Inside campus libraries and dormitory rooms, thousands of students connect to the Internet not only to study with online systems like Blackboard but also to watch movies and TV shows on Netflix. Computers, smartphones, wireless printers, tablets, iPods, Xboxes, handheld gaming systems, e-readers, smart TVs, Blu-ray players--students now bring an…

Describes how California's Peralta Community Colleges District decided to hire an outside company to manage its computer networks, but that problems cause it to now want a technology boss on its own staff. (EV)

This article describes The Onion Router (TOR). It is a freely available, open-source program developed by the U.S. Navy about a decade ago. A browser plug-in, it thwarts online traffic analysis and related forms of Internet surveillance by sending your data packets through different routers around the world. As each packet moves from one router to…

Describes how colleges are taking advantage of bargains on fiber-optic lines to build regional computer networks; some envision a national network for academe. (EV)

Describes how universities are weighing changes to or termination of their modem pools, which allow off-campus faculty, staff, and students to have access to the campus network or the Internet. (EV)

Describes how the University of the South Pacific has created a satellite-based computer network aimed at greatly expanding its offerings to students on remote islands. (EV)

Nearly three years after the beginning of the Internet2 project, designed to enhance research by building a superfast version of the Internet, few professors are finding it revolutionary. Most participating institutions have not upgraded local networks to take full advantage of the two interconnected high-speed networks used by the project.…

No college or university last year joined the 14 institutions that already require students to buy computers. The reasons include: greater than expected costs of supporting required computers, lack of educational software, and adequency of computer laboratories are sufficient for the needs of most students. (MLW)

Increasingly, colleges are debating whether or not to require students to own computers. Issues include whether computers are the best use of student resources, how to pay for the cost of both computers and campus networks, faculty perceptions of the need for computers, and computer access versus computer ownership. (MSE)

Increasingly, college career counseling centers are using the World Wide Web to provide career information, job listings, and telecommunications links for long-distance job interviews. The online listings tend to be specialized, and there is concern about accountability for them, but supporters find the greater availability of career information a…

Colleges and universities are finding that ways to misbehave in computer-mediated communication come along faster than institutions can create policies to deal with them. Although most schools have acceptable-use policies, technological advances change the environment quickly and require flexible policies. Most institutions have created a mix of…

As Abilene and other research networks designed to substantially enhance research capabilities join the Internet, network managers are concerned about unforeseen problems with the untested systems and their complex connections. (MSE)

A survey of directors of academic computing at 981 2- and 4-year colleges found that identifying appropriate software for faculty is considered a more important function than developing software for classroom use; that public research universities are anticipating more computing budget cuts; that networking is increasing; and that student and…

College administrators are complaining that "Yahoo! Internet Life" magazine used a flawed surveying process and inaccurate data to select the institutions it named in a recent ranking of "American's 100 Most Wired Colleges." Even some institutions faring well in the ranking have concerns about the survey, citing problems with…

A recent study rated colleges and universities on computer connectedness, using such criteria as faculty use of the Internet for academic purposes (online homework, course home pages, online academic materials); required courses in Internet use; computers, wires, and network connections for students and faculty; non-academic Internet services…