Instructional design, just like any type of design is often about eliminating extraneous elements and leaving the essential functions. I have recently been looking for a content management system/portal which would promote collaboration on a very large library initiative. I looked at PhpWebSite and Post Nuke. Neither one of these content management systems truly suited my needs. I almost entirely forgot about our course management system–Blackboard. When I looked at the product with fresh eyes, I was surprised to find that it suited my needs better than PhpWebSite or Post Nuke.

Our library initiative called for a reletively strict adherance to a implementation timeline. As a result, we needed a calendaring feature that would be prominantly available on the navigation menu. Although Blackboard 6.0 has a strong calendaring feature, they bury it among a bunch of other features that we had no need for. I need to bring this calendaring feature forward and eliminate these extraneous features. Doing this is by no means straight-forward. Here is how I did it:

1) First you need to add the “tools area” to your main menu by clicking on “Manage Course Menu” in the “Control Panel.” Then click on add “Tool Area.” Choose “Tools Area” from the “Area Type” drop down box. Click on “Submit.”

2) Now that you have opened up the potpurri of features available in “Tools Area”, you will create a link directly to the calendaring feature–without having to deal with all the other extraneous tools. In the “Manage Course Menu”, click on add “Course Link.” Click on the “Browse” button, choose the “Calendar” under the “Tools Area” in the pop-up window and click “OK” You now have created a direct link from the navigation menu to the calendar.

3) All you have to do now is delete the “Tools Area” from your navigation menu. Go to the “Manage Course Menu” in the “Control Panel” Click on the “remove” button next to “Tools Area”

VI is an editor that is natively available in the LINUX/UNIX operating system. It is rather difficult text processing tool to learn (By today’s standards). Some general notes:

1) You can only paste in “Insert Mode”

2) In “Command Mode” the keystroke “X” deletes the space to the right of the cursor

3) Hitting the “home” button puts you at the front of the current line.

I know–this is not very sexy stuff.

I recently wanted to get the IP address of my Linux server. I thought there might be a more elegant way of getting this information than starting LinuxConf. I searched the internet and found out that you can get the IP address at the terminal window by typing “ifconfig”. This returns a lot of other networking information and information about your network card. Quick note, if you type in “ifconfig” and you get something like “Command Cannot Be Found”–you will have to locate this utility with the “whereis” command. Look in the man pages for specific syntax.

When you connect to a new server (other than the EXU server/modules), you need to configure several .ini (configuration files).

The very first thing that you need to change is the server that you connect too in the “library.ini”
The path is: “c:\Al500\Alephcom500\Tab\Library.ini”

Some things that you need to remember when changing Library.ini:

1) Don’t use tabs when you space this file–>Use spaces.
2) Don’t erase the original configuration, just “comment” it out.
3) The program parses the .ini file from top to bottom. It knocks on the first door, second door, third door. The program opens the first door it comes to.
4) Don’t forget that the port needs to be changed.
5) This is a UNIX table–it is case sensitive.
6) You have to include your library’s libraries in the middle collumns.

The next thing to do is change the PERLIBS

The Perlibs file can be found at: “c:\AL500\(acq .,Cat., Circ.,)\Tab\per_lib.ini”

Some things that you need to remember:

1) Each module has its own PERLIB.ini—>but we do not edit all of them.
2) The PERLIB.ini files that we do not edit are: “catconv”, “sear”, and “alephcom” modules.
3) Once again, the application parses the “ini” file from top to bottom.
4) Be somewhat careful when you are adding libraries to the PERLIB files (modules)–it can be overdone. For example, you should not add the the Bib01 to the Serials module. This is because the Serials module interacts most with the Adm50 library, and if it is in the Bib library–it cannot work with the Adm library.

The last thing we do is edit the “Sear” module (This also requires editing the base.dat file).

We edit the Sear or OPAC module through the “Aadmn” module in the client.
1) Click on the “Aadmn” module in the client.
2) Look in the “Configuration” menu for “Libraries Manager.”
3) In the dialog box that appears, click on the “OPAC Bases.”
4) Add the Bib (01) and Auth (10) libraries to the top of the screen.

In The MARC record standard, the bibliographic record is a generic bibliographic record–it could be plopped down in any library anywhere. The Holdings and Item record are the library-specific information such as barcode, call number, collection….etc.

In ALEPH, collection codes do NOT control circulation (item status and patron status mandate circulation details). In other words, the intersection of item status and patron status mandate the loan period, among other things.

One of the most difficult and intangible qualities of any outstanding presentation is “Flow.” Presentations with “flow” seem organized, logical and easy to follow. Without this attribute, the students/audience may feel the presentation is disjointed. Worse yet, if your presentation is lacking “flow”–the audience may entirely stop paying attention.

In PowerPoint presentations, you can lose your audience rather quickly, simply by switching from PowerPoint to an external program such as a Web brower. I can’t tell you the number of times that I have seen a presenter fumble this transistion. For good reason, it isn’t easy to switch out of PowerPoint, without dropping the ball. Cutting down on the number of mouse-clicks when you make this transition can really remedy a bad transition. This week, I saw Jane Neale of NYLINK demonstrate a nifty little trick that enables the presenter to transition out of PowerPoint smoothly. The trick involves bringing the taskbar to the front of the screen–while PowerPoint is in slide show mode. This trick cuts the number of transition mouse-clicks in half. Here’s how it works. While in presentation mode, hit the “windows” and “tab” keys. This key-stroke brings up the taskbar. Then just pick the application that is minimized to the taskbar–SSSMMOOOOOOTH.