Reinveting the Internet is not easy. Researchers working on a federally supported effort to design a replacement recently had to go back to the drawing board. They now think the best way to do it is to try several "best ways" instead of searching for just one--and to invite help from social scientists rather than just self-described computer…

Cloud computing, one of the latest technology buzzwords, is so hard to explain that Google drove a bus from campus to campus to walk students through the company's vision of it. After students sat through a demo at computers set up nearby, they boarded the bus and got free T-shirts. The bus only stopped at colleges that had already agreed to hand…

This article reports on Blackboard, a course-management system used by the University of Maryland-Baltimore County to rate and track the "most active instructors" using the university's course-management system. Just about every college has such a system these days, designed to track assignments and manage online class discussions, but…

Technology decisions should not be made solely in some geeky corner of the campus, but should be central to strategic planning and involve top academic leaders. Campus-technology leaders traded tales from the trenches and plenty of advice during the two-day Technology Forum, held in Tampa, Florida in February 2008. Ohio University responded to a…

A computer lab has become one of the most popular hangouts at Northern Virginia Community College after officials decided to load its PCs with popular video games, install a PlayStation and an Xbox, and declare it "for gamers only." The goal of this lab is to entice students to take game-design and other IT courses. John Min, dean of…

Many historically black colleges and universities have developed several projects to improve technology on campus and promote its use. Some see it as a key to institutional survival. Projects emphasize training students and faculty in computer use, making joint purchases, sharing on-line instructional experiences, and seeking grants to install…

This article reports on the most recent search-engine company to join with academic libraries in digitizing large collections of books to make them easily searchable online. Yahoo Inc. has teamed up with the University of California system, the University of Toronto, and several archives and technology companies on a project that could potentially…

Recently, Microsoft Corporation has become more aggressive in its attempts to sell products on college and university campuses, promising new licensing deals for colleges, free Microsoft training for computing officials, and advice on structuring university information-technology budgets. Critics are concerned that the trend will reduce…

Increasingly, colleges and universities are building warehouses for little-used library books, which can be delivered to campus on request. Warehousing saves money and provides better climate control for books. Scholars and students today have access to needed information through electronic databases and online catalogues, often from home, thus…

Some faculty feel that, as tasks become "unbundled," technology may take over instructional duties that define professor's jobs, with courses designed outside the institution, lectures replaced by Web sites, tests created and administered by outside organizations. Others feel that computers foster more interactive and lively learning environments…

Five of the world's largest libraries have joined Google in a herculean effort to digitize millions of books and make every sentence searchable. The project involves libraries at Harvard and Stanford Universities, the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and the University of Oxford, in England, as well as the New York Public Library. It could…

Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University is aggressively pursuing a plan to change the presentation and dissemination of student research by requiring students to submit theses and dissertations in digital form and creating a database on the World Wide Web that provides free, instantaneous access to graduate students' research. Some…