EDUCAUSE | Contributed by Organizations or Campuses; Articles, Papers, and Reports; and Productivity Applications and Systems

Keeping Track of Students, and Staying in Touch

ckeller — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 12:19:37 -0500

A start-up company from a former Blackboard executive is positioning itself to help colleges boost retention with communication tools ... and lots of data.

Exploration Of Partnership Opportunities For Campus Collaborative Tools - Final Report

ckeller — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 09:58:55 -0500

Recently a diverse committee of Berkeley campus leaders met with representatives from Google and Microsoft to explore the Google Apps for Education and Microsoft Live@EDU service offerings and to determine if these vendors' offerings in the areas of mail, calendaring, and web based file sharing are a reasonable alternative to UCB running these services locally (via the current CalMail, WebFiles, and CalAgenda services).

In addition to examining the benefits and drawbacks of outsourcing campus messaging services, such as email and calendaring, to one of these vendors, the committee also explored their associated collaborative tools offerings, such as collaborative writing; social bookmarking; photo, audio, and video sharing; and mapping, which may also be of considerable campus interest.

This is the report from that committee.

Colleges Testing Google Apps

ckeller — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 16:50:07 -0500

U.S. universities are signing for the free Google Apps hosted software suite--but aren't abandoning Microsoft apps just yet.

Privacy Fears Hit Google Search

drupal — Mon, 13 Feb 2006 13:59:25 -0600

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is warning users about what it says are privacy concerns with Google's new Desktop Search application. The tool indexes files from a computer, allowing users to search that content from other machines. According to the EFF, this process poses significant risks to personal privacy, particularly in light of recent government demands for access to usage logs from Google and other companies. EFF staff attorney Kevin Bankston said, "Unless you configure Google Desktop very carefully, and few people will, Google will have copies of...whatever...text-based documents the desktop software can index." If federal authorities obtain Google's records, he said, they would have access to all of those files.Officials from Google conceded that the new tool does represent a trade-off of some measure of privacy, but said such a compromise is one that many users will be willing to make. The company also said it would encrypt those files, would place strong limits on who can access the information, and would not store it for more than 30 days.

Web Focus: Using Collaborative Technologies When on the Road

drupal — Mon, 09 May 2005 12:06:40 -0500

While attending conferences, employees are now expect to be able to read email when on the road. The author argues that there are additional technologies which may enhance our effectiveness when away from the office. Some potentially useful tools are described, possible problem areas are listed and an approach to deployment is given.

Grokking the infoviz

drupal — Fri, 01 Aug 2003 12:29:41 -0500

Information visualisation is about to go mainstream. While it may not be the killer application some expect, "infoviz" is going to help users to manipulate data in many new ways.