All posts by Joseph Antonioli

About Joseph Antonioli

Senior Curricular Innovation Specialist

Facebook and You. De-FAANGing Our Social Media to Take Control of Our Digital Lives (DLINQ and Library Cryptoparty series)

Midd Points

Tuesday, March 3, 2020
3:00pm – 4pm Eastern
Wilson Media Lab, Davis Family Library

Co-facilitators:
Joe Antonioli, Senior Curricular Innovation Strategist, DLINQ, and
Brenda Ellis, Senior Research Librarian, Library

This cryptoparty is the first of a series that focuses on the FAANG
companies. Participants will focus on Facebook, and actively take steps
to protect their privacy while learning about how our data is collected
and shared. We ask that all attendees bring their own laptop so that
they can take the benefits of these activities with them.

Please visit this site to register for the Facebook De-FAANGing Cryptoparty – http://go.middlebury.edu/cryptofb

About FAANG Companies (from De-FAANGing Facebook)

“Facebook and the other FAANG companies (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google) have been learning about us through our posts, purchases, media consumption, and browsing habits for many years. These companies are grabbing our attention strategically, even while company executives are “limiting — and sometimes outright banning — how much screen time their kids get.” Facebook has become the largest social media platform, making it an essential communication platform for many people. This makes it hard for us to think about breaking our relationship with Facebook, even as it breaks our trust over and over again.”

Photo by ROOM on Unsplash

Facebook and You. De-FAANGing Our Social Media to Take Control of Our Digital Lives (DLINQ and Library Cryptoparty series)

Midd Points

Tuesday, March 3, 2020
3:00pm – 4pm Eastern
Wilson Media Lab, Davis Family Library

Co-facilitators:
Joe Antonioli, Senior Curricular Innovation Strategist, DLINQ, and
Brenda Ellis, Senior Research Librarian, Library

This cryptoparty is the first of a series that focuses on the FAANG
companies. Participants will focus on Facebook, and actively take steps
to protect their privacy while learning about how our data is collected
and shared. We ask that all attendees bring their own laptop so that
they can take the benefits of these activities with them.

Please visit this site to register for the Facebook De-FAANGing Cryptoparty – http://go.middlebury.edu/cryptofb

About FAANG Companies (from De-FAANGing Facebook)

“Facebook and the other FAANG companies (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google) have been learning about us through our posts, purchases, media consumption, and browsing habits for many years. These companies are grabbing our attention strategically, even while company executives are “limiting — and sometimes outright banning — how much screen time their kids get.” Facebook has become the largest social media platform, making it an essential communication platform for many people. This makes it hard for us to think about breaking our relationship with Facebook, even as it breaks our trust over and over again.”

Photo by ROOM on Unsplash

Academic Technology Fall Kick-Off Series

Midd Points

Members of the Academic Technology Group, Librarians, and Media Services are hosting workshops to help faculty learn about and use various services for the teaching toolkit. We are hosting a number of workshops on Canvas and Panopto, as well as an introduction to new services. We have also set aside time for faculty to get specific technology for teaching questions answered.

Please be aware that you must be logged into Google with your Middlebury username and password to fill out and submit the form.

SIGN-UP FORM

You may sign up for as many sessions as you would like to attend.

Please note that all sessions are about 60 minutes, and that they take place in the Wilson Media Lab.

Moodle Archive and the Transition to Canvas

Midd Points

Middlebury’s Moodle instance is redirecting to https://moodle.middlebury.edu. Please note that the archive is only accessible to Middlebury faculty, staff, and students who are accessing the site while on a Middlebury network, or via Middlebury VPN.

Archive Access

The site will prompt you with a drop-down request to login with your Middlebury username and password:

You will know that the login attempt worked when you are directed to Moodle.

To enter the site click the “Login” link which will re-direct to the MIddlebury login page. In testing, a dropdown menu came up a second time for some when attempting to login to Moodle as described below. Login once more with your Middlebury username and password.

Archive Restrictions

The archive will not be accessible to Middlebury self-registered guest accounts. The archive will be maintained until December 2018* when it is expected to be de-commissioned.

*December 2018 will mark the end of the two-year online course material retention policy since the adoption of Canvas in the Fall 2016 term.

Access from Course Hub

Active faculty, staff, and students can access the Moodle archives via Moodle links from the Course Hub. Clicking on a link to a past Moodle resource in Course Hub will prompt the login process described above.

