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THE WIRED CAMPUS

A daily glance at education-technology headlines
for Friday, October 27.

A service of The Chronicle of Higher Education

"Facebook's Political Conscience"
Facebook has done plenty to earn its reputation for frivolity.
The site's best-known feature, after all, is a tool that lets
students digitally "poke" each other. But the social network is
also doing wonders for student activism, reports USA Today.
Politically conscious undergraduates and high-schoolers are
finding that Facebook can put them in touch with a national
network of like-minded students who might never have found local
advocacy groups on their own. Several of Facebook's most popular
groups are devoted to altruistic causes, like legalizing
same-sex marriage and supporting the search for alternative
sources of energy. According to USA Today, though, the
most-trafficked advocacy group is pushing a rather less
high-minded agenda: "Reduce the Drinking Age to 18!"  --Brock
Read
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-10-23-students-web_x.htm


Student Activism in the 30's
http://newdeal.feri.org/students/

Student Activism in the 60's
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Students_for_a_Democratic_Society
The Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) was, historically,
a student activist movement in the United States

STUDENT ACTIVISM MAP
http://www.soundout.org/activism.html


"Educause's Plea to Blackboard"
Educause, a higher-education technology group, has released the
text of a letter encouraging Blackboard Inc. to abandon its
controversial patent and subsequent lawsuit against the rival
software company Desire2Learn Inc.  As reported by The Chronicle
this month, Educause's Board of Directors voted unanimously
before its annual conference in Dallas to condemn Blackboard's
decision to patent its e-learning technology and sue another
company. Educause officials hand delivered a letter stating as
much to Blackboard's president and chief executive officer,
Michael L. Chasen, who has maintained that the patent is not as
broad as some people perceive it to be.  The patent has prompted
considerable grief among college officials, who say it will
inhibit innovation in the online-learning industry. Educause's
letter said the group is looking out for the interests of member
institutions, not choosing sides in a corporate squabble.
Officials of Blackboard, which is a corporate member of
Educause, have indicated that the group's stance on the issue
would not sway their decision to continue with the lawsuit.
--Dan Carnevale

Election of Board officers for 2007
John Bucher was elected Board Chair.
David Smallen was elected Vice Chair.
Becky King was elected Secretary.
Tracy Mitrano was elected Treasurer.
http://www.educause.edu/content.asp?page_id=12077&bhcp=1


"Wise Words on Wikipedia"
For better or for worse, Wikipedia has become the first
destination for many a student researcher. Does the site's
ubiquity mean that professors have a responsibility to
contribute? "I feel I have an obligation to do so, at least
within my field," said Alexander M.C. Halavais, an assistant
professor of communications at Quinnipiac University, during a
live Chronicle chat yesterday. "Public scholarship...is an
important part of being a professor," Mr. Halavais said. "Since
Wikipedia is probably the single most visible source of
knowledge for many today, it strikes me as an important place to
engage in that role. I would love to see universities and tenure
committees embrace that role, but I am not holding my breath." A
complete transcript of the chat -- in which Mr. Halavais
discussed Wikipedia's strengths and weaknesses, and the role of
the encyclopedia as a research tool -- is now available online.
http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=1669

"Are Soldiers' Ballots Secure?"
The absentee-voting system that allows U.S. military personnel to
cast votes using e-mail messages and faxes is rife with security
weaknesses, says a report released on Wednesday by four academic
computer scientists. The system exposes soldiers to identity
theft and creates an opportunity for foreign governments or
hackers to tamper with ballots, the researchers conclude. The
report, "Internet Voting Revisited: Security and Identity Theft
Risks of the DoD's Interim Voting Assistance System," was
written by Aviel D. Rubin, of Johns Hopkins University; Barbara
Simons, a former president of the Association for Computing
Machinery; David Wagner, of the University of California at
Berkeley; and David R. Jefferson, of Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory. ---Andrea L. Foster
http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=1667


