Hello all,
From 4-6 November 2009 I visited the Educause conference “The best thinking in Higher Education IT”-conference in Denver. The visit was organized as a trip by the SURF foundation. We travelled with 35 persons, mostly working in organizations for Higher Education. On https://www.surfgroepen.nl/sites/edutrip2009/default.aspx the “Edutrip SURFgroep” you will find small reports from the sessions we visited. Below a small report of the sessions I visited and that might be of interest for some of you
Keynote: Good to Great and the Social Sectors Session Type: General Session.
-E-Portfolio Lightning Round.
-Building a Cost-Effective Cloud Computing Campus Cyberinfrastructure for Education and Research.
-Library Lightning Round.
-Hailing from "Foreign": The Plight and Delight of Embodying Culture Change.
-Keynote: It Is About Time: Getting Our Values Around Copyright Right.
-Developing a Next-Generation Campus Web Portal
-Creating a Global Community: Knowledge Given, Knowledge Gained.
-Embracing the Cloud: New Approaches for Delivering Campus IT Services—Strategy and Policy Development
Wednesday Nov 4th, 2009 8:15 AM - 9:45 AM
Keynote: Good to Great and the Social Sectors Session Type: General Session
“Author of the best-selling Good to Great (and its supplement Good to Great and the Social Sectors), co-author of the enduring classic Built to Last, and author of the recently released How the Mighty Fall, Jim Collins will challenge participants to think about the key drivers that distinguish great institutions from others. Why do some become great? Why do some never transcend mediocrity? Why do some great enterprises fall? And why do some prevail to greatness even in a tumultuous world spinning out of control, characterized by rapid and unpredictable change, risk, peril, luck, and overwhelming opportunity? Greatness, he teaches, is not primarily a function of circumstance but of conscious choice and discipline. Collins will discuss how participants can apply the lessons to their own organizations, leadership challenges, and personal choices. In this session, he will pay particular attention to the challenges facing social sector leaders in higher education.”
Wednesday Nov 4th, 2009 10:30 AM - 11:20 AM
E-Portfolio Lightning Round
This was an interesting view on some different ways of using E-portfolios. I included a Blog of Allan Shawn Yorke which quite accurately expresses what it was all about.
Building Blog-Based E-Portfolios: Multiple Units and Dynamic Platforms. Geoffrey C. Middlebrook, University of Southern California
Design, Implementation, and Maintenance of the Clinical Practice E-Portfolio. Ivy Tan, University of Saskatchewan
Eastern CT SU's Liberal Education E-Portfolios During Trying Times. David L. Stoloff, Eastern Connecticut State University
Implementing Electronic Portfolios by Beginning with Student Assessment. Patrick Lowenthal, University of Colorado Denver
Searching for an E-Portfolio Solution Collaboratively. Lorna Wong, University of Wisconsin System Administration
Resources referred to:
Helen barrett’s videos on eportfolio and digitally Storytelling http://eportfolios.blip.tv/
Eastern Connecticut State University Liberal Education Electronic portFolio (Eastern LEEF): http://sites.google.com/site/easterncsueportfolio/Home
Allan Shawn Yorke’s BLOG from this lightning round: http://www.personal.psu.edu/asg102/blogs/portfolio/2009/11/eportfolio-lightning-round.html
Wednesday Nov 4th, 2009 11:40 AM - 12:30 PM
Building a Cost-Effective Cloud Computing Campus Cyberinfrastructure for Education and Research
Patrick Dreher first explains what different terms are all used in the discussions on ‘Cloud Computing’ like:
HaaS - Hardware as a service
IaaS - Infrastructure as as service
Public cloud
Private cloud
Patrick explains the system they have built. Based on 350 blade servers they run a pool of virtual machines that is being controlled by hardware devices that offer them to the staff and students via a web interface. In the web browser you select what machine you want to work on and for how long (30 minutes to 8 hours). Then an RDP session is started and you are offered the one-time username and password for that machine in the web browser.
This way you can order for example 20 Windows XP machines with Mathematica software installed for your lecture room the next morning.
All software used is Open Source, so anyone could built this system them self.
