Unexpected time to reflect and reorganize

We were without power for two days at the college, through no fault of our own. I had a backlog of comptuer and network related work, and at first I was chagrined. Then I realized it was a good opportunity to step back and take a look. Where have I, and the labs I am involved with, been and where we are going? My brain, notepad, pencil, whiteboard and marker do not need electrical power!

Ninety percent of my time is spent "in the trees," figuring out how to solve countless new problems in using technology, and maintaining our computers in the ATL and DCC with software upgrades and "clean-up" operations. The power loss was an unforeseen but welcome opportunity to step back, see the forest, and evaluate the big picture.

One of the more challenging recent projects has involved subtitling, with three faculty suddenly needing good solutions and workflows. With over 10 programs out there, and little previous personal experience, it took considerable research and testing to find the best one for our needs. We settled on Annotation Edit, a bit pricey, but it has a generous educational discount, and tech support was very responsive. Spending a bit more at the front end, and buying a good solution, usually saves lots of time and aggravation further down the road, and pays for itself.

Another interesting recent project involved assisting a faculty member in purchasing an HD camcorder. We settled on the Canon HG-20, this records to either hard drive or memory card. For a loaner we would have chosen memory card only, but this one had a slightly larger chip, and good low light capture was desirable. I taught her student assistant how to use Final Cut Express to digitize and edit about 20 hours of older Digital-8 tapes for research purposes. It was especially rewarding as the student was an extremely fast learner, I usually only had to show her something once, and she got it, and figured out quite a few things on her own. I love fast learners!

Upcoming projects this summer include:

♥ Researching and piloting a good podcasting solution. Apple's upcoming Snow Leopard Server has both a new built-in Podcast Library and a Blog Server that can be used for podcasting. With our Developer Account we will test the pre-release versions. I will also be investigating the Opencast site for new developments in open source podcasting.

♥ Configuring two new computers for the ATL, a dual boot Mac for video and audio editing and a Windows machine for graphics.

♥ Expanding our lab storage with a new 8 terabyte RAID, this will almost double our storage capacity.

♥ I wish I had the opportunity to attend the Open Video Conference, but will have to settle for watching some of the many interesting on-line videos, and hope to catch up in this rapidly evolving area.

♥ Getting familiar with the Digi Mbox 2 Mini audio interface and ProTools Le 8, we will be installing these in a new 17 computer Mac lab, along with other video and audio production software: Final Cut Express, QuickTime Player Pro, MPEG2 QT component, Flip4Mac Player Pro, Toast, Audacity, iLife 09, iMovie 06, MPEG Streamclip, Perian and Silverlight.

♥ Getting our multicasting, both live and playlists, back up and running. We left this on a back burner, we were all busy with the successful migration to Google Apps for Education.

♥ Conduct a security audit of our servers, and ensure they are as hardened as possible against hacking.

♥ Evaluating the new OS 3 for the iPod Touch, and preparing for some new iPod enabled courses.

♥ Moving support materials from our old wiki (in MediaWiki), to our new one (in Google Sites). This is an ongoing project, and will probably take a year to accomplish. For a while, we will be using both to support the use of technology in education. My approach is to move what is needed, it's too much to move everything, and technology can change faster than I can move. One thing about a wiki, it's never done!

All in all, it will be a busy summer, and gone before we know it!

Once a year I also go through the DCC, storage cabinets, my office, and our storage closet. I organize and dispose of obsolete technology that will not be needed in the future. I am always amazed at the hundreds of items, and thousands of dollars' worth, of software, hardware, printouts, and books that I eliminate. I usually do my clean-up in late August, the power loss enabled me to perform the majority of it now.

When I was a shipwright at Mystic Seaport, I bought and used woodworking tools that were at least a generation old. These older tools, such adzes and chisels, were much better made than their modern counterparts. When I dispose of computer technology that is obsolete after only a couple of years, I often think of my beautifully crafted adze, which must be over 50 years old, and still works like a charm.

Tempel Summer Institute 2007

We recently completed our eighth annual TSI workshop for 10 faculty, conducted over a period of 7 full days. The title of the hands-on workshop was "New Ideas for Designing a Course that Incorporates Technology to Enhance Student Learning". Five members of our Instructional Technology Team provided instruction (Chris, Diane, Mark, Marisa, Janet and myself), with two other members of our team (Don and Newell) providing hardware and software tech support. Members of the library's Research Support Team also spoke on reference assistance, information literacy, and copyright issues (always a favorite topic!)

We conducted the workshop in a large computer lab, with dual projection, both from a Mac and a PC. Each faculty member had a computer to use, this year we had 7 PCs and 3 Macs, in the past few years it's been about 50/50.

Two faculty experts on pedagogy, Stephen Loomis and Eugene Gallagher, started off the workshop with a day mostly devoted to pedagogical concepts and course design. Chris and Diane also gave faculty an overview of ConnCourse (our name for WebCT) and the technologies we would be using in the course. I attended the first day to learn more about pedagogy, and to be available to answer technical questions.

I have to admit I'm mentally exhausted by the end of the school year, so I was not looking forward to working twelve days in a row without a day off. But right after commencement is the best time to get faculty before they leave for the summer. The timing also allows us a full summer of catching up on old work, starting new projects, office cleanups, and vacations, without a major interruption. So we march when we have to, and I managed to find the resources, day by day, to perform what I hope was a good job.

One thing I realized, by the end of the institute, is how competent our faculty are in the areas of teaching and pedagogy. Running a technology lab with scanners, audio and video editing equipment, and lots of technology, I often see faculty in a state inexperienced in these matters. Not seeing these individuals in their teaching environments, it's an unfortunate human tendency to generalize any lack of knowledge or understanding of technology to other areas. This workshop gave me a good opportunity to see faculty in their own natural teaching/learning worlds, and gave me a better understanding and appreciation of their skills.

One of the main purposes of the institue is to increase faculty's understanding and appropriate use of technology. So, over a period of time, their overall experience level in these areas has been increasing, as by now over 80 faculty have gone through the institute. And, of course, some of them are ahead of us in some areas of specialized technology.

This year, for the first time, we introduced podcasting, wikis, blogs, iPods videoconferencing, and the concepts of Web 2.0 and Social Software. I'll write a few posts on my involvement with these, although many other topics were covered. Considerable more preparation was required for this year's Institute, due to the introduction of these new technologies, all in the same week. Looking back on it all, it was well worth it.

Here is a LINK to the nice brochure Janet Hayes made for the Institute (880k).