Nokia Siemens Networks said July 19 that it had agreed to buy the wireless-network equipment division of Motorola for $1.2 billion in cash, the New York Times reports. Nokia Siemens, which makes telecommunications equipment, is a joint venture of Nokia of Finland and Siemens of Germany. Nokia, one of the world’s largest mobile phone makers, has struggled to maintain its footing in the cell phone industry as rivals like Apple and HTC of Taiwan have gained market share. The Motorola unit that Nokia Siemens is buying supplies wireless carriers with the equipment needed to build and maintain cellular networks, including infrastructure for the fourth-generation mobile technologies known as LTE and WiMax…
…Read MorePodcast Series: Innovations in Education
Explore the full series of eCampus News podcasts hosted by Kevin Hogan—created to keep you on the cutting edge of innovations in education.
Student programmers solve real-world challenges
An interface that allows hearing-impaired people to communicate with others using an augmented-reality environment took home the grand prize of $25,000 in the eighth annual Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals in Poland, a prestigious international programming contest for high school and college students.
Team Skeek, a team of university students from Thailand, was responsible for the project, which also took first place in the software design category.
The winning project, eyeFeel, allows hearing-impaired people to communicate with others using an augmented-reality environment that combines speech and face recognition, converts it to English from text, and generates virtual conversation text balloons and sign language animation in real time.…Read More
Schools reach out to prospective students via Facebook
Colleges and universities are becoming increasingly proactive in using social media to reach prospective students, acknowledging that today’s teenagers are very active online.
A Maguire Associates survey of U.S. public and private institutions offering four-year undergraduate degrees found that senior enrollment officers are incorporating the internet into undergraduate recruitment and communication. The survey found that 77 percent of senior enrollment officers have begun to use social networking sites in the face of the economic downturn and continued digital innovation.
Brian Shulman, dean of the School of Health and Medical Sciences at Seton Hall University, said combining social media and public relations efforts has improved the school’s image exponentially in one year.…Read More
ED looks to crack down on misleading college recruiting
Some of the nation’s largest online colleges could be barred from tying recruiters’ pay to the number of students they enroll if the Obama administration’s new list of rules for for-profit institutions becomes federal policy.
The administration’s set of 14 proposed guidelines for for-profit colleges—announced June 16—was created in response to widespread student complaints of deceitful recruiting practices at some of the most profitable institutions.
Many of the proposals aim to ensure that federal aid is distributed only to students who are qualified to take college classes.…Read More
Indiana forms state branch of private online college
A new agreement between the state of Indiana and a private online university will allow Indiana residents to use state scholarships to pay for tuition at the computer-based program. The arrangement is the first of its kind, but it could signal the beginning of a larger trend in higher education.
WGU Indiana is a new branch of Western Governors University, a private, nonprofit university designed for working adults trying to earn bachelor’s or master’s degrees. Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels says he considers WGU Indiana, established June 11 when Daniels signed an executive order, to be the eighth state university—although it is technically a private program and will not get state funding like other colleges.
Daniels said WGU Indiana will help adults earn degrees at their own pace and on their own schedule.…Read More
New service helps students pinpoint search for open online courses
Sifting through archives of open online course material could soon become easier. A new public beta version of a web-based college course library aims to help students find open curriculum with a search function designed to narrow their hunt for video and audio lectures.
Einztein, a nonprofit organization based in Santa Monica, Calif., launched the beta version of a library with more than 2,000 complete online courses grouped into more than 30 categories, according to a May 25 company announcement.
Einztein’s library, approved of and curated by scholars and educational experts, features a search engine that helps students and educators drill down to exactly the course they’re searching for, doing the “heavy lifting of cataloguing and indexing the courses into a searchable library,” according to the announcement.…Read More
Colleges click the ‘like’ button on social media classes
From public relations in social media to the potential marketing power of “mommy bloggers,” colleges and universities are offering graduate-level certificates focusing on the business side of Twitter, Facebook, and a host of other sites that draw Americans from every demographic.
Social media courses have sprung up on college campuses as social media web sites—once seen as a virtual playground for bored college students—have become central to marketing campaigns, branding items, and communication with customers, group members, and alumni, for example.
Drury University in Springfield, Mo., announced this month that it would join a handful of schools nationwide offering social media certificates geared for graduate students and business professionals hoping to learn the latest in Facebook and Twitter-based marketing and how search engine optimization can bring more web users to a company’s web site.…Read More
Are video games the answer to college counseling shortage?
A simple online search will turn up hundreds of web sites packed with advice for high school students applying to college. But few internet resources offer step-by-step guidance, and with college counseling dwindling in public schools, University of Southern California researchers have created a video game that lets student simulate the application process in all its complexity.
The online game, called Pathfinder, has been piloted among more than 100 Los Angeles-area high school students this year and could be available to school districts free of charge if USC’s Game Innovation Lab secures $1 million in grants and funding, said Zoe Corwin, a research associate in the university’s Center for Higher Education Policy Analysis.
The Pathfinder pilot uses playing cards, but the finished product will be a web-based game, officials said.…Read More
Texas college teams up with digital signage industry
Students enrolled in Texas State Technical College’s Digital Signage Technology program will be able to network with digital signage professionals and stay up to date with the latest in interactive technology after the school became the nation’s first college chapter of the Digital Signage Federation (DSF), a nonprofit trade organization.
The DSF announced the industry’s first college partner May 17, and TSTC officials said the partnership would give its students access to industry news and trends that could make them more marketable when they finish the signage associate degree program and enter the workforce.
There are three students in TSTC’s digital signage program, which launched in the spring 2010 semester with about $1 million in funding from the U.S. Department of Education, said Patricia Golin, a program specialist at the college. Golin expects at least five more students to join the digital signage program next fall, and the school projects 20 signage students by fall 2011.…Read More
Exam lets prospects ‘test drive’ online education
Prospective students returning to college after a lengthy layoff can gauge their basic English and math skills beforehand to make sure they’re ready for online classes with a new program designed to find the most qualified and disciplined students for web-based courses.
Test Drive College Online, launched May 5 at no charge, matches applicants with online institutions that best suit their academic goals after the student passes a 20-question College Competency Exam, which includes freshman-level math and English questions that help advisors identify students who aren’t yet ready for higher education.
Once students pass the competency test, they can enroll in a five-week course designed as a test run, letting them understand the demands of web-based classes before they pay tuition and find they can’t handle the workload. If the student completes the course, an advisor helps the student transfer the credits earned during the five-week class and enroll in any one of 200 online programs.…Read More