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Programs > Center for IT Excellence >May 2008 |
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| Advancing IT Education and the Workforce in Washington State | ||||||||||||||||||
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| Newsletter | ||||||||||||||||||
| May 2008 | ||||||||||||||||||
| Inside this Issue... | ||||||||||||||||||
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| Events, News, and Professional Development Opportunities for IT Educators and Students | ||||||||||||||||||
| News for the Classroom | ||||||||||||||||||
| Best Practices, Initiatives, Products, and Projects | ||||||||||||||||||
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| Announcements | ||||||||||||||||||
| Events, News, and Professional Development Opportunities for IT Educators and Students | ||||||||||||||||||
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Save the date for the 10th annual Working Connections IT Faculty Development Institute happening August 19th through 22nd
The Working Connections Institute will celebrate a decade as a state-wide professional development and training experience for IT faculty this August. Over the last nine years, we have hosted almost one-thousand faculty participants at Bellevue Community College, as they learned the latest developments in technology and classroom best practices. Register here!
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Instructor Job Shadow Program: Accepting Applications Now! 2008-2009: "Linking IT Educators with Washington State Businesses"  Instructors often confess that it is challenging to present tangible, real-world applications of the latest technology in the classroom. How can instructors become cognizant of the latest implementation of technology at the workplace? What better answer to this question than time on the job with an IT professional or staff. The 2008 CITE Instructor Job Shadow Program will provide an opportunity for instructors in to observe first hand the advances of technology in the workplace. The goal is to equip instructors with the knowledge and skills to infuse relevant IT practices in the classroom to benefit their students and programs. Participating businesses, or Workplace Hosts, can contribute by matching the instructor with an employee who can provide advice, examples, and real work experience as it applies to the area of study. Email Maureen Majury or phone at 425.564.4229 or to discuss placement with a local company for your show shadow. Reimbursement to faculty is $100 per day. back to top |
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| News for the Classroom | ||||||||||||||||||
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Up Coming Trends in Technologies for Teaching and Learning
Trends in technology for teaching and learning — An interview with Agnes Figueroa, Director of Computing Services at Bellevue Community College, describing the changes in technology use by students and faculty. Agnes also comments on the impact of these technologies on campus infrastructure and on the computing services groups, and remarks on the upcoming trends in technologies for teaching and learning. Listen to the interview. back to top |
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Picture This: Video Streaming To Your Classroom
With new technologies comes new ways of developing and delivering educational resources. The Internet has opened up an exciting new realm of useful content. However, with such a vast repository of information there comes the problem of deciphering what is quality and relevant content. Streaming Video can provide a very powerful tool that can enhance the learning environment both in and out of the classroom. It allows you as the teacher to enhance the classroom experience by playing media in the classroom with a simple click on a web link. Students can access the videos to study for exams, review information that they may have not clearly understood, or watch the video to build on what was presented in class. How Does Streaming Video Work? One source says, "Streaming media is the simultaneous transfer of digital media (video, voice and data) so that it is received as a continuous real-time stream. Streamed data is transmitted by a server application and received and displayed in real-time by client applications such as Microsoft's Windows Media Player or QuickTime Player. These applications can start displaying video or playing back audio as soon as enough data has been received and stored in the receiving station's buffer." Read the full article. TechLearning.com, Julia VanderMolen, April 2008 back to top |
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IT + Innovative Math Support = IT Transfer Degree Four state community colleges and the UW Bothell are researching how keep learners on track to an IT transfer degree. Funded by the National Science Foundation, the group has completed a review of literature; next step: pilot project design. The focus of the work is supporting tech-savvy students through math requirements…a rough spot for many. The pilot’s purpose is to implement best practices in math courses required for IT and CS programs to assess the impact on student retention. You are invited to review the literature, join in the conversation, and/or create a pilot of your own. Contact the projects P.I., Patricia Dombrowski, at pdombrow@bellevuecollege.edu. |
