Leslie Dare

The web site for the search for the Vice Chancellor for Information Technology (Chief Information Officer) has been established.

http://www.ncsu.edu/admin-searches/cio/

If you have a document created with Office 2007 that you can't open with an earlie version, install the Microsoft Compatibility Pack,
which includes a File Converter. Once it is installed, you should be
able to double-click on Office 2007 documents and they will open up.
From there, you can "save as" a Word 97-2003 Document.

Minutes can be found online at:
http://www.ncsu.edu/student_affairs/dets/tech/meetings/092007.html
 
There were a number of good questions asked both during and after the meeting. I tried to capture those and place them where relevant. Anything not having a home was placed in the last "Miscellaneous" section.
 
Also included are a couple of instances where I've provided technical instructions - like converting Word 2007 documents and fixing GroupWise name search options. Be sure to read carefully to get all these tidbits!

Thanks to everyone who was able to attend today's Division of Student Affairs Tech Staff meeting. A special thanks to Susan Klein from the Information Technology Division who provided some important updates.

DETAG has produced five podcasts, with several more on tap for the coming year. I finally figured out how hto get them loaded into Wolfcast so that a user can now subscribe to the enter "Students First Podcast" series.

Here is the link to subscribe: http://wolfcast.ncsu.edu/Student_Affairs/

For those who care about the technical details: When using the Wolfcast upload feature, I would get an error stating that I needed to upload an mp3 file...which is exactly what I was uploading! Me thinks it might have have instead seen it as a RealMedia file since that was the icon, but the file extension was .mp3, not .rm. But it worked fine when I uploaded from a Mac!

And yes, subscribable is a word.

The Summer 2007 e-journal for StudentAffairs.com is now online. (This publication focuses specifically on technology in student affairs.) There are several good articles. One highlights an issue we've been discussing in Student Affairs here at NC State: whether to rely on a central IT organization for our infrastructure and support or to manage this on our own.

A new way to combine all your Twitter updates: Twitter Digest. Pretty cool.

This recent report from Pew Internet & American Life Project reviews How teens manage their online identities and personal information in the age of MySpace. 

Some interesting findings:

1. Boys and girls have different views/behaviors on privacy
2. Half of all American online teens use a social network
3. Teens treat various types of personal information differently

This report is important because it is describing tomorrow's college students. We need to understand students' use and perceptions about technology. Our IT folks need understand this so that our technology infrastructure can continue to evolve at an appropriate pace. Our administrators need to understand this so that we can anticipate how to respond to issues related to privacy, and ethics, and the many other areas. Our faculty need to understand how students will expect these technologies and behaviors to translate into the classroom. Our Student Affairs folks need to understand how these behaviors will translate into behaviors outside the classroom. The list goes on, but the additional point is that we should be doing this collectively: having conversations across campus about the next generation of students that will be here soon.

(Side note: seems as if these "generations" come more and more quickly. The baby boomer generation is generally accepted as being post-WWII through the very early 1960s, where as "Generation X" and "Generation Y" and now the "Net Generation" have all followed in quick succession.)

The first Division of Student Affairs Tech Staff meeting will be held on Thursday, September 20, 2007 from 11:00 a.m. to noon in the Walnut Room of Talley Student Center. All Division LANTechs and Webmasters are strongly encouraged to attend.

Here is a tentative agenda:
1. Student email change (guest: Susan Klein)
2. Reorganization of all university IT services (guest: Susan Klein)
3. Upcoming Division Tech training
4. DETAG updates
5. Software purchasing
6. Computer Security Day (November 30)
7. Web stats software
8. Student Portal updates (sending announcements, etc.)
9. Clean Your Computer Day (to be scheduled very soon)
10. Lots more, TBD

I recently posted a link to some survey data collected at the University of Minnesota, and passed that along to colleagues in University Planing & Analysis (UPA). The Assessment Coordinator for LITRE is Dr. Geetanjali Soni and she is housed in UPA. She provided this update about LITRE initiatives on student and faculty technology.

