InformationWeek Stories by Ellis Booker

InformationWeek Stories by Ellis Bookerhttp://www.informationweek.comInformationWeeken-usCopyright 2012, UBM LLC.2013-05-23T14:10:00ZLinux-Based Education OS Gets New FeaturesEdubuntu update includes several new packages, including a touch-typing tutor and a mindmapping tool.http://www.informationweek.com/education/k-12/linux-based-education-os-gets-new-featur/240155465?cid=SBX_iwk_related_mostpopular_Data_Management_education <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> <div class="storyImageTitle"> 12 Open Educational Resources: From Khan to MIT</div> (click image for slideshow) </div>  Edubuntu 13.04, released April 25, brings the education edition into sync with the latest version of Ubuntu, the popular Linux operating system. While schools are advised to stick with the Long Term Support (LTS) version, Edubuntu 12.04.x, the new release is "intended for enthusiasts and users who would like to try out the latest and greatest software," according to the release notes on the <a href="http://www.edubuntu.org">Edubuntu</a> home page. Those curious about where in the world Edubuntu has been deployed can check out this user-contributed <a href="http://edubuntu.org/deployments/map">map</a> at Edubuntu.org. Unlike Ubuntu's LTS releases, which are supported for five years on both the desktop and server, releases like 13.04 (codename: Raring Ringtail) are supported for nine months. The new default packages in Edubuntu 13.04 include: -- klavaro: flexible touch-typing tutor -- krecipes: recipe manager and collection -- gramps: genealogical research program -- chemtool: chemical structures drawing program -- fritzing: easy-to-use electronics design software -- Einstein: puzzle game inspired by Einstein's puzzle -- vym: mindmapping tool -- bluefish: wysiwyg html editor [ Will cash prizes encourage software developers to build educational applications? See <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/admin-systems/education-tech-vendors-launch-apps-conte/240154596?itc=edit_in_body_cross">Education Tech Vendors Launch Apps Contest</a>. ] Formerly known as Ubuntu Education Edition, Edubuntu came into the world in October 2005, coinciding with the release of Ubuntu 5.10, on which it was based. Both Linux distributions are the administered by U.K. firm <a href="http://www.ubuntu.com/project/canonical-and-ubuntu"target="new">Canonical</a>. In April 2012, Edubuntu celebrated its first LTS release, based on Ubuntu 12.04. An important feature of that version was a major new release of Linux Terminal Server Project (LTSP), or thin-client support in Linux servers. With LTSP, inexpensive thin clients, as well as legacy PCs, can handle a variety of common tasks, such as browsing the Web, sending email, creating documents and running desktop applications. In the most minimal LTSP configuration, a workstation needs only RAM and a network card to boot up; the server provides its OS. This architecture is both manageable and secure, and it may be very attractive to cash- and staff-strapped school IT directors. In an LTSP setup, "fat-client support" seems paradoxical, until you understand that LTSP v5.x added support for a thin-client type known as "fat clients." This setup retains the manageability of an LTSP client-server architecture but uses the local machine's CPU, graphics and RAM, rather than rendering server windows on the client. This means better use of the LTSP server's resources for the other attached clients and, probably more importantly, better multimedia and 3-D application performance. Edubuntu 12.04 also included new classroom management software, <a href="http://www.epoptes.org/"target="new">Epoptes</a> (Greek for "overseer"), which replaced iTalc. The new software allows for screen broadcasting and monitoring, remote command execution, sending messages and imposing restrictions like screen locking or sound muting. There are pre-assembled Edubuntu packages for different age groups: -- ubuntu-edu-preschool (ages 5 and younger) -- ubuntu-edu-primary (ages 6-12) -- ubuntu-edu-secondary (ages 13-18) -- ubuntu-edu-tertiary (university level) The second of four scheduled point releases of Edubuntu 12.04 was released in February. Edubuntu 12.04.2 brought updated hardware support, bug fixes and security updates. Users already on Edubuntu 12.04 LTS systems who have applied all available updates are already running 12.04.2 and need not reinstall. Media downloads and installation guides for all versions of the education distro are available on the Edubuntu <a href="http://edubuntu.org/download">download page</a>.2013-05-22T12:56:00ZArt And Computer Literacy Overcome Challenges At NYC SchoolMany of its students are disadvantaged and living in temporary housing, but this New York City school’s computer lab is making strides.http://www.informationweek.com/education/instructional-it/art-and-computer-literacy-overcome-chall/240155381?cid=SBX_iwk_related_mostpopular_Data_Management_educationLocated on 4th Street between Avenue C and D in Manhattan, <a href="http://schools.nyc.gov/schoolportals/01/M015/default.htm"target="_blank">Roberto Clemente School</a> has an impressive computer lab with 28 Apple iMacs and a Smart Board. John Holleran has been running the lab for the past two years. He took it over after convincing the school's principal, who was facing a choice between a technology teacher and an art teacher, that he could teach both. "Initially, the principal wanted to do traditional art with pre-K and computer art with the older grades," Holleran, whose title is technology teacher, told me in an interview. But, indicative of the pervasiveness of computers in the culture, even the pre-K and kindergarten students were comfortable using the Macs. In first and second grades, Holleran uses the Mac layout program, <a href="http://www.apple.com/iwork/pages/"target="_blank">Pages</a>, for teaching basic computer activities. "We talk about opening documents and templates, and I transition them to other programs," he explained. [ How can we improve math learning apps? Read <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/instructional-it/problem-of-math-educational-software-nee/240154753?itc=edit_in_body_cross">Problem Of Math Educational Software Needs Solution</a>. ] Unfortunately, while the lab was filled with top-notch hardware donated by a city councilwoman, the school didn't have money for software. Holleran's solution to the software gap was to use iWork and Pages, which both came pre-installed on the iMacs, and supplement these with two free software programs: <a href="http://tuxpaint.org/"target="_blank">Tux Paint</a> for drawing and <a href="http://www.stykz.net/"target="_blank">Stykz</a> for animations. (Holleran also got around the lack of a color printer by displaying the student's artwork on the Smart Board and on the large LCD in the school's lobby.) Rather than use Stykz simply as an art tool, Holleran coordinates around assignments with other teachers in the school. For instance, he had students animate their math problems, such as "one alligator eating one-third of six pigs." <div style="display: inline; float: right; margin-left: 5px; background-color:#eee;padding: 5px; width: 325px;"><img src="http://img.deusm.com/educationalit/2013/02/258516/214525_994911.jpg"> Computer artwork from a Roberto Clemente kindergarten student.</div> The students also use <a href="http://www.edmodo.com/"target="_blank">Edmodo</a>, the social networking site geared for schools, which lets teachers control who has access and what is posted. "I do a few lessons on Internet etiquette," Holleran told me. Transient Students "We have a huge transient population; about 40% are in temporary housing," Holleran notes, adding that fully a quarter of the students may be gone and replaced by the end of the academic year. Roberto Clemente has the expected problems of a school with high-needs students: Nutritional and behavioral problems are widespread. Interestingly, despite large numbers of children who likely don't have home computers, Holleran is consistently amazed by how comfortable students are using computers. "They pick up these programs fast, and find all the bells and whistles on their own." For instance, the fifth graders start using Apple Keynote, a presentation program, to build slideshows and practice public speaking. "They find the transitions, the builds, the flashing lights, the photo drops." Having students create content and teach each other about application gimmicks is a great way to keep them focused and interested, he told me, adding this is doubly important for these students, who often deal with chaotic, stressful home lives. "With technology evolving so quickly, I don't want to waste instructional time teaching the ins and outs of a program or tool that may become obsolete before [students] hit middle school," Holleran wrote in a follow-up email. "The kids benefit from focusing on creating valuable content and using technology as a means to share it." In fact, based on its success with students, Holleran reports the school is thinking about using the computer lab to engage Roberto Clemente's parents, which he said is a persistent struggle. "We're now discussing ways of giving parents access to the computers. They could write a resumé or a letter or just check email." This column was originally published on UBM's Educational IT site.2013-05-13T09:06:00ZEducation Tech Vendors Launch Apps ContestLearning management systems (LMS) vendors hope awards program will spur educational apps development.http://www.informationweek.com/education/admin-systems/education-tech-vendors-launch-apps-conte/240154596?cid=SBX_iwk_related_mostpopular_Data_Management_education<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> <div class="storyImageTitle"> 12 Open Educational Resources: From Khan to MIT</div>(click image for slideshow)</div>Will cash prizes and bragging rights encourage software developers to build educational applications? That's the hope of a group of learning management system (LMS) vendors, who have joined forces to announce an awards program at the <a href="http://www.imsglobal.org">IMS Global Learning Consortium</a> Conference in San Diego, Calif., on Monday. "Edtech isn't the ecosystem it should be," Brian Whitmer, co-founder and chief product officer at <a href="http://www.instructure.com">Instructure</a>, maker of the Canvas LMS, told InformationWeek in a phone interview. "It's too hard for new entrants to get in." Along with LMS makers <a href="http://www.blackboard.com">Blackboard</a> and <a href="http://www.desire2learn.com">Desire2Learn</a>, Instructure wants to encourage developers to use the IMS' Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) standard for building applications. The awards program is a way to promote LTI. [ Want more on Canvas? Read <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/instructional-it/canvas-lms-maker-launches-open-education/240152738?itc=edit_in_body_cross">Canvas LMS Maker Launches Open Education Apps Directory</a>. ] Under the LTI Apps Bounty, any qualifying app will receive $250; winners will receive an additional $1,000. Winners will be announced on June 20. LTI is a specification that seeks to establish a standard way of integrating learning applications with platforms such as learning management systems, portals or other educational environments. In LTI parlance, learning applications are called "tools" and the learning management system is the "tool consumer." For example, Canvas is written in Ruby, Blackboard is written in Java and Desire2Learn is built in the .NET Framework -- but all of these "tool consumers" can use LTI-compliant "tools." IMS Global hosts a catalog of LTS-compatible software and platforms <a href="http://developers.imsglobal.org/catalog.html">here.</a> "Yes, there are barriers to entry [in the education software market] and providing financial incentives to enter is a good idea," Benjamin Jones, an associate professor at Kellogg School of Management and faculty director of the Kellogg Innovation and Entrepreneurship Initiative (KIEI), said in a phone interview. But Jones went on to say schools and school districts won't buy software until they are convinced about the effectiveness of these applications. "There's still a challenge proving these products work," he said. Jones, along with Duke University business professor Aaron Chatterji, is building <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/instructional-it/educational-software-gets-graded/240152986">Edu Star</a>, a cloud-based platform that will, among other things, offer empirical rankings of educational software. To get the word out about the awards, the companies are alerting their respective developer communities, school customers and social media channels. Details about the awards program -- including submission and judging criteria, as well as a submission form -- are available <a href="http://instructure.github.io/lti_bounty.html">here</a>. All entries must be submitted by midnight Mountain Daylight Time on June 10.2013-05-08T13:36:00ZCoursera Tests New Textbook PartnershipsCoursera teams with publishers to offer some free textbook content to students enrolled in online classes.http://www.informationweek.com/education/instructional-it/coursera-pilots-integration-with-textboo/240154482?cid=SBX_iwk_related_mostpopular_Data_Management_education<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=" 8 MOOCs Transforming Education" title="8 MOOCs Transforming Education" class="img175" /></a> <div class="storyImageTitle">8 MOOCs Transforming Education</div>(click image for larger view and for slideshow)</div>Massive open online course (MOOC) company <ahref= "www.coursera.org">Coursera</a> today announced a pilot program with several education publishers, who will make some of their e-textbook content free to students while they take an online Coursera class. The pilot marks the first time Coursera has worked with publishers this way. Up until now, Coursera has avoided requiring students to pay for textbooks, in line with its goal of making its classes free to a mass audience. But Coursera has always recognized that students could benefit from using high-quality material, company co-founder Daphne Koller told InformationWeek in a phone call. Moreover, the move will lift a "really significant burden" from instructors who want to use these textbook sources directly instead of trying to distill ideas for their Coursera classes, Koller said. [ Recently Coursera announced a set of professional development courses aimed at teachers. Read more at <a href=" http://www.informationweek.com/education/online-learning/coursera-online-hub-offers-teachers-deve/240153995?itc=edit_in_body_cross">Coursera Online Hub Offers Teachers Development</a>. ] The publishers will benefit too, according to Koller, because they will gain access to the sort of non-traditional students who tend to take MOOCs. "It provides them with a marketing channel into a population which, by the large, they don't have penetration into." Koller also predicted that once a class is over, some students may want to buy the textbook, e-textbook or even digital content used during the class. But details and possible discounts for such purchases, including the ability to purchase a "Coursera version" of a textbook, have yet to be worked out with the publishers. In addition to future sales, another benefit for publishers will be worldwide, anonymized usage statistics from large numbers of students. "We're not giving them identifiable student data, but we can give them usage statistics sliced by demographic data, if we have it," Koller said, noting that this global data will be valuable to the publishers as they refine their current products and design new ones. Chegg e-reader Technically, Coursera will leverage the DRM-protected e-Reader from its existing partner <ahref="www.chegg.com">Chegg</a>, an online textbook rental company. The Chegg reader has been embedded into the Coursera platform so that after a student signs on, he or she will find a tab with the publisher materials. Publishers participating in the pilot include Cengage Learning, Macmillan Higher Education, Oxford University Press, SAGE, and Wiley, and Coursera is actively discussing pilot agreements and related alliances with Springer, the company said in a statement. Notably missing from the list is the world's largest educational publisher, <ahref="http://www.informationweek.com/education/online-learning/education-giant-pearson-adapts-to-digita/240153068">Pearson</a>. Without mentioning Pearson or others by name, Koller said she was hopeful about adding publishing partners in the future. Pressed to guess the percentage of Coursera courses that will make use of publisher e-textbook content within a year, Koller said, "If we manage to get all the publishers we'd like, well over half the courses will end up using [this material]." 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.) 