vrijdag 10 december 2010

Twitter when visiting conferences

Twitter is a great tool to use when attending a Conference/Event. This will stimulate, motivate and inspire your (fellow-)Students ("Motivation is contagious!" Seeing that someone is motivated leads to more commitment and better performance, even on other tasks. Cite from Jeroen Bottema)

You ask your -Colleagues,Students and Family to follow you on http://twitter.com and send them your twitter account and -if you know that allready- a Hash tag .

(a Hash-tag is a short word starting with '#' that people insert in their messages when twitting on a specific subject. This is often the conferencename fe. #oeb10 for "Online Educa Berlin 2010" ).


You 'tweet' your

-interesting impressions,
-statements
-links to presentations
-Hash tags


Colleagues, (fellow-)Students and Friends (and fellow conference guests) will now get 'live' information from your exiting impressions.

It is a good idea to also publish your impressions more extensive on a Blog (like this).

Click here for: The Ultimate Twitter Guidebook for Teachers

ps. Twitter does NOT specificly need an internet enabled phone. You can Twit perfectly well from a 'normal'PC/laptop.

Example of tweets on Online Educa 2010:

Extension of submission deadline for Mobile Learning Conference to Jan 7th 2011 #Bremen http://bit.ly/mlcb2011 #mlcb #cfp #oeb10

RT @andyjb: http://andysblackhole.blogspot.com/2010/12/i-was-plan-b-for-online-educa.html moral dont look behind when presenting #oeb10

Working with my notes from #oeb10 Still impressed by Arian Sannier ,The third Way. But dancing with the Danish lady was also a pleasure!

http://andysblackhole.blogspot.com/2010/12/i-was-plan-b-for-online-educa.html moral dont look behind when presenting #oeb10

@heikephilp On our blog: Bridging the Ocean: Miami/Berlin #OEB10 #OEB2010 http://goo.gl/1UHtK mentioned yours :)
~~

donderdag 9 december 2010

Online EDUCA 2010 Impressions

Last week I and Ger Tielemans were at the "Online Educa" in Berlin. SURF organized this trip for us and 50 other IT and teaching staff from Higher Education in the Netherlands. Below are my impressions. Ger will send his impressions later.

ONLINE EDUCA BERLIN is a large international platform for exchanging ideas and experiences on ICT-supported education and training. 2197 learning and training professionals from 108 countries convened at the Hotel InterContinental in Berlin from December 1st – 3rd.

In 85 parallel sessions, delegates discussed the latest trends and developments in ICT-supported learning in the corporate, academic and public service sectors. 530 speakers from 45 countries contributed to the comprehensive agenda.

Other locations with impressions and findings from Online Educa:
http://blog.hansdezwart.info/2010/12/05/so-what-did-i-learn-at-online-educa-2010/
http://wiki.surffoundation.nl/display/oeb2010/Home http://www.havanaweb.nl/rubriek/de_weekgast
http://berlijn2010.cviweblog.nl/
http://nielsmaes.wordpress.com/2010/12/05/oeb10-technologische-ontwikkelingen-veranderen-de-wereld-maar-het-onderwijs-is-in-kern-hetzelfde-gebleven/#more-10
http://ictohub.wordpress.com/2010/12/08/terugblik-op-online-educa-berlin-2010/

Wednesday 1 dec 2010 - Pre-conference on Moodle2.0
At UNESCO-IHE we have Moodle version 1.9 Upgrade to Moodle 2.0 is planned for 2012 .

- the presenter showed an animation of Sir Ken Robinson on: "Changing Education Paradigms" which is really great FUN, both in content and in format. You can watch it on Youtube on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U There is also a Book called 'the element' by Ken Robinson

-GOOD IDEA: Place a Group photo of students in Moodle classroom to make themselves at home

-The presenter claims that Mahara can be the step from LMS (Learning Management System) to PLE (Personal Learning Environment). Mahara is an Open Source E-Portfolio platform. In principle Mahara is a separate product, but it links very well to Moodle. With Moodle 2.0 single sign-on is taken care of.

