The work presented here demonstrates the feasibility of using the single-mode fibers of an optical Internet network to deliver visible light between separate laboratories as a way to perform remote spectroscopy in the visible for teaching purposes. The coupling of a broadband light source into the single-mode fiber (SMF) and the characterization…

People live in an era of social, enterprise-oriented, and increasingly cloud-based technology; a dramatic shift away from stand-alone isolated silos that previously dominated. Computing systems can flourish today only when built to easily exchange data and services. An application that stands alone may provide practical functionality but may not…

The word "wisdom" is rarely seen in contemporary technology and learning discourse. This conceptual paper aims to provide some clear principles that answer the question: How can we establish wisdom in complex learning networks? By considering the nature of contemporary calls for wisdom the paper provides a metatheoretial framework to evaluate the…

Education facilities managers are faced with a daunting set of challenges: They must find new ways to reduce energy consumption and carry out greener energy policies. HVAC typically accounts for more than 30% of a building's electricity costs, so there is a clear incentive to eliminate unnecessary heating and cooling of unoccupied rooms. With more…

Simulation environments make it possible for science and engineering students to learn to interact with complex systems. Putting these capabilities to effective use for learning, and assessing learning, requires more than a simulation environment alone. It requires a conceptual framework for the knowledge, skills, and ways of thinking that are…

We implemented two local area network (LAN) projects in our introductory data communications and networking course. The first project required students to develop a LAN from scratch for a small imaginary organization. The second project required student groups to analyze a LAN for a real world small organization. By allowing students to apply what…

Cloud computing is definitely a thing now, but it's not new and it's not even novel. Back when people were first learning about the Internet in the 1990s, every diagram that one saw showing how the Internet worked had a big cloud in the middle. That cloud represented the diverse links, routers, gateways, and protocols that passed traffic around in…

Radford University was recently configured with a campus-wide wireless local area network. Using these new capabilities, a classroom-based Honors section of Concepts of Biology was conducted solely using electronic technologies (paper was never transferred from professor to student). To accomplish this, students used common software and freeware.…

A parent walking into a classroom in a Minnesota public school today will be presented with a different learning environment compared to that of 20 years ago. Gone are filmstrips and movie projectors and in their place are computer screens. Today's classroom is a heavy user of digital media, and much of that is accessed via the Internet. It is…

One way to bring concepts to life in an introductory data networks course is for students to physically build a network that addresses a real business problem. However it can be challenging to find a suitable business problem, particularly if the network can exist only during the class period. This case presents a realistic business scenario and…

This report reflects a collaborative research effort to help inform Brazilian educational leaders about significant developments in technologies supporting teaching, learning, and creative inquiry in primary and secondary education. In an effort that ran from August through October 2012, a carefully selected group of 30 experts considered hundreds…

In this era of political rancor when everything is a zero-sum game, it is refreshing to think that two parties could actually come together to create a win-win situation. That is exactly what is happening, though, as a number of universities take on the role of application service provider (ASP) for smaller schools. It is not all confetti and…

This paper describes a competition-style of exercise to teach system and network security and to reinforce themes taught in class. The exercise, called NetSecLab, is conducted on a closed network with student-formed teams, each with their own Linux system to defend and from which to launch attacks. Students are expected to learn how to: 1) install…

In this article, a course on high-frequency wireless communications systems is presented. With the 145-MHz baseband subsystem available from a prerequisite course, the present course emphasizes the design and implementation of the 2.45-GHz front-end subsystem as well as system integration issues. In this curriculum, the 2.45-GHz front-end…

Hiring substitute teachers used to be an early-morning calling burden for staff members at schools in Oregon's Coos Bay School District. Now that work has been passed off to Aesop, a service from Frontline Placement Technologies, which springs into action upon receiving a notification, either by call or log-in, from a teacher reporting an absence.…