One more weekend of Football is out of the way. I thought Patriots played a sloppy game and thanks to their defense and a missed field goal by the Ravens, they will be playing in Superbowl. The hype of the Patriots/Giants Superbowl rematch is on full swing and the whole Tom Coughlin/Bill Belichick relationship while they were both assistant coaches with the Giants is back in the limelight. Bill Belichick is a Wesleyan Alum, class of ’75, and has explained how he applies what he learned in College in NFL. I am really looking forward to an exciting Superbowl a couple of weeks from now. We have a big party planned in our house and the Giants fans amongst our visitors have back row seats with heat turned down and will be served warm beer while we in the front row seat will enjoy the warmth, better food and nice cold beer. For that one day, I don’t mind being called a bad host by a few!
As we begin the Spring semester, I am happy to talk about something that has been in the works for quite some time. It is a fact that technologies are coming at us at a rapid pace and they are changing the landscape in Higher Ed in ways that no one every anticipated. On the one hand, Higher Ed institutions have been the most influential in terms of research and development and through those, have affected tremendous changes in the world. On the other hand, they have also been very resistent to changes when it comes to teaching, learning and research, all for good reasons. As Larry Summers wrote in his NY Times piece recently “My predecessor as Harvard president, Derek Bok, famously compared the difficulty of reforming a curriculum with the difficulty of moving a cemetery.” I believe that we need a strategy and an ongoing plan that prepares the College for the changes in technologies and how it affects the Library and the College’s core academic mission. And we want to do develop this plan not in isolation, but in collaboration with the faculty, students, staff and the alumnae.
We have planned a symposium series for the Spring titled “Liberal Arts Learning in the Digital Age” to facilitate these conversations.
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It was a fabulous weekend of football and I was glad to see the Patriots crush the Broncos. The other games were also good, especially the upset by the Giants. My wife reminded me of past life as an ardent Giants fan – a leftover from when I was a grad student going through years of agony of supporting a substandard team until Bill Parcells and Phil Simms turned things around. Somewhere along the line I switched my allegiance, primarily because of children. Anyways, this Sunday will be another terrific day and though I hope that the Pats go all the way and win it all, it is one game at a time at this point!
We also had an adventurous and long night last night, trying to get my Prius up the hill in snow onto Weston Terrace. Somehow survived all of that. It is not the morning after that adventure that I wanted to write about, rather one of our other major transition – Project Goodbye MM!.
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New Year arrived roughly the same way that it always does. The usual gatherings on New Year’s eve, watching Dick Clark and the Ball drop, toasting etc. etc. We had a rather quite party this year and settled down in the basement. A group of friends who wanted to surprise us came home to find no lights and wanted to head back. But just to make sure, they called and of course, we were home in the basement. They joined and the party was on with a fine bottle of Champagne.
One of the resolutions I made was not to send emails to my staff during the holiday break unless it was absolutely essential. I believe I kept that up! Yay!
Yes, like many out there, I made a few resolutions. Of course, they are personal ones and I am not going to discuss them here. These resolutions also have a very predictable path – you do what you resolved to do in January and then it goes downhill. I actually keep data on all of these and this path is evident. So, why even bother? Well, at least for a short period of time you are more disciplined about something.
What I want to talk about here is less of resolutions than some of the plans for the upcoming year at the College. (more…)
Here I am in warm, sunny Jupiter, Florida for a week of golf, parties and just relaxation for the holidays. Wait, relaxation? No, that does not come to me naturally. Soon after we arrived here, we grabbed something to eat and hit the golf course for 9 holes. My sons and I had a very good first outing, the last 2 holes were played in not so ideal conditions, but we were able to locate our balls. I have been up since 5:30 AM, my usual wakeup time, attending to College work – we have some purchases to finalize because we got “excellent” deals because of the end of the year. It is yet another game that we all have to play.
I am happy to say that I have brought a different attitude to negotiating purchases at Wellesley and I am thrilled to see some of the staff practicing it effectively. We have saved significant amount through these bargaining which are going towards academic initiatives such as classroom technologies and academic software purchases.
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This week so far has been a difficult one – too many late nights. A couple of holiday parties, meeting a good friend in Boston and then the headache caused by the OS upgrade to my machine, which I discuss in detail later. I am looking forward to the trip to Jupiter, FL next week with my family. my sons and I plan to play golf and hopefully get some time to relax too.
I was all excited by the prospect of upgrading to Lion sometime in October when I got the DVD. Here we are in mid-December and finally it happened. My frustration with the upgrade is caused by unique circumstances surrounding my own computer, however, there have been more than the usual complaints about a Mac OS upgrade like the one discussed here.