Some statements:
-An e-portfolio is a tool for reflection.
-Moodle/Mahara is Yin/Yan
-Teacher and students learn together
-Students learn to be responsible for their own learning
-Diferent forms of assessment are needed
-What an e-portfolio does is: Focus on positive achievements, not on mistakes..
-with uploading texts on Mahara, yo can let students acknowledge that they are the intelectual owner of the material they upload.


Moodle 2.0
------------
Most important new functionality is about: Files and repositories

-Filepicker is the new Moodle-tool to link to files etc. It is in fact similar to the Mrcute block that we have in Moodle 1.9. You now link to files that you first upload in your personal Moodle repository or in any other repository (Youtube and Flickr included). For most files you can select whether only a reference to the repository location is made or whether the file has to be copied to the local Moodle installation. If all links to a file are gone, moodle deletes the physical file. Students can have access to repositories as well, but NOT to some only. It is all or nothing.



Thursday 2 december 2010 - Opening Plenary
A University Degree with an Expiration Date ?
In todays keynote by Adrian Sannier (Pearson eCollege)the term "A Degree with expiration date" was dropped. In my view that would really express the concept of lifelong learning ;-).

See (ao) http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/COUNTRIES/EASTASIAPACIFICEXT/MALAYSIAEXTN/0,,contentMDK:21620323~menuPK:324494~pagePK:2865066~piPK:2865079~theSitePK:324488,00.html

SESSION: E-learning for Environmental Sustainability (SFS04)
UNEP ( http://www.unep.org/mentor/africa ) is trying to set up large scale E-learning in Africa for environmental sustainability .

Several representatives from several African countries shown us how things are developing from governance to organization to implementation.

During the session the term E-waste is explained to be one of the major problems in Africa. E-waste initiative is about electronic waste dumped by western world. Kenya has e-waste regulation (is leading in this)

Common sense Vienna ( www.common-sense.at/i-call ) is supporting and helping (sponsoring?) in this E-Learning initiative. They give a presentation about their interactive-storytelling-by-GSM product they developed for awareness training in Africa.


SESSION: Assessment
The presenter tell about a HR E-learning study where Peer assessment is used for assessment of the final dissertations . The teacher just one of the assessors among students. She tells us that to make this a success you must start the design of your course with the assessment.


Friday December 3 - Academic Plenary
Darwikinism: One of the speakers today introduced this funny new word to the audience:

"Darwikinism"

Survival of the fittest content

Deletionism + exclusionism / inclusionism = darwikinism


See: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Darwikinism

SESSION: Informal Ethics (ETH46)
Drunk students where always there, but now photos appear on fe. face book. This will make applying for job difficult and will worry patients that lookup their doctor on the internet..
To educate students about these ethical issues we could let them look up photos of themselves on facebook or google. The shock of the amount and diversity will make them aware of possible implications putting embarrassing photos on the internet.

One person in the audience explains that in Africa they feel our ethical issues and behavior on internet is invading their culture. They talk about war . Many Africans feel swamped by another culture

When using humor on the internet it is better to be pretty inclusive


SESSION: Online assessment (PED61)
Natasa Brouwer UVA
Natasa shows us the measured results of assessment results of students that were offered formative assessment along the "Homogeneous catalysis" course. The formative assessment was not scored and was only offered to the students to help them study. The results were (lightly) indicating that formative assessment helped the students to improve the formal summative assessment at the end of the course.

( In the evening Ger and me had dinner with Natasa and Lilia (Lilia Ekimova assisted in the research) where Natasa told me about this interesting video: "Confessions of a Converted Lecturer: Eric Mazur" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwslBPj8GgI )


Sofia Torrão FEUP Portugal
In this presentation told us about her experiences with using a VLE (in this case Moodle) for having electronic assessments.

Preconditions set:

-Restrict access to ip numbers used in the room

-Restrict access to other apps such as browsers etc. This can be done by pre-installing the PC's with a (bare bone) Linux (Ubuntu) and Firefox only installed.

