The five classroom upgrade projects are proceeding. We are still awaiting delivery of the consoles to house all the equipment. The original order was placed on August 22.
Deady 106 is used 2--3 times a day by the math department for the purpose of projecting mathematica and other software. Room rennovations are almost complete except for some inlined black shades on the windows.
Chiles 128 now has all the equipment. It is not known yet if it is being used.
Lawrence 177 and 115 are done. The equipment is being used in the AStronomy 121 class in 177 Lawrence taught by Professor Imamura. A high resolution proxima 920 panel has been secured for AAA use and use in these rooms.
Straub 146 still needs network connection. A panel has not yet been acquired for that room due to lack of feedback.
The recommended two tier modem policy was discussed by the internal staff at the Computing Center on Thursday Oct. 5. The outcome of those discussions was to postpone adoption of our recommended policy until more data on usage patterns is acquired. Given the divisive nature of this subject, it is probably wise for this committee to back off on this issue as far as advising the Computing Center but we should continue to gather informal feedback from students and faculty on the effectiveness of the current two hours for all users policy.
Andrew Bonamici, Assistant University Librarian for Administrative and Instructional Media Services was introduced as a new member.
Josh Cox was introduced as the Chair of the Student Computing Policy Committee.
There are currently 230 active modems in the UO pool, an additional 96 modems have been delivered and rack mounted, but need additional work for final hook-up.
Metricom has completed installation of radio equipment for the Ricochet Wireless Data Service campus trial. Dale is looking for 25 beta users to test the wireless modems for a month. Users should be with-in visual distance of PLC and must pay the monthly service fee (beta testers will be able to but their modems for $100. at the end of the test!). Network Services will be developing the drivers for these modems and Micro Consulting will work on developing documentation and Micro Purchase will be selling the Metricom wireless modems (about $295. installed). These modems will support TCP/IP only and are not a good fit with users who need ARA (Apple Remote Access) or Shiva (Novell) connectivity.
Radios have been placed on top of many campus building (EMU, Lawrence, PLC, CC) and inside the Knight and Science libraries. Dale notes that Metricom is a commercial service and NOT part of UO networking - we are providing them an opportunity to site their equipment.
Andrew will now be managing the Instructional Media Center and spoke about his goals for improved service and support. Some of these included:
Jerry Tindal presented a summary of the Teaching Technology Survey. (see also these notes Group discussion centered around the 22% of students who are resistant to computer technology in the classroom and ways to reach students who may not find that computers improve their learning.
Tim Gleason in the course of discussing the survey results raised the point of fair expectations with respect to classroom assignments. That is, can professors know what students can be reasonably expected to do given the current state of ON and OFF campus network access. This also led to a general discussion on support models for students and faculty with the consensus being that lots of support is needed but that the optimal structure of that support remains elusive. Bothun suggested that ultimately, student driven peer support is the only thing that will work.
As an addon to this, Bothun suggested that the committee and the Deans really need to know the level of desktop computing resources that faculty have right now. To assess this Bothun drafted this small survey which will be distributed to all faculty. For this to be effective, we need nearly 100% faculty response, so urge your colleagues to spend 5 minutes filling out the form.
The Syllabus '95 conference, held July 22-26 at Sonoma State University in Rohnert Park, Calif., focused on how technology can be used in instruction. More than 1,000 attendees from the U.S., Canada, Spain, Sweden, Belgium, and Japan attended the event.
The program was divided into daily topics:
Deferred until next meeting which will be on Nov 16
from 8:30--9:45 in Willamette 350.