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December, 2007

The Edutech Report - December, 2007 - Full Issue PDF
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Smart Consolidations to Limit IT Costs
By Thomas Warger
Information technology cannot always cost more, grow ever bigger, and consume more staff time. The benefits of task automation have been real, but they have been increasingly offset by inefficiencies in the very fabric of information technology in higher education. The campus hunger for IT needs to encounter something like the restraints on most other campus appetites. The challenge for the IT group is to take a more directive approach to driving selected consolidation of systems, services, and standards, without which IT costs will rise unsustainably.

Quotes of the Month
IT terra incognita; media literacy

Newsbriefs
Higher Education IT Security Report Card; First Global Faculty E-book Survey Results; Looking for Manuscripts on MUVEs

After the Library Catalog
Web 2.0 has raised user expectations of how electronic assets should be presented. And, as some librarians and other people will tell you, users seem to have fewer skills and less patience for searching and navigating library catalogs. The Web has instilled the expectation that everyone can be a competent searcher, so the online public access catalogs looks deficient when compared to everyone’s favorite search engines, online transactional environments, and application skins. Users now expect search interfaces to be truly interactive: they can select the scope of the search and the selection criteria they prefer. They want to be able to refine and drill into results without repeating the search. They want the information source to retain information about their choices and their search and activity histories.

Consultants: Looking at the CIO
By Thomas Warger
Consultants are engaged, encountered, or endured in a variety of circumstances in the lives of CIOs. What CIOs need to do in these instances varies considerably, depending on the nature of the consultancy and the reason it is happening.

Your First High-Stakes Budget
By Thomas Warger
You are the brand new CIO, reporting to the president, and you need to compete head-on with the other senior administrators in the annual budget battle. This is the time in the annual budget cycle when new requests are brought forward, among much jockeying and gamesmanship. The hard work begins this winter, once the board of trustees sets the actual threshold for next year’s budget.

Edutech Responds
Usefulness of Table PCs; Capturing Classroom Audio and Video; Providing Technology Support for Night Classes; Landline Dorm Phones