tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-78037772024-03-12T23:01:48.696-04:00Think ThunkComputing, academia, and academic computing.EBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18117506726182202904noreply@blogger.comBlogger48125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7803777.post-1129682226525000392005-10-18T20:25:00.000-04:002005-10-18T20:37:06.553-04:00Useit.com has weighed in: this blog sucks!Jakob Nielsen weighed in two weeks ago with his annual <a href="http://www.useit.com/alertbox/designmistakes.html" target="new">Top Ten Web Design Mistakes</a>. Since we continue to work on the large-scale overhaul of our organization sight, I was feeling pretty high about that we'd managed to avoid 9 out of 10 of his mistakes, and the one we did violate, we did for good enough reason.<br /><br />Then today he published the <a href="http://www.useit.com/alertbox/weblogs.html" target="new">Top Ten Design Mistakes for Weblog Usability</a>, and I failed on nearly every score.<br /><br />This sight has been semi-moribund for months as I try to determine if blogging about my professional life is actually compatible with my profession. When I think of the necessary improvements, it's a little daunting.EBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18117506726182202904noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7803777.post-1112737473963895302005-04-05T18:00:00.000-04:002005-04-05T17:46:27.803-04:00Blogger Van Winkle meets CMSWhere the heck did March go?<br /><br />So, yes, I've been insanely busy. But that's not the full story for why I've been on a month-long hiatus. Work has recently been taking me into areas that probably would be interesting to write about in play-by-play mode, but given my position, it clearly wasn't appropriate to discuss. That sounds much worse than it is.<br /><br />Consider, for instance, product selection and vendor negotiations. Not much that I could safely say on the topic of products and vendors whom we were researching and negotiating with. It's not just that I had responsibility to stay silent on issues that impacted the negotiating position of the organization—which I did. I also found myself routinely realizing that there were just too many aspects of the project that other stakeholders hadn't had a chance to hear about or weigh in on yet. I felt an obligation on sensitive issues not to let colleagues first hear about things on my blog. While getting dooced is the popularly explored hazard of mixing work with blogging, it’s hardly the only one.<br /><br />I've been working with a number of colleagues on researching Content Management Systems (CMS) this year. At long last, I can publicly state that we've signed an agreement with Ingeniux as the platform for redesigned website.<br /><span class="fullpost"> So far, they've been a good outfit to work with. I'm interested to see how this process works out from here…I'm especially interested on how things go when you get to the end users of a new technology product. Most computing widgets meet up with adoption barriers when they reach the end users. It seems to me that the linchpin of adoption is ease of use. <br /><br />This is specifically NOT a critique of our clientele. In fact, adoption of new things is expensive and time consuming. The resistance to change can be viewed as not only human nature, but a necessary step in the feedback loop that helps to force new tools and methods to be more efficient and useful.<br /><br />Our web maintainers already have a perfectly good, but often confusing set of tools for updating their content. For years, people have been looking for the thing to make this whole business easier. Easier content updates will hopefully spell more content updates, which will hopefully result in more usable content for our important audiences.<br /><br />I'm usually suspicious that <I>deus ex machina</I> will arrive in the form of a software box. Every once in a while, though, we have seen examples of products that make the daily transactions of networked communication far easier. When we introduced the Blackboard learning management system at the Trico, the number of courses using the web to supplement course activities soared from single digits to triple digits almost overnight. At the time we made that decision, Blackboard was not universally perceived as the most powerful tool available, but it did appear to be the easiest.<br /><br />I’ve often heard resource developers ask a paraphrased form of the famous quote from the movie <I>Field of Dreams</I> (based on the Kinsella novel, <I>Shoeless Joe</I>): If we build it, will they come? And of course, there’s no guarantee. For starters, how and where you build it matters tremendously. They don’t ask ‘Is this heaven?’ just because you showed up.<br /><br />If you are with a college or university and you're currently considering content management solutions on your campus, I'm happy to discuss our issues and discoveries with you. (And, of course, I'm interested in your experiences!) In addition to ease of use, I can generally say that full Mac support, standards compliance, and backoffice administration were also factors that played into our final decision.</span>EBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18117506726182202904noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7803777.post-1109403329380190162005-02-26T15:00:00.000-05:002005-02-26T23:53:11.456-05:00Michael Gormon vs. The Blog PeopleBack in December, Michael Gormon <a href="http://www.infomotions.com/serials/colldv-l/05/att-0054/M-Gorman___Google_and_God_s_Mind.pdf">griped about Google and its ambitions</a>. More recently, he <a href="http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA502009?display=BackTalkNews&industry=BackTalk&industryid=3767&verticalid=151&&" target="_blank">tore into blogs and the people who keep them</a>. Since the Prexy-elect of the A.L.A. is weighing in with comments that fall somewhere between professional criticism and open mockery, and since they've in turn been <a href="http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/02/25/0441239&from=rss" target="_blank">picked up on the ultimate tech-salon, Slashdot</a>, this debate has turned into a Whole Big Thing. (875 Slashdot comments and counting!)<br /><br />For those of us who have been in the information services arena for any length of time, I think we can hear overtones of the classic (and pointless) I.T. vs. Library culture wars of a previous era.<span class="fullpost"> Before I comment directly on Gormon's incendiary remarks in the <span style="font-style: italic;">Library Journal</span>, I'm putting on the record that I fervently love and admire librarians. (Let's give a shout out to all my friends at the reference desk.) I've spent many years promoting (successful) (they tell me) partnerships between I.T. workers, librarians, and other academic tribes; I'll continue to do so until they pry my meeting schedule from my cold, dead fingers.<br /><br />Gormon's remarks in both pieces, are, of course, generally true. And yet, they're embarrassingly unsophisticated, in ways that my hipster librarian friends who can fluidly navigate traditional librarianship and the roster of expanding digital forms of expression could immediately spot. Is Google's PageRank algorithm the ideal way to store and retrieve information? Does the ideal exist? Do libraries have the market cornered on optimal finding and access to information? Are most blogs good? Are all blogs bad? Are the "Blog People" uniformly illiterate Neanderthals? (Answer key: no, no, no, no, no, and no.) Gormon confesses to not knowing much about the blogosphere until December. This statement suggests to me that, for a person involved in the information services field, he'd been living under a rock. Not that he's a raging Luddite or "antidigitalist." Just moldy as all get-out. As I was reading his piece in the <span style="font-style: italic;">LJ</span>, I had the vague impression that he was speaking about blogs the way my pappy would have spoken about the newfangled rock music in the 1950's. For better and for worse, rock-and-roll is here to stay.