2013-05-06T12:05:00ZTravel Stress Quantified Using Big DataTravel giant CWT uses big data science to examine the productivity costs of stressful business travel.http://www.informationweek.com/big-data/news/big-data-analytics/travel-stress-quantified-using-big-data/240154241?cid=SBX_iwk_related_mostpopular_Data_Management_education <div class="inlineStoryImage inlineStoryImageRight"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/big-data/slideshows/big-data-analytics/5-big-wishes-for-big-data-deployments/240153214"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/981/Big_Hadoop_01_tn.jpg" alt="5 Big Wishes For Big Data Deployments" title="5 Big Wishes For Big Data Deployments" class="img175" /></a> <div class="storyImageTitle">5 Big Wishes For Big Data Deployments</div>(click image for larger view and for slideshow)</div> Millions of workers are on the roads, railways and tarmacs every day. But what's the impact on productivity when those trips go wrong, when business travelers experience stress and suffer indignities large and small? CWT, a $28 billion global travel, meetings and events management company, wanted to find out. Through its <ahref= "http://www.cwt-solutions-group.com/>CWT Solutions Group</a> consulting arm, the company embarked on an initiative last June to examine some 15.3 million trips in its transaction database and combine this information with several other internal and external data sets. The result, announced in April, is an algorithm-based tool called the CWT Travel Stress Index (TSI). The TSI measures the financial impact of lost productivity incurred through trip-related stress. The tool is now being used to inform CWT's recommendations to its clients. [ State and local governments have only a fraction of the resources they'll need to handle future data volumes. Read more at <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/big-data/news/government/information-management/big-data-will-stymie-local-government/240153888?itc=edit_in_body_cross">Big Data Will Stymie Local Government</a>. ] "We had the transactional data and we had some traveler profile data, but it was scattered and we had to bring them together," Catalin Ciobanu, director of innovation, big data analytics at CWT, told InformationWeek during a Skype call. A physicist formerly with Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), Ciobanu was <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/big-data/news/hardware-architectures/big-data-profile-catalin-ciobanu-carls/240144253">profiled</a> by InformationWeek last December. Along with the transactional data, Ciobanu gathered survey data on more than 7,000 CWT travelers. "We asked them to rank, on a stress scale of one to ten, 33 activities," Ciobanu said. (In the first iteration, just 22 of the activities were used; Ciobanu hopes to add in the other 11 in future versions of the tool.) This part of the research revealed three types of stressors: lost time (such as the inability to work on a plane or in a hotel without an Internet connection); surprise (such as lost luggage) and a third category Ciobanu describes as "routine breakers" (such as having to wake up early or the inability to eat healthy foods). This data also highlighted demographic differences. For instance, female travelers were more stressed than their male counterparts in virtually every category, and more senior -- presumably older -- workers experienced more travel stress than junior employees. Interestingly, senior workers were less likely to be stressed by surprises. More details from the stress trigger analysis, with variations by demographic category, can be found <a href= "http://www.cwt-solutions-group.com/export/sites/cwtpreprod/.content/files/cwt-stress-triggers-for-business-travelers.pdf">here</a>. Calculating Costs With the transactional and perception data sets in place, CWT collected compensation benchmark data from across all industries, countries and job titles, as well as information about geopolitical risks. The goal was to calculate the productivity hit caused by stressful travel for different types of travelers. "When we looked at it all, we saw there is an irreducible component of stress that is close to 70%," Ciobanu said. However, this still leaves 32% that can be acted upon with different travel policies. For example, CWT can use to the model to advise its clients about connectivity options for each stage of a trip or to recommend a specific carrier based on on-time or lost-luggage performance. While the stress index is an interesting use of data, travel management companies like CWT and American Express Travel have been struggling to prove their value in an increasingly self-service world, Andreas Weigend told InformationWeek in a phone call. Weigend, the former chief scientist of Amazon.com, now teaches at Stanford University and directs the school's Social Data Lab. In the 1980s, travel agent "experts" accessed arcane back-end systems; in the 1990s, Web-based systems like Expedia and Orbitz arrived; in the 2000s, social media-centric travel review sites appeared. "The next phase [of air travel booking] is the connection to the social graph, the connection between people," Weigend said, noting that air carrier KLM now allows travelers to add their Twitter handle on their flight's seating chart. CWT is not alone in using data to help sort out stress of potential trip, according to Weigend. The Web travel booking site <a href="http://www.hipmunk.com"> Hipmunk</a> includes, along with the standard ways to search flights by price and time, a tab called "Agony" that sorts flights through a combination of best price, shortest length and fewest layovers. Meanwhile, CWT's Ciobanu does not plan to stop with the stress index. Hinting at future plans, he said he wants move from "travel policy" to "traveler policy" -- that is, making the model more and more individualized. Without offering details, he recommended watching for announcements in the next nine months to a year. The Travel Stress Index, which runs under Linux and uses about 2,000 to 3,000 lines of C++ code, looks at around one million trips per minute. While the TSI is proprietary and uses transactional data of CWT clients for its benchmarking, Ciobanu and his team have <a href= "http://www.cwt-solutions-group.com/publications-and-media-centre/research-and-view-points/trip-reconstruction.html">released details</a> about the framework, called "Trip Reconstruction," on which it was built. 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! 2013-05-06T11:50:00ZStudents Want More Mobile Devices In ClassroomNine in 10 elementary, middle and high school students believe mobile devices will change the way kids learn, Pearson survey finds.http://www.informationweek.com/education/mobility/students-want-more-mobile-devices-in-cla/240154188?cid=SBX_iwk_related_mostpopular_Data_Management_education<div class="inlineStoryImage inlineStoryImageRight"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/leadership/educational-technology-across-the-ages/240149241"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/954/1_tn.jpg" alt="Tablets Rock On: Education Tech Through The Ages" title="Tablets Rock On: Education Tech Through The Ages" class="img175" /></a> <div class="storyImageTitle">Tablets Rock On: Education Tech Through The Ages</div>(click image for larger view and for slideshow)</div>When it comes to the influx of mobile devices into K-12 classrooms, you’ll find both proponents and opponents among educators and parents. But ask kids what they think, and there’s no debate: Laptops, smartphones and tablets are the future, they say. Released last week, the Student Mobile Device Survey reveals that students almost unanimously believe mobile technology will change education and make learning more fun. The survey, which tallied the responses of 2,350 U.S. students, was conducted for learning company <a href="http://www.pearson.com">Pearson</a> by <a href="http://www.harrisinteractive.com">Harris Interactive</a>. According to the survey, 92% of elementary, middle and high school students believe mobile devices will change the way students learn in the future and make learning more fun (90%). A majority (69%) would like to use mobile devices more in the classroom. [ Can tablets designed for education make a difference? Read <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/instructional-it/amplify-tablet-hopes-to-rule-schools/240150167?itc=edit_in_body_cross">Amplify Tablet Hopes To Rule Schools</a>. ] The survey results also contained some surprises. For example, college students in math and science are much more likely to use technology for learning, and researchers expected to see this same pattern in the lower grades. "[We] found that students in grades 4-12 use tablets almost equally in math, science, history and social studies, and English/language arts," Pearson’s senior VP of market research Seth Reichlin told InformationWeek in an email. Other surprises cut along racial lines. The survey found that Hispanics in grades 4 to 12 are more likely (36%) than white (30%) or black (28%) students to own a tablet. "We expected the opposite based on differences in median family income," Reichlin wrote. Similarly, black and Hispanic students in grades 4 to 12 were more likely than other students to own a smartphone (51% of black students, 49% of Hispanic, 40% of white). Overall, the survey found that more than one-third of 4th and 5th graders (36%), and a third of middle school students (34%), currently own a tablet. A quarter of all students intend to purchase a tablet within the next six months, the survey found. Asked about their use of tablets, one-third of elementary, middle and high school students said they have used one for schoolwork this academic year; another 44% said they have used a smartphone for schoolwork. Interestingly, among students who use a tablet for schoolwork, more than half (52%) use a device that they own personally, rather than one borrowed from the school. Younger students are more eager to use tablets in class than their older peers, according to the survey. Also, although two-thirds of elementary and middle school students said they would like to use mobile devices more often in class, only 61% of high school students and 43% of college students said this. "It is particularly interesting to note that as students rise to higher levels in their education, the way that they rely on mobile devices to support learning changes as well," Shawn Mahoney, VP of product design research and evaluation for assessment and instruction at Pearson, said in a statement. "While smartphones and tablets are still important tools for high school students, it appears that they are looking for more full-featured productivity devices, such as laptops, to support their learning activities." The Student Mobile Device Survey was conducted online by Harris Interactive on behalf of Pearson between Jan. 28 and Feb. 24 among 2,350 U.S. students, including 500 elementary school (4th-5th grade) students, 750 middle school (6th-8th grade) students, and 1,100 high school (9th-12th grade) students. The survey also included a national sample of 1,206 college students.2013-05-01T09:45:00ZCoursera Online Hub Offers Teachers DevelopmentCoursera and more than a dozen education partners will offer classes for K-12 teachers starting this summer.http://www.informationweek.com/education/online-learning/coursera-online-hub-offers-teachers-deve/240153995?cid=SBX_iwk_related_mostpopular_Data_Management_education<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=" 8 MOOCs Transforming Education" title="8 MOOCs Transforming Education" class="img175" /></a> <div class="storyImageTitle">8 MOOCs Transforming Education</div>(click image for larger view and for slideshow)</div>Already the largest MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) platform for students, <a href="https://www.coursera.org/">Coursera</a> Wednesday announced a set of professional development courses aimed at teachers. The free courses are a joint project between Coursera and more than a dozen professional development institutions, museums and schools of education. "We're open for enrollment," Julia Stiglitz, director of strategic partnerships, told InformationWeek in a phone interview. The first online classes will start this summer, followed by others in the fall and winter. The initiative also represents Coursera's first foray into early childhood and K-12 education, and is the first time the company has partnered with non-degree-bearing institutions. The new courses, which will be offered for free to a global audience and are not limited to teachers, will be listed on Coursera's course directory under the category Teacher Professional Development. [ MOOCs are the new big thing in higher ed. Do they live up to the hype? Read <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/online-learning/moocs-valuable-innovation-or-grand-diver/240147875?itc=edit_in_body_cross">MOOCs: Valuable Innovation Or Grand Diversion?</a> ] Initial courses will cover diverse subjects including content development, the common core curriculum, teaching through tinkering, character education, and implementing flipped and blended learning strategies, Coursera said in a statement. "We've had in-person professional development for decades, regionally and nationally," Bronwyn Bevan, associate director of programs at the <a href="http://www.exploratorium.edu">Exploratorium</a>, told InformationWeek in a phone interview. The Exploratorium, a hands-on museum of science, art, and human perception in San Francisco, will offer two courses: One around integrating engineering into middle and high school STEM classrooms, and another on integrating tinkering into elementary and middle school. The Exploratorium's involvement with Coursera is "part of our effort to expand our reach," Bevan said, adding it was exciting to reach a whole new community of educators, learning from and with that community. "At Coursera, we hope to support millions of teachers around the world in expanding their skills, networks and knowledge, by opening up access to some of the best resources out there, free of cost," Coursera cofounder Daphne Koller said in a statement. Not Focused on Online Instruction Despite their rapid growth, MOOCs haven't received universal acclaim, with some arguing that classes containing 30,0000 to 60,000 students <a href= "http://www.informationweek.com/education/online-learning/moocs-valuable-innovation-or-grand-diver/240147875">aren't the best way to teach</a>. There have even been a few highly publicized rejections of MOOCs by postsecondary teachers. But Coursera's Stiglitz rejected the idea that the new program was meant to promote MOOCs or even train teachers how to develop online educational content. Although some of the classes will be around online course creation and blended learning, most are not, she said. "Most [of the courses] are around in-person teaching," she explained. "I think we could have an impact in this space." Schools of education participating in Coursera's teachers hub include the College of Education, University of Washington; Curry School of Education, University of Virginia; Johns Hopkins University School of Education; Match Education's Sposato Graduate School of Education; Peabody College of education and human development, Vanderbilt University; Relay Graduate School of Education; and University of California, Irvine Extension. Other participating educational institutions include the American Museum of Natural History; The Commonwealth Education Trust; The Exploratorium; The Museum of Modern Art; and New Teacher Center. 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.) 2013-04-30T11:02:00ZNewsiT Uses Big Data Tools To Verify TweetsJournalist and entrepreneur develops analytics platform to give companies confidence when crowd-sourcing news from social media feeds.http://www.informationweek.com/big-data/news/big-data-analytics/newsit-uses-big-data-tools-to-verify-tweets/240153892?cid=SBX_iwk_related_mostpopular_Data_Management_education<div class="inlineStoryImage inlineStoryImageRight"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/thebrainyard/news/galleries/social_networking_consumer/10-social-networks-for-special-interests/240145821"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/938/Catmoji_full.JPG" alt="10 Social Networks For Special Interests" class="img175" /></a> <div class="storyImageTitle">10 Social Networks For Special Interests</div>(click image for larger view and for slideshow)</div>In their endless pursuit of breaking news and trends, many media organizations have turned to social media. Publishers place top tweets on their homepages, and Twitter's own homepage includes, without editorial comment, a "Trends" column that shows the top terms, phrases and hashtags used by its 200 million+ active users. But there's a fundamental problem with using social media this way: How do you know which stories and trends are real? Melinda Wittstock, founder and CEO of <a href="http://www.newsit.net">NewsiT</a>, thinks she has a solution. "Our platform is mobile and social in nature," Wittstock told InformationWeek in a phone interview. "It not only crowd-sources contextual content from social sources, it verifies it for relevance, impact, sentiment and reliability/veracity." [ How did a hoax tweet prompt Twitter to change its security? Read more at <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/security/attacks/twitter-preps-two-factor-authentication/240153539">Twitter Preps Two-Factor Authentication After AP Hoax</a>. ] On its blog, the company describes what it does: "NewsiT helps media, publishers and anyone in need of accurate, contextual content and trusted social connection. The platform crowd-sources user-generated content and verifies it in real-time for relevance and reliability with powerful algorithms, rating and reputation-scoring processes." Wittstock is no newcomer to the information-gathering process. She was a business reporter and then media correspondent of the Times of London, then anchored and produced for BBC World TV, Financial Times/CNBC Europe and ABC World News Now, among others. Her first company, Capitol News Connection, supplied public radio stations, TV outlets and newspapers with localized news from Congress. NewsiT uses a variety of algorithms to mine the "Twitter firehose" in real time, finding relevant tweets that, for instance, match a phrase, hashtag, handle, geolocation or sentiment. NewsiT then filters out repetition and noise, leaving a smaller set of content that can be subjected to what Wittstock described as "a process of weighting according to the reputation of its source" -- a process Wittstock says will get more and more sophisticated and accurate over time. Although many media companies aspire to use social media as a data input, most are using it at a very rudimentary level, according to Frank J. Cutitta, founder and CEO of <a href="http://brandsintl.com">The Center for Global Branding</a>, a consultancy specializing in global branding issues. Cutitta's current research project, "Weapons of Mass Discussion: Enterprise Social Media and the New CIO/CMO and Data Science Alliance," will cover key issues and challenges in IT's evolving relationship with emerging social and conversational media platforms. "Very little of what I've seen has been algorithmic," he told InformationWeek in a phone interview. Cutitta also questioned how many media companies will need the kind of real-time verification and analysis NewsiT plans to offer. "A lot of other media sectors are lumbering along [digesting some social media feeds for and turning it into editorial insight, trending and editorial direction]," he said. "These companies don't have a strong case for immediate verification." But Wittstock said media and content companies were only one of her target markets. Other potential customers include consumer brands, advocacy organizations and financial companies. "As financial markets open to social as a source, if millions of dollars can be made or lost on a tweet, you need to be able to do [a NewsiT-like analysis of accuracy and validity] in real time," Wittstock pointed out. (Indeed, just a few days after I spoke with Wittstock, hackers compromised Twitter accounts of The Associated Press, sending out <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/security/attacks/ap-twitter-hack-lessons-learned/240153626">a false tweet</a> about an attack on the White House that had injured President Obama. Stock trading systems read the "news" and reacted nearly instantaneously, causing The Dow Jones industrial average to plummet more than 150 points before recovering.) Regarding the impact of services like NewsiT on journalism, Wittstock was upbeat. "This is an aid, not a competitor," she said, adding that reporters will be able to catch stories before they break out. "It can take some labor-intensity out of the news-gathering process, but it doesn't take away from journalism; it enhances it," she said. NewsiT, currently angel-funded but with plans for Series A financing, is in its first customer trials and hopes to sell its first platform license later this year. 