Many rural areas of the country lack an on-ramp to the information superhighway for people who are looking for educational and professional advancement, which leaves these rural communities frustrated by a situation that puts their residents at a significant disadvantage. This article describes Quick Start and Advanced Internet Regions (AIR.U) as…

Game-based learning (GBL) combines pedagogy and interactive entertainment to create a virtual learning environment in an effort to motivate and regain the interest of a new generation of "digital native" learners. However, this approach is impeded by the limited availability of suitable "serious" games and high-level design…

Many institutions implement a distributed antenna system (DAS) as part of a holistic approach to providing better wireless coverage and capacity on campus. A DAS provides wireless service within a particular area or structure via a network of separate antenna nodes that are connected to a common source through fiber or coaxial cable. Because DAS…

Most school business officials have heard the term "cloud computing" bandied about and may have some idea of what the term means. In fact, they likely already leverage a cloud-computing solution somewhere within their district. But what does cloud computing really mean? This brief article puts a bit of definition behind the term and helps one…

Many students probably take pictures daily. Whether snapshots of their friends at a Justin Bieber concert or of their latest skateboard trick, these images document changes in a student's life. Digital cameras can do more, however, than record memories to post on Facebook. They can also help students examine changes in their environment. This…

For better or worse, college sports are a big, big deal. But the value of sports on campus goes far beyond gate receipts, sponsorships, and TV revenues. Regardless of the size of a school, sports are a key element in spurring alumni giving and involvement; they play a major factor in helping prospective students select a college; and they help…

Who hasn't received mail from a company notifying them that their personal information may have been compromised? No organization--not Amazon, not the CIA--is immune to cyberattacks, and higher education is no exception. Indeed, colleges and universities may be even more susceptible to security breaches than their corporate brethren, and the…

This paper outlines the process by which the Ontario Education Research Exchange (OERE), part of the Knowledge Network of Applied Education Research, developed and launched an online hub of education research summaries to facilitate greater use of research by stakeholders in the field of education. The project is an effort in knowledge…

We describe our experiences teaching MapReduce in a large undergraduate lecture course using public cloud services and the standard Hadoop API. Using the standard API, students directly experienced the quality of industrial big-data tools. Using the cloud, every student could carry out scalability benchmarking assignments on realistic hardware,…

In this article, the authors discuss the development of the "Sudan Game," an interactive model of the country in the time period leading up to the Sudanese referendum on the secession of the South. While many simulations are designed to educate about their subjects, the "Sudan Game" is intended to be a prototype for policy…

Putting a CIO and a lawyer together in the same room may give one the start of a pretty decent joke, but it could also save an institution millions of dollars in legal fees. While the IT chief understands the systems that fall under the purview of compliance, the attorney is the go-to pessimist for identifying the "gotcha" elements when it comes…

In contributing to understanding about the barriers and opportunities associated with new technologies in educational settings, this article explores dimensions of the educational spaces associated with using networked technologies in contemporary classrooms. After considering how educational spaces may be "produced" (to use Lefebvre's…

The future cyber security workforce needs radio frequency identification (RFID) information systems security (INFOSEC) and threat modeling educational materials. A complete RFID security course with new learning materials and teaching strategies is presented here. A new RFID Reference Model is used in the course to organize discussion of RFID,…

Colleges and universities have got a big problem: how to bake a wireless network as good as Mom's. The problem is that enterprise wireless networks "tend to be a little more finicky" than the home ones. While the home devices are plug-and-play, enterprise networks force IT departments to manage client issues such as drivers and settings. It's a…

Courses in Information Technology Ethics are often designed as discussion-intensive courses where case studies are introduced and evaluated using ethical theories. Although many of the case studies directly apply to our students' online lives, the stories can sometimes seem too far removed from their own experiences. While we read the news…