Tech Updates 2.0

It is time to get ready to get ready as we work towards the start of the 2008-2009 academic year! There are ton of technology related sessions this year during our in-service. Here are a few of them:

What you need 2 learn about the NEW Desire2Learn (Goins Auditorium)
Wednesday, August 13 10:45 am and 3:30 pm

myPellissippi Overview (MC 146)
Wednesday, August 13 10:45 am and 3:30 pm
Friday, August 15 9:45 am

Tomorrow’s Gonna be a Banner Day (ER 327)
Wednesday, August 13 10:45 am and 2:15 pm

NoodleTools: Plagiarism Prevention tool (ER 147)
Wednesday, August 13 2:15 pm

Making the Transition from Office 2003 to Office 2007 (ER 327)
Friday, August 15 9:45 am
Friday, August 22 10:30 am

Communicate/Create/Share: Using Web 2.0 in your teaching (AL 151)
Friday, August 22 9:00 am

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Well, it had to come sometime. Former Google employees launched their own search engine this week. Cuil (the Gaelic word for both knowledge and hazel and pronounced “cool”) is a search engine that is trying to solve the “two great problems of search”:

how to index the whole Internet—not just part of it—and how to analyze and sort out its pages so you get relevant results.

Features include

• a larger snippet of the page along with images
• multiple column results page
• drilldown so you can search by category
• rollover definitions
• tabs
• search term suggestions

Click the screenshot to see a larger version or check out their About pages for more.

Cuil - Features

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Through TnCIS, there is a group of students from Pellissippi State, ETSU and UTK attending the Edinburgh Film Festival. They are also blogging and videoing their experiences.

We are aggregating all of their individual blogs and videos through a “master blog” hosted at PSTCC. If you would like to read some of their work, drop by the master blog:

Edinburgh International Film Festival blog

Filed under: Educational Technology, Internet Technologies, Multimedia Production, Online Teaching, Web 2.0, blogging, pstcc, teaching | No Comments »

We first starting talking about Twitter back in September 2007 for the Microblogging Web Wednesday. Twitter keeps growing and is becoming something much more than just answering “what are you doing right now?”.

Combining the SMS (text messaging from your phone) with instant messaging (IM) as well as good old fashioned web form entry, browser plugins or even Adobe AIR application gives all those who tweet a myriad of options for adding their entries to their Twitter accounts.

As you build up your followers and followees, the network becomes a useful place for getting almost instant information, feedback and a sense of the zeitgeist of your peers on any given day.

With the open style of communication, there are now a lot of options for seeing the tweets from your friends and the Twitterverse at large. Here are some interesting options to explore.

Twitter Vision - a mashup of Google Maps and Twitter where you can watch the tweets come in from around the world.

also in 3D!

Quotably - makes it easier to follow conversations between folks in Twitter

Tweet Clouds - map the most commonly used words in your or another person’s tweets so you can see what is most important or frequently discussed. (Glad to see that woohoo was in my cloud!)

And, if you want to just track certain words that we humans use a log, visit Twistori - which beautifully tracks those important words:

• Love
• Hate
• Think
• Believe
• Feel

What are you doing with Twitter today?

BTW - if you are using Twitter, you can follow pstcc_ets to get status updates about the D2L server!

Filed under: Internet Technologies, Web 2.0, Web Wednesday | No Comments »

As we transition into Banner more completely, there is bound to be some confusion about what to do when
Words from the HelpDesk:

With the transition to myPellissippi (our new portal), some students enrolled for summer classes have expressed confusion regarding which specific user account to use for this summer semester. All students enrolled in classes during summer 2008 must use the s_username for all their online course work and email.

The new account username (that does not contain s_) is NOT used for summer; at this point, the new account username is ONLY used for FALL 2008 registration activity.

For the summer semester, please communicate with students using the s_ account that is listed in the Outlook address book as “student account”.

Hope that helps with the confusion.

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Yes - we admit it. We are big fans of the Commoncraft Show and their simple and fun (and brilliant) way to explain so many concepts of Web 2.0 and other technologies. If only we had thought of it!! This time, they explain Social Media. Try not to get hungry while you watch!

Social Media in Plain English from leelefever on Vimeo.

Filed under: Internet Technologies, Multimedia Production, Web 2.0 | No Comments »

Our New Support Site is only one part of the upgrade to the latest version of Desire2Learn.

The upgrade, now complete, took place over this past weekend.

Faculty should be able to log into the server and see their current courses. There is still some tweaking going on behind the scenes but all in all, it is ready to go.

You might want to visit our Top Ten Changes/Improvements page and/or the What’s New with 8.3 page to see what all the hubbub is about.

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We here at ETS are joining in the celebratory mood that is Graduation Day!!

Congratulations to our graduates! We are as proud of you as you are of yourself. It is a worthy goal and one worth achieving.

The best of luck in your future endeavors.

Image: ‘Graduation Cake Guy‘
www.flickr.com/photos/15923063@N00/143186839

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Happy Earth Day everybody!!

Since we are hosting the Earth Fest this year, it seems fitting to also take a look at some actions you can take here at work and home to help with our environmental footprint.

Yes, the debate about whether web sites with black or white backgrounds use more energy might be a bit too techno for us(see Blackle and Google’s response)..but there is plenty we can do.

Check your monitor energy settings: If you use a PC, take a quick trip to the Display Properties. Click on the Screen Saver tab and then click o the Power button in the lower right. From there, you can make some adjustments about how your monitor, hard drive and the entire system will power down to save energy when you are away from the computer for a longer amount of time.

On a Mac, dive into System Preferences and do the same adjustments on the DIsplay control panel.

Other Power Savers: Unplug perpherals like scanners, speakers or at least power them off when you are not using them. You can also get smart power strips to help monitor and conserve energy usage. Here are 10 tips for conserving computing power usage.

Bring your own coffee mug: If you are as much of a caffeine addict as I am, you have your coffee each day at your desk. Rather than use and toss a styrofoam cup (or more than one) each day, bring your own mug from home to reuse.

Check out your transportation options: There are several sites that provide information about mileage and energy consumption. See if you can find your car in the list.

• Hybrid Center Comparison Chart - compare stats and features of selected hybrids with other hybrid and non-hybrid references
• FuelEconomy.gov - a site from the US Environmental Protection Agency. Find and compare cars, get fuel economy tips and see gas prices around the country.

Recycle your white paper: There are collection bins all around the campuses for white paper. Collect paper at your desk and take it to the bin when you get a good collection.

Save Paper: Try creating PDF files and send those to folks rather than printouts. Consider using GreenPrint to select what pages to print and save paper that way.

Get Informed: Download the new eco-version of Flock. Flock is a dandy Web 2.0 savvy browser built on Firefox. This one comes pre-loaded with all kinds of environmental news sites and more. Plus, it’s GREEN!

More Environ-media and Info:

How to Compost - A Sierra Club Tip Video

Veggie Car - a short documentary about a car fueled with vegetable oil

Filed under: Internet Technologies, Technology Tuesday | No Comments »