Very laborintensive task

I just created a second post with my picks for the Oct 19 conference day. I must say that this takes a lot of work. Too much, actually!
It seems to me that there is an urgent need for some sort of mechanism on the conference website whereby I could search through the database of all preconferences and sessions. But there isn't, as far as i can see. Why not use tags or the like? That's why I love Flickr.com or del.icio.us so much. They really have thought about the ease of use of their services.
Is anyone listening? Anyone agree? Suggestions?

Oct 19 (11.40 AM), still day one:: Enterprise computing etc..

There are so many interesting sessions on this Educause! Here are my picks for 11:40 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. on October 19.
1. Calendar and Scheduling Interoperability: Emerging Standards and Implementations
During the past year several institutions have made significant progress in developing and implementing enhancements to the IETF WebDAV standard to better support shared calendar information (CalDAV). Come hear from the authors of the new IETF draft and those implementing server and client software to achieve interoperability.
2. From the Pit to the Pinnacle: Transformation of Help Desk Services at Rutgers University
Rutgers University has developed a help desk request tracking application that strives to ensure excellence in customer service. This presentation will address the success story of how this in-house solution regenerated an ailing help desk, expanded, developed a following, gained momentum, and landed at the precipice of an open-source release that will potentially be a valued resource for the entire higher education community.
3. Creating Connectivity with a Portal
A prospective student portal can be a powerful tool for recruiting, relationship building, and admissions management. Additionally, it can streamline and personalize many of the otherwise labor-intensive interactions, enhance communications between institutions and prospective students, and improve admissions yields while helping promote efficiency in recruiting operations.

Information resources, digital content and libraries: Interesting sessions on wednesday 19

Although you may think that this theme will have less attention at the conference, there are quite interesting sessions! The role of library services in teaching and learning is growing, that is what you can see in this programme. Here is my selection:

10:30 a.m. - 11:20 a.m.
The DPubS Development Project: Building an Open Source Electronic Publishing System
The DPubS development project, a partnership between libraries at Cornell and Penn State, aims to provide libraries, university presses, and other independent publishers with an open-source online publishing system. This presentation will describe the history and functionality of DPubS, the proposed development plans, and the challenges the project faces.

2:15 p.m. - 3:05 p.m.
What Universities Can Do to Use Shared, Ubiquitously Accessible Storage
Open-standards Web technology allows institutions to provide storage accessible "from any place, at any time, to anyone" (with appropriately authenticated authorization). We will present and compare three universities' (Boston College; University of California, Irvine; and University of Texas at Austin) deployments of such services, based on the WebDAV protocol, to meet differing institutional needs and constituencies.

Transformations: Mount Holyoke's Class Project Becomes a Digital Archive
Mount Holyoke College will present a case study of a faculty-initiated and grant-funded digital project that was developed into a sustainable digital resource by multiple departments. The panelists (archivist, library systems manager, and network manager) will offer a successful tale of open and collaborative work using minimal resources.

Developing Legal and Policy Frameworks to Sustain Digital Scholarship
Scholars producing complex born-digital scholarship need new models of institutional support, including different distribution channels for finished projects. Libraries are thus expanding their roles beyond archiving to include technical and legal developmental support and dissemination. What policy frameworks are needed when we commit to stable, long-term collection of digital scholarship?

2:15 p.m. - 4:40 p.m.
Library/IT Partnerships
This Constituent Group meeting will provide a forum for discussing management issues unique to the collaborative efforts now required of librarians and IT managers. This will be an excellent opportunity to exchange ideas regarding potential partnerships such as training, working with information providers, delivering services, providing support for instructional technology and multimedia, and supporting campus-wide information systems.

3:50 p.m. - 4:40 p.m.
Getting IDEAS: Liberal Arts Colleges Collaborating on Digital Collections for Asian Studies
Collaborators at four liberal arts colleges have created a Web-accessible curricular resource, the Image Database to Enhance Asian Studies (IDEAS), made up of four collections of digital materials. Faculty members, librarians, and technologists worked together with support from the Midwest Instructional Technology Center to develop standards for and implement IDEAS.

4:55 p.m. - 6:10 p.m.
Peer to Peer File Sharing
Current Issues Roundtable

Handheld Devices in the Library Setting
Poster Session - Emerging Technologies

Bookmarklets and Your Library: How to Search Your Catalog from Any Web Page
Poster Session - Library
Bookmarklets use Javascript to enable the user to quickly and easily gain access to library resources from any Web page by selecting a word or phrase and clicking on the bookmark. Bookmarklets can be made for a library catalog, a link resolver, or any electronic resource that accepts a search string as input.

Information Literacy on a Shoestring
Poster Session - Library
By modifying open-source materials and incorporating assessment through Blackboard, Concordia University incorporated information literacy into a required freshman course. Other than a minimum investment of time by the library and instructional design staff, the project required no additional financial investment by the university.

