Autodesk, Inc. is a company that makes Internet and computer software, and is also notable in that its chairman and CEO is a woman?Carol Bartz?one of the small number of women who head a technology Fortune 500 company. But that?s a situation she would like to see change, and an Autodesk initiative is intended to do just that.
Design Your Future: Math, Science and Technology for Girls is aimed at inspiring more girls to consider high-tech careers that take full advantage of 21st century opportunities.
As you would expect?considering what the company behind it does?there is a cool Web site, which you can visit at
http://www.autodesk.com/dyf/dyfmain2.html.
Miami-Dade Community College (M-DCC) has been named a Regional Center for Microsoft Corporation?s IT Academy program, which supports academic institutions in preparing students for careers as network administrators, technical support specialists, design engineers, and software and hardware developers. The program also includes training for faculty members at regional centers in the United States and Canada.
An article in the February issue of M-DCC?s College Forum newsletter reported that many of the classes will be held at the new Emerging Technologies Center of the Americas (ETCOTA) in downtown Miami. The 40,000-square-foot facility became fully operational this past fall and has the capacity to train 10,000 students a year, but according to Jonathan Sussman, director of industry relations for ETCOTA, innovative technology training will be offered at all six M-DCC campuses.
A paper from the American Library Association (ALA) summarizes the new standards and requirements of the Technology, Education and Copyright Harmonization Act.
Known as the TEACH Act, the legislation was signed into law by President Bush in November and redefines the terms and conditions on which accredited, nonprofit institutions in the U.S. may use copyright-protected materials in distance education without permission from the owner and payment of royalties.
According to the ALA, the paper outlines the act?s benefits and organizes the law?s requirements into three groups of duties that may be assigned to three divisions within a college or university for implementation: "duties of institutional policymakers; duties of information technology officials; and duties of faculty members or other instructional staff."
For more information, visit
http://www.ala.org/washoff/teach.html.
Described as "a knowledge exploration tool about information technology, especially about the Internet and computers," whatis.com contains more than 4,000 encyclopedic definition/topics and about 12,000 hyperlinked cross-references between those definition-topics and other sites.
According to whatis.com?s Web site, the definitions are continually revised and updated, and suggestions, links and comments have been received from more than 10,000 contributors representing more than 60 countries.
For more information, visit
http://whatis.techtarget.com.
The U.S. Department of Commerce and EDUCAUSE have announced a new policy that will open up the .edu domain to many more institutions and distance-education providers than were previously eligible for its use. According to the Commerce Department, current .edu domain name holders will not be affected by the new policy.
Use of the domain has been restricted to colleges accredited by the six regional agencies that accredit traditional colleges and universities, but the new policy will open up the .edu domain to any college that is accredited by an agency recognized by the U.S. Department of Education.
Since taking over assigning .edu addresses, EDUCAUSE has changed the policy in order to allow community colleges to use the domain. The latest recommendation for change was made in November, but it had to be approved by the U.S. Department of Commerce.
For more information about EDUCAUSE?a nonprofit organization with a mission "to advance higher education by promoting the intelligent use of information technology"?visit
www.educause.edu.
