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…

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,…

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.…

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.…

Despite the last few years' growth in awareness of open-source software in schools and the potential savings it represents, its widespread adoption is still hampered. Randy Orwin, technology director of the Bainbridge Island School District in Washington State and a strong open-source advocate, cautions that installing an open-source…

This article provides a list of the essential steps to keeping a school's or district's network safe and sound. It describes how to establish a security architecture and approach that will continually evolve as the threat environment changes over time. The article discusses the methodology for implementing this approach and then discusses the…

Discusses distance learning at East Mecklenburg High School (Charlotte, North Carolina), a demonstration site for the North Carolina Information Highway. Highlights include community/adult education, hardware, costs, video and sound equipment, distance learning class scheduling, and future outlooks. (AEF)

Discussion of technology planning in schools focuses on the total cost of ownership, a model from business that can be helpful in determining the real costs of educational technology. Highlights include learning resources; organizational impacts and management; computer network resources, including software; research and development; and spirit…

Describes fiber optic technology, explains its use in education and commercial settings, and recommends regulations and legislation that will speed its use to create broadband information networks. Topics discussed include distance learning; interactive video; costs; and the roles of policy makers, lawmakers, public advocacy groups, and consumers.…

Benchmarking information technology services has become a vital activity for colleges and universities. The COSTS Project (http://www.costsproject.org/) is an ongoing quantitative effort to benchmark the costs of providing IT services in higher education; the project helps institutions understand their IT budgets and staffing relative to peer…

This document presents witness testimony and supplemental materials from a Congressional hearing addressing the potential as well as the affordability of educational technology and the classroom of the future, where computers and computer networks will increasingly aid teachers and facilitate learning. Those presenting prepared statements are…

The scope of this project included end-user computing devices, network servers, local area network hardware, and the labor costs associated with each of these components. Software, application service providers, content and curriculum development, and staff developmental training were included as well. The case study is composed of five sections.…

Many educational institutions have a substantial personal computer (PC) network that can be adapted to provide digital video on demand, as well as PCs that can be used as video on demand clients. To gain insight into the issues involved in using this technology in an educational environment that relies heavily on video, a simple, low cost video on…

Provides answers to questions that educators have about networking. Highlights include functions of a network; effect on instruction and administration; connecting to the Internet; the most common kind of network; decision making; smart shopping; costs; and the future for school networking. (AEF)

This report summarizes one of a series of workshops organized by RAND's Critical Technologies Institute (CTI), on behalf of the U.S. Department of Education, to take advantage of the experience and insights of those already implementing new technologies in schools. The workshop consisted chiefly of dialogues with educators and experts from the…