Blogs

Thousands at this year's EDUCAUSE Annual Conference in Orlando stood and cheered at the end of Freeman Hrabowski's closing presentation. None of the people in that audience, and no one else who has heard him speak or otherwise interacted with this enlightened and enlightening educator/administrator, will be surprised to learn that he has been named to the the U. S. News list of America's Best Leaders 2008. The eclectic group of 20 individuals (plus the entire corps of U. S. Junior Officers) includes such well-known names as Lance Armstrong, Jeff Bezos, Stephen Spielberg, and Michael Tilson Thomas, but also ranges out to Indra Nooyi, "Karaoke-singing chief executive taking Pepsi in an unlikely direction -- toward healthful foods". The list is profiled by David Gergen, who notes: "Obama is a leader of great potential, but he can't do it alone."

Today the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) held a panel discussion and debate, titled "Are Broadband Markets Competitive Enough?" Panelists included Ev Ehrlich, Jeff Eisenach, and John Windhausen. For the record, Windhausen has worked very closely with EDUCAUSE in developing a national big broadband policy. At times a lively debate, Ehrlich and Eisenach both argued that the U.S. broadband market is competitive, while Windhausen said much improvement is needed.

The following is a quick summary of each speaker's initial talk:

I've been working on our annual report. Here are some interesting stats:

The CDDC has been referenced in over 250 books, over 500 scholarly publications total. We've appeared in numerous textbooks, academic papers, etc. Last year we had over 2 million unique addresses visiting our servers and we transferred over 4terabytes of information. We have around 65000 links to our site, many are duplicates, but around we do have links from at least one university on every continent that has a university, and usually we have many links from many universities. We have links from corporations, and many links in the international non-profit sphere. Our materials have been used by millions of people and in hundreds courses and likely will continue to be used for some time.

To better serve Higher Education learning technology professionals in a market that continues to rapidly evolve and expand, LearnSAT now surveys 22 learning technology product and service categories. Additionally, the revised LearnSAT provides a more dynamic survey instrument, enabling respondents to complete the survey in one or multiple sittings and the ability to structure the survey based on respondents’ areas of interest and expertise.North American Higher Education institutions are invited to participate in LearnSAT 2008. IMS GLC also invites learning technology product and service providers as well as higher education institutions to promote this survey within their client base and with peer institutions, respectively.To take or promote this survey, please see, http://www.imsglobal.org/LearnSat/index.htmlThanks for your support. Question or comments can be referred to John Falchi, information provided below. John Falchi, Chief Program Strategist, IMS Global Learning Consortium, 919.656.0343, jfalchi@imsglobal.org

In this free December 1 EDUCAUSE Live! Web Seminar, Leading the IT Workforce in Higher Education, presenter Phil Goldstein, ECAR Fellow, EDUCAUSE, and President, Philip J. Goldstein & Associates, LLC, will present the results of his recent ECAR research on IT leadership. The research examined critical topics including the potential impact on the workforce of boomer retirements, succession planning, and leadership effectiveness. Goldstein will also present rising leaders' perspectives on the CIO role.

Today marks the entry of Amazon's Cloudfront Beta. This new service brings cloud computing to the masses see - http://aws.amazon.com/cloudfront

This fourteen-minute podcast features an interview with Sandra L. Miller, Director of Instruction & Research Technology at William Paterson University of New Jersey. The conversation was recorded at the EDUCAUSE 2008 Annual Conference, and centers on Sandra Miller's session, "NJVid: A Collaborative Portal for Statewide Video Access." She also talks about attitudes towards the use of multimedia in learning. The conversation host is Linda A. Cabot, Vice President of Information Technology at Cardinal Stritch University.

NJVid is a collection and service-driven portal that technically consists of six component parts: Collections, Networking and Access, Authentication and Authorization, Services, Repository, and Mass Storage. Initially funded by IMLS (Institute of Museum and Library Services), NJVid provides New Jersey's K–20 institutions, museums, and libraries state-of-the-art video access.

This seven-minute podcast features an interview with Stephen Toback, Senior Manager of Interactive Technology Services for the Office Of Information Technology at Duke University. The conversation was recorded at the EDUCAUSE 2008 Annual Conference, and centers on his session, "Evolution of iTunesU and Its Role in the Duke ExperienceThe Evolution of iTunes U and Its Role in the Duke Experience." He also discusses past, present, and future plans for iTunes U at Duke. The conversation host is Linda A. Cabot, Vice President of Information Technology at Cardinal Stritch University.

As one of the pilot schools developing iTunes U, Duke University has seen an evolution of the tool over the past three years on its campus. The repository of content in iTunes U reaches faculty, staff, students, alumni, prospective students/parents, and the world at large. In this interview, Stephen

This thirteen-minute podcast features a panel update recorded at the EDUCAUSE 2008 Annual Conference. The panel discussion is entitled, "Digging Deep with P2P: Understanding Students' Media Habits," and features results from a research study by the Illinois State University's Digital Citizen Project and Carnegie Mellon University. The panel includes:

The largest group of victims of identity theft is between the ages of 18 and 29. Students need to understand the risks and how to protect their personal information, computer, and campus networks. During an EDUCAUSE 2008 presentation, "Computer Security Student Video", student winners, faculty, and judges discussed how others can use the resources of the Computer Security Awareness Video Contest to raise awareness on your campus and get students involved in the 2009 competition.