<br /><br />I believe that we will be well-served to be critical of what Google does (up-to-date ready reference) and doesn't (in-depth, scholarly inquiry) do well. Likewise, the best blogs are enormously useful in aggregating news, providing well-written opinion, and building learning/interest communities. In fact, the best "Blog People" (we call them "bloggers") read. A lot. Whole books, even. Without even hesitating, I could name two dozen blogs that are more interesting, informed, and informative in an average post than Gormon's piece in the <span style="font-style: italic;">LJ</span>.<br /><br />Here are some other takes on the Gormon piece, not all of which I agree with:<br /><a href="http://www.librarystuff.net/2005/02/revenge-of-blog-people.html" target="_blank">Steven Cohen</a><br /><a href="http://archive.scripting.com/2005/02/25#When:8:07:31AM" target="_blank">David Winer</a><br /><a href="http://brainwagon.org/archives/2005/02/25/1027/" target="_blank">Mark VandeWettering</a><br /><a href="http://www.teleread.org/blog/2005_02_20_archive.html#110941534444729053" target="blank">David Rothman</a><br /><a href="http://www.slyturtle.com/?p=127" target="_blank">Andre</a></span>EBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18117506726182202904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7803777.post-1108579251277481832005-02-17T00:30:00.000-05:002005-02-17T00:34:07.143-05:00Speed Bumps (on the Road of Application Migration)From the category of little things making a big difference...<br /><br />Enthused by my successful transition to Firefox on all my machines over the last few months, I thought I'd give email client Thunderbird a try. I've been using Eudora since the dawn of time, but have been increasingly noticing its creakiness. (I'll still gladly take the power of full-fledged client like Eudora over any web mail interface, though. I don't get how so many people tolerate using web mail as a primary mail interface.) As for Thunderbird, I was enticed to see how well its professed anti-spam functionality performed. If it could do for my email what SpamAssassin has not been able to do thus far, it would be a lifesaver.<br /><br />In the last twenty-four hours I ran the installer on both Windows XP and Mac OS X. For now, I'm using it quite happily on the XP machine, but quickly aborted on the Mac.<span class="fullpost"> The XP installation was drool-proof. It converted all my Eudora settings, filters, and address book entries without a hitch as far as I can tell. Within a few minutes I was up and running. There were only a few minor settings changes that I needed to make, and figuring out how to configure the preferences was easy to interpret.<br /><br />When I tried the installation on the Mac, though, I was not offered an option to convert my Eudora stuff. The only migration I was offered was from Netscape. (Somebody actually used Netscape as a mail client? Poor schmuck.) That was that. I don't have the time to recreate my address book and complex filtering rules. I'm sure somebody's already built the Eudora migration tool, but it wasn't part of the basic install. Let's face it, I'm too governed by inertia to play the hunt and peck game to replace something that was generally working fine anyway. When it comes to bread-n-butter apps like browsers and mail clients, auto-pilot migrations are essential. Maybe I'll try again at the dot-one release.<br /><br />The verdict is still out on the spam filtering, by the way. It requires training, which takes a little bit of time at the outset. I've had a number of false positives on messages from mailing lists, but otherwise, it seems to be getting better.</span>EBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18117506726182202904noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7803777.post-1108100812452308682005-02-11T00:01:00.000-05:002005-02-11T01:07:52.626-05:00Tipping Point ExistentialismPartially inspired by my participation in a <a href="http://geekymom.blogspot.com/2005/01/paradox-of-choice-review.html" target="_blank">study circle</a> of <a href="http://www.swarthmore.edu/admissions/academic_program.html#consortium" target="_blank">Tricollege</a> IT and library staff that I helped to start, I've been doing a lot of reading of books like the Malcolm Gladwell's most recent stuff and Barry Schwartz's <i>The Paradox of Choice</i>. It has been fascinating reading, but so much thinking about spreading ideas and making decisions is starting to give me a case of the existential manager heebie jeebies.<br /><br />So maybe we can learn to spread ideas by manipulating the environment and exploiting special talents of people in our organizations, just as Gladwell suggests in <i>The Tipping Point</i>. <br /><br />Million dollar questions: what ideas are worth trying to tip? Are there any big ideas that I.T. in higher education is (or should be) trying to tip right now? Or is our job just to make the trains run on time and keep everybody more or less out of harm's way?<span class="fullpost"><br /><br />Million dollar questions, continued: how much mindspace should we legitimately occupy for the people we serve? Do we add complexity to people's lives by constantly trying to spread new ideas, features, services, practices, versions, tips, etc.?<br /><br />Million dollar questions, also: how much behavior can we reasonably hope to shape? Given the effort involved in just trying to modify very basic behaviors (like practicing good password security or backing up files regularly), is there enough mindspace that an I.T. organization (or library) can occupy to spark more interesting epidemics? See also: opportunity costs.<br /><br />Million dollar questions, they just keep on coming: are I.T. organizations populated by innovators and early adopters, or are they agents of the conservative mainstream culture, seeking to minimize risk and protect the status quo?<br /><br />I keep coming back to the thought that these issues are really about organizational leadership. Connecting workers' daily to-do lists to broader organizational goals. I wonder if collegiate information services organizations generally have our eyes on the ball, or if we're mostly just getting through semesters putting out fires and trying to stay on the good side of a demanding clientele. Are we a "maven" culture that truly helps to translate good ideas into something that broader constituencies can use?<br /><br />I think I need some less thought-provoking reading for a few weeks! Congratulations to you on your interpretive powers if any of this puzzled rambling made sense.</span>EBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18117506726182202904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7803777.post-1107813653336164752005-02-07T17:01:00.000-05:002005-02-07T17:00:53.336-05:00Firefox conversion survival kit, tip #1Back from a week of flu. Hackity-hackity, cough-cough-cough!
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<br />A faculty friend just got the rundown on why he should switch his browser from I.E. to Firefox. Then he asked how he sets up Firefox to be his default browser. I had to do this myself only weeks ago, but I'd already forgotten.
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<br />If you're running Panther, you set the default browser for your whole system by configuring the default browser setting in Safari's preferences. Brilliant! (Blech.)<span class="fullpost">
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<br />If you have a Mac, you already knew this, but I've recorded it here as both an example of horrible, counter-intuitive U.I. design and a reminder to myself of how to do this the next time I'm asked. (It's so non-intuitive, that I'll have to go looking it up. I find it really hard to remember things that defy logic.)
