The Learning Activity Management System (LAMS) Foundation has announced the launch of a new Web site that will allow what it calls “open source teaching,” in which educators can share and modify digital lesson plans. The LAMS Community Web site is based on the .LRN open source platform, developed at MIT. Using the LAMS Community […]

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has issued its final ruling in favor of the University of California in its patent dispute with Microsoft. At issue is a technology used for launching certain applications in Web browsers. The technology was developed at the University of California at San Francisco and licensed to a company called […]

The state of Massachusetts is considering a plan to provide a laptop computer to every middle and senior high school student in the state.
The plan, offered by Governor Mitt Romney, includes other provisions, such as adding 1,000 new science and math teachers. The nonprofit One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) organization was credited with the idea […]

The University of Georgia has revealed that a hacker was able to access a computer system that contained personal information for employees of the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences as well as people who are paid from that department. Social Security numbers were in the accessed database, though no credit card information was exposed. […]

Education officials in the United Kingdom and Ireland have signed an agreement to work together in support of an initiative called the National Digital Repository, which is designed to support higher education e-learning. The repository, which started in January 2005, is to be a collection of components of higher education courses, allowing users to develop […]

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has filed a new batch of 757 John Doe lawsuits against users of P2P networks, accusing them of copyright violations. Included in the new suits are cases against individuals at 17 college and university campuses accused of illegally trading songs over Internet2’s high-speed network using a file-sharing application […]

According to numbers from the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers, online advertising revenues in the first half of 2005 hit a new high of about $5.8 billion, an increase of 26 percent over the first half of 2004. The percentage of total online ad revenues earned by keyword-based search ads has held steady at 40 […]

The Wikimedia Foundation launched the Wikibooks project to create a kindergarten-to-college curriculum of textbooks based on an open source development model. Material written for the new texts can be short or long and easily modified, and the resulting Wikibooks would be freely licensed. The goal is to produce thousands of books and smaller entries on […]

The Federal Communications Commission again delayed enforcing a deadline for Internet phone service providers to disconnect customers who have not yet verified that they understand they might not be able to reach an emergency dispatcher when they dial 911 on their cellular phones. The FCC noted that status reports from the VoIP service providers indicated […]

With the help of host countries, MIT is setting up Fab Labs, or fabrication laboratories, around the world. Fab Labs provide an opportunity for individuals to use various technological means to build things that solve local problems. For example, Haakon Karlsen, a rancher who lives hundreds of miles north of the Artic Circle, used a […]