TagCloud of Rider University’s Strategic Plan

academic achievement action activities additional adoption affairs alumni approval arts assessment assoc benchmarks budget build business campus campuses career chair classroom co-curricular college community comprehensive connections continue deans departments development director diverse division education engaged enhance enrollment ensure establish existing expand experience faculty fundraising goals graduate implementation improved include increased indices information institutional integral international kpis leadership learning life management needs objectives ongoing operating opportunities overall page plan potential professional programs provide provost rates recruitment relations research resources responsibility retention rider school sciences service skills social specific staff strategic strengthen students success support teaching technology timeline undergraduate university vp year

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Linux.com | Educators can manage course content with Moodle

I am about to make a major push at Rider to try to make people aware of Open Source alternatives to Learning Management Systems like Blackboard. There are a lot of problems with Blackboard as an enterprise system, not the least of which is price, but also support issues, upgrade woes, questions of monopoly, and a real lack of innovation, despite the endless upgrades. Enter Moodle, an open source Learning Management System that is truly looking at what’s going on in the web 2.0 tools for inspiration of its features, like wikis, rss, flash video, and 3rd party service integration. I can, and will, go on about this, but in the meantime, take a look at what another instructor is saying about Moodle, because I couldn’t have said it better. Moodle is already installed at Rider - if you want to try it, just call me at x7145. As always, click the link for the whole story. - j.

Linux.com | Educators can manage course content with Moodle
Why use Moodle?

One reason I recommend Moodle is because it provides a full variety content of activities that teachers can add to a course. Moodle has more than 100 gradable activity modules and plugins such as chats, forums, and tests. While other gradable modules, such as flashcards, podcasts, LAMS, and galleries, are not included in the standard package, they can be installed as modules later. Moodle also allows administrators to back up and restore courses. Once created by a teacher, a course can be reused in subsequent years with little effort.

Another reason to recommend Moodle is because of its philosophical foundations. Moodle is designed with a social constructionist philosophy, a belief that people actively construct new knowledge as they interact with their environment, and that learning is more effective when you’re constructing something that others experience. In other words, collaborative learning and discovery are at the foundation of this CMS application. You may not agree entirely with this philosophical foundation — I do not — but educators in the sciences and in the humanities can accept much of this philosophy since the social constructionist philosophy lies somewhere in between the strict qualitative and quantitative extremes.

iMedia Connection: Podcasting 101

This is a good overview on what’s needed to produce a good quality podcast, and so I figured I’d share it. It’s positively amazing what you can do with an open source audio editing application like audacity. Combined with a $100 mixer and a few $15 microphones, you can have a clean crisp mix with effects and fades and more.

iMedia Connection: Podcasting 101

Setting up a quick and cheap recording studio

At the barebones level a microphone attached to the soundcard of your computer will allow you to record audio. Using professional sound recording software can give you more options in creating a quality file. I recommend Audacity which stands out as being of good quality, available for both Mac and PC formats (and Linux) and free!

Audacity is a simple audio mixing programming that offers a handful of audio effects and multiple tracks. It’s worth checking out.

You may also need to invest in a quality microphone. Audio recording, like most multimedia projects, is generally a case of Garbage In/Garbage Out (GIGO). If you use sub par materials you will often get sub par results. For as little as $20 you can get your hands on a solid condenser microphone/headphone combination at RadioShack that will most certainly be better than the microphone shipped with your computer.

Because most podcasts are not professionally produced, basement offices and guest bedrooms are often the recording environment of choice. Ambient noise is always a problem but with consideration to time of day and use of noise canceling filters in the recording software you can bring the quality of the recording up.

I’ll also mention that coming up with an entertaining format for your show is a huge plus. While a monologue format will get your main points across having a standardized ’show’ format (think musical intros and information segments) will make broadcasts more appealing and easier to update.

How to Accept Criticism While at Work - WikiHow

While I was trained how to do this in fine arts classes while in University, [yes, I have a BFA in scuplture] many people are not, and this little ehow gives a good insight into how to best approach external criticism.

How to Accept Criticism While at Work - WikiHow

How to Accept Criticism While at Work

So you just finished what you thought was a great project at work, and now your boss is listing all the things you need to improve upon. Don’t get discouraged; constructive criticism is a key part of any job. Through this article, learn how to accept criticism and do your job as well as possible.

Princeton offers Vodcasts of Lectures

Well, I can’t say that it’s an original idea, but the big P is likely to follow through on this idea of free Vodcasting of lectures. I hope that Rider groks what’s going on and asks me to make some percentage of lectures available from here as well.

