage of the cloud service, Gavish explained. <P> Vidyo technology has also been incorporated into other large-scale deployments. For example, it's licensed for use in Google Hangouts and <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/thebrainyard/news/video_conferencing_telepresence/nintendo-wii-u-adds-video-chat/240142333">Nintendo's Wii U Video Chat</a>. Vidyo also offers a <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/thebrainyard/news/video_conferencing_telepresence/vidyo-free-cloud-service-bridges-videoco/240004196">free cloud service for bridging between videoconferencing systems</a>. <P> In order to be considered for distribution through Internet2, Vidyo needed to be sponsored by member universities that found it useful, such as Arizona State University. "We continue to see a significant increase in the number of downloads of the Vidyo client; over 2,000, which is double from this time last year -- just from word of mouth," Arizona State University's chief information officer Gordon Wishon said in a statement for the press release. "We sponsored Vidyo as a NET+ Service for the very reasons that make us champions of this video communications solution. We needed something very flexible, portable and high-quality, even under the worst bandwidth conditions. We've pushed Vidyo to the edge many times and its performance has been outstanding under the most extreme circumstances." <P> Other Web conferencing and online meeting services currently going through the Internet2 validation process include Adobe Connect and <a href="http://seevogh.com">SeeVogh</a>, which originated as a tool for academic research collaboration. <P> Internet2 has about 30 products in its cloud services catalog so far, Waggener said, and it is expanding its membership to include smaller institutions and higher education as well as more K-12 schools. "Extending participation to millions is really our goal," he said. <P> <em>Follow David F. Carr at <a href="http://twitter.com/davidfcarr">@davidfcarr</a> or <a href="https://plus.google.com/113166369746212246457/?rel=author">Google+</a>, along with <a href="http://twitter.com/IWKEducation">@IWKEducation</a>.</em> <P> <i>Can data analysis keep students on track and improve college retention rates? Also in the premiere all-digital <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/gogreen/012813ed/?k=axxe&cid=article_axxt_os">Analytics' Big Test</a> issue of InformationWeek Education: Higher education is just as prone to tech-based disruption as other industries. (Free with registration.) </i>2013-04-18T13:40:00ZLynda Weinman assures educators that popular tutorials website Lynda.com wants to be a resource, not a replacement, for schools and universities.http://www.informationweek.com/education/online-learning/mooc-founder-stresses-partnership-with-t/240153199?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Smartphones_mobility<!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <div class="inlineStoryImage inlineStoryImageRight"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/online-learning/inside-eight-game-changing-moocs/240152508"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/976/MOOC_canvas_01_tn.jpg" alt="Inside Eight Game-changing MOOCs" title="Inside Eight Game-changing MOOCs" class="img175" /></a><br /><div class="storyImageTitle">Inside Eight Game-changing MOOCs</div><span class="inlinelargerView">(click image for larger view and for slideshow)</span></div> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> Lynda Weinman could easily redefine herself as the founder of a Web design and computer training massive open online course (MOOC), but she would rather not -- not if it would put her in competition with traditional schools and universities, some of which are her best customers. <P> As the <a href="http://www.lynda.com" target="_blank">Lynda.com</a> co-founder and executive chair said in a speech this week at the Education Innovation Summit at Arizona State University, she prefers to present her service to educators as a resource to help them teach better, rather than a replacement for what they do. <P> "I prefer being a complement, and not being a competitor," Weinman said. In addition to being a resource for independent, self-directed learning, Lynda.com licenses its content to thousands of universities and about 700 K-12 school systems, some of whom have purchased site licenses that make the content available to all students, faculty and staff. One of her favorite student success stories concerns a janitor at a U.K. university who wound up moving into the institution's Web team as the result of self-study. <P> When Weinman took the stage, someone in the audience tweeted about being relieved to see a teacher featured at the event, following a parade of technologists and edtech entrepreneurs. Weinman made it clear that she sees herself as a teacher and wants other teachers to see her as one of them. <P> <div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject" style="width: 176px; float: right; padding: 15px; padding-right: 0px;"><img itemprop="image" src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/education/2013Q1/lyndalogo.gif" alt="Lynda.com logo" title="Lynda.com logo" height="160" width="176"></div> <P> Lynda.com has grown into perhaps the best known library for online tutorials on Web design and programming, as well as many other subjects related to computers and creativity. The