Technology in education: July 2011 news summary

ACUMA Inc.: the Association representing tertiary campus service organisations in Australia & New Zealand July 2011 technology and education news summary

July 2011 technology and education news summary

Amcom inks $9m deal with Uni of WA for Cloud services University of Western Australia consolidates to private cloud Prestigious innovation award for university-based website Murdoch University improves website RMIT goes Google, says no to Microsoft's Cloud Government creates advisory group on IT in education New website helps Australian students take hassle out of finding accommodation NBN BUZZ: Rural reading material Are you a female IT student? $5,000 and expenses paid visit to Google up for grabs Web Accessibility for All Tribal Selected by Australasian Education Sector Latest strategy is one for the e-books Google+ Solves the Social Privacy Problem by Making Friending Very Complicated Amazon To Acquire The Book Depository Uni start-up snubbed by ACT govt 39 Things You Should Know About Google+ Technology in education: online resources from ACUMA Incorporated

Amcom inks $9m deal with Uni of WA for Cloud services TechWorld.com.au July 25 2011 The three-year agreement will see the telco provide hundreds of servers and over 400TB of storage to the university Amcom Telecommunications (ASX:AMM) has penned a three-year $9 million contract to provide hosted Cloud services to the University of Western Australia (UWA) ....

Full article: http://goo.gl/sKQVh University of Western Australia consolidates to private cloud ITNews.com.au July 25 2011 Amcom picks up $9 million agreement.

The University of Western Australia has embarked on an 18-month project to consolidate approximately 1000 disparate servers to a private cloud platform in Amcom data centres.

The institution would look to migrate 400 terabytes of data currently held on-campus to Amcom's two Perth-based facilities under a $9 million, three-year agreement signed with the Western Australia service provider....

Full article: http://goo.gl/F1sZM Prestigious innovation award for university-based website Press Release: University of Waikato July 25 2011 Prestigious innovation award for university-based website ACUMA Inc.: the Association representing tertiary campus service organisations in Australia & New Zealand Locked Bag 1333, Launceston, Tasmania 7250, Australia Tel: +61 3 6324 3935 || Fax: +61 3 6324 3670 || admin.acuma@acuma.org.au http://www.acuma.org.au || http://twitter.com/acumainc || http://www.scribd.com/acumainc

ACUMA Inc.: the Association representing tertiary campus service organisations in Australia & New Zealand July 2011 technology and education news summary

An innovative University of Waikato website connecting scientists with schools has won a prestigious telecommunications award.

The Science Learning Hub won the Education category at the Telecommunications Users Association NZ (TUANZ) 2011 Innovation Awards held in Auckland recently. The awards honour innovation across New Zealand’s telecommunications sector and is attended by the who’s who of....

Full article: http://goo.gl/cUvXv Murdoch University improves website FutureGov.asia July 23 2011 Since 2009, Murdoch University, with 18,000 students, has been looking at its website’s user experience to generate leads and school application submission, said Tim Elleston, Digital Advisor, Murdoch University.

“The university realised it needed a more robust and customisable analytics solution to get a clearer view of engagement, conversion, and abandonment,” said Elleston....

Full article: http://goo.gl/rQsem RMIT goes Google, says no to Microsoft's Cloud CIO.com.au July 19 2011 Project part of five year ICT plan, Cloud-first sourcing approach The Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) has moved its 74,000 students to Google as part of a long-term Cloud computing strategy.

After deciding to migrate student and staff email accounts to a hosted solution earlier this year, RMIT’s executive director of IT services, Brian Clark, said the choice to go Google was easy to make....

Full article: http://goo.gl/2bGBN Government creates advisory group on IT in education ITWire.com.au July 18 2011 The Federal Government has created an advisory group of education and IT experts to provide it with advice how best to deploy IT in education and support the new Australian Curriculum.

School education minister, Peter Garrett, announced the move at the 2011 Australasian Association of Distance Education Schools National Conference in Hobart, saying: "The group will be chaired by the highly respected eLearning expert and Vice-chancellor for teaching, learning and equity at the University of Technology Sydney, professor Shirley Alexander."

Full article: http://goo.gl/GPgYU

ACUMA Inc.: the Association representing tertiary campus service organisations in Australia & New Zealand Locked Bag 1333, Launceston, Tasmania 7250, Australia Tel: +61 3 6324 3935 || Fax: +61 3 6324 3670 || admin.acuma@acuma.org.au http://www.acuma.org.au || http://twitter.com/acumainc || http://www.scribd.com/acumainc

ACUMA Inc.: the Association representing tertiary campus service organisations in Australia & New Zealand July 2011 technology and education news summary

New website helps Australian students take hassle out of finding accommodation BriefingWire.com July 15 2011 With Shared Student Accommodations, landlords and students can locate each other for free, using specific search criteria.

Finding affordable housing can be tough, and it’s even tougher when you are a student headed off to a new place for the first time. Landlords don’t have it easy either. They have to constantly try and locate suitable tenants, which is historically extremely costly and....

Full article: http://goo.gl/asgvH NBN BUZZ: Rural reading material Technology Spectator July 14 2011 NBN Buzz is a weekly wrap up of everthing that's going on with Australia's biggest ever infrastructure project.