-Use strict time-window

Experiences:

Even with all these precautions in place, students managed to sabotage. They used fe. their moodle profile (where you can change your employer data etc.) to transfer answers etc. to each other. Or they used mobile phones.

One of the other 'technics' was one 'good' student logging in for 3 others and doing their tests for them.

"geo contextual time security"


SESSION: Students Feedback for Learning (PED78)
Ellen Kuipers HAN
Ellen demonstrated an interesting tool that allows teachers to upload a short piece of lecture on a YouTube-like manner. Students are then invited to comment on the piece of lecture and can add pieces of movie where they explain the issue in their own (better) words. The tool will also be used for language learning where students can help other participant's pronunciation by commenting on a movie of the student telling fe. about a family picture.

Computer tool is called 'talent' and is implemented by Wortell company in the cloud. It is built in/using 'Microsoft assure' ?

Timescale under the movie so that comments can be given by saying 'at second 67 you pronounce this wrong etc....


From the Vendor show

PANOPTO lecture capture software

Panopto had a very small booth next to the Africa virtual University. They showed software for Lecture capture that might be interesting for low profile solutions. The software can record:

-1 or more Webcam streams
-Powerpoint
-Smartboard

During the recording no editing can be done. The concept here is that students while viewing can switch from presenter to Powerpoint and/or Smartboard. This sounded very new and simple to me.

vrijdag 3 december 2010

Darwikinism

One of the speakers today introduced this funny new word to the audience:

"Darwikinism"

Survival of the fittest content

Deletionism + exclusionism / inclusionism = darwikinism



See: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Darwikinism

donderdag 2 december 2010

donderdag 12 november 2009

Visit to: Dé Onderwijsdagen 2009: Samen Slim Leren

Visit to: Dé Onderwijsdagen 2009: Samen Slim Leren
10 en 11 November 2009 Jaarbeurs Utrecht, Beatrixgebouw

The 10th of November I visited de Surf Onderwijsdagen http://owd2009.surf.nl/owd2009/ (most info in Dutch) where I visited a number of very interesting sessions. Below I made a small summary of my findings.
The 'Onderwijsdagen' are organized by the Surf foundation which promotes "Sustainable change of Dutch Higher Education by use of ICT and a systematic approach to innovation, knowledge development and dissemination".

Contents
-Keynote on Open Resources for Education (VERY INTERESTING)
-Session: "Kijk Mam Zonder Wachtwoord" ("Mama look, without password")
-Session E-Merge by Henk Frencken
-Session "Augmented reality" by Arno Coenders
-Session "ICT voorzieningen in the cloud' (ICT applications in the cloud")
-Keynote Marc Lammers (FIH Mastercoach Olympisch Bondscoach)

Keynote on Open Resources for Education (VERY INTERESTING)
Richard found out that 15 persons in the world where trying to write a similar book on Electrical Engineering at about the same time. They decided to write the book together and produced a raw book of 2000 pages. Everyone (lecturers) can now assemble his/her own book by selecting the relevant chapters/parts of this 'base book' and get it printed for 25$ per copy.
In his keynote he mentions a lot of other very interesting issues on Open Resources, especially the idea of 'Lenses' where institutes or people discuss the quality of certain Open Resources, which can be seen as a great alternative system of Quality control.
Resources:
Presentation:http://www.surfmedia.nl/medialibrary/item.html?id=YJ9ZFMeFacvuPUeQLQ2IR0Em
San Francisco Chronicle: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/01/22/EDRTUJ346.DTL
New York Times article: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/01/opinion/01tue3.html?_r=1
Connexions website: http://cnx.org/
About lenses: http://cnx.org/help/viewing/lenses

