Integers: A signed or unsigned whole number running from -32,768 to 32,768 or from 0 to 65,535 if not signed. Integers are used anytime something needs to be counted.
Long Integer: Any whole number outside the above range. Python doesn’t distinguish between the two though many languages do. Practically, Python’s integers range from −2,147,483,648 to 2,147,483,648 or 0 to 0 to 4,294,967,295. Most of us will be very happy with this many whole numbers to choose from.
Real and Floating Point Numbers: Real numbers are signed or unsigned numbers including decimals. The numbers 2,3,4 are Integers and Real Numbers. The numbers 2.1, 2.9,3.9 are Real Numbers, but not Integers. Real Numbers can include representations of irrational numbers such as pi. Real numbers must be rational, that is a decimal number that terminates after a finite number of decimals. You will sometimes encounter the term Floating Point Numbers. This is a technical term referring to the way that large Real Numbers are represented in a computer. Python hides this detail from you so Real and Floating Point are used intercangeably in this language.
Binary Numbers: And Octal and Hexadecimal. These are numbers used internally by computers. You will run into these values fairly often. For instance, when you see color values in HTML such as “FFFFFF” or “0000FF”,
Hexadecimal and Octal are used because humans can read them without too much trouble and they are compromise between what computers process and what we can read. Any time you see something in Octal or Hexadecimal, you are looking at something that interfaces with the lower levels of a computer. You will most commonly use Hexadecimal numbers when dealing with Unicode character encodings. Python will interpret any number which begins with a leading zero as binary unless formatting commands have been used.
Numbers such as 7i are referred to as complex. They have a real part, the 7, and an imaginary part, i. Chance are you won’t use complex numbers unless you’re working with scientific data.
A String consists of a sequence of characters. The term String refers to how this data type is represented internally. You store text in Strings. Text can by anything, letters, words, sentences, paragraphs, numbers, just about anything.
Lists are close cousins to Strings, though you may never need to think of them that way. A list is just that, a list of things. Lists may contain any number of numbers or any number of strings. List may even contain any number of other lists. Lists are compared to arrays, but they are not the same thing. In most uses, the function the same so the difference, for our purposes, is moot. Strings are like lists in that, internally, the computer works with strings in an identical manner to lists. This is why the operations on Strings are so different from numbers.
The last main data type in the Python programming language is the dictionary. Dictionaries are map types, known in other languages as hashes, and in computer science as Associative Arrays. The best way to think of what the dictionary does is to consider a Library of Congress Call Number(something this audience is familiar with). The call number is what’s called a Key. It connects to a record which contains information about a book. The combination of keys and records, called values, comprises a dictionary. A single key will connect to a discrete group of values such as the items in this record. Dictionaries will be touched on in the next lesson in some detail in the next course. These are fairly advanced data structures and require a solid understanding a programming fundamentals in order to be used properly.
Statements, an Overview
Programs consist of statements. A statement is a unit of executable code. Think of a statement like a sentence. In a nutshell, statements are how you do things in a program. Writing a program consists of breaking down a problem you want to solve into smaller pieces that you can represent as mathematical propositions and then solve. The statement is where this process gets played out. Statements themselves consist of some number of expressions involving data. Let’s see how this works.
An expression would be something like 2+2=4. This expression, however is not a complete statements. Ask Python to evaluate it and you will get the error “SyntaxError: can’t assign to operator”. What’s going on here? Basically we didn’t provide a complete statement. If we want to see the sum of 2+2 we have to write a complete statement that tells the interpreter what to do and what to do it with. The verb here is ‘print’ and the object is ‘2+2’. Ask Python to evaluate ‘print 2+2’ and it will show ‘4’. We could also throw in subject and do something a bit more detailed: ‘Sum=2+2’. In this case we are assigning the value of 2+2 to the variable, Sum. We can then do all sorts of things with Sum. We can print it. We can add other numbers to it, hand it off to a function and so on. For instance, might want to know the root of Sum. In which case we might write something like ‘print sqrt(sum)’ which will display ‘2’.
A shell is essentially a user interface that provides you access to a system’s features. Normally, this means access to an Operating System. In cases like this, the shell provides you access to the Python programming environment.
Anything preceed by a “#” is not interpreted or executed by the programming shell. Comments are used widely to document programs. One school of programming holds that code should be so clear that comments are uncessary.
