Life after E-mail...

E-mail has been around since 1971 when Ray Tomlinson sent the first networked e-mail. It was Mr. Tomlinson who decided that the @ symbol would be used to connect the user's name and the machine at which the mailbox is located.

Since the 1970's, e-mail has made some improvements, but it’s also remained relatively the same. It is not a sexy tool. There aren't a ton of bells and whistles. The overall design and functionality of electronic mail hasn't changed. We pick people to send mail to. We write our message. We send our message and we wait for a reply.

1996 saw the launch of Hotmail, the first web-based e-mail service. The web-based structure of Hotmail makes it much more assessable to the average person. Now you no longer needed to be connected to a company network or load your mail program (AOL) onto your local machine. E-mail could be accessed from any computer with an internet connection. Not surprising that Microsoft buys Hotmail for $400 million just one year later.

Two of the major IT initiatives that businesses are concentrating on today are Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems and Social Media efforts. Both offer alternatives on how we communicate electronically to both internal and external co-workers and contacts. This threatens the existence of e-mail. Companies like Burberry, Virgin America, and CareerBuilder are implementing CRM tools like SalesForce Chatter Platform to replace e-mail. Chatter is the leading enterprise social network that allows teams to connect in a social networking environment to communicate.

Back in 2011, Mark Zuckerberg stated that “We don’t think a modern messaging system is going to be e-mail.” This came out at the same time that New York Times, ran an article suggesting that for college age students, e-mail is quickly going out of style. E-mail is being replaced by texting, instant messenger, Twitter, Facebook, CRMs, and Learning Management Systems. There is a common belief that in the future, most electronic communication will come in brief, informal bursts. In a survey to incoming freshmen at TCNJ, we asked about student’s use of e-mail and other electronic communications. The overall theme of the answers were "I text with my friends. I use e-mail to communicate with old people."

So what is next for e-mail? If e-mail has a future, what will it be? Like the travel agent who has to evolve to stay in business, what changes would e-mail have to make to stay alive? If there is no future, then what is the future for electronic communication going to be?

Tracking Students

In response to violence on college campuses and in our schools over the last decade, colleges and universities are faced with the daunting task of being responsible for their students whereabouts. 

Hurricane Sandy caused TCNJ to put a program into place to collect off campus addresses for those students who were not living in TCNJ housing but also not living in their parents permanent address.

Technology provides an ever growing number of tools that help keep track of student on campus and their activities.  Use of social locationing services is one such tool to track students across campus, to take attendance in class, or monitor use of facilities.

Another product, Campus Track by Opentech (opentech-us.com)  provides a means for student activities to be tracked via IDs throughout our campus.  The software would all us to "monitor activity, control privileges, keep a verifiable record of attendance, and create an electronic log to improve security."  While it’s impossible to know the whereabouts of every student on campus, this system allows us to manage traffic flow in and out of our facilities, and keep a record for our review if we ever need it.  Campus Track is a campus-wide activity tracking solution that will allow TCNJ to effortlessly track and authorize student access to:

• Academic facilities
• Recreational facilities
• Resource centers
• Events

In a way, our current ID card system already can do some of this, it would just be a matter of pulling the data together to see where and when  you swiped your card to pay for printing (implemented this semester), pay for coffee, or swipe into a residence hall or computer lab. 

The TCNJ EOF department has recently implemented an RFID tag system to track student activity.  A small, key chain size RFID tag was issued to each student in the EOF program.  When a student enters the office for a meeting, attends an event, or walks into the tutoring center, they will be asked to scan their tag.  Although this provides better service to the student, it also helps to track their activity.

Other similar devices, like BeHere app, use iBeacons to track students and take attendance.  iBeacons is a Bluetooth technology where your phone submits a single to beacons that are in the area.  BeHere is an app for the iPad where the iPad acts as the beacon.  As students enter the room the beacon identifies them by their cell phone signal and marks them as present.  This technology could easily be modified to put a beacon on each building and we could track your path across campus and instantly identify which building you are in or closest to.

What do you think of colleges using this?  Would you find it an invasion of privacy?  How could colleges use such technologies to better serve their students?

Fall 2014 Semester Q1

Welcome to the TCNJ MIT 201 Blog Site!  This blog is used to create discussion in Mr. Buonocore's class.  You will be required to use this blog to respond to a discussion question that I will post.  Blog  topics will be posted at the beginning of each session.  Your blog post will be considered part of class participation and are designed to encourage group discussion.  In order to meet the minimum requirement of this assignment, you will be required to submit your response to the discussion topic and respond to at least 1 of your classmates.  Responses should be meaningful and one sentence responses will not be accepted.

Topics will be posted by me at the beginning of each blog cycle.  Since the purpose of the blog is to create a discussion, blog posts and comments are expected to be completed before the due date in order to give others time to respond to them.  Blog posts submitted ON the due date will not be eligible for full credit.  Posts submitted after the due date will receive less than ½ or 0 credit depending on how late it is submitted.

Strength of Passwords

TCNJ has recently implemented a new password policy where students, faculty, and staff are now required to change passwords every 90 days. The old policy allowed user to keep their passwords forever and never change them.  Thus there were some users who had the same password for 16 years.  The new 90 day experation policy, will be complimented by stronger password requirements:

• Passwords must be at least 8 characters long and can be up to 20 characters long.
• Passwords must contain at least:
• One numeric character
• One symbol character (examples: ! # $ @ % ^ & ? +)
• One upper case character
• One lower case character

Similar security policies have been in place in many organizations for a long time and are perceived to make our systems more secure, yet it does ask the question, is there a specific security vulnerability or attack that this is designed to counter, or are we just following the procedure because "it's the way it has always been done"?

