There's an interesting story in the Washington Post about how universities struggle to keep students electronically informed in an age of hyper-mediated communications and personal technologies.
Susan Kinzie reports:
"College students now are wired, wireless, Sidekicked, Facebooked, YouTubed and bleeping with instant messages and text messages. But try getting an important announcement out to everyone on campus.
It's the flip side of all the technology: Students are more connected than ever -- but surprisingly tricky for administrators to reach."
One possible solution to this problem is the development of web portals, which can be individualized according to the needs of students. According to Wikipedia, a web portal is a site on the World Wide Web that typically provides personalized capabilities to its visitors, providing a pathway to other content. It is designed to use distributed applications, different numbers and types of middleware and hardware to provide services from a number of different sources.
A university web portal would allow students to have access to a number of data bases as well as updates about life on campus all in one place.