How will academic libraries make sure that their content is available on a 3.5-inch mobile device? Should this even be a goal of the academic library? This week the NYTimes wrote about the rapid growth of reading platforms, and reading, on cellphones and other mobile platforms. In "Cellphone Apps Challenge the Rise of E-Readers" we learned that there are 84 million smartphones and 50 million ...

Brad Stone has an interesting piece "The Argument for Free Classes via iTunes" in today NYTimes. He reports that iTunesU now has ~250,000 individual classes available for download and that other platforms like YouTube.edu are experiencing dramatic growth. Across our campuses a vigorous debate is taking place about if and how we can make our learning materials and educational product available ...

I'm going homeAnd when I want to go home, I'm going mobileWell I'm gonna find a home on wheels, see how it feels,Goin' mobileKeep me moving--The Who - Going Mobile from Who's Next 1971.EDUCAUSE - go mobile! First the good news:The People: Both Steve Worona and Gerry Bayne are masters at the mediums of the webinar and the podcast.EDUCAUSE Podcasts: 37 pages of educational technology podcast ...

I just finished an excellent book called The Fourth Star: Four Generals and the Epic Struggle for the Future of the United States Army. I believe that the experience of the generals profiled in this book can teach us in academia a great deal about how the culture of large and tradition bound institutions can be transformed. In order to effectively fight in Iraq these generals, particularly David ...

Twitter is changing how I keep up with the educational technology world. I'm moving from relying on an RSS reader (I use Google Reader) to relying on Twitter subscriptions and hashtags. For the first time I'm wondering if Google should be worried about their core business model, as if my experience is any guide on how we use the Web to understand the world, may be moving away from search and more ...

Three cheers for the educators at Syracuse and UW Madison for refusing to purchase new Kindle's until the speech-to-text feature meets accessibility standards. It is beyond stupid that Amazon neglected to provide spoken menu options, therefore making it impossible for sight impaired readers to access the speech to text feature.All colleges and universities, and libraries (and all of us consumers) ...

Money has been much on my mind in recent days.We are all thinking about our work in terms of a new normal when it comes to available resources. Times of fiscal constraint can create opportunities for learning technologies to bring new efficiencies and savings. For instance, moving more learning, collaboration and communication tools to cloud-based consumer services can accomplish twin goals of ...

I saw on Twitter that Jim Collins did not grant permission for his EDUCAUSE keynote "Good to Great and the Social Sectors" to be recorded and and displayed. Do a Twitter search for "Collins #educause09". This is in contrast to Lessig's talk, which is available on both the conference streaming site and blip.tv.If the Collins talk is indeed not going to be available for viewing on the public Web ...

Can someone help me understand the aggression of ed. tech companies on the EDUCAUSE vendor floor and their passivity in the blogosphere and social media environment?Why is it that I could not walk from one end of the vendor floor to another without being assaulted by offers to sit in on a presentation, have a deep conversation about a product or service and the future of education, or receive ...

Dear EDUCAUSE 2010 Program Committee:Before I jump into brainstorming about future conferences, I think the 2009 Program Committee members and the EDUCAUSE team members deserve a huge round of applause for putting on such an amazing conference in Denver! I'm amazed at how smoothly the conference ran, how engaging the keynotes were, and how much support was offered to presenters. The amount of ...