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! 2013-04-26T09:55:00ZEducation Data: Privacy Backlash BeginsPrivacy and education experts worry about the movement to capture and analyze student data, even as edu tech companies decry ulterior motives.http://www.informationweek.com/education/data-management/education-data-privacy-backlash-begins/240153668?cid=SBX_iwk_related_mostpopular_Data_Management_education <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> <div class="storyImageTitle"> 12 Open Educational Resources: From Khan to MIT</div> (click image for slideshow) </div>  As increasing amounts of student, class and school data are captured and analyzed, some people have started to sound alarms about potential privacy violations and other kinds of misuse. "I think it's totally illegitimate to take kids' data without parental consent," said Leonie Haimson, a parent activist and executive director of <a href="http://www.classsizematters.org">Class Size Matters</a>, a nonprofit organization that wants smaller classes in New York City's public schools and the nation as a whole. "If these exact same records were in a doctor's office or hospital, it would be illegal to collect them without parental consent," she told InformationWeek in a phone interview. Haimson has taken special aim at <a href="http://www.inbloom.org/">inBloom</a>, a nonprofit startup funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation of New York that seeks to be a vendor-neutral data service to collect student data gathered in many different software systems and services. Haimson and others worry inBloom and other efforts using student data -- such as the <a href="http://www.ed-fi.org/">Ed-Fi Alliance</a>, the <a href="http://www.msdf.org/">Michael and Susan Dell Foundation</a>-funded education data integration initiative -- may ultimately feed sensitive, personally identifiable information to for-profit companies. They also worry about accidental release of the data through, for example, hacking. For its part, inBloom states in its FAQ that the company "has no ownership of student records." It continues: "Neither inBloom nor any other participating agency or vendor may sell or share confidential student data" unless "authorized by a state or district with legal authority over those student records." [ For another take on student data issues, read <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/instructional-it/hope-battles-fear-over-student-data-inte/240151687?itc=edit_in_body_cross">Hope Battles Fear Over Student Data Integration</a>. ] Vendors of data collection, analysis and sharing platforms in education routinely say they are sensitive to privacy concerns. Personally identifiable information (PII) is programmatically <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/policy/who-owns-student-data/240149473">anonymized</a> for this very reason, they say. But the critics aren't convinced. "You can always put it back together, nothing is really ever anonymized," said Sheila Kaplan, who has been monitoring regulations around student directory information for years. Kaplan's website, <a href="http://educationnewyork.com">Educationnewyork.com</a> has become a clearinghouse for news and information about the topic. Suspicions also involve the specific types of data being collected. For example, Haimson wonders why inBloom needs to collect so much "incredibly individualized data," including a student's address, disciplinary history and special-needs status. In April, InformationWeek asked inBloom about reports that its data set would include social security numbers. An inBloom spokesperson responded: inBloom discourages districts and states from storing social security numbers in our data service; instead we agree with the industry-wide best practice many school districts and states have of assigning a unique student ID number that is separate from the student's social security number. That said, it's ultimately up to each school district or state to decide whether or not they track and store student social security numbers. "That's a cop-out," Joel R. Reidenberg, a law professor and founding academic director of the Fordham Center on Law and Information Policy at Fordham University School of Law, told InformationWeek in a phone interview. "InBloom includes [the social security number] as a data field, and if they didn't include it, schools would have to use something else. The choice of data fields is a policy decision." Separately, inBloom has said its data privacy and security protections exceed Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) requirements. FERPA is a decades-old federal law that protects the privacy of student education records and provides parents certain rights to their children's education records. But FERPA itself has been the target of privacy activists.A lawsuit, filed by the <a href="http://epic.org/">Electronic Privacy Information Center</a> in January against the U.S. Education Department, argues that its 2011 regulations undercut student privacy and parental consent in FERPA. The suit contends the changes effectively allow individuals, and both private and public entities, access to student records. "EPIC has brought some very strong claims," Reidenberg said. And however the EPIC suit is decided, states will start to enact restrictions on student data collection and sharing, Reidenberg predicted, because FERPA lacks any recourse rights for children or their parents. "Data breaches are going to happen," he said, noting that even in the heavily regulated financial services industry, which spends substantial amounts of money on information security, "data exposures happen on a regular basis." Perhaps because of the growing outcry, the Department of Education's chief privacy officer recently issued informal <a href="http://www.educause.edu/ero/article/privacy-and-security-initiatives-and-recommendations-us-department-education">guidance on FERPA and student privacy</a>. But, if data privacy objections prompt new rules or regulations, will that will stunt the use of data-driven technologies in education? We asked Cameron Evans, Microsoft's national and chief technology officer of U.S. education, for his opinion. "We do see some uses of student data that need to be addressed and foreclosed, including advertising and marketing uses by cloud service providers," Evans said in an email response. He also wrote: "We can enable data-driven technologies in learning by being fully transparent with schools on how we use the student data we collect, and most importantly, ensuring our schools that this data will never be used for commercial interests unrelated to the IT services we are providing them and their students." But some critics are skeptical about the stated goals of educational data collection per se, which proponents claim is entirely around <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/instructional-it/hope-battles-fear-over-student-data-inte/240151687">improving student performance through technology</a>. "No, I don't think their goal is to improve education," Kaplan said. "It's to make money." Likewise, Haimson rejected the heralded benefits of data collection, sharing and analysis in education. "We're not fooled by the PR spin about a 'tech revolution in learning,'" she said. "There's no proven value to any of this stuff -- no research to show any of this stuff works." The real goal of theses high-tech projects, she declared, is simply to get cut costs by getting rid of teachers and putting larger and larger classes online. What change might satisfy Haimson? "Opt-in would satisfy me," she said, referring to parental opt-in to collect or use PII by the school or third parties. But Reidenberg was dubious an opt-in mechanism would solve the problem. "The complexity and sophistication of the data uses would make it difficult for the average parent to know what they're consenting to," he said.2013-04-18T16:03:00ZHP Unveils Online 'STEMx' Courses For TeachersHP Catalyst Academy will offer teachers MOOC-driven "mini-courses" on traditional STEM disciplines, plus other high-tech subjects.http://www.informationweek.com/education/online-learning/hp-unveils-online-stemx-courses-for-teac/240153209?cid=SBX_iwk_related_mostpopular_Data_Management_education<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=" 8 MOOCs Transforming Education" title="8 MOOCs Transforming Education" class="img175" /></a> <div class="storyImageTitle">8 MOOCs Transforming Education</div>(click image for larger view and for slideshow)</div> This week saw the launch of a new massive open online course (MOOC), this one aimed at educators, specifically designed to help them prepare to teach a variety of technology topics. <a href="http://catalyst.navigator.nmc.org">HP Catalyst Academy</a>, which goes into beta in June, extends the <a href="http://www.hp.com/go/hpcatalyst">HP Catalyst Initiative</a>, launched by Hewlett-Packard in 2010. To date, HP has made grants to 56 organizations in 15 countries under the program, which seeks to support innovative teaching methods for so-called STEMx education. Coined by the HP Catalyst Initiative, STEMx covers not only science, technology, engineering and math, but also other high-technology disciplines such as computer science, nanoscience and biotech. The modified acronym also refers to the skills of collaboration, creativity, communication, problem solving, inquiry, computational thinking and "global fluency." The MOOC was announced by HP's education partners, <a href="http://www.iste.org">the International Society for Technology in Education</a> (ISTE) and the <a href="http://www.nmc.org">New Media Consortium</a> (NMC), during the 2013 HP Catalyst Summit in Sao Paulo, Brazil. The meeting attracted more than 120 educators and policy leaders. "The academy was a way to scale, and let more people have exposure to these innovative ideas," Leslie Conery, chief education officer of ISTE, told InformationWeek in a Skype call from Sao Paulo. The MOOC is not just for teachers, said Conery. Interested students will be encouraged to check out the academy's courses, she said. Conery also emphasized that the academy was not a monolithic learning management system (LMS) from HP but rather a federation, connecting teachers to STEMx educators, using a variety of online teaching platforms. These educators -- so-called HP Catalyst Fellows -- will offer a set of online mini-courses covering a wide range of topics, such as digital fabrication, computational thinking, remote labs, game design and social media. "It's a fantastic opportunity," Debbie Forster, chief operating officer for the London-based charity Apps for Good, and one of the first 15 Fellows, told InformationWeek during the Skype call. Apps for Good teaches educators how to help students to conceive, develop and commercialize software apps that answer social needs. Although the three-year-old program has scaled from two locations and 50 students to 100 schools and 5,000 students, "there's always a waiting list," Forster said. The academy will let her scale to a global audience, she said. HP Catalyst Academy is currently accepting applications for additional fellows for the next round of mini-classes, slated to start in the fall.2013-04-17T12:30:00ZEducation Giant Pearson Adapts To Digital LearningPearson, the world's largest educational publisher, recognized older students as online learning harbinger.http://www.informationweek.com/education/online-learning/education-giant-pearson-adapts-to-digita/240153068?cid=SBX_iwk_related_mostpopular_Data_Management_education<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=" 8 MOOCs Transforming Education" title="8 MOOCs Transforming Education" class="img175" /></a> <div class="storyImageTitle">8 MOOCs Transforming Education</div>(click image for larger view and for slideshow)</div>Schools aren't the only ones grappling with big questions about online learning, flipped classrooms, assessment analytics and open-source alternatives to commercial products. Traditional publishers are making changes, too. <a href ="http://www.pearson.com">Pearson</a>, the world's largest education publisher, was early to embrace the digital future, according to observers. The company says more than half of its revenues last year came from digital products and service. Pearson is composed of its global education group of Pearson International, Pearson North America, and Professional; the Financial Times Group, publisher of the Financial Times newspaper and other specialty editorial and research products; and the Penguin Group, an international consumer publisher. Penguin is being merged with Bertelsmann's Random House to create the world's biggest trade book publisher, Penguin Random House, under a joint venture. [ Looking for free online classes? Read <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/online-learning/12-open-educational-resources-from-khan/240150477?itc=edit_in_body_cross">12 Open Educational Resources: From Khan to MIT</a>. ] "We've organized internally around three A's -- achievement, access and affordability," Todd Hitchcock, senior VP of online solutions and business development at Pearson, told InformationWeek in a phone interview. The three A's reflect Pearson's predictions about the market, based on its own research over the last three or four years, he said. Among other things, Pearson saw a changing student profile, especially in higher education, where the average age is now 38. "The demographic changing," Hitchcock said. "[They] need flexibility … so access becomes more online and blended." Similarly, although Hitchcock isn't sure that massive open online courses (MOOCs) will transform education, they have had the effect of "shining a light on online learning, access and affordability models," he said. Then again, a technology itself can sometimes spark change. Take Pearson's <a href="http://www.pearsonetext.com">eText</a> platform, a database of grade-specific educational content. eText was honored as InformationWeek's "Best Emerging Technology: Enterprise Mobility" last September. eText is now being developed as an overall solution for students, Hitchcock said, adding, "It's an opportunity to rethink the whole ecosystem for the learning." Pearson isn't alone in noting shifts in the education market. A 2012 <a href="http://sloanconsortium.org/publications/survey/changing_course_2012"> Babson Survey</a> of online learning revealed that over 6.7 million students were taking at least one online course during the 2011 fall term, an increase of 570,000 students over the previous year. Based on responses from over 2,800 academic leaders, the survey, "Changing Course: Ten Years of Tracking Online Education in the United States," also found that online learning was critical to the long-term strategies of 69% of chief academic leaders.From the outside, at least, the greatest competitive threat to traditional education publishers would seem to be open educational resources (OER). Noncommercial OER is to instructional content what open-source code is to software. But OER is just another facet of new education tactics, insists Hitchcock. "What we're seeing is more convergence," he said. Schools and teachers want ways to "weave them into a solution." To this he adds that because Pearson offers services for "every single element, except instruction, open source doesn't frighten us." In fact, Pearson and the other big education publishers didn't always have this inclusive philosophy about OER, when they thought it was a competitor, says a former Pearson executive and now digital education strategist and analyst. There was a time when "all the big players thought the best they could do was lock it out," said Frank Catalano, a founding columnist at <a href ="http://www.GeekWire.com">GeekWire</a> and a Pearson senior VP from 2004 to 2008. "But this is a customer-driven business," Catalano continued. "Customers said flat out, "'We want to use these materials.'" Catalano believes Pearson's biggest competition comes from its two main rivals, McGraw-Hill Education and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, which have narrowed Pearson's once-clear lead in digital products. "All of the big three have digital-savvy people at the helm now," Catalano said. But Pearson senior executives tout their strengths. "We have more digital learners using Pearson products (over 11 million in 2012) than all of our content competitors combined," Jerome Grant, chief learning officer for Pearson Higher Education, said in an email interview. With the purchase of online program design and development, marketing and enrollment and technology company Embanet last fall, Grant said, "We are now able to