Reading level-appropriate search results

Via Searchengineland.
It seems you can pick the reading level of your advanced search results. This could help students get better sources; it could help people check their writing level for online content.
Instructions on how to do this are available on the google search engine help site.

Moodle batch file upload how-to

Yesterday I finally finished my Moodle batch file upload how-to web page in Wordpress. I'd started it two previous times, making screenshots for both Apple OS X and Microsoft Windows, but had so much difficulty putting them into Wordpress, that I had given up. The difficulty lied in the fact that Wordpress stips out some html code I had put in. I wanted images next to text; unfortunately, unless the text is long for each image, the images forma kind of stair and displace the text Finally, I surrendered to the system and just centered the images with no text around them. Sure, I could have created a table with images on one side in their own column and text in another column, but I don't really like to use tables for anything but tabular data.
Additionally, there are the pedagogical considerations. How many images does one need to get the point across? Does every step need an image? How much context does the image need? The entire screen or just enough to see the feature I'm pointing out? Which way is easiest to do X feature? Should I point them to the menu, or perhaps just tell them the keyboard shortcut? Perhaps the right- (or command) click option is best.

LaTeX

What's the fastest way to get software to a bunch of people? Put it somewhere multiple people can access it.
One faculty member asked me to get MikTex and Texmaker installed in a lab. I generally don't like doing that in the middle of a block, especially if it's not for a large class, as I'd have to re-image the lab or install it manually. So we went with option b, which is install it on a terminal server.
Of course, the faculty member had not specified which version or manner of the free software to install; 2.8 or 2.9; basic or complete, so naturally the one I installed first (basic 2.9) was completely wrong. Even complete 2.9 didn't work as it should, though complete 2.8 does.
In order to test it, I messed around a little in the software. It's still beyond me, but I like the idea that you have templates and that's what you work off.

Scanners

I was counseling with a few people recently about scanners. They're going with the new Canon Scanfront 300p scanners, which look really cool, but are no good for scanning books or items that are bound or irregularly-shaped.
I'd love to see a flatbed scanner with a screen. It could have instructions on it and would be a much better solution for the library.

DS Tech Presentation

A while back, one of our faculty members received an email from a guy who had arranged for a professor to come to his school district a little north of here to talk about using technology in educating disabled K-12 students. The professor forwarded the email to someone else, who forwarded it to someone else, who forwarded it to me, where the buck finally stopped. I researched it and learned the professor actually wasn't ever a teacher here, but at another local college.
Nevertheless, I invited him to come and see what tech we have and I agreed to come and speak at his event. Two night ago, I spoke. Here's the Prezi outline of my speech:

Copy of ATCC - Accessibility Technology at Colorado College on Prezi

I did add some live demos and had supplementary materials, so it wasn't as boring as if I had just read from the slides, though next time, I will refrain from using so much text on my slides and concentrate more on images which reinforce or clarify my ideas.

Zinepal | Online eBook Creator

Zinepal | Online eBook Creator
Looks pretty cool and is similar to Tabbloid and RSSzine (makes you pay). Handy ways to read blog and updated sites offline.

ge.tt typewith.me join.me youcanbook.me

I like to try and keep up with new websites that could be helpful. I used ge.tt to transfer some files to a faculty member. It was nice, as with the free account, I could delete the files after she had them. It was also nice, as the site is so simple and sparse, it wasn't difficult to use, though custom urls might be nice.
I'm also editing a document with typewith.me. So far, my collaborators haven't added anything, though I remain hopeful.
I look forward to using join.me. I've participated in some online demos lately and some of the companies have used it to show off their products. It's made by the same people who do logmein.com; I hope that the school will try out the logmein.com support option if we try another remote software support option next year. Our current product is okay, but I think we might save some money using logmein's offering. We're currently using Bomgar, which was purchased with end of year money.
My boss has been doing several equipment consults and had looked for a way to let people schedule their own times with him easily. After he sent out the less-ideal invites, whenisgood announced youcanbook.me. He was quite frustrated.

In which Weston helps three people at once

It's been a busy past few days. The Writing Center desk got a "newer computer" (they used to have a Dell GX260, now they have a Dell Optiplex GX520), but with the upgrade to Window 7, the worker reported that it was slower than the old one, though it is quieter. I looked into it and recommended a graphics card and more RAM, as it has around the same speed processor and the same RAM as the old machine. I also disabled visual styles to try and speed things up.
While that was going on, I was helping two or three other people. One of the "make a personal web page with your picture, 10 relevant class links and your resumé" assignment folks came in to get a trial of the software installed on her Mac. I suggested iWeb might be easier, so I guided her through getting that set up and her first personalized page published. At the same time, I helped a guy scan a couple duplex documents into Adobe Acrobat so we could send the OCR'ed files off in an application.
Oh, of course there was the student who wanted to print a poster-sized image of a famous old rock singer, but could only find small images online. She couldn't find any posters of the person in three or four poster shops in the first place! We searched Google Images (and a couple other sources) and used several of the features:

• Find simliar
• More sizes
• Find a specific size
• Find black and white

Finally, she just made a collage of several images of this rock singer and put them on one large document to print.

PDF me, please!

A professor came into the lab this morning and asked if I could help her. She's going to a third-world country for a semester and doesn't want to drag a bunch of textbooks with her, so she asked if we could turn the one (or perhaps one of the ones...) she wants to teach with into a PDF. Around 600 pages...Thanks to our high-speed, duplexing color scanner, the entire book was scanned into the computer in around 30 minutes.

