Chronicle of Higher Education Audio: Tech Therapy

Episode 79--How Internet2 Plans to Spend $62.5 Million in Stimulus Funds

In what could be considered a model of using off-the-shelf tech tools for a high-impact class project, a writing class spent the fall semester creating resources to help victimes of online bullies. The Tech Therapy team talks with Mark Marino, an assistant professor of writing at University of Southern California who led the effort, and one of his students about their online campaign.

Kevin Kelly, one of the founders of Wired Magazine, sat down with the Tech Therapy team to talk about his new book "What Technology Wants," and what his framework for understanding change means for colleges.

The Tech Therapy team looks back on the rise of Facebook, as portrayed in a new Hollywood film, and examines whether colleges have a responsibility to educate students about the network's privacy implications. Also, we get a status update about e-textbooks from Joel Thierstein, associate provost at Rice University and executive director of the Connexions project, a platform for e-textbooks and other online education materials.

Naomi S. Baron, a linguistics professor at American University, studies how cell phones and online messaging change social interactions. She talks to the Tech Therapy team about her concerns that colleges push too much technology on students and professors. Should colleges encourage e-mail-free Fridays?

New federal regulations that took effect this summer require colleges to take steps to deal with illegal music and movie downloading on campuses networks. Heidi Wachs, Georgetown University's director of IT policy, talks with the Tech Therapy team about the fallout from the law and how colleges can stay on top of this issue.

Plenty of high-tech teaching materials are now available, but digital scholarship has been slow to take off, says Edward L. Ayers, president of the University of Richmond and a pioneer of digital history.

Jimmy Wales, a co-founder of Wikipedia, sits down with the Tech Therapy team to discuss the best?and worst?ways to use the online encyclopedia in teaching and research. And he challenges traditional newspapers to adopt some of Wikipedia's practices.

The Tech Therapy team talks with Freeman Hrabowski, the president of the University of Maryland Baltimore County, about using data to improve teaching and research. And in their first news-analysis segment, they discuss the iPad's potential for education.

The Chronicle?s technology reporter Jeff Young joins Warren Arbogast as Tech Therapy?s new co-host, and they discuss some of the new things listeners will hear on the show, starting in May.

Cathy Kelley, an assistant provost at Fairleigh Dickinson University, asks the Tech Therapists how technology staffers can maintain their energy when they constantly have to tackle new technology projects.

Susan Gibbons, vice provost and dean of the University of Rochester's River Campus Libraries, tells the Tech Therapists how she and a colleague repaired a longstanding rift between librarians and techies.

Bill Tomlinson, author of the forthcoming book "Greening Through IT," tells the Tech Therapists how technology can help and hinder sustainability efforts.

Scott Carlson and Warren Arbogast discuss the impulse to cut in tough times?and the need to plan for growth.

The Tech Therapists look at cloud computing, green technology, and the major issues that IT staff members will have to deal with in 2010.