Session: "Kijk Mam Zonder Wachtwoord" ("Mama look, without password")
OpenID is a system whereby you login with a Service provider (Fe. Hotmail) after (via) the log in with an Identity Provider (Fe. Microsoft passport / Live ID). The Service provider does not keep passwords herself, but just trusts the Identity provider. This system ensures that during a session you only have to login ones and do not have to type passwords for each Service provider again.
Surfnet however has formed a 'Federation' with all main Universities in the Netherlands where the Identity check is done at the individual institutes that are part of the Federation. Within this Federation all parties trust each other and open up (some) Services to the other federation partners.
Reason for not wanting to use OpenID is that Universities do not want all User information to be stored with OpenID providers but want to be in control themselves.
Problem is that the Fedration uses another protocol then OpenID and thus does not fit in with publicly available Service Providers like Live@EDU and Google Apps.
Resources:
http://www.slideshare.net/DeOnderwijsdagen2009/411-kijk-mam-zonder-wachtwoord

Session E-Merge by Henk Frencken
E-merge is a regional alliance between TU-Delft, Hogeschool Leiden, Haagse Hogeschool and University of Leiden to work on projects to innovate education by ICT. On http://www.e-merge.nu/ you can find what they are working on. For us interesting is the project on E-portfolio http://www.e-merge.nu/index.php?id=214 .

Session "Augmented reality" by Arno Coenders
This was a very nice presentation on the (future) use of augmented reality in education. Best example is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9KPJlA5yds , a small movie by BMW. Another nice example is http://alien.t-immersion.com/ . If you install and run the application, you can hold the pages of the book in front of the camera which will replace the page (visible on the screen via the webcam) by a three dimensional figure that will move over the screen as you move the page in front of the camera. An example on YouTube is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foAaQsdka0w
Resources:
http://www.slideshare.net/DeOnderwijsdagen2009/716-augmented-reality-arno-coenders

Session "ICT voorzieningen in the cloud' (ICT applications in the cloud") Question in this presentation was whether Universities should move their E-mail to the cloud or not. Both Google Apps and Live@EDU (Microsoft) are offering to host the E-mail of institutes on their computers. Institutes keep a lot of control over the email boxes and can keep using their own URL, so it seems a perfect solution. Microsoft offers the service for free, at least for the first 4 years (what happens then, no one knows).
According to the speakers, Microsoft has the best legal arrangements. This is important because mail is stored on servers in the US where other laws are valid etc. Problem with Microsoft is that they do not comply with the Surf federation login system (see above). This problem is being worked on by Microsoft however. Advice of the speakers is to wait with moving E-mail to the cloud until the federated login is working because institutes do not want to move the credentials of staff and student to an outside organization.
Resources:
http://www.slideshare.net/DeOnderwijsdagen2009/415-ict-voorzieningen-in-the-cloud-uitbesteden-of-niet-andres-steijaert

Keynote Marc Lammers (FIH Mastercoach Olympisch Bondscoach)
Interesting pep-talk on becoming the best using innovations.
Resources:
http://www.surfmedia.nl/medialibrary/item.html?id=KvGNG40DHlgxgoYFpdZXeYw1

Visit to: Educause “The best thinking in Higher Education IT”-conference in Denver (4-6 November 2009)

Hello all,
From 4-6 November 2009 I visited the Educause conference “The best thinking in Higher Education IT”-conference in Denver. The visit was organized as a trip by the SURF foundation. We travelled with 35 persons, mostly working in organizations for Higher Education. On https://www.surfgroepen.nl/sites/edutrip2009/default.aspx the “Edutrip SURFgroep” you will find small reports from the sessions we visited. Below a small report of the sessions I visited and that might be of interest for some of you


Keynote: Good to Great and the Social Sectors Session Type: General Session.
-E-Portfolio Lightning Round.
-Building a Cost-Effective Cloud Computing Campus Cyberinfrastructure for Education and Research.
-Library Lightning Round.
-Hailing from "Foreign": The Plight and Delight of Embodying Culture Change.
-Keynote: It Is About Time: Getting Our Values Around Copyright Right.
-Developing a Next-Generation Campus Web Portal
-Creating a Global Community: Knowledge Given, Knowledge Gained.
-Embracing the Cloud: New Approaches for Delivering Campus IT Services—Strategy and Policy Development



