10 best new features of Windows Server 8

Microsoft claims 300 new and improved features in Windows Server 8, but after a few days in Redmond watching demos and stepping through lab sessions, we wonder whether the marketing guys accidentally left off a zero. It's hard to name a Windows Server feature that hasn't been tweaked, streamlined, wizardized, or completely revamped. Whatever grudge you may hold against Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 8 will almost certainly make amends.

If you're a large shop struggling to manage hundreds of Windows servers, Windows Server 8 should ease the job. If you're a small shop trying to squeeze high-end capability from a low-end budget, Windows Server 8 has plenty for you, too. With Windows Server 8, everything from server deployment to high availability becomes smoother and more automated.
In fact, there's so much of note in the new OS, it's almost a crime to stop at the top 10, listed below in no particular order. Believe it or not, data deduplication for production file servers, native PowerShell support in Hyper-V, and virtual Active Directory didn't even make the list. Look at it this way: There will be even more surprises in store when you finally get your hands on a Windows Server 8 beta.

Multiserver management. Server Manager not only gets a face-lift in Windows Server 8, donning the superclean Metro look, but opens the management horizon to the entire server environment. Pull in new servers (physical or virtual) to manage through Active Directory or DNS lookup, and Server Manager will inventory the server and add a new tile to the dashboard displaying its state. Other tiles roll up aggregates of information across multiple servers by server role and various attributes.

Views are search driven, so it's easy to pull up matching values across all rows. Search filters can be saved, so it's easy to create personalized dashboards or standard views for selected sets of machines. Instead of reaching across the screen to ye olde Task pane (RIP), you perform all actions directly on specific elements, by right-clicking and choosing from a contextual menu. Naturally, all of this remote, multiserver management goodness is built on PowerShell and WMI (Windows Management Interface). Considering Microsoft's boasts of 2,300 new PowerShell cmdlets, wizards should become more commonplace throughout the Windows Server ecosystem.

USING INTERACTIVE VIDEO CONFERENCING IN SCHOOLS

TECHNOLOGYS able to connect people all over the world and thanks to interactive video conferencing programs schools are able to talk to one another in completely different countries. No longer will you have just a "pen pal" anymore you will actually end up with a virtual message from them and you are able to make friends clear on the other side of the planet. Thanks to technology students are truly able to see the rest of the world and to be able to connect with other cultures and to see actual places that they are studying and learning about.


There are so many amazing advantages to what video conferencing is providing to schools. Here are a just a few of the many advancements interactive video conferencing is able to provide:

1. Additional course offerings. For students that have been able to excel at their current grade the video conferencing can help to provide them with advanced learning. They can use the program to learn outside of their day to day classroom learning in order to shadow college professionals and many other things. It is a great way to add more learning methods and programs to your child's education if they are not being challenged enough.

Benefits of Distance Learning Courses or Correspondence courses

Distance Learning Courses or Correspondence Courses have emerged as a new evolution and has greatly affected the people from all over the world. Distance Learning Courses have gained much popularity and the reason behind this is its various advantages. Earlier, Correspondence Courses were dependent on mail-in based system and those who wanted to pursue these courses had to communicate with their teachers through mail. All the study materials and assignments were sent through mail. But now with the development in technology you can easily pursue these courses. In order to get a degree through Correspondence Courses all you need is just a computer with internet connection.

Distance Learning Courses provide you with the opportunity to continue education according to your convenience. Correspondence Courses are now being preferred by more and more people as these courses equip the individuals with highly specific skills which can be helpful for their career advancement. Actually, the main objective of Distance Learning Courses is to provide education to people from every walk of life irrespective of their age. Anybody can pursue education through Correspondence Courses. There are courses for individuals belonging to different age groups.
Another important advantage of Distance Learning Courses is that you can study at anywhere and at anytime without leaving your other responsibilities. It provides the flexibility of time and location; you can even study from the comfort of your home as there is no need to attend regular classes. You can study at a time when you feel comfortable. Correspondence Courses are very beneficial for those individuals who are already working but need a special qualification for promotion in job or career advancement. They can pursue Distance Learning Courses along with their current job and fulfilling all their obligations.

