Dear DO,
I’m quite familiar with the fantastic work CDH does during the week. However, what’s life like for a CDH member on a weekend? Do you relax or enjoy time with your families just like us real people? Are you robots that simply power down?
Sincerely,
Curious Jorge from New York

Dear Curious,

We at CDH actually spend weekends FIGHTING CANCER. Well, at least on the weekend of April 19th-20th this year, at the annual Relay for Life at UCLA. Relay for Life is a tag team walk-a-thon-style fundraiser for the American Cancer Society, and this year CDH has formed a team of around ten staff and family members. The UCLA event takes place in Drake Stadium over 24 hours (Saturday 12PM – Sunday 12PM), during which we’ll have at least one team member on the track the entire time. Each team member is encouraged to get donations and can set their own goal. The team goal is currently set at $1,000, and is 47% complete with about half a month left until the event.

To get the inside scoop, join us– in a display of narcissism and journalistic excellence– for an interview with the team captain himself, Frank Lee.

DO: Frank, what inspired you to create a team and get CDH involved in this event?
Frank: I first heard of the event when my friends in the community service fraternity Alpha Phi Omega formed a team. This year I was going to join their team, but figured I’d be able to raise more funds than alone by starting my own team. CDH people have always been a friendly, social, and socially conscious bunch, so I thought they also would be eager to take part in the event. It was fantastic that we’ve got people who jumped right on board. Although this is the first group philanthropic event I know of, in the past years Linda Holmes (CDH Labs Manager) put together softball practices and competitions against the other computer consortiums, so team socials/exercise isn’t a new concept to us.

The Digital Odyssey also asked other team members why they joined the team and this is what they had to say:

“My intention when I initially offered to join the team was to have some fun and support CDH. Then I received a phone call from a good friend, during her annual mammogram the doctors found an cancerous lump in her breast and she said she was scheduled for surgery in a week. I could not believe it, It was out of the blue, we just had dinner the previous week and all was fine… The Relay for Life event is more to me now and I feel like walking for somebody close and for everyone battling this disease… I really hope to raise money and awareness for this cause.” – Linda Holmes

You’re more than welcome to CLICK HERE and make a donation for the team (or join the team)!

For quite some time, Nancy Ezer (Lecturer, Near Eastern Languages and Cultures) has been working with Ted Liu (CDH’s foreign languages instructional technology coordinator) to develop an online tool to teach Hebrew grammar. Nancy had been using a workbook for quite some time, and even had an electronic version of it, but it was trapped on old disks in a format that we could no longer use (beware the passing of technology!).

She submitted a project proposal to CDH in 2005, which included the possibility of outsourcing some of the work to a company. We decided to take advantage of the functionality available in Course Management systems in order to build the grammar tool. At the time, we were reviewing Sakai, but when it became clear that the CCLE would be based on Moodle, we decided to use it instead.

Nancy and Ted collaborated very closely, and Ted found ways to get the quiz tool to work with the many challenges that the Hebrew Workbook presented.

On December 5, Nancy and Ted talked about and demonstrated the quiz tool at a presentation in the CDH PC Lab. Shortly afterwards, our colleagues in OID picked up the item for their “tools for teaching” series. See http://tinyurl.com/3xao8x

The DTAs are full-time career employees who provide technical support in all areas of computing and are the center point for all technological assistance. Each DTA is assigned to a specific administrative unit, such as the Dodd Group or the Royce group, and spends 80% of their time as the primary contact for all technology related concerns. The DTAs are skilled PC and Apple hardware/software technicians and handle all matter of desktop support issues. They each have a wide variety of experience utilizing networking and communication protocols, graphic design concepts, and data management stratagems. The other 20% of DTA time is spent working on special projects, such as, website design, and the bi-weekly home computer support clinics.

If a DTA can’t help you directly, they know how to find help. So it is always a good idea to start with your DTA!

Clockwise from top left, the DTA team members are Alastair Thorne, Bronson Tran, Bryan Jung, Calvin Tong (DTA Coordinator), Dave Nguyen, Frank Lee, Joseph Fahs, Roozbeh Kavian and Steven Lee.

The DTA web page is http://www.cdh.ucla.edu/dta.html

By contrast, the ITC team consists of ten part-time humanities graduate students hired for a tenure of up to two years and based in the “ITC Lab” (1041 public policy). The focus of the ITC team is to assist instructors with the best use of technology in instruction and learning. Like DTAs, ITCs are assigned to support specific departments. However, they work very collaboratively to share their various disciplinary, pedagogical, and technical skills wherever needed. ITCs are most often associated with course websites, but they know and consult on a variety of other technology tools, including presentation software, media processing, blogging and wikis, Wimba, scanning and OCR. The ITC Lab is equipped with high-end digitizing equipment — available to instructors to use by appointment or on a drop-in basis.

