Smoking on Campus & the 25 Foot Rule

At Sarah Lawrence College smoking is permitted. But there is a catch. SLC has a 25 foot rule.

Smoking is prohibited in the following areas:

• both terraces/patios of the Siegel Center, including the stone wall on the front terrace
• inside any College building, including residence halls
• within 25 feet of any building entrance or restricted pathway

Over the years there has been discussion on how to address the issue because many smokers ignore or were unaware of the policy. Recently I decided to use Google Maps and, roughly, overlay the areas that fall within the stated policy. What I found was no surprise to me. — There are few spaces to smoke on campus if someone adheres to the policy.

View Larger Map

The Printer is Going Wireless

Google released “Cloud Printing” today for Windows users. Read the announcement here: http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2011/01/print-from-your-phone-with-gmail-for.html

This means you can be on the road and print your important document at your printer of choice. It’s that simple. No biggie, right? Of course the printer is going wireless, isn’t everything?

It’s time to install the application and print while on the way to school/work! Hold that thought.

Academia is often slower to deploy such eye popping technologies for a variety of reasons, support being one of the biggest. Security is incredibly important and the I.T. world is not known for it’s rapid deployment of new technologies. The path followed is likely to be described as “Tried and true.” It’s safe and it’s proven. Two words a CIO will like.

What is the present state of printing at your institution?

• Can you print via the wireless network?
• Can you print from a laptop via Ethernet or wireless?
• Can you print to any printer or only a select printer?
• Do you have to swipe a card to release a job?

What would be the best solution for you – students, faculty, staff?

Students are going mobile – Duh

A growing trend is the mobile/hand-held market. Businesses know this. Google and Apple are competing for the mobile advertising crown and smart phones are selling in big numbers. A prediction I read yesterday places the smart phone at 50% of the market in the USA by the end of 2011.

Students are going mobile. Schools need to pay attention to this and get relevant information to students for reasons including: communication, retention, community, feedback, etc. When should this be done? ASAP.

For the past two years Sarah Lawrence College has polled its student body about a number of technical items including cell phones, texting, etc.

Looking at some of the highlights (significant increases, +6% or more, are bolded)…

Responses (of apprx 1500 total both years):

• 2008-2009 - 565
• 2009-2010 - 332

Computer ownership:

• 2008-2009 - 98%
• 2009-2010 - 97%

Cellphone ownership:

• 2008-2009 - Cell phone 80% Phone in residence (aka landline) 1% Both 16%
• 2009-2010 - Cell phone 80% Phone in residence (aka landline) 1% Both 12%

Carrier:

• 2008-2009 - Verizon 41% Cingular 35%
• 2009-2010 - Verizon 41% Cingular 32%

Receiving text messages:

• 2008-2009 - Once/day 13% Several times/day 62% Several times/week 12%
• 2009-2010 - Once/day 8% Several times/day 73% Several times/week 6%

Sending text messages:

• 2008-2009 - Once/day 16% Several times/day 58% Several times/week 10%
• 2009-2010 - Once/day 9% Several times/day 70% Several times/week 5%

Email checked via cell phone:

• 2008-2009 - Y -  22% N – 73%
• 2009-2010 - Y – 30% N – 61%

Web accessed via cell phone:

• 2008-2009 - Y – 23% N – 72%
• 2009-2010 - Y – 32% N – 60%

Non-iPhone

• 2008-2009 – 8%
• 2009-2010 - 14%

iPhone

• 2008-2009 – 12%
• 2009-2010 - 13%

iPod touch ownership:

• 2008-2009 - 10%
• 2009-2010 - 17%

Reviewing the data, our students are sending and receiving multiple text messages per day via their smart phone or iPod Touch and checking their email and browsing the web more using hand held devices. This is not outlier data. Next year I anticipate even higher use of text messaging and hand held web browsing.

What does this mean to SLC and to you (other institutions and companies)?

Now, yes now, is the time to begin implementing technologies that will be, at least, one-way communication with your constituents. They want to know what is going on and expect that we will provide the solution.

Emergency/weather notification systems are all the fad in the academic world. But students want more. They WANT to know more, to stay connected. An opt-in service is a best bet because there is no possible way to know what every student does/does not want.

I have just re-initiated my research and would love to hear from those of you who have found great SMS tools (for academia) – comments welcome.

I could say more and defend the trend but the title says it all. What are you/we doing to get our information mobile?