<br /></span>EBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18117506726182202904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7803777.post-1106841367479756782005-01-27T21:49:00.000-05:002005-01-27T22:02:43.313-05:00We're not bad. We're just drawn that way.Our current student ce-web-rity, Nelson Pavlosky, one half of the digital-manifesto-wielding, <a href="http://www.freeculture.org/" target="_blank">free-culture-seeking</a>, freedom-fighting duo who jousted with (and defeated) Diebold in <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/news/hellraiser/2004/05/04_403.html" target="_blank">last year's famous case</a>, says that <a href="http://phoenix.swarthmore.edu/2005-01-27/opinions/14558" target="_blank">my organization ain't so bad</a>. In fact, we're an "ally in a quest for a freer society." Heavy. I think it was sometime in the Clinton administration that we last got a little credit in a public student forum.
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<br />It may surprise Nelson and some other students that our ITS department is more than just benignly tolerant of freedom of expression. We are a living, breathing, group of humans with similar core values to the community we are a part of.<span class="fullpost"> As such, we are quite partial to all kinds of personal and academic freedoms, just like our faculty and students. We value your safety just as much as the Dean's Office. We also need to protect other organizational interests, as would the P.R. office, the H.R. department, and our legal counsel—not to mention the Board of Managers. Some of these interests are in tension at times, but we all do our best to balance them in appropriate ways, while leaving the smallest possible dent when sacrifices must be made.
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<br />As a small, residential place, we're fond of calling ourselves a community. I think one of the first steps in having a true community is to stop making different parts of it into "the other," and start forging a shared identity. Our shared cultural values includes traits like rigorous intellectual inquiry, respect for diverse opinions, and commitment to broadly-defined personal liberties.
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<br />While I appreciate the recognition Nelson gives my colleagues, I'd like to point out that it's not so much that ITS has stood up to external pressures. The reality is that the whole College has stood up together against those pressures, and the people I work with have played their part thoughtfully and with great care.
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<br />We are you. (I feel like breaking out into a chorus of "We are the people in your neighborhood.") There are times when we must address our differences of opinion, but I'd hope that one outcome of spending four (or more) years at an undergraduate institution like Swarthmore is to appreciate the sense of shared mission that typifies such places.</span>EBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18117506726182202904noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7803777.post-1106710894915037242005-01-26T13:00:00.000-05:002005-01-27T14:44:03.693-05:00Welcome to Swarthmore visitors<img src="http://swarthmore.collegestoreonline.com/webitemimages/333/W40032-t.jpg" align="right" hspace="7">If you weren't in attendance at the talk that <a href="http://www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/tburke1/perma12605.html">Tim Burke</a> and I gave at the faculty luncheon today, please forgive me for cluttering your RSS feed.
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<br />If you <span style="font-style: italic;">were </span>at the talk today<span style="font-style: italic;">, </span>welcome. If you have any questions or comments about what you heard, I'll be glad to field them here. (I'm sure Tim will chime in if he feels he has anything to add.)
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<br />***update***
<br />Our supercool librarians have rolled today's bib-blog-ography into a <a href="http://www.bloglines.com/public/swarthmorelibrary" target="_blank">public feed page</a> that you can use to check out a variety of aggregated resources you may be interested in. (Thanks, M.)
<br />EBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18117506726182202904noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7803777.post-1106583724711008312005-01-24T17:00:00.000-05:002005-01-25T10:35:38.656-05:00When all-campus communications go bad<img src="http://www.swarthmore.edu/%7Ebehrens/ronantoon2.jpg" align="left" hspace="7" />
<br /><span style="font-size:78%;"><a href="http://phoenix.swarthmore.edu/" target="_blank">The Phoenix</a>, 01.20.2005. Republished with permission from the artist.</span>
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<br />For the longest time, the campus had a printed publication called the <i>Weekly News</i>, which was mostly announcements and classifieds. To cut back on expenses, the publication went online-only, which pretty much killed it. Everybody I talked to says that they no longer read the <i>Weekly News</i> ever since they stopped delivering the physical copy to our mailboxes. Me included.
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<br />This change put even more pressure on all-campus email, which now was the only way to slackvertise to the whole campus. Anybody drawing a paycheck at the College had the ability to spam the campus about their events or their sofas for sale. Some people really resented the volume of stuff, especially students, and much clamor arose for an email revolution.
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<br />Personally, I can't get worked up about a few excess, perhaps frivolous emails from colleagues when the global email infrastructure is collapsing under the weight of drugs-n-porn spam. But, it strikes me as really indicative of how unruly campus communications can be, and how hard it can be to change information consumption habits once they're formed.<span class="fullpost">
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<br />Of course, a 15 minute investment in setting up an email filter in a proper client would solve this problem, but that hasn't gained anywhere near the traction that griping about junk mail has. Some students even want ITS or some other administrative entity to police for content on the mailing lists. (There's a bad idea whose time must never come.) Instead, we're sending out digests twice a day, which I consider patently worse than what we originally had. I suppose it's only better if you're measuring good and bad by how many emails you won't read are sitting in your inbox. It's really bad if you only read 10% of the traffic on the list, but if you use subject headings to alert yourself to things you care about.
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<br />Unless and until we're able to put forward a real campus announcements system on the web, preferably something that's delivered prominently on a campus portal and with an awesome GUI, I think we were better off just letting chaos reign on the lists and telling the people who have time to complain about junk mail to get over themselves.
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<br />I think I'm out of the mainstream on this one.</span>EBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18117506726182202904noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7803777.post-1106286100876015622005-01-21T01:00:00.000-05:002005-01-25T10:14:55.386-05:00Ed-Tech Toolbox Essential:Database Solutions with FileMaker Pro 7A recurring theme in my support of Humanities faculty over more than a decade is that few have a workable definition of what a database is. A database is something that one accesses in the library perhaps, but it certainly isn't something that you make. (This probably also stems from the fact that unlike most other disciplines, Humanists do not often perceive of the fruits of their research as data.) As a result, I've seen a number of cases over the years where somebody has spent countless hours generating reams of notes or drawers of slides before they ever realize that they have barely-usable pile of "stuff."
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<br />On the one hand, it's a little bit worrisome that there are generations of scholars floating around who continue to be trained, from what I can tell, to approach their research with rather medieval methods for information storage, processing, and retrieval. On the other hand, it makes my job both fun and rewarding.<span class="fullpost">
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<br />This week I had a professor land at my door with a problem. She's doing close analysis of patterns of language in a classic work of literature. (Trust me, you've heard of it.) She'd gone through this tome and literally pulled out every instance of a particular part of speech. She then dutifully (and handsomely, I might add) recorded more than a dozen descriptive data elements about each instance on papers in a manila folder.
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<br />Alas, to search and sort? She'd figured that she'd try entering it all into Excel. It's good that she realized that she had structured information that belonged in tables, but thank goodness she found her way to me before she started entering her multi-lingual data into a giant spreadsheet.
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<br />The best part of my job is that in order for me to help instructors, they have to give me a crash course on their research. Our faculty are world-class scholars, so even if the technology use is early on the evolutionary scale, the questions are always fascinating. I consider it a fair barter to ask for my help in exchange for some intellectually stimulating conversation.
