The diffusion of the use of the learning virtual environments presents a great potential for the development of an application which meet the necessities in the education area. In view of the importance of a more dynamic application and that can adapt itself continuously to the students' necessities, the "U-ALS" (Ubiquitous Adapted Learning…

"Cloud computing is a model for the enabling of ubiquitous, convenient, and on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and other services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction." This…

The education sector remains abuzz with cost-cutting expectations despite pressures to increase services. Automation of costly manual tasks could save funds for many of these institutions, specifically in data protection. The IT departments of schools and universities can take advantage of a proven cost-savings opportunity in data protection that…

Peer-to-peer (P2P) systems, and client-server type storage and computation outsourcing constitute some of the major applications that the next generation cloud schemes will address. Since these applications are just emerging, it is the perfect time to design them with security and privacy in mind. Furthermore, considering the high-churn…

No matter how many car washes or bake sales schools host to raise money, adding funds to their coffers is a recurring problem. This perpetual financial difficulty makes expansive technology purchases or changes seem like a pipe dream for school CIOs and has education technologists searching for ways to stretch money. In 2005, state K-12 school…

Data compression is the art of using encoding techniques to represent data symbols using less storage space compared to the original data representation. The encoding process builds a relationship between the entropy of the data and the certainty of the system. The theoretical limits of this relationship are defined by the theory of entropy in…

The demand for graduates with exposure in Cloud Computing is on the rise. For many educational institutions, the challenge is to decide on how to incorporate appropriate cloud-based technologies into their curricula. In this paper, we describe our design and experiences of integrating Cloud Computing components into seven third/fourth-year…

IT leaders today must not only provide but also decide: which tools and services should they continue to supply, which are better delivered by others, and perhaps most critically, which methods from among the bewildering array of alternative sourcing strategies will best serve their faculty, staff, and students. In 2009, the EDUCAUSE Center for…

Drawing upon the concept of governance, this dissertation refers to the two most commonly employed mechanisms that ensure high quality knowledge in electronic repositories as expert-governance and community-governance. In three related but distinct essays, the dissertation examines the governance concept, and investigates contributing knowledge to…

Your learning curriculum needs a new technological platform, but you don't have the expertise or IT equipment to pull it off in-house. The answer is a learning system that exists online, "in the cloud," where learners can access it anywhere, anytime. For trainers, cloud-based coursework often means greater ease of instruction resulting in greater…

In this case study the authors describe Pepperdine University Libraries' migration to OCLC's WorldShare Management Services. They elaborate on the rationale for the decision, review some of the challenges and lessons encountered along the way, and briefly discuss some effects of the new system on our libraries. The focus is on technical services…

The need, use, benefit and potential of e-portfolios have been analysed and discussed by a substantial body of researchers in the education community. However, the development and implementation approaches of e-portfolios to date have faced with various challenges and limitations. This paper presents a new approach of an e-portfolio system design…

One of the most explosive areas of growth in the field of higher education is currently in emerging international markets. In developing nations, lack of access to high-quality teachers and educational materials is often the key obstacle preventing students from gaining the skills and knowledge they need to pursue new opportunities and advance in…

The New Media Consortium's Horizon Report provides a view of the emerging technologies that are likely to impact the educational world globally. Highlighted in this paper are four technologies that rose from the pack as the most likely to impact education in the next three years: (1) Collaborative Environments; (2) Online Communication Tools; (3)…

School business administrators have long recognized the need for a workable data recovery plan regardless of cause. Yet many have not reassessed their current data backup and recovery capabilities, perhaps because they have not experienced a catastrophic failure. There are three reasons school business administrators may not realize or recognize…