Mainstreaming the Electronic Theses Production Work Flow Using DigiTool
Poster Session - Library
McGill University is engaged in a pilot e-theses project designed to transform the current print-based theses processing model into an electronic one. Staff are designing a model for converting, cataloging, and disseminating the institution's e-theses. This poster session will provide a detailed work flow chart and provide a model for migrating to e-theses.

More Than a Collection: Real Libraries for Students at Online Universities
Poster Session - Library
Nontraditional universities without a physical library can offer online collections to their remote students. But how well are they providing the full array of library services? Two reviewers of online institutions describe models of online libraries, identify factors in their success, and suggest how traditional libraries can learn from them.

When is Multimedia Not the Answer? When Faculty Expertise and Instructional Design Fundamentals Unite!
Poster Session - Library
Librarians have expertise in reference, research, and faculty support, but not necessarily in instructional design, writing for the Web, or multimedia development. Are multimedia tutorials the solution to frequently asked questions about library resources? Not necessarily, especially when library faculty expertise can converge with instructional and Web design fundamentals for timely, targeted, cost-effective virtual answers.

A Community of Practice: Integrating Information and Computer Literacy at Purdue University
Poster Session - Teaching and Learning
Faculty and librarians at Purdue University collaborated to integrate information and computer literacy into the freshman composition curriculum. The impact of skill development on student performance was measured using both qualitative and quantitative scales, including the Information and Computer Technology Literacy Assessment developed by the Educational Testing Service.

Equal Library Opportunities: Insights for Off-Site Programs
Poster Session - Teaching and Learning
Xavier University librarians offer students in off-site programs equitable library services and support. Collaborating with faculty, the librarians establish a presence in off-site programs by linking to electronic reserves, subject guides, online chat, search strategy worksheets, instructional videos, and xu.tutor--all delivered to off-site students through the campus portal.

Oct 19, day 1: Enterprise computing & infosystems

Here's is a first batch of interesting sessions on Educause 2005 (no seperate preregistration required) for the theme Enterprise computing & information systems. I found the program overwhelming and very comprehensive!
Anyway: here comes my first batch, that can be seen from 10:30 a.m. 'till 11:20 a.m on October 19/
1. An community source ERP
ERP is the realm of large vendors, right? Only the crazy would try to play in that space. Well, some crazies are doing just that with the Kuali initiative. A panel of representatives from six partner organizations will discuss the factors that led them to join this initiative.
2. It Was a Dark and Stormy . . . Eight Weeks! Maintaining Critical IT Services During the 2004 Hurricane Season
This session will highlight how Computer Services & Telecommunications at the University of Central Florida managed university IT operations and infrastructure during three hurricanes over a period of eight weeks.
3. Listening to the Client: Connecting IT and the Academy
IT leaders assume what is best for the academy without real validation. MIT and Stanford completed collaborative client satisfaction surveys that also created new performance measures, exploded "myths" of what mattered, created new campus dialogue, and reset strategy. We will present the survey, the process, and specific tactical and strategic actions.
4. Leveraging Guest Accounts for Ubiquitous Web Sign-On System Acceptance
We will present Cosign Friend, a scalable, flexible, and lightweight guest account mechanism implemented in conjunction with our Web single sign-on system at the University of Michigan. We address the need for guest accounts at a large university, our requirements gathering process, and the implications of our design choices.
5. TechConnect: Student-to-Student Technical Help
TechConnect is an innovative student-to-student distributed help desk focused on student needs. The TechConnect coordinators are student employees who work in campus labs and provide technical help, answer questions about registration and financial aid, and assist students to fulfill class assignments that incorporate technology.

History of ICT in education - and where we are heading? - FLOSSE Posse

I found a (Critical) history of ICT in education - and where we are heading? .
Just read it, and try to imagine where we are heading, according to the author.
Are we? I am not so sure. There are a lot of 'conservative' powers that prevent us from taking real steps forward.
Am I too pessimistic? Please let me know.

JORUM: good example of learning materials repository

A good example of a project aiming at the establishment of a learning materials repository is JORUM. It provides access to materials and encourages the sharing, re-use and re-purposing of them between teaching staff. More information.

Speaker List (Complete & long)

A complete list of speakers is also available. If you'd rather go for a session with your favorite speaker, click theSpeaker List.

ALL Seminars & Conferences available

Finally, there is complete overview of all Seminars & Conferences available on the Educause website. Don't get disappointed when you click this link. You have to scroll down .....and get overwhelmed by the magnitude of Educause.

Learning Actually Blog

A very nice example of e weblog that i will keep looking at: "Learning Actually".

LOREnet: building a network of learning materials repositories

The 24th of May, so before the start of this blog, there was a seminar about LOREnet, a Surf project aimed at setting up learning materials repositories as a part of the existing structure of institutional repositories of the Dutch higher education institutes. Here is the link to the Lorenet seminar .