Princeton to Offer Free “Vodcasts” of Lectures on Web

Princeton University (NJ) has added “vodcasts” - shared videos that can be watched using Apple Inc.’s iTunes - to the podcasts, or downloadable sound files, it already offers on its Web-based University Channel. The service makes academic lectures and events available to the public via the Web. Apple recently introduced vodcasting technology in conjunction with the video-enabled iPod as a way of sharing video files over iTunes. Subscribers are notified when podcasts and vodcasts are available directly on the website or for downloading onto a computer. Both options are free of charge.

RedDot 6.5: New Features Extend Usability and Simplify Content Delivery

I quite literally almost choked when I saw this. Saving to CMS from Word? Editing from Firefox interface!! Yay!

New Features Extend Usability and Simplify Content Delivery

RedDot, Now Even More User-Centric

With RedDot’s improved SmartEdit, content contributors and other business users can create and edit content using Microsoft Word and save changes directly to CMS, eliminating the need for any CMS training.

A new Mozilla Firefox user interface allows RedDot CMS users to work on any platform supported by the open-source browser, including Macintosh, Linux and Unix based systems.

OpenDocument Fellowship - Resources - FAQ

Given all of the hullaballo over MA’s decision to use OpenDocument rather than MS Word’s Document format, I thought it might be nice to give a link to a FAQ about OpenDocument. Enjoy!

OpenDocument Fellowship - Resources - FAQ

What is OpenDocument?

OASIS Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument or ODF) is:

* An open, XML-based file format.
* An open standard from the OASIS standards group.

OpenDocument covers the features required by text, spreadsheets, charts, and graphical documents. Some background information on the format can be read in “History of OpenDocument, From birth to world movement”, by Daniel Carrera. A non-technical overview of the format is found in “Everybody’s Guide to OpenDocument” by Marco Fioretti.

The short name of the format is OpenDocument.

Wired News: Futurists Pick Top Tech Trends

The futurists are envisioning a pretty cool future, as usual. In this latest set of predictions:

Simplicity, Mobile Socialization, The end of the combustion engine, and a move towards greener living, capped with a 2006 Technology Explosion the likes of which we haven’t seen in like, at least 8 years. Fun stuff, but a lot of it seems positioned to be true.

Wired News: Futurists Pick Top Tech Trends

Simplicity: Over the past couple of decades, gadget makers have toiled ceaselessly to add functionality. As a result, your cell phone can now play games, do math and sound off like a barking dog when your ex calls. Your digital camera can shoot extremely poor-quality video. And nearly every device you own with a screen also contains a clock.

The problem, says Ian Pearson, futurist in residence at British Telecommunications, is that most people buy a device for a particular purpose. They neither want nor care about all the extra capabilities.

“We’ve done 20 years of adding functionality, and 99 percent of that functionality isn’t needed,” Pearson said. “There will be an enormous market over the next several years for really simple stuff.”

Announcing lugip|blog

Linux User’s Group in Princeton (LUG/IP) has a new way of sharing news: lugip|blog is available at http://lugip.org/blog and invites you to keep an eye on what’s going on with Open Source Software in the Greater Princeton area.

All of our meetings, activities, news, and related items will show up here. We plan for it to be a clearing house to keep you informed of our status.

Hope to see you there!

The RSS feed is http://lugip.org/blog/?feed=rss2 if you’d like to subscribe.

lugip|blog

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Dirk Loss: Windows-Tools on CD-ROM

This is a mighty cool software list.

Dirk Loss: Windows-Tools on CD-ROM

Having created several bootable Windows CD-ROMs with Bart’s PE Builder, I thought how nice it would be if I could use some of the plugins on running systems (i.e. without having to reboot). So in spring 2004 I started searching the Internet for useful utilities that can be run directly from CD-ROM. These were my requirements:

* Must be available free of charge (at least for non-commercial use). If source code is available under a Free Software/Open Source license, that’s even better.
* Small is beautiful
* Graphical user interfaces are nice (this is Windows after all… * My focus is on diagnostic, network and security tools (no games or MP3 players…)

Here’s my list. Download the tools, exctract the archives to a folder on your harddisk and burn them on a CD-ROM. Or put them on your USB-stick. If you leave out all unnecessary files (documentation, language files, etc.) and compress all executables with UPX, all these tools together (more than 600 executables) take less than 100 MB of disk space.