Thanks to intelligent solutions, schools, colleges, and universities no longer need to manage user account life cycles by using scripts or tedious manual procedures. The solutions house the scripts and manual procedures. Accounts can be automatically created, modified, or deleted in all applications within the school. This article describes how an…

The for-profit sector of higher education has generated some disturbing headlines recently. Widely publicized charges of predatory recruiting practices have prompted new regulations and provided fuel for scorching criticism of the entire business model. But while the spotlight is focused on what for-profits are doing wrong, are people overlooking…

Is the print textbook--that old-fashioned, heavy, expensive staple of the 20th-century classroom--soon to be a thing of the past? While it's hard to imagine the K-12 world, known for its resistance to change, throwing out math, language, and science textbooks in favor of digital content, the nation's current fiscal crisis, combined with major…

More and more school districts across the country are joining social networking sites, such as Facebook and MySpace. This Information Capsule discusses the frequency with which school districts are using social networking sites, how districts are using the sites, and potential drawbacks associated with their use. Issues for districts to consider…

Engaging the digital natives isn't as daunting as one thinks. This article describes how three classrooms do it. One of these is in Brevard Public Schools in Viera, Florida. Pete Episcopo, the digital-media artist of the school, wanted to share his love of all things digital and teach essential 21st-century skills so students could be better…

Community and family involvement in schools is a well-documented antecedent to student success; yet, educators often find it challenging to increase involvement with parents and members of diverse communities. One solution is to use information and communication technology (ICT) as a bridge between schools, families, and the community. This…

"Building Institutional Capacity for Data-Informed Decision Making" is the third installment of the Cutting Edge series, which aims to help colleges engage faculty, scale successful interventions, and create a strong culture of evidence through use of data to strengthen their institutional change and student success efforts. Though the…

With Internet usage in the United States at an all-time high, information technology use in education has continued to increase. Research has shown that many students are utilizing these materials to search out information and assist with completing class assignments. Many college students have described the Internet as a functional tool that…

As President Obama said in advance remarks about the American Graduation Initiative: "[T]he hard truth is that some of the jobs that have been lost in the auto industry and elsewhere won't be coming back. And that only underscores the importance of generating new businesses and industries to replace the ones we've lost, and of preparing our…

When most academic technologists tackle computing, their time is occupied by laptops and servers--relatively small-scale stuff. A couple of blades here, a couple of blades there. Generally, even for network managers, the processing power rarely stacks up to anything awe-inspiring. Sometimes, however, computing can be bigger and broader than many…

Enrollment in distance and technology mediated instruction has seen strong growth at Florida's public universities over the past six years, closely following the growth in overall student enrollment up to 2002-03. This document includes: (1) a bulleted list of key growth indicators; (2) a chart that compares distance education enrollment with…

Discussion of the Florida Learning Support Systems, being developed by schools and businesses to better utilize information technology in education, focuses on use of the Internet as background communication, or communication between applications running on different computers without human intervention to develop new kinds of instructional and…

The "ISSS Annual Conference Proceedings" is a peer-reviewed professional publication published once a year following the annual conference. (Individual papers contain references.) [For the 2009 proceedings, see ED504973.]