Soft Crack

It’s Friday, August 28th, 2009 and welcome to episode 96 of TechTalk4Teachers, I’m Tom Grissom. It is now officially the first week of fall semester classes and we have met all the deadlines for having the technology infrastructure in place for a successful start to the school year. This summer has been particularly busy with a large number of new faculty and staff computers as well as the new netbook project we are implementing this fall. To listen click on the Play button > Download MP3 It is always interesting getting ready for the first day of school as there is literally a tidal wave of faculty, staff, and students that show up all at once ready to hit the ground running. We survived the first week of school and can breathe a sigh of relief as all the hard work over the summer has paid off with a smooth launch to the school year. We are still in orientation mode as there have been many meetings this week and I will be meeting with several departments to give updates and provid...

It’s Monday, August 17th, 2009 and welcome to episode 95 of TechTalk4Teachers, I’m Tom Grissom. We are fast approaching the first day of fall semester classes and there still remains much to do in schools all across America. Technology support staff are making that final push toward the first day of school. Many schools have already started, at EIU our official first day back to school is now one week away, we begin on August 24th. To listen click on the Play button > Download MP3 Summertime is a time when technological equipment gets updated with the installation of new purchases and is also a time for installing program patches and upgrading programs to the latest versions. In addition, there are often many moves that occur as faculty and staff change offices and computer labs are deconstructed for waxing of floors and then reconstructed again. All of this takes time and effort and before we know it it is again time for the first day of school. The ITC has been very busy this sum...

It’s Friday, July 31st, 2009 and welcome to episode 94 of TechTalk4Teachers, I’m Tom Grissom. It is the last day of July and you know what that means. Tomorrow marks the beginning of August and that means that the first day of school cannot be far away. For those of us in the northern hemisphere and particularly the United States many of us will be heading back to school for that first day of the fall term in August. To listen click on the Play button > Download MP3 Please remember that many staff, particularly technology staff, never left. Summer-time is a time for upgrading machines and systems during the so-called slow time of summer. This cycle has gradually been compressed over the years so that there really is no slow time for support personnel anymore. It is also becoming more common for teachers to work throughout the summer as there are many summer school programs across the US. Upgrading T-1, DS-3, and other network connections is becoming a necessity for schools across t...

It’s Monday, July 20th, 2009 and welcome to episode 93 of TechTalk4Teachers, I’m Tom Grissom. Today is the 40th Anniversary of man landing and walking on the Moon. I have provided some links in the show notes related to this anniversary and its importance to the United States and the world. To listen click on the Play button > Download MP3 I grew up in the 1960’s and 1970’s and remember the Space race well. It had a profound impact on me. One of the iconic images I have is the TV shot of the Saturn V rocket clearing the tower. I remember seeing the big red U S A letters streaming vertically upward reaching for the stars as the rocket lifted-off. I also remember watching live TV coverage of that first step that Neil Armstrong took for all of mankind 40 years ago today. NASA at 50 http://discoveryeducation.com/NasaAt50/ The Space race is also probably one of the reasons I ended up in the teaching profession and definitely why I pursued a science degree. It was as though America prope...

It’s Friday, July 10th, 2009 and welcome to episode 92 of TechTalk4Teachers, I’m Tom Grissom. I am back from the National Educational Computing Conference held last week and I am trying to find my “techlegs” and get caught up with work that was left undone while attending this conference. I heard estimates of over 18,000 people attending NECC this year, by the size of the crowds in Washington DC this was probably not far off. Despite the workload piling up back home, this conference was certainly worth the trip. To listen click on the Play button > Download MP3 Record attendance at NECC 2009 http://www.iste.org/AM/Template.cfm?Template=/CM/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=23923 For those of us that are relied upon as frontline technology support taking time away from work is difficult to schedule and we tend to pay for this time away with a full in-box and stacks of to-do’s that were neglected when we were away. Despite this cost getting away to conferences such as NECC is very valu...

It’s Friday, June 26th, 2009 and welcome to episode 91 of TechTalk4Teachers, I’m Tom Grissom. This weeks episode is a short one as I am in the process of heading out to the National Educational Computing Conference in Washington, DC better known as NECC that will be taking place next week. To listen click on the Play button > Download MP3 NECC is one of those conferences that I try to make it to at least every other year as it is focused on educational technology at the K-12 level. Since EIU is a teacher preparation institution this conference allows me the chance to connect with others from all around the world in person and share our experiences with one another. The conference has a huge vendor area as well as a large number of sessions provided by practicing K-12 teachers. If you would like to experience some of the conference with me and other attendees you can follow me on my Twitter account, twitter.com/tomgrissom , you can also search for the #NECC09 hash tag as many people ...