The 2007-2008 ITC team. Front row, left to right: Huan Wang, Yoshiko Fukuyasu, Eva Sobolevski, Jonathan Jones, Chris Shaw, Yasu Imao, Kim Mack
Back row, left to right: Innhwa Park, Ted Liu (Foreign Languages IT Coordinator), Randall Gordon, Austin Payne, Annelie Rugg (ITC Coordinator)

The ITC web page is http://www.humnet.ucla.edu/itc/

(Thanks to Linda Holmes for drafting this article).

Q: What’s the point of each issue? Do you expect your readers to become a technical genius like you?

A: [Laughs] Well, these aren’t complete lessons on certain topics, as I don’t expect anyone to take time from their already busy schedule to become a pro on a certain topic. I do hope to raise awareness about certain security issues and provide helpful tidbits on productivity. The key is small doses. I also intentionally leave out some details because another goal is to get the reader curious about the topic and encourage them to consult me about the issue. Different people have different situations and instead of making each issue a reference for all, I prefer people come talk to me, where a casual personal consultation would be more effective. That also keeps each issue concise, which I’ll address in my response to your next question. Oh, and another reason for the creation of these tech tips is to regularly remind my clients that I exist and I’m available to help them. A DTA is useless if his or her existence is unknown.

Q: Wise words. How do you decide on what content goes into each issue?

A: I have two priorities whenever I write an issue. One, the topic must be relevant. Whatever I write about needs to relate to the readers somehow, usually an aspect of security or productivity that affects most readers. Two, the article must be concise. If I want the article to be read, it better not be long. To me, anything that takes longer than two minutes to read risks being delegated to the “read later” pile indefinitely.

Q: Should I subscribe to your tech tips?

A: Well if you currently do not subscribe to or are an author of the tech tips, I recommend signing up. I write each issue so it will be easy reading, yet I try to include something technology-savvy readers may find new. Directions for signing up are included at the bottom of this article.

Q: Huh? Anyway… Can I make suggestions?

A: Sure, I appreciate any feedback from my readers. If it’s negative, make it constructive. If it’s positive, I’d like to know specifically why so I can keep those aspects. I’d also be interested in hearing what topics you would like covered.

Q: This Digital Odyssey article itself is really long. And you spent the whole thing talking about yourself. Is that what the tech tips are like?

A: … No. I promise.

To subscribe to or get more information on Frank’s Tech Tips, e-mail Frank at frank@humnet.ucla.edu.

Example “Back Issues” (PDF format)

• Is Your Password Safe?
• Save Time and Trouble. Use PDFs.
• Backup Your Data
• Computer Maintenance, Part I: Speed

A department’s website is a very important resource in promoting and distributing information about the department and its individuals. Users will often look at the department

History:
CDH Network Services had met with Communications Technology Services (CTS) back in Spring 2006 to discuss the possibility of migrating our Exchange service to EM. At that time EM did not meet our expectations in three major areas; single sign on, directory services integration (Active Directory), delegated administration to local units, and could not offer mailboxes to graduate students.

Present:
CDH Network Services have met with CTS twice recently to discuss these hurdles to see if we could move forward. EM services seem to have evolved to better accommodate customers needs. CTS has come up with Kerberos solution which would enable customers to use single sign on. CDH is currently looking into this. EM now offers delegated administration including reset passwords, lock/unlock accounts, create distribution lists, add/remove contacts to DL’s, remove DL’s, and view Barracuda (user access) setttings to name a few. Active Directory integration is still something that CTS has not provided a solution for. We discussed the issue of graduate student mailboxes and they don’t see this as road block anymore. They are willing to create these mailboxes and we both agreed that they will treated as a specialty mailbox.

In September Stacey, Joseph and I met with Reem and the Humanities MSOs to discuss the possibility of migrating to EM and it was well received. Reem asked the MSOs to go back to their departments and chairs for feedback. Meanwhile CDH Network Services will be testing Kerberos and the test accounts for functionality.

Future:
At our next meeting with CTS (TBD), we will determine whether to move forward with EM or not. More to come…

Link: Enterprise Messaging Home Page

To start with we successfully implemented a project tracking system so that projects can be planned and individual tasks allocated, tracked and closed to completion. This system called CDH Project Tracker has been in use since many months now and other managers within CDH have started using the same. This sure has simplified Kathy’s work and may be complicated Joseph’s a bit.

Starting with Hypermedia Berlin all projects within CDH ITP are being moved onto subversion configuration management system. The programmer team has quickly learned how to use subversion and they are starting to like it, I guess. Network services group, especially Denise, has been of great help in setting this system up and running.

A defect tracker system is being tested and piloted which will be used to track application defects and help quantify and thus improve quality of delivered products.

The process to call for projects is being improved to bring clarity about the deliverables that should be expected within each project that is accepted by CDH for the academic year. This will help improve communication and bring some structure to the chaos of software development and maintenance projects.

Overall the last academic year has been an interesting one. The current year will see these processes mature and place CDH in a position to take up bigger and better challenges in instructional technology projects.

The site is a resource for a number of Digital Humanities initiatives that are under way. These include a open rank faculty search in Digital Humanities, a Mellon Postdoc search and the Mellon funded seminar on Media, Technology and Culture. Professor Todd Presner (Germanic Languages) is convener of the seminar.

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