Resources referred to:
Campus Cyberinfrastructure (CCI) Working Group http://www.educause.edu/CCI
Wednesday Nov 4th, 2009 2:15 PM - 3:05 PM
Library Lightning RoundThese two presentations were focused on the role a library could play in Information literacy instruction. Megan Fitzgibbons gave a very good presentation on the use of CMAP Concept Mapping software that she used to determine the places in the learning process where the library could support. An example can be seen on page 7 in the resource “Concept_mapping_presentation_slides” at the bottom of this post.
Concept Mapping for Collaboration. Megan Fitzgibbons, McGill University
Based on analysis of syllabi and assignments, concept mapping software is used to visualize and align the learning outcomes of university courses with librarians' information literacy instruction.
Information Literacy in the Curriculum: Faculty Guidance Using Focus Groups. Roseann Bowerman, Lehigh University
Resources referred to:
Concept_mapping_presentation_slides: http://www.educause.edu/sites/default/files/library/presentations/E09/SESS034/Fitzgibbons_EDUCAUSE_2009.pdf
And
http://library.concordia.ca/about/staff/forum/Fitzgibbons_presentation09.pdf
Poster of Megan Fitzgibbons on Concept Maps
http://library.concordia.ca/about/staff/forum/Fitzgibbons_poster09.pdf
Combined presentations: http://www.educause.edu/sites/default/files/library/presentations/E09/SESS034/library_lightninground.pptx
Thursday Nov 5th, 2009 8:10 AM - 9:00 AM
Hailing from "Foreign": The Plight and Delight of Embodying Culture Change
“If you have been brought to an organization as a change agent, how do you lead in a culture that may be different from the one you left behind? What are the obstacles? The panelists, who recently moved into new work cultures, including some abroad, will discuss and extract common themes.”
This session was a wonderful discussion on what is needed and what plays a role when being a change agent in a new environment. One of the panel members was present via videoconference on a laptop screen which worked very well.
Books/Publications that were mentioned as important by the individual panel members:
Scarf a brain-based model for colloborating with and influencing others: http://academy.clevelandclinic.org/Portals/40/SCARF.pdf
Healing the wounds ,david noer: http://www.totalpicture.com/shows/big-picture/david-noer-the-layoff-survivors.html
Bates, A.W. (Tony) (2000), Managing Technological Change: Strategies for College and University Leaders: http://edutechwiki.unige.ch/en/Bates_managing_technological_change_model
Thursday Nov 5th, 2009 9:30 AM - 11:00 AM
Keynote: It Is About Time: Getting Our Values Around Copyright Right
In this talk, Lawrence Lessig reviewed the progress of the "open access" movement in education. He made a call for educators to finally resolve this issue in a way that enables the potential of technology for education. The way to go is something similar as the Creative Commons for music and art. Each scientist could add a “Scientific Commons” paragraph to his/her publication, allowing others to cite and use texts from the publication as long as they also allow this with the same Scientific Commons” paragraph.
Resources
Session Video and slides: http://www.educause.edu/Resources/EDUCAUSE2009FacetoFaceConferen/ItIsAboutTimeGettingOurValuesA/175767#tabs--2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons
Thursday Nov 5th, 2009 11:45 AM - 12:35 PM
Developing a Next-Generation Campus Web Portal
This presentation was about the creation of a web portal environment to help bridge on- and off-campus worlds, improve access to resources, and allow community members to publish their own information portlets and collections. What they showed was a really good practical and pragmatic portal environment that was very well received by their students and staff.
Resources
Powerpoint: http://www.educause.edu/sites/default/files/library/presentations/E09/SESS074/EDUCAUSE%2BNov%2B2009%2B-%2BNext%2BGen%2BCampus%2BWeb%2BPortal.pptx
Project website: http://www.ithaca.edu/myhome/
Friday Nov 6th, 2009 8:10 AM - 9:00 AM
Creating a Global Community: Knowledge Given, Knowledge Gained
Duke University thinks that to be able to solve global problems students will benefit from an interdisciplinary and international approach. That is why Duke stimulates students to study one or more semesters abroad and has the interdisciplinary focus program.
"Dukes Global Programmes" http://studyabroad.duke.edu/home/Programs
"Duke Engage Programme" allows students to spend a summer abroad on a project on a Duke scholarship.
"Themed or Focus programs” offer students the opportunity to approach topics from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. http://interdisciplinary.duke.edu/education/focus_programs/index.php ("Duke-China" project is an example)
Because cultural experience of being at Duke is also important ICT has started a program to make that students/staff abroad feel they are at Duke in Durham.