It’s Friday, June 19th, 2009 and welcome to episode 90 of TechTalk4Teachers, I’m Tom Grissom. This week the world has witnessed the ongoing struggles of Iranian citizens as they work through the aftermath of their recent election. What is interesting is that Twitter has become a new News source and its users have actually mocked traditional media and chided the old media for not covering what was happening in Iran immediately after the Iranian election this past week. To listen click on the Play button > Download MP3 I first became aware of this by noticing a tag in Twitter named #CNNfail last Saturday night as it was becoming a trending topic in Twitter. Many people on Twitter that night wanted to see live coverage of the aftermath of the Iranian election and expressed their displeasure with CNN for not broadcasting live coverage by using the #CNNfail tag. CNN instead was broadcasting re-runs, and in the opinion of many on Twitter, were not covering an international event of intere...

It’s Friday, June 12th, 2009 and welcome to episode 89 of TechTalk4Teachers, I’m Tom Grissom. Today marks the end of an era in analog TV broadcasting. Today is the last day that NTSC analog television signals will be broadcasted in the United States. Please be sure to check on your less technically-adept friends and family this weekend to make sure that they can still receive the new digital TV signals that we are now solely reliant upon. To listen click on the Play button > Download MP3 For myself and some of my neighbors in this part of rural Illinois this transition already has impacted the choices of TV channels available. Back in February I helped my grandparents install a new national branded digital TV converter box that allowed them to watch a few local stations. After having this converter box for some time now my grandparents were not satisfied with it and stated that the old way was better. After quizzing them about what they were missing they stated that there were a few...

It’s Monday, June 1st, 2009 and welcome to episode 88 of TechTalk4Teachers, I’m Tom Grissom. This week I would like to focus on a new project that the ITC is currently undertaking this summer involving netbooks. We have recently ordered two sets of netbooks to be placed in mobile carts that will be used to provide an on-demand computer lab type environment for our classrooms. To listen click on the Play button > Download MP3 This will provide an instant 1 to 1 computing solution for our students. The netbook carts will be placed in two different buildings to serve the needs of our faculty and students. We are very excited to add an additional building on campus that previously did not have this capability so that more of our students have an opportunity to utilize technology resources. Add in the fact that we saved over 70 percent that a full-sized laptop cart solution would have cost and our business managers are also smiling. When you can equip an entire classroom for 30 cents on ...

It’s Sunday, May 24th, 2009 and welcome to episode 87 of TechTalk4Teachers, I’m Tom Grissom. Last week I talked a little bit about the power of real-time events for learning and how current events can add value in the classroom. I gave an overview of the website called spacevidcast and how they were using Twitter to add value to their followers. Since that time I have been following Astro_Mike on Twitter who is in real-life NASA Astronaut Mike Massimino, a mission specialist that was aboard the recent STS-125 Space Shuttle Atlantis that just completed a successful mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope. To listen click on the Play button > Download MP3 Following Astro_Mike has given me a different perspective than I would have had otherwise regarding the latest Space Shuttle mission. Here is one of Astro_Mike’s tweets from the mission “From orbit: We see 16 sunrises and sunsets in 24 hrs, each one spectacular as the sun lights up the atmosphere in a spectrum of colors” http://...

It’s Saturday, May 16th, 2009 and welcome to episode 86 of TechTalk4Teachers, I’m Tom Grissom. It is the week after final exams here at Eastern Illinois University but things have not slowed down a bit at the ITC. I was intending to get this podcast out earlier this week but we have been overwhelmed by the sheer volume of work to be done. End of the semester duties including final grading as well as preparations for the beginning of the new summer semester have kept us all very busy this week. To listen click on the Play button > Download MP3 Throw in some recent new technology purchases, end of year budget balancing, and the verification of inventories and we have more than enough work to keep us very busy over the entire summer. We have a lot of exciting things happening this summer at the ITC and I will share what we are doing as we rollout several new projects so stay tuned to TechTalk4Teachers for more. Semester schedules are now compressed and one semester flows to the next wi...