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<br />The professor in this case knew her data very intimately, so after an hour at the whiteboard, she had visual understanding of her data's structure, and I had a working specification for the database she needed. It took under four hours to crank out a database that met her needs. This afternoon she took it for a test spin, with only two minor change orders, requiring only a few minutes each.
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<br />The light has turned on for her, and I've already been informed that this consultation has helped her think about her larger book project. To me, that's great beyond my ability to express it.
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<br />So a word about tools here. We've always used FileMaker Pro in our shop for this type of work. It was never a perfect tool, but it was quick and simple, and with enough kludges, you could make it do what you wanted. At least it was cross-platform, which is essential for us.
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<br /><a href="http://www.filemaker.com/products/fmd_home.html" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.filemaker.com/images/boxshots/fm_prods_fmd.jpg" align="left" hspace="8"></a>Version 7 has come a long way, and it's now quite an elegant development package, especially if you get the Developer edition. There were so many powerful new features, but I especially appreciated being able to store all the tables and a (portable) script library in a single file. This not only makes relationships a snap to set up, but it's also really nice for the solutions developer. If you're using Developer edition to produce a stand-alone/runtime version of your application, there's just one file to give to the client.
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<br />Special thanks to colleague J.J., whom I know wishes not to be named on web sites, but who gave me the crash course on all the new features in FM Pro. It was impressive to watch a virtuoso fly through the application.</span>EBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18117506726182202904noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7803777.post-1106108306982717932005-01-18T22:59:00.000-05:002005-01-20T17:28:19.316-05:00Not trying to pick a fight!It seems I <a href="http://incsub.org/blog/?p=164">touched a minor nerve with James Farmer</a> when I expressed (and <a href="http://http://edu-blogger.blogspot.com/2005/01/cant-we-blog-about-something-different.html#comments" target="_blank">Rick West seconded</a>) my concern last week that blog-centered focus had been dominating my experience of educational technology sites.<blockquote>Now it does happen that there are a number of people quite focused in the study and use of ‘blogging’, a fascinating new area of communication and community that’s only really developed in a big way over the last few years, many people say it’s changing the world, or has the potential too, haven’t you heard?</blockquote>Yes, yes I have heard. A little too often, I'm afraid.<span class="fullpost">
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<br />Blogs and other social software are an important phenomenon, and they deserve the attention of educational technologists. They fit into the ever-growing toolbox of communication and media solutions available to faculty and students. Will some courses use them to great effect? Absolutely, and Farmer is one of the people I expect to help bring good models to light for the rest of us.
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<br />Nevertheless, they're a niche application in the academy, at least for now. And rather than assuming that they're going to only grow and grow, I think it's actually quite likely that the explosive growth in blogging will soon see a contraction. We won't know for some months, but we might already be in it.
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<br />The big problem is that blogs have a voracious appetitte for one of an academic's most precious commodities--time. Writing and editing content, researching, and cultivating an audience takes a great deal of effort. Many well-written blogs will wither for lack of time, or the ability to reach a sustaining level of participation or readership.
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<br />Project-based blogging has been used to good effect by many educators. While these techniques may transform particular class experiences, they do not, nor are they likely to transform the academy or the teaching/learning process in general.
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<br />The media has hyped up the blogosphere in 2004, so getting out the word is no longer really needed from us. In fact, I think it's partly the responsibility of we who know the subject intimately to push back somewhat against the hype.
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<br />So, just to be clear about this, I'm pro-blog. How could I not be? I just don't think the topic should dominate so many column inches. All I suggest is that we strive for a greater sense of proportionality. I'm not dogging other writers for writing about whatever makes them happy; I'm only trying to inject my professional assessment into the discussion.
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<br />And with that, on to other things. There are so many.</span>EBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18117506726182202904noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7803777.post-1105630441964160772005-01-13T07:33:00.000-05:002005-01-25T10:37:16.353-05:00The Dark Prince of AppleIt's <a href="http://www.eff.org/news/archives/2005_01.php#002190" target="_blank">stuff like this</a> that sometimes makes me feel dirty when I use my Mac.<span class="fullpost">
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<br />Steve Jobs knows how to make Apple innovate, and he knows how to market products to consumers. To a certain extent, that's like noting that Mussolini made the trains run on time. I am rather thankful that he's never been endowed with a monopoly, or his obsessive control issues would probably make Microsoft seem sweet and benevolent.</span>EBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18117506726182202904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7803777.post-1105593322690426332005-01-13T01:01:00.000-05:002005-01-13T16:33:21.690-05:00At least it's not called iMiniAfter all the mayhem yesterday, I didn't have a chance to watch Steve Jobs' traditional <a href="http://www.apple.com/quicktime/whatson/appleevents/" target="_blank">dog-n-pony-show keynote</a> at MacWorld S.F.
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<br />Aside from the preview of OS X/Tiger and iLife apps, the highlight of the show is new hardware. This time, the toys were (theoretically) pitched downstream of the typical Apple/Mac devotee. The Shuffle lives below the iPod on the food chain, and the Mac Mini sets a new lowest common denominator for Mac hardware.
<br />
<br /><img src="http://images.apple.com/macmini/images/designoptical20050111.jpg" align="left" hspace="6" vspace="6"> Or does it? We're told that this cheapie is pitched at winning converts, appealing to 4.5 million new iPodders who are now predisposed to reconsider the Apple brand on their desktops. These users presumably need the low price point, so that the barrier to considering a switch is reduced. They usually also have cheap I/O devices and monitors, so that'll work. Or it won't, and it still might not matter.<span class="fullpost">
<br />
<br />If you need more memory, a display, a superdrive and keyboard/mouse, you'll probably be better off buying an iMac. This isn't so much a cheaper Mac as it is a bare bones Mac.
<br />
<br />Lo, this is a machine that calls out just as well to long-time Apple geeks, because it just begs to be bought in multiples. Want a dedicated iTunes/Airport Express server or media server for your home? Slap VNC on this little buddy and you have a customizable, headless server appliance. (My brother is already on this.)
<br />
<br />How about uses in education? With the monitor de-coupled, this might play to the parallel processing crowd for small clusters. (Big ones still want the rack-mountable Xserves.) Swarthmore colleague Doug Willen suggested that this might be useful for deployment on (or in)teaching podia, where space is at a premium. Just on form factor alone, this is worth considering anywhere you want to hide your hardware. I can also see this as a great standby/loaner machine to fill in for us to have for faculty who need to get work done immediately despite a system in crisis. At this price it might even make sense for lab deployment. For $1500 round-trip, you should be able to buy a Mini with a new monitor and keyboard/mouse, then upgrade the CPU in two years, keeping the other parts for four.
