Think Stops available at the 2008 Mid-Atlantic Regional Conference each asked a different question to which attendees wrote responses, adding ideas, or building on the ideas of others. Here are photos of the white boards used for the Think Stops along with the ideas and thoughts generated. Thanks to Ellen Borkowski of the University of Maryland for providing the photos.
Think Stop #1 Taking Risks
Think Stop #1: Taking Risks – what risks did you take and how did they work out?
- Created a mandatory Cell phone program with value add in applications
- Developed an on-line application for ERP system proposals from vendors.
- Closed a help desk & instituted roving support
- Result – more time to help w/complex questions
- Launch an ERP implementations without back-filling staff
- Developing an enterprise wiki for collaboration between fac/staff/studnents
- Adopting Google web toolkit -hard at first – (a new ‘programming paradigm’) – but saving us thousands of lines of code/effort/hours now (2 months later)
- I took responsible of a large system – researches – and ended up resolving certain issues that had plagued it for years
- I cross California Avenue every morning – and I’ve learned to look both ways
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Think Stop #2 What's consuming your time?
Think Stop # 2: What’s consuming your time – and keeping you up at night?
- Rising energy expenses
- Governance – or lack thereof – or lack of effective
- Documentation, community development, learning community management
- How do I account for contact hours in fully online courses?
- IT Security requirement – NIST/FISMA Etc. Every new federal contract requires an IT security plan….
- Lack of user security awareness; Lack of internal controls and processes
- How to return teaching & learning to “core mission”. Status within the universe of priorities competing for resources.
- Motivating 40+ student employees towards better levels of technical expertise and customer service.
- Trying to become proactive consultants instead of reactive troubleshooters
- HACNERS & BOTNETS
- Electrical and cooling capacity
- Disaster recovery
- People who turn off DNS servers and move them unapproved on Friday mornings.
- 24 & 7 support w/ 40 hr. staff
- How to not get lost in tech issues vs. teaching
- Application of these technologies in the classroom
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Think Stop #3
Think Stop # 3: What would you like to see-hear-do at next year’s conf. in Philadelphia?
- IT involvement/integration with physical security*
- Identity management, IT as a tool for physical security and whatever happened to SCORM
- -Powering/cooling schools technology infrastructure.
- Authoring Tools for online courseware
- Learning management Systems – caomparison, low-cost options
- - -and the status of open source ones (SAKAI, Moodle, etc (seconded)
- NFC applications and use of mobile devices to access academic, student life, and admin info (such as grades, room assignment)
- IT Governance – examples – also governance/management distinctions
- Sustainability
- Workshop on determining costs for IT services
- Web 2.0 practical applications to education
- Developing collaboration and consensus to Pay for new technology
- Privacy issues re: using google apps and hosted email services
- More teaching practices using technology, esp. virtual worlds, wikis, blogs.
