Sponsored White Papers, Webcasts, and Downloads
ZDNet Resources
- Supercomputing for a mere $800k
- Recent price cuts to IBM's previous-generation supercomputer (the Blue Gene/L) have allowed universities and research institutions to invest in supercomputing technology when they would not otherwise be able to justify the cost. While the latest-generation supercomputer, the Blue Gene/P is well over twice as fast as the L, according...
- Tags: Education Technology
- Blog posts 2007-08-01
- What the heck is a thin client?
- My mom is neither an educator, nor a technologist, but she has taken to reading my blogs anyway (group, "Ahhhh", please). She actually runs a gourmet tea and spice company based just a few miles from Microsoft corporate headquarters (weird, huh?). She'll occasionally send me an email asking...
- Tags: Training for the masses, Education Technology, Classroom Tech
- Blog posts 2007-08-01
- Improved ODF support for Office, courtesy of Sun
- EWeek reported last week on Sun's new ODF plugin for Microsoft Office. While OpenOffice generally does a passable job of converting between Office and ODF files, more intricate presentations or heavily-formatted documents may be more susceptible to losses. While Microsoft has its own tool for converting files, the...
- Tags: Education Technology
- Blog posts 2007-07-31
- Slow downloads in Linux? IPv6 may be to blame
- Internet Protocol Version 6 (or IPv6 for short) promises to solve the problem of dwindling IP address. Long story short, we're running out of the roughly 4 billion addresses available to us under the current scheme (IPv4), so it's time for an upgrade. IPv6, in addition to providing...
- Tags: Education Technology
- Blog posts 2007-07-31
- Back to school? Make sure you get Office 2007
- The Kane County Chronicle is reporting that one district in this Illinois county has recommended that all high school students have a copy of Office 2007 running on their home computers before heading back to school this fall. Since the district (Batavia, Illinois, if anyone outside Kane County cares)...
- Tags: K-12, Education Technology
- Blog posts 2007-07-29
- Evaluating thin clients from a position of strength
- All too often our schools (and even our colleges and universities) turn to thin-clients as a 'last resort' to address severe budgetary constraints without regard for other alternatives which can also reduce costs without sacrificing needed computing resources. Many view thin-clients as a one-stop solution which fixes easy-to-identify problems within an existing infrastructure. Often...
- Tags: K-12, Higher Ed, Funding, Emerging Tech, Education Technology, Classroom Tech
- Blog posts 2007-07-27
- Training the trainer
- Yesterday as I sat in training for our new SIS, I posed the question, "Why is it so hard to train teachers?". One of the best responses I received addressed the quality of many trainers:One reason some teachers are hard to train is... ... the trainer...
- Tags: Education Technology
- Blog posts 2007-07-27
- Why is it so hard to train teachers?
- Ever noticed what a pain in the butt it is to teach teachers? They gab, chatter, giggle, and do everything for which they give students detentions. I'm sitting in training for our new SIS and, fortunately, I only have to handle the technical pieces of the training. ...
- Tags: Education Technology
- Blog posts 2007-07-26
- Never mind...just tell their students if they're naughty
- As the Senate continued adding, revising, and removing amendments from the Higher Education Act on Wednesday, outcry from universities, lobbyists, and private citizens caused Harry Reid to withdraw his amendment on college file sharing. The original amendment, was sweeping, vague, and fairly clueless about it's implications. While work...
- Tags: Piracy, Legal Issues, Higher Ed, Education Technology
- Blog posts 2007-07-25
- More anti-file-sharing rhetoric in Washington
- Insidehighered.com, among several other sites, is reporting on Senator Harry Reid's latest proposal to prevent illegal file-sharing on college campuses. The article lists the main components of his plan that he is including as an amendment to the Higher Education Act:The Reid plan would require colleges to: ...