<br />
<br />Me, I still hope my sweetheart someday blesses a laptop purchase, but given the right alignment of events, like already having a lot of the extras laying around, I could imagine one of these would do the trick.
<br />
<br />For now, my buying advice is to wait to buy one if you're interested. In a few months, Tiger will be shipping, and the upgrade probably will not be free.
<br />
<br />Gizmodo has a great rundown of the <a href="http://www.gizmodo.com/gadgets/laptops-pcs/apple/mac-mini-second-wave-029530.php" target="_blank">reactions to Mac Mini</a> collected from a variety of press sources.
<br />
<br /><img src="http://images.apple.com/ipodshuffle/images/indexwithgum20050111.jpg" align="left" hspace="6">As for the Shuffle, this is going to cause a price-war with the other low-end players. Without an LCD display, that's going to keep the pressure on Apple to keep on comparing well with some established players. I'm not sure whether that's sustainable, but the whole iPod phenomenon isn't about price alone. My brother wants to get the meme started to <a href="http://www.slyturtle.com/index.php?p=121" target="_blank">nickname the Shuffle the gumPod</a>. I think toyPod or blindPod might draw attention to the more salient features of the device. No, wait, I've got it...iPiddle?</span>EBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18117506726182202904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7803777.post-1105510493099888712005-01-12T01:15:00.000-05:002005-01-12T15:09:29.766-05:00One way to lose a day heading into the semester<img src="http://www.swarthmore.edu/~behrens/officewater.jpg" width="200" height="313" align="right" hspace="7" border="0" alt="A picture of my flooded office.">Around 10:00, colleague E. steps in to ask if anybody already knows about the water that's pouring out of the housekeeping closet in the hallway just outside our office suite.
<br />
<br />Hmm...no!
<br />
<br />After poking my head out the door, wow, that really was a lot of water. Not overflowing sink kind of water. A-geyser-is-spouting-off-behind-this-door kind of water.
<br />
<br />"We need to get Facilities up here fast," say I. E. disappears to find something. Colleague J. runs to call for help; can't find number.<span class="fullpost">
<br />
<br />I open said closet door to investigate.
<br />
<br />It turns out that the door was the only thing holding back the sea. Knee high water gushes out, and I quickly slam door shut again. Now the water has really spread, and is headed for J.'s office. E. shows up with a roll of paper towels. I think I'm the first one to realize that we were well past that point.
<br />
<br /><img src="http://www.swarthmore.edu/~behrens/hallway.jpg" align="left" hspace="7" border="0">Frantically, we run to J.'s office to get all computers and other possessions up off the floor. By the time we complete that, the water is taking over my office. We just get the surge protectors and the Dell up off the floor in my office, and it's seeping into E.'s office, and the (gasp!) video editing lab. In each room, we're just staying a few inches ahead of the advancing water line. Out in the hall I know the water is advancing down the hallway into other offices and the public computing lab. And also...
<br />
<br />THE CAMPUS DATA CENTER. See also: machine room, server room, nerve center, life-giving source of our electronic lives.
<br />
<br />In the few minutes that it took for the rescue team to arrive, most of the first floor of Beardsley Hall was covered by an inch or three of water. Rusty water.
<br />
<br />A surprisingly young water heater in the closet suffered "catastrophic failure." How does a water heater do that when it's only a few years old?
<br />
<br />Bigger question: what is a water heater doing in the closet adjacent to THE CAMPUS DATA CENTER? The newly remodeled data center.
<br />
<br />Well amazingly, they had the water out in about 90 minutes, but the offices are being cooled and blown dry overnight. We moved our staff meeting to the coffee bar. <img src="http://www.swarthmore.edu/~behrens/wetlab.jpg" width="320" height="262" align="right" hspace="7" border="0" alt="Water in the video editing lab is not advised.">The sub-60 temperature and noise in my office gave me a good excuse to make some rounds to faculty and library offices. Then hopped onto the wireless network to get some work done until another faculty member could find me for a late-afternoon meeting.
<br />
<br />I know I have an interrupt-driven workplace, but this is really something on a different level.
<br />
<br />As a humorous sidenote, the architect who designed our space remodel last year was in just the day before with a photographer to take shots for the portfolio. Could her timing have been any luckier?
<br />
<br />
<br />***UPDATE***
<br />My Dell needed a new power supply, which is the only computer casualty that we know of. Luckily, there's an authorized repair shop down the hall. (So spoiled!)
<br />
<br />It has also been reported that my internal censors may have slipped for a few seconds at one point, so I apologize to anybody who was within earshot.</span>EBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18117506726182202904noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7803777.post-1105076729721776212005-01-07T01:10:00.000-05:002005-01-07T13:50:34.186-05:00Meta-blogging squaredKudos to the people who kept up on their blogs over the holiday season. I needed the break.
<br />
<br />Something's been on my mind about the whole academic technology blog thang. As a relative newcomer to the small community of educational technologists who blog, I have been discouraged by one recurring observation. It is this:
<br />
<br />There's too much blogging about blogging.<span class="fullpost">
<br />
<br />I'm interested in social software, and I use it. I'm interested in others' use of these tools. If an instructor is interested in applications of wikis for teaching and learning, I'll be thrilled to have a cozy chat about the various models for doing so.
<br />
<br />I've also been in this field for over a decade, and social software is still a tiny fraction of what educational technology is. It represents an overwhelmingly disproportionate share of the word count on the blogs that define themselves as being of the field. Some of that's to be expected. The surgeon suggests surgery, and the blogger qua blogger believes in the power of blogs. To a lesser extent, I think blogging is also a safe and easy topic to write about. ("You're reading my blog. Among other things, you may be interested in blogging.")
<br />
<br />Bloggity bloggity blog blog blog.
<br />
<br />Maybe this corner of the blogosphere is self-selecting for authors who are enthusiastic about the growth of the medium. Nevertheless, I've followed some of the blogs on the library side of the information services fence. Lo and behold, they're talking about the full range of professional topics. I have to imagine that there are some other pros out there who'd like to use the medium to discuss the vast sweep of technologies, applications, resources, and models in the field of academic computing.
<br />
<br />As it is the new year, be it here resolved that this blog shall not be about blogging. Unless it's really important to the story. Even then, only in moderation.
