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TOP STORIES FOR WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 30, 2006 Harvard Offers Virtual Class in Second Life Online Courses Draw Growing Numbers of Students Downloading Starts at Google Book Search California Legislates Smart Wi-Fi Security Hackers Get 19,000 Credit Card Numbers from AT&T HARVARD OFFERS VIRTUAL CLASS IN SECOND LIFE This fall, Harvard Law School professor Charles Nesson will coteach a course on argument with his daughter, Harvard Extension School instructor Rebecca Nesson, that will take place in the Second Life virtual world. In Second Life, users create avatars that they control, using them to move around the virtual environment and interact with others and with the virtual physical space. A number of other colleges and universities have used Second Life as a component of certain courses. For this new course at Harvard, Nesson and Nesson will teach students--entirely through the virtual environment--how to use blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other electronic tools to make effective arguments. The class, which is open to the public through Harvard's extension school, will take place in an online replica of the university's Ames Courtroom. Rebecca Nesson will hold office hours in Second Life; Charles Nesson's office hours will be in his actual office. Chronicle of Higher Education, 30 August 2006 (sub. req'd) http://chronicle.com/daily/2006/08/2006083001t.htm ONLINE COURSES DRAW GROWING NUMBERS OF STUDENTS According to new research conducted by Eduventures, online education has come to represent a considerable portion of continuing and professional education students at nonprofit institutions. For-profit institutions are typically considered the leaders in online enrollments, but nonprofits now have about 20 percent of their continuing and professional students in such programs. The study, which covered 43 institutions, also found that online courses take more time and money to develop than in-class courses and that half of the institutions that offer online programs have outsourced at least some of the components. Eduventures also predicted that enrollments in online continuing education programs will grow by about 20 percent annually for the next several years. Chronicle of Higher Education, 29 August 2006 (sub. req'd) http://chronicle.com/daily/2006/08/2006082902n.htm DOWNLOADING STARTS AT GOOGLE BOOK SEARCH Google's controversial Book Search program is set to begin offering downloads of entire out-of-copyright texts. Until now, books in the program were available online only. With the option to download texts, users can now easily search those texts, print copies of them, or keep local copies on their computers to read offline. Books still under copyright protection are not available for download. Instead, small sections of text are online for users to view, unless the copyright owner grants Google permission to show more text. Many publishers and others have objected to Google's model, saying that even scanning copyrighted books and displaying snippets of them violates their copyright. Sidney Verba, director of the Harvard University Library, one of the libraries participating in the program, said that the ability to search texts allows users to "find previously buried information about historical events or people, places of interest, and matters cultural or scientific." Wall Street Journal, 30 August 2006 (sub. req'd) http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115694354228349458.html CALIFORNIA LEGISLATES SMART WI-FI SECURITY The California legislature has passed a bill that would require makers of wireless computer equipment to warn consumers of the risks of not securing wireless networks against "piggyback" users. Under the terms of the Wi-Fi User Protection Bill, which must be signed by the governor to take effect, makers of wireless hardware must, by October 2007, do one of four things: place warning labels on boxes, put warnings in the setup software, include warnings in the process to implement the hardware, or set the hardware to be secured by default. A spokesperson from Linksys, leader in Wi-Fi hardware, said the company supports the legislation. "Anything we can do to educate consumers ... is good for the industry overall," she said. Wi-Fi industry analysts, on the other hand, questioned the usefulness of the law. Paul Debeasi of Burton Group said, "The question is, can we legislate away consumer idiocy?" Another analysts characterized the law as a "solution in search of a problem," comparing it to "cautioning the coffee drinker that the beverage is hot." CNET, 30 August 2006 http://news.com.com/2100-7351_3-6110897.html HACKERS GET 19,000 CREDIT CARD NUMBERS FROM AT&T Hackers broke into an AT&T computer system and gained access to about 19,000 customer records over the weekend, according to the company. The records, which included credit card numbers, were for customers who had bought DSL equipment through AT&T's Web site. The company issued a statement expressing regret for the incident and said it would pay for credit-monitoring services for any consumer affected by the breach. According to the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, computer security breaches since early last year have exposed a total of more than 90 million consumer records to hackers and identity thieves. ZDNet, 29 August 2006 http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1009_22-6110765.html ***************************************************** EDUPAGE INFORMATION To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your settings, or access the Edupage archive, visit http://www.educause.edu/Edupage/639 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] ***************************************************** OTHER EDUCAUSE RESOURCES The EDUCAUSE Resource Center is a repository for information concerning use and management of IT in higher education. 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