- Tags: Education Technology
- Blog posts 2007-07-24
- Moore's Law irrelevant? Afraid so, at least for ed tech
- The UK version of Crave, another CNET online publication, posted an interesting piece today on how the OLPC XO which just entered mass production may make Moore's Law far less important to the industry. As the author asked:Think about your own PC usage -- does it honestly include anything...
- Tags: Education Technology
- Blog posts 2007-07-24
- Oz of prevention = lb of cure
- So now I'm sitting in another hotel room in beautiful New Haven, Connecticut. The plan, of course, was to be home by now and writing this post from my basement office. Best laid plans and all that. Turns out that the leaf springs on my trailer rented...
- Tags: Education Technology
- Blog posts 2007-07-23
- Usability vs solid IT
- I'm just writing a quick post this morning since I'm in a motel room with 4 kids off the Jersey Turnpike getting ready to finish my drive home to Massachusetts. However, I'm writing on a lovely unsecured wireless connection that the motel provides. Last week I read George...
- Tags: Education Technology
- Blog posts 2007-07-23
- My fall wishlist
- Of course I'm running late turning in my purchase orders for next year. I guess I'll get to it after vacation. I turned in a spreadsheet with budget estimates in May. What do they want? My first born? Oh well. At least it got...
- Tags: Education Technology
- Blog posts 2007-07-20
- ASUS on schedule to release $199 subnotebook for back to school
- ASUS is on schedule to release their budget subnotebook in late August or September, according to DesktopLinux.com. Slated to start at $199, the device will run Xandros Linux with KDE. It will also have a special introductory interface for those new to computing, but this can be bypassed...
- Tags: Education Technology, Classroom Tech
- Blog posts 2007-07-20
- OpenSUSE 10.3 may not include LTSP support
- In a recent post I reported that OpenSUSE would be adding LTSP support to compete with Edubuntu in their upcoming 10.3 release, along with several other educational tools in a "SLEDucator CD". I must admit that I was pretty excited. My experiences with Edubuntu and *buntu have been...
- Tags: OpenSUSE and Ed Tech, Open Source, Education Technology
- Blog posts 2007-07-19
- Quality products are to blame for Linux/Mac popularity
- There have been a few posts on ZDNet in the last couple days relating to Vista rollouts and available alternatives. In particular, Marc Wagner wrote "Is Vista to blame for Mac, Linux popularity?". As he noted, In the end, the conscientious IT department will view the transition from...
- Tags: Open Source, Education Technology
- Blog posts 2007-07-18
- The realities of municipal Wi-Fi
- While, in principle, I agree with my colleague, Chris Dawson (Why municipal Wi-Fi is an educational expense), the problems with this approach are huge -- and have nothing whatsoever to do with education. In the 1930's the rationale for providing ubiquitous radio, electrical, telephone, and water resources to everyone was motivated by the...
- Tags: Education Technology
- Blog posts 2007-07-17
- Is Vista to blame for Mac, Linux popularity?
- A silly question, I know, but I just read Will Vista cause a switch to Macs, Linux? and I was dumbfounded. Here's the premise:The cost of upgrading to Windows Vista is forcing more organizations to evaluate alternatives including Apple Macs and Linux for the desktop.According to the article, Capital & Regional CIO...
- Tags: Education Technology
- Blog posts 2007-07-17
- Why municipal WiFi is an educational expense
- I'm not big on large government-funded projects, whether at the federal, state, or local levels. In my experience, they just have a tendency to go awry. Of course, I live outside of Boston. Can you say Big Dig? However, one area in which municipalities (or better...
- Tags: Education Technology
- Blog posts 2007-07-17
White Papers and Webcasts
In this Super Techies interview, larger-than-life techie Marc Canter talks with ZDNet's Editor in Chief Dan Farber about his career as a multimedia pioneer.
We need to get back to freethinking and innovation that is core to our roots. Companies like Intel were founded on thoughts like the famous quote from Robert Noyce - "Don't be encumbered by the past, go out and do something wonderful."