Operations on Numbers
Expressions are discrete statements in programming that do something. They typically occupy one line of code, though programmers will sometimes squeeze more in. This is generally bad form and can really make your program a mess. Expressions consist of operations and data or rather data and operations on them. So, what can you do with numbers? Here is a concise list of the basic operations for integers and real numbers of all types:
Arithemetic:
Addition: z= x + y
Subtraction: z = x – y
Multiplication: z = x * y. Here the asterisk serves as the ‘X’ multiplication symbol from grade school.
Division: z = x/y. Division.
Exponents: z = x ** y or xy, x to the y power.
Operations have an order of precedence which follows the algebraic order of precedence. The order can be remembered by the old Algebra mnenomic, Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally which is remeinds you that the order of operations is:
Parentheses
Exponents
Multiplication
Division
Addition
Subtraction
Operations on Strings
Strings are strange creatures as I’ve noted before. They have their own operations and the arithmetic operations you saw earlier don’t behave the same way with strings.
Putting Expressions Together to Make Statements
As I noted earlier, all computer languages, and natural languages, possess pragmatics, larger scale structures which reduce ambiguity by providing context. This is a fancy way of saying just as sentences posses rules of syntax to make able to be comprehended, larger documents have similar rules. Computer Programs are no different. Here’s a break down of the structure of programs in Python, in a general sense.
Programs consist of one or more modules.
Modules consist of one or more statements.
Statements consist of one or more expressions.
Expressions create and/or manipulate objects(and variables of all kinds).
Modules and Programs are for the next class in the series, though we will survey these larger structures next lesson. For now, we’ll focus on statements and expressions. Actually, we’ve already started with expressions above. In Python, statements can do three things.
Assign a variable
Change a variable
Take an action
Variable Names and Reserved Words
Now that we’ve seen some variable assignments, let’s talk about best practices. First off, aside from reserved words, variable names can be almost any combination of letters, numbers and punctuation marks. You, however, should never ever, use the following punctuation marks in variable names:
+
–
!
@
^
%
(
)
.
“
?
/
:
;
*
These punctuation marks tends to be operators and characters that have special meanings in most computer languages. The other issue is reserved words. What are “reserved words”? They are words that Python interprets as commands. Pythons reservers the following words.:
True: A special value set aside for boolean values
False: The other special value set aside for boolean vaules
None: The logical equivalent of 0
and: a way of combining logical conditions
as: describes how modules are imported
assert: a way of forcing something to take on a certain value. Used in debugging of large programs
break: breaks out of a loop and goes on with the rest of the program
class: declares a class for object oriented design. For now, just remember not to use this variable name
continue: returns to the top of the loop and keeps on going again
def: declares functions which allow you to modularize your code.
elif: else if, a cotnrol structure we’ll see next lesson
else: as above
except: another control structure
finally: a loop control structure
for: a loop control structure
from: used to import modules
global: a scoping statement
if: a control structure/li>
in: used in for each loops
is: a logical operator
lamda: like def, but weird. It defines a function in a single line. I will not teach this becuase it is icky. If you ever learn Perl you will see this sort of thing a lot and you will hate it, but that’s just my personal opinion.
nonlocal: a scoping command
not: a logical operator
or: another logical operator
pass: does nothing. Used as placeholder
raise: raises an error. This is used to write custom error messages. Your programs may have conditions which would be considered invalid based on our business situation. The interpreter may not consider them errors, but you might not want your user to do something so you ‘raise’ an exception and stop the program.
return: tells a function to return a value
try: this is part of an error testing statement
while: starts a while loop
with: a context manager. This will be covered in the course after the next one in this series
yield: works like return
Variable names should be meaningful. Let’s say I have to track a person’s driver license number. explanatory names like ‘driverLicenseNumber’.
Use case to make your variable names readable. Python is case sensitive, meaning a variable named ‘cat’ is different from named ‘Cat’. If you use more than one word to name variable, start of lower case the change case on the second word. For instance “bigCats = [‘Tiger’,’Lion’,’Cougar’, ‘Desmond’]”. The common practice used by programmers in many settings is that variables start with lowercase and functions(methods and so on) start with upper case. This is called “Camel Case” for its lumpy, the humpy appearance. Now, as it happens, there is something of a religious debate over this. Many Python programmers prefer to keep everything lower case and join words in a name by underscores such as “big_cats”. Use whichever is easiest or looks the nicest to you.
Variable names should be unique. Do not reuse names. This will cause confusion later on.
Python conventions. Python, as with any other programming language, has culture built up around it. That means there are some conventions surrounding variable naming. Two leading underscores, __X, denote system variables which have special meaning to the interpreter. So avoid using this for your own variables. There may be a time and place, but that’s for an advanced prorgramming course. A single underscore _X indicates to other programmers that this a fundamental variable and that they mess with it at their own peril.