truly partner with colleges and universities to provide content, technology, platform and services. We are the only learning company with these capabilities." Hitchcock points out that helping schools keep pace with digital calls for a different approach to product development and deployment, one that is more dynamic and iterative. It also requires input from many groups, including student advisory boards. Building such "tight feedback loops" explains Pearson's recent outreach to constituents willing to share anonymized data, with the end goal of demonstrating the efficacy of teaching products and practices, Hitchcock said. "Traditionally, a publisher sells a book," he says. "Now we're focused on the entire solution, helping the student be successful. Education IT directors are leveraging technologies and technology models that allow them to implement the right products and services for schools right now. In this <a href="http://reports.informationweek.com/abstract/104/8955/Government/best-practices-top-tech-tools-for-educators.html?k=axxe&cid=article_axxe">Top Tech Tools For Educators</a> report, we'll look at some of the tools schools are using and how they're being put to work in the classroom to engage students and improve learning. (Free registration required.)2013-04-16T11:58:00ZEducational Software Gets GradedEdu Star platform aims to give teachers, schools and developers empirical rankings of education tech tools, accelerating application innovation and deployment.http://www.informationweek.com/education/instructional-it/educational-software-gets-graded/240152986?cid=SBX_iwk_related_mostpopular_Data_Management_education <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> <div class="storyImageTitle"> 12 Open Educational Resources: From Khan to MIT</div> (click image for slideshow) </div>  Teachers will tell you the problem isn't a paucity of educational software. The problem, they say, is picking between dozens or even hundreds of applications all claiming to teach a subject. "Right now we live in a system in which nobody knows what works," said Benjamin Jones, an associate professor at Kellogg School of Management and faculty director of the Kellogg Innovation and Entrepreneurship Initiative (KIEI). "They don't know what to buy or what to implement," Jones told InformationWeek during an interview in his office on the Northwestern University campus. Hoping to address this fundamental problem, Jones, along with Duke University business professor Aaron Chatterji, is building Edu Star, a cloud-based platform that will, among other things, offer empirical rankings of educational software. Specifically, Edu Star plans to rate each technology on a scale of one to five stars. It will also provide additional information about the software, such as how many students have used it, how it was tested and user ratings from students and teachers. Edu Star will be available to academics and application developers alike, an important distinction. [ New-fangled educational devices didn't start with computers or the Internet. Read <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>. ] This feedback loop between users and developers distinguishes the project from Consumer Reports, to which it has sometimes been compared. "Edu Star has features of the Consumer Reports model," Jones said. "But in this space, you need more than experts, you need quantitative assessment at low cost." Jones does appreciate how Consumer Reports' transparent ranking methodology has made it into a trusted brand, something he would like to emulate. Jones imagines an automated, iterative, A/B testing scheme. These results would be extremely valuable to developers, of course. "On one side are students, teachers and parents. On the other side are developers," Jones said. However, just as important, will be keeping these testing costs down. This will give "innovators and entrepreneurs a testing opportunity" they may be denied today, Jones said. According to Jones, it's incredibly hard for application developers to make money in the K-12 market, in part because procurement cycles are very long. He hopes Edu Star will help shrink that time by giving school procurement managers empirical evidence that an application performs as advertised. Since good teachers often have their own innovative ideas, Jones assumes some using Edu Star will pair up with developers, helping them generate new tools that can get to market quickly. Edu Star will be hosted at -- and tap into the users and content of -- <a href="http://powermylearning.com/">PowerMyLearning</a>, a free K-12 online learning platform operated by nonprofit <a href="http://cfy.org/">CFY</a>. To date, PowerMyLearning has received grants totaling $7 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. CFY's Digital Learning Program has grown from serving a few hundred students, plus their teachers and parents, in one school in 1999 to now having served over 50,000 students, plus their teachers and parents, in more than 100 schools nationwide. The goal of Edu Star is to bring rigor to educational applications testing, said Elisabeth Stock, the founder and executive director of CFY, in a phone interview from Jones' office. "We're trying to show causation, using a random controlled trial, as is done in medicine," she said. Like Jones, CFY is committed to using digital technology to helps students, educators and parents improve educational outcomes. But more so, both are eager to quantify the impact of educational software on student outcomes. In this sense, Edu Star mirrors other efforts, such as the <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/data-management/university-data-sharing-project-takes-bi/240148153">Predictive Analytics Reporting (PAR) Framework</a>, which has been aggregating student data from two-year and four-year institutions. Interest in proving the efficacy of different educational practices has been spurred by the Common Core Standards, the U.S. education initiative to standardize curriculum across the states. Not only do the CCS specify math and language arts requirements, they require schools to move towards computer-based assessment. Under the CCS mandates, "even the best teachers in the state will have to make some changes," said Stock, adding that this situation presents a unique opportunity for offerings like Edu Star. Edu Star integration into PowerMyLearning is expected to start early next year. Education IT directors are leveraging technologies and technology models that allow them to implement the right products and services for schools right now. In this <a href="http://reports.informationweek.com/abstract/104/8955/Government/best-practices-top-tech-tools-for-educators.html?k=axxe&cid=article_axxe">Top Tech Tools For Educators</a> report, we'll look at some of the tools schools are using and how they're being put to work in the classroom to engage students and improve learning. (Free registration required.)2013-04-15T12:46:00ZBig Data Profile: D&B's Anthony ScriffignanoAnthony Scriffignano, D&B, Dun & Bradstreet, big datahttp://www.informationweek.com/big-data/news/big-data-analytics/big-data-profile-dbs-anthony-scriffignano/240152873?cid=SBX_iwk_related_mostpopular_Data_Management_education<div class="inlineStoryImage inlineStoryImageRight"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/1363/Anthony_Scriffignano_175a.jpg" alt="Anthony Scriffignano, SVP Worldwide Data & Insight, Dun & Bradstreet" title="Anthony Scriffignano, SVP Worldwide Data & Insight, Dun & Bradstreet" class="img175" /><div class="storyImageCaption">Anthony Scriffignano SVP Worldwide Data & Insight Dun & Bradstreet</div></div>A familiar name in financial and research circles, <a href="http://www.dnb.com">Dun & Bradstreet</a>, now in its 171st year, is one of world's leading sources of commercial information and insights on businesses. D&B's global commercial database, with more than 200 million business records, deals with a number of special data management issues that would resonate with any company playing on a multilingual global stage. "We're on a journey right now to transform our focus, organizationally, from data to insight, to foresight to action," said Anthony Scriffignano, senior VP of worldwide data and insight. His title was newly created as part of a new organization based on global data insight and analytics. "If you note the name of the organization, it's not a 'data' organization," he said. "It's a data, insight and analytics organization. That's a huge shift for us." Scriffignano speaks articulately about this strategic shift, and observes what it means for D&B customers. "A lot of our customers look at us as a place to get data, a report or a score," he said. But the endgame is to take D&B data, merge it with customer data, and so figure out what's going to happen, and help customers take action. "All our initiatives are all around that," he said. InformationWeek spoke to Scriffignano in April via phone. Name and title: Anthony Scriffignano, SVP, Worldwide Data & Insight Tenure at current job: 12 years, current title about 2 years. Career accomplishment of which I'm most proud: [When I joined D&B], I was very adamant that data was multilingual and multinational, and is often transformed quite a bit. So we've introduced multilingual identity resolution. Decision I wish I could do over: Wish I'd pursued my MBA sooner. My most important career influencer: It would have to be 9/11. Something happens that disrupts the whole world and reminds you to think about the bigger world. Current top initiatives: An Asian language semantic disambiguation system, which addresses the fundamental problem of identity resolution of a business entity, regardless of language or writing system. We're also very focused on the analytic components of data and delivering multi-dimensional insight using our data and the customers'. Most disruptive force in my industry: Cloud-based capabilities are extremely disruptive. In an era in which we can conceive of the storage and application space as virtually limitless, what new possibilities might emerge as the costs are driven down? The closest analogy I can think of is when virtual memory made it possible to develop applications that no longer needed to "fit" in the memory space available. That evolution gave rise to large memory models that enabled problems to be solved that couldn't even have been articulated in the past. If storage and applications are virtual, computing can converge on a virtually unrestricted way of problem solving. Biggest misconception about big data: That we're going to solve [big data] problems with technologies to curate more data. It's what I call the "bigger hard drives" phenomenon. Yes, of course we need those things. [But] fundamentally what we need is the ability to step back and say, "Let me assume I had all of the data I could possibly conceive of, and I had it right here, at my keyboard, now what am I going to do?" The reasons big data projects go wrong: There's not enough focus on problem formulation and opportunity formulation. We tend to jump right to, "How are we going to store it? What databases are we going to use? What cloud solution are we going to use? Who are the providers for services, middleware, consulting?" The word "data" comes up a lot. Look, you wouldn't go to the supermarket and buy all the food. You actually plan the meal. Yet we behave that way with data. A promising technology: Semantic disambiguation, the ability to figure out what words mean. Sentiment analysis, as an example. There's a lot of focus now on finding the nuanced meaning [of words], tokenizing that meaning, and putting scores on it so it can be operated on heuristics that try to approach the behavior of people when they read. <center> <div style="margin:0; padding:0 0 10px 10px; width:560px;"> <div style="border:1px solid #000000; padding:0;"> <div style="margin:0; padding:4px; font-size:1.2em; text-align:center; color:#ffffff; background-color:#CC0000;"> Anthony Scriffignano At A Glance </div> <div style="margin:0; padding:8px; text-align:left;"> Education: PhD in Leadership and Change from Antioch University, MBA from Columbia University, BS and MA in computer science from Montclair State University. <div style="margin:10px 0 10px 0; padding 0; border-bottom:solid 1px #666666;"></div> Person I'd most like to have lunch with: Albert Einstein. <div style="margin:10px 0 10px 0; padding 0; border-bottom:solid 1px #666666;"></div> First job: Working out the engineering implications of using giant cranes for a manufacturer that sold and rented large construction cranes. <div style="margin:10px 0 10px 0; padding 0; border-bottom:solid 1px #666666;"></div> If I weren't involved in data analytics: I'd love to work on multicultural collaboration and globalization. </div> </div> </div> </center> Companies want more than they're getting today from big data analytics. But small and big vendors are working to solve the key problems. Also in the new, all-digital <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/gogreen/032513?k=axxe&cid=article_axxt_os">Analytics Wish List</a> issue of InformationWeek: Jay Parikh, the Facebook's infrastructure VP, discusses the company's big data plans. (Free registration required.)2013-04-03T09:06:00ZDropbox In The Classroom: 4 Great UsesDropbox cloud-based service does more than basic storage jobs for educators, with no IT help required.http://www.informationweek.com/education/admin-systems/dropbox-in-the-classroom-4-great-uses/240152140?cid=SBX_iwk_related_mostpopular_Data_Management_education<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> <div class="storyImageTitle"> 12 Open Educational Resources: From Khan to MIT</div> (click image for slideshow) </div>When <a href="http://www.dropbox.com">Dropbox</a> arrived on the scene in the fall of 2009, it was aimed at consumers. But today, some of Dropbox's 100 million-plus users worldwide are students and teachers, who use the Web storage and file synchronization service in a variety of ways. Because it is a browser-accessible Web service, Dropbox needs little in the way of IT intervention, and can be used by students on campus and off. And because it offers clients for Windows, Mac and Linux -- as well as Android, iOS and BlackBerry smartphones -- any student can use Dropbox, regardless of device. Here are four great uses for Dropbox in the classroom. 1. Sharing Stored Files. In the early days, some educators probably turned to Dropbox simply because their school's own networking setup lacked such a feature. Anecdotal reports suggest that schools now are sanctioning the use of cloud services like Dropbox. [ What's the latest and greatest in Dropbox? Read <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/byte/personal-tech/storage-memory/dropbox-200-pretties-up-the-menu/240150665?itc=edit_in_body_cross">Dropbox 2.0.0 Pretties Up the Menu</a>. ] Last year, Dropbox launched a program called <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/spacerace">Space Race</a>, offering people with an .edu email address an extra 3 GB of storage -- on top of the 2 GB of storage all users get. At this writing, it is not clear if Dropbox will offer Space Race again this year. 2. Overcoming Email Limitations. Over-size attachments, such as large PowerPoint files and videos, that never reach their intended recipient because the email program chokes on the file, is a common complaint of email users. Dropbox essentially solves this problem by bypassing email. 3. Turning In Homework. In its simplest application, Dropbox can be as used a common filing cabinet through which teachers can provide documents, such as homework assignments and handouts, and media files for the entire class. But another popular use goes in the opposite direction, from students to teachers. Using Dropbox as a homework drop has the added benefit of providing, by default, a time-stamp for these submissions. Of course, students can share Dropbox folders with each other too, and so collaborate on joint assignments. Happily, the free version of Dropbox saves a history of all deleted and earlier versions of files for 30 days. Paid Dropbox Pro accounts have a feature called Packrat that saves file history indefinitely. 4. Easy Saves From Popular Apps. Quite a number of popular productivity and educational applications now feature a Dropbox "sync" option. <a href= "https://www.evernote.com/">Evernote</a>, for example, has a "save to Dropbox" option. Other popular education apps with Dropbox integration include: <a href="http://www.gingerlabs.com/cont/notability.php">Notability</a>, <a href= "http://www.ithoughts.co.uk">iThoughtsHD</a> and <a href="http://www.majorspot.com/">Ghostwriter Notes</a>. A free Dropbox account includes 2 GB of space. Users can earn more free space in a <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/help/15/en">variety of ways</a>. Also, more storage can be purchased via monthly or annual plans. For institutions needing even more storage, there is <a href= "https://www.dropbox.com/teams">Dropbox for Teams</a>, which adds a number of advanced account security and management options, as well as unlimited storage. Pricing for Dropbox for Teams starts at $795 for up to 250 licenses. InformationWeek's March Must Reads is a compendium of our best recent coverage on collaboration. This <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/gogreen/031313mr?k=axxe&cid=article_axxt_os">Must Reads: Collaboration</a> issue looks at how collaboration tools solve real problems, the potential for unified communications to expand collaboration outside your company, where the cloud fits in and more. (Free with registration.) 