Lawmaker to push for open online textbooks

College students pay more than $900 annually for textbooks.
College students pay more than $900 annually for textbooks.

Every semester, a few students in Steven White’s business and marketing courses ask to borrow the professor’s copy of the course textbook. They can’t afford one for themselves, White said, and their sub-par exam scores show it.

That’s why White, a University of Massachusetts Dartmouth professor since 1998, supports a federal law that aims to lower skyrocketing college textbook costs by making students privy to a class’s book prices before they register for the course, requires publishers to disclose book prices to professors, and rids textbooks of “bundles” like CDs and access to web sites that raise prices.

The law, known as the College Textbook Affordability Act, was included in the Higher Education Opportunity Act passed by Congress in 2008. The textbook provisions—championed by Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill.—kicked in July 1.…Read More

IT officials: Only one in 10 campuses have ‘cutting edge’ technology

Fourteen percent said professors simply 'won’t use' technology that is available to them
Fourteen percent of students said their professors simply 'won’t use' technology that is available to them.

Most college students say their schools understand how to use education technology in the lecture hall, but only 9 percent of campus IT officials describe their institution’s technology adoption as “cutting edge,” according to a survey released July 19.

The survey of more than 1,000 IT staff members, faculty, and college students, conducted by CDW Government Inc. (CDW-G), shows that three out of four students surveyed approved of their college’s use of technology, while highlighting two findings that concerned some technologists: only a sliver of respondents defined their campus technology as “cutting edge,” and far more IT staffers push for education technology than do instructors.

According to CDW-G’s report, 47 percent of respondents said their college campus uses hardware that is “no more than three years old,” and 38 percent said their campus’s technology infrastructure is “adequate, but could be refreshed.” Only 9 percent said their education technology is “cutting edge,” and 5 percent described their computer systems as “aging.”…Read More

Harvard profs dropping final exams

Final exams are probably not anybody’s primary concern at the moment, but it is worth noting that the July-August edition of Harvard Magazine reports that many Harvard professors will no longer routinely require final exams, the Washington Post reports. It turns out that Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences voted on this policy a few months ago, according to the magazine article. The arts and sciences faculty–of which there are more than 1,000, including dozens of Nobel laureates and Pulitzer Prize winners–teach in Harvard College, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and the Division of Continuing Education. For decades, professors who chose not to give a final exam were required to submit a form to opt out. Now, professors will have to file a specific request to give a final. The magazine said that Dean of Undergraduate Education Jay M. Harris is already predicting that Harvard will shorten the academic calendar by a day or two in response to the eased testing burden, but, in fact, final exams have been “going the way of the dodo” for years…

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InfoComm 2010 highlights changing nature of AV

InfoComm attendance increased in Las Vegas this summer.
InfoComm attendance increased in Las Vegas this summer.

“The AV industry is changing,” said Jeff Singer, marketing communications director for Crestron. “We have to redefine what AV is.”

Singer was speaking at the 2010 InfoComm exhibition in Las Vegas, North America’s largest audio-visual (AV) technology show. He was referring to how the lines between traditionally defined categories of products and services in the AV field are blurring—and never has that been more apparent than at this year’s show.

Unless they hired a systems integrator, for instance, school technology buyers used to deal with one vendor for classroom audio products, a separate vendor for digital signage, and yet other manufacturers for projectors and displays. At InfoComm 2010, however, it was possible to find ed-tech solutions that combined classroom audio with emergency alert, projectors with interactive pen displays, and even podiums with digital signage.…Read More

Apple: Free cases to alleviate iPhone 4 problems

Apple Inc. will give free protective cases to buyers of its latest iPhone to alleviate the so-called “death grip” problem in which holding the phone with a bare hand can muffle the wireless signal, reports the Associated Press. Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced the giveaway July 16 during a news conference at the company’s headquarters, even as the company denied that the iPhone 4 has an antenna problem that needs fixing. The more than 3 million people who have already bought the iPhone 4 and new buyers through Sept. 30 will all be eligible. People who already purchased the $29 “Bumper” cases will be refunded. Jobs began the event by saying, “We’re not perfect,” but was quick to point out that no cell phone is perfect. He played a video showing competing smart phones, including a BlackBerry from Research in Motion Ltd., losing signal strength when held in certain ways. Phones usually have an antenna inside the body. In designing the iPhone 4, Apple took a gamble on a new design, using parts of the phone’s outer casing as the antenna. That saved space inside the tightly packed body of the phone, but means that covering a spot on the lower left edge of the case blocks wireless signal. Consumer Reports magazine said covering the spot with a case or even a piece of duct tape alleviates the problem. It refused to give the iPhone 4 its “recommended” stamp of approval for this reason, and it had called on Apple to compensate buyers…

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Barnes & Noble launches eBook software for students

One-third of students are comfortable with eBooks, according to a study.
One-third of students are comfortable with eBooks, according to a study.