Avoid starting variable names with a number. This may or may not return an error. It can also mislead anyone reading your program.
“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds”. But not to programming minds. Consistency helps the readability of code a great deal. Once you start a system, stick with it.
Statement Syntax
Putting together valid statements can be a little hard at first. There’s a grammar to them. Thus far, we’ve mainly been workign with expressions such as “x = x+1”. You can think of expression as nouns. We’ve clearly defined x, but how do we look inside? For that we need to give it a verb, the print command. We would then write “print x”. However we can skip the middle statement and print an expression such as “print x + 1”. The interpreter evaluates this per the order of operations I laid out earlier. However, once that expression is evaluated, it then applies the verb, “print”, to that expression.
Print is a function that comes with the Python distribution. There are many more and you can create your own. We’ll cover that a bit in next lesson. Let’s look at little more at the grammar of a statement. Consider:
x = sin(b)
Assume that b has been defined elsewhere. x is the subject, b is the object and sin is the verb. Python will go to the right side of the equal sign first. It will then go to the inside of the function and evaluate what’s there first. It then evaluates the value of the function and finishes by setting x to that value. What about something like this?
x=sin(x+3/y)
Python evaluates from the inside out according to the rules of operation. Very complex statements can be built up this way.
x = sin(log((x + 3)/(e**2)))
Regardless of what this expression evaluates to (I don’t actually know), Python starts with the innermost parentheses, then works through the value of e squared then adds 3 to x and divides the result by e squared. With that worked out, it takes the logarithm of the result and takessthe sine of that before setting x to the final result.What you cannot do is execute more than one statement on a line. No more than one verb on a line. In this context, a verb is an assignment, or a command acting on an expression
markdown cell
code cell
Call up your copy of Think Python or go to the website at http://www.greenteapress.com/thinkpython/html/. Read Chapter 2. This will reiterate much of what I’ve presnted here, but this will help cement the content into you minds. Skip section 2.6 because IPython treats everything as script mode. IPyton provides you with the illusion of interactive, but everything happens asynchronously. This means that any action you type in will not instantaneously resolve as it would if you were running Python interactively on your computer. You will have to use print statements to see the results of your work.
Your assignment consists of the following:
Exercise 1 from Chapter 2 of Think Python. If you type an integer with a leading zero, you might get a confusing error:
<<< zipcode = 02492
SyntaxError: invalid token
Other numbers seem to work, but the results are bizarre:
<<< zipcode = 02132
<<< zipcode
1114
Can you figure out what is going on? Hint: display the values 01, 010, 0100 and 01000.
Exercise 3 from Chapter 2 of Think Python.Assume that we execute the following assignment statements:
width = 17
height = 12.0
delimiter = ‘.’
For each of the following expressions, write the value of the expression and the type (of the value of the expression).
width/2
width/2.0
height/3
1 + 2 5
delimiter 5
Exercise 4 from Capter 2 of Think Python. Practice using the Python interpreter as a calculator:
1. The volume of a sphere with radius r is 4/3 π r3. What is the volume of a sphere with radius 5? Hint: 392.7 is wrong!
2. Suppose the cover price of a book is $24.95, but bookstores get a 40% discount. Shipping costs $3 for the first copy and 75 cents for each additional copy. What is the total wholesale cost for 60 copies?
3/ If I leave my house at 6:52 am and run 1 mile at an easy pace (8:15 per mile), then 3 miles at tempo (7:12 per mile) and 1 mile at easy pace again, what time do I get home for breakfast?
In your IPython notebook Create a markdown cell and write up your exercise in there. Just copy it from the textbook or from the above write up. Next ceate a code cell and do your work in there. Please, comment your work thoroughly. You cannot provide too many comments. Use print statements to see the outcome of your work.
From: The EDUCAUSE Blended and Online Learning Constituent Group Listserv [mailto:BLEND-ONLINE@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU] On Behalf Of Robert Tousignant Sent: Thursday, April 9, 2015 1:41 PM To:BLEND-ONLINE@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU Subject: Re: [BLEND-ONLINE] Faculty Involvement in LMS Selection
I’ve been reviewing this thread and thought I’d introduce a new player… Schoology is getting the attention of the analyst community and gobbling up the SIIA Codie awards for best learning platform the last couple of years. (Please note, I am not an impartial observer and I do a horse in the race)
The attached document includes information that will explain a new paradigm for evaluating an LMS that we see being adopted more and more – a move from a focus on utility (features and functions) to one focused standards, interoperability and the user experience (UI/UX).