Importing Moodle Courses into Canvas

We will continue to support faculty who plan to import archived course content from the Moodle archive to Canvas.* You may use the existing instructions to migrate your course sites, or you may request assistance.

*Some Moodle course archives are very large (greater than 1GB) due to repeated imports and remixing over the years. If your back-up is noticeably large, we may request that you be more selective with items included in the import file to reduce the file size import to Canvas. We may also make recommendations about ways to more distributively host file types (e.g. video and audio) that tend to take up greater amounts of server space.

Creating Back-Up Copies of Moodle Content for Personal Archiving

Moodle currently hosts course content dating back to Fall 2010 term. After December 2018, Moodle will be de-commissioned. If you would like to create a back-up of your Moodle formatted content for personal storage, we recommend following the course back-up process outlined by Moodle.org. The process will produce an .mbz formatted file. This file format can be imported into Canvas or re-imported into another instance of Moodle* which could be accomplished by installing a copy of Moodle on a personal MiddCreate site. Alternatively, an .mbz file can be renamed to .zip format for limited file access, or storing on a cloud file storage account like Google Drive or Microsoft 365 OneDrive.

*Please note that Moodle is frozen at version of Moodle 2.8.8 while the most recent stable version of Moodle is 3.3.1 (as of July 2017). This means that archive content may not be fully compatible with newer versions of Moodle.

Additional Questions or Help?

Contact library-at@middlebury.edu

ACTT In-Progress Project Presentation for GoogleApps for Edu and OneDrive

In-progress Projects, Middlebury Community Interest, Open, Post for MiddNotes, Post for MiddPoints

Tuesday, May 17th from 3-4pm
LIB 105A or Polycom 712833

The new ACT Team process includes in-progress project presentations. These presentations are meant to inform the community about how things are going, what has been done and what still needs to be done, what is going well and what are the challenges.

Agenda

In this meeting we will look at the GoogleApps for Edu and OneDrive projects.

In-progress project presentations are open meetings, anyone may attend. Please feel free to share the invitation with anyone you feel is interested in the topics discussed.

ACTT In-Progress Project Presentation Video Streaming Service

In-progress Projects, Middlebury Community Interest, Open, Post for MiddNotes, Post for MiddPoints

Tuesday, May 10th from 3-4pm
LIB 105A or Polycom 712833

The new ACT Team process includes in-progress project presentations. These presentations are meant to inform the community about how things are going, what has been done and what still needs to be done, what is going well and what are the challenges.

Agenda

In this meeting we will look at the Video Streaming Service project.

In-progress project presentations are open meetings, anyone may attend. Please feel free to share the invitation with anyone you feel is interested in the topics discussed.

 

ACTT Extended Team Meeting Agendas for April 19th and 26th, 2016

For Faculty, For Staff

The new ACT Team process includes Extended Team meetings. These closed meetings allow the Team to work with expert staff and focus on evaluating solutions that inform recommendations.

Agenda

The next two meetings will be discussions with vendors that can help meet the needs for the Video Streaming Service project.

  • Tuesday, April 19th, 2016 – Panopto
  • Tuesday, April 26th, 2016 – Ensemble

Notes for In-Progress Projects April 12, 2016

For Faculty, For Staff

The new ACT Team process includes in-progress project presentations. These presentations are meant to inform the community about how things are going, what has been done and what still needs to be done, what is going well and what are the challenges.

Agenda

In this meeting we will have two presentations:

In-progress project presentations are open meetings, anyone may attend.

RStudio

Albert Kim and David Guertin

  • http://rstudio.middlebury.edu
  • David creates accounts for faculty and students.
  • In the desktop version, each student needs to install multiple packages; with RStudio Server, a faculty or an admin installs all packages in one location and students don’t need to.
  • R Markdown: combines text, R code, graphics are embedded in one document. Standardized and easier to grade.
  • Some upper-level courses require students to download the desktop version of RStudio, it is important for them to understand this environment. The server version is most useful for entry-level courses and limited use within a course as it reduces the time needed to set up the software.
  • VPN may be necessary for MIIS to access RStudio, this should not be the case. David will work with Chris to see why this may be happening.
  • To go live, we would need to set up with Active Directory. Do we want people to add RStudio via the Course Hub using a self-service model, or do we them to contact AT? David and Joe will communicate about this.
  • Shiny Server Pro: create interactive apps and graphics without needing any tech knowledge. Graphics are interactive, changing the variables changes the graphic display in real time.
  • You can host apps on free shinyapps.io or you can install Shiny Server Pro and serve on your own servers. Free for academic institutions with proof of syllabus. The Middlebury-hosted service is much more responsive.
  • We would like to share these services with other faculty. Albert and Bill will communicate and set up a demonstration, possibly through CTLR programming.