<br />
<br />And yes, I'm aware of the irony of the post. You don't need to point it out in the comments. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go work with <a href="http://www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/tburke1" target="_blank">Tim Burke</a> on a faculty luncheon talk we're giving. You know...about blogging.</span>EBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18117506726182202904noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7803777.post-1103560762491420922004-12-20T17:10:00.000-05:002004-12-21T00:12:31.073-05:00IE 86'ed at PSUYou've already seen the story about the I.T. department at Penn State, a massive public university, urging its community to <a href="http://live.psu.edu/story/9376" target="_blank">stop using Internet Explorer</a>. You read it at the <a href="http://chronicle.com/free/2004/12/2004121001n.htm" target="_blank">Chronicle</a>, <a href="http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/12/11/2035222&from=rss" target="_blank">Slashdot</a>, Information Week, etc.
<br />
<br />I'm really pleased about this decision and impressed with the administrators at Penn State for making a public stand. My satisfaction isn't derived from the normal urge to badmouth Microsoft. When they make good software, I'm happy to give them my business. Heck, yeah, I'd like more competition in the marketplace, but I have no problems firing up my copy of Excel.
<br />
<br />I'm just sick of enduring the immense resource drain that the Swiss-cheese security of Explorer and Outlook have caused.<span class="fullpost"> Billions of dollars have been wasted globally trying to counteract the negative impacts of viruses, worms, spyware, and all other manner of exploits that their software has been vulnerable to. Oh, sure, MS aren't the bad guys. What would we think of a bodyguard whose every client was shot, while defending himself by saying "there are too many people who want to hurt my clients."
<br />
<br />The main problem for customers of a ubiquitous monopoly like Microsoft is clout. How do you build up sufficient market power to make them be responsive to your needs?
<br />
<br />I've been quietly advocating for a public education campaign on campus for years to urge folks off of Microsoft's internet apps. It'll be interesting to see if any other schools follow suit in public fashion over the coming months. With the stir over Firefox going on, this is probably as good an opportunity as we're going to get. </span>EBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18117506726182202904noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7803777.post-1102691502389716202004-12-10T08:07:00.000-05:002004-12-10T15:37:08.276-05:00Webcast-in-a-boxWe saw a demo of Sonic Foundry's <a href="http://www.sonicfoundry.com/systems/mediasite.asp" target="_blank">Mediasite</a> yesterday. Mediasite is a conferencing appliance. It allows you to capture a presentation with multiple video sources, most typically a camera trained on the speaker synchronized with screenshots of his Powerpoint slides or document camera. Without any post-processing (a.k.a. "Editing"), you can immediately send that canned presentation to the web for streaming or to a CD.
<br /><img src="http://www.sonicfoundry.com/images/product_image.jpg" align="left" height="50%" width="50%" hspace="8"><BR>I'm not going to do a review of product features here. If you're in the market for a conferencing appliance, you'll find reviews at <a href="http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0%2C1759%2C1544759%2C00.asp" target="_blank">PC Magazine</a>, <a href="http://www.networkcomputing.com/showitem.jhtml?articleID=21800098&pgno=3" target="_blank">Network Computing</a>, and <a href="http://www.mediasite.com/systems/articles/ProAV_Apr04.pdf" target="_blank">ProAV Magazine</a>. My overall impression is that this is a very elegant, easy-to-use system if you have a need to record classes and presentations in this way. It does seem to really ease much of the technical and support complexity of creating webcasted content.
<br />
<br />There are some drawbacks and limitations, though.<span class="fullpost">For starters, your output is totally locked into Windows Media. The meta-data scheme that synchronizes video cues to images from the laptop is internal to the Windows Media architecture. (Don't expect to run your stuff through Cleaner to make a QuickTime version, for instance.) Furthermore, you're reliant on use of a specialized player/viewer, so you have that obstacle to clear every time you try to get new users to make use of your webcasts (live or on-demand). Finally, while the output doesn't require post-processing, it also doesn't really allow it either. If you recorded an hour of video but only want to use fifteen minutes of it, you have a problem. On top of all the other possible objections, the device doesn't come cheaply.
<br />
<br />Of course, I only really care about the device's utility in higher education. There are a couple scenarios where I can envision that a Mediasite or one of its competitors would be highly useful. One is obviously distance education, but if you're at a distance education shop, your institution already has systems for collecting and delivering course content. There are many other situations where professors have large lecture courses where they wish to deliver the lecture and supporting materials for on-demand use outside of class. Another is to create supplemental presentations on topics that will not be covered in class, such as remedial or preparatory material, lab instructions, etc. If this last scenario is your primary need, I can imagine Mediasite being quite useful. You have to decide whether the use of the appliance will be sufficient to justify its price. We small, residential schools might have a difficult time drumming up enough use to make the case for purchase, but my assumption is based only on our current lack of demand locally. We have a growing demand for streaming video, but it generally hasn't come from the curricular realm.
<br />
<br />I haven't even gotten into the whole issue of whether it is educationally appropriate for instructional technologists to endorse the use of a technology tool that largely serves to preserve and deliver Powerpoint content. That's an <a href="http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/powerpoint" target="_blank">argument</a> for (<a href="http://thinkthunk.blogspot.com/2004/08/confessions-of-former-powerpoint-user.html">actually from</a>) another day.</span>EBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18117506726182202904noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7803777.post-1102196079211875982004-12-04T16:38:00.000-05:002004-12-04T16:43:32.826-05:00Voting open for first edublog awardsThe first <a href="http://incsub.org/association/poll" target="_blank">edublog award voting has opened</a> with Think Thunk nominated in the category "Best technology meets pedagogy blog." Hey, proof that <span style="font-style:italic;">somebody</span> is reading this thing. I'm flattered and humbled.<span class="fullpost">
<br />
<br />Although Scott Leslie thinks this sort of thing is <a href="http://www.edtechpost.ca/mt/archive/2004_11.html" target="_blank">not helpful</a>, I think this criticism takes the exercise <span style="font-weight:bold;">way</span> too seriously.
<br />
<br />I consider the edublog awards more of a community building exercise than anything else. Looking over the nominations has made me aware of a much broader blogging community, and I've discovered some great new writers as a result. I can also tell from the limited statistical tracking I do on this site that I've received many hits here that were referred as a direct result of the nomination. This can't be anything but a good thing, as far as I'm concerned.
<br />
<br />Taking some time to give a little recognition to our favorite writers is not a waste of time. Building a sense of community in our mildly obscure neck of the woods isn't going to hurt anybody.
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<br />Vote for Think Thunk if you like. That's great, and I'm certainly grateful for your support. More importantly, use the opportunity to explore the many other fine blogs that were nominated. You won't be sorry.</span>EBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18117506726182202904noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7803777.post-1102019495590341322004-12-04T01:00:00.000-05:002004-12-04T01:44:24.693-05:00Garage Band: making music without paying your duesI was curious to find out what I could do with <a href="http://www.apple.com/ilife/garageband/" target="_blank">Garage Band</a>. It had been years since I'd spent hundreds of hours fooling around with my 4-track cassette recorder that my high school band buddies (and later college friends) and I were using to lay down tracks. It has been longer than I care to admit since I'd taken music theory courses, been able to score up a basic arrangement of a pop tune, or taken lessons in voice, percussion, or keyboard.