Feel free to reach out directly if I can be of assistance.
These days, I tend to favor LMS Review/Selection initiatives that take one to two years to complete, but as always, it depends on the institution, its readiness to spec the needs of their faculty/students and evaluate viable options, as well as the campus resources available to nurture a possible smooth LMS platform transition. I like pointing out to the well-executed recent LMS selection initiatives carried out by UCF, Northwestern, Indiana, Harvard and Dartmouth, although there are many others.
*** Attend the FACULTY SUMMER INSTITUTE :: Wed-Fri May 27-29 at Urbana-Champaign
#pedagogy #BlendedLearning #classroom #teaching #OnlineLearning #EdTech http://go.illinois.edu/facultysummerinstitute
_____________________________
From: Hap Aziz <hapaziz@gmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, April 9, 2015 12:30 PM
Subject: Re: [BLEND-ONLINE] Faculty Involvement in LMS Selection
To: <blend-online@listserv.educause.edu>
That’s sounds like a similar timeframe to what we had at UB when we moved from Blackboard to Canvas. While LTI didn’t not play a large role in the decision-making process as we changed our LMS, it is now a central consideration as we look to acquire any new app functionality for our learning environment.
I’m setting up an area in the IMS forum area for LTI policy discussion. I’ll share that location with the group shortly so we can take some of the in-the-weeds discussion offline here.
The selection process started in January of 2013 and the task force voted at the end of May of 2013 unanimously for Canvas so about 5 months. By October we started training faculty in preparation for the Spring 2014 semester what was amazing about our transition to Canvas was that we had everyone moved out of ANGEL by start of Summer 14 so we only had 1 semester where we were supporting both ANGEL and Canvas. The use of LTI integrations and Canvas makes our jobs a lot easier to support the various tools that faculty are adopting for their classes – it also makes it a lot easier for faculty to integrate other technologies and keep them in the LMS or have single sign on so it is more seamless for students.
CONFIDENTIALITY: This email (including any attachments) may contain confidential, proprietary and privileged information, and unauthorized disclosure or use is prohibited. If you received this email in error, please notify the sender and delete this email from your system. Thank you.
From: The EDUCAUSE Blended and Online Learning Constituent Group Listserv [mailto:BLEND-ONLINE@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU] On Behalf Of Hap Aziz Sent: Tuesday, April 07, 2015 7:09 PM To:BLEND-ONLINE@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU Subject: Re: [BLEND-ONLINE] Faculty Involvement in LMS Selection
Hey, Sam, long time no see! Do you know about how long your whole selection process took? Also, does LTI conformance make your job with academic technology more straightforward to deal with?
I am at San Juan College and we also recently went through the selection process for a new LMS and like others who have commented switched to Canvas (from ANGEL). We ended up with a selection team that was primarily faculty, a couple students, and a handful of technology staff that reviewed the various LMSs and then made our final decision. If you would like I can get you the contact information for the faculty who assisted on the selection team.
CONFIDENTIALITY: This email (including any attachments) may contain confidential, proprietary and privileged information, and unauthorized disclosure or use is prohibited. If you received this email in error, please notify the sender and delete this email from your system. Thank you.
From: The EDUCAUSE Blended and Online Learning Constituent Group Listserv [mailto:BLEND-ONLINE@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU] On Behalf Of Noval, JeJe (LLU) Sent: Wednesday, April 01, 2015 9:25 PM To:BLEND-ONLINE@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU Subject: [BLEND-ONLINE] Faculty Involvement in LMS Selection
Hello Colleagues,
Were any of you, faculty members, involved in the learning management selection process of your educational institution? If so, would it be possible to interview you in the future for a research study?
Best,
JeJe Noval, MS, RD
Assistant Professor
Loma Linda University
Designing a makerspace for your library is an ambitious project that requires significant staff time and energy. The economic, educational and inspirational rewards for your community and your library, however, will make it all worthwhile. This class will make the task of starting a makerspace less daunting by taking librarians step by step through the planning process. Using readings, online resources, discussions and hands-on exercises, participants will create a plan to bring a makerspace or maker activities to their libraries. Topics covered will include tools, programs, space, funding, partnerships and community outreach. This is a unique opportunity to learn in depth about one public library’s experience creating a fully-functioning makerspace, while also exploring other models for engaging libraries in the maker movement.
