campus blogs, integration, support, all that jazz.

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I’m posting this using the campus implementation of WordPress even though I don’t want to. I’d rather post this using the latest version of WordPress with all the plugins I’ve come to use with my other blogs. The trouble is that WordPress on our campus as currently conceived is more work than our support people are able to deal with in a timely manner. Too many projects clearly and correctly rank higher for our network team than upgrading or patching something that isn’t fully supported anyway.

It is quite nice that WordPress MU allows for integration with an LDAP server. This means that for this blog I can use the same username and password that I use for a number of other campus services. However it does not integrate into our campus website nor does our campus portal let WordPress or RSS feeds “plug in” for a user.

So what is the bottom line? Is blogging at Illinois Wesleyan viable? Sure, but it isn’t bulletproof. We have turned the corner and are engaged in regular discussions about what technologies we need to include in a standard “tool set” for faculty. A few faculty have included blog software in their courses, as a means to facilitate out of class discussion. In my opinion we first need a strong commitment to a technology from the faculty body (the summer workshop sponsored by the Mellon Center was a great start) and then we can find the resources to make it happen.

secure wireless – the new way!

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Wireless network access has been around for a number of years here at Illinois Wesleyan. At first we had wide-open access in the Hansen Center and Ames Library. Once we were able to impose an LDAP-based authentication system, we began to roll wireless out to additional locations. Now students can surf the wireless in the Bertholf Commons, the Dugout, the Atrium of the CNS and more. Unfortunately getting a computer to talk to the secure wireless access points was not that easy. Continue reading →

Maintaining and Troubleshooting Vista Computers

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In an earlier post I commented about day 1 of an onsite Microsoft training class here at Illinois Wesleyan. My main complaints at that time had to do with the virtual environment and the obsession with Microsoft troubleshooting dogma.  I’ve had some time to reflect on the class so in this post I’ll give a more complete evaluation.  Continue reading →

Vista Experience

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I like Microsoft Windows Vista. I’ve been using it for quite a while and it works quite well. I like the look of things, and with a few usability concerns aside, I find it to be an improvement over XP. One of the features that is simultaneously a good idea and kind of silly is the “Windows Experience Rating”. Continue reading →

PDF repair

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I’ve spent an hour now trying to fix some broken PDFs and I must say this is not a joyous experience. The docs have correct file sizes but display as blank pages in Adobe Reader. None of the features in Acrobat 8 Professional seem to help recover the data. There are a couple of free tools that claim to be able to repair PDFs under certain circumstances (not mine though). First was PDFTK, also known as PDF toolkit. This is a command line tool for Windows that does various document processing functions. Another that I’m trying is called jPDFtweak. It is a java based GUI tool that claims to be the “Swiss Army Knife for PDF files”. So far it has crashed on both my Mac and my Vista machine.

Looks like I’ll be recommending a rescanning project!

Microsoft training

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Today was the start of a three-day onsite Microsoft Vista training class at work. I’ve been to lots of these courses and I guess I’ve adapted to them. Others didn’t take to it so easily. Upon reflection I can see why. The first module is all about “troubleshooting methodology”. While I understand that someone wishing to become a MS certified support person would need to know Microsoft’s doctrine on troubleshooting techniques, I’m not so sure it needs to be an instructor-led piece, and I’m dead sure it shouldn’t lead off the first day.

Furthermore, the whole class is done with virtualization. This is a cool, cheap way to go that doesn’t waste a lot of time (except in setting up). However it is kind of hard to conceptualize a series of remote connections to virtual machines on the same single physical PC.

I have learned a few neat support tricks that I’m not sure I would have found otherwise. Apparently there is now a Windows Recovery Environment that trumps the old command line Recovery Console. It includes a memory test – better 12 years late than never! I also never realized that the msconfig application in Vista has an extra tab. You can use it to launch a number of different tools, including a reg file that disables/enables User Account Control.

I certainly hope that the rest of the class will find similar gems even among the questionable course design by MS. I’d hate to see this first group training effort be our last!

why would faculty want to blog?

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A number of us just completed a 2-day workshop on technology for a select group of faculty here at Illinois Wesleyan. Naturally 2 days is not enough time to even establish the foundations of enhancing teaching and learning with updated communication and research techniques. We had to blast through a lot of topics and examples of a few of the more ubiquitous tools in quite a hurry. I’m afraid that in the rush we might not have expressed why certain types of technology might be attractive to an already busy faculty member. Here are a few thoughts about what might “seduce” a teacher into authoring a blog:

  • at its most basic, blogging is about self-publishing. Anyone with opinions, expertise, or criticisms can simply post to a blog to share it with the world. This sounds a heck of a lot easier (for the casual bits of work) than submitting papers and writing journal articles. A group of undergraduates who tackle heavy scholarly work in a blog could take pride in that work standing up to scrutiny in an extremely public forum.
  • Most of the work is done for you. Barbara Ganley referred to a blog as a “vessel” for your content. You don’t have to design a webpage, learn code, or understand how the internet works. You write, you click “publish” and your work is out there. It is automatically archived by date and by categories that you provide.
  • Our mission statement says “A liberal education at Illinois Wesleyan fosters creativity, critical thinking, effective communication, strength of character and a spirit of inquiry”. I believe that our faculty will benefit from investigating new means of communication simply by expanding their perspective. I suspect that it is with strength of character and a spirit of inquiry that a teacher must adapt, improve, and learn.

Wiki Farming

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An upcoming workshop requires a wiki for pre-workshop preparation. Since we don’t have a functional campus wiki engine we decided to use a free wiki service. These sites are referred to as Wiki Farms and there are a mind boggling variety of options that separate the major players. I chose Wiki Spaces for a start. They don’t use the same engine (MediaWiki) that is used by Wikipedia, but the Wiki Spaces engine is actually a bit easier. There is no need to learn a markup language since there is a toolbar with common tasks built in. Next I’ll see how collaboration works…I’ve invited other workshop facilitators to join in. I can already predict that we will have a little trouble organizing the information but hopefully we can resolve that problem swiftly and efficiently.

think you are too connected?

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The interactive web has been featured on NPR in the form of Twitter. Twitter is a blog-based service with no potential revenue stream. It allows everyone to post what they are doing at any given moment. The attraction? It is easy to post a tiny blurb via IM or phone. I get the feeling that people are tired of reading digest-sized voluminous blogs. Twitter is more stream of consciousness and more apt to be adapted in ways like Twittervision. I personally like Flickrvision better as a timewaster, but Twitter itself allows you to set up friend groups to narrow your focus.

Another “connected” site is Hype Machine. Hype Machine is a blog aggregator that focuses entirely on music blogs. This way you can find out what is hot just as it is warming up. Many of these blogs link to MP3s, and then Hype Machine caches them. That way you can stream a flash version of songs directly from Hype servers and click a link to buy via iTunes, eMusic, or Amazon. Alternately you could use the Hype Machine to link out to various blogs and do your own reading and listening. I fail to see how any band today could remain “underground” for more than a day or so. Today’s hipsters can be into new trends before the bands even get together!

Some of my friends express dismay at the two-way web. One fellow said that he feels increasingly insignificant in the face of this very big interactive world. Is anyone out there still expecting privacy or anonymity?