<br />
<br />I am a lapsed musician. (To be brutally honest, a severely lapsed artist in many forms.) I still have a good ear, but I've lost whatever chops I may have once had. While I'd fiddled around with many digital audio editing/sequencing applications over the years, I'd never really managed to do much with them besides cleaning up spoken word recordings.
<br />
<br />If Garage Band was supposed to be so easy, though, I wondered what I could do with it in a very limited time. So I gave myself two hours to create the best song I could make. I came up with this little ditty, <a href="http://www.swarthmore.edu/~behrens/WednesdayFunkKebob.mp3">"Wednesday Funk Kebob."</a> (It was a Wednesday, and I was making music-on-a-stick. Get it? I'm so clever.) I recorded no original material. Working only with canned loops, I collaged together a fairly rich multi-track piece within my time limit.
<br />
<br />Trust me, I'm fully aware that I didn't just set the musical world on its edge. But you'll have to admit, it's fairly listenable. Go on now, check it out. It won't bite.<span class="fullpost">
<br />
<br />It's a little scary to me just HOW easy it was to pull this off. Garage Band drool-proofs so much of the business of sampling and mixing tracks. For instance, the loops provided will automatically adjust to the tempo and key signature that you've set for the piece. You really don't need to know a lick of music theory. Drag-n-drop. I just had a flashback to the heyday of Kai's Power Tools for Photoshop, when we were all treated to a couple years of excessively cheesy digital art.
<br />
<br />While I'm really impressed with how much the tool empowers somebody like me to do, I'm struggling with the notion of how useful it is to empower somebody like me. While there's a small, intense market (a.k.a. my son's grandparents) for the images in my iPhoto and the home movies I can churn out in iMovie, I'm not so sure that there's anybody who wants to listen to my cut-and-paste compositions.
<br />
<br />Still, it's an elegant program. It's definitely a winner for a singer/songwriter type who is looking to easily sketch out a new idea when other musicians aren't available. (From what I've heard and <a href="http://www.tweakheadz.com/review_of_garage_band.htm" target="_blank">read</a>, it's quite a breeze for live recording.) It's also a cheaper and easier alternative for actual garage bands to work up a simple demo. Certainly, for whatever simple (amateur) audio for multimedia I might have to create, it would be simple, cheap, and natural to edit and sequence it in Garage Band.
<br />
<br />Interestingly, Garage Band seems poised to become a suite of products for <a href="http://www.apple.com/ilife/garageband/jampacks/" target="_blank">Apple</a> and <a href="http://www.bitshiftaudio.com/products/idrum/index.html" target="_blank">third</a> <a href="http://www.zero-g.co.uk/index.cfm?articleid=850" target="_blank">parties</a> of <a href="http://www.macjams.com/" target="_blank">many types</a>. A cottage industry has cropped up around producing Garage band loop files. (Anybody can make them with a simple <a href="http://developer.apple.com/sdk/#AppleLoops" target="_blank">developers kit</a>.) In January, Apple is <a href="http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=756" target="_blank">expected to release a highly-integrated breakout box</a> (a device with multiple inputs for audio sources) at a competitive price.
<br />
<br />As usual with all the iLife apps, the point is not so much to create the best tool, it's to create the tool that the basic consumer is excited to use. I'm sure that there's quite a nice, steady revenue stream for Apple to tap for add-ons like the breakout box, the loop packages, etc. A dedicated niche market of rock star and DJ wannabes may be all it takes to make the application live on for a long time, and in the meantime, it's a very fun toy for lapsed musicians like me to fool around with.</span>EBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18117506726182202904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7803777.post-1101852559813870982004-11-30T17:30:00.000-05:002004-11-30T17:32:44.633-05:00Blackboard Survival Tip #1aSince I mentioned it yesterday, Liz Evans passed along a handy little utility for Mac OS X users who want to package zip archive content for use on Blackboard with the Document Unpackager building block. If you use the built-in zip facility in OS X, you'll get lots of invisible files (made visible) in your Blackboard course. To avoid a lot of manual cleanup, you should use a handy scripted droplet to make an archive file that has this invisible content stripped out. (You can do this other ways, but this is really easy for the Mac users.) Please see <a href="http://thinkthunk.blogspot.com/2004/11/blackboard-survival-tip-1.html">yesterday's post</a> about the Document Unpackager building block if you don't know what I'm talking about.<span class="fullpost">
<br />
<br />Download <a href="http://www.swarthmore.edu/~behrens/Bb_doc_packager.zip">the droplet</a> for Mac OS X.
<br />You can also retrieve a <a href="http://www.swarthmore.edu/~behrens/DocPackager.pdf">page of documentation</a> prepared by Liz.
<br />
<br />In short:
<br />1) Name and organize your folder tree to match your desired hierarchy for content on Blackboard.
<br />2) Drag-n-drop the folder onto the Packager script to make the "clean" zip file.
<br />3) Load the content into a content area in Blackboard using the "Document Package" content type from the "Select" pull-down menu.</span>EBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18117506726182202904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7803777.post-1101765464978003212004-11-29T17:03:00.000-05:002004-11-30T00:19:59.356-05:00Blackboard Survival Tip #1If you're an instructor who uses Blackboard to deliver large amounts of course material each term, ask your local Blackboard administrators if they have looked into the <a href="http://www.blackboard.com/addons/b2/catalog.htm?ShowData=1&CurrentPage=4#Results" target="blank">"Document Unpackager" Building Block</a> (or something like it). If you are a Blackboard administrator, you'd better go look it up before you get asked about it. Thanks to the distance education group at Joliet Junior College for creating the "duh" tool that seems like it should have been there from the start.
<br />
<br />From the catalog description:
<br />The Document Unpackager allows you to upload a zip file containing folders and files to Blackboard. It is then unpackaged and course content items are created with the files attached. The directory structure within the zipfile is translated into folders within Blackboard. All content created by the Building Block is usable even if the Building Block is removed at a later time.<span class="fullpost">
<br />
<br />Blackboard can really turn off some power-users. One of the big complaints is its insistence on form-driven content creation processes. They're helpful for the less tech-savvy teachers, but a real drag once you're a seasoned pro. This is handy little tool, and a real winner to show to your faculty when you're doing that little "What's new in Blackboard" session.</span>EBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18117506726182202904noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7803777.post-1101451127166774142004-11-26T01:32:00.000-05:002004-11-26T12:49:56.513-05:00For your Black Friday amusementMy brother and I are geeking out at the family homestead in the late late hours after Thanksgiving. Both of us have laptops out, sharing the wireless connection on the Airport hub, chatting about internet and computer junk while we surf. I just asked, "What makes the U2 iPod so special?" The answer, according to him, is that it comes with a $50 "gift certificate" toward the purchase of "The Complete U2" collection. Also, "It's black."