Melissa S. Robinson is the Senior Branch Librarian at the Peabody Institute Library’s West Branch in Peabody, Massachusetts. Melissa has over twelve years of experience in public libraries. She has a BA in political science from Merrimack College, a graduate certificate in Women in Politics and Public Policy from the University of Massachusetts Boston and a MLIS from Southern Connecticut State University. She is the co-author of Transforming Libraries, Building Communities (Scarecrow Press, 2013).
This is an online class that is taught asynchronously, meaning that participants do the work on their own time as their schedules allow. The class does not meet together at any particular times, although the instructor may set up optional sychronous chat sessions. Instruction includes readings and assignments in one-week segments. Class participation is in an online forum environment.
Payment Info
You can register in this course through the first week of instruction. The “Register” button on the website goes to our credit card payment gateway, which may be used with personal or institutional credit cards. (Be sure to use the appropriate billing address). If your institution wants to pay using a purchase order, please contact us to make arrangements.
==============================
Making, Collaboration, and Community: fostering lifelong learning and innovation in a library makerspace
Tuesday, April 7, 2015 10AM-11:30AM PDT
Registration link: http://www.cla-net.org/?855
Travis Good will share insights garnered from having visited different makerspaces and Maker Faires across the country. He will explain why “making” is fundamentally important, what its affecting and why libraries are natural place to house makerspaces. Uyen Tran will discuss how without funding, she was able to turn a study room with two 3D printers into a simple makerspace that is funded and supported by the community. She will also provide strategies for working with community partners to provide free and innovative maker programs and creating a low cost/no cost library maker environment. Resources and programming ideas will also be provided for libraries with varying budgets and staffing. Upon completing this webinar, every attendee should be able to start implementing “maker” programs at their library.
please have two great articles on the use of social media in the library:
1. Experts as facilitators for the implementation of social media in the library
Vanwynsberghe, H.., Boudry, E.., Verdegem, P.., & Vanderlinde, R.. (2014). Experts as facilitators for the implementation of social media in the library? A social network approach. Library Hi Tech, 32(3), 529-545. doi:10.1108/LHT-02-2014-0015
Excellent article. Apparently, they do things differently in Belgium.
“Social media literacy” (SML) can be defined as not only the practical
and critically cognitive competencies possessed by users of social media, but also the
motivation to employ these media effectively and appropriately for social interaction
and communication on the web (Vanwynsberghe and Verdegem, 2013).
Repeated by me numerous times, but ignored consistently.
p. 530 Therefore, the aim of this study is to empirically assess how a social media expert, or the employee with the most knowledge and skills concerning social media, in the library facilitates, or impedes, the information flow and implementation of social media in the library.
p. 541 The findings suggest that such social media experts play a significant role in either supporting or constraining the information flow and implementation of social media.
5.2 A social media expert plays an important role in the library for spreading
information about social media Unsurprisingly, social media experts are the most central actors for giving social media information; they share more social media information with other librarians and rarely receive information in return. Any information they do receive mostly comes from a person skilled in social media use. The social media expert as the central actor in the information network has the power to facilitate or prevent information exchange about social media (Scott and Carrington, 2012).
this is, if the experts are ALLOWED to participate. What if the social media access is usurped by very few others?
even worse, what if the social media is decentralized across?
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
2.
Woodsworth, A., & Penniman, W. D. (2015). Current Issues in Libraries, Information Science and Related Fields. Emerald Group Publishing.
Mon, L. and Phillips, A. (2015) ‘The social library in the virtual branch: Serving adults and teens in social spaces’, in Current Issues in Libraries, Information Science and Related Fields. Emerald, pp. 241–268.
The Social Library in the Virtual Branch
p. 256 Lorri Mon and Abigail Phillips. Measuring and Assessing the Results of Social Media Activities
public libraries
at the moment the success is assessed and quantified according the activity by the library and the users.
beyond the activities of viewing, friending, liking, following, commenting, mentioning, and sharing and re-sharing, an important question is: How has this social media activity contributed to furthering the library’s mission, goal, and objectives?
p. 257 Assessing the impact, influence and reach of the library’s social media requires more effort than simply counting followers, friends and likes; e.g. assessing friends or followers as a percentage of the library’s services area.
Planning an impact assessment might involve measuring traffic to the physical library or to specific library web pages before and after FB or Twitter posting, or measuring usage of particular resources before and after a social media promotion.
How do you present the idea of your research and intertwine it with data in a cohesive, interesting way? Join us in a short session to learn effective communication through infographics using data visualization and design.