 

Academic Cyberinfrastructure Inventory

 

  • The Project Team is learning a lot about our environment through working on this project.
  • Q: Why does the inventory include services like Facebook, Twitter, Scrivener, etc.?
    • We know these services are being used for academic work.
    • For comparison with similar services.
    • To track the continuum of moving from service to service over time.
  • A viewable/usable version of the inventory should include a filter for Middlebury-supported services.
  • Once the Project Team has completed the categorization phase, the project will be shepherded by the ACTT working with ITS to deploy the information in a web-accessible format. It will include search functions for faculty, staff and students, with some protected information behind authentication for staff that need to track dependencies, for instance.

Notes for Kick-Off on April 5, 2016

Kick-offs, Meetings, Middlebury Community Interest, notes, Post for MiddNotes, Post for MiddPoints

Agenda

We will be starting the new ACTT process with a Kick-Off meeting. This is an open, non-mandatory meeting for anyone who is interested in learning about the Academic Cyberinfrastructure Transformation Team to attend. We will introduce the new team members, structure, and thoughts on how the Team activities will be evaluated.

This is an open meeting, please share with anyone who is interested in learning about the ACTT

Notes

  • Mission: “Our mission is to evaluate and recommend technology services and innovations for teach, learning and research.”
  • Joe is teaching a course on “Design Thinking” this semester. Design Thinking includes an “Empathy Phase”

Q&A

  • Q (Melissa/CNS). How will information and requests trickle up?
    • “I have many day-to-day projects where I would love to have a license that exists on the Midd campus, but not the MIIS campus, or I would like to build a server with 1TB of storage to host a web site”
    • “My research center, CNS, is becoming such a large consumer of storage and bandwidth”
    • “On a request from Laurie Patton, I am researching a cloud services that could host our information”.
    • Answer – Joe – Anyone who wants to make a request for technology or technology services for academic use may approach the team. Happy to be an entry point for requests that may go to ITS or other groups.
    • Jim – we have to account for the resource requests during the budget request process.
  • Q (Melissa/CNS). We are a collection of researchers that become PI on large grants, we need to inform others of the implications on the projects that we are running…  So we can write it into
    • We are giving money to non-Middlebury developers to do things that could be done inside Middlebury
    • Jim: not necessarily opposed to using outside resources…
  • Q (Jim): May be Amy McGill can weigh in on the MIIS budget process and how funding decisions are made.
    • Amy McGill
      • MIIS Research Centers are funded with base productivity requirements
      • Campus community infrastructure is for day-to-day use
      • Research Centers seek their own funding for larger projects that need additional resources, they do typically provide for initial as well as on-going maintenance costs.
  • Q. ACTT contribution to the Strategic Planning Process?
    • t.b.d.
  • Q (Melissa/CNS).  Is it too early to start making suggestions for agenda items?
  • Q (Melissa/CNS).  I would love to explore the ability to share licenses across campuses.  We pay out of grant licenses for Tableau, for image processing software…  I drool over some of the licenses that the Geology department has.  This is not a simple request, but I would love to tackle it as a subject.
    • A (Zach/ITS-SR): Let’s talk; more productive if we can get an idea of the specific titles you’re interested in, so we can check what licensing models are available.
  • Q (Melissa/CNS).  I would love to talk about our data storage and access to bandwidth.  Because we use satellite images, large data sets, we are becoming something of a hog on the MIIS systems.   I would like to open a discussion on how we can meet CNS’s research technology needs including storage, bandwidth, and some security issues.
    • Joe: Has anyone done a “needs assessment for the department”?
      • We don’t have a department, we are a research center within a larger campus.
      • I have done a casual needs assessment. 13 TB of storage, external drives, google drives, drop boxes… Need access across three offices.
      • Jim:  ITS can help with a needs assessment and identify appropriate technology solutions, perhaps on campus or in the cloud, ideally consistent with other larger IT initiatives for Middlebury and work with CSN to identify, implement solutions.  We did this for the Middlebury DC office a couple of years ago that included the CSN operation there for example.
  • Q (Bob/MIIS).  Working toward equitable cyber infrastructure across VT and Monterey campuses seems like a an appropriate activity for the Team.

Actions

Joe to build form for collecting evaluation requests.