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| Best Practices, Initiatives, Products, and Projects | ||||||||||||||||||
| Business Intelligence | ||||||||||||||||||
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JavaOne: Sun backs off plan to charge for MySQL backup features: But reserves right to close source and charge for other features Sun Microsystems Inc. has dropped its unpopular plan to charge for some features -- and their source code -- in its recently acquired MySQL database. But the company, which bought MySQL AB in February for $1 billion, will continue to reserve some features of the open-source database only for paying users, according to a blog post on Tuesday by Kaj Arno, MySQL's vice president of community relations. "To financially support MySQL's free and open-source platform, we have a business model which allows both community and commercial add-ons, and we remain committed to it," Arno wrote. "We believe the model to be useful for both those who spend money to save time, and those who spend time to save money." Amazon.com Inc. will soon begin a limited-release test of an upcoming Web-based database that will work closely with its S3 online storage service and EC2 online application hosting service. The database, called SimpleDB, is aimed at application developers looking for a less expensive, easier-to-use alternative to a full relational database, primarily for running real-time queries against structured data. Read the full article. ComputerWorld, Eric Lai, May 6, 2008 back to top |
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'Revolutionary' collective intelligence of users touted at Web 2.0 Expo: Web 2.0 allows for the sharing of intelligence in ways never seen before While Web 2.0 technologies may have struggled in the past against criticism that they are self-indulgent time-wasters, Web 2.0 is now being touted as a collection of ground-breaking applications that can harness the collective intelligence of a multitude of users. That was the message here at the opening of the O'Reilly Web 2.0 Expo, where Tim O'Reilly, president of O'Reilly Media, noted that the Internet's emergence as a platform itself marks an "amazing revolution in human augmentation" akin to the advent of literacy. He highlighted Web 2.0 applications that use Google Earth to track global deforestation and those aiming to shed light on how congressional legislation is written and passed as examples of this revolution. Read the full article. ComputerWorld, Heather Havenstein, April 23, 2008 back to top |
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| Researcher finds new way to hack Oracle database:
'Lateral SQL injection' details released in paper Security researcher David Litchfield has released technical details of a new type of attack that could give a hacker access to an Oracle database. Called a lateral SQL injection, the attack could be used to gain database administrator privileges on an Oracle server in order to change or delete data or even install software, Litchfield said in an interview on Thursday. Litchfield first disclosed this type of attack at the Black Hat Washington conference last February, but on Thursday he published a paper with technical details. In a SQL injection, attackers create specially crafted search terms that trick the database into running SQL commands. Previously, security experts thought that SQL injections would work only if the attacker was inputting character strings into the database, but Litchfield has shown that the attack can work using new types of data, known as date and number data types. Read the full article. Computerworld, by Robert McMillan, April 25, 2008 back to top |
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| Business Technology | ||||||||||||||||||
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Windows Vista SP1 Disaster Recovery Guide Vista's SP1 was expected to solve a lot of problems; instead, it caused even more trouble. Here are fixes to some top complaints, from a Windows Update that won't update to endless reboot loops. When Microsoft rolled out Windows Vista Service Pack 1 to millions of users, people had king-sized anticipations about what SP1 would do for their systems. Sadly, for some people, that eagerness turned into an imperial-sized disgust at what SP1 did to their systems. Sometimes SP1 wouldn't install correctly; sometimes it wasn't installed at all; and sometimes it left their machines far worse off than before. I'm going to profile some common disaster scenarios that crop up with Vista SP1 and talk about what can be done in each case. The vast majority of the problems that crop up with SP1 can be solved with a little care and diligence. Even if you have to completely reinstall, you can usually do so without torching your data. Read full article. Information Week, by Serdar Yegulalp, May 6, 2008 back to top |
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| Green Technology | ||||||||||||||||||