Sarah Lawrence Library Survey Report 2010

The Sarah Lawrence College Library posted it’s response to the community today.

The Main Library, Music Library, Visual Resources, and Help Desk staff have all carefully reviewed the survey results from this year’s library survey, and have written a report that addresses the majority of concerns and issues brought up. You can download a PDF of the report here:

• http://slc.edu/library/other/survey_2010.pdf

We use the results to figure out which areas we need to improve our service, and also to plan for the future. We’re constantly striving to find ways to better serve the Sarah Lawrence community, and your feedback is much appreciated! Many thanks to all who participated.

Original post

The Sarah Lawrence College Technology Survey 2009-2010 Response Numbers and Chart

A 29.97% response rate from the Sarah Lawrence Community without any incentives… Fantastic!

Below is the response chart for the tech survey. As you can see the response rate jumps significantly after a reminder is sent. Below the chart are the numbers used to create the graph.

Additional data will be posted soon. The survey close at midnight last night.

Click to view complete graph

Date    Total Responses    Complete Responses    Incomplete Responses    Remaining        Time
4/13/2010*    0    0    0    2161    launch    12:00
4/14/2010    161    136    25    2025        9:00
4/15/2010    179    152    27    2009        9:00
4/16/2010*    186    159    27    2002    reminder
4/17/2010
4/18/2010
4/19/2010    285    240    45    1921        9:15
4/20/2010*    295    251    44    1910    reminder    9:53
4/21/2010    359    304    55    1857        10:00
4/22/2010    369    313    56    1848        12:00
4/23/2010*    372    316    56    1845    reminder    9:00
4/24/2010
4/25/2010
4/26/2010*    432    368    64    1793    reminder    9:54
4/27/2010    557    467    90    1558    closed    9:13

* = reminder sent

The Sarah Lawrence College Technology Survey 2009-2010

After some tweaks based on feedback after last year’s initial technology survey I launched, what is now, the 2nd Annual Technology Survey at The Sarah Lawrence College using LimeSurvey. If you are in academia and use LimeSurvey please contact me if you are interested in using our survey at your campus.

This year we released the survey to the entire campus in one fell swoop – last year we released it in two phases: students then faculty and staff.

I will be tracking the daily numbers and will post response rates as I did last year.

The important changes/additions include:

• iPad interest and purchase plans
• eBook interest
• eReader interest and purchase plans
• Microsoft Office ownership, use, and interest in purchasing a discounted copy
• Open text field asking for suggested uses of any technology for use on- and off-campus. We asked them to think big!
• Due to the financial standing of the institution no incentive was made available.

Stay tuned.

YouTu.be

Have you tried sharing a YouTube link via Twitter or another social site that limits your character length? YouTube has changed things up for the better.

Make Way for youtu.be Links
http://youtube-global.blogspot.com/2009/12/make-way-for-youtube-links.html

What is the change?

Original = 31 characters: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
New = 16 characters: http://youtu.be/

A reduction of 15 characters.

Sure, it’s not the ultra short link shortener but “when you see a link with this URL, you are indeed about to click on a YouTube video.” – from YouTube blog linked above

What else is better besides the 15 character crunch?

Also, because the link contains the ID of the video you’re going to see, developers can do interesting things like show you thumbnails, embed the video directly, or track how a video is spreading in real-time.

So, grab that shortened URL and start sharing.

temp

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=t2Vv30CpMQkwL9Ya2NVF4bg&output=html

What the F**K is Social Media: One Year Later

What the F**K is Social Media: One Year Later

View more documents from Marta Kagan.

Students go ga-ga for ‘Undo Send’

Every time I tell students about the lab feature Undo Send within seconds they are giddy with excitement about how much this is going to save them. That’s right – going to. Inevitably their thoughts go back to an email they wish they could have unsent but the possibility of never having that worry again is mesmerizing.

At a student club leader presentation two weeks ago I reviewed a number of labs and explained Undo Send. Note – I had approximatley 5-10 minutes to review the entire Google Apps suite so I was going quickly. About 3 seconds after I explained Undo Send and had paused for effect one student literally gasped with jaw agape! You could see the “OMG HFCIT FTW” look across her face. She was elated.

Though not at profound a reaction, possibly because of the brain melt that has affected them, students also smile a the fact that they can change the undo time from 5 seconds to 10 seconds.

Tasks has graduated to become an official part of GMail, when will Undo Send.

Nobody has snubbed the lab feature. Yet. Will someone? I’d be amazed.