8:10 am, An Enterprise-Grade Model for Classroom Technology Support
The final day of the conference started with noticeable fewer people around. This session discussed the U of M’s automated system of classroom monitoring. It was quite impressive with complete information on the status of equipment in their 300+ classrooms. They use a system by AMX. Basically, they have completely standardized their classroom setups. They can monitor the status of all equipment from a central location. They have a simple yet complete tactile control pad (no touch screens) in the classrooms. They also have a “hotline” phone that rings the helpdesk where the classroom status can be displayed (and remotely controlled). They have found as they’ve increased the number of these standardized classrooms their calls have gone down. In 4 years they have not had a projector theft — realtime monitoring by campus police, local alarm and siren, and password protection on projectors. With their AMX system they run reports as to total minutes of usage for each item. It’s impressive. Also, one interesting oddity was that the office of classroom management is under the registrar and not IT at the U. They have extremely high uptimes for the classroom and an analysis was done equating that to tuition efficiency and hourly operating cost (the comparison was a little weak). Afterwards a colleague and I thought this talk seemed familiar. Then we remembered we saw him at COTF IX in 2003 talking about “Classroom Technology: Developing The Overall Plan.”
9:30 am, Sakai and the Higher Education Community: The Road Ahead
Well, I didn’t pay too close attention to everything that was discussed. Sakai is framed as a collaborative learning environment — not just for classes. They are working to integrate the 3 P’s – perl, python and PHP – for homegrown modules. Stage 1 was the project, now they’re moving into the next stage of the Sakai foundation to sustain it. Well, since I’m not trained in java Sakai still leaves me in the dust. It’s just not as accessible as PHP and as supportable for smaller institutions without a java focus. Sakai looks like the CMS solution for large Universities. moodle is the solution for smaller institutions.
10:30 am, General Session: Right and Wrong in Cyberspace
This general session wasn’t as stinky as the first 2. Of course they couldn’t hope to cover these topics in an hour, the moderator — Randy Cohen who writes the NYTimes magazine column “The Ethicist” — was quite funny. Many security, privacy, and public information concerns were raised. The session is available online as video and is worth a watch.
And with that Educause 2005 ended. I wasn’t looking for anything in particular this year and perhaps that made it not as rewarding as previous years. But the LAMS presentation was the highpoint for new material for me.
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