ITS Coffee Break

The ITS Coffee Break tries recording in stereo as it tests out one of three new microphones recently purchased by Lafayette for podcasting. In Tech News, hosts Ken Newquist and Courtney Bentley talk about ways to spruce up your Facebook profile, discuss Berkley's decision to upload 200 course lectures to YouTube, and speculate on Google's purchase of the microblogging platform Jaiku. In Help News, two new "Integrating Teaching with Technology" presentations are announced, as well as an ITS brown bag lunch about getting started with Linux.

The October 3rd edition of the Coffee Break leads off with news of Lafayette's implementation of Shibolleth and the recent Podcamp Philly event held at Drexel University. In Tech News, hosts Ken Newquist and Courtney Bentley discuss the new Firefox Campus Edition, the Chronicle of Higher Education's new Tech Therapy podcast, and one professor's attempt to rate the trustworthyness of Wikipedia's contributors. In Help News they review file compatibility issues with Microsoft Office 2007, announce upcoming Outlook and NetStorage workshops, and offer a tip for quickly saving photos using Safari.

The ITS Coffee Break returns for the fall semester with news of bouncing e-mails, the switch to SFTP for accessing web sites on WW2, updates to the Lafayette Toolbar for Firefox, a discussion of the top ten Facebook apps for Librarians, and a look at the latest features added to Google Maps.

Technology in the class room is the focus of an upcoming LVAIC symposium, and news of the event leads off the latest edition of the ITS Coffee Break, recorded on location at the Cosmic Cup Coffee Co. on College Hill. Hosts Ken Newquist and Courtney Bentley also have news about the network upgrade project and upcoming outages associated with it, as well as an update about progress with Moodle. In Tech News, they discuss the much hyped iPhone, review Google Maps new "drag your route" feature, get organized with Unclutterer.com, and discover how to build things from scratch with Instructables.com. News about July and August workshops and of just-added Moodle documentation rounds out the podcast.

I heard of an interesting utility on MacBreak Weekly podcast recently. It's called Cache Out X and it does a great job of cleaning out all those stupid cache and swap files that show up mysteriously when you start your Mac and your trash is suddenly full. This application handles both system files and internet files that take up useless drive space. It handles 8 different web browsers and has loads of automated preferences, you can even schedule it to run via iCal. Best of all, it's FREE! I found it at versiontracker.com

The ITS Coffee Break begins with news of the first-year student technology guide, an update of ongoing work on the network redesign project, and latest about our progress importing Fall 2007 course data into Moodle. Moving on to Tech News, hosts Ken Newquist and Courtney Bentley look at MIT's virtual residence halls within Second Life, discuss the new Leopard edition of the Mac OS X operating system, and check out the new Windows version of Apple's Safari web browser.

Hosts Ken Newquist and Courtney Bentley settle into their summer routines with the latest edition of the Coffee Break. In ITS news, they provide an update on the conversion from Blackboard to Moodle. In Tech News, they provide a rundown of their summer reading and projects lists, talk about Google's new 'Street View' addition to its Maps tool, and take a look at the new beta version of CNN's web site. Finally, they announce the first batch Moodle Quickstart workshops for the summer.

A discussion of Lafayette's upcoming conversion from Blackboard to Moodle leads off this week's edition of the ITS Coffee Break. In Tech News, hosts Ken Newquist and Courtney Bentley review "Confessions of a Podcast Junkie", an EDUCAUSE article by Carie Windham that the discusses the advantages of combining podcasting with teaching and talk about Case Western Reserve University's virtual campus in Second Life. In Help News, they announce ITS's new "Windows Vista" resource page and offer a preview of upcoming summer workshops.

This week on the Coffee Break, hosts Ken Newquist and Courtney Bentley discuss ITS's recommendations regarding using Windows Vista at Lafayette, discover how some librarians are learning all about Web 2.0, look at the Mashtracker web site for following cutting edge web technology news, and talk about faculty new computer options. They round out the show with announcements about three new ITS Brown Bags covering the virtual world Second Life, the open source course management software Moodle, and the latest developments on the World Wide Web.