Another Summer 2008 IT Update

Time to give SBU another blog post on how things are going for Instructional Technology this summer. Picking up from the last post, and going week by week...

During the week of July 7th, quite of bit of Electronic Classroom install work was done. The Blackboard login page was updated to provide some details and links to more information. ANGEL released their ePortfolio version 2.1, which we've added to our testing server. This week saw the end of ITV classes which ran from 7am to 6pm, and the first day of sales for the new iPhone 3G were on the 11th, which made for some interesting Twitter reading. People standing in line for hours, authorizing systems overwhelming, etc.

The week of July 14th started with the availability of the new Palm Treo 800w; while it starts with Sprint only, it will most likely be available on Alltel soon after. Now that Bolivar has the faster EV data service, my older Palm Treo 700wx feels even more useful than before, and the built-in features like GPS and Wi-Fi for the 800w would be a nice step up. Beyond dreams of a newer cell phone, this week had three days of Datatel training in the ITS computer lab, continued Electronic Classroom install work, and another ANGEL meeting. We started talking about Configuration details for our ANGEL server, and the abilities and features highlighted in those discussions were exciting and well-received. Another two week set of ITV classes started this week, but they are both start time of 1pm, so the workload is much lighter than the previous two weeks.

To close, how about a peek into the week of July 21st? We've just had the last of the full new Electronic Classroom installs for the Bolivar campus completed today. I'll still need to revisit them all for fine tuning and such well before August 25th. Work on the Salem campus is scheduled to begin on Wednesday this week. The last week of Summer 2008 ITV is underway, and another ANGEL meeting is scheduled for Thursday. At this meeting, we'll start applying the ideas discussed last week to our testing server.

The Summer semester has gone past very quickly, it will be Fall 2008 before I know it!

On the eve of the 4th of July 2008

I ran out of time and gumption to make a post last week, so I wanted to review the past two weeks in SBU Instructional Technology before enjoying a three day weekend.

On the LMS front, we have a testing ANGEL server running now, which has been of great use for the Administrator training. I just keep finding more and more reasons to like ANGEL, from both the Instructor and Administrator perspectives. For Blackboard, I did receive confirmation from the vendor for our previous My Courses module (with the red push pins and courses organized by semester) that it will not work on our downgraded server. So, I will soon need to make a post here dedicated to working with the original My Courses module. Basically, you can modify the list of courses it will show, that way you are not looking at courses from Fall 2005 if you don't want to.

Summer ITV started June 30th, and with a class that starts a 7am, and another that ends at 5:45pm, I've had rather long days in the office. Working towards a three day weekend has helped, and the classes themselves have all run very smoothly. It can be kinda quiet here without some students going in and out from ITV classes. And I always enjoy seeing communication technology making it possible to deliver face-to-face learning in a convenient-for-many way.

And today marked the first major installs for new Electronic Classrooms this summer. Jester Learning and Performance Center's 244 room now has all the equipment it needs. There are some minor issues to resolve, otherwise the room is nearly done. The list I have made to keep track of all the efforts is fairly long, such that I have to scroll up and down a fair amount in OneNote to see it all. But getting this room, and the projector mounted in the Art Department's computer lab, serves as a great way to start checking items off the list.

IT Weekly Update

Greetings SBU IT blog readers! I wanted to take a few moments to jot down what's been going on in the three main areas for Instructional Technology. The ITV front has been fairly quiet for June, but Graduate Education classes will kickoff in full force on June 30th, so the coming week will involve making sure all is ready for that. Electronic Classrooms (EC) have also been fairly quiet so far. I did install a hinging mount for a computer monitor for Jester 230, in hopes it will help with visibility issues for student seating areas. I did get two new document cameras for use in Taylor 220 and Music 107, and while I have intentions of getting them installed in the Jun 23rd week, I may be short on time and gumption with efforts in other areas. The area getting much of my focus is LMS, both Blackboard and ANGEL. Content from former Bb Organizations has been copied into the new course-orgs, and there is some tweaking work still needed for the login and My Courses module areas, since those were affected by the license downgrade.