<br />
<br />I already have my iPod, so this doesn't really concern me. With the holiday season upon us, and knowing that some of my faculty friends have asked me about iPods for their kids, let me tell you what I discovered on a quick trip to the Apple Store for Education.<span class="fullpost">
<br />
<br />The 20 GB iPod is about $269, and ships in 2-4 business days.
<br />The 20 GB iPod U2 sells for $329, and ships in 1-3 weeks. Oh look, it also comes with a poster.
<br />
<br />There's a mild irony here. After all, this is the Apple Store for education, so we presume that the audience is somewhat intelligent, or at least aspires to be.
<br />
<br />To recap: for the extra $60, you get a $50 "gift certificate" that can only be redeemed toward the purchase of a $150 music anthology. Otherwise, you're out the $60, unless you consider the black and red design worth the premium. Oh, let's not forget that poster.
<br />
<br />As my brother says: "We really need to talk to the people who go for this stuff. If we could figure out why they'd buy this, we could sell them pretty much anything we wanted to."
<br />
<br />But Steve Jobs has already beaten us to that punch, hasn't he?</span>EBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18117506726182202904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7803777.post-1101236584734718522004-11-23T17:30:00.000-05:002004-11-23T20:24:52.820-05:00Refining the iceberg model of I.T.I gave a presentation to Tri-College (Bryn Mawr, Haverford, Swarthmore) library and I.T. staff two weeks ago titled "Puzzles within Puzzles: Managing Complexity in Information Technology." For that talk, I used a diagram that has <a href="http://thinkthunk.blogspot.com/2004/08/complexity-of-scope-and-integration.html">appeared here</a> before to launch into a couple of related topics. I've revised it to make it easier to read and to visually introduce the concept of the iceberg and the water line. Since I've been notified by a few people that they've used this diagram for other purposes, I'm posting the revised version here. I think the new one has more layers of information, but old and new are both available, depending on your preferences.
<br /><img src="http://www.swarthmore.edu/~behrens/model.jpg">
<br />As with most models, this is an oversimplification of the real world environments it attempts to describe. Nevertheless, I think this can be useful to show some of the relationships between technology and higher education institutions that impact how I.T. organizations should weigh investments in web information systems.<span class="fullpost">Keep in mind my assertion that the information age is still squarely in its industrial revolution. (We are just now figuring out the processes by which we will be able to mass-produce and distribute online data to meet a consumer demand for web content.) The diagram attempts to reveal observations about this change in the technology environment. <ol><li>Much of the growth in information technology for the last few years has been within the broad category of information management systems. These systems allow people with only minimal technical effort to generate and use massive databases of information over the web. (The product examples in bold are the ones used at Swarthmore.)</li><li>These information management systems occupy a project space that is different from what higher education I.T. shops were engaged in for most of the web's first decade.</li><li>Most technology systems beg for integration with other elements of the overall technology infrastructure. The pink arrows remind us that information must move horizontally and vertically across the layers shown. LDAP data about people not only populate scheduling and commerce systems, but they are also useful for defining permissions to alter content in a course management system or customize one's personal views on the campus portal. Images and documents in digital asset management systems are needed in course management systems. And portals? They need to integrate with everything. That's what they do.</li><li>Interoperability is rarely provided by product vendors, which has made product integration a key aspect of project management. Home-grown enhancements not only require attention as they are being developed, but also every time upgrades are made in related systems.</li><li>Interoperability generally yields a better user experience but adds significant resource demands on technology organizations. The question arises: "When it comes to elegance of the user experience, how good is good enough?"</li><li>Enter the water line: The interest in technology projects has a lot to do with how aware various people and constituencies within your organization are of the technologies in question. Do they use them? Do they like them? How directly can they feel savings in time, ease of use, etc. that your solution delivers? Many senior leaders have a very high water line. How do you talk to them about investments that they may never use themselves and may not fully understand?</li></ol>These are not the only questions one can come up with about the areas I've suggested. If this is, in fact, a useful model for thinking strategically about technology investments, it should hold up to all sorts of challenges and inquiries.
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<br />If you would like an hi-res version of the diagram, you can download a copy of the <a href="http://www.swarthmore.edu/~behrens/model.tif">TIFF file</A>.</span>EBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18117506726182202904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7803777.post-1100883775846474492004-11-19T13:36:00.000-05:002005-01-29T00:59:00.426-05:00ARTstor developments and debate continueI'm not blessed with sufficient time (or factual certainty) to give a full-scale update on ARTstor news at the moment. After I've had a chance to do some fact-finding, I'll be sure to post more. In the meantime, I wanted to make sure this blog had links to the current information available relating to ARTstor.<span class="fullpost">
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<br />In my previous ARTstor post, I mentioned plans under development at ARTstor for some increased interoperability, at least with respect to searching other collections from the ARTstor interface(s). I encourage anybody who is interested to review the slides from ARTstor CTO Bill Ying's October 26th presentation at the <a href="http://www.diglib.org/forums/fall2004/ying1004_files/frame.htm" target="_blank">Digital Library Federation's (DLF) Fall meeting</a>. The slides raise a lot of questions about details, but they serve well to outline the direction ARTstor is heading in.
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<br />Also, there's a <a href="http://listserv.uark.edu/scripts/wa.exe?A1=ind0411&L=vra-l#14" target="blank">vigorous discussion</a> running on the Visual Resources Association's VRA-L listserv. I learned some things by participating in it. First, there are a lot of different perspectives that shape how people view ARTstor right now: size of institution, existing image collection resources, past experiences in communication with ARTstor, etc. Second, despite what I'd previously thought, I am hardly the most vocal or intense critic of ARTstor's strategy and interactions with the visual resources community.
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<br />Both technical and community relations responses are required to achieve greater success. I'm on the outskirts of this particular community, so I tend to focus on the technical side. But I think all the parties involved need better, more productive ways to build a constructive relationship for the future.</span>EBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18117506726182202904noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7803777.post-1100725462148515612004-11-17T19:03:00.000-05:002004-11-19T11:17:12.706-05:00If only I'd known this about...<a href="http://wigu.com/overcompensating/2004/11/copper-vs-chocolate.html" target="_blank">THE INTERNET</A>, so many of my worst days of the last ten years might have been avoided. Or at least been easier to explain.
<br />EBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18117506726182202904noreply@blogger.com1