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NC State University has been collecting information about student technology use as a part of the sophomore and graduating senior survey. Also a faculty use survey was done is 2003 and is proposed again for fall 2008. A portion of the 2006 faculty well being survey is also related to technology use.  Details are online. We are also in the process of looking at trends over time.

Additionally, last semester, LITRE did a some focus groups (Coordinated by Traci Temple and Janet Fortune of FCTL and in collaboration  with ITD, Delta and the Libraries) to find out WHAT TECHNOLOGIES STUDENTS ARE USING TO ?SURVIVE? AT NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIVERSITY. The results should be on our website soon.

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The folks at the University of Minnesota have published results from technology surveys they conducted. They regularly survey both thestudent and faculty populations at that institution, and the results from the 2007 student survey are now available. (My recollection is that they survey faculty recently as well, but those results aren't up yet.)

A few highlights below; keep in mind that U of Minn has been identified by NC State as a peer institution.

1. Students are experienced in their use of technology, but not sophisticated.
2. Students print a lot.
3. Students strongly support use of significant levels of technology in the classroom.
4. Gender differences exist.

NC State collects some data on this front, but not comprehensively and from this perspective. There are data collection efforts through ITD, the Instructional Services unit in DELTA, LITRE, and FCTL. It would be great to see more collaboration, which may actually be happening through the LITRE assessment group.

Here is an interesting event: Blog Action Day on October 15, 2007. This is an international event. I plan to participate with a post related to technology and the NC State campus environment (probably recycling hardware or something along those lines).

I don't think blogging has reached a critical mass yet at NC State, but I think that WolfBlog software will evolve (and improve) and more students, staff and faculty will engage in blogging (either as readers or writers or both). As blogging becomes much more mainstream, I'm wondering if we could do something like this on our own campus. 

I've been reading the various blogs related to Da Chen's visit to our campus. Many students on campus (including at least FYC and ALS students, and likely others) are given a writing assignment based on Da Chen's work. The blog titles chosen for many of these blogs are Da Chen specific. Here are some examples. (And, if you visit each you will see that the vast majority have only the one post.) My favorite is DaChenGoState; never miss an opportunity to show that school spirit!

http://blogs.lib.ncsu.edu/page/ChenDa
http://blogs.lib.ncsu.edu/page/chenreading
http://blogs.lib.ncsu.edu/page/dachenals
http://blogs.lib.ncsu.edu/page/ALS103abl
http://blogs.lib.ncsu.edu/page/wcotm
http://blogs.lib.ncsu.edu/page/cotm
http://blogs.lib.ncsu.edu/page/dachen101
http://blogs.lib.ncsu.edu/page/DaChenGoState
http://blogs.lib.ncsu.edu/page/DaChen15869
http://blogs.lib.ncsu.edu/page/chencotm
http://blogs.lib.ncsu.edu/page/dachencom
http://blogs.lib.ncsu.edu/page/summerreading
http://blogs.lib.ncsu.edu/page/Reading
http://blogs.lib.ncsu.edu/page/myvalues9
http://blogs.lib.ncsu.edu/page/DA
http://blogs.lib.ncsu.edu/page/ValuesALS
http://blogs.lib.ncsu.edu/page/dachenqnn
http://blogs.lib.ncsu.edu/page/colorvalues
http://blogs.lib.ncsu.edu/page/dachenbmmmallar
http://blogs.lib.ncsu.edu/page/valuesoflife


This catches my attention because of my recent interest in the concept of teaching our students to be "net savvy" (as well as our staff and faculty). Will these students use these blogs for other purposes? Do they not understand how to set up a blog? Maybe they understand and are only blogging for this one course requirement and don't intend to use the blog again.

I should note that are a number of other posts on blogs that have more traditional blog names (usually the name or unity of the student). But the number of Da Chen-specific blog titles really caught my eye and has me wondering just how much our first-year students understand blogging.