I've completed the first week of ANGEL Instructor Training, and I keep finding more and more reasons to like ANGEL. ITS members have had three meetings with ANGEL support folks, all of them helping us get to the point of planning for our own testing server to be running by Friday the 27th of June. This will assist with the Administrator training and efforts, allowing us to kick the tires and get the system to work with the rest of SBU's resources. Having access to the Support documentation, I have found two files that would be of interest to SBU faculty, even this much before you have access to SBU's ANGEL yourselves. Both the Blackboard Switcher, and the Instructional Design files, can give you some insights on what is the same and also different between Bb and ANGEL. If you would like to have access to these files, please e-mail me at ncross AT sbuniv DOT sbu. Or leave a comment on this blog post! B^)

New furniture for Electronic Classrooms

Benees 001
Originally uploaded by npcross

Much like my June 4 2008 post about Electronic Classrooms (ECs), this one about ECs has two purposes. One, to show the new Benees (www.benees.com) furniture we recently received to use for this summer's install work. Second, I am trying out Flickr a bit more, by adding notes to this and the Benees 002 photo, and then making a blog post from the Benees 001 photo from Flickr into the SBU IT blog. We've started to receive some of the new slimeline case computers needed to make the smaller furniture work. Since these two are destined for Springfield, moving and unloading/reloading equipment will be part of the process. SBU IT has used Benees furniture for several years now, and continues to be pleased with the product and price.

Electronic Classroom Plans for Summer 2008

I have two purposes in this post. One, I want to inform the readers of a general sense on what IT is doing with Electronic Classrooms this summer. Second, I have been wanting to try the ability to embed a Google Docs presentation into a website. So, please view the following slides to know what new rooms are being installed, and what rooms will have some manner of update or enhancement done.

What is Instructional Technology @ SBU?

Hello blogosphere, this is Neal Cross, Director of Instructional Technology at Southwest Baptist University. I thought I would open up my blogging efforts by describing both what I do, and what my intentions are with this. My area of SBU's Information and Technology Services has three main hubs; first is Learning Management Systems (or LMS). Also referred to as Course Management Systems (CMS), this is a web-based system that provides SBU courses with a web site. When I first moved into the department of Instructional Technology several years ago, LMS is all I did. And the LMS then was Blackboard CourseInfo 4.0, which was soon followed by version 5.5. In the Fall of 2005 we began using Blackboard Academic Suite 6.3, and during the 2008-2009 year, we will be transitioning away from Blackboard to ANGEL. This transition is one reason for my wanting to start blogging, and perhaps start using a wiki as well, but before going off on that tangent…

The second Instructional Technology hub is Interactive TeleVision (ITV), or video conferencing. Within a year of being in the Instructional Technology department, we started gathering the equipment, and then the office space, to have rooms on the Bolivar campus capable of conducting video conferences for class use. Over the years, we have put in three Bolivar rooms, three Mountain View rooms, two Salem rooms, and even added some ITV abilities to the Springfield campus most recently. The course load for ITV occupies the afternoons and evenings of Mondays through Thursdays, and often involves Fridays and Saturdays as well. Both undergraduate classes and Graduate Education classes benefit from the ability of putting students from many locations together with a teacher in one location.

The third hub is Electronic Classrooms (EC). This effort has resulted in nearly all classrooms on the Bolivar campus in being equipped with a computer and AV system, so that teachers and students can incorporate various types of multimedia in their learning experiences. Similar efforts have equipped most rooms at the Springfield, Mountain View and Salem campuses. While there are common features to all rooms, there have been different levels of customization applied to help rooms work in the way departments have wanted.

So, Instructional Technology (IT) helps provide support for all of this. If you have questions or problems with Blackboard, ITV or classroom equipment, IT is your direct connection. In partnership with the rest of the Information and Technology Services departments and personnel, IT provides both support for problems happening now, to training and encouragement for better utilization of SBU resources to enhance teaching and learning in the future. The future is here now with Web 2.0 technologies such as blogs, and with upcoming efforts like Bb to ANGEL, this blog will be a channel of communication from Instructional Technology to the rest of the SBU family.