• Sen. Clinton, Discovery Open State-of-the-Art Media Education Center at NY Middle School

  Discovery Communications unveiled the Discovery Channel Media Education Center at Poughkeepsie Middle School in New York. Time Warner Cable is also a partner in the project, agreeing to rewire the school to provide high-quality cable access to the school's classrooms. US Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and Discovery Communications President and CEO Judith A. McHale joined officials from Time Warner Cable and the Poughkeepsie School District at the official opening of the media education center.

  Senator Clinton worked with Discovery Communications to encourage the selection of a New York school for this groundbreaking project. The Discovery Channel Media Education Center features a state-of-the-art TV studio that allows students to produce short television programs, exposes them to cutting-edge media technology, and gives teachers the opportunity to explore new ways of educating.

  For the full story, visit http://corporate.discovery.com/news/press/05q3/050919r.html

• Five School Districts Split $1M Broad Prize for Urban Education

  The Broad Foundation announced that Norfolk Public Schools (VA) is the winner of the 2005 Broad Prize for Urban Education, the largest education prize in the country awarded to the most outstanding urban school districts.

  As the winner of The Broad Prize, Norfolk Public Schools will receive $500,000, and the four finalists (Aldine Independent School District (TX), Boston Public Schools, New York City Department of Education, and San Francisco Unified School District) will each receive $125,000. This year was the third time Norfolk was a finalist for The Broad Prize, bringing the district's three-year winnings to $750,000.

  The $1 million Broad Prize is an annual award honoring the country's urban school districts that are making the great improvements in student achievement, while reducing achievement gaps among ethnic groups and between high- and low-income students. The money goes directly to graduating high school seniors for college scholarships.

  For the full story, visit http://www.broadfoundation.org/med-news/index.shtml

• Georgia Tech's College of Computing Unveils Two New Dell Supercomputing Clusters

  The College of Computing at Georgia Tech has installed two Dell high-performance computing clusters (HPCC) at its campus in Atlanta. These supercomputing clusters are made up of 64 and 128 Dell PowerEdge 1850 servers.

  The systems provide both dedicated and campuswide resources for Georgia Tech's researchers, whose work has helped the university rank among the nation's top research campuses. Researchers plan to use the systems to study complex problems, including the simulation of aircraft designs and the design of future computer chips.

  For the full story, visit
  http://www1.us.dell.com/content/topics/global.aspx/corp/
  pressoffice/en/2004/2005_09_20_rr_000?c=us&l=en&s=corp

• 4GL School Solutions Wins 2005 EdNET HERO Award

  4GL School Solutions Inc. (4GL) is the recipient of the 2005 EdNET HERO Award that goes to for-profit companies. Presented recently at the 13th annual EdNET Conference in San Diego, CA, the HERO Award recognizes nonprofit and for-profit organizations that have made the most significant positive impact on education through educational technology and telecommunications.

  An EdNET finalist for two years running, 4GL won consideration for its Web-based ENCORE! suite of software and service solutions for special populations. ENCORE! helps school districts increase the effectiveness of their programs for special populations by automating time-consuming data collection and reporting processes, and reducing the paperwork burden.

  For the full story, visit http://www.4glschools.com/news/press/2005/9_22_05_ednet_award.htm

• South Carolina School District Selects Scantron's Complete Assessment Solution

  Officials at Orangeburg Consolidated School District Five (SC) have selected the Complete Assessment Solution from Scantron—an integrated product that includes Achievement Series and Performance Series—as their choice for formative and diagnostic testing, citing its ability to provide the information needed to help children learn the district curriculum and meet or exceed goals for the state's assessment tests.

  Orangeburg Consolidated School District Five is nationally recognized for its ability to improve academic performance. The district will use Performance Series three times per year to assess grade-level proficiency: the fall test will help in student placement, the January test will evaluate student grade-level progress, and the spring test will determine which students could benefit from taking summer school. Achievement Series will be used periodically throughout the year as a benchmark assessment to measure gains against the district curriculum, and as pacing guide

  For the full story, visit http://biz.yahoo.com/pz/050922/86496.html

iPrism 4.0, the latest release of St. Bernard Software's (http://www.stbernard.com) Internet filtering appliance, allows network users to guard against Web-based threats by blocking sites that are known to have spyware, malware, or phishing content. It can also prevent the unauthorized use of public IM and P2P file-sharing programs, and provides real-time monitoring and enhanced reporting capabilities that provide immediate visibility of protocol exchange, which can help determine the origin of bandwidth drains or security breaches. iPrism 4.0 has also added kernel-level filtering technology that will help increase the speed with which reports are generated, and allows organizations to create filters that adhere to their acceptable usage policies. Pricing for iPrism, including appliance, subscription, and maintenance, starts at $3,490.

Roving Planet's (http://www.rovingplanet.com) AP Commander uses a continuous configuration and firmware management process to automatically find and manage every access point on a campus WLAN or distributed Wi-Fi environment, and eliminates intrusions by remembering approved settings and making automatic security corrections whenever unauthorized external changes are detected. The solution supports all SNMP-enabled enterprise access points, and optimizes WLAN performance through the centralized management of key access point settings such as encryption method, radio power output, and “channelization.” AP Commander also enables users to choose which configurations to monitor and control from a single console, and provides customizable reports that review all configuration changes and firmware updates in chronological order. It is currently available for Redhat Linux, Mac OS X Server version 10.4, and the Apple Xserve G5 operating systems.