ITS Coffee Break

Courtney Bentley reports on her recent trip to Educause, the education technology conference, including news about Duke's Digital Initiative, work on collaborative learning spaces, podcasting, and a Flash-based economics course. In tech news, Google's acquisition of YouTube and its release of its "web office" product Google Docs and Spreadsheets take center stage. In Help News there's a slew of workshop announcements, including details about the upcoming administrative computer training workshops.

This week's edition of the Coffee Break announces the ITS Gamer Server Survey, which looks at ways to improve network speed for gamers and non-gamers by deploying a game server on campus and then discusses the proposed Center for Teaching and Learning at Lafayette. In Tech News, Ken and Courtney look at Kansas State University's new podcasting initiative that plans to make 6,000 class podcasts available to students. In Help News, they discuss the upcoming "Design and Administer Effective Web Surveys" workshop being given via web conference by Stephen Porter, Director, Institutional Research, Wesleyan University.

The information literacy brown bag to be hosted by Skillman Library on October 6 leads off this week's ITS Coffee Break. A look at tech news beyond Lafayette's campus finds science fiction author Cory Doctorw trying out some alternative methods of publishing fiction, lessons for those afraid of cascading style sheets, news about Sony's new Reader product for viewing digital books, and a list of higher education podcast feeds. Finally, hosts Ken Newquist and Courtney Bentley look at ITS' upcoming workshop schedule, which includes "Acrobat I: Creating PDF Documents" and a host of training sessions for staff and administrators receiving new Lafayette computers.

The latest edition of the Lafayette Libraries & ITS newsletter Bytes & Books and the launch of the College Archives Photograph Collection lead off campus news in the 9/20 edition of the Coffee Break. In Tech News, Ken and Courtney look at applications designed to be loaded onto portable computer drives such as USB Flash keychains or iPods, discuss science fiction author David Brin's essay "Why Johnny can't code" and then chat about Microsoft's own Soapbox. In Help News, they announce upcoming workshops on podcasting and adminsitrative computer training.

September's scheduled network outage and news about updates to the Skillman Mac Lab top ITS News in this edition of the ITS Coffee Break. In Tech News, Ken and Courtney discuss Facebook's pending transition from closed to open community, talk about a Wired reporter's recent experiment in community reporting and editing via a wiki, and delve into the war of ratings at Digg.com. Announcements about upcoming Word Basics and Podcasting 101 workshops round out the podcast.

Spam is on the menu as Ken and Courtney talk about the new tougher setting available in Lafayette's Proofpoint anti-spam service and then look at the growing phenomenon of "spam blogs". There's also more details about Apple and Dell's notebook computer battery recalls, a discussion of Google's new Image Labeler game, news about the Windows Media Player 11 Beta's ability to stream audio and video to Xbox 360s, and information about the early fall ITS workshop schedule.

There's actual coffee with this edition's Coffee Break as Ken Newquist and Courtney Bentley talk about their caffeine fix from the newly-relocated Cosmic Cup. In ITS news, they have an announcement about the WW2 Community Web Server Rebuild Project, and in Tech News they discuss Apple's laptop battery recall and Penn State's new podcast project. Finally, in Help News, they talk about why students may still want an All-LAN cable when wireless is available and announce the Consulting Center's Fall Semester hours.

In this edition of the ITS Coffee Break, Ken Newquist and Courtney Bently take a look at the recently re-opened beta site for Google's web-based word processor Writely, talk about updates to Safari Tech Books Online, offer tips for working with Blackboard, and ask for volunteers to help test the ITS web site.

Blackboard -- both the creation of courses for the fall, and a new patent lawsuit that the company field against a competitor -- dominates the ITS Coffee Break's August 14 edition. The show also has ITS news about the next scheduled network outage and September's big LVIAC Copyright Workshop featuring Kenneth D. Crews. In tech news Ken and Courtney discuss the implications of the Blackboard lawsuit, the social video web site YouTube, the recall of 4.1 million laptop batteries by Dell, and the release of the Firefox 2.0 Beta.

Ken and Courtney give a rundown of changes to Novell Native File Access on the Mac and the upcoming ITS scheduled outage, and then talk about the new "Deleting Online Predators Act" approved by the House of Representatives. They also give a report on the recent "LVAIC Technology in the Classroom" presentation held at Cedar Crest College, and offer their thoughts on some of technologies demoed, including using green screens for instructional video, Unreal Tournament for teaching, and wireless "clickers" for classroom participation.