Location: Miller Center 205
Wednesday, February 18 2-2:45pm
Thursday, March 19 11-11:45am
Tuesday, April 14, 10-10:45am
Thursday, April 30, 10-10:45am
All of Samsung’s smart TVs — which take voice commands — come with a warning to consumers that essentially says: Your TV is listening and might be sending what you say to Samsung and a third party responsible for transcribing what you say.
1. search can be determined by all or selected dbases. delinted by dbases, author, date etc. that information can be also re-ordered.
can safe searches (as Aleph)
citation tools are only EndNote and Refworks. BIbNote possible. WOrks with ZOtero.
open source can be plugged in (upper right corner)
display: place hold, consortia can be displayed. buttons are available to be edited.
description: allows own.
persistent record link upper right scroll bar
access online: who the preferred provide is. off campus with proxy credentials
search same as in Aleph, but the option to select dbases
more flexible search in terms of electronic formats
report a problem is embedded.
Happy New Year and welcome back to those who had some time off over the holidays!
We have a demo scheduled for OCLC’s WorldShare product on January 26, from 10 am to noon. Originally I had asked for responses for a 90 minute demo, but the company was worried we wouldn’t have time for questions, so it was extended to noon.
This will be via WebEx and the session will not be recorded. Anyone (and everyone) in your libraries is welcome to attend.
The dial-in information is below:
Monday, January 26, 2015
10:00 am | Central Standard Time (Chicago, GMT-06:00) | 2 hr
There is an informative discussion on the LITA board regarding signage, both hard/software-wise as well as design-wise.
From: Hess, M. Ryan [mailto:MHESS8@depaul.edu] Sent: Monday, January 05, 2015 6:14 PM To:lita-l@lists.ala.org Subject: [lita-l] Re: Digital Signs – Best practices, hints & tips
Hi Christa,
I don’t manage the signs in our library, but had a part in getting them put in place and designing workflows. Along the way, I found some interesting research on the topic:
San Jose Public Library (2009). San Jose Public Library Signage Design Guidelines. Retrieved from http://www.olis.ri.gov/ services/ ce/ presentation/ SJW-SignageDesignGuidelines.pdf
Barclay, D. A., Bustos, T., & Smith, T. (June 01, 2010). Signs of success. College & Research Libraries News, 71(6), 299.
Shooting more from the hip, my opinion on digital signage is that commonly made mistakes with content include:
– multiplied narratives don’t work in most library cases. Keep everything short and on a single slide
– keep the slide visible for at least a minute to give people a chance to read it
– make sure your graphics are appropriately sized for HD screens (keep those images sharp and avoid pixelation)
On a technical note, we use a mix of solutions:
– PPTs on USBs
– We’ve experimented with Google Drive Slideshows too, to help streamline the work
M Ryan Hess
Digital Services Coordinator
DePaul University
JTR 303-C, DePaul University, Lincoln Park Campus, 2350 N Kenmore Ave., Chicago IL 60614
office: 773-325-7829 | cell: 650-224-7279 | fax: 773-325-2297 | mhess8@depaul.edu
We are using a Plex Media Server feeding 3 Rokus over a wireless connection from a laptop. We use .jpg pictures for our slides. Each Roku is connected to a different folder on the Plex server since our displays are in different parts of the building.
Edward
—–Original Message—–
From: Junior Tidal [mailto:JTidal@CityTech.Cuny.Edu]
Sent: Monday, December 22, 2014 1:10 PM
To: lita-l@lists.ala.org
Subject: [lita-l] Re: Digital Signs – Best practices, hints & tips
Hi Christa,
We used two templates for our digital sign. We were using PowerPoint on a Windows machine.
Librarians would take turns updating the slides to promote databases, workshops, library hours, etc., and we had a stable of maybe a dozen or so slides. We updated the slides whenever we needed to promote specific events, usually a couple of weeks before it took place.
This made it much easier to update the slides, because we couldn’t remotely login into the PC with Powerpoint running. Now, we can connect to the RPi/Screenly, and upload images.
Best,
Junior
Junior Tidal
Assistant Professor
Web Services and Multimedia Librarian
New York City College of Technology, CUNY
300 Jay Street, Rm A434
Brooklyn, NY 11201
718.260.5481
“For educators to prepare students to be good digital citizens, it is crucial that they have a clear understanding of the many components of digital citizenship and consistently model the behavior.” said Wendy Drexler, ISTE chief innovation officer, in a prepared statement