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Refurbishing an old approach to PC recycling There is an easy, cheap, and environmentally friendly way to recycle PCs, cell phones, and other electronics, according to Jeff Ziegler, CEO of Austin's TechTurn: reuse them. The company, one of many that specialize in disposing of old electronics, says refurbishing offers the most efficient alternative to dealing with the world's growing mound of e-waste. Energy doesn't get wasted pulling old computers apart and melting down components into raw materials. Additionally, energy and natural resources aren't consumed for a new PC because the old one has effectively usurped demand for it. Approximately 80 percent of the notebooks that come into the company's facility get refurbished and resold. The rest get picked apart and sold by component, or munched and melted. "We are selling laptops that are 10 to 12 years old," he said. PC refurbishment has been around for years, and it typically has not lived up to its promise. The failure largely can be chalked up to Moore's Law, which describes how computers and other devices get steadily cheaper and better over time. Because of these two factors, resale value drops extremely rapidly. Why buy a used computer if the new one costs about as much? Read the full article. CNETnews.com, Martin LaMonica, December 2007 back to top |
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Green IT
The focus of Green IT that came to the forefront in 2007 will accelerate and expand in 2008. Consider potential regulations and have alternative plans for data center and capacity growth. Regulations are multiplying and have the potential to seriously constrain companies in building data centers, as the impact on power grids, carbon emissions from increased use and other environmental impacts are under scrutiny. Some companies are emphasizing their social responsibility behavior, which might result in vendor preferences and policies that affect IT decisions. Scheduling decisions for workloads on servers will begin to consider power efficiency as a key placement attribute. Source: Gartner Identifies the Top 10 Strategic Technologies for 2008. Read the full article. Gartner, by Christy Pettey, 2008 back to top |
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| Multi-Media and Web | ||||||||||||||||||
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How Not To Do Newspaper Video (Note: This article is directed towards those already in the online news industry, but it might prove helpful in preparing students interested in entering the field). The Digital Journalist was probably the first publication to start talking about how newspapers would need to migrate their brand to the Web, and the key element was going to be with video. That was at least five years ago, and since then newspapers have grasped that idea. Today, there are countless workshops and seminars around the country every year, teaching newspaper photographers how to produce video. This year, the NPPA TV News Workshop actually had more still photographers from newspapers enrolled than people from TV stations. But we hear countless calls for help from these newspaper photographers who have made the jump, as their employers – who although they have heeded the call to move to video, don't understand what it takes to do this skill – are beating them down. So here are the rules. Please pass these on to your editors and publishers: YOU ARE NOT IN THE TELEVISION BUSINESS Read the full article. The Digital Journalist, editorial, May 2008 back to top |
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The New Hacker Economics To make money, you have to move up the economic food chain into higher-value, more profitable work and markets. That economic fact of life applies to nations, companies and individuals. A study released this week shows how this natural law is being applied in the subculture of criminal computer hackers. Pilfered credit card numbers and bank account PIN numbers have become commodities on shadowy Web sites where stolen digital information is bought and sold. Company e-mail, business documents and personal health information are the new targets of choice for illegal hackers, according to Finjan, a San Jose-based maker of Web security software and appliances. In its report, Finjan said its researchers found a single server that housed a hefty pile of business and personal information stolen from 40 companies around the world. To be sure, computer security companies are in the business of not only finding but also marketing security risks. But the Finjan research is intriguing because it seems to point to an evolution in illicit computer hacking. Read the full article The New York Times, by Steve Lohr, May 8, 2008 back to top |
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Microsoft Provides Fix for Crashes Related To IE Patch Many of those affected are puzzled that Microsoft would recommend editing the Windows registry rather than fixing and re-issuing the patch. Microsoft on Tuesday issued support documentation to address Internet Explorer problems caused by last week's security patch. "We have been working with a small number of customers that reported issues related to the installation of MS07-069," said Kieron Shorrock, the Microsoft Security Response Program Manager responsible for Internet Explorer, in a blog post. "Specifically, on a Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2)-based computer, Internet Explorer 6 may stop responding when you try to a visit a Web site." Read the full article Information Week, Tomas Claburne, December 2007 back to top |
