As some of you already know, 2007-08 will be a year of important and exciting change for the Humanities in the area of course websites. After many years of using Ecampus, we will transition to building new Humanities course sites on the UCLA Common Collaboration and Learning Environment, or CCLE. The CCLE is a campus-wide initiative that CDH has been involved in for the last year and has the goal to
A Department Technology Analyst (DTA) was recently discovered spamming his department. When confronted about his monthly mass e-mails titled “Frank’s Tech Tips”, Frank Lee, the DTA for the Royce Humanities Group, denied any wrongdoing and claimed he was sending out “educational e-mails” or “tech tips” in the interest of his clients. Digital Odyssey correspondent Frank Lee was able to get an exclusive interview with the accused… um, Frank Lee.
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.
By Calvin Tong
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
Background:
Enterprise Messaging (EM) is an email and calendaring system that is part of the recent UCLA IT initiative. So far all of UCLA Administration and several other departments, including the Library, School of Nursing, OIT, ATS, School of Arts, Summer Sessions, Society & Genetics, and CNSI Administration, have all migrated to EM. EM uses the same Microsoft Exchange 2003 server and supports the same email clients (e.g. Outlook, Entourage, MacMail, Eudora) as CDH currently does. Part of our Technology Infrastructure Fee (TIF) goes towards the support of EM. The Humanities Departments are projected to pay about $22,000 for FY 2007-2008 towards EM.
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…
Moving from ad-hoc programming towards structured execution of small and large instructional technology projects the CDH Instructional Technology Programmers Group (CDH-ITP) has taken many baby steps in that direction over the past few months. These revolve around developing a software development / project execution life cycle and follows simple steps of planning, doing, testing and delivering Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) products.
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.
This message came over from the Library.
From: Farb,Sharon
Sent: Sunday, September 30, 2007, 12:13pm
The UCLA library is interested in gathering input from UCLA faculty and graduate students working with undergraduates regarding two databases aimed at interdisciplinary undergraduate uses. Please share this announcement with any faculty or graduate students you think may be interested. All comments welcome. Deadline is October 31, 2007.
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The databases are:
Academic Search Premier
Indexes and abstracts articles in more than eight thousand arts and humanities, social sciences, and life and physical sciences journals; offers access to full-text articles in more than 4,400 journals
Academic Search Complete
Indexes and abstracts articles in more than 10,900 journals and other publications in English, Spanish, German, French, Italian, and Portuguese; full-text available for more than 5,300 journals; coverage spans all disciplines and area studies
Academic OneFile
Indexes and abstracts articles in more than eight thousand journals in the physical sciences, technology, medicine, social sciences, arts, theology, and literature; includes NPR, CNN, and CBC transcripts and podcasts and the full text of The New York Times from 1995 to the present
Learn more at http://www2.library.ucla.edu/electronicresources.html
There are already five roundtable discussions lined up for 2007-2008, with more in the works.
The roundtables are informal gatherings at which we discuss topics related to digital humanities. We often start out discussing one topic and end up on a completely different one, but the discussions are always lively and engaging.
In November, we will host a visit from Virginia Kuhn (USC School of Cinematic Arts) who will discuss “the academy’s resistance to the digital, using her own dissertation as a limit case.” Dr. Kuhn was spotlighted in a Chronicle of Higher Education article in 2006 Digital Dissertation Dust-up. Also in November, John Lynch (graduate student in Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, UCLA) will lead a discussion of web based bibliography tools.
In March, Professor Marcus Kracht (UCLA Dept of Linguistics) will lead a discussion of issues and challenges in developing software to test linguistic theories.
In April John Unsworth (Graduate School of Information and Library Science, University of Illinois) will visit. And Susan Lewak (graduate student in English, UCLA) and Shish Akat (from the Rhythm and Hues company) will lead a discussion of Wikis in the educational environment as well as the changing nature of authorship.
For more events, details of meeting times and to RSVP see the CDH Events Page.
On May 10th, 2007 UCLA had its first Digital Innovation Day sponsored by the Office of the Vice Chancellor of Research and the Institute for Digital Research and Education as well as the Center for Digital Humanities, the UCLA Digital Humanities Incubator Group, Academic Technology Services and the Experiential Technology Center. It was held in 1302 Perloff Hall from 4-8pm
This event was designed to highlight the innovative research that is being done here at UCLA utilizing digital technology. It also served as a catalyst for strengthening the UCLA community by encouraging collaboration between faculty from different departments and disciplines, who are engaged in research utilizing digital technology. It provided a great opportunity for 350 attendees to view and experience many of UCLA’s groundbreaking digital research projects, and meet the faculty and graduate students involved in the creation.
The Keynote Speaker was:
2006 Lyman Award winner Willard McCarty, King’s College London and his Plenary address was:
Last April, Prof. Tim Tangherlini (Scandinavian Section) gave a fascinating talk on his use of a Tablet PC in the classroom. Annelie Rugg at CDH had purchased a Lenovo tablet PC for loan to instructors that want to try it out. Since the idea had originally come from Tim, he quickly said he wanted to try it in his classes.
Among the things that Tim discovered: the Tablet PC is excellent for grading papers. Tim asks his students to submit their work to Turnitin.com (available through my.ucla). When it comes back, he can open it on the tablet and proceed to write on the margins. Not enough space in the margin? Just zoom in and write more! The students can zoom in to read the comments when they get their papers back. Say something you see later is not relevant? Just erase it. Want to draw a line from one part of the paper to another? Just use the drawing tools. When you’ve finished, the whole thing can be saved to pdf and sent off to the student.
Tangherlini’s powerpoint presentation is here: navigating-the-tablet.ppt
If you are a UCLA Humanities instructor and would like to test a Tablet PC, contact Annelie Rugg (annelie@humnet.ucla.edu)
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I asked Tim some follow up questions in email. Here’s what he wrote:
Q. What would you say to a colleague who was considering using a Tablet PC?
The tablet PC has come a long way from the glitchy and unreliable Newton’s of yore. Even but a scant 2 years ago, the tablet was a cumbersome piece of hardware–it generated a massive amount of heat, and one had to “train” the software to recognize your handwriting. In some models, the stylus was tethered to the machine. Ugh.
But now they are light, small (8.5 x 11), there is no handwriting training, and they work remarkably well. The clamshell models with reversible screen are far more versatile than the tablet only models, but I suspect it is a matter of preference. I’m not sure you’d want it as your only machine, unless you (a) don’t mind having fairly elaborate docking stations and (b) don’t do anything that requires high processor speed or lots of memory (ie you wouldn’t want to edit video or do GIS stuff on this thing). It is an excellent classroom presentation platform, a fabulous grading platform, and a very good travel computer.
Q. What did you find most useful about the Lenovo?
The ability to grade using handwriting on electronic papers.
Q. What did you think needs to be improved?
Battery time and foreign language handwriting recognition.
Q. What’s your overall impression of this technology?
This is a keeper–I strongly recommend departments to buy 2 or so for “check-out” to faculty members so they can play, learn and innovate with
this platform.
We have launched a new site for Digital Humanities and Media Studies at www.digitalhumanities.ucla.edu
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.
The site was built using the Joomla content management system. See our post on Department Websites Service for more details about Joomla.