A recent post to the EDUCAUSE blog nicely sums up the challenges of being a participant (citizen?) in the Web 2.0 world. Trying to navigate through a variety of tools and the resulting multiple identities can be a hindrance to really exploring all that Web 2.0 has to offer. And to compound it, some of those identities are personal and some are professional...and some are a blend which blurs it all even more. Lines that I had firmly drawn years ago to separate those worlds now seem to have shifted, which causes me to ponder just how transparent I want my life to be.

But back to the more technical challenges. A micro-level example of the problem of multiple profiles/identities is on our own campus. One of the most common questions I hear is "When will I be able to have just one login?" I think that the powers that be are very aware of this issue, and it is being addressed as part of an Identity Management initiative (I'll add a link to that soon as I can find it).

A response to that post has led me to read more about OpenID, a phrase I've seen but only now am appreciating as a concept. Simply put, "OpenID means the elimination of multiple user names and passwords and a smoother, more secure, online experience."

The notion of solving this at the macro-level is exciting, and I look forward to watching its development.

The Centre for Learning & Resource Technologies recently published a list of  Top 100 Tools for Learning. I'm not familiar with this organization though reading up now. The list is dynamic and routinely updated based on Top 10 Tools lists submitted by a variety of folks from the corporate world, higher ed, K-12, other non-profits, consultants and so on.

As I scroll through the list, I find myself thinking in terms of myself (do I use these tools?) and my Student Affairs colleagues (do they, generally as a group, use these tools?).

The top five: Firefox, de.licio.us, Skype, Google Search, and Wordpress.

Me: Yes (daily), Yes (daily), Yes (occasionally), Yes (daily), and No (Blogger and others)

My SA Colleagues: Some, Probably Not, Probably Not, Yes, and Probably Not.

This isn't surprising to me, or really even disappointing. It is so hard to keep up with the technology, especially for those of us who are digital immigrants. Many university administrators are probably unfamiliar with many of these tools, and it is my job to keep our SA folks up to date about these tools. First, how do students use them? Second, how can we use them to deliver courses, student services, and developmental programs? Third, how can we use them for our own individual productivity?

This list might be good material for initial self-assessment for workshops related to these tools.

Today's article on Technician Online makes clear that students' love of  Facebook is not unconditional. In fact, students seem to have a love/hate relationship with this and other online social networking sites. This article outlines some new tools available on Facebook, which are the result of Facebook Platform (a set of developer's tools that allow these applications to be written). Apps range from pure entertainment to politics  to dating to the "doing good deeds" genre, and include titles such as iLike (music), LOLCats, Movies, Naughty Gifts, Compare People, Causes, My Purity Test, Fortune Cookie, What's your Stripper/Porn/Gangster/Hieroglyph (and more) Name, Moods, Bumper Sticker...and hundreds more.

Some students quoted in the Technician article feel that these applications make Facebook more of a time-waster than before, and others feel that the applications are silly or meaningless.

This coincides with some student perspectives I heard through an Interactive Theatre performance at a conference I recently attended. The students (both in character and out) stated that they have a love/hate relationship with Facebook. On one hand, it is the ultimate procrastination tool, and you can find yourself suddenly hours into a Facebook session. On the other hand, it helps the students feel connected. Essentially, the students were saying that they are addicted (their term) to Facebook and had to get their fix every day, even though it could (but doesn't always) waste time.

Another theme from this performance was the notion that Facebook seduces students into the notion of "feeling connected" but that when using Facebook in a vacuum, it can lead to all sorts of misconceptions and behaviors that can be harmful to individuals and and their relationships with others. Students use Facebook to "feel connected" (especially on large campuses) but can also end up feeling isolated and friendless.

I think our Student Affairs staff have a love/hate relationship with Facebook as well. Many recongize this as a resource that indeed could be a wonderful tool to help students connect, but worry about the lack of personal interaction, the sharing of personal information, and the consequences of the behaviors on students.