Statement about one of the bottlenecks is: "Bandwidth is the key to everything"
Things ICT worked on:
-Website for International programmes
-Networksystems abroad (with partners)
-Flip Videos (several hundreds) are given to students abroad to do:
-Video journaling
-Video BLOGs
-Video Interviews
This is called "Duke Digital Initiative"
-Campus in a box. Duke is working on a box (suitcase/19" rack) to connect remote sites really physically to the Duke network (firewall etc.)
-Working on tele-presence (see Cisco telepresence magic on Youtube)
Duke has a "Global programme"-steering group to keep communication as good as possible between faculties and ICT etc.
Newcastle University
At the airport of Minneapolis I met Steve Williams, Director of Information Systems & Services Ctaremont Tower of Newcastle University. He also attended the “Duke”-session at Educause and told me that Newcastle University was also stimulating their students to study abroad. http://www.ncl.ac.uk/about/global/
Resource:
Presentation + Slides: http://educause.mediasite.com/mediasite/SilverlightPlayer/Default.aspx?peid=4900dfd224964cc5bc8f1d15a573e40f
Duke study abroad website: http://studyabroad.duke.edu/home/Programs
Approved programmes abroad:
Duke engage programme:
Focus Programs:.
Friday Nov 6th, 2009 9:30 AM - 10:20 AM
Embracing the Cloud: New Approaches for Delivering Campus IT Services—Strategy and Policy Development
This was a crystal clear and good presentation of the CIO of NJIT and an Instructional Designer of NJIT.
Outsourcing, open source, SaaS, and virtualization offer new approaches for delivering campus IT services. Examples at NJIT include Google Mail, Postini, Moodle, iTunes U, thin-client desktops, and Amazon Web Services. The session outlines strategy development and implementation and support issues from a CIO perspective and an instructional/user-support perspective.
NJIT is one of the 3 public research universities of New Jersey and is located in Newark.
A cite from a long time ago: "The network is the computer" SUN computing
“Users need not have knowledge of, expertise in, or control over the technology infrastructure in the "cloud" that supports them.”
Things to remind when going to Cloud computing:
-Use local authentication --> Shibboleth
-Locally brand your cloud applications
-Make sure you have a degree of web services expertise (.csv, XML ....) in house
Why Cloud computing according to NJIT?
-E-mail is nowadays a commodity like water and electricity. Commodity suppliers today have a scale we cannot compete with.
-Arizona State University saves $500.000/year by outsourcing E-mail to Google. The Chronicle of Higher Education - 1/11/2008
2 options for E-mail in the cloud
-Microsoft live @edu (only windows operating system, coupled tightly to Microsoft offerings)
-Google Apps (connection to Open Office)
NJIT sees several reasons for putting E-mail in the cloud:
-NJIT is transitioning "Email for live" to "Mail-forwarding" . The existing alumni mailboxes are outsourced to Google mail.
-When hosted by Google you have no worries and costs for mail-hygiene (Virus/Spam/DoS)
Open Source
Old model: "Build or Buy"
New model: "Build, Buy or Befriend"
VLE
NJIT replaced WEBCT for Moodle. They hired "Moodlerooms" to host a pilot now.
-LDAP integration and add/drop is handled via .csv file.
-Mahara e-portfolio is hosted by Moodlerooms (bundled with Moodle) as well
-Drupal Content management is used for Courses, Websites, Video repositories and groups.
-NJIT joined Open Courseware initiative (consortium)
Multimedia
NJIT utilizes Apple's bandwidth by storing their Audio and Video on iTunes. (Check out their Wallstreet metldown series)
Facebook
School on Facebook ( www.inigral.com )
NJIT gives each course a facebook group to socialize and discuss the course.
Youtube
used to store videos . Make sure you tag all videos (Like Newark-....) In our case IHE-hydroinf IHE-water etc....
"Just in time computing" --> a server for every student is possible in the cloud.
Research
-Elastic Computer cloud
"Amazon web services for Education" is not expensive
Local clouds
Managing Virtual Machines saves time and you can expand and contractresources with the application lifecycle. So, at times when system is busy
Resources:
Some definitions: http://www.nice-italy.com/web/nice/cloud
Powerpoint of presentation: http://www.educause.edu/sites/default/files/library/presentations/E09/SESS133/embracing_cloud_ullman_haggerty.ppt
Geen opmerkingen:
Een reactie posten