2013-04-02T12:48:00ZGoogle Glass Testing Goes To High SchoolMeet an Indiana high school teacher who will take part in the Google Glasses beta test. One subject he teaches: innovation.http://www.informationweek.com/development/mobility/google-glass-testing-goes-to-high-school/240152117?cid=SBX_iwk_related_mostpopular_Data_Management_education<div class="inlineStoryImage inlineStoryImageRight"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/hardware/desktop/google-chromebook-pixel-visual-tour/240149087"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/953/one_tn.JPG" alt="Google Chromebook Pixel: Visual Tour" title="Google Chromebook Pixel: Visual Tour" class="img175" /></a> <div class="storyImageTitle">Google Chromebook Pixel: Visual Tour</div>(click image for larger view and for slideshow)</div> Forget apples. Central Indiana high school teacher Don Wettrick is getting something much better: a pair of Google Glasses. The Franklin High School teacher will join about 8,000 others who have been selected by Google to try out its interactive, Internet-connected spectacles. The first commercial version of Google Glass, dubbed Glass Explorer Edition, won't arrive until next January, according to Google. "I found out Saturday morning. They sent an email and a tweet," Wettrick told InformationWeek Education in a phone interview. Although happy about being selected, Wettrick said he wasn't all that surprised, because his class was, he said, a "perfect match." "I hate to sound arrogant, but a lot of applicants wanted to film a wedding or a basketball game," he said. "We represent Google's spirit." [ Will Google Glasses enhance or interfere with reality? Read <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/internet/google/google-glass-vision-for-future-unclear/240145387?itc=edit_in_body_cross">Google Glass: Vision For Future Unclear</a>. ] Wettrick was referring to his Innovations class. Now in its first year, it allows the 17- and 18-year-olds to collaborate on projects of their own choosing. In this sense, the class of 20 mirrors Google's own policy of letting employees devote 20% of their time to passion-driven projects. The students find experts through their local networks or, increasingly, via Twitter. Projects are documented through weekly video blogs, and all the work is substantiated against Common Core State Standards, Wettrick said. To date, the students have worked with a tech startup in Seattle and an app developer in Beijing. A group of three students built a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) and will serve as teachers when it launches in three weeks. In fact, it was Wettrick's self-starter students who encouraged their teacher to apply for the Google Glass beta program. Wettrick's entry, created and submitted on the day submissions were due on Feb. 27, includes a 15-second video. It was a natural choice for Wettrick, a broadcast teacher. "If I'm selected, it won't just be for me, It'll be for my entire class," Wettrick said in the video. "I run a publicly educated class called Innovations, and in this class we communicate and collaborate with other experts. This would allow us the opportunity to work with Google and then communicate our results to the world." How will Wettrick's class use Google Glass? "We have an interest in video," he said. "But I think the students see this as an opportunity to be a game-changer in education. It's less about video and more about collaborating with other schools, teachers and students." Last month, at the SXSW conference in Austin, Texas, Google provided more <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/platform/google-project-glass-api-details-emerge/240150573">detail on Google Glass</a>, including how developers will write applications for the interactive eyewear. As for Wettrick and the other Glasses beta testers, the honor of being chosen does not come free. Not only do they have to travel to California, they will have to pay $1,500 for the glasses, when they become available to beta testers in the next several weeks. InformationWeek is conducting a survey on IT spending priorities. Take the <a href="http://informationweek.2013ITspending.sgizmo.com/s3/?iwid=pl">InformationWeek 2013 IT Spending Priorities Survey</a> today. Survey ends April 5.2013-03-21T14:33:00ZTableau Data Visualization Tool Gets Major RevampTableau updates data visualization tool to add support for mobile editing and APIs for a variety of cloud-based data services.http://www.informationweek.com/software/business-intelligence/tableau-data-visualization-tool-gets-maj/240151417?cid=SBX_iwk_related_mostpopular_Data_Management_education<div class="inlineStoryImage inlineStoryImageRight"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/big-data/news/big-data-analytics/20-top-masters-degrees-for-big-data-analytics-professionals/240145673"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/934/IntroImage_tn.jpg" alt=" Big Data Analytics Masters Degrees: 20 Top Programs" title=" Big Data Analytics Masters Degrees: 20 Top Programs" class="img175" /></a> <div class="storyImageTitle"> Big Data Analytics Masters Degrees: 20 Top Programs</div> (click image for larger view and for slideshow)</div><a href= "http://www.tableausoftware.com">Tableau Software</a> Thursday released Tableau 8, a major update of its data visualization tool. Topping the list of 90 new features is support for mobile, drag-and-drop authoring, via a browser -- either using HTML5 or older Dynamic HTML browser technology. Formerly, the data visualization company's mobile offering supported consumption but not editing. "We're making analytics fast and easy, beautiful and useful," Chris Stolte, chief development officer and Tableau Software co-founder, said in a statement. Clearly, Tableau hopes the ability to modify queries and answer questions on the go will attract more users. The company claims about 10,000 installations of its desktop and server products worldwide. [ Visualization can be key to understanding your data. Read <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/software/business-intelligence/how-to-choose-advanced-data-visualizatio/240004277?itc=edit_in_body_cross">How To Choose 'Advanced' Data Visualization Tools</a>. ] There might emerge a different class of user, Francois Ajenstat, Tableau's director of product management, told InformationWeek in a phone interview. "[They] aren't going to build deep analytics but they can filter, add dimensions, change visualization and see sophisticated calculations," he said. "I buy the argument it'll expand their base," Cindi Howson, founder of <ahref = "www.biscorecard.com">BI Scorecard</a>, told InformationWeek. She added that by offering a data visualization tool requiring minimal IT setup, Tableau is challenging traditional vendors of ad-hoc query tools, such as Business Objects and Cognosis, which also come in mobile versions. Still, Howson said it wasn't entirely clear yet how customers would embrace these on-the-go systems. In a separate announcement also aimed at adding customers, Tableau earlier this month said students could use its $2,000 desktop tool <a href= "http://www.informationweek.com/education/data-management/tableau-makes-visual-analytics-tool-free/240150394">for free</a> for one year. Another important update in 8.0 are a number of new "connectors" for cloud-based data sources. These include connectors for Google Analytics, Google BigQuery and Salesforce.com. The Salesforce connector might be especially important to customers, Howson said, given an issue with Saleforce.com's own reporting tool. "Right now, reports in Saleforce are pretty inflexible," she said. "Salespeople who aren't sophisticated BI users will now be able to look their data in a new way." She added Tableau is among a relative few BI vendors with native connectors to Salesforce. Tableau also announced both a new Javascript API and data extract API, which customers can use to integrate Tableau into their own enterprise applications. For instance, using the API, a customer could pull a Tableau visualization into a website. Tableau said it had also updated its free application, Tableau Public, with all of the new analytical and visualization features of the latest release. Tableau, which premiered 8.0 at its customer conference last fall, said about 4,000 of its customers participated in the beta program for the new release. 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.) 2013-03-19T09:06:00ZBig Data Profile: FICO's Andrew JenningsFICO's chief analytics officer discusses mobility, machine learning, consumer empowerment and why big data is no savior.http://www.informationweek.com/big-data/news/big-data-analytics/big-data-profile-ficos-andrew-jennings/240151038?cid=SBX_iwk_related_mostpopular_Data_Management_education<div class="inlineStoryImage inlineStoryImageRight"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/1360/Andrew_Jennings.jpg" alt="Andrew Jennings, Senior VP, Chief Analytics Officer, FICO" title="Andrew Jennings, Senior VP, Chief Analytics Officer, FICO" class="img175" /><div class="storyImageCaption">Andrew Jennings Senior VP, Chief Analytics Officer, FICO</div> </div> Best known for its credit scoring and fraud-detection services, <a href="http://www.fico.com">FICO</a> has been working with and interpreting huge volumes of data for much of its 57 years. More recently, the company has broadened beyond financial services, offering its big data decision-support skills to brands like Samsung, Capital One, Best Buy, Conagra and the National Football League. Helping lead this charge is Andrew Jennings, who took on the new title of senior VP, chief analytics officer, 18 months ago. Jennings helps FICO bring predictive analytics to thousands of companies in more than 90 countries through a variety of platforms, including applications, tools, wireless and cloud. "What we've learned is ... machine learning tends to be naive," Jennings told InformationWeek. "Understand the domain, understand the data and then understand where and how this thing you've created is going to be used. If you don't understand those three things, it doesn't matter what algorithm you use, it will fail." InformationWeek spoke to Jennings in March via phone. Name: Andrew Jennings, senior VP, chief analytics officer, for FICO. Tenure at job: I've been at FICO since November 1, 1994. The chief analytics officer job, about 18 months. Before that, I was head of research for three years. [The new title of chief analytics officer] was a recognition of the growing importance of analytics in the business world. FICO has been in analytics since day it was founded, over 50 years ago. But we never actually had a chief analytics officer. Now that analytics is at the forefront of the way that businesses can and should be operated, it made sense to have somebody designated as the chief analytics officer to be responsible for both a large number of the analytic products but also, more importantly, research and strategic direction. Career accomplishment of which I'm most proud: Given my background of being a risk manager, writing checks and having to meet sales numbers, I've always been very focused on doing the research side of the job [that's] focused on business problems. I like to say, "It's not the FICO University. It's FICO R&D, and we are a for-profit company." Decision I wish I could do over: Taken more time after graduating with my PhD and going to work. My most important career influencer: Not someone I worked with. I'm an economist by training ... the person who influenced me most, and his ability to think and describe still does, is John Maynard Keynes. What I like about Keynes is while he was mathematically brilliant, his books are extremely well-written and they're not full of formulas. Current top initiatives: -- Mobility. That's a huge area of growth, and it's a focus for FICO as a company. It's a channel which establishes a conversation with a consumer. Since at the heart of what we do as a company is forecasting and attempting to predict consumer behavior -- will you pay your bills or not? is that really you at the end of that credit card transaction? -- the mobility communication takes that to a whole other level. Using messages and interpreting responses to more intelligently communicate to both parties' advantage, analytically, is quite a complicated challenge. The company as a whole has an initiative around that because it impacts the work we do in fraud, collections, marketing and so on. -- Harnessing the power of big data algorithms and machine learning [but] translating that into an analytic form that is transparent, and from which you can calculate what we call "reason codes." [These codes] are explanations for consumers, management and regulators why certain decisions have been taken. Most disruptive force in my industry: Consumer empowerment. I don't really have a prediction for how it'll play out, but the ability of consumers to take more control over the data they generate. Biggest misconception about big data: That it's a savior, that it'll solve all problems. There's a lot of debate about causation and correlation. They are not the same thing. There are circumstances where correlation is sufficient and there are circumstances where it is absolutely not sufficient. The reasons big data projects go wrong: Just because it's big data doesn't mean there's no ROI or business-case required. You need something concrete you are trying to solve, that has a meaningful impact on the business. A promising technology: The ability to understand and adapt models in close to real time. We call it "self-calibration." [This is valuable] especially in situations where I don't have time to collect data or in situations where I don't have a lot of historical information. For example, we're very big in fraud detection. We're working with a couple of banks that have historically poor data, [and] we've been able to take that kind of technology and create models that begin to learn and adapt. <center> <div style="margin:0; padding:0 0 10px 10px; width:560px;"> <div style="border:1px solid #000000; padding:0;"> <div style="margin:0; padding:4px; font-size:1.2em; text-align:center; color:#ffffff; background-color:#CC0000;"> Andrew Jennings At A Glance </div> <div style="margin:0; padding:8px; text-align:left;"> Education: BA and PhD in economics, and an MSc in agricultural economics from the University of Wales. <div style="margin:10px 0 10px 0; padding 0; border-bottom:solid 1px #666666;"></div> Person I'd most like to have lunch with: Admiral Lord Nelson. <div style="margin:10px 0 10px 0; padding 0; border-bottom:solid 1px #666666;"></div> First job: Selling ice cream in Weymouth, on the south coast of England. <div style="margin:10px 0 10px 0; padding 0; border-bottom:solid 1px #666666;"></div> If I weren't involved in IT: I'd start a landscape maintenance company. </div> </div> </div> </center> Attend Interop Las Vegas May 6-10 and learn the emerging trends in information risk management and security. Use Priority Code MPIWK by March 22 to save an additional $200 off the early bird discount on All Access and Conference Passes. Join us in Las Vegas for access to 125+ workshops and conference classes, 300+ exhibiting companies, and the latest technology. <a href="http://www.interop.com/lasvegas/?_mc=MP_BTMEDIWKAXE">Register today</a>! 2013-03-18T14:20:00ZEducators Share Tech Struggles: From Tablets To TwitterEducators from around the world shared lessons on how to best utilize mobile, social and other technologies at annual ASCD education conference.http://www.informationweek.com/education/instructional-it/educators-share-tech-struggles-from-tabl/240151020?cid=SBX_iwk_related_mostpopular_Data_Management_education <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> <div class="storyImageTitle"> 12 Open Educational Resources: From Khan to MIT</div> (click image for slideshow) </div>  Should teachers use social media? What are the best practices for flipped classrooms? How are educators in other countries using computers and networks? These were but a few of the 400 session topics at the 68th annual meeting of the <a href="http://www.ascd.org/">ASCD</a> this past weekend in Chicago, where technology's impact on teachers, students and institutions dominated much of the discussion. This year, the nonprofit's three-day conference and exhibit drew more than 10,000 educators and administrators, as well as hundreds of vendors. But technology isn't a panacea, said ASCD speakers and attendees. "We must think through how to help students use technology as a tool rather than having that tool rule our lives," Freeman A. Hrabowski III, president of the University of Maryland, declared during his keynote in the first general session Saturday. Rather than focus on tech skills per se, Hrabowski said, "the key skill every student should have coming to college, other than reading, is the ability to ask good questions." [ Will distributing textbooks in an open source model help schools invest limited funding where it's most needed? See <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/instructional-it/open-education-take-back-the-curriculum/240150758?itc=edit_in_body_cross">Open Education: Take Back The Curriculum</a>. ] At New Trier High School in Winnetka, Ill., which gave iPads this school year to 600 freshmen and 25 teachers, the issue is professional development, not hardware or software. But finding time to train teachers on best uses can itself be the problem. "The obstacle, in a nutshell, is finding time to develop the teachers in the use of the technology," Linda Knier, director of academic services, told InformationWeek. Indeed, school administrators elsewhere in the world struggle with many of the same problems. They worry how best to deploy technology into their schools, and then make sure it is being used effectively by teachers and students alike. "For the first five years, we worried about infrastructure," said Siew Hoong Wong, deputy director-general of education in Singapore, which runs a tightly organized, centrally managed national education system. But that $2 billion project, completed in 2000, was followed by a bigger one: getting teachers to use the technology for teaching and learning, integrating it with pedagogy, learning and the needs of future employers. Those needs, he said, were about "teamwork, communications [and] solving problems together." Wong was a panelist in a session Saturday titled "<a href="http://ascd13.mapyourshow.com/5_0/sessions/sessiondetails.cfm?ScheduledSessionID=18A8CF">The Future of Education in a Globally Connected World</a>," which attracted a standing-room-only audience of more than 200 people. Panelist Pasi Sahlberg, director general of the Center for International Mobility and Cooperation, admitted the role of technology in his home country of Finland was a weakness, both because of a somewhat "outdated infrastructure" and the