Author Archive

15
Sep
2017

Grant America for Bulgaria

categories: conferences and other events, information technology, Library and information science

http://www.us4bg.org/areas/education/

Proposal |Project Title

The 21st Century Skills of the Academic Librarian in Bulgaria

Applicant:
Plamen Miltenoff, PhD, MLIS, http://web.stcloudstate.edu/pmiltenoff/faculty/
My experience and connections with the library organizations and professionals from Moldova, Bulgaria and Austria, as well as my 17+ years working at the St. Cloud State University library provides me with an opportunity for comparison and, consequently, proposal for collaborative practices with Bulgarian academic librarians.

Project Duration: one year

Problem Identification: Through the years, my work with faculty and librarians from Shoumen University (http://shu-bg.net/ ), Plovdiv University (https://uni-plovdiv.bg/), New Bulgarian University (https://nbu.bg/),  the American University (https://www.aubg.edu/) and Sofia University (https://www.uni-sofia.bg/) helped me identify differences and similarities in the work of the Bulgarian educational institutions and academia from abroad.

The role of the academic librarian in the educational process is different/limited in Bulgaria compared to the United States. During a collaboration on gamifying library instruction (http://web.stcloudstate.edu/pmiltenoff/bi/), the NBU librarians demonstrated their propensity to shift their campus role close to the campus role of American librarians, yet in general the Bulgarian library guild remains traditional in their view of their responsibilities toward the educational process on campus.

Project Objectives:

This proposal aims regular discussions among professionals from Bulgarian and American (possibly other nations) librarians to determine the framework regarding librarian’s responsibilities. Are academic librarians faculty members or staff? Do they have teaching or service (or both) responsibilities? What are 20th century academic librarians’ responsibilities are to be preserved? Updated? What are the 21st century responsibilities to be gained? What is the relationship between academic librarians and faculty? What is expected from an academic librarians to ensure learning happens? To benefit faculty’s teaching?
A comparison of academic library structures, job descriptions, models and discourses can lead to deep[er] analysis of existing structures and possible reorganizations to improve the role of the library in particular and the efficiency of the educational institution in general.
Comparisons of topics and syllabi: multiliteraices as successor of information literacy? Is the academic library the hub for technological innovations (e.g makerspaces, 3D printing, virtual reality/augmented reality) and if not, what is the academic library role in the process?
Other relevant topics / issues are expected to transpire during such discourse.

Project Description:

The project is organized in collaboration of synchronous and asynchronous character during the span of one academic year. Three synchronous sessions each semester (six sessions for the entire semester) will provide a forum through e-conferencing tools (e.g. Adobe Connect, WebEx, Skype, Google Hangout etc.) for live discussions and planning. Weekly asynchronous dialog through social media (e.g. blog, Facebook Group, Google Group etc.) will provide the platform/ hub/ forum daily/detailed preparation for the monthly synchronous meetings.

Most valuable feedback through the weekly asynchronous discussions will be voted by participants and three best weekly contributions will be awarded badges. At the end of the academic year, the three contributors with largest collection of badges will be awarded cost for registration fee, travel and lodging to an important European conference regarding libraries and education.

The experience and lessons from the process will be summed up, published and presented at local (Bulgarian), regional (Balkans) and international (European, U.S.) educational conferences and events. Similar cross-cultural experiences and studies will be research and comparison and future collaboration will be sought.

Impact:

  • The use of synchronous tools will provide technological and didactical practice for academic librarians; an experience they later can apply in their service to the campus community.
  • Same with the asynchronous tools / social media
  • The practice and experience of using social media for institutional purposes can help librarians figure out pertinent outreach to the recent and incoming students (Millennials and Gen Y)
  • The use of social media will provide transparency and participatory governing of the process.

Sustainability:

The lessons from such endeavor aim to bring closer collaboration and understanding between academic librarians and campus faculty. Such collaboration can be measured, as well as impact of improved teaching and improved learning. The measurements should convince university administration to further support the continues process of cross-cultural collaboration between academic librarians.

