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^)

Blackboard and ANGEL status updates

Blackboard was downgraded successfully earlier this week. My thanks to David Bolton for his efforts to get the former organizations ("orgs") working as courses. I have been able to upload the content for most orgs starting with A-L, and the SBU Staff Council, with little problem. I would be further along, but I am taking the time to cleanup the extra clutter made by the Import process in each org's menu. All the course orgs start with an X in the course ID. I'll try to finish up the rest of the org content loading early in the June 16th week. Once that is done, please feel free to look around, make your org Available, etc. And if you find any problems, or have any questions, please e-mail via blackboard@sbuniv.edu

The noon hour on Friday the 13th was SBU ITS's first meeting with ANGEL via phone conference, with the goal of getting started on the implementation process. So far, things look good for beginning the online training very soon, and getting our test server up and running. This will initially be use for both Administrator training, as well as figuring out how to make things work as we want and need.

We've started down the road that leads from Blackboard to ANGEL.

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.

Blackboard Downgrade Scheduled

Instructional Technology (IT) has the needed information from Blackboard Support, and therefore has scheduled our Blackboard server downgrade to occur late night on Wednesday, June 11th, 2008. A two hour maintenance window from 11pm on the 11th to 1am on the 12th will be used. IT asks you make your final preparations to copy files and portfolios from Blackboard between now and 6/11/08 11pm. Instructions for doing so were posted earlier on this same blog.

Then, on the 12th, we will recover former organizations to their new courses on Blackboard. Summer 2008 courses should not be affected by this downgrade. Please e-mail any questions, comments or concerns to: blackboard@sbuniv.edu

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.