Raccoon Riles Pixel

Raccoon at home in our backyard?
Last night Sue and I were sitting in our family room when our brown indoors only Burmese cat, Pixel, got very agitated. Pixel puffed up (related picture) and went near (not too near) our back door and hissed. Sue said, "what is going on, is there a Raccoon in our back yard?" She went to the back door and screamed, "oh my God! It is at the back door!" This is not the first time time Pixel has seen a raccoon, we had them in our house once (related story.) This raccoon seemed quite at home. The critter stuck around with plenty of time for me to go get a digital camera and take its picture. Then, when it was ready, the varmint climbed one of our redwood trees where I suspect it lives.

Vlogging Presentation

Presentation at CATS 2007
At the recent Community of Academic Technology Staff (CATS) conference in Fullerton I did a presentation on video blogging (aka vlogging.) I recorded the presentation and a copy of that is here in MP3 format. Sadly a problematic mic caused a lot of hiss in the recording and I did my best to filter that out. (Note to self: never trust untested equipment.)

The PowerPoint from the session is here. I had a lot of videos in the PowerPoint. I have removed those from this web version of the PowerPoint and replaced them with hyperlinks to the vlog posts. I will be presenting this presentation at this evenings Journalism 163 class. I am including direct links below for reference.

List of video blog posts from presentation:

• STEM Post - Slide 8
• Story of the Swami - Slide 11
• Train vlog entry - Slide 14
• FreeVlog Sample - Slide 16
• Education Vlogger - Slide 18
• SJSU Journalism 163 Post - Slide 19

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Last CATS day

Joshua is one sharp guy
Joshua Archer, from the CSU Center for Distributed Education is presenting again. This is the last day of CATS and I am presenting in about 40 minutes. I have enjoyed all the presentations Joshua has given at this conference. Unfortunately the most exciting of his sessions is at the same time as mine. If I had a choice I would go to his rather than mine.

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Net-generation Instructor

Carl Berger keynote session
The Net-generation Instructor is the topic of the presentation that Berger is giving at CATS2007. Berger is an engaging speaker and is talking about issues affecting faculty adoption of Web 2.0 technology. He opened with an exercise in cognitive dissonance, he had everybody count back from 100 by sixes as he whistled. He presented some very interesting statistics on new media literacy among students and faculty and attitudes toward new technology adoption and the Net-Gen Instructor. This session is available on Elluminate.

Characteristics of a Net-Gen Instructor:

• Younger, but not exclusively
• Perception that their expertise is strong in all areas
• Preference in how to learn, they prefer to learn by experimentation and consulting with friends.

How do we guide them?

• Get out of their way
• Meet their special needs
• Recognize their efforts (in RTP)

His Presentation is Here [Power Point]

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Things managers can do for IT workers

A list of things CSU managers could and should do. These suggestions do not cost any budget dollars and encourage productivity:

• Encourage Staff Mentoring. Provide mentoring opportunities for staff with other staff. Encourage staff to find mentors. If a staff member wants a mentor and does not find a mentor managers should make it their job to find a mentor for the staff member.
  
• Build a sense of career rather than just providing a job. Reward and encourage upward mobility. Let your staff members know their careers matter. Encourage upward career development, offer such opportunities to staff. Make this part of counseling of staff.
  
• Recognize Human Limitations. Don't task staff with impossible missions and especially do not punish staff for their inability to perform them.
  
• Make professional development a part of change management. Do not task staff with rolling out a technology they are not trained in supporting. Training costs but ignorance costs a lot more than training. You pay for training once. You pay for ignorance on an ongoing basis every time a task is not performed efficiently or correctly.
  

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Open Source Session

Another Great CATS Session (Updated 3-26-07, 19:00)
Joshua Archer, from the CSU Center for Distributed Education, led this great session. Also speaking was Kevin Kelly from SFSU. They talked about the state of Open Source technology in the CSU system. SFSU is moving to Moodle, an open source alternative to Blackboard and WebCT. Still, there is a reluctance to adopt open source solutions in the CSU system.

The focus of the conversation seemed to be on back end, server side, open source solutions, but discussions also included desktop software like Audacity and Open Office. It was decided to create a Google Group for CATS members who wish to keep abreast and share resources of Open Source projects in the CSU system.

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Blogs in the CSU

This was a really cool session! I will have to write more later. A lot of good ideas and great conversations came out of this. I wish it was podcast. Why aren't these sessions being podcast? I brought my gear to podcast MY session!

On to the open source session!

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CATS from Fullerton

I am at Fullerton:
This week is the tenth CATS conference. CATS stands for the Community for Academic Technology Staff. Right now we are going through the keynote presentations. David Ernst of the Chancellor's Office is presenting. He is focusing on what has happened over the last 10 years, with an eye on the future. His presentation is talking about leveraging collaboration with other campuses. He says there will be greater emphasis of this.

Focus On:

• Technology Initiatives
• Best Practices In Teaching and Learning
  

He said, "information literacy is no longer a goal because most people are literate, at least as we defined it ten years ago." I think he is wrong, because the vision of information literacy we had ten years ago is obsolete in this Web 2.0 world.

I am rooming with Wes Logan. We are staying at the Embassy Suites in Brea. It is very convenient to this campus.

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