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I am not sure if things have changed the way we celebrate the holiday season or that I am getting older. It just feels so different. I remember the excitement around looking forward to the month of December. I distinctly remember how happy I was walking along 5th avenue in NY City looking at all the displays and going to Barnes and Nobles downtown to pick up books on sale. I was in NY City last Friday and didn’t even occur to me to do these things or the Rockefeller Center to see the Christmas tree and watch the skaters in the skating rink. I am sure that all of these are still happening and that I am just geting old and my interests are elsewhere.
Our children have grown and the celebrations and buying gifts for them have changed so dramatically, partly due to technologies. I remember how I was running from store to store like a mad man trying to locate that one missing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Character that our elder son so badly wanted. I literally snatched it out of the hands of an old lady in one store after not finding it in seven stores. She was deliberating whether to take that one or another and the moment she put it down, I took it and rushed out. It was a rare commodity then! And boy, it was indeed a happy holiday when the little kid was thrilled to see it under the Christmas tree! Good old days!
A year has gone by since I began at Wellesley around the Holiday season. The creation of the Advisory Council for Library and Technology Policies coincided very closely with my official arrival date and I had a chance to review and comment on the legislation. The first meeting of the ACLTP Committee was held on Wed. 12/15/2010 at 4 PM. Happy Anniversary to ACLTP!
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I have been extremely busy (with meetings, some coding and a retreat) for the past several days that I have not had time to write a post. I was supposed to take this week off, but an important meeting today required my attendance, so I am working today and most of tomorrow. This will have an effect on what we serve for our Thanksgiving guests (just kidding). I love Thanksgiving and this year, in addition to the usual group of friends, another who has not been able to come will join us. For us, the celebrations extend into Friday and Saturday when groups of friends and extended family who each celebrate Thanksgiving with their own families gather in our house for more celebrations.
Many of us are deeply concerned and frustrated by the bickering taking place in Washington, the most recent one is the lack of compromise on deficit reduction. Rather than concentrating on trying to solve the economic issues which are crippling us, it appears that our esteemed lawmakers seemed to have found time to draft SOPA on the back of PIPA (Protect Intellectual Property Act) passed earlier. The reason for urgency is partly related to fixing the stealing of intellectual property which is indirectly affecting the economy, however, it is so far reaching that we will all be affected severely if passed.
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We have reached a major milestone in our conversion to Google. With a few exceptions, all of our current students, faculty and staff have been moved to Google Apps for Education. Kudos to the hard work of the Google Team. They did a terrific job of planning, training, executing, responding to emergencies and most importantly providing the TLC where needed. We are working towards moving the Meeting Maker calendar over to Google Calendar. I hear that many departments are not waiting – they have already moved.
This transition, like all others, has brought changes in the way we use technology for communication. FirstClass, which was self-contained, was the single point of communication for the campus. We are trying to do the same with tools that Google Apps provides, but it is not the same and raising concerns.
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It is already the end of October and Happy Halloween to you all. Given the wide power outage in CT due to the storm this past weekend, I am not sure how much trick or treating is likely to happen. I remember the days of planning for Halloween with our children, initially my wife yielding to their customized costume choices and then over the years, preference for what is available in the stores that is the latest and greatest to ordering them on the web. We all have gone through the years when there were scares about candies laced with poison and other things to worrying about the amount of sugar in take that a day like today brings. I think this is all fun.
Sept-Oct also happens to be a festival heavy month for us in India. Since Hindu calendar is lunar, our festivals do not fall on fix dates or sometimes not even in the same month. Two major festivals – Navaratri and Deepavali (also known as Diwali in the North) – are celebrated during these months. Deepavali is like the Christmas equivalent for us in terms of the way it is celebrated.
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Things got a little bit out of hand this past week. On Friday night we went back to CT. I came back to Boston on Sunday to go see the Patriots. An exciting game that Patriots managed to win. That night, I went back home very late. Since I was unable to find a reasonable flight from CT to Philly (where EDUCAUSE conference was held), I decided to take the Acela express. This required me to get up very early and go to New Haven, only to find that the train was 45 minutes late. However, it was a comfortable ride and the difference between flying and riding the Acela in terms of the time spent was roughly the same.
The free WiFi on Acela was unreliable. So I used my Verizon 4G MiFi which also was not reliable. I bet I had far better luck with my 3G when I used to ride Metro North. Could this be because of WiFi interference? Could it be because Acela was going fast? Who knows? We need more reliable connectivity. I was pleasantly surprised to see Acela full both ways!
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