belief among some teachers that "young people may already be spending too much with technology at home." "If I had to name one area for concern and improvement," Sahlberg said, "it certainly is the use of technology." Last year, Thailand bought 800,000 tablets and gave one to every first grader, said panelist Benjalug Namfa, deputy secretary general, Office of Basic Education Commission, Ministry of Education, Thailand. As Thailand's 40,000 schools and 400,000 basic education teachers now try to sort out the best uses for tablets, the devices are already having an unintended consequence in the rural areas. Because teachers can record themselves reading text, students' parents are also learning basic literary skills, she said.Teachers and administrators were also eager to share their successes and frustrations using technology in the classroom. At Dodgeland Elementary School in Juneau, Wis., computers available to students include a cart of iPads, Lenovo laptops and netbooks. "These are in addition to our computer lab of desktop computers," elementary principal Jessica Johnson explained in an email. "But it is looking like the iPads are the favorite tool to use," she added. Johnson noted that when Web-based tools like Google Docs are used, students often continue using them at home, whether they are required to or not. "For example, students will continue blogging at night or ask parents to download an app to their iPhone or home tablet," she said. In addition, every Dodgeland Elementary classroom is equipped with a <a href="http://smarttech.com/">SmartBoard</a>, which teachers use throughout the day for a variety of purposes, including interactive presentations, recording student work and playing media such as YouTube clips and images. Another school using interactive boards is Istrouma High School in Baton Rouge, La., which installed <a href="http://www.prometheanworld.com">Promethean</a> boards about five years ago, said school principal and Istrouma graduate Robert Webb Jr. But when Webb noticed teachers were using the interactive whiteboards solely for presentation, he realized "we needed to give the teachers some professional development." Things changed quickly after that, with teachers handing off control of the boards to students, he said. ASDC attendee Melissa Edwards, a district instructional technologist with the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools in North Carolina, advocates using Twitter for finding quality online resources. "[Twitter] brings those of us in education together and out of our little silos," she told InformationWeek in a phone call. Edwards said teachers and students in her district also actively use <a href="http://www.edmodo.com">Edmodo</a>, a secure, closed social media site that is sometimes described as a "Facebook for schools." North Carolina and other locations have policies that forbid teachers from connecting with students on Facebook. At least one school in North Carolina is trying to teach its students best practices for Facebook and other social media sites. The school prepared a guidebook for how to use social media effectively, and now is developing lesson plans and activities to support these guidelines, Edwards said. Regarding obstacles, Edwards said they mostly boil down to a "fear of the unknown" and hesitancy by teachers to embrace new ideas before totally understanding them. "But as a teacher, you have to let go of some of the control, let learning happen and not necessarily plan all the steps," she said. The nonprofit ASCD claims 140,000 members and is comprised of superintendents, principals, teachers and professors in 134 countries. ASCD offers multiple ways for educators and others to connect: A 50,000-strong blog platform called <a href="http://edge.ascd.org">ASCD EDge</a>; <a href="https://twitter.com/ASCD">Twitter</a>; <a href="http://www.Facebook.com/ASCD.org">Facebook</a>; <a href="http://www.pinterest.com/officialascd">Pinterest</a>; and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/ascdwholechild">YouTube</a>. 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.) 2013-03-08T14:11:00ZTableau Makes Visual Analytics Tool Free For StudentsStudents enrolled at accredited schools worldwide can use the data-visualization desktop client that usually sells for $2,000.http://www.informationweek.com/education/data-management/tableau-makes-visual-analytics-tool-free/240150394?cid=SBX_iwk_related_mostpopular_Data_Management_education <div class="inlineStoryImage inlineStoryImageRight"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/big-data/news/big-data-analytics/20-top-masters-degrees-for-big-data-analytics-professionals/240145673"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/934/IntroImage_tn.jpg" alt=" Big Data Analytics Masters Degrees: 20 Top Programs" title=" Big Data Analytics Masters Degrees: 20 Top Programs" class="img175" /></a> <div class="storyImageTitle"> Big Data Analytics Masters Degrees: 20 Top Programs</div> (click image for larger view and for slideshow)</div>  Eager to see more students learn data visualization, Tableau Software on Tuesday announced it would provide its desktop tool to students under a free, one-year license. Tableau for Students is available for accredited colleges and universities, as well as K-12 institutions. <a href ="http://www.tableausoftware.com/freeforstudents">Students can apply online</a> to receive a product code for Tableau Desktop Professional. Tableau had already offered a student discount for its desktop client, which retails for $2,000 per user. But the free license offer points to the company's belief that data analytics should be understood by many more people -- and not just computer science and statistics majors. This could also help address the much-reported <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/big-data/commentary/big-data-analytics/data-scientist-shortage-split-role-in-half/240144215">shortage of big data workers</a>, Francois Ajenstat, Tableau's director of product management told InformationWeek in a phone call. [ Can elementary school students handle big data? See <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/big-data/commentary/big-data-analytics/big-data-education-when-should-it-start/240012780?itc=edit_in_body_cross">Big Data Education: When Should It Start?</a> ] Some 10,000 organizations worldwide already use software from Tableau, which also makes an enterprise server. Commercial customers include Barclays, Deloitte, Ferrari, Intel, Johns Hopkins Hospital, SpaceX and Unilever. In early 2010, the company released Tableau Public, a Web-based, free-to-use analytics tool. Tableau Public is limited to 100,000 rows of data and can be saved only to Tableau Public servers. "Think of it as a YouTube for data," Ajenstat said about Tableau Public, which he said had been viewed some 100 million times since its launch. The hope, Ajenstat said, is that teachers and students using the desktop client will post their work to Tableau Public, spurring comments and development, especially for data-visualization applications outside computer science and statistics. (A full list of academic institutions using Tableau today can be found <a href="http://www.tableausoftware.com/academic">here</a>.) Training for Tableau for Students will be handled by an existing series of free-to-watch videos and tutorials on the company's website. After the year license for Tableau for Students expires, students can apply for a year extension, Ajenstat said. Attend Interop Las Vegas May 6-10 and learn the emerging trends in information risk management and security. Use Priority Code MPIWK by March 22 to save an additional $200 off the early bird discount on All Access and Conference Passes. Join us in Las Vegas for access to 125+ workshops and conference classes, 300+ exhibiting companies, and the latest technology. <a href="http://www.interop.com/lasvegas/?_mc=MP_BTMEDIWKAXE">Register today</a>! 2013-03-08T10:24:00ZCarfax Selects MongoDB To Drive 11 Billion RecordsVehicle-history service switches to open source, NoSQL database with an eye to exploring its massive data set in new ways.http://www.informationweek.com/software/business-intelligence/carfax-selects-mongodb-to-drive-11-billi/240150331?cid=SBX_iwk_related_mostpopular_Data_Management_educationThere's a 30-year-old relational database up on blocks at Carfax's Columbia, Mo., office. On Tuesday, the Web service, which supplies used-vehicle history reports to millions of consumers and 30,000 dealerships every year, announced plans to retire its VMS-based RDBMS and switch to MongoDB, the open source, document-oriented database developed and supported by <a href="http://www.10gen.com">10gen</a>. "VMS has been a very valuable OS for us," Carfax CTO Joedy Lenz told InformationWeek in a phone interview. "Unfortunately, with our data volumes, it became fairly expensive to operate and maintain." The production VMS system will be retired within 12 months, he said. Carfax's Vehicle History Report, created in 1986, is the largest vehicle-history database ever assembled, with nearly 11.5 billion records and growing at 1 billion new records a year. It comprises information from more than 75,000 sources, such as U.S. and Canadian motor vehicle departments, service and repair facilities, insurance companies, and police departments. [ For more on database vendors, see InformationWeek's <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/big-data/news/big-data-analytics/big-data-101-new-vendorneutral-guide/240145502?itc=edit_in_body_cross">Big Data 101: New Vendor-Neutral Guide</a>. ] When it takes over the driver's seat, the MongoDB will run across 50 servers. Lenz declined to name the hardware vendor. But 10gen CEO Max Schireson told InformationWeek on the phone: "Using inexpensive commodity servers means they can scale out," Schireson said. While an open source product, 10gen claims some 500 customers worldwide who pay for its consulting and services. This customer list includes marquee Web brands like eBay and Craigslist, but traditional businesses as well, including three of the top 10 global banks and telcos, among others. Another advantage of using MongoDB is its built-in redundancy. If a node fails, work is picked up by one or more secondary nodes. In fact, Carfax already uses a seven-node VMS system. However, Lenz shared that in early performance testing, MongoDB ran transactions up to four times faster. But speed and cost savings weren't the only reasons Carfax decided to migrate to a NoSQL architecture. Unlike their relational predecessors, NoSQL databases like MongoDB, Cassandra and Riak use a flexible, schema-less design that is especially well suited for massive amounts of variable data. "Mongo does [transaction processing] with the added benefit of analytics and data mining," he said. "The sky's the limit ... we're just scratching surface." As NoSQL products like MongoDB win new adherents, relational database vendors haven't been sitting still. Just last month, Oracle announced</a> a major upgrade, <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/software/information-management/oracle-mysql-upgrade-challenges-nosql-on/240147829">MySQL 5.6</a>, which includes features for high-scale deployments. For example, Oracle announced it would support direct access to data through the <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/software/information-management/oracle-mysql-gets-nosql-savvy-upgrade/232601007">Memcached API</a>, which is up to nine times faster than accessing data through SQL parsing.2013-03-06T09:06:00ZE-Textbook Pilot Puts College Books In CloudNationwide e-textbook pilot returns for second year to test how post-secondary institutions might switch from printed learning materials to digital.http://www.informationweek.com/education/instructional-it/e-textbook-pilot-puts-college-books-in-c/240150097?cid=SBX_iwk_related_mostpopular_Data_Management_education<div class="inlineStoryImage inlineStoryImageRight"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/leadership/educational-technology-across-the-ages/240149241"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/954/1_tn.jpg" alt="Tablets Rock On: Education Tech Through The Ages" title="Tablets Rock On: Education Tech Through The Ages" class="img175" /></a> <div class="storyImageTitle">Tablets Rock On: Education Tech Through The Ages</div>(click image for larger view and for slideshow)</div>How digital textbooks and other educational materials will be distributed, managed and paid for in the future has become a hot topic among academic institutions, textbook publishers and ed tech vendors. On Monday, one of the largest e-textbook pilot programs to date was announced by a number of key industry players. In total, the project will involve 50 publishers and nearly 30,000 textbooks. Although the number of participating colleges and universities has yet to be determined -- the schools have until the end of April to sign up for the pilot -- last year's test attracted more than two dozen institutions. Spearheading the effort are two nonprofits, educational association <a href="http://www.educause.edu">Educause</a> and educational consortium <a href="http://www.internet2.edu">Internet2</a>. Educause, a membership organization for those who "lead, manage, and use information technology to shape strategic IT decisions at every level within higher education," claims a membership of more than 1,800 colleges and universities and 300 businesses serving education. Internet2 claims participation of 220 U.S. universities, 60 corporations, 70 government agencies and 38 regional and state education networks, among others. [ Libraries without stacks? Read <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/online-learning/a-digital-public-library-without-paper-b/240146262?itc=edit_in_body_cross">A Digital Public Library Without Paper Books</a>. ] The pilot, a follow-up to one a year ago, starts in the fall and includes participation by three e-textbook and digital course materials companies, <a href="http://www.coursesmart.com">CourseSmart</a>, <a href="http://www.courseload.com">Courseload</a> and McGraw-Hill Education. The pilot allows institutions to select from the three providers, which collectively offer 50 publishing partners. "While student and faculty experience in the pilots will inform strategic choices, the most central question is whether institutions see benefit in an institutional approach to digital course materials," Courseload CEO Mickey Levitan said in an email interview with InformationWeek. Shelton Waggener, Internet2 senior VP, said that this year's pilot would focus more on the needs of institutions and students than last year's. "The pilot intends to address ... how designs that previously focused on the publishing author or faculty member add institutional and student needs into the e-content design," he said in an email interview. "Also, we want to know how cloud-based services interoperate with campus systems and the unique device needs of students." According to Internet2's <a href="https://blogs.internet2.edu/archives/1317">news release</a>, this year's pilot, like its predecessor, has two main goals: -- To continue to advance the higher education community's understanding of online materials and what is necessary for them to attain and surpass the effectiveness, accessibility, economy, and other relevant outcomes associated with traditional textbooks. -- To explore innovative business models, terms, and conditions that make access to digital educational materials more flexible, economical, efficient, and simple for institutions and publishers alike. Brad Wheeler, professor and the CIO at Indiana University, characterized Internet2's eText pilot program as "an essential way for institutions to try out new digital textbook options as they work through their campus policies and strategies. Most importantly, it is enabling institutions to learn together and to collectively shape the path to digital." Indiana University was an early innovator in the e-textbook space. Its own <ahref="http://www.informationweek.com/education/instructional-it/indiana-university-models-e-textbook-suc/240149826">project</a>, now in its third full semester, has some 10,000 IU students involved, and is being tried by two dozen institutions. Institutions participating in the research project will have a choice between three packages, which allow a select number of students access to any e-textbook within the package's catalog. But as Internet2 says on its website, the flat fee, which covers the e-reader platform, publisher-provided content and integration with the LMS, "is not meant to be a model that would be expanded on a larger scale." In other words, this fee structure applies only to the pilot. Courseload's Levitan noted the advantages of a common platform for distributing digital course materials. "On the economic side, an institutional approach creates the conditions for lowest possible cost. On the educational side, outcomes can be improved through tools that support better collaboration, deeper engagement and richer analytics while ensuring that all students have access to all required content from day one," he said. Colleges and universities interested in participating in the pilot must complete an <ahref= "http://tinyurl.com/fall-2013-pilot-application">application</a> by March 8 and submit their signed contract by April 30, 2013. Attend Interop Las Vegas, May 6-10, and attend the most thorough training on Apple Deployment at the NEW Mac & iOS IT Conference. Use Priority Code DIPR03 by March 9 to save up to $500 off the price of Conference Passes. Join us in Las Vegas for access to 125+ workshops and conference classes, 350+ exhibiting companies, and the latest technology. Register for <a href="http://www.interop.com/lasvegas/?CID=MP_ILV_IWK_Article_TL&_mc=DIPR03">Interop</a> today!2013-03-04T09:06:00ZIndiana University Models E-Textbook SuccessIU's e-text program, with nearly 10,000 students using digital textbooks, offers lessons learned for other universities.http://www.informationweek.com/education/instructional-it/indiana-university-models-e-textbook-suc/240149826?cid=SBX_iwk_related_mostpopular_Data_Management_education <div class="inlineStoryImage inlineStoryImageRight"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/leadership/educational-technology-across-the-ages/240149241"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/954/1_tn.jpg" alt="Tablets Rock On: Education Tech Through The Ages" title="Tablets Rock On: Education Tech Through The Ages" class="img175" /></a> <div class="storyImageTitle">Tablets Rock On: Education Tech Through The Ages</div>(click image for larger view and for slideshow)</div>  In 2009, during a visit to the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, a light went off in Brad Wheeler's head. "I said, 'Oh my, we're going be invaded by consumer-grade [tablet computers],'" the Indiana University business professor and CIO told InformationWeek in a phone call. While Wheeler's intuition about the explosion of tablets -- 15 months before Apple released its first iPad -- was spot on, his real concern was how the university would manage content on these devices. Just as important, he was concerned about the prices students would have to pay for this digital content. At the time, textbook publishers were keen to control their lucrative textbook price margins, as it was clear education was going digital, Wheeler said. Publishers saw digital as a way of dealing with the used-textbook aftermarket, which had begun to cut into their business, he added. An ancillary problem was technological, as every publisher at the time dreamed of using its own platform for its own digital titles. "This would have been a support and [digital rights management] nightmare," Wheeler said. "We wanted to get ahead of that," Wheeler explained, adding he wanted to use a wholesale, site-license model, which IU had successfully done with software companies years before. "We cut one of the first big [license deals] with Microsoft in 1998, and cut the first deal with Adobe in 2008," Wheeler said. Under the Adobe license, for instance, IU students have access to virtually every Adobe software product. [ Microsoft is a pushing software subscriptions, rather than licensing. Learn about <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/software/productivity-applications/office-365-for-business-worth-the-upgrad/240149705?itc=edit_in_body_cross">Office 365 For Business: Worth The Upgrade?