company she and her husband, chief creative officer Bruce Heavin, started 18 years ago has offered instruction in many forms over the years, in the classroom and by selling VHS tape videos before settling into its current model as a subscription-based library of online video tutorials. Weinman got her first big hit with <em>Designing Web Graphics</em>, a 1995 book that taught many people how to make the Web look good. <P> "It's all teaching -- it's just different form factors," Weinman said. <P> In an interview prior to her Wednesday keynote address, she said she understands that some teachers may feel "a little threatened" by the proliferation of online learning content but hopes they will learn to see it as a resource rather than a threat. To keep pace with a fast-changing world, students need to be able to research and learn on their own, Weinman said. That means being "more open to outside influences, beyond what the teacher's point of view may be, where the teacher is more in a mentorship and guide position, rather than a sage everyone is going to go to for every answer," she said. <P> With more than 87,000 videos in its catalog, Lynda.com says it topped $100 million in revenue in 2012. Now the site is in the process of expanding to reach beyond its current English-speaking audience. <a href="http://www.video2brain.com/en/news/press-room/lynda-com-acquires-european-online-learning-company-video2brain" target="_blank">Lynda.com acquired European competitor Video2brain</a> in February, a month after it took <a href="http://go.bloomberg.com/tech-deals/2013-01-16-lynda-com-lands-103-million-in-biggest-education-financing/" target="_blank">$103 million in venture funding</a>. The desire to internationalize the service is the main reason Lynda.com decided to take outside financing, after years of bootstrapped growth, Weinman said. <P> Lynda's funding followed a year in which <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/online-learning/education-tech-investments-surpassed-1-b/240147042">education technology investments topped $1 billion</a>. <P> Despite the boom in online education, there is "no one solution" to all the challenges faced by educators. Online learning ventures need to partner with education and with educators, she said, rather than seeking one magic formula. "The whole idea of standardized formulas is never going to work because we all learn differently," Weinman said. <P> <em>Follow David F. Carr at <a href="http://twitter.com/davidfcarr">@davidfcarr</a> or <a href="https://plus.google.com/113166369746212246457/?rel=author">Google+</a>, along with <a href="http://twitter.com/IWKEducation">@IWKEducation</a>.</em>2013-04-17T10:01:00ZAdmissions 2.0, which lets prospective students learn about a school, set up a visit and apply for admission, is part of a broader Mobile Campus offering.http://www.informationweek.com/education/mobility/modo-labs-showcases-mobile-college-admis/240153081?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Smartphones_mobility<!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <div class="inlineStoryImage inlineStoryImageRight"> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/online-learning/12-open-educational-resources-shaking-up/240150477"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/961/creative-commons_tn.jpg" alt="12 Open Educational Resources: From Khan to MIT" title="12 Open Educational Resources: From Khan to MIT" class="img175" /></a><br /> <div class="storyImageTitle">12 Open Educational Resources: From Khan to MIT</div> <span class="inlinelargerView">(click image for slideshow)</span></div><!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> A company spun off from MIT's mobile development efforts says it can help universities make themselves more attractive to prospective students. <P> <a href="https://www.modolabs.com/">Modo Labs</a> was established to commercialize the open source <a href="http://kurogo.org/home/">Kurogo</a> middleware for mobile development that got its start at MIT, under the direction of cofounder and COO Andrew Yu. "The most popular app there was a shuttle tracking system that would let you stay indoors until the bus arrives," he said, something that was popular in winters. "That's still a popular app at many schools." <P> Although programmers can use the platform to create their own custom apps for any purpose, Modo Labs continues to focus heavily on the higher education market with its Mobile Campus suite of apps. Admissions 2.0, which was announced this week at the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers annual meeting in San Francisco, can be purchased as part of that suite or separately. Modo claims that 60% of students now conduct part of their online college search from a mobile device. <P> <strong>[ Which educational software is the best? Read <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/instructional-it/educational-software-gets-graded/240152986?itc=edit_in_body_cross">Educational Software Gets Graded</a>. ]</strong> <P> Kurogo provides a suite of standard modules for connecting to databases, content management systems and other common enterprise systems, along with generic open source modules for displaying news items or videos and connecting with Facebook and Twitter. Content can be presented in either a mobile Web format or in the form of native apps for iPhone and Android phones. Modo Labs sells a series of premium apps that