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Podcast 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.
Ohio State wins allies in records dispute with ESPN
A host of national university groups and even the federal government turned in legal briefs yesterday that generally support Ohio State University (OSU) and oppose ESPN in the network’s fight for records stemming from possible wrongdoing inside the athletic department.
The U.S. Justice Department did not take a position on whether the records are protected by a federal student-privacy law known as the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.
But it took issue with ESPN’s argument to the Ohio Supreme Court that FERPA does not bar the release of covered records and instead merely sets conditions on schools that receive federal funds.…Read More
Students: Social media blackout eye-opening, ‘annoying’
Students at Harrisburg University, where technology officials recently deprived students of social media access for one week, said the restriction was a minor inconvenience for many on campus, and showed some students just how tethered to popular social sites they had become.
IT decision makers at Harrisburg University of Science and Technology in Pennsylvania–a campus of about 600 students established in 2001–banned access to Facebook, Twitter, AOL Instant Messenger, and MySpace through the school’s network during the week of Sept. 13 as a way of showing students how ingrained the technology has become in their everyday lives.
Harrisburg also hosted a panel of social media experts during the experimental week who discussed privacy and security issues in social media, how the technology is used to communicate with mass audiences, and how the professional world has adapted to the exponential popularity of sites like Facebook.…Read More
IBM makes cloud computing available to academia
IBM has joined technology leaders Google, Microsoft, and Amazon in providing colleges and universities with free cloud computing aimed at easing campuses’ IT strain and enhancing distance learning.
IBM announced Feb. 10 that the company will make its cloud computing servers available to college professors at 20 colleges nationwide—a growing trend among technology giants forming partnerships with higher education.
IBM’s Academic Skills Cloud will be used by faculty members to make course curriculum available on students’ laptops any time, “free up” campus technology resources, and advance online course capabilities, according to the IBM announcement.…Read More