</a> ] Wary at first, publishers have been receptive to IU's overtures, said Wheeler, who has inked deals with four of the five largest textbook publishers to date, and is close on the fifth. The e-texts deals also include online simulations, tutors and labs. Handling the licensing deals for more than two dozen other institutions piloting e-text is <a href="http://www.internet2.edu">Internet2</a>, the nonprofit educational consortium. Internet2 claims participation of 220 U.S. universities, 60 corporations, 70 government agencies and 38 regional and state education networks, among others. Now in its third full semester, some 10,000 IU students are part of its <a href="http://etexts.iu.edu">e-text</a> initiative, which has doubled to 250 course sections in just the past year. From a cost standpoint, IU believes it has saved $200,000 in total over next-best options. At IU, e-texts are managed by <a href="http://www.courseload.com">Courseload</a>, an online learning and collaboration platform. Among other things, Courseload lets teachers add any sort of media or annotate existing textbooks, and push this onto students' devices. Similarly, students can highlight or add notes to their digital files, as well as collaborate with others -- for example, members of a study group. Synchronization is handled over the network. Along with ongoing, searchable access to all of their e-texts while they are enrolled at IU, students using e-text can print for no additional cost or get full printed versions for a small fee. The ability to print a digital textbook on demand is of interest to assistant microbiology professor Tanya Noel at the University of Windsor in Ontario, Canada. "We've asked, and very few of my students have expressed interest in electronic [textbooks]," Noel told InformationWeek in a phone call. "But if we had access to printing and reduced costs, students would be much more willing to use it, and I'd be much more willing to endorse it as a professor," she said. Asked what comes next for IU, Wheeler was quick to answer. "We've improved the economics [of textbooks] ... Now, how do we improve the efficacy of teaching?" He said this next phase will involve analysis of how students use digital content, and how this relates to educational outcomes.2013-02-27T09:06:00ZWho Owns Student Data?As data collection and data analysis in education grow, so do worries about student and teacher privacy. Is there enough protection?http://www.informationweek.com/education/policy/who-owns-student-data/240149473?cid=SBX_iwk_related_mostpopular_Data_Management_education <div class="inlineStoryImage inlineStoryImageRight"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/big-data/slideshows/big-data-analytics/slideshow-unexpected-big-data-uses-use/240144221"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/925/image1_tn.jpg" alt="Big Data's Surprising Uses: From Lady Gaga To CIA" title="Big Data's Surprising Uses: From Lady Gaga To CIA" class="img175" /></a> <div class="storyImageTitle">Big Data's Surprising Uses: From Lady Gaga To CIA</div> (click image for larger view and for slideshow)</div> Will computer-mediated instruction lead to an invasion of student and teacher privacy? Some think so. Computers now make it possible to collect not only every test response of every student but, increasingly, each student's interaction with class material, teachers and even other students. Although some see real promise in analyzing these vast amounts of data to improve teaching and educational <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/big-data/news/big-data-analytics/can-big-data-analytics-boost-graduation-rates/240147807">outcomes</a>, others see an invasion of privacy. Organizations ranging from the ACLU to state PTAs have entered the fray, worried that a number of data-sharing initiatives violate student and teacher privacy. Other critics simply worry about the security of so much aggregated data. Magnifying these concerns is the fact that a key piece of federal legislation about student data, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (<a href="http://www2.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/ferpa/index.html">FERPA</a>), was created before the era of email or cloud computing. [ What should tech companies do to protect students? Read <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/policy/big-datas-opportunities-responsibilities/240149065?itc=edit_in_body_cross">Big Data's Opportunities, Responsibilities For Education.</a> ] FERPA explicitly prohibits disclosure of information contained in student education records absent consent from parents, or from students age 18 or older, if they are enrolled in any post-secondary educational institution. It also requires schools to impose restrictions on vendors who have access to such records; for example, prohibiting vendor data mining of records for advertising purposes. Earlier this month, education writer <a href="http://hackeducation.com/2013/02/10/inbloom-student-data-privacy-security-transparency/">Audrey Watters</a> blogged about a Gates Foundation-funded initiative called <a href="http://www.inbloom.org">inBloom</a> -- formerly The Shared Learning Collaborative -- which seeks to address interoperability issues between the various databases and software used in education. inBloom is now being piloted in nine states. "While 'personalized learning' may be the stated goal of inBloom, it's easy to see that this sort of data infrastructure can (and will) also be used to enable surveillance -- monitoring and assessing students and in turn teachers and in turn schools," Watters wrote. Data-gathering initiatives clearly are sensitive to these issues. Take the <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/data-management/university-data-sharing-project-takes-bi/240148153">Predictive Analytics Reporting (PAR) Framework</a>, a nearly two-year-old project that has been aggregating student data from two-year and four-year institutions. In nearly every public statement, PAR officials stress that their work anonymizes both student and institution. The PAR database now includes more than 1.7 million student records and 8.1 million course-level records. Privacy is a significant concern, Ellen Wagner, executive director of WICHE Cooperative for Educational Technologies (WCET), told InformationWeek in a phone interview. WCET launched PAR in May 2011. "We're working carefully with our institutional partners," said Wagner, on issues of data governance, including "who can touch the data." Vendors of educational platforms must wade through these data privacy debates too. "Up until recently, schools could only collect performance data, test scores," Al Essa, director of analytics research and strategy at learning management system (LMS) vendor <a href="http://www.desire2learn.com">Desire2Learn</a> told InformationWeek. "Now we're also able to collect engagement data -- activities, both academic and nonacademic." For example, these systems might record when a student logs in, how long they stay, how and when they access course content and tools, and how they work on assignments. The end goal, Essa said, is to develop an understanding of a student's strengths and weaknesses. He said this promises to improve the educational experience and even go further, such as creating recommendation engines for majors or future careers. Desire2Learn is developing both of these capabilities in its platform. Essa said his company advises schools, before implementation of Desire2Learn, to address privacy by forming a committee to talk about data governance. "[This group] should pull people in from throughout the institution, not just the legal team," he said. How concerned are you about the collection of student data, and the rules and regulations around its use? Share your thoughts in the comments below. Attend Interop Las Vegas, May 6-10, and attend the most thorough training on Apple Deployment at the NEW Mac & iOS IT Conference. Use Priority Code DIPR02 by March 2 to save up to $500 off the price of Conference Passes. Join us in Las Vegas for access to 125+ workshops and conference classes, 350+ exhibiting companies, and the latest technology. Register for <a href="http://www.interop.com/lasvegas/?CID=MP_ILV_IWK_Article_TL&_mc=DIPR02">Interop</a> today!2013-02-26T09:13:00ZTablets Rock On: Education Tech Through The AgesFrom tablets to Google Glasses, education technology has a colorful history. Take a look back and a peek forward.http://www.informationweek.com/education/leadership/tablets-rock-on-education-tech-through-t/240149241?cid=SBX_iwk_related_mostpopular_Data_Management_educationNew-fangled educational devices didn't start with computers or the Internet. Writing, arguably the first education "technology," debuted at the end of the Stone Age, in the late 4th millennium BC. Although we don't know how cuneiform script was taught, we do know this pictographic system evolved during its 22 centuries of use, becoming more simplified and abstract until it was supplanted by the Phoenician alphabet around the 2nd century AD. Writing's long history reveals a defining human characteristic: The constant search for new ways to capture and distribute knowledge. This search has provoked cultural, political and religious controversies along the way. Take, for example, a recent survey of professors at top research universities who <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/instructional-it/classroom-technology-faces-skeptics-at-r/240148217">prefer old-fashioned teaching methods</a> such as whiteboards to using the Internet as a way to instruct. In this sense, today's debates about what should or should not be taught, or about the impact of this or that technology on students, echo earlier fights that stretch back centuries. Another unsettled debate swirling in academia today: the educational impact of remotely connected students. In the past few years, millions of students around the world have taken massive open online courses (MOOCs) offered by established post-secondary institutions and commercial startups. As MOOCs have become more popularity, educators, parents and students have started asking legitimate questions about what is being gained and what is being lost when students <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/online-learning/moocs-valuable-innovation-or-grand-diver/240147875">never step foot on a campus</a> or share a physical classroom with others. Some believe technology -- specifically, data analytics -- will play an important role in answering these important questions. Projects such as the <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/data-management/university-data-sharing-project-takes-bi/240148153">Predictive Analytics Reporting (PAR) Framework</a> are collecting data across postsecondary institutions and studying educational outcomes, with the goal of revealing the best educational approaches. Data capture and analysis also will be a key part of the <a href="http://www.corestandards.org">Common Core State Standards</a> initiative in the United States. The CCSS, which seeks to bring diverse state K-12 curricula into alignment, is expected to start formal assessment via computerized testing in the 2014–2015 school year. Undoubtedly, some of these newest approaches will be transformational. Others will be discarded or evolve into something entirely new. Only time will tell. Explore our slideshow to learn more about some of education's technological milestones through the ages, including the newest ones.Johannes Gutenberg's printing press, a watershed technological advance in 1450, certainly helped accelerate literacy in Europe, and was a boon to the mission of the Catholic Church. But the press also enabled wider publication of books the Church deemed heretical during the Protestant Reformation. In 1559, Pope Paul IV ordered the first Index Librorum Prohibitorum, or Index of Prohibited Books. The index, issued 20 more times by different popes, was published for the last time in 1948. RECOMMENDED READING: <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/online-learning/moocs-valuable-innovation-or-grand-diver/240147875">MOOCs: Valuable Innovation Or Grand Diversion?</a> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/instructional-it/classroom-technology-faces-skeptics-at-r/240148217">Classroom Technology Faces Skeptics At Research Universities</a> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/leadership/informationweek-education-your-new-guide/240145815">InformationWeek Education: Your New Guide To Higher Education IT</a> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/mobility/why-tablets-will-kill-smart-boards-in-cl/240145886">Why Tablets Will Kill Smart Boards In Classrooms</a> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/big-data/news/big-data-analytics/can-big-data-analytics-boost-graduation-rates/240147807">Can Big Data Analytics Boost Graduation Rates?</a> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/data-management/university-data-sharing-project-takes-bi/240148153">University Data Sharing Project Takes Big Step Forward</a> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/big-data/news/big-data-analytics/big-data-analytics-masters-degrees-20-top-programs/240145673">Big Data Analytics Masters Degrees: 20 Top Programs</a>The University of London was the first university to offer distance learning degrees, establishing its External Programme in 1858. This program, now known as the <a href="http://www.londoninternational.ac.uk/">University of London International Programmes</a>, collaborates with 12 colleges of the University of London and offers flexible and distance-learning degree programs worldwide. RECOMMENDED READING: <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/online-learning/moocs-valuable-innovation-or-grand-diver/240147875">MOOCs: Valuable Innovation Or Grand Diversion?</a> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/instructional-it/classroom-technology-faces-skeptics-at-r/240148217">Classroom Technology Faces Skeptics At Research Universities</a> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/leadership/informationweek-education-your-new-guide/240145815">InformationWeek Education: Your New Guide To Higher Education IT</a> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/mobility/why-tablets-will-kill-smart-boards-in-cl/240145886">Why Tablets Will Kill Smart Boards In Classrooms</a> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/big-data/news/big-data-analytics/can-big-data-analytics-boost-graduation-rates/240147807">Can Big Data Analytics Boost Graduation Rates?</a> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/data-management/university-data-sharing-project-takes-bi/240148153">University Data Sharing Project Takes Big Step Forward</a> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/big-data/news/big-data-analytics/big-data-analytics-masters-degrees-20-top-programs/240145673">Big Data Analytics Masters Degrees: 20 Top Programs</a>The Scholastic Aptitude Test, founded in 1926 by the College Board, was first scored automatically in 1936 by an IBM 805 computer, which used electrical current to detect marks made by special pencils. But it wasn't until optical scanners, able to detect the marks of the ubiquitous No. 2 pencil, that standardized college entrance exams became a rite of passage for millions of college-bound juniors and seniors in the United States. RECOMMENDED READING: <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/online-learning/moocs-valuable-innovation-or-grand-diver/240147875">MOOCs: Valuable Innovation Or Grand Diversion?</a> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/instructional-it/classroom-technology-faces-skeptics-at-r/240148217">Classroom Technology Faces Skeptics At Research Universities</a> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/leadership/informationweek-education-your-new-guide/240145815">InformationWeek Education: Your New Guide To Higher Education IT</a> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/mobility/why-tablets-will-kill-smart-boards-in-cl/240145886">Why Tablets Will Kill Smart Boards In Classrooms</a> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/big-data/news/big-data-analytics/can-big-data-analytics-boost-graduation-rates/240147807">Can Big Data Analytics Boost Graduation Rates?