Wednesday Nov 4th, 2009 8:15 AM - 9:45 AM



Keynote: Good to Great and the Social Sectors Session Type: General Session

“Author of the best-selling Good to Great (and its supplement Good to Great and the Social Sectors), co-author of the enduring classic Built to Last, and author of the recently released How the Mighty Fall, Jim Collins will challenge participants to think about the key drivers that distinguish great institutions from others. Why do some become great? Why do some never transcend mediocrity? Why do some great enterprises fall? And why do some prevail to greatness even in a tumultuous world spinning out of control, characterized by rapid and unpredictable change, risk, peril, luck, and overwhelming opportunity? Greatness, he teaches, is not primarily a function of circumstance but of conscious choice and discipline. Collins will discuss how participants can apply the lessons to their own organizations, leadership challenges, and personal choices. In this session, he will pay particular attention to the challenges facing social sector leaders in higher education.”





Wednesday Nov 4th, 2009 10:30 AM - 11:20 AM

E-Portfolio Lightning Round

This was an interesting view on some different ways of using E-portfolios. I included a Blog of Allan Shawn Yorke which quite accurately expresses what it was all about.


Building Blog-Based E-Portfolios: Multiple Units and Dynamic Platforms. Geoffrey C. Middlebrook, University of Southern California

Design, Implementation, and Maintenance of the Clinical Practice E-Portfolio. Ivy Tan, University of Saskatchewan

Eastern CT SU's Liberal Education E-Portfolios During Trying Times. David L. Stoloff, Eastern Connecticut State University

Implementing Electronic Portfolios by Beginning with Student Assessment. Patrick Lowenthal, University of Colorado Denver
Searching for an E-Portfolio Solution Collaboratively. Lorna Wong, University of Wisconsin System Administration


Resources referred to:

Helen barrett’s videos on eportfolio and digitally Storytelling http://eportfolios.blip.tv/


Eastern Connecticut State University Liberal Education Electronic portFolio (Eastern LEEF): http://sites.google.com/site/easterncsueportfolio/Home

Allan Shawn Yorke’s BLOG from this lightning round: http://www.personal.psu.edu/asg102/blogs/portfolio/2009/11/eportfolio-lightning-round.html


Wednesday Nov 4th, 2009 11:40 AM - 12:30 PM

Building a Cost-Effective Cloud Computing Campus Cyberinfrastructure for Education and Research

Patrick Dreher first explains what different terms are all used in the discussions on ‘Cloud Computing’ like:

HaaS - Hardware as a service

IaaS - Infrastructure as as service

Public cloud

Private cloud

Patrick explains the system they have built. Based on 350 blade servers they run a pool of virtual machines that is being controlled by hardware devices that offer them to the staff and students via a web interface. In the web browser you select what machine you want to work on and for how long (30 minutes to 8 hours). Then an RDP session is started and you are offered the one-time username and password for that machine in the web browser.

This way you can order for example 20 Windows XP machines with Mathematica software installed for your lecture room the next morning.

All software used is Open Source, so anyone could built this system them self.

Resources referred to:

Campus Cyberinfrastructure (CCI) Working Group http://www.educause.edu/CCI

Wednesday Nov 4th, 2009 2:15 PM - 3:05 PM

Library Lightning RoundThese two presentations were focused on the role a library could play in Information literacy instruction. Megan Fitzgibbons gave a very good presentation on the use of CMAP Concept Mapping software that she used to determine the places in the learning process where the library could support. An example can be seen on page 7 in the resource “Concept_mapping_presentation_slides” at the bottom of this post.


Concept Mapping for Collaboration. Megan Fitzgibbons, McGill University

Based on analysis of syllabi and assignments, concept mapping software is used to visualize and align the learning outcomes of university courses with librarians' information literacy instruction.