There is an ongoing debate between which is more secure, requiring more frequent password changes or enforcing a really strong password requirement but not requiring users to change it.

The same arguments are used by both sides:
Frequent changes will certainly makes sure that half the office has stickies with their password on their monitor or under their keyboard.

Requiring really strong passwords will certainly make sure that half the office has stickies with their password on their monitor....

Frequent changes will make users use the weakest password they can use and still meet the requirement while adding a rotating number to the end that changes every expiration.

Really strong passwords will cause more uses to use the help desk and password reset

The arguments go on and on.....So what are your thoughts? Which approach is safer?

Social Media and College Admissions Part II

For a few semesters now, I've surveyed my class as to their thoughts on Social Networking and College Admissions.  These former posts have always questioned if colleges and universities should be involved in social networking, should they have a plan, and basically, do students even want us there.  If you like, you can view the blog post at http://tcnjmit201.blogspot.com/2013/09/social-media-and-college-admissions.html

Like it or not, higher education is into social networking sites.  Colleges use sites as a requirement tool, as a fund raising tool, to create communities, and to......evaluate applicants?  You have probably been warned that you have to be careful with what you post on the internet because employers might see it and use it against you, but what about graduating, or even getting into college in the first place.

In May 2006, a student at Millersville University in Pennsylvania was denied a teaching degree just days before graduating.  Millersville was made aware of a photo she posted onto MySpace.com titled "Drunken Pirate".  In the photo, the student was wearing a pirate hat and drinking from a plastic cup.  The college claimed that the photo was "promoting underage drinking".
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2008/12/court_rules_against_teacher_in.html

In a more recent case, a high school senior and prospective student at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, ME was denied admissions after attending a campus information session and repeatedly posted disparaging comments on Twitter about her fellow attendees and using a common expletive.  Bowdoin College claims that the reasons behind the denial were solely academic and that the student would not have been offered admissions anyway.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/10/business/they-loved-your-gpa-then-they-saw-your-tweets.html?_r=0

Your thoughts?  Find and post other examples along with your thoughts.

Course Feedback

We will be skipping blog assignment 3.  In its place, I will be posting looking for your feedback.

This is not graded nor will it count toward class participation.  I am just looking for feedback.  I believe that all feedback is good, both good and bad comments, so please be honest.

I'm looking for your feelings on the course;
length of the class.
should it be longer than 8 weeks
topics covered
the mid term
group project
I talk too much
my stories are great :)
Whatever.

You can post as anonymous as to hide your identity!  I won't hold it against you anyway.  You also won't get extra credit for positive comments so don't bother if you are just trying to kiss up.

Thanks in advance.

Prof. Buonocore

What would Socrates "think"?

In our class we've learned about a lot of different technologies and how they help individuals in both their personal and business lives.  But are all these advances in technology good for us?

We can all pretty much agree that Socrates (yes we are talking about a Greek philosopher in a technology class) was a brilliant man.  We can also agree that, for centuries, we've defined an "educated" person as someone who can "read and write".  Its very interesting then to note that Socrates "bemoaned the development of writing" and thus also books and reading.  His reasoning stemmed out of a fear that as people would come to rely on written word and books, that they would "cease to exercise their memory and become forgetful."  He went on to say that without proper instruction on how to train the mind, people would not truly be knowledgeable, and instead would be truly ignorant.

As we mentioned in class..."if you don't know the answer to something, you can just Google it".  Don't know the name of an actor or movie, just IMDB it.  Don't worry about getting directions to your destination, just plug it into your GPS.

For my whole life people had to look at maps in order to find their way to a destination. I have memories of being amazed by my fathers ability to recall street names and directions to my friends house that he was only at once and over a year ago.  He took pride in remembering directions.  My father-in-law, took pride in remember account numbers, and yes, the 16 digit ones.  All too often, navigation today is handed off to technology. Most people have no idea how to read a map, estimate distance, and relate it to their physical surroundings.  And why should they, machines and satellites do it much better.  And come on....remembering a 16 digit account number...impossible!
When I was in 4th grade, you had to actually memorize the 50 states and capitals and all former US Presidents.  We would race against our friends and parents to see who could recite them faster.  Does it matter?  Well, today, the iPhone will tell me more about any state or president than I could possibly ever remember.  But have we stopped exercising our minds and conditioning it to be smarter.  I'll be honest, I don't remember the last time I bothered remembering a phone number.  I just hit the voice command on my phone and speak "Call Home".

Most of the time, technology makes us feel smarter.  When a friend at a party shouts out the answer to a question that no one else could remember (because he looked it up on his phone) your friend feels superficially smarter....but is he really dumber because he isn't strengthening the brain wiring that solves problems and instead relying on a machine.

My grandfather just passed away this year at the ripe old age of 104!  Right up until the end, his brain was sharp.  He remembered people and names.  Could tell stories from things that happened years ago, and loved doing crossword puzzles.  He would do them all day and was fast.  After filling in the correct response to one of the questions, he would glance up at whoever was sitting next to him and ask "Did you know that?"  This is a man who never had an iPhone, never owned a computer, and certainly never searched for anything online. 

If Socrates was scared that writing and books would make us ignorant, what would he think of all the technology benefits we have today?  I bet you could "Google it" to find out. 

What do you think?