run on the platform, including a Mobile Hospital and Mobile Enterprise suite, as well as Mobile Campus. <P> "A non-programmer can go in and create a mobile site, adding pictures and text, without knowing PHP or iOS/Objective-C," Yu said, referring to common programming languages for the Web and iPhone native apps. At the same time, developers with common PHP and HTML skills can create more custom apps. <P> "Admissions 2.0 directly supports our recruitment and retention efforts," said Indiana State Web Services Director Santhana Naidu in a statment. "With Modo Labs' content publishing technology, we were able to deploy both an Admissions mobile website and native apps, without any development resources. Now, the solution provides all the capabilities needed for recruits to fully explore the University from any mobile device." <P> The Admissions 2.0 app provides templates for four key functions: <P> -- Explore: Explore is the gateway to information a school's facts and figures and unique history, as well as articles, photos, and videos about campus life and academic programs. <P> -- Visit: Everything about how to visit the school and set up a tour. <P> -- Apply: Details on the admissions process, including dates, application requirements, interview scheduling, financial aid and important deadlines. <P> -- Campus Virtual Tour: An optional extension to Admissions 2.0, the tour model displays a rich, interactive, multi-stop mobile tour with descriptive text, photos, videos, and links. <P> <div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject"><img itemprop="image" src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/education/2013Q1/admissions.jpg" alt="Modo Labs Admissions module" title="Modo Labs Admissions module" height="700" width="550"></div> <P> <em>Follow David F. Carr at <a href="http://twitter.com/davidfcarr">@davidfcarr</a> or <a href="https://plus.google.com/113166369746212246457/?rel=author">Google+</a>, along with <a href="http://twitter.com/IWKEducation">@IWKEducation</a>.</em>2013-04-16T15:07:00ZUdemy for Organizations lets companies create their own branded learning channels and create private courses with Udemy's tools.http://www.informationweek.com/education/online-learning/udemy-comes-to-corporate-training/240153035?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Smartphones_mobility<!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --><div class="inlineStoryImage inlineStoryImageRight"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/online-learning/inside-eight-game-changing-moocs/240152508"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/976/MOOC_canvas_01_tn.jpg" alt="Inside Eight Game-changing MOOCs" title="Inside Eight Game-changing MOOCs" class="img175" /></a><br /><div class="storyImageTitle">Inside Eight Game-changing MOOCs</div><span class="inlinelargerView">(click image for larger view and for slideshow)</span></div> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE -->The online course website <a href="http://www.udemy.com">Udemy</a> is entering the corporate training market with Udemy for Organizations. <P> The new product allows businesses and other organizations to establish their own subdomain on the site through which they can offer their own private-branded portal to the education content they believe will be most useful to their employees. Organizations also will be able to create their courses for internal use only but take advantage of Udemy's tools to produce them. <P> We included Udemy in our recent survey of <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/online-learning/inside-eight-game-changing-moocs/240152508" target="_blank">leading MOOCs</a>, putting it in a category with Coursera and edX, which offer massive open online courses from major universities for free. Udemy has some MOOC-like characteristics, offering about 75% of its courses for free, but it charges for the other 25%, said Dennis Yang, president and chief operating officer. "They're more like massively affordable online courses," he said. <P> Udemy's courses are also offered for "anywhere, anytime" consumption, rather than following a regular weekly schedule the way Coursera and edX classes do, and they focus on teaching specific technical or business skills rather than academic subjects. <P> <strong>[ Like it or not, online education is a growing trend. Read <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/online-learning/moocs-are-here-to-stay-profs-say/240151139?itc=edit_in_body_cross">MOOCs Are Here To Stay, Profs Say</a>. ]</strong> <P> At least initially, there is no charge for organizations of 250 employees or more to set up a Udemy subdomain. "We may charge in the future, but for now the platform is free to use, and you pay for the content you consume," Yang said. Large organizations will be able to negotiate a discount or a site license to cover all employees, he said. <P> For some time now, Udemy has been getting inquiries from companies that like the content the site offers but want to offer it to their employees in a more customized way, with the ability to curate the course catalog, Yang said. <P> Eventually, Udemy might add more technical integration options, such as single sign-on for corporate clients, Yang said. "Right now, we're focused on making the core experience for administrators and students as easy as possible." <P> Udemy offers more than 7,000 self-paced courses. The Udemy for Organizations