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TOP STORIES FOR WEDNESDAY, JULY 21, 2004 Duke Freshmen to Receive iPods IBM Looks to Compete with Microsoft for College Students British Government Pushes Open Access School Project Leads to Cheap Mobile-Phone Detector DUKE FRESHMEN TO RECEIVE IPODS Duke University has announced a plan to give each of its 1,650 incoming freshman this fall an Apple iPod as an experiment to see how the devices affect teaching and learning. Each iPod will come with orientation information and an academic calendar installed. Duke will set up a Web site from which students can download course materials, lectures, audio books, and other academic content to their iPods. Although the project is not designed to discourage copyright infringement, according to Tracy Futhey, vice president of information technology at Duke, having "an easy-to-use legal alternative" could provide students with an incentive to limit illegal file trading. The project is estimated to cost Duke $500,000, and students will keep the iPods. After the school year is over, school officials will evaluate the educational benefits of the program. Wired News, 20 July 2004 http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,64282,00.html IBM LOOKS TO COMPETE WITH MICROSOFT FOR COLLEGE STUDENTS A new initiative from IBM aims to offer alternatives to Microsoft products in academic settings. Because Windows computers are so common, many academic programs focus on teaching software development using Microsoft's operating system and development tools, according to Haym Hirsh, chairman of the computer science department at Rutgers University in New Jersey. Hirsh added, however, that "we don't want our students to come out knowing only one way to do things." Under IBM's new program, interested colleges and universities will be given access to software and development tools, including open-source products as well as proprietary IBM products such as the DB2 database and WebSphere Internet software. Institutions will also have access to course-development assistance from IBM's in-house training programs. Officials from IBM said the program involves more than simply the promotion of IBM hardware and software, responding to demand from academic interests to have a broader range of options for teaching computer science. Wall Street Journal, 20 July 2004 (sub. req'd) http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB109027258344267723,00.html BRITISH GOVERNMENT PUSHES OPEN ACCESS Less than a week after a Congressional committee in the United States called for open access to government-funded research, Britain's Science and Technology Committee has issued a report with a similar recommendation. Like the U.S. report, the British report does not require open access but strongly encourages scholarly publications to be either posted on public Web sites or published in "author-pays" journals, in which authors pay a fee to have their research published, thereby eliminating fees for subscription. The report also calls on the government to subsidize author-pays fees for scholars and encourages academics to retain copyright over their published works, rather than signing copyright over to the journals that publish them, which typically happens today. The British Office of Science and Technology may issue new regulations based on the report this fall. Meanwhile, Reed Elsevier, the largest publisher of scientific journals, last month announced that authors of its publications would be allowed to post copies of their work on institutional Web sites. A spokesperson for Reed Elsevier said the publisher welcomed the report, though it believes "some of the concerns expressed in the report about government policy on scientific publishing to be overstated." Chronicle of Higher Education, 20 July 2004 (sub. req'd) http://chronicle.com/prm/daily/2004/07/2004072002n.htm SCHOOL PROJECT LEADS TO CHEAP MOBILE-PHONE DETECTOR A team of secondary-school students in New Zealand has created a mobile phone detector for a business competition at their school, St. Thomas of Canterbury College in Christchurch. The device, which the students named CellTrac-r, can detect radio signals that cell phones use when transmitting or receiving either calls or text messages. When activity is detected, the device illuminates a series of lights that indicate that activity and how far it is from the detector, which can monitor distances up to 30 meters. Similar devices are currently available from electronics makers, but the one developed by the students is significantly less expensive than those available today. The students have sold all 20 of the first batch they made, for NZ$39.95. Linda Roberts of the University of Canterbury said she plans to test the devices during university exams at the end of the year in an effort to prevent students' cheating with cell phones. "People could be texting away in an exam of 400 people and it would be hard to detect," said Roberts. The devices will also be tested in a local prison to detect unauthorized cell-phone usage within the prison. BBC, 20 July 2004 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3890959.stm ***************************************************** EDUPAGE INFORMATION To subscribe, unsubscribe, or change your settings, visit http://www.educause.edu/pub/edupage/ Or, you can subscribe or unsubscribe by sending e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To SUBSCRIBE, in the body of the message type: SUBSCRIBE Edupage YourFirstName YourLastName To UNSUBSCRIBE, in the body of the message type: SIGNOFF Edupage If you have subscription problems, send e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For past issues of Edupage or information about translations of Edupage into other languages, visit http://www.educause.edu/pub/edupage/ ***************************************************** OTHER EDUCAUSE PUBLICATIONS EDUCAUSE publishes periodicals, including "EQ" and "EDUCAUSE Review," books, and other materials dealing with the impacts and implications of information technology in higher education. 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