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March 24, 2011
To be who you are --
I hope you've read it.
I hope we've all read it.
It's more than a political agenda from our nation's president. It's more than "boys will be boys". It's more than "...kids these days...". It's more than our-country-is-headed-to-hell-in-a-handbasket. It's more.
One girl, alone in her love (for Star Wars), isolated by gender, left to contend against the pack mentality of youth. Unique. And ashamed. Shamed by a group of people who fear someone ... something different. Unique.
And so the battle rages. The reign of the beautiful people - the popular people. The revenge of the nerds. Geeks. Dweebs. Dorks. Gamers. Smarty-pants. Comic-book fanatics. CCG-ers. WoW lolcats.
What are we? We are expanding. When most of us ( the geek-nerds) grew up, we were repeatedly humiliated, teased, taunted, harassed, mocked, ignored or tossed about. We were (in general) smaller, nicer, unwilling to fight back with our fists or words, outnumbered, and desiring peace (so we could go play whatever we loved so dearly).
We wanted to fit it, to be cool, to look "pretty", to say the right (cool) thing, to wear the right thing and walk the right way.
So we hid. We vanished. Cloistered in basements, corners or in front of computers we thrived ... sometimes in tight groups - often alone.
But the world has shifted. We are still mocked, and mistreated, but most of us survived and grew up. We got jobs. Our toys are shinier. We bought things, and made things, and innovated, and still could not learn enough. We thrived.
Then along came Katie. An ancient beacon called us. Pain. A flood of memories...
But, we are thriving. We respond. All of us. ALL of us. Thousands write, call, email, blog, send toys, donate and make a connection. Katie is one of us. We will no longer stand by, or hide or run when pushed. We responded.
I was a Katie.
It may have been Star Wars, Star Trek, computers, games, comic books ... doesn't matter. We were different. Nerds and Geeks. We've come together. We've affected our culture. Everything isn't just fine overnight, but being a geek or nerd isn't so offensive now. Isn't so lowly. And we are growing.
Katie, stand tall. Be who you are. We're here.
Posted by ellism at 1:49 PM | Comments (0)
Course Evaluation
This last term I worked with Cat McGrew to facilitate the technology end of the online Course Evaluation system for students (via Portal).
We worked with Richard to update the Standard Deviation formula(s).
I hope that if Faculty decided to go this direction, we can simply open the system up to all students for all classes. I think it would eliminate some confusion. Faculty are still concerned with the response rate, but the Faculty test group this term had very high response rates.
Posted by ellism at 1:38 PM | Comments (0)
March 4, 2011
RecTrac - final update
The Rectrac install is going fine, from what i can tell. Ross is handling the details and working w/ Huber & Christina for the app & data from Wolfweb.
Adam has the card encoding working smoothly, with configuration only needed on the workstation. We hoping to provide this to them soon, so that card encoding can get underway. We would want the bulk of cards encoded before opening day, so that users could simply enter the facility.
Posted by ellism at 12:26 PM | Comments (0)
Google Apps
It's official. WOU is going Google.
Google Apps. It's a whole suite of tools that includes gmail, calendar, sites, gchat, blogger, etc...
WOU's page can be found here.
Next week Admissions and the Library will be moving over (mostly themselves). We have worked on the documentation and refined a migration process for all campus users.
Some students may not want to transfer, but many faculty/staff have email, calendars and contacts that range over decades. Although transition is never completely smooth, the end product is good and the migration path is refined.
This migration is basically all that I've done for the past 3-4 weeks, hence no blogs :)
Posted by ellism at 12:19 PM | Comments (0)