</a> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/data-management/university-data-sharing-project-takes-bi/240148153">University Data Sharing Project Takes Big Step Forward</a> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/big-data/news/big-data-analytics/big-data-analytics-masters-degrees-20-top-programs/240145673">Big Data Analytics Masters Degrees: 20 Top Programs</a>Although an early form of videoconferencing was demonstrated by AT&T Corp. at the 1964 World's Fair, higher education didn't start using this technology -- dramatically improved by hardware and software advances, as well as Internet Protocol standardization -- until around 2003, when schools around the world began to integrate video conferencing into their distance-learning programs. RECOMMENDED READING: <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/online-learning/moocs-valuable-innovation-or-grand-diver/240147875">MOOCs: Valuable Innovation Or Grand Diversion?</a> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/instructional-it/classroom-technology-faces-skeptics-at-r/240148217">Classroom Technology Faces Skeptics At Research Universities</a> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/leadership/informationweek-education-your-new-guide/240145815">InformationWeek Education: Your New Guide To Higher Education IT</a> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/mobility/why-tablets-will-kill-smart-boards-in-cl/240145886">Why Tablets Will Kill Smart Boards In Classrooms</a> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/big-data/news/big-data-analytics/can-big-data-analytics-boost-graduation-rates/240147807">Can Big Data Analytics Boost Graduation Rates?</a> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/data-management/university-data-sharing-project-takes-bi/240148153">University Data Sharing Project Takes Big Step Forward</a> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/big-data/news/big-data-analytics/big-data-analytics-masters-degrees-20-top-programs/240145673">Big Data Analytics Masters Degrees: 20 Top Programs</a>The online virtual world <a href ="http://www.secondlife.com">Second Life</a>, developed by Linden Lab and launched in 2003, might have failed in its goal of creating a general-purpose consumer platform, but it still holds a fascination for some educators. By one count, some 300 universities around the world teach courses or conduct research in SL. Adult English language instruction appears to be the leading educational application. RECOMMENDED READING: <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/online-learning/moocs-valuable-innovation-or-grand-diver/240147875">MOOCs: Valuable Innovation Or Grand Diversion?</a> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/instructional-it/classroom-technology-faces-skeptics-at-r/240148217">Classroom Technology Faces Skeptics At Research Universities</a> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/leadership/informationweek-education-your-new-guide/240145815">InformationWeek Education: Your New Guide To Higher Education IT</a> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/mobility/why-tablets-will-kill-smart-boards-in-cl/240145886">Why Tablets Will Kill Smart Boards In Classrooms</a> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/big-data/news/big-data-analytics/can-big-data-analytics-boost-graduation-rates/240147807">Can Big Data Analytics Boost Graduation Rates?</a> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/data-management/university-data-sharing-project-takes-bi/240148153">University Data Sharing Project Takes Big Step Forward</a> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/big-data/news/big-data-analytics/big-data-analytics-masters-degrees-20-top-programs/240145673">Big Data Analytics Masters Degrees: 20 Top Programs</a>First released in April 2010, Apple's iPad has rapidly and substantially changed the way we use computers both inside and outside of schools. By some accounts, Apple's iPad sales to schools started taking over PCs in 2012. Not coincidentally, vendors of mobile device management (MDM) <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/mobility/smartphones-hit-schools-mdm-vendors-don/240148507">products</a> are bringing their enterprise software tools to school administrators, who are eager for better ways to manage and secure and these devices. RECOMMENDED READING: <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/online-learning/moocs-valuable-innovation-or-grand-diver/240147875">MOOCs: Valuable Innovation Or Grand Diversion?</a> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/instructional-it/classroom-technology-faces-skeptics-at-r/240148217">Classroom Technology Faces Skeptics At Research Universities</a> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/leadership/informationweek-education-your-new-guide/240145815">InformationWeek Education: Your New Guide To Higher Education IT</a> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/mobility/why-tablets-will-kill-smart-boards-in-cl/240145886">Why Tablets Will Kill Smart Boards In Classrooms</a> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/big-data/news/big-data-analytics/can-big-data-analytics-boost-graduation-rates/240147807">Can Big Data Analytics Boost Graduation Rates?</a> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/data-management/university-data-sharing-project-takes-bi/240148153">University Data Sharing Project Takes Big Step Forward</a> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/big-data/news/big-data-analytics/big-data-analytics-masters-degrees-20-top-programs/240145673">Big Data Analytics Masters Degrees: 20 Top Programs</a>The first massive open online course (MOOC) is believed to have been the 2008 course "Connectivism and Connective Knowledge," created by George Siemens, then an associate director of research and development with the Learning Technologies Centre at the University of Manitoba, and Stephen Downes, an online learning and new media designer and commentator. The attention focused on MOOCs intensified in 2011 and 2012, thanks to a handful of commercial offerings such as <a href="http://www.coursera.org">Coursera</a>, <a href="http://www.udacity.com">Udacity</a>, <a href="http://www.alison.com">Advance Learning Interactive Systems Online (ALISON)</a> and others sealing alliances with traditional academic institutions, accompanied by a surge of venture capital <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/online-learning/education-tech-investments-surpassed-1-b/240147042">investment</a> into the sector. Harvard and MIT also made a splash with edX, a not-for-profit MOOC that currently offers courses from 12 universities. RECOMMENDED READING: <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/online-learning/moocs-valuable-innovation-or-grand-diver/240147875">MOOCs: Valuable Innovation Or Grand Diversion?</a> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/instructional-it/classroom-technology-faces-skeptics-at-r/240148217">Classroom Technology Faces Skeptics At Research Universities</a> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/leadership/informationweek-education-your-new-guide/240145815">InformationWeek Education: Your New Guide To Higher Education IT</a> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/mobility/why-tablets-will-kill-smart-boards-in-cl/240145886">Why Tablets Will Kill Smart Boards In Classrooms</a> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/big-data/news/big-data-analytics/can-big-data-analytics-boost-graduation-rates/240147807">Can Big Data Analytics Boost Graduation Rates?</a> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/data-management/university-data-sharing-project-takes-bi/240148153">University Data Sharing Project Takes Big Step Forward</a> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/big-data/news/big-data-analytics/big-data-analytics-masters-degrees-20-top-programs/240145673">Big Data Analytics Masters Degrees: 20 Top Programs</a>Massive open online courses (MOOCs) provide immense amounts of data -- data that can be parsed, compared, merged, modeled and analyzed, with the goal of improving educational outcomes. Proponents say these systems will be able to detect struggling students sooner than traditional means, and trigger a teacher intervention or even make an automatic change in a lesson plan. One reason predictive and prescriptive analytics have become hot topics? Declining college graduation rates in the United States. Almost half of the students who begin college at a two- or four-year institution fail to earn a degree within six years. RECOMMENDED READING: <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/online-learning/moocs-valuable-innovation-or-grand-diver/240147875">MOOCs: Valuable Innovation Or Grand Diversion?</a> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/instructional-it/classroom-technology-faces-skeptics-at-r/240148217">Classroom Technology Faces Skeptics At Research Universities</a> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/leadership/informationweek-education-your-new-guide/240145815">InformationWeek Education: Your New Guide To Higher Education IT</a> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/mobility/why-tablets-will-kill-smart-boards-in-cl/240145886">Why Tablets Will Kill Smart Boards In Classrooms</a> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/big-data/news/big-data-analytics/can-big-data-analytics-boost-graduation-rates/240147807">Can Big Data Analytics Boost Graduation Rates?</a> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/data-management/university-data-sharing-project-takes-bi/240148153">University Data Sharing Project Takes Big Step Forward</a> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/big-data/news/big-data-analytics/big-data-analytics-masters-degrees-20-top-programs/240145673">Big Data Analytics Masters Degrees: 20 Top Programs</a>Google's Project Glass, a research and development program to develop an augmented reality head-mounted display (HMD), is already attracting the attention of educators, well ahead of this product being commercialized.One highly cited <a href="http://www.onlineuniversities.com/blog/2012/09/8-amazing-ways-google-glasses-will-change-education/">article</a> on the potential impact of Google Glasses was written last fall by the staff of OnlineUniversities. Among other topics, the essay wonders how teachers -- who already deal with the downsides of other electronic gear in the classroom -- will keep students wearing such futuristic devices from becoming distracted.RECOMMENDED READING: <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/online-learning/moocs-valuable-innovation-or-grand-diver/240147875">MOOCs: Valuable Innovation Or Grand Diversion?</a> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/instructional-it/classroom-technology-faces-skeptics-at-r/240148217">Classroom Technology Faces Skeptics At Research Universities</a> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/leadership/informationweek-education-your-new-guide/240145815">InformationWeek Education: Your New Guide To Higher Education IT</a> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/mobility/why-tablets-will-kill-smart-boards-in-cl/240145886">Why Tablets Will Kill Smart Boards In Classrooms</a> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/big-data/news/big-data-analytics/can-big-data-analytics-boost-graduation-rates/240147807">Can Big Data Analytics Boost Graduation Rates?</a> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/data-management/university-data-sharing-project-takes-bi/240148153">University Data Sharing Project Takes Big Step Forward</a> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/big-data/news/big-data-analytics/big-data-analytics-masters-degrees-20-top-programs/240145673">Big Data Analytics Masters Degrees: 20 Top Programs</a>2013-02-21T11:04:00ZBig Data Myths PersistBig data hype has reached a level where some customers are actually avoiding labeling projects as big data, Tibco executives say.http://www.informationweek.com/big-data/news/big-data-analytics/big-data-myths-persist/240149013?cid=SBX_iwk_related_mostpopular_Data_Management_education <div class="inlineStoryImage inlineStoryImageRight"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/software/information-management/13-big-data-vendors-to-watch-in-2013/240144124"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/924/BigDataLogos_tn.jpg" alt="13 Big Data Vendors To Watch In 2013" title="13 Big Data Vendors To Watch In 2013" class="img175" /></a> <div class="storyImageTitle">13 Big Data Vendors To Watch In 2013</div> (click image for larger view and for slideshow)</div>  The rush to put a "big data" label on every new use of data risks diluting the meaning of the phrase and, worse, may lead some organizations down a disappointing road, say two seasoned IT executives. "I noticed our customers doing what a lot of people would consider to be 'big data' will often say, "We don't call it big data,'" Chris Taylor of <a href="http://www.tibco.com">Tibco Software</a> told InformationWeek in a phone interview. Taylor leads product marketing for business event and in-memory computing products at Tibco. These customers didn't want their work associated with "needle in a haystack" efforts, and felt such a description was far too limiting, he said. Also on the call was Taylor's Tibco colleague, company CTO Matt Quinn. A 14-year Tibco veteran, Quinn said it was also important to put big data in a historical context. He said this has been a 20- or 30-year trend of businesses picking out some data, normalizing it and using it to make decisions. [ Taylor and Quinn will do a deep dive into this topic during <a href="http://www.interop.com/lasvegas/conference/it-workshops.php?session_id=17">Big Data Myths and Real Decisions</a>, at <a href="http://www.interop.com/lasvegas/?CID=MP_ILV_IWK_Article_TL&_mc=DIPR02?itc=edit_in_body_cross">Interop Las Vegas</a>, May 6-10. Use Priority Code DIPR02 by March 2 to save up to $500. ] "It's a facsimile of a facsimile of a facsimile of what's actually going on out there in the real world," he said. "The challenge people are having at the moment is that business, like life, doesn't fit in nice, clean boxes." Trying to see what's really going on, in all its variety and messiness, "is proving to be a very complex task," he said. Along with wanting to dispel the idea that data started growing recently, and not over decades, another myth Quinn wants to explode is the well-worn notion of big data's so-called three Vs: volume, velocity and variety. "I feel a little heretical when I say it, but there's always been variety and a relative amount of volume," he said. "What's happened now is people have started to develop tools to manage and mine that data." Another myth is that Hadoop is somehow synonymous with big data, Taylor said. "It turns big data into a very batch and offline process," he said, adding this is a mistake because it misses the possibility of managing data "in a real-time scenario." Another myth: The prevailing idea that these data questions can't be answered without a <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/software/information-management/meet-the-elusive-data-scientist/240142235">data scientist</a> on the scene, and that their small number will be a huge constraint on businesses wanting to conduct big data projects. "I tend to believe this is a misleading discussion," Taylor said. Analytical tools will become more powerful, putting these abilities "into the hands of regular people," he said. Quinn went further, suggesting a data scientist who <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/big-data/news/big-data-analytics/wanted-qualified-data-scientists-peopl/240115300 ">lacks business context</a> may actually cause more harm than good. "This has parallels to the banking crisis," he said. "You had a bunch of quants ... who made some incredibly poor decisions because they didn't have the context." Rather than becoming enamored of the enabling technologies for big data, Quinn suggested business leaders should first sit back and ask, "What's the No. 1 question that you've wanted to have answered but you were always told it was impossible? Start from there. Don't start with what data you have, start with the important question." Just as important as finding answers is making them actionable and "operationalizing" them, he added. Quinn does allow that one category of data, machine-generated data, is exploding. Up until now, companies have typically analyzed just a <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/big-data/news/big-data-analytics/nearly-all-big-data-ignored-idc-says/240144229">tiny fraction</a> of any activity. For example, transactions captured into a database on a retailer's website may represent only 2% of all the server's activity, Quinn said. The rest goes untapped or may be discarded. Now it is possible to analyze this activity, "which may have more value than the transactions" for retailers trying to better model the behavior of visitors, he said. Not an overhyped myth, according to Quinn, is the impact big data initiatives are having on company organizational structures. "For all the warts and all the good stuff, the lingering success of big data is ultimately going to be measured not in how successful the technology was, but it's going to be how successful the organizational transformation was." Just like service-oriented architecture before it, Quinn said, the big data revolution is forcing organizational change, including breaking down barriers and silos, and prompting fundamental questions about ownership and governance. As large healthcare providers test the limits, many smaller groups question the value. Also in the new, all-digital <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/gogreen/021813hc/?k=axxe&cid=article_axxt_os">Big Data Analytics</a> issue of InformationWeek Healthcare: Ask these six questions about natural language processing before you buy. (Free with registration.)