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| Network Services and Computing Systems | ||||||||||||||||||
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Zero-day treasure hunt: Researcher hides IE attack on Web
Aviv Raff has discovered zero-day vulnerability in Internet Explorer that would allow an attacker to take control of a victim's PC. Security researcher Aviv Raff has published code that would allow someone to take control of a computer running Internet Explorer, but there's a catch. He's not saying exactly where he's hidden the attack. Somewhere in my blog, I embedded a proof-of-concept code that exploits this zero-day vulnerability," Raff wrote. A zero-day attack is a previously undisclosed software flaw that has not been fixed by the software maker. The bug, which affects Internet Explorer 7 and IE 8, could allow an attacker to run unauthorized software on a victim's computer. Raff informed Microsoft of the flaw on Tuesday and the software vendor has not yet patched it, Raff said. Microsoft didn't get much time to fix the bug, but Raff said he didn't feel that Microsoft would address the issue quickly unless he went public with the vulnerability. Read the full article InfoWorld, by Robert McMillan, IDG News Service, May 07, 2008 back to top |
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| Developers vs. designers: Who wins? It remains one of the thorniest problems in app dev: How to get the folks in the blue shirts, khakis, and glasses to make nice with their black-shirted, skinny-jeaned, faux-hawked neighbors down the hall? Like as not, your own answer largely depends on which side of the building you sit. Particularly for RIAs (rich Internet applications), where form and function share equal billing, team dynamics can make or break a project. Little wonder, then, that Adobe, Microsoft, and Sun are all racing to market with new tools and platforms aimed at helping developers and designers meet each other halfway. Unfortunately, though well intentioned, these wonder products aren't likely to solve anything. Read the full article. Infoworld.com, by Neil McAllister, May 08, 2008 back to top |
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| General Information and Computing Technology | ||||||||||||||||||
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MySpace To Share User Profiles With Other Sites MySpace plans to give users the option of sharing their profiles and other personal information with other Web sites, a move that could dramatically expand the reach of the Web's most popular social network. MySpace executives said Yahoo, eBay, Photobucket, and Twitter have joined the site's "data-availability initiative," which will be open to any Web site, including rival Facebook. MySpace plans to begin offering the service. "Today, MySpace no longer operates as an autonomous island on the Internet," Chris DeWolfe, chief executive and co-founder of the site, told reporters during a teleconference. "We're hoping to create a significantly more social experience across the Web." Read the full article Information Week, by Antone Gonsalves, May 8, 2008 back to top |
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| Announcements | ||||||||||||||||||
Applications of Information Technology: Trends Assessment for 2007 - 2008
(Updated Version!) – Published by and available from the Center of Excellence Information Technology Trends Assessment, 2007-2008: Industry, The New Learner and Implications for Education, is an 80+ page research report summarizing economic, employment, industry, technology and demographic trends influencing IT-related programs published by the Center. Decision makers in education, business and government find this trends research focusing on applications in Information Technology current, relevant, and informative. Note: This report may be especially helpful for educational administrators and faculty evaluating IT and technology - related programs and curricular directions and strategies. Copies can be ordered for faculty and educators in Washington state for only $25. Order your copy back to top |
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Subscribe to the Center of Excellence Newsletter
To continue receiving the CITE newsletter, please complete the request form. If you wish to discontinue receiving this newsletter, please email CITE. How can the IT Center of Excellence assist your institution? At the IT Center of Excellence, our mission is to be a resource arm to the Community and Technical Colleges and high schools of Washington State. Let us hear from you to discuss your needs and how we can be of service to you. For further information, email CITE or call Maureen Majury at 425.564.4229. Archived Issues of CITE Newsletters Now Available Online Recent editions of the CITE e-newsletter are now archived for reading on the CITE web site. Topics include Mobile/Wireless Computing, Outsourcing/Offshoring, IT Network Security, Business Intelligence/Data Mining, VoIP, and Convergence Technologies. back to top |
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 | | NWCET is a division of Bellevue Community College, and is partially funded by National Science Foundation grants. | 
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