Barnes & Noble has joined the growing list of companies and organizations giving college students electronic alternatives to their pricey textbooks with the book retailer’s free NOOKstudy software that could save students 40 percent at the bookstore.

The NOOKstudy software will be usable on PCs, Macs, the Apple iPad, and, of course, the Nook when the program is released in August. More than 500,000 free eBooks will be available through the software, according to the Barnes & Noble web site, including some texts that might be required for college students.

Barnes & Noble will partner with learning management giant Blackboard in its NOOKstudy launch, allowing students who use Blackboard’s online learning platform to buy and read texts available in the NOOKstudy library, which will be stocked with more than 1 million eBooks in all.…Read More

College CIO: Embrace virtualization, but not too much

Virtualization can sometimes cause IT headaches, Herleman says.
Virtualization can sometimes cause IT headaches, Herleman says.

Using one computer to power many has saved money as college budgets have been slashed, but too much of this good thing can lead to “virtualization sprawl”—an emerging problem that one IT leader is determined to avoid.

Karl Herleman, CIO at Miami Dade College (MDC), has, like many technology decision makers, moved his eight-campus school toward virtualization in the past three years. This means one computer in a campus computer lab can power several machines, reducing the IT department’s costs and saving the college on its monthly energy bills.

MDC has trimmed its energy consumption by 10 percent since 2008, thanks largely to virtualization, Herleman said.…Read More

Google putting its digital library to the test

Google Book Search has about 12 million books available.
Google Book Search has about 12 million books available.

Google Inc. is giving researchers nearly a half-million dollars to test the academic value of its rapidly growing online library.

The grants announced July 14 will be used to help pay for 12 humanities projects studying questions that will require sifting through thousands of books to reach meaningful conclusions.

Google is hoping the research will validate its long-held belief that making electronic copies of old books will bring greater enlightenment to the world. The company’s critics, though, have argued that the internet search leader has trampled over copyright laws to build a commanding early lead in digital books so it can boost profits.…Read More

Librarians: Many faculty members embrace digitization

Librarians remind students that some valuable literature isn't yet avaiable online.
Librarians remind students that some valuable literature isn't yet available online.

The sentimentality that college faculty members have for the old-fashioned campus library isn’t the norm at some institutions with vast digital libraries, higher-education librarians and technologists say—countering recent research that lists faculty resistance as a roadblock in digitizing library collections.

Research that refers to the “wistfulness” for the days of wooden bookshelves and massive piles of literary works was released June 2 by the Washington, D.C.-based Council on Library and Information Resources, a nonprofit group that advocates for greater access to information.

The study, titled “The Idea of Order: Transforming Research Collections for 21st Century Scholarship,” charges that entrenched professors and staff members have slowed the creation of digitized book collections. The study also cites the conflicting ideas about whether information should be commodified or made freely available online as a persistent impediment to library digitization.…Read More

All-digital newsstand coming to college stores

More than 3,000 magazines and books will be available on mobile devices like the iPhone.
More than 3,000 magazines and books will be available to college students on mobile devices like the iPhone.

College students will be able to access digitized publications from around the world starting in August, including many that can be incorporated into their course work, after the campus retailing industry teamed up with a digital content distributor to create an online newsstand stocked with 3,000 magazines and books.

The nonprofit National Association of College Stores (NACS), based in Ohio, announced July 12 that it would make the digital resources available through Zinio, a content provider that offers 75,000 publications in 24 languages. The online publications can be accessed through computers, iPhones, iPads, and other mobile devices popular among college students.

NACS officials touted the digital newsstand as the first directed specifically at the college market. Officials did not release the number of campuses that would use the Zinio newsstand when it’s opened later this summer.…Read More

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