Technology in Environmental Education

In a world where we are frequently exposed to controversial high-tech headlines about self replicating miniature robots, attempts to download human brains into computers, and cars with night vision and heads up displays, (note) I am often asked what does technology have to offer environmental educators and their students? When it comes to technology, we are of two minds. We hate TV, but we have a favorite show. We hate deforestation, but we love beautiful wood-grain furniture. We hate electronic eavesdropping. But we love it when it's used to capture a fiendish criminal. Technology. We love to hate it. We hate to love it. (note.) In the next few pages, I will explore the philosophy and examples of how we try to embrace (if not love) Technology in our programs at IslandWood.

In a recent survey of environmental centers, Bethany Lesure found the most common reasons for integrating technology into educational programs are "audience demand", "State Ed. Requirement", a way to "Reach Out", and that "Kids Relate" to technology (Lesure, 2002). While these are very pragmatic reasons, I would argue that we need to be more deliberate in our choices � after all, isn't much of Environmental Education about considering the consequences of one's actions? (note.)

Integrating technology into our educational programs provides students with additional tools to enhance their learning. So you might wonder, "What are the benefits of taking this approach to help students explore and understand the world around them?"

Technology supports our efforts to appeal to different learning styles. With a variety of learning tools, students can understand their experiences through verbal, written, spatial, quantitative, and/or graphical means. As a result, many more students become engaged in the learning process.

Technology supports our multidisciplinary approach to learning. Integrating different disciplines helps students combine their mathematical, logical, scientific, linguistic, artistic, and social knowledge to make their lives and interactions with the world clearer.

Technology in EducationE

Many people warn of the possible harmful effects of using technology in the classroom. Will children lose their ability to relate to other human beings? Will they become dependent on technology to learn? Will they find inappropriate materials? The same was probably said with the invention of the printing press, radio, and television. All of these can be used inappropriately, but all of them have given humanity unbounded access to information which can be turned into knowledge. Appropriately used-- interactively and with guidance-- they have become tools for the development of higher order thinking skills.

Inappropriately used in the classroom, technology can be used to perpetuate old models of teaching and learning. Students can be "plugged into computers" to do drill and practice that is not so different from workbooks. Teachers can use multimedia technology to give more colorful, stimulating lectures. Both of these have their place, but such use does not begin to tap the power of these new tools.

In this area, you will find descriptions of how computers can be used to stimulate and develop writing skills, collaborate with peers in foreign countries, do authentic kinds of research that is valuable to the adult world, and do complex kinds of problem solving that would otherwise be impossible.Read More

The Web of Knowledge: Vision, Design, and Practice

The Knowledge Web (K-Web) is an interactive tool for understanding and inspiring the creation of ideas, and for vividly demonstrating how our world is a direct result of ideas and events of the past. Students can trace the profound influence not only of Aristotle's logic, but also see how perspective in painting literally changed the way we see the world, or how the invention of the car would not have been possible without the perfume bottle. By flying through its unique 3D nested globes, which combine space and time into a single intuitive construct, users can explore how seemingly unrelated people, places and disciplines interrelate in unexpected and unpredictable ways to produce our world.

The first section of the article, The Vision, traces the origins and socioeconomic importance of the K-Web. Patrick McKercher sketches what the K-Web will do, including how it will be enhanced by virtual reality in the second section--The Design. Andy Rogers and Judy Bonne conclude with a discussion of the involvement of teachers, and suggest why and how the K-Web can be integrated into the classroom--The Practice.Read More

ELEVATE YOUR EXPERIANCE

Search Amazon.com Computers for The history of the modern computer begins with two separate technologies—automated calculation and programmability—but no single device can be identified as the earliest computer, partly because of the inconsistent application of that term. A few devices are worth mentioning though, like some mechanical aids to computing, which were very successful and survived for centuries until the advent of the electronic calculator, like the Sumerian abacus Read more

Online Instructional Technology Courses

Kaplan University, the school below with the highest overall ranking, is effective at equipping students via its instructional technology courses to be successful instructional technologists, electronics technology instructors, computer information systems instructors, Information technologys, etc. and connect them to future employers. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, at present there are 124,480 people employed as instructional coordinators alone in the US, and their average annual salary is $61,270. Education, training, and library employees make on average $49,530 per year and there are about 8,488,740 of them employed today.
Instructional Technology Organizations
International Society for Technology in Education »
California Educational Technology Professionals Association »
Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education »
Association for Career and Technical Education »
Florida Distance Learning Association »
American Association of University Women »
National Science Teachers Association »
Universities Space Research Association »
Mississippi Technology Association »
Association of Information Technology Professionals »More information Here