February, 2007

The Edutech Report - February, 2007 - Full Issue PDF
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What the Trustees Are Asking
By Thomas Warger
Trustees and governing board members are more likely now to ask questions about institutional information technology than they were even a few years ago. Some of the motivation for their interest is in response to problems in recent years. The year 2000 did more than anything else to raise the visibility of IT for the public in general, including trustees. More recently, virus outbreaks, security lapses, and hurricane disasters have kept awareness of IT high, at least regarding its vulnerabilities. The rise of consumer-level digital technology has brought technology into almost everyone’s life, but this does not necessarily connect in the public view with the rest of information technology.

Quotes of the Month
Spellings Commission and technology; Web 2.0

Newsbriefs
EDUCAUSE Supports Legislation to Protect the Open Internet; Training College Students in Information Literacy

Creating Alignment
By Linda Fleit
Many higher education IT environments are troubled these days. And to paraphrase Leo Tolstoy’s famous first line from Anna Karenina, each of these troubled environments is troubled in its own way. Whether it’s so high a level of demand for services that the IT department can’t keep up, or an unsuccessful implementation of an ERP, or a constant stream of complaints from faculty that the IT staff is unhelpful and unresponsive, problems sometimes seem to be woven right into the fabric of these environments.

Edutech Responds
Managing a software changeover; reducing the amount of equipment and supplies lost, misplaced, or pilfered on campus; funding approaches to a new ERP replacement project