New academic initiative from IBM.

New academic initiative from IBM. IBM (International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY, www.ibm.com) The world's largest computer company. IBM's product lines include the S/390 mainframes (zSeries), AS/400 midrange business systems (iSeries), RS/6000 workstations and servers (pSeries), Intel-based servers (xSeries) is leading a new initiative to collaborate with educators This is a list of educators. See also: Education, List of education topics. External link: General Category: inteaching students the open standards Specifications for hardware and software that are developed by a standards organization or a consortium involved in supporting a standard. Available to the public for developing compliant products, open standards imply "open systems;" that an existing component in a system can be replaced skills necessary to compete andkeep pace with changes in the information technology workplace. When thecompany announced the IBM Academic Initiative in July July:see month. , it noted that theprogram is intended to "better prepare students for the jobs oftomorrow." Describing it as "an innovative program offering a wide rangeof technology education benefits from free to fee that can scale to meetthe goals of most colleges and universities," IBM said that itwould work with schools that support open standards and seek to use opensource and IBM technologies for teaching purposes, IBM will work withthese institutions both directly and via the Internet InternetPublicly accessible computer network connecting many smaller networks from around the world. It grew out of a U.S. Defense Department program called ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network), established in 1969 with connections between computers at the . Moreover, IBM says that it will work with a wide range ofpostsecondary institutions--from large universities to communitycolleges to career and technical schools. The company will work withselect schools that support open standards in three key objectives:training an IT workforce to fill the new kinds of jobs that are emergingat IBM and across the industry; providing the right skills to the nextgeneration of IT workers to ensure they are qualified for the jobs oftomorrow; and ensuring that universities have the most current, relevantcurricula that map to the kinds of jobs that are expected, so schoolscan be attractive for enrollment, funding and growth. As one of the initiative's benefits, IBM will assign atechnical team to assess an institution's IT curricula and providetechnical training and skills for faculty and staff. Academic Initiativeparticipants can also take advantage of IBM's Workforce DevelopmentSolutions and Advanced Career Education. For more information, visit www.ibm.com.