Education | Enterprise Architecture in Higher Education

Microsoft Canadian Colleges Exec Briefing – Keynote

enterprise architecture, higher education 2 Responses »

Feb 022011

Anthony Salcito, VP World Wide Education, Microsoft – tonysa@micorosoft.com 617-877-2780

Technology in Education – Expect More

Today’s Challenges

attract and retain students, researchers and academics in an increasingly competitive environment
student populations are growing and are more diverse, distributed, discerning and price concious
limited government funding and tight budgets

Collaborative Campus a vision and an IT architecture designed especially for higher education to establish a relevant, contemporary learning environment. (Microsoft 2011)

Technology Focus Areas

Unified Communications
Academic Search
Education Analytics
Virtualization
Cloud Services
Social Computing
Mobility
Identity Integration

Anthony did a series of impromptu demos using Office 2010 tools particularly PowerPoint and OneNote (one of my fav apps)

Take a look at the Microsoft Download Centre for the Interactive Classroom.

Office 365 for Education

Office 365 for Education is a replacement of Live@Edu offering. Brings together cloud versions of Microsoft communication and collaboration products - Office Professional Plus, Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Exchange Online and Lync Online. This is a very interesting option for us if we choose to run our administrative SharePoint in our data centre and leverage the Office 365 cloud service for academic delivery service. This hybrid option could give us scalability for our large and dynamic academic environment.

We really need to get our heads around what is private and confidential (from a data perspective) and what is not.

Student Readiness Resources – Microsoft is putting lots of focus in this area by providing career roadmaps, student learning plans, IT Academy Student Pass, Dreamspark, Student 2 Business, Imagine Cup, BizSpark, Student Tech Clubs, etc

Partners in Learning – building capacity, growing learning communities, expanding teaching and learning practices.

Take a look at Montage – another Microsoft project, part of fuse labs – http://fuse.microsoft.com/project/Montage.aspx

Another one to look at based on a gaming for learning model Ribbon Hero http://www.officelabs.com/ribbonhero

Time Flies When You are Having Fun

enterprise architecture, higher education, leadership, management, personal 1 Response »

Sep 132010

Over the past month, I hit a couple of career milestones. On August 31, 2010, I completed my 18th year of service at British Columbia Institute of Technology. On Sept 4, 2010, I completed 3 years as the Manager, Business Application Services and Enterprise Architecture in the Information Technology Services department at BCIT. I also will be attending my 30th high school reunion this month … not sure where the time is going!

Time flies and working in Higher Education has been very rewarding. In Aug 1992, I joined BCIT as an Intermediate Systems Analyst. I was hired for my expertise with Information Builders FOCUS mainframe 4GL language. My role was to work on the various reporting and application systems built in FOCUS running on an IBM mainframe. By 1996, we became concerned about Y2K and its impact on the mainframe. We also implemented the Finance module in our ERP to compliment the Student module installed in 1992. I worked on a project with a colleague to bring a SQL based reporting platform to BCIT. I began to read about the works of Bill Inmon and his ideas about data warehouses and the Corporate Information Factory as well as the first exposure to the father of Enterprise Architecture, John Zachman. Little did I know how much Zachman would influence my career.

After surviving Y2K (we must have done a good job because there was no catastrophe), I got introduced to Ralph Kimball and his star schema approach to data marts and data warehousing in 2002. Soon after in 2004, a new opportunity came up as part of an Institute Strategic plan to integrate technology in our teaching, learning, research and business practices – Technology Enabled Knowledge. Several of us were sent on John Zachman and Stan Locke’s 5 day EA Master class. After taking the course, I knew I had found an field (to me) that encompassed all the things I had experienced in my career to date. I applied for the new position of Enterprise Architect and got it! I have been passionate in leading the development of our Enterprise Architecture practice and finding a way to tie it to our organizational goals and strategies. You can find much of our work on this blog.

I am now taking on a new challenge (while still working full time) to attain a Masters of Science in Information Management from Syracuse University. I know I will be blogging much more on this. Enough for now … time for homework!

Taking the Next Step in My Education

education, enterprise architecture, leadership, management 2 Responses »

Aug 042010

Since I completed both the UBC Sauder School of Business – Certificate in Management Excellence and the Carnegie Mellon Institute of Software Research International – Certified Enterprise Architect program, I have been looking to take the next step in my education. Here is an older post where I asked “What Masters Program should I choose?“ I now have an answer to my question!

I applied for and received funding from my employer, BCIT to pursue a graduate level degree. With the funding approved, I applied to the Masters of Science in Information Management Program at Syracuse University’s iSchool. Last week, I received my formal letter of acceptance! I will begin my program in September 2010. It has been a very long time since I have been in a formal education program. It should be an interesting ride. I will be continuing my day job and will be taking most of the program online. I am looking forward to a trip or two to Syracuse University and will now cheer for the Orange!!

Here is a video about the program: