| Flavio Argueto - CATS Liaison |
Flavio Argueto
is the Instructional Design Support Specialist/Lab Manager in the
Faculty Instructional Support Center at CSU Los Angeles. He is also a
graduate of CSULA, holding a BA in Social Science and an MA in
Education in the area of Instructional Technology, with an emphasis in
Computer Education and Technology Leadership. He assumed his position
in March of this year—and one of his first assignments was to attend
the CATS conference at Sacramento State.
Flavio has held other
positions at CSULA, too. He worked for the Office for Students with
Disabilities for 1-1/2 years, where he developed expertise in adaptive
technology; he also helped maintain a computer lab specifically
designed for these students. Before that he provided technical support
for the Office of University Admissions for 11 years. He also helped
with the campus' PeopleSoft implementation.
In addition, for the
past 8 years he has taught at a local adult education center, including
courses in MS Office Suite, Web Design, and Design Elements, as well as
an Introduction to Computers class.
On a personal note, Flavio
has been married for ten years and has three children: Dyani (age 9),
Anahi (5), and 2-1/2 year old Noah. And, as if he weren't busy enough
already, this year he began coaching Anahi's soccer team. Not only
that, he also started running 10K runs and 1/2 marathons.
Both CSULA and CATS are lucky to have such an energetic and skilled person in their midst!
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| CATS Distinguished Service Awards |
This fall we are accepting nominations for the CATS Distinguished
Service Award, which is given to those community members who have made
exemplary contributions to the Community. You may nominate yourself or
a fellow CATS member(s). Selection of multiple awardees is possible.
Nominations will be accepted until December 31. Award winners, who will
be honored at the CATS Conference in March, will be notified February 1.
Go to http://cats.cdl.edu/awards for details and a link to the online nomination form.
There are many CATS out there who deserve this award so nominate away!
This article was contributed by Kevin Kelly
(SFSU), who was an attendee at all 3 LMS Summits held recently. It
does not represent the content of a report being written by the
Chancellor's Office, which will be released soon. Over
a five-week period (September 29 to November 1), various
representatives from the 23 CSU campuses and the Chancellor's Office
met at three summits to assess unique and common needs related to the
use of Learning Management Systems (LMS). These representatives
included CATS members, disability program center staff, faculty from a
variety of disciplines, library faculty and staff, faculty development
center staff, Directors of Academic Technology (DAT), campus CIOs and
administrators, Chancellor's Office staff, and more. Glenda Morgan from
the Chancellor's Office and Phil Hill, a consultant, facilitated
productive sessions, keeping the focus on identifying the needs rather
than on proposing solutions prematurely. Glenda and Phil are
currently creating a report from the three Summits and from the campus
focus group visits they've conducted. The report should encapsulate the
thoughts shared at various large group and breakout sessions designed
to:
- create common terminology for further discussion
- define roles for supporting LMS use
- demystify open source
- identify LMS problems and solutions
- determine collaboration opportunities
- begin a framework for LMS strategic planning at the campus level
It has been refreshing to see the Chancellor's Office focus on the
process rather than a specific LMS product, even after Blackboard
announced its intention to acquire WebCT right during the second Summit. Everyone
agreed that this process should not end with the Summits. As the
process continues, it will be important for CATS members to stay
informed; to continue to communicate LMS-related ideas on their own
campuses and within the CSU community; and to participate in ongoing
efforts to improve the student experience with the LMS and related
academic technologies.
| Kate Berggren - CATS Liaison |
Kate Berggren
is a Texas Hold'em champ whose day job for the last 5
years has been to support faculty and
students with other online instructional applications. She is rightfully
proud of the good relationships she has built with the faculty. Most
recently she was involved in the installation of Elluminate, an online
meeting application.
Kate has a very long history with CSU Northridge. Her first job
there was as a student assistant in Extended Learning, beginning in
1980. Not only has she worked on campus since then, she literally grew
up right across the street!
Kate's history with CATS is also long. She has been an active
conference attendee since 2001 (Long Beach). This year she took on the role of
Northridge's CATS Liaison and wants to create a stronger CATS community
on the campus.
On the personal front, she is married and has four
children whose ages range from 15 - 23. If she could pick her dream
job, Kate would choose to be a doctor, a general practitioner to be
precise. One of her favorite recreational activities is playing Texas
Hold'em online—and she's pretty good at it!
|
Calling all CATS! Session proposal submissions for the March 20 - 22, 2006 CATS Conference are now being accepted.
The newly-designed conference website
is full of information for your review regarding the when's, where's,
what's, and who's. You'll be particularly interested in seeing the
session categories the conference planning team has selected for our
9th annual conference. You can see these on the Program page, where there is also a link to the session proposal system.
Submissions will be accepted through January 30. If you have any questions, please contact the Conference Chair, Jay Rees.
| Professional Announcements |
Shariq Ahmed,
Blackboard Administrator, and CATS Liaison from CSU Fullerton, just
received a grant in the amount of $33,600 from the University Planning
Initiative to update the computers in the Faculty Development Center
lab. Go, Shariq!
|
Each year Humboldt State University President Rollin Richmond recognizes staff that "have
served the University in a manner which clearly exceeds normal
expectations for the position." This year 5 of the 10 awardees were
technologists, each snagging a $400 cash award.