version also comes with analytics for tracking employee progress through the courses. <P> One early user is Datalogix, an advertising technology company. "Our employees are extremely tech-savvy and extremely busy, so traditional training tools just don&#8217;t work for us," Chris Scoggins, senior VP and general manager, said in a statement. "Udemy for Organizations gives us the flexibility to let our people take courses when and where they have the time, and lets us take advantage of the amazing content on the Udemy platform -- as well as create our own courses to leverage all of our internal expertise." <P> <em>Follow David F. Carr at <a href="http://twitter.com/davidfcarr">@davidfcarr</a> or <a href="https://plus.google.com/113166369746212246457/?rel=author">Google+</a>, along with <a href="http://twitter.com/IWKEducation">@IWKEducation</a>.</em>2013-04-12T11:05:00ZLearning management system developer Instructure promotes the Learning Tools Interoperability specification as it preps its own Canvas App Center.http://www.informationweek.com/education/instructional-it/canvas-lms-maker-launches-open-education/240152738?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Smartphones_mobility<!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <div class="inlineStoryImage inlineStoryImageRight"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/online-learning/inside-eight-game-changing-moocs/240152508"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/976/MOOC_canvas_01_tn.jpg" alt="Inside Eight Game-changing MOOCs" title="Inside Eight Game-changing MOOCs" class="img175" /></a><br /><div class="storyImageTitle">Inside Eight Game-changing MOOCs</div><span class="inlinelargerView">(click image for larger view and for slideshow)</span></div> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> Canvas learning management system (LMS) maker Instructure has introduced an open directory of educational apps, which can be used with any system that implements a standard application embedding format, as it prepares to launch its own integrated app market. <P> <a href="http://www.instructure.com/" target="_blank">Instructure</a> promises to deliver the App Center, pre-stocked with more than 100 apps, including WordPress, Khan Academy, Dropbox and Evernote, at its <a href="http://www.instructure.com/instructurecon" target="_blank">user conference in June</a>. <P> When it arrives, the Canvas App Center is supposed to deliver "one-click" simplicity for the instructor who wants to install an app into the learning workspace for a course. However, the content displayed within the App Center -- the directory of embeddable tools that support the <a href="http://www.imsglobal.org/lti/" target="_blank">Learning Tools Interoperability</a> (LTI) specification -- will be pulled from <a href="http://edu-apps.org" target="_blank">edu-apps.org</a>, a website Instructure is launching now. <P> <strong>[ Seeking social apps for elementary educators? Read <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/instructional-it/edmodo-social-collaboration-for-teachers/240152473?itc=edit_in_body_cross">Edmodo: Social Collaboration For Teachers</a>. ]</strong> <P> Although the <a href="http://www.imsglobal.org/index.html">IMS Global Learning Consortium</a> that developed LTI has a basic listing of compatible products on its website, Instructure co-founder and chief product officer Brian Whitmer saw the need for a searchable catalog with user reviews included. IMS has been talking about creating a richer directory of LMS apps, but those talks were just getting started and Instructure decided it couldn't wait, he said. At the same time, Instructure recognized the directory would be more attractive to participating vendors if it were open, rather than specific to Canvas. <P> "We're trying to do this an interoperable way," Whitmer said. "We're taking open submissions, and a product will be approved as long as it works in LTI." The website itself is being delivered with an open application programming interface (API), meaning that it will be possible for other learning management systems such as Moodle to hook into the learning tools catalog the same way that Canvas will, he said. <P> "Our competitors in this space will of course be skeptical of our motives," Whitmer acknowledged. The site was set up with a ".org" domain partly to signal the purity of those motives, and it's possible that Instructure could turn the site over to IMS at some point to make it independent, he said. <P> At the same time, Whitmer added that rival LMS firm Blackboard actually has an app listed in the directory, a Web conferencing tool that can be used independently. "They were totally fine with adding that to the directory," he said. <P> <div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject" style="background-color: #eee; padding: 10px; width: 590px; font-style: italic; margin-top: 15px; margin-bottom: 15px;"><img itemprop="image" src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/education/2013Q1/edu-apps.png" alt="Edu Apps directory" title="Edu Apps directory" height="390" width="590"><br />A directory listing of math apps that conform with the LTI specification.</div> <P> <em>Follow David F. Carr at <a href="http://twitter.com/davidfcarr">@davidfcarr</a> or <a href="https://plus.google.com/113166369746212246457/?rel=author">Google+</a>, along with <a href="http://twitter.com/IWKEducation">@IWKEducation</a>.</em>