15
Sep
2017

K12 IT management

categories: announcement

8 truths about K-12 IT systems management

By Gary Johnson September 13th, 2017

Unique complexities can be distilled down to eight truths, and may explain why vendors never seem to meet expectations in K-12 IT.

https://www.eschoolnews.com/2017/09/13/8-truths-k-12-systems-management/

Consider the information they handle every day. School districts in America today are complex, sophisticated businesses, not only managing multiple applications across multiple platforms, but also managing people and equipment in the real world, like bus fleets, library systems, and cafeterias.

you will find admins working with an average of 30 onsite and online platforms. That’s 30 systems to feed with data and update. The kicker is that those systems might not be on speaking terms with each other.

Interoperability is a multi-headed issue for any IT professional, but in the K-12 education world it is especially complex. These unique complexities can be distilled down to eight truths, and may explain why vendors who have been very successful in other IT verticals never seem to meet expectations in K-12.

The Solution Cannot Be Point-to-Point

Data from many active sources is profoundly difficult to keep current, especially when considering the different protocols used for each particular point-to-point integration.

There Must Be Multiple Ways of Moving Data

A successful broker/dashboard must be able to accommodate all of these integration methods. The broker needs to support it as well as the industry’s existing standards, such as SIF and CSV.

The System Must Merge Disparate Feeds

Data comes into educational systems from a variety of feeds, including CSVs and file sharing. Handling all these feeds develops a vital function, coveted by IT professionals and system admins everywhere: a comprehensive representation of the data truth of your district.

Your Data Solution Must Be Bidirectional

Different systems don’t always talk to each other politely, and with some districts using as many as 30 applications, writing grades back to the SIS can get thorny.

We Need a Flexible Data Model

some of those free or low-cost integrations are profoundly rigid and can’t accommodate the data reality of school districts.

We Must Deal with “Dumb” End Points

In the world of district data, we are moving toward REST APIs and other unintelligent end points. There is no inherent logic in an API that tells the system how to move data. And as mentioned earlier, many legacy systems still depend on CSV’s for data.

Integration Belongs in the Cloud but Must Accommodate On-Premise Apps

know the cloud actually is an ideal setting for interoperability, especially since so many of our applications are cloud-based. It gives you maximum visibility, maximum diagnostic capability and manageability. You can manage from anywhere, anytime.

Be Multi-Tenant with Supervisory Capability

For areas where intermediate units or a Board of Cooperative Educational Standards (BOCES) provide IT services to districts, the system admins need a big picture approach. The integration platform must allow the IU or BOCES to troubleshoot, diagnose, manage, and support multiple districts in one dashboard, but only show district personnel data belonging to their organization. State education agencies also have this need.

There are several reputable companies that provide an iPaaS–in fact Gartner compared 20 of them in their 2017 Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Integration Platform as a Service. However, without a deep understanding of education data models, even these vendors may fall short, and may be expensive.

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more on IT for K12 in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=digital+literacy+edad

15
Sep
2017

evaluate IT in K12

categories: Digital literacy, educational technology, information technology, instructional technology, technology literacy

New Ways to Evaluate School Technologies to Save Money & Boost Efficiencies

https://event.on24.com/wcc/r/1483433/3117E1766D64897841ED782BEEFC3C83?mode=login&email=pmiltenoff@stcloudstate.edu

Please join me September 20 for a free webinar where Dr. Sheryl Abshire, CTO of Calcasieu Parish SD and a recognized leader in K-12 technology, shares her insights on the top strategies, best practices and most valuable ideas that can reduce IT departmental costs and increase efficiencies.

What: New Ways to Measure & Leverage the Value of IT
When: 09/20 @ 2:00 PM ET | 11:00 AM PT

Register Now

Listen in and learn how to:
·         Use data you already collect to justify needs and resources
·         Create a new value proposition for IT
·         Measure the strategic use of IT in the district
·         Determine if your current technology is making the difference you expected

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My notes from the webinar:
Gartner: K12 technology ; http://www.gartner.com/technology/research/content/education.jsp

https://www.schooldude.com/ Tech support costs in K12 increased by 50% in the last four years from 14% to 21% of the technology budget. One half of the school technology leaders said that their school board understands that technology relates to district oveall goals , it is not as supportive financially. Worse, 8% felt that the school board does not believe technology is important to their district overall goals

