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| The ten most widely read online EDUCAUSE Review articles from 2010 focused on innovation, current IT issues, individual/collaborative learning, attention, openness, the future campus, scholarly publishing, and libraries.
In case you missed them in 2010:
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Along these lines, check out:
‘Jeopardy’ champs take on IBM’s Watson
“This is huge; this isn’t just about answering questions,” says computational linguistics expert George Luger of the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, who was not part of IBM’s team. “Everything before this was just a run-up to computers as true personal assistants.”
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Change is exponential…not linear.
From DSC:
Steve Taffee makes some good points in his blog posting entitled, “What if your cloud evaporates?”
When vendors offering cloud-based apps and services suddenly no longer support or offer a product line or they begin charging for what was previously free, etc. — this creates a significant issue. Quoting Steve’s posting:
The off-again, on-again fate of the social bookmarking service Delicious led to considerable angst among its users, with the discussion among some educational technologists broadening to include all cloud-based services and scenarios of suddenly being without access to mission critical services.
This is another reason why I entitled this blog Learning Ecosystems — because all of the people, tools, and things that can contribute to our learning are often in a constant state of flux/change. So we are forced to adapt. However, this is easier said than done when suddenly 10,000 students can’t access application ABC or service XYZ on the cloud. This is a truly problematic situation. It won’t stop cloud computing from moving forward, but it would sure be helpful if vendors would be required to give some sort of “heads-up” to help us address this issue and find alternatives well in advance of having to make a switch.
From GetIdeas.org:
Australia’s New Higher-Ed Authority Calls for Fresh IT System — which links to “New higher education authority calls for fresh IT system” in CIO — by Rodney Gedda (Techworld Australia)
The federal Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR), is designing a new core information system for a new higher education agency – the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA) – which is scheduled to begin operating around mid-2011.
TEQSA will be an independent body with powers to “regulate university and non-university higher education providers, monitor quality and set standards”. Its primary mission will be to help students receive the best quality higher education at any provider.
At the core of TEQSA will be a new information management system in the form of a Web-based portal.
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Addendum on 1-20-11:
The future of the TV is online — from telegraph.co.uk
Your television’s going to get connected, says Matt Warman
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From DSC:
In other words, the future CEO’s will have a strong appreciation for — if not significant experience in — technology-related fields.
IT Beyond the Campus — from CampusTechnology.com by Bridget McCrea
Drexel University positions itself as an outsourced IT department for smaller colleges
Web 2.0’s Foundation of Sand — from CampusTechnology.com by Trent Batson
From DSC:
Below is the excerpt I want to point out:
The lessons of our experience, and perhaps of the experience of others, is that startups and other initiatives without venture capital that may need to depend on free Web services to get started must at some point move to commercial sites. The Web, where information wants to be free, and which is wildly creative, innovative, vital, and powerful, offers a great ride. But it is also highly transient with Web apps coming and going, metamorphizing, being bought, or not staying current.
From DSC:
The world of IT is very complex right now (with no signs of getting any less complex) — and things are constantly changing. Thus, when building or maintaining one’s learning ecosystem, you WILL experience changes in applications, services, vendors, and features sets. Such things will come and go (think Google Wave for example). Technologies evolve. Change WILL happen. Some services and vendors won’t make it or will be purchased. Count on such things happening, stay flexible, adaptable and responsive; try to make backup plans for each product/service/vendor that you possibly can.
Hottest jobs and skills in cloud, mobile app development — from pcworld.com by Meridith Levinson, CIO
Want to lock in some job security in IT over the next five years? Then make sure you’re poised to move into cloud computing or mobile application development. That’s where the IT jobs are expected to be, according to 2,000 IT professionals recently surveyed by IBM.
IBM’s annual global Tech Trends survey identified cloud computing and mobile application development as the hottest tech trends and most sought-after IT skills for the next five years. An overwhelming majority of survey respondents (91 percent) expect cloud computing to overtake on-premise computing as the primary IT delivery model by 2015. More than half (55 percent) of survey respondents believe that in the same amount of time, the need to develop applications for mobile devices (such as Android, iPhone, iPad and PlayBook) will far surpass the need to develop software for traditional PCs and servers. These trends will impact IT jobs and the skills needed to do them.
IBM survey says mobile apps will dominate enterprise — from WSJ.com by Timonthy Hay
Consumers love tablet computers and smartphones and are finding novel uses for the many applications that run on them. But the devices are catching on in a significant way in the business world as well, according to a new survey from International Business Machines Corp., the company responsible for building and running much of the country’s enterprise computing systems.
After surveying 2,000 information-technology professionals in 87 countries, IBM found that more than half believe that within the next five years, more developers will be working on mobile applications and cloud-based architecture than traditional computing platforms for enterprise.
Four ‘business model’ scenarios for higher education: An introduction to strategic planning through storytelling — from Gartner
This document and its related research has two purposes: (1) to equip higher education executives with a set of planning tools that enable actionable, institutionally aligned strategic planning through transparent communication and participation; and (2) to highlight several trends and technologies important in institutional strategic planning for the next 10 years.
Key Findings
- According to Gartner experience, more than 60% of higher education IT strategic planning is isolated from the institutional strategic planning process, or the institution doesn’t have an institutional strategic plan, or strategic plans are not linked to the budget-planning process.
- The technology of today is a disruptor of old business/institutional models as well as an enabler of new business/institutional models. Institution strategic planning cannot be done without considering the impact of IT.
Recommendations
- Higher education CIOs who want to become the trusted business partner need to address the core mission of the institution in order to be able to make relevant contributions to the senior management and strategic planning.
- Higher education CIOs should use scenario-planning methodology — strategic planning by storytelling — to involve, communicate with and align with institutional stakeholders.
- Higher education CIOs should only use Gartner’s higher education “business model” scenarios as a context and guide in forming their own strategies, focusing as much on the collective journey as the end goal.
