Author: jsudd3

Dartmouth began working with Aisera, a Palo Alto, California, software company, at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic to develop a solution that would enable the school’s IT service desk to keep up with an influx of requests it received as a result of students and faculty working and learning remotely. The current solution, launched last fall, uses natural-language processing to extract answers from a data set consisting of Dartmouth’s policies and procedures, as well as previous IT service use-cases.

Microsoft has set up a new hub for work and learning that works through Microsoft 365 and Teams, placing learning, well-being and collaboration resources closer to the user and the organization he or she works for.

During the Spring 2020 semester, several vendors offered temporary access to download and use software on personally-owned devices. The list of software includes Adobe Creative Cloud, SAS, SPSS, and MATLAB.

Instructors teaching remotely or in HyFlex learning environments can now access Zoom videoconferencing directly from HoverCam’s Flex 11 document camera software.

A new virtual reality device from a team of Carnegie Mellon University researchers allows users to “feel” virtual walls and objects.

As more and more colleges and universities are shutting down their campuses over the next several weeks in an effort to curb the spread of COVID-19, education technology companies have stepped forward to help move student learning to the virtual realm.

The U of I WebStore has partnered with MathWorks and our IBM vendor to provide access to MATLAB, Simulink, and SPSS to all University of Illinois faculty, staff, and students.

Access to MATLAB and Simulink is available through June 30, 2020.
Access to SPSS is available through August 1, 2020.

The U of I WebStore and Adobe have partnered together to bring temporary at-home access to Adobe Creative Cloud to all University of Illinois students.

Temporary Access to Creative Cloud will last until May 31, 2020. This date is subject to change. Adobe is closely monitoring the situation and may, at its sole discretion, modify the validity of the licenses.

The 2019-20 State of Technology in Education report from Promethean has revealed a significant increase in respondents who believe technology is integral to everyday life and education.