Archive for December, 2009
« Previous EntriesNew Report: For-Profits Gobble Up More of Online Market Amid Recession
Saturday, December 19th, 2009New Report: For-Profits Gobble Up More of Online Market Amid Recession
Regulatory heat. Loan default worries. Bad publicity.
That’s the storyline about for-profit colleges lately, but here’s some other news: They just keep gobbling up the online-education market.
According to new
Hacker Breaks Into Community-College Server Containing Personal Info of 51,000
Saturday, December 19th, 2009Hacker Breaks Into Community-College Server Containing Personal Info of 51,000
A hacker broke into a computer server at the North Carolina Community College System, gaining access to the personal information of 51,000 people, the Asheville Citizen-Times reported on Thursday. The breach occurred at a library server in Raleigh, North Carolina, in August. System officials say the [...]
‘Step Away From the Laptop. You Are Too Close to the Laptop.’
Thursday, December 17th, 2009‘Step Away From the Laptop. You Are Too Close to the Laptop.’
Between September and October last year, Simon Fraser University, in British Columbia, logged 27 reported laptop thefts. But now the university’s next would-be computer thief might be met with an alarm and a greeting from campus security.
That’s because officials have been planting a “bait” [...]
Give a Humanist a Supercomputer …
Thursday, December 17th, 2009Give a Humanist a Supercomputer …
… and you’ll be surprised what he or she can do with it. That’s what the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Department of Energy figured. Last year, they staged a competition for “computationally intensive” humanities projects that would draw on the DOE’s High Performance Computing (HPC) resources at Nersc, the National [...]
Blackboard Settles Longstanding Patent Fight With Rival Desire2Learn
Wednesday, December 16th, 2009Blackboard Settles Longstanding Patent Fight With Rival Desire2Learn
Just weeks ago Blackboard said it would appeal its patent battle against rival Desire2Learn all the way to the Supreme Court, but on Tuesday both companies announced that they have settled their epic legal battle.
The companies issued a joint press release announcing that they had reached an agreement [...]
France Pledges $1.1-Billion to Digitize Archives
Wednesday, December 16th, 2009France Pledges $1.1-Billion to Digitize Archives
France will spend $1.1-billion on digitizing its archives, President Nicolas Sarkozy announced on Monday, in an effort to maintain control over its literary history. But the investment doesn’t mean France is dismissing collaborating with Google, The New York Times reported.
An announcement earlier this year that the French government was working [...]
The All-Digital Library? Not Quite Yet
Wednesday, December 16th, 2009The All-Digital Library? Not Quite Yet
Washington, D.C.—Don’t de-accession those print materials yet. The digital research library is not quite ready for prime time, according to Lisa Spiro, director of the Digital Media Center at Rice University, and Geneva Henry, executive diretor of Rice’s Center for Digital Scholarship.
At a session of the membership meeting of the [...]
E-Textbook Publisher Strives to Make Titles More Accessible to the Blind
Tuesday, December 15th, 2009E-Textbook Publisher Strives to Make Titles More Accessible to the Blind
Flat World Knowledge Inc. on Monday announced an effort to make its electronic textbooks more accessible to blind students and those with other disabilities.
The upstart textbook publisher, which makes its textbooks free online but hopes students will purchase print copies or related study aids, said [...]
Free Web Site Helps Harvard Students Cut Class
Tuesday, December 15th, 2009Free Web Site Helps Harvard Students Cut Class
You’ve heard of MIT OpenCourseWare. The free Web site FinalsClub.org, which pays Harvard students to share lecture notes online, piggybacks on that open-content genre — with one twist. Harvard gets little power over what’s published.
The two-year-old startup derives its name from the Ivy League university’s final clubs. As [...]
Business-Backed Group Tells Colleges to Follow For-Profit Model When It Comes to Teaching
Saturday, December 12th, 2009Business-Backed Group Tells Colleges to Follow For-Profit Model When It Comes to Teaching
A new report from a business-financed public-policy organization says that traditional colleges and universities can learn from for-profit colleges’ approach to teaching.
The Committee for Economic Development’s new report makes recommendations for how the government, colleges, and universities should encourage online education. One [...]