FAST FIVE for the week of February 23, 2014

News:

FAST FIVE is moving:

Starting next week, FAST FIVE will become a publication of CUCCIO (Canadian University Council of Chief Information Officers). The original concept for the FAST FIVE came from this group in a meeting in February 2011 and a link to the publication's blog has always been part of the CUCCIO web site. As the organization representing Canada’s higher education IT leaders, leveraging the content and ensuring the future growth of FAST FIVE is in the best interests of the FAST FIVE, CUCCIO, and the community overall.  CUCCIO website  FAST FIVE blog

Using technology to reshape classrooms:

Concordia University is hosting its second annual e.SCAPE conference next week. The conference will focus on the impact of technology on education and the development of a greater range of online courses. The key note address will be given by Tony Bates, a Canadian expert on online learning and distance education. Going beyond digital literacy

Smart Computing for Innovation:

The 2014 Impact Report for the Southern Ontario Smart Computing Innovation Platform (SOSCIP) identifies key innovations of the research partnership and their plans for the future. The seven partner universities in conjunction with IBM have 40 joint research projects and 30 projects with SME partners. There are 21 postdoc research fellows and an estimated 280 related jobs created by this consortium. SOSCIP report

Olympic impact:

The 2014 Winter Olympics were passionately followed by university staff and students across Canada according to IT network statistics. Eric van Wiltenburg from UVic published this graph of streaming traffic around the Womens' hockey final UVic streaming traffic and Western University published this graph of traffic patterns during Men's Curling and Mens' hockey (Canada vs. USA)  Western bandwidth.

New look and feel:

The University of Toronto's Information Technology Services team is launching a new look and feel for it's WebLogin Screen. The new features include easy access from mobile devices, user-friendly browser guides on how to protect accounts, and easy to navigate help menus. The attached video illustrates the changes. UofT WebLogin  

Responses:

Last week the following question was posed:

As a result of a recent class action law suit in California, Google's lawyers now admit Google does data mine student emails for ad-targeting purposes outside of school, even when ad serving in school is turned off. The attached post from SafeGov.org provides more details on the issue and cites several university examples. Given this revelation, as well as other recent NSA revelations, are you planning to be more cautious about moving your users an data to cloud-based services? Do you feel these services are trustworthy? Is "free" worth the cost to your institution? Google data mining

The best response came from Garry Sagert, Director of UVic Online, and a leading expert on IT privacy legislation. He succinctly stated:

"You either pay for the product, or you ARE the product!"