Harvard Business Report Driving Digital Transformation. 2015 surveyed digital leaders. Driving innovation most important role breaking down internal silos

https://hbr.org/resources/pdfs/comm/RedHat/RedHatReportMay2015.pdf

  • align technology with educational mission of the school district
  • show value
  • eliminate silos
  • look for cost savings
  • other investments with long-term savings
  • transformational strategies
  • engage community – bond issues, levies, and other funding

consortium for school networking: 10 concepts http://www.nmc.org/organization/cosn/

virtualization; data deluge; energy and green IT; complex resource tracking; consumerization and social software; unified communications; mobile and wireless; system density; mashups and portals; cloud computing

what is a quick recovery?

Action plan: 1. Focus on virtualization and green IT for immediate cost and flexibility benefits. 2. Look at storage virtualization, deduplication and thin provisioning. 3. Evaluate web social software to transform interactions 4. exploit mashups and cloud-based services to address immediate user needs. 5. link UC to collaboration and enterprise applications to support growth initiatives. 6. begin to track weak signals and subtle patterns – from everywhere.


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SchoolDude – Josh Green, Application Engineer, josh.green@schooldude.com

  • lack of budget and staff
  • managing upkeep and replacement of growing number of devices
  • time
  • perception gap (what we are doing)

tool: Insight
agentless network discovery mechanism. scanning of devices on the network. optimize hard software usage, improve planning and budgeting process with status reporting.

MDM (mobile device management). supports both BYOD and school devices. control app distribution across the network, supervise device usage, remotely manage device policy

Helpdesk: complete ticket to close helpdesk solution

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Q&A time

technology facilitators: spend time at assigned schools; talk to teacher and try to figure out what teachers know about technology and then work the principal to customize workshops (PLCs) to build the skills based on their skills set. versus technology facilitator at every school. Help them grow their own.

certificate of attendance-Plamen Miltenoff

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more on digital literacy for EDAD in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=digital+literacy+edad

15
Sep
2017

eportofolios conference

categories: conferences and other events, digital identity, Digital literacy, digital storytelling, educational technology, pedagogy, student-centered learning

Meaning-Making with Eportfolios

Southeast Regional Conference November 6-7, 2017 University of Virginia 

Conference Description and CFP
The Association for Authentic, Experiential, and Evidence-Based Learning (AAEEBL) and the University of Virginia (UVa) are pleased to host the 2017 Southeast Regional AAEEBL Conference.  AAEEBL is an international professional association dedicated to supporting educational leaders committed to education transformation relevant to 21st century learnings and best known for promotion of ePortfolios as a high impact practice in higher education.

Theme: Meaning-Making with Eportfolios
ePortfolios provide an authentic context for learning and assessment as well as fertile ground for the exploration of the learning process itself.  In this conference, we propose to explore the role of “meaning making” in the various facets of the ePortfolio building process and the way it informs the experiences of our students and our understanding of learning.

http://www.aaeebl.org/members/EmailOptPreferences.aspx

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more on eportfolio in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=portfolio

13
Sep
2017

university web page design

categories: announcement

Urgent: Today’s students need a digitally fluent college website-here’s how

By Liz Schulte August 3rd, 2017

Students can no longer remember the world before the technology revolution. Digital fluency isn’t optional for schools; it’s a must.

https://www.ecampusnews.com/eschool-media/students-digital-fluency-website/?all

A good school site should:

  • Demonstrate its brand
  • Be easy to navigate
  • Show students a clear pathway to success
  • Highlight the best qualities of the school
  • Provide information visitors want to find

Pay close attention to your website’s analytics. Where are visitors going? How long are they staying? When do they leave? Are they finding where they want to go while they are there?

92 percent of Americans 18-29 years old own a smartphone. They will interact with your site from their phone. If it is frustrating, they will be frustrated with the school. The site needs a responsive design that will allow it to adapt to the size of any screen.

implement A/B testing to make sure the new design is improving on functionality and not just aesthetics. Also, make sure your website is ADA compliant.

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more on academic web page design in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=web+design

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