"Google vs. the Evolution of Language"
Most CEOs would kill to have their company's name work its way
into the lexicon. But officials at Google -- one of a rarefied
group of businesses that has actually achieved that honor -- say
becoming a verb isn't all it's cracked up to be. In a post on the
company's official blog, Michael Krantz calls Google's absorption
into common parlance "an honor that's simultaneously highly
flattering and faintly unsettling." The unsettling part, he
says, is that "Google" has in many cases become a catch-all term
for Internet searching, not a specific reference to the company's
own search engine: Google is a trademark identifying Google Inc.
and our search technology and services. While we're pleased that
so many people think of us when they think of searching the web,
let's face it, we do have a brand to protect, so we'd like to
make clear that you should please only use "Google" when you're
actually referring to Google Inc. and our services. "If you
absolutely must use one of our competitors," pleads Mr. Krantz,
"please feel free to 'search' on Yahoo or any other search
engine." Google's grammatical badgering seems relatively
good-natured, but it hasn't been very well received in the
blogging community, as CNET's Blogma points out: "Last I
checked," one blogger wrote, "Google and I both live in a free
country."  --Brock Read
http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=1666


"Growth May Be Slowing at MySpace"
It may seem bizarre to wonder if a Web site with 124 million
registered users has seen better days, but The Washington Post
nevertheless asks if that might be true of MySpace, the wildly
popular social network. The Post boils much of its argument down
to a hard-to-dispute precept: Teenagers, the site's driving
force, are a finicky lot. But adolescent caprice may actually be
less of a problem for MySpace than technology's forward march:
More attractive, less public sites like Facebook are are cutting
into the social network's market share. The Post does offer a
useful suggestion for gauging a social-networking site's
popularity -- by measuring the amount of time users spend on it
in a given month. MySpace's average monthly-usage figures seem
to have plateaued, but Facebook's are still slowly climbing, the
newspaper notes. Still, if the experiences of Friendster and
Xanga are any indication, Facebook may peak sooner than its
creators would like. So even at colleges where Facebook is still
all the rage (that is, most of them), campus officials should
keep an eye out for new social-networking crazes on the horizon.
 --Brock Read
http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=1675


" ACLU Gives Up Challenge to Patriot Act"
The American Civil Liberties Union on Friday dropped a lawsuit
against the government over Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act.
The section is often called the "library provision" because it
allows federal officials to demand the records of library
patrons, among others, by means of secret subpoenas granted by
the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. In a statement, the
ACLU said Congress had made improvements to the provision when it
extended the Patriot Act on March 9. The revised law allows
"people who receive a demand for records to consult with a
lawyer and challenge the demand in court," the advocacy group
said. But according to the ACLU, the library provision is still
unconstitutional since--at least initially--it bars recipients
of the subpoenas from disclosing that they have received them.
Citing that and other issues, the ACLU said it will still
consider providing legal help to individuals who receive demands
for information under the provision. --Andrea L. Foster
http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=1674


"Academic Publishers Team Up to Offer Free Articles to Poor Nations"
The United Nations Environment Program, Yale University, and more
than 200 scientific publishers announced today that they are
setting up a portal to provide scientists and policy makers in
developing countries with free or low-cost access to research
articles in environmental science. The initiative, called Online
Access to Research in the Environment (OARE), will provide free
access to educational and policy institutions in 70 low-income
countries and will offer access at a nominal cost to
institutions in 36 "lower-middle-income countries," according to
a press release. The project will cover over 1,200 journals and
is supported by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the
John D. And Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=1673


"Carnegie Mellon Signs Technology Deal With Portugal"
Carnegie Mellon University and Portugal's Ministry of Science,
Technology, and Higher Education announced plans on Friday for a
long-term research and education collaboration in information and
communication technologies. According to a news release issued by
the university, the deal will emphasize information processing
and networks as well as related areas of applied mathematics,
technology, and policy. The agreement, which also will create an
Information and Communication Technologies Institute, with
locations in both Portugal and Pittsburgh, follows a similar
collaboration, announced two weeks ago, between Portugal and the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=1672



Copyright (c) 2006 The Chronicle of Higher Education, Inc.


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