Blogs

In a letter sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Association of American Universities, EDUCAUSE joins others in urging the two presidential candidates to appoint a science advisor by the time they are sworn into office. It also asks that they upgrade the status of that advisor, given the importance science plays in many of the challenges facing America. Read the full letter here.

Assessment. Learning space design. Changing student and faculty practice. When polled, focus groups within the EDUCAUSE teaching and learning community identified their top “challenges” in teaching and learning with IT. But how does your list compare? What big issues dominate your campus conversations and water cooler debates? What challenges would you add?

In a letter sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Association of American Universities, EDUCAUSE joins others in urging the two presidential candidates to appoint a science advisor by the time they are sworn into office. It also asks that they upgrade the status of that advisor, given the importance science plays in many of the challenges facing America. See the letter text below:

"To Senators John McCain and Barack Obama,

The next President of the United States will face a wide range of domestic and international challenges, from financial and regulatory reform, to healthcare and rising energy costs, from global climate change to ensuring U.S. economic competitiveness and national security. These challenges share one thing in common: long-term solutions that will be impossible without groundbreaking scientific and technological advances. It is therefore critical that the next President seek out and rely upon sound scientific and technological advice early and often in the new Administration.

I edit the transdisciplinary studies book series with Jason Nolan

Towards Humane Technologies: Biotechnology, New Media and Ethics (Paperback)

The fifth annual National Cyber Security Awareness Month (NCSAM) was kicked off earlier today at an event held at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. The event featured a panel including DHS Assistant Secretary for Cyber Security and Communications Gregory Garcia, National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA) Executive Director Michael Kaiser, and Symantec Senior Director for Public Affairs Adam Rak.

Secretary Garcia described DHS efforts to improve cybersecurity and emphasize it as A Shared Responsibility. He cited increased government investment as a sign of the high priority given to cybersecurity by the federal government. The NCSA's Kaiser urged Americans to "keep up your defenses and hone your instincts". He explained that the NCSA will undertake a new "www" campaign in the coming months advising consumers to ask: who is asking for your information, what are they asking for, and why do they need it.

Before you can fix the problem, you must diagnose it.

On Tuesday, September 30, Congress passed the final version of S. 1492, the Broadband Data Improvement Act. It is expected that President Bush will sign the bill into law. The legislation requires the government to keep track of who has quick access to the Internet in the United States. Specifically, it requires the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to collect consumer surveys on broadband access in rural, urban, and suburban locations. Furthermore, the surveys would also cover small and large business markets.

The FCC will use the surveys to draw up a list of those locations that lack broadband service. They will include population and income level statistics with that information as well.

The lead sponsor of S. 1492, Sen. Daniel Inouye, is a supporter of greater access to broadband. He says you must measure the problem before you can manage it. Ostensibly, this bill takes the first step in completing the senator's mission.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has published the IT Security Essential Body of Knowledge (EBK). A Glossary of Key Terms used in the EBK is also provided.

According to the overview on the US-CERT website:

The IT Security EBK conceptualizes IT security skill requirements in a new way to address evolving IT security challenges. The EBK characterizes the IT security workforce and provides a national baseline representing the essential knowledge and skills that IT security practitioners should have to perform specific roles and responsibilities.

The EBK was featured in a November 2007 EDUCAUSE Live! presentation when DHS was accepting comments on a draft version of the document.

Jamie's Ministry of Food, the celebrity chef's new TV series, is a powerful portrait of the socially excluded. It also reveals an enduring truth, says Felicity Lawrence: our diet today is as much about class as it always has been - and it will take more than a one-man mission to change that

[From Felicity Lawrence on Jamie Oliver's TV series Jamie's Ministry of Food | Life and style | The Guardian ]

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Given that we face the same sort of issues in the United States, with students coming into classes with various nutrition related illnesses, I think it might be worth considering some of the points made in this article about the issues about food in the U.K.

It is a bit off-topic, and it is nominally about a tv series, but I think it points toward some distressing issues that translate into computing behaviours also.

For a long time I was working on a dissertation looking at Open Source technologies. Today, I did not turn that dissertation in. That project has been shelved. Today I turned in the first draft of a dissertation on the Critical Political Economy of New Knowledge Technologies. I have a ton of research on Open Source things, but in the end, I looked at all that has been done in the last few years and decided descriptive sts work on open source technologies didn't really interest me so much as much as cyberinfrastructures, e-social science, and virtual worlds. Which, I've been writing a good bit about in the last few years. So That's what the dissertation is about and its in draft.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has published the IT Security Essential Body of Knowledge (EBK). A Glossary of Key Terms used in the EBK is also provided.

According to the overview on the US-CERT website:

The IT Security EBK conceptualizes IT security skill requirements in a new way to address evolving IT security challenges. The EBK characterizes the IT security workforce and provides a national baseline representing the essential knowledge and skills that IT security practitioners should have to perform specific roles and responsibilities.

The EBK was featured in November 2007 on EDUCAUSE Live! presentation when DHS was accepting comments on a draft version of the document.

October is National Cyber Security Awareness Month (NCSAM). As we rely more on technology-based solutions in our everyday lives, cybersecurity becomes everyone's responsibility. We encourage you to consider ways you can raise awareness among your faculty, staff, and students and invite you to help promote NCSAM. For further suggestions, please consult the Resource Kit for National Cyber Security Awareness Month, developed by the EDUCAUSE/Internet2 Security Task Force. 

Additional EDUCAUSE resources include: 

EDUCAUSE Review and Publisher/Editor D. Teddy Diggs won a 2008 Ozzie Award in the category Best Use of Digital Imagery, Association/Non-Profit for the article "Dr. Mashup" from the July 2007 issue. View the full list of winners.

This post was written in response to danah boyd’s post, “Facebook and Techcrunch: the costs of technological determinism and configuring users.” danah focused on recent (and not so recent) attempts by social network sites like Facebook to regulate how individuals relate to others when using their service. I noticed that danah’s argument—expressing a consistent point of view, whose development you can trace in her writing—reinforces the criticisms I made of the Spock service last December.

I'm looking forward to attending this year's Education Unbound event, organised by digital agency Online Creative Communications. I'll be joining Futurelab learning researcher Dan Sutch, teacher and web 2.0 advocate David Noble, and co-founder of the "School of Everything", Andy Gibson, on the speakers' panel for the evening event. Channel 4's Matt Locke will be cat-herding, ahem, moderating what I'm sure will be a very lively discussion on all things related to learning and social media. Last year's event, which focused partly on the impact of social media on educational publishing, was reportedly thought-provoking - see previous participant Ewan McIntosh's lucid dissection of the 2007 event.

This fifty-minute podcast features a session from the EDUCAUSE 2007 Annual Conference. The session,
"Kuali Rice: Simplifying Software Development," is presented by Aaron Godert, Senior Software Architect/Engineer at Cornell University.

Kuali Rice integrates workflow, a lightweight service bus, and centralized notification within an easy-to-use, enterprise class, development framework. The suite enables agile development so that developers can react to end-user business requirements in an efficient and productive manner, allowing them to focus on producing high-quality business applications. Additional resources are available for this session.