With more than 30 million iPods sold since 2001, chances are you've witnessed the invasion of these small digital players and their matching distinctive earphones on campus. Your students, their parents, your alums, their kids, and your faculty and staff have likely seen or used one. Supported by the so-called "net generation" as much in love with cutting-edge technology as with on-demand music, the arrival of this fashionable device at colleges and universities has opened the door to a digital audio revolution in higher ed: podcasting.
The fall semester opened this year with unprecedented concern over the scope of plagiarism in higher education. A virtual epidemic of cheating, or perhaps just a new awareness, has spread across the academic world. A web search for "plagiarism" reveals numerous articles published this past summer alone in the higher education press.
The webmaster, once seen as a hero and magician, is now in danger of being viewed as a bottleneck. No lone person, or even a central office, can be responsive enough to keep today's complex higher education websites stocked with up-to-the minute information. On the other hand, if dozens of individuals and offices create their own web materials without coordination, a website can splinter into unnavigable chaos. This dilemma is motivating many savvy webmasters to start moving their institutions in the direction of web content management software (WCMS).