Bush bonanza or bull?

Now that the Telstra deal is firmly in the rear-vision mirror and the public’s patience for protests about the agreement has been thoroughly exhausted, attention has shifted to how we can make use of the NBN once it’s constructed and the degree that certain groups will benefit.

One of the most important goals of the NBN – if not the most important – is to support rural communities.

The plight of ‘non-city folk’ is frequently invoked by the government and NBN supporters to justify....

Full article: http://goo.gl/TG2WA Are you a female IT student? $5,000 and expenses paid visit to Google up for grabs PCAuthority.com July 11 2011 Yes, there is actually a Google scholarship, and you can apply for it online. Read on to find out how.

The $5,000 scholarship and expenses paid "networking retreat" at Google's Sydney Engineering centre is being offered to a female university student in Australia or New Zealand....

Full article: http://goo.gl/jgso9 Web Accessibility for All CampusTechnology.com July 07 2011 When a Web designer or developer at the University of Washington in Seattle has questions about the accessibility of the school's sites and applications, he or she can tap the expertise of a team of technology accessibility specialists such as Terrill Thompson. As a senior computer specialist, Thompson divides his time among multiple grant programs, including AccessIT (the National Center on Accessible ACUMA Inc.: the Association representing tertiary campus service organisations in Australia & New Zealand Locked Bag 1333, Launceston, Tasmania 7250, Australia Tel: +61 3 6324 3935 || Fax: +61 3 6324 3670 || admin.acuma@acuma.org.au http://www.acuma.org.au || http://twitter.com/acumainc || http://www.scribd.com/acumainc

ACUMA Inc.: the Association representing tertiary campus service organisations in Australia & New Zealand July 2011 technology and education news summary

Information Technology in Education) and DO-IT (Disabilities, Opportunities, Internetworking, and Technology). These federally funded research and dissemination projects focus on improving access....

Full article: http://goo.gl/162p2 Tribal Selected by Australasian Education Sector PRNewsWire.co.uk July 07 2011 Tribal, the UK's trusted supplier of student administration systems to over 250 universities and colleges around the world, have recently signed a number of high profile contracts across the Australasia education sector. The University of Queensland (UQ), Manukau Institute of Technology (MIT) and nine New Zealand institutes of technology/polytechnics (ITPs) have appointed Tribal to help....

Full article: http://goo.gl/rE8Jj Latest strategy is one for the e-books The Sydney Morning Herald July 07 2011 LAST week Bleeding Edge had one of those life-changing epiphanies that completely alter one's relationship with technology.

We read an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education (bit.ly/kgypvG) about the way publishing technologies could reduce the costs of textbooks for university students and dramatically change study methods....

Full article: http://goo.gl/Rkkfj Google+ Solves the Social Privacy Problem by Making Friending Very Complicated AllThingsD.com June 29 2011 I’ve been using Google+ for a little more than a day now, and I think I’m just starting to grasp how this “Circles” concept works. The idea is to give users much more control over who they share with, and to allow for unbalanced relationships (where one person cares more about the other) in a way that....

Full article: http://goo.gl/k2ZZE Amazon To Acquire The Book Depository MediaBistro.com July 05 2011 Over the holiday weekend, Amazon revealed that it will buy The Book Depository, a bookselling competitor in the UK and Australia.

According to The Bookseller, Office of Fair Trading will investigate the deal, analyzing if the merger could produce “a substantial lessening of competition” in the UK book market....

Full article: ACUMA Inc.: the Association representing tertiary campus service organisations in Australia & New Zealand Locked Bag 1333, Launceston, Tasmania 7250, Australia Tel: +61 3 6324 3935 || Fax: +61 3 6324 3670 || admin.acuma@acuma.org.au http://www.acuma.org.au || http://twitter.com/acumainc || http://www.scribd.com/acumainc

ACUMA Inc.: the Association representing tertiary campus service organisations in Australia & New Zealand July 2011 technology and education news summary

http://goo.gl/Qy453 Uni start-up snubbed by ACT govt ZDNet.com.au July 05 2011 The Australian Capital Territory Government has snubbed a group of six university students from the Australian National University (ANU) by going to tender for a new, $12.5 million bus-tracking application, instead of using an application that the students had developed and....

Full article: http://goo.gl/5CVnU 39 Things You Should Know About Google+ WebProNews.com July 02 2011 This isn’t every single thing there is to know about Google+. That could probably be a book rather than an article, and the Google+ Project has only just begun. If Google has its way, it will live on for years.

Or it could go the Google Wave route. It’s just too early....

Full article: http://goo.gl/tplDk Technology in education: online resources from ACUMA Incorporated

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ACUMA Inc.: the Association representing tertiary campus service organisations in Australia & New Zealand Locked Bag 1333, Launceston, Tasmania 7250, Australia Tel: +61 3 6324 3935 || Fax: +61 3 6324 3670 || admin.acuma@acuma.org.au http://www.acuma.org.au || http://twitter.com/acumainc || http://www.scribd.com/acumainc