Team Blogs & Collected Feeds from rSmart

Mitsubishi is expanding its 500-series of digital classroom projectors with two new wide-format models: the WD510U and the WD500U-ST. The WD500U-ST is a short-throw projector designed specifically for whiteboard applications and other environments where space may be limited.

Hodges University has reported a 250 percent increase in online enrollment following its adoption of the Tegrity Campus 2.0 service, a class capture Web service for higher education. Hodges deployed Tegrity in fall 2007 in an effort to provide more flexible learning tools to help students boost academic achievement.

Slippery Rock University in Pennsylvania is using the SAS Enterprise Intelligence Suite for Education for data management and reporting to help the university improve recruitment, retention, and graduation rates. Using the application, Slippery Rock tracks and shares information on student performance and quality.

In the recent past, I wrote about not really getting Twitter. Since then, I have to say that it has grown on me. I am not and never will be an addict. But it does add a nice social dimension to my day, particularly given that I work alone from my home office a lot of the time. It lets me feel a little more connected with friends and colleagues, and does so without taking up unacceptable amounts of time. So, for my former fellow Twitter skeptics, I have a few suggestions for how to get the most out of it:

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Read the rest of Learning to Like Twitter (520 words)

Microsoft is rolling out a free antivirus software program for consumers that will compete with products made by Symantec and McAfee. Code-named "Morro," the AV app is expected to be available by the end of 2009.

Microsoft Wednesday previewed the ability to centrally manage applications and resources in the planned upgrade of SQL Server, code-named "Kilimanjaro."

Microsoft exec Stephen Elop on Monday announced two hosted solutions from Microsoft--Exchange Online and SharePoint Online--which are now available to organizations of all sizes in the United States. The software, paid for by annual subscriptions, is hosted on Microsoft's servers and supported by Microsoft's channel partners.

When colleges and universities consider a constituent relationship management (CRM) initiative, they all too often focus on the technology while failing to consider the underlying philosophy behind CRM. That's according to Audrey Bledsoe, who is manager of CRM technologies at DePaul University in Chicago.

This is a guest post by Jim Farmer.

“Learning, education, and HR standards communities have very little to show in terms of cross-domain standards interoperability and convergence despite significant investments over a period of more than a decade.” Chuck Allen, Executive Director of the HR-XML Consortium, made this assessment of standards that cross the boundaries of standards-setting bodies in a “White Paper” submitted to the LETSI SCORM 2.0 Workshop held October 15-17, 2008 in Pensacola, Florida. As learning systems exchange data with various administrative, ERP and human resources systems, standards are needed to avoid expensive continuous redundant software maintenance.

How can an institution incorporate Web 2.0 learning opportunities for students, and evidence of learning from those opportunities, into existing campus technologies and processes? PlugJam is providing part of the answer.

As part of a strategy to meet students' expectations to experience interactive Web 2.0 applications in their learning environments, Delta College in Michigan launched an online Delta iTunes U site this fall.

The word "content," as used in education, is troublesome for many educators today who see education as a constructivist process, an interaction between knower and learner, and as a student-centered activity.

The Pennsylvania State University's World Campus and Kryterion have gone public with results of a pilot in which students completed proctored exams online using Webassessor Online Secured Testing. The technology is intended to deliver tests without the need for an in-room proctor present.

New Mexico's Innovative Digital Education and Learning program (IDEAL-NM) has selected the Wimba Collaboration Suite to pilot as its statewide collaborative learning platform. IDEAL-NM will deploy Wimba's in its statewide network of K-12 and higher education institutions, which includes 89 districts and 22 college campuses, to enhance student engagement and collaboration and increase learning outcomes.

IBM has launched a new social networking tool aimed at facilitating collaborative knowledge sharing within organizations.

MIR3 has added a new notification feature to its family of inEnterprise solutions. Recorded Response allows emergency managers to notify their target recipients of events as well as collect responses in their recorded voices in addition to traditional response options. This feature now allows the collection of more exact and situation-specific detail.

Northern New Mexico College (NNMC) has gone public with its use of AVG Anti-Virus software. The college, which has 3,200 students and 200 staff and faculty on two campuses, runs a network with about 700 workstations and 13 servers.

Netbooks and mobile computers will soon be able to run the Ubuntu operating system with additional energy efficiency. The breakthrough comes from porting Ubuntu to the ARMv7 processor architecture, which Canonical last week announced it planned to do.

There are, in my experience, six strategies to consider with any use of technology that will guard against rote use of technology and facilitate critical analysis of teaching and learning effectiveness. In this article, I'll share with you the checklist I work with and encourage others to work with in learning about and using new technology.

Carnegie Mellon University has moved from beta to production status with its Xirrus WiFi network array. The beta project was initially announced in November 2007. At that time Xirrus said it would open up its Linux-based wi-fi array operating system (ArrayOS) to the university and participate in co-development of features and applications that include services such as device and network management, roaming pattern analysis, and usage pattern analysis.