Author Archives: 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)

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

Moodle Archive and the Transition to Canvas

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

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

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 Core Team March 29, 2016

[RE] Introductions

We all knew each other from the CTT, so this was a chance to reaffirm a commitment to looking at technologies and the services around them that make them successful. The re-boot to the ACTT structure provides definition and focus, while sticking to the mission to evaluate and recommend technology services and innovations for teaching, learning and research.

Review Charge and Process

We reviewed the slides at go/delta, paying attention to the responsibilities of the various Team members. The Extended Team is made up of experts, Program Teams, and Project Teams.

Program Teams

The Middlebury Institute of International Studies is in the process of forming a Team, similar to the CTT, that will focus on cyberinfrastructure conversations pertaining to Monterey. They will have their own sponsorship (Amy McGill) and leadership (Bob Cole), set their own agenda topics, and determine how they will communicate together. Bob and Amy will share information between the MIIS Team and the ACTT.

Other Program Teams may develop in the future. MIIS has a head start, the DLC is a good hub for these conversations.

Project Teams

Small Project Teams carry out the charge of the evaluation. Their activities may include gathering requirements, identifying solutions, contacting vendors, and starting drafts of recommendations. These Teams will share information with the Extended Team, this allows the Project Teams to be nimble while still gaining a variety of perspectives. The ACTT Core Team is responsible for the final proposals.

Academic Cyberinfrastructure

We agreed on the importance of looking at the practices and people associated with technologies. Joe presented a short definition of cyberinfrastructure, others provided their own understanding. The Core Team is currently working on a shared definition that will help describe what we do. Joe will start share his definition, others will contribute.

 

Make Decisions About Communication

We decided an email group and slack channel, Joe will make these happen.

We have started building a schedule of meetings.

Plan Open Kick-Off for April 5th

Joe will present the slides avalable at http://act.middcreate.net/site/. Everyone will provide their own input. MIIS will have a number of people who are interested in their Program Team attend.

Set Agendas for Future Meetings

Future topics include video streaming, RStudio, and the Academic Cyberinfrastructure Inventory. There is also an interest in learning about GoogleAppsforEdu and One Drive, especially knowing what will be available for the fall. Joe will confirm presenters, then we will share the topics and dates as far out in advance as we can.

ACTT Kick-off Meeting: April 5th, 2016

Tuesday, April 5th from 3-4pm
LIB 105A or Polycom 712833

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.

Extended Team Membership

Academic Technology – Joe Antonioli
Center for Teaching and Learning – Bill Koulopoulos
Central Systems and Networked Services – David Guertin
Digital Learning – Sean Morris
Digital Liberal Arts – Alicia Peaker
HelpDesk – Joe Durante
InfoSec – Paul Dicovitsky
Librarians – Stacy Reardon
Media Services – Mack Pauly
MIIS Digital Learning Commons – Bob Cole, Amy Slay
SR Hardware – Jamie Carroll
SR Software – Zach Schuetz
Web Applications – Adam Franco

Extended Team responsibilities:

  • Contribute expertise.
  • Round-the-table updates.
  • Share back with their group.
  • Attendance by invitation.