EduSite: Nieuwe organisatie SURF-DU voorlopig van de baan

Wow!
This is really a big surprise and something that doesn't make me happy. Edusite writes (in Dutch):
EduSite: Nieuwe organisatie SURF-DU voorlopig van de baan.

CETIS-The Case for Creative Commons Textbooks

Creative Commons is getting more and more attention as a means by which we can free ourselves from those publishers that are charging us ridicous amounts of money for their journals and for their educational content.
For example, read the article The Case for Creative Commons Textbooks on the very informative website by CETIS.
It is stipulated that University of California students paid an average of $898 per year on new and used textbooks in 2003. The author (Fred M. Beshears, U.C. Berkeley) argues that in a best case scenario textbook costs can be reduced to $3.25 per year!
That gives us something to think about!

EDUCAUSE Australasia Auckland

Recently, the EDUCAUSE Australasia was held in Auckland, Australia. On the website, you will find some interesting presentations. Betty Collis was a keynote speaker over there.
I am not quite sure what the connection with the American Educause is or was.
Do you know?

Information resources, digital content and libraries: Interesting preconferences

For those of the Surf Edutrip 2005 who choose for theme Infrastructure, digital content and libraries I recommend to join the following preconferences:

Seminar 02A - Advanced Issues in Copyright Law: Copyright and Distributed Learning
This seminar is especially interesting when dealing with re-use of learning material. Hopefully we get some insight in the juridical possibilities and constraints for depositing, publishing and using learning material.

Seminar 08A - Knowledge Management and Leadership: Do We Know What We Know?
How to retrieve and share knowledge and information more effectively? For our theme a somewhat general question but it can offer a framework for developing services and tools.

Networking, Infrastructures and Advanced Computing - Preconferences

For the SURF Edutrip 2005 Theme Group "Infrastructures and Advanced Computing" the following pre-conferences could be interesting:

Seminar 04F - Effective wired and wireless network security practices for higher education
Seminar 10F - Implementing a campus-wide wireless LAN: considerations and practices
Seminar 04P - Getting Groove-y: the future of course management is here
Seminar 15P - Successful approaches to cybersecurity awareness and training

The first two are full-day seminars and the second two are afternoon seminars.
Joachim

EduStandaard

EduStandaard: the Dutch organisation (or should I say foundation?) that is heavily involved in learning technology standards. The site is only available in the Dutch language, at the time of writing is.

Interesting preconferences (Enterprise Computing & Information Systems)

I have selected five interesting preconferences that have to do with our theme. Here they are:

1. Click for the Detailed Agenda of Seminar 01A of a morning preconference 1A on the needs of our new students.
2. Another interesting one is on Aligning IT Planning with New Learners. Check out the Detailed Agenda for this preconference.
3. The third interesting preconference is on the role of IT leadership. Check out the Detailed Agenda and speaker of this pre-conference (separate registration and fee are required).
4. Seminar 03P is called EnableIT: Landing a Successful ERP Solution at a University. The details are here: Agenda.
5. There is a very interesting hands-on workshop in the afternoon with a new piece of software for course management. This sounds very promising. Check out the Detailed Conference Agenda.

TALL: mapping VLE's on ELF

ELF has a very comprehensive website, which is located on www.elframework.org. It is sometimes hard to find the real gems in there. But i found something very interesting.
The Oxford University conducted the TALL Desk Study whereby they actually conducted a mapping of existing VLE's on the JISC E-Learning Framework. I haven't had the time to read it all, but it sounds very interesting as a preparation for our Edutrip. Recommended reading!

If not open source, then Shibboleth

Auricle is a very nice example of a weblog on learning technologies in Higher Education. Auricle is edited by Derek Morrison, Director of the e-learning@Bath team. Auricle is called a "private collaborative Weblog (blog) (..) as a mechanism for communicating interesting information or problems and resolutions amongst the team."
In this recent post on Shibboleth they highlight very clearly why this new technology is so much needed.

EDUCAUSE Community Blogs

Educause (the organisation that is) is also into webblogs. Just click EDUCAUSE Community Blogs and there you go.
I must tell you that this is still in beta. All in all there are 560 posts at the time of writing.

Full program not yet available

The full program for the EDUCAUSE 2005 Annual Conference is not available yet on the website. I will put a post on this weblog as soon as it is available.

Digitale Universiteit uses Creative Commons!

And now for something completely different!
The Digitale Universiteit uses a Creative Commons license. See Digitale Universiteit - Creative Commons for the details (Dutch). Would this also be an approriate license for our activities within the Edutrip?

Who should read this blog

The EDUCAUSE 2005 Annual Conference will be held in Orlando (Florida). You can be part of it! See the link on the righthand side (>>>Edutrip) for more details in Dutch.
This blog is meant for the people interested in the theme for which I am appointed Eduguide. The theme is "Enterprise Computing & Information Systems".