10/28/2004

Here are the videos of presentations I attended at Educause. Both are regarding open-source. Mitchell Kapor's speech is strongly for open-source (warning: he tends to wander all over the place when he speaks) while David Lambert offers a more balanced summary of good and bad points with open-source (and commercial). I enjoyed Dr. Lamberts presentation more than Kapor's.

Mitchell Kapor: The Cathedral, the Bazaar, and the Academy
http://mslive.sonicfoundry.com/Live/LiveViewer/?peid=1f26cb71-f0c7-4289-8edb-b667502a2e32

H. David Lambert: Collaborative Open-Source Software: Panacea or Pipe Dream for Higher Education?
http://mslive.sonicfoundry.com/Live/LiveViewer/FrontEnd/View.aspx?peid=e3a2e07a-5645-43c3-963b-dac6562849c7

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10/27/2004

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Here are the minutes for the EdTech Team Leaders Meeting (Oct 25, 2004):

Minutes
Educational Technology Team Leaders Meeting
Monday, October 25, 2004
Media Conference Room BRK 180
2:30 p.m.


Present: Farokh Eslahi, Albert Whittenberg, Tulio Llosa, Munindra Khaund, Bob Walker, Gary Bach (Presentation)

Absent: Pam Rodgers

Internal Web Site (Gary Bach)

Gary gave a quick preview of his work on designing a new layout for the EdTech internal website. There were some questions on the search feature and the capability to control the Crestron and/or projection equipment in the UHB classrooms. It was agreed that some sort of security protection must be put in place before the system could be live and allow control of the classroom systems. There was also a suggestion of tying the “Updates” box on the front page of the internal site to our EdTech blog for creating updates (Tulio is researching into using RSS feeds/alarms to update what’s new on the internal site). Everyone noted that the new layout was easier to navigate than the previous two versions and should be a useful training tool for student workers.

IBM Software (Farokh Eslahi)

Computer Science and MIS faculty have been asking Farokh to investigate the possibility of adding the IBM Scholars Program to our existing library of software we offer for CSC and MIS students. Like MSDNAA, the IBM Scholars Program offers a host of products for free download by students. Unlike MSDNAA, this program does not have a fee for the institution to have to pay to get these packages for their students. Farokh will add himself as an instructor and see if we can just download all the packages and add them to WebStore.

The URL for the IBM Scholars Program is:
http://www.developer.ibm.com/university/scholars/

Strategic Plan (Farokh Eslahi)

There continues to be progress in developing a strategic plan(s) for UIS. Farokh currently serves one of two Academic Professional reps (Sherry Hutson being the other) as well as the representative for technology concerns. The committee has hired an outside consultant and has charged that a first draft must be complete by the end of February 2005, and the final draft completed in six months. This document should be practical, brief and serve as a guideline for the campus.
Some of the primary concerns that Farokh, Sherry and the group are focused on are as follows:

-Salary equity with the other UI campuses
-Improving collaboration between staff and faculty
-Professional development for staff
-Uniqueness of UIS (what is our story?)
-Direction of online at UIS

Blogs (Farokh Eslahi)


To promote the use of our EdTech blog, it was decided that the minutes for both the EdTech Staff Meeting and the Team Leaders Meeting would be added to the blog. The minutes for this team leaders meeting will be distributed to all team leaders for review before added to the blog.

Surveys of Faculty (Farokh Eslahi)

Before new training/workshops start for the equipment in UHB, some sort of survey needs to take place with the faculty using these rooms (or even all faculty). To achieve the highest return rate, several ideas where discussed regarding how the surveys should be conducted. Here are some of the items mentioned:

-Email or web page format survey (nice intro on why we doing this)
-Top down approach – go to deans first and then department chairs, etc.
-Card surveys left in classroom (certain spots for faculty to drop them off)
-Go door-to-door in UHB to solicit comments
-Offer incentives such as USB memory keys (first 25 or 50 or by a certain date)
-Keep survey short (5 to 6 questions)
-Some mixture of multiple choice questions and comment/suggestion type questions
-Use a variety of the formats (email, paper, card, etc) to get the greatest response from faculty

Each of us are to work on what we would like the five/six questions would be by Monday of next week.

ET WebSite (Farokh Eslahi, Munindra Khaund)

The “What’s New” section was reviewed. When the survey is created, information will be placed in this section regarding in (including maybe a link to the actual survey if it is decided it will be delivered in that way). Current and future multimedia projects will be featured there as well…the hope being that this section will turn into more stories of what can be done than just links to new software.
Pictures of some of the labs need to be updated as well on the “Labs” page.

WebStore (Tulio Llosa)

The server is up, the free software packages from UIUC are loaded, and icons and a new logo has been sent to ELMS for the front page. Clay, Gary and Sudha continue to work on creating the descriptions for the rest of the software. It is hoped that we can start offering this to test groups next month to prepare for a full rollout before spring semester.

Weekend Coverage (Albert Whittenberg)

Thanks to everyone that has helped supporting the weekends as Jeff Alinger has changed his schedule to take every other Sunday off. He has requested vacation time on November 8, 9 and 10. Bob offered to take one of the days if needed, and we would need to check with Dennis to make sure nothing is scheduled for that weekend. If it looked like nothing intensive was going on, Ralph might also be asked to take one of the days.

The next Educational Technology Team Leaders Meeting is scheduled for 2:30 p.m. on Monday, November 8th, in the Media Conference Room.






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10/25/2004

Tales: Teaching and Learning Experiences (TaLEs) | 0 Comments

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