Boulder, Colorado – The WICHE Cooperative for Educational Technologies (WCET) is pleased to announce NJEDge.Net (New Jersey Research & Education Network): NJVID is a recipient of a 2012 WCET Outstanding Work (WOW) award, a competition that recognizes innovative uses of educational technologies in higher education. Since 2004 the WOW award has been presented to colleges, universities, and organizations for exceptionally creative, technology-based solutions to a significant problem or need in higher education.

NJEDge.Net (New Jersey Research & Education Network): NJVID

NJVID is a state-of-the-art digital video repository service for streaming and preservation of academic and research videos for higher education. By providing cost effective video streaming and repository services, NJVID enables institutions to overcome the technical barriers in digitizing and making video available to users through a secure portal. This service is provided by NJEDge.Net – New Jersey Research and Education Network – and builds upon a strong, statewide collaboration among universities, libraries, museums and K-12 education.

The NJVID service enables faculty to implement visual media into their courses by allowing them to upload their own videos and share them with students to enhance the learning experience. Users can create their own virtual clips from full-length videos and add their own notes to it, as well as string videos and clips to create personalized playlists. By using a simplified user management system, metadata cataloging and search tools, any institutional user can discover, collaborate and share resources. These video resources can also be made available within learning management systems, on websites and blogs.

NJVID also hosts a huge collection of over 5000 cataloged commercial educational digital videos that relate to a diverse array of fields from reputed vendors such as Films Media Group, PBS, Ambrose, Intelecom and others, allowing institutions that have licensed this content to easily add these videos to their video collection for streaming.

In creating a unified portal for faculty uploaded, locally owned and commercial licensed videos, NJVID has today grown to fulfill a much greater need of educators and students alike: the use of video as a major tool in teaching and learning.

“The significance of the WOW Award is more than just some cool, new technology tools,” notes James Bowey, professor at Winona State University and chair of the WOW Awards Committee. “At the heart of the award and this year’s three honored projects is that each addresses a real and important need that is shared widely across higher education. It’s the innovative, often collaborative, way in which these projects were carried forward that merits the award, as well as the fact that each serves as a model for others to replicate.”

The winning projects will be honored at the WCET Annual Meeting<http://wcetconference.wiche.edu> on November 2 in San Antonio.

The WICHE Cooperative for Educational Technologies (WCET) (www.wcet.wiche.edu<http://www.wcet.wiche.edu/>) is a cooperative, membership-driven, non-profit provider of strategies and services that accelerate the adoption of effective practices and policies, advancing excellence in technology-enhanced teaching and learning in higher education. More information is available on WCET’s Website: wcet.wiche.edu<http://wcet.wiche.edu>

The Quilt Board of Directors recently completed its annual election for The Quilt Executive Committee. The Quilt is pleased to announce three new members will join the Committee in 2013 for two-year terms: Jeff Custard, Network Engineering Manager, University Center for Atmospheric Research and Front Range GigaPoP; Tim Lance, president and Chair, NYSERNet; and Dave Reese, vice president and Chief Technology Officer, CENIC. The nine-member Executive Committee provides ongoing oversight of Quilt affairs as delegated by the full Board.

The Board also completed its officer elections for 2013. Don Welch, president and CEO of Merit Network, was elected to the office of Vice Chairman for 2013. In accordance with Quilt bylaws, the 2012 Vice Chairman, Claude Garelik, Systems IT Security Officer for the South Dakota Board of Regents and Chairman of the Board for the Great Plains Network, was elected to the Chair position for this year. Claude replaces Wendy Huntoon, Director of Networking at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center and Executive Director of the Three Rivers Optical Exchange.

“As a member-powered organization, The Quilt is very fortunate to not only have a tremendous breadth of talent among our members but also the strong commitment of these individuals who are remarkable in their leadership contributions to advanced regional networking in support of research and education,” said Jen Leasure, Quilt president and CEO. “I congratulate the new Executive Committee members on their election and look forward to continuing our work together for another highly productive year for the organization.”

About The Quilt

The Quilt is the national coalition of advanced regional networks for research and education, representing 31 networks across the country. Participants in The Quilt provide advanced network services and applications to over 250 universities and thousands of other educational institutions.

Five vendors identified to partner with research and education community on OpenFlow-based solutions and initiatives

Seattle, October 24, 2012 – The Quilt, the national coalition of advanced regional research and education (R&E) networks, announces that five equipment providers have been selected as OpenFlow Switch Authorized Quilt Providers (AQP’s): Brocade; HP via reseller partner Matrix Integration; IBM; NEC Corporation of America; and Pica8.

One of the missions of the R&E community is to engage with its many partners, including industry, to design, develop and support experimental, leading-edge technologies in order to drive advancements in academic networking and research. To help support this mission of the community it serves, The Quilt released its National Request for Proposal (RFP) for OpenFlow-Enabled Network Switches in May with the objectives of:

• defining a preferred set of configurations for OpenFlow-enabled equipment for the research and education community
• providing a sensible set of switch options for regional and campus networks to purchase OpenFlow-enabled equipment
• promoting and enabling software-defined networking capabilities to scale to more regional and campus networks by leveraging the R&E community’s collective experience and interest in software-defined networking
• identifying and partnering with equipment providers who are creating a new development platform around the ideas of OpenFlow

Jen Leasure, president and CEO of The Quilt, stated, “OpenFlow and more generally software-defined networking offer important new sets of choices for Quilt members and their Authorized Buyers to consider, as they seek to more efficiently and flexibly deliver advanced network services and applications to diverse and growing constituencies within their states and regions. By qualifying the AQP’s we are announcing today, The Quilt seeks to make it easier for our members to identify and, if in the interests of their stakeholders, to adopt OpenFlow technologies optimized for R&E environments.”

Each of the AQP’s met the current set of preferred features and configurations as outlined in the RFP. Each demonstrated a willingness to partner with the R&E community to create a new development platform around the ideas of OpenFlow and also provides a unique set of capabilities to contribute to a suite of switch options for regional and campus networks. A willingness to perform third-party interoperability testing with other OpenFlow-enabled switches was also a key selection criterion.

Effective immediately the AQP’s are authorized to sell to Quilt member networks and their Authorized Quilt Buyers under a Quilt Pricing Agreement initially valid for 12 months with option for renewal if mutually agreeable to The Quilt and the AQP.

About The Quilt

The Quilt is the national coalition of advanced regional networks for research and education, representing 31 networks across the country. Participants in The Quilt provide advanced network services and applications to over 200 universities and thousands of other educational institutions. For more information, visit www.thequilt.net.