Migration

Posted on by Michael

I have migrated.  My old Blog was fine, but as WOU has migrated to Google Apps, it’s time to keep moving forward.

We have worked hard to enable Single Sign-On for WOU services.  Our previous system is somewhat antiquated and can easily be replaced by Blogger.

If Blogger can do everything our previous system could, I don’t see why we wouldn’t migrate completely over.  One less server/service/integration to maintain.

And we’ll be using “cloud computing”… 🙂
Buzzwords … seriously.

Anyway, I’ll have additional technical blogs on the way.  This was really just a proof-of-concept at the beginning of this new path.

DegreeWorks

Posted on by Michael

We had two meetings about DegreeWorks this week. It is a Sungard product designed to replace CAPP (for degree evaluations in the Wolfweb).
At this point, WOU members want to get started asap, but we are working with 2 other OUS schools to collaborate as much as possible.
Once we find out the earliest option to schedule the launch, we can put the rest of the pieces in play.
So next week I’ll be working to manage the schedule, budget and organize the players to optimize our time. In the end it’s going to be 18 months until the scheduled release. The Registrar’s office has a great deal of work to do, and we have no IT resource available on the Banner side until the end of the summer.
We’ll bring it together and I expect it to be a positive process, overall.

The Public Forum(s)

Posted on by Michael

This week I presented two campus forums for Google Apps.
I had roughly 30 at the first lunch-hour session, and 20 the following day.
Although we hold trainings/events like this from time-to-time, I am nearly always disappointed by the lack of turnout. Lunch-time isn’t the greatest time for training, but it’s the only option for many faculty/staff who can’t leave their desks during the day.

The material seemed to be helpful to those who attended. Perhaps 5% of the attendees were students. I was pleased with the response, and was happy to help convey this important information in a personal atmosphere.

To be who you are —

Posted on by Michael

I hope you’ve read it.

Katie’s story

I hope we’ve all read it.

It’s more than a political agenda from our nation’s president. It’s more than “boys will be boys”. It’s more than “…kids these days…”. It’s more than our-country-is-headed-to-hell-in-a-handbasket. It’s more.

One girl, alone in her love (for Star Wars), isolated by gender, left to contend against the pack mentality of youth. Unique. And ashamed. Shamed by a group of people who fear someone … something different. Unique.
And so the battle rages. The reign of the beautiful people – the popular people. The revenge of the nerds. Geeks. Dweebs. Dorks. Gamers. Smarty-pants. Comic-book fanatics. CCG-ers. WoW lolcats.

What are we? We are expanding. When most of us ( the geek-nerds) grew up, we were repeatedly humiliated, teased, taunted, harassed, mocked, ignored or tossed about. We were (in general) smaller, nicer, unwilling to fight back with our fists or words, outnumbered, and desiring peace (so we could go play whatever we loved so dearly).

We wanted to fit it, to be cool, to look “pretty”, to say the right (cool) thing, to wear the right thing and walk the right way.

So we hid. We vanished. Cloistered in basements, corners or in front of computers we thrived … sometimes in tight groups – often alone.

But the world has shifted. We are still mocked, and mistreated, but most of us survived and grew up. We got jobs. Our toys are shinier. We bought things, and made things, and innovated, and still could not learn enough. We thrived.

Then along came Katie. An ancient beacon called us. Pain. A flood of memories…

But, we are thriving. We respond. All of us. ALL of us. Thousands write, call, email, blog, send toys, donate and make a connection. Katie is one of us. We will no longer stand by, or hide or run when pushed. We responded.

I was a Katie.
It may have been Star Wars, Star Trek, computers, games, comic books … doesn’t matter. We were different. Nerds and Geeks. We’ve come together. We’ve affected our culture. Everything isn’t just fine overnight, but being a geek or nerd isn’t so offensive now. Isn’t so lowly. And we are growing.

Katie, stand tall. Be who you are. We’re here.

Course Evaluation

Posted on by Michael

This last term I worked with Cat McGrew to facilitate the technology end of the online Course Evaluation system for students (via Portal).

We worked with Richard to update the Standard Deviation formula(s).

I hope that if Faculty decided to go this direction, we can simply open the system up to all students for all classes. I think it would eliminate some confusion. Faculty are still concerned with the response rate, but the Faculty test group this term had very high response rates.

RecTrac – final update

Posted on by Michael

The Rectrac install is going fine, from what i can tell. Ross is handling the details and working w/ Huber & Christina for the app & data from Wolfweb.

Adam has the card encoding working smoothly, with configuration only needed on the workstation. We hoping to provide this to them soon, so that card encoding can get underway. We would want the bulk of cards encoded before opening day, so that users could simply enter the facility.

Google Apps

Posted on by Michael

It’s official. WOU is going Google.

Google Apps. It’s a whole suite of tools that includes gmail, calendar, sites, gchat, blogger, etc…

WOU’s page can be found here.
Next week Admissions and the Library will be moving over (mostly themselves). We have worked on the documentation and refined a migration process for all campus users.

Some students may not want to transfer, but many faculty/staff have email, calendars and contacts that range over decades. Although transition is never completely smooth, the end product is good and the migration path is refined.

This migration is basically all that I’ve done for the past 3-4 weeks, hence no blogs 🙂

Office 2007: PDFs

Posted on by Michael

Office 2007? Weird man, it’s just weird.
After over a decade of normalcy from MS, they change … everything? And why? To look cooler. Meh.

So I had to ask for help to convert a Word document to PDF. Didn’t really wanna download an app to do it, so here’s what I learned:

Word 2007 can do this itself.
Click the circley-roundy-buttony thing in the upper-left hand corner.
Click Save-As.
Select .PDF document, and off you go.

Simple? Yeah. Finally. Finding it? Harder.