Let's congratulate the Humboldt CATS who were recognized for their supreme efforts:
- Katherine Granfield, Systems Analyst, Fiscal Affairs
- Mark Hendricks, Systems Administrator
- David Marshall, Information Technology Consultant, College of Natural Resources and Sciences
- Cassandra Tex, Assistive Technology Specialist, Student Disability Resource Center
- Joan Van Duzer, Instructional Technologist, College of Professional Studies
CSU Stanislaus' Faculty Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning and
its Office of Information Technology—where you'll find our own Brian Duggan—were recently honored with a POD Innovation Award from the Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education.
The prestigious award recognizes "innovative ideas that have improved
learning and teaching, as well as enhancing the general effectiveness
of higher education faculty members." Stanislaus won the award for
their 2005 Technology Fair, a project that Brian worked on for
several months.
|
This article was contributed by Patrick Crispen (CSULB).
Google's self-stated goal is to "organize the world's information and
make it universally accessible and useful." Unfortunately, a great deal
of the world's information, such as the content of books, isn't
universally accessible or useful, especially online. A few weeks ago
Google officially unveiled Google Book Search,
a free service that lets you search for keywords or phrases from
books and then points you to real-world locations like libraries or
bookstores where you can view or purchase those books.
Google Book Search gets its materials from two sources: the Google Partner Program is currently digitizing the
collections of several major libraries including Harvard, Stanford, and
Oxford. Publishers are attempting to stop the Google Library Project claiming that it violates copyright laws. Check Slashdot or your favorite tech blog for the latest developments.
To
understand the purpose of Google Book Search you have to understand the
purpose of Google's cache. Google "bots" scour the Internet and collect
copies of the things they find—html, text, images, etc. These are added
to Google's cache, which is indexed to make it easier for you to find
what you're looking for. When you do a search, you're not searching the
Internet, you're searching Google's cache. The key here is that when
you finish your search and click on a link, Google doesn't point you to
their cached copy of that item, they point you back to the original.
(Exception: the cache:search operator, which only works with html.)
Google
Print is simply caching the contents of scanned books. In response to a
search, you are provided with the full text, provided the book is in
the public domain. But, if the book is copyrighted you can only see a
few sentences on either side of your search term (for context), along
with links to locations that have the book, such as libraries and book
stores.
And don't forget to check out Google Scholar while you're at it. This site lets you search for keywords or phrases in peer-reviewed papers, theses, abstracts, and articles.
| Michaeline Veden - Executive Council Member |
Michaeline Veden
has worked at Sacramento State for 27 years and currently serves as
Executive Producer of the Sacramento State Academic and Creative
Services Unit. In her role as Executive Producer, she manages a unit of
18 creative and technical professionals ranging from graphic designers
to ITCs to broadcast video producers and engineers. Her team is
responsible for working with faculty and state agency clients to
produce professional and compelling instructional and informational
materials in support of the Sacramento State community and citizens of
California.
Michaeline originally hails from the Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania area and to this day is an avid Steelers fan. Upon
receiving a B.S. in Library Information and Media Science, she
relocated to Sacramento and , after a brief tenure in publishing, she
joined the Sac State staff. She went on to earn an MA in
Educational Administration/Higher Education there.
Through
her work on the campus, Michaeline has had the opportunity to travel to
Israel, Brussels, Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, and China. Projects related
t this travel include video documentaries, interactive DVD training
modules for teachers, and a comprehensive information technology
website/database developed for university presidents in the third
world. On campus, she is often involved in the implementation of large
scale, high profile university events such as the 2003 Gubernatorial
Recall Debate, where she did everything from lighting to sound to
satellite feeds and facilitation of press telecommunications needs.
Michaeline
is a charter CATS member and has served as local host coordinator for
CATS 2000 and 2005. Through her service on the Executive Council, she
hopes to help expand the community to include creative professionals
that are engaged in developing materials for use in fulfilling the
teaching and learning mission of the CSU. She is currently a member of
the Awards, Communities of Practice, and By-Laws committees.
|
| "Vision" at Sacramento State |
This article was contributed by Arthur Buntin (Sacramento State).
University
Computing Labs at Sacramento State has successfully deployed "Vision,"
a classroom management tool created by Alteris. With Vision,
instructors are able to take better control of the classroom
environment and make better use of the technologies available to them
in computer-based classrooms. So far it has been well-received. One
faculty member said that it
"...definitely enhanced my ability to manage my classes. I was able to
monitor what students were doing during the exam and make sure they
were only accessing resources that were allowed under exam policies." Some of Vision's features are:
- Demo - Instructors can share their screen content with all or selected students
- Supervision - Instructors can monitor one or all of their students' computers on their own screen
- Blank Screen - Instructors can darken classroom computers to dissuade students from checking email and surfing the Web
- Highlighter - Instructors can highlight text on a student's screen
To help instructors use the tool effectively, Sac State technical
staff developed a short, laminated, easy-to-follow help document that
covers the basic functions and features that trainers thought would be
used most frequently. In addition, one-hour training workshops have
been held just prior to and immediately following the start of sessions
to provide interested faculty with a more detailed demonstration of the
tool.
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