Automatically running optical character recognition (OCR) on the thing took quite a bit longer, then exporting as a PDF took a while, too.

Then I heard from my boss that only a few chapters were to be converted and given to her, according to their discussion. Unfortunately, Acrobat 9 didn't want to cooperate, so I had my student worker use OS X Preview to separate 'em (which seems to have removed the OCR. hmp.), then another worker batch OCR the individual chapters, which seems to have worked. Interestingly enough, my OCR'ed PDF was around 250 MB, the total size of the individual chapters was around 2.5 GB! Talk about an explosion!

Conduits, not cul-de-sacs

Several months ago, a professor and I spoke about our online learning management system based on Moodle. She's been what I would call an average user, posting readings in her courses. She and I talked about a few of the ways she could make her course less of a dead end and more of an outlet or starting-off point. We agreed to meet a little closer to when she would be setting up her course.
We finally met today. It was great! I showed her how she could use typewith.me to have her students workshop their papers. I showed her how they could all securely edit and annotate a 10 year old document with current research in Google docs. We embedded links to research article databases, links to youtube, hulu, Netflix and our library's film collection, together with a forum, so students can find films that are examples of what they learn in class. We even embedded a youtube video clip in the course page!
To top off the work, I said I would look for ways her students could add films to her netflix queue and if they could all contribute videos to a youtube channel, to better use youtube.com/leanback. Alas, it looks like the only way to allow others to add videos to either of these queues is to share a username and password, and we all know that's not really an option.

auto update other programs

Lifehacker often has great ideas that can help people. I would recommend students follow a recent suggestion to use Windows Task Scheduler with Ninite to keep various programs updated. Genius!

file transfers

One thing people often ask for in the labs is how to transfer a file from one computer to another. There are many ways to do this indeed, but what I see students doing most often is emailing the file to themselves. This solves several problems, but is not elegant. It creates a backup copy apart from their own hardware, but there are size limits to backups.
Other suggestions I've offered, depending on the situation:

• anonymous ftp
• thumb drive
• boot the mac into target disk mode
• burn a DVD/CD
• network shared drive
• drop.io (RIP)
• large file transfer services (bigupload, etc)
• dropbox, etc

One that I just heard about it ge.tt. No downloads, extensions, few limits and it appears dead simple. 

Tips and Tricks: Images in cells - Official Google Docs Blog

This is really neat:

Tips and Tricks: Images in cells - Official Google Docs Blog: "=image('http://www.google.com/intl/en_ALL/images/srpr/logo1w.png', 1) will scale the image down in the current cell. With other parameters you can choose from a variety of sizing options including size to fit, stretch, original size, and even specify a custom size."

...and it's one of the reasons I like google. They listen to what people want and they try to improve things. I find it can be quite time-consuming, but I think it's worth it to be able to help people.

ACM ePortfolio Workshop

A few weeks ago, I went to the ACM ePortfolio Workshop. It was interesting made me want to use ePortfolios in my student worker program. Now I'm developing the documentation and the program around that. My summary with links to relevant sites and presentations is on Google Documents.

CMS Selection

Thus far, we've looked at several CMS options.

• Reason CMS
• LiveWhale
• DotCMS
• Cascade Server
• Ingeniux

Reason and LiveWhale stand out as they don't look like the others. All have some of the same features, but the last three seem to have a much more cluttered back end for administration/editing, as well as hinting that there should be an editorial process in the publishing process, which seems to go against the way things are done here. 

Most people who have anything to do with web pages here has the power to publish un-edited content. The major problem with this is that it requires HTML editing software, as most users are NOT code monkeys or even geeks. Most often, it seems the web editor of the department is a faculty member, department assistant, office manager, technical director or technical assistant.

Yes, the help desk, educational tech services, and communications web team do support them, but if they can publish pages, nothing is stopping them from publishing an ugly, unusable, or poorly-designed page or site. Not that all or even more pages or sites are. I think many of the departmental campus sites are okay or fine, but there are a few where the information architecture or page design leave something to be desired.  

CMS Selection

Several months ago, I volunteered to help out with the new design of the college website. I didn't hear anything back from anyone, though I participated in one forum on the subject.
Then, after the proposals were received and the group had met once, the Director of IT Services asked if I wanted to join them. I said sure and spent the night reading the proposals to prepare for the meeting the next day.
It's been interesting to see others' perspectives in going through the proposals and seeing what they think about what we need, what we want and what "a good fit" means.
It's also been informative to participate in a working group as opposed to a project team. It seems a working group is a lot more loosely organized, whereas a project team, as lead by a project manager, is a lot more organized and traditional.
I've really realized I like working with deadlines and a more defined organizational structure, though I do enjoy freedom and autonomy.

24/7 Lab

Occasionally, I've heard from students that they want a lab they can access any time. Last year, I decided to do something about it. I placed response paper in all the public and dorm labs asking if people were interested in a 24/7 lab and if so, what they would need there, in order for them to visit.
Response was good. Most of the respondents said they were interested in the lab and simply asked for a few basic software packages and one or two specialized ones (for statistical or mathematical analysis).
Using pre-approved budget money, I added dedicated computers to an existing dorm lab and with the help of residential staff allowed access to the space for all students. We are tracking the usage of the space overnight, to see if it is still needed.
Ideally, we'd have a larger space, which could be used by classes during the day, but for now, we've got two Apple and two Windows computers there, along with a printer and four thin client terminal computers.