Though we had an excellent start of the semester, there were two nagging issues we needed to solve. One had to do with the print management software called Papercut and the other had to with Macs in classrooms. The first issue was related to one of the unusually busy printing season – first two weeks of the semester. In addition, we are now using multi function devices for printing and in order to support them, we needed to move the print server to Windows server, the only supported platform. The Mac issue had to do with the way we have been reusing the computer names and how this “confuses” the active directory, resulting in the users not be able to login to the domain. Notice that both of these problems are related to Microsoft backend technologies. Just sayin’…

Thanks to the teamwork by LTS staff and their hard work, both of these problems seem to be under control. Another case that illustrates that no matter how hard you work to avoid these problems, the real field testing happens only when our faculty and students are here. This is why the best strategies are one that allows us to be prepared and solve the problems quickly. We can never rest saying “we have tested everything and they work”. No, they don’t, sorry!

I know that “change” is a topic I have discussed a few times, but this is a good time to revisit. Changes are continuing to happen all around us. Here are a few changes in the College:

• Read this Gmail Blog. A new look for smartphone Gmail client, new groups interface, a new compose, and a new inbox. All of these happened in the last few months. My wife was complaining the other day to me – “you techies continue to do these changes to justify your existence and we are the ones who suffer”. I mumbled that I don’t work for Google & I don’t make these decisions. She asked me what I said, & I promptly responded  – “nothing”. BTW, I like all of these changes, however I do appreciate how difficult it can be for some to adjust to these constant changes.
• We upgraded Sakai this past summer. Of course, we received a lot of positive feedback, but it is a change nevertheless, and I am sure that this will be an adjustment for a few.
• Our library circulation statistics show further decline with corresponding increase in the electronic resource access, showing changes in the way library collections are being used. What exactly does this mean for us in terms of strategy? I would love for you to read this article which discusses the need to invest more of our resources in special collections and archives than “commodity” collections.
• Printing in the College changed over the summer. I have heard an earful about how bad the new MFDs (Multi Function Devices) are. Of course, we collaborated on this, but we were not the decision makers. But you see, that is irrelevant. Everyone thinks, if it is technology, we are it! It turns out that they are not that bad and solutions do exist to correct the problems. So I keep encouraging everyone to report the problems.
• In terms of administrative things, we are moving to a brand new reporting environment based on Blackboard Analytics and Pyramid, that supports inquiry based analytics. How appropriate for a liberal arts college. We saw a demo of this yesterday. This, in my mind, will be a true game changer!

And then here are some changes that will affect all of us one way or the other:

• Though Apple didn’t announce anything that would be a major change, they announced two new phones – 5C and 5S. As we know, Apple has mastered the user interface issue, so, even though the hardware may change, the user interaction is highly unlikely to change. But, they seem to be losing the smartphone & tablet war to hardware running Google’s android operating system. This means, they have to come up with some significant changes to make them look different and better. FYI I gave up iPad and switched to Google Nexus 7. I love it. The reason is much better integration with Google tools.
• edX just announced a partnership with Google which will be a change for those institutions using Google’s Course Builder as their LMS. It also means that edX members like us now have an open source, free, and hosted solution to think about. I have no idea where this will lead us, because this is a complex issue that needs a lot of discussions at the College. But I do see this to be a viable alternative to Sakai for those who are willing to experiment.
• Just when we thought that we understood the tools that the teenagers favored, this report came out showing “Nope, they are changing”. Though facebook is used a lot, there has been a 12% drop in use. And YouTube use is down by 30%. At least for the YouTube I can find an explanation – may be I am watching too much of it and slowing down the experience for the rest 🙂 Who would have thought that they are dumping FB? This is important for us to follow as we strategize on the best way to communicate with the prospective applicants and first years.

Of course, there are so many changes that are continuing to happen around us and I don’t see this trend slowing down. Sometimes, it can be draining. Like this news about “butt detection” –  a technology which was in the labs is now being implemented. Why? Even I, who loves many of the changes and adopt them, sometimes feel that this type of stuff is stretch.

We have to watch these changes very carefully from multiple perspectives. We don’t control the adoption of many of these technologies by our users, so we need to have a strategy for support – widely referred to as the BYOD (Bring your own device) support. It is also extremely important to take advantage of some of these changes and emerging technologies for the collective benefit of the College. However, we need to be extremely careful about our choices. For example, we were keenly following Google’s Course Builder, but were not ready to recommend it to our faculty yet (lucky us!). As I noted above, it will be switched to an edX like platform within a couple of years of launch! Similarly mergers and acquisitions take place all the time in software industry. These are beyond our control, and almost always result in some changes sooner or later.

The observing of and guessing when and what to adopt is what makes us nervous. I would say that our choices have been pretty good so far. Of course, that depends on the eyes of the beholder!