Information Literacy in the Curriculum: Faculty Guidance Using Focus Groups. Roseann Bowerman, Lehigh University


Resources referred to:

Concept_mapping_presentation_slides: http://www.educause.edu/sites/default/files/library/presentations/E09/SESS034/Fitzgibbons_EDUCAUSE_2009.pdf

And

http://library.concordia.ca/about/staff/forum/Fitzgibbons_presentation09.pdf


Poster of Megan Fitzgibbons on Concept Maps

http://library.concordia.ca/about/staff/forum/Fitzgibbons_poster09.pdf


Combined presentations: http://www.educause.edu/sites/default/files/library/presentations/E09/SESS034/library_lightninground.pptx


Thursday Nov 5th, 2009 8:10 AM - 9:00 AM

Hailing from "Foreign": The Plight and Delight of Embodying Culture Change
“If you have been brought to an organization as a change agent, how do you lead in a culture that may be different from the one you left behind? What are the obstacles? The panelists, who recently moved into new work cultures, including some abroad, will discuss and extract common themes.”

This session was a wonderful discussion on what is needed and what plays a role when being a change agent in a new environment. One of the panel members was present via videoconference on a laptop screen which worked very well.

Books/Publications that were mentioned as important by the individual panel members:

Scarf a brain-based model for colloborating with and influencing others: http://academy.clevelandclinic.org/Portals/40/SCARF.pdf

Healing the wounds ,david noer: http://www.totalpicture.com/shows/big-picture/david-noer-the-layoff-survivors.html
Bates, A.W. (Tony) (2000), Managing Technological Change: Strategies for College and University Leaders: http://edutechwiki.unige.ch/en/Bates_managing_technological_change_model


Thursday Nov 5th, 2009 9:30 AM - 11:00 AM

Keynote: It Is About Time: Getting Our Values Around Copyright Right


In this talk, Lawrence Lessig reviewed the progress of the "open access" movement in education. He made a call for educators to finally resolve this issue in a way that enables the potential of technology for education. The way to go is something similar as the Creative Commons for music and art. Each scientist could add a “Scientific Commons” paragraph to his/her publication, allowing others to cite and use texts from the publication as long as they also allow this with the same Scientific Commons” paragraph.


Resources

Session Video and slides: http://www.educause.edu/Resources/EDUCAUSE2009FacetoFaceConferen/ItIsAboutTimeGettingOurValuesA/175767#tabs--2

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons



Thursday Nov 5th, 2009 11:45 AM - 12:35 PM

Developing a Next-Generation Campus Web Portal


This presentation was about the creation of a web portal environment to help bridge on- and off-campus worlds, improve access to resources, and allow community members to publish their own information portlets and collections. What they showed was a really good practical and pragmatic portal environment that was very well received by their students and staff.


Resources

Powerpoint: http://www.educause.edu/sites/default/files/library/presentations/E09/SESS074/EDUCAUSE%2BNov%2B2009%2B-%2BNext%2BGen%2BCampus%2BWeb%2BPortal.pptx



Project website: http://www.ithaca.edu/myhome/



Friday Nov 6th, 2009 8:10 AM - 9:00 AM


Creating a Global Community: Knowledge Given, Knowledge Gained

Duke University thinks that to be able to solve global problems students will benefit from an interdisciplinary and international approach. That is why Duke stimulates students to study one or more semesters abroad and has the interdisciplinary focus program.

"Dukes Global Programmes" http://studyabroad.duke.edu/home/Programs

"Duke Engage Programme" allows students to spend a summer abroad on a project on a Duke scholarship.

"Themed or Focus programs” offer students the opportunity to approach topics from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. http://interdisciplinary.duke.edu/education/focus_programs/index.php ("Duke-China" project is an example)

Because cultural experience of being at Duke is also important ICT has started a program to make that students/staff abroad feel they are at Duke in Durham.

Statement about one of the bottlenecks is: "Bandwidth is the key to everything"

Things ICT worked on:

-Website for International programmes

-Networksystems abroad (with partners)

-Flip Videos (several hundreds) are given to students abroad to do:

-Video journaling

-Video BLOGs

-Video Interviews

This is called "Duke Digital Initiative"

-Campus in a box. Duke is working on a box (suitcase/19" rack) to connect remote sites really physically to the Duke network (firewall etc.)

