Learning Commons Staff Meeting - May 08, 2008

Attendees:

• Ed Sargent
• Cheyenne Roduin
• Sukirti Ranade
• Michael Bresloff
• Ellen Kinamon (minutes)
• Michele Ng 

Time/Date/Location: 

     May 8, 2008 1:30-3:00 PM

Agenda:

• Advertising update
• "My Research" feature in Proquest
• Star Center vs. Learning Commons changeover
• Slogan - catch phrase
• Updating computers
• New streaming video tool

Notes:

Ed announced that July 1 the Learning Commons will no longer be part of instruction.  We will be under the VP of Extended Learning, Ray Nadolny.

This is part of the reorganization announced Wednesday 5/7 which will bring in a new interim VP of Instruction, move Shirley Metcalf to Executive VP of College Advancement, and create a new division of Extended Learning. 

Cheyenne talked about publicizing the Learning Commons (which is the new official name for the Library+) and directing attention to what we offer.  She has been working with Sheila Walton to find ways to advertise.  She plans to set up in the East Mall each quarter and adopt a bulletin board for the Learning Commons in the East Mall.  She mentioned that there are no signs allowed on glass, painted surfaces or designated boards.  She is not sure about if chalking on walkways is allowed.  She asked for suggestions on how, where and what to advertise.

Cheyenne said that if students are using the "My Research" feature in Proquest, this information will not be saved for them as we don't have that function.  Please inform students if they are attempting to save in that feature. They should email their research to themselves or copy research and citations in WORD and save the file.

Ed said that the old lwtcstarcenter.com will disappear and the lwtclearningcommons.com will be the new website officially July 1.  Forms and calendars have all

been moved to the new site.  The official browser for the Learning Commons is Firefox.  One of the recommended tools (Zotero) only works with Firefox, not Internet Explorer.

Cheyenne asked that we all brainstorm a new slogan for next week's meeting.  Also, students and staff should be trying out all databases for problems, glitches, etc.

Cheyenne began a discussion about the updating of the computers in the Learning Commons.  We need regular updates, but the student-workers cannot do this.  It requires a Deep Freeze password from IT and they don't want students to have it generally.  Ed said he will talk to Paul Hutton about IT regularly updating the computers through an imaging process.  We would tell them what we need on each computer.  Cheyenne said that a WIKI page could be created where we would all add to the list to get this process started. The laptops are 512K ram and we need at least a gigabyte of RAM on all the computers in the Learning Commons.   Office 2007 is currently on some of the computers, and Ed said he would talk to Paul about getting it on all the computers in the Learning Commons.  Students/staff  would have to be reminded to save their document in the 2003 format if they do not have Office 2007 at home.

Ed talked about podcasts, Ustream.com and other tools such as scribd.com and issuu.com.  Ed recommended all become familiar with the tools on the Learning Commons Tool link.  Ustream allows anyone with a camera and an internet connection to create a video presentation.  He recommended his class website www.optioncommand.com for review. 

Using/defining a common tagging system for the Learning Commons was discussed for use on the blog and WIKI.

Action Items:

Ed--work with Paul Hutton on updates and more RAM.

All--test databases, investigate, learn and use new Tools on the Learning Commons site and other recommended sites.

All--common tagging system ideas.