~13 minute video talk by a journalist showing how news organizations verify information posted by users on the web (tweets, photos, videos) using technology such as Google Earth, etc.

How to Read a Book

Did you find an odd box with pieces of paper inside? It might be a book! Some of them still have real pages—and I’ll show you just how to read one.

The Business Value of Google Glass and Wearable Computing – Wearable computing is an emerging technology that’s affecting both the consumer and enterprise space.

Predatory Publishers Strike Back
Predatory publishing is what happens when open access publishing is subverted by manipulation, exploitation, and spammer mentality. Jeffery Beall is a librarian who uses his blog to expose predatory publishers, and they would rather he didn’t. Beall has written a Nature column piece  about predatory publishing, and his blog is Scholarly Open Access.

a busy lab

Students fill the Wilson Media Lab in the Davis Family Library, completing media projects for the end of the semester. A good number of students in this picture are finishing up posters for their theses.

Good afternoon,

I am writing to notify you of a pending planned downtime to enable Remote-Learner’s technical support team to upgrade the configuration of your Moodle Private Cloud Service (MPCS).  Please be aware of the following:

• Planned downtime window for your site(s) is Saturday, May 4, 2013 – 3am to 7am EDT.

• Your site(s) will be unavailable for four (4) hours while the MPCS upgrade occurs.

The MPCS upgrade will enhance our ability to provide effective support and maintenance of your Moodle server.  We will not be upgrading or changing the version of your Moodle or ELIS site(s) during this process.  Thank you in advance for your cooperation and understanding as we continue to improve our ability to provide you the best service possible.

Sincerely,

Rod Deter, Vice- President of Client Services

Now a guest lecturer can be added to a Moodle course. Collaboration with colleagues from other institutions can happen in a WordPress site. A resident of Middlebury can create a page that shows them the latest athletic scores next to a list of on campus events.

What guests will have access to
Course Scheduler (can create schedules, but not email them)
Portal (can customize their layout)
Commenting on WordPress (sites.middlebury.edu)
Moodle sites open to anyone with a Middlebury login (placement tests)
Can submit and track their tickets in Web Helpdesk

What guests can be given access to
Can be made contributors/authors/editors of WordPress sites (sites.middlebury.edu)
Can be made teacher/students of Moodle sites.
Can be made editors of wikis (mediawiki.middlebury.edu)

What guests will not have access to
Editing in Drupal (www.middlebury.edu, www.miis.edu, museum.middlebury.edu)
Creating GO links
Creating a WordPress site
Public computers
Wireless internet
Printing
Course Hub
MiddFiles
Uploading to MiddMedia
Ride Board

This list may change over time as new services are added and new needs are identified.

You may test the new Guest System yourself by browsing to https://middguests.middlebury.edu/ and using a non-middlebury.edu or non-miis.edu email account.

Dear Valued Client,

In the past few weeks, some of our clients have been the target of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. These attacks have led to outages for other clients who shared the same internet access points.

To help us detect and prevent this type of attack in the future, Remote-Learner needs to move a critical piece of security infrastructure. The reconfigured hardware will reduce the probability of a successful attack and improve access to the rest of our system during an incident.

We will implement this change during a very brief maintenance window this Thursday, March 7, 2013 at 11:59 PM CST. While the service interruption should not last longer than a couple of minutes, there is a small chance we will require up to 15 minutes.

Thank you for your understanding.

Sincerely,

The Remote-Learner Team

The following message was sent to WordPress site owners on Thursday, the 22nd:

Thank you to everyone who participated in our survey on the change from “blogs” to “sites.”

On Sunday, February 24th, during downtime we will be changing the url of our WordPress instance from “sites.middlebury.edu” to “sites.middlebury.edu.”

What you need to do: NOTHING
This change only affects the url in the address bar of a browser, you do not need to move any content in your site.

Will your links still work? YES
We will be setting up a redirect so that anyone trying to visit a site using “sites.middlebury.edu” will be redirected to “sites.middlebury.edu.”

Can I still track visits to my site using Google Analytics? YES
Last January we made a change to have all Middlebury web applications crawled using one Google Analytic account. You will simply need to add the “sites.middlebury.edu” address in your segments.

Will this change my site or url if I use another address? Like middlab.middlebury.edu or southchinasea.org? NO
Sites that have their own url, their own subdomain, will not be affected by this change.

Please send questions about this change to Joe Antonioli.

—–
Dear Valued Client,

In order to install new security upgrades and additional security features, Remote-Learner’s IT technical support division has planned a five-hour maintenance. During the maintenance period internet connectivity may be briefly disrupted several times on February 16th from 1:00 am EST to 6:00 am EST.

The new upgrades and security features will provide additional hosting security for clients.  Ultimately, we believe that you will be pleased with the security updates, and we ask in advance that you accept our apologies for any inconvenience you may experience. We welcome your feedback on our efforts to continue to provide quality customer service and we request that you direct any questions and concerns related to this scheduled maintenance to Remote-Learner’s support division.

Sincerely,

The Remote-Learner Team

The response to first question shows a 63% agreement rate (or an 85% non-disagree rate).

The second question was an optional “Why?” “Why not?” comment, and many respondents took the opportunity to explain their choices. There were 79 comments.

Typical of the “yes” respondents’ comments:

“Absolutely agree. While this does not change the essence of the thing, what something is called still carries a great weight – “sites” is a much more versatile term and lends greater freedom to this URL series. “

“ A blog has a reputation as something homegrown, of someone writing their thoughts on a particular topic. Sites sounds more like a neutral label as just something listed online. I like it.”

“I do not like to think of my site as a blog, as it has a lot of information that is not chronologically-ordered. This would be a terrific change!”

Explanations

Some comments expressed valid concerns, here they are with an explanation of the impact:

“I think we might need to update every single go link for all the middgoal posts and middstart posts we have out there. Who knows what links the students have been promoting… Seems like a major pain for what really is a minor change. If there is a workaround for this that I don’t know about, then go for it.”

“I have been working for a long time at having people connect to my blog.  If you change it, all those links will be broken, and with it I will lose readership.”

There will be a permanent redirect for the new URLs, anyone clicking on the old URL will still visit your site. Also, sites with their own URL (http://southchinasea.org, http://middstart.middlebury.edu, etc.) without “blogs” in the URL will not see a change.

“…will this mess up google rankings, searching, etc.?”

There may be a minor impact on rankings, but factors like credible resources linking to your site have a higher impact. In addition, because of the change we made last January, you can still track your site in Google Analytics.

The Web Prioritization Committee approved this change at the January 24th meeting, we will let you know when the change will take place.

Ithaka, the non-profit organization that brings us JSTOR, on Supporting the Changing Research Practices of Historians: This study, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, uncovers the needs of today’s historians and provides guidance for how research support providers can better serve them.

3D Printing:  Wondering what this technology is all about?  Read the latest CQ Researcher report “3D Printing: Will it revolutionize manufacturing?“  Trivia question: How was this technology used in the latest James Bond thriller “Skyfall”?

Some faculty and students have been reluctant to post undergraduate theses to Scholarship at Middlebury in part because they fear it could jeopardize their ability to publish the findings in journals later on. A report published in the Chronicle of Higher Education indicates there isn’t much cause for this kind of concern. (Read the comments too, where the validity of the conclusions is debated.) Putting Dissertation Online Isn’t an Obstacle to Print Publication, Surveys Find.