-Working on tele-presence (see Cisco telepresence magic on Youtube)

Duke has a "Global programme"-steering group to keep communication as good as possible between faculties and ICT etc.

Newcastle University

At the airport of Minneapolis I met Steve Williams, Director of Information Systems & Services Ctaremont Tower of Newcastle University. He also attended the “Duke”-session at Educause and told me that Newcastle University was also stimulating their students to study abroad. http://www.ncl.ac.uk/about/global/

Resource:

Presentation + Slides: http://educause.mediasite.com/mediasite/SilverlightPlayer/Default.aspx?peid=4900dfd224964cc5bc8f1d15a573e40f

Duke study abroad website: http://studyabroad.duke.edu/home/Programs

Approved programmes abroad:

Duke engage programme:

Focus Programs:.


Friday Nov 6th, 2009 9:30 AM - 10:20 AM

Embracing the Cloud: New Approaches for Delivering Campus IT Services—Strategy and Policy Development

This was a crystal clear and good presentation of the CIO of NJIT and an Instructional Designer of NJIT.

Outsourcing, open source, SaaS, and virtualization offer new approaches for delivering campus IT services. Examples at NJIT include Google Mail, Postini, Moodle, iTunes U, thin-client desktops, and Amazon Web Services. The session outlines strategy development and implementation and support issues from a CIO perspective and an instructional/user-support perspective.


NJIT is one of the 3 public research universities of New Jersey and is located in Newark.


A cite from a long time ago: "The network is the computer" SUN computing

“Users need not have knowledge of, expertise in, or control over the technology infrastructure in the "cloud" that supports them.”

Things to remind when going to Cloud computing:

-Use local authentication --> Shibboleth

-Locally brand your cloud applications

-Make sure you have a degree of web services expertise (.csv, XML ....) in house

Why Cloud computing according to NJIT?

-E-mail is nowadays a commodity like water and electricity. Commodity suppliers today have a scale we cannot compete with.

-Arizona State University saves $500.000/year by outsourcing E-mail to Google. The Chronicle of Higher Education - 1/11/2008

2 options for E-mail in the cloud

-Microsoft live @edu (only windows operating system, coupled tightly to Microsoft offerings)

-Google Apps (connection to Open Office)

NJIT sees several reasons for putting E-mail in the cloud:

-NJIT is transitioning "Email for live" to "Mail-forwarding" . The existing alumni mailboxes are outsourced to Google mail.

-When hosted by Google you have no worries and costs for mail-hygiene (Virus/Spam/DoS)

Open Source

Old model: "Build or Buy"

New model: "Build, Buy or Befriend"

VLE

NJIT replaced WEBCT for Moodle. They hired "Moodlerooms" to host a pilot now.

-LDAP integration and add/drop is handled via .csv file.

-Mahara e-portfolio is hosted by Moodlerooms (bundled with Moodle) as well

-Drupal Content management is used for Courses, Websites, Video repositories and groups.

-NJIT joined Open Courseware initiative (consortium)

Multimedia

NJIT utilizes Apple's bandwidth by storing their Audio and Video on iTunes. (Check out their Wallstreet metldown series)

Facebook

School on Facebook ( www.inigral.com )

NJIT gives each course a facebook group to socialize and discuss the course.

Youtube

used to store videos . Make sure you tag all videos (Like Newark-....) In our case IHE-hydroinf IHE-water etc....

"Just in time computing" --> a server for every student is possible in the cloud.

Research

-Elastic Computer cloud

"Amazon web services for Education" is not expensive

Local clouds

Managing Virtual Machines saves time and you can expand and contractresources with the application lifecycle. So, at times when system is busy

Resources:

Some definitions: http://www.nice-italy.com/web/nice/cloud

Powerpoint of presentation: http://www.educause.edu/sites/default/files/library/presentations/E09/SESS133/embracing_cloud_ullman_haggerty.ppt