October 2007 Archives

I have only begun to scratch the surface of all of the ITS blogs that have sprung up since the pilot was opened up. And with even just a little scratching the possibilities continue to astound me.

I am better connected to what's happening in the library world, for example. I currently subscribe to Mairéad's, Mark's, Lisa German's, John Meier's, Peter Brantley's (UCB), and Lorcan Dempsey's, blogs . Not all are at Penn State and part of the local pilot, but all are related because the "outside" blogs were found by reading others' blogs.

I've been getting a lot out of Mark Linton's blog from TNS.

One of the newer one's I've subscribed to that I've enjoyed is Chris Stubbs' in TLT.

I know there are many more out there and that I can use the directory to try and find them. I was just calling out how much I'm getting out of it personally without even having gone on much on a hunt. Please feel free to comment with a pointer to your own blog or if you have any advice that goes beyond how to search our blogging directory.

After I make some sense out of how I'll organize the ITS blogs I read, I can see that I've got a larger process to undertake to organize the many faculty blogs that are quite active.

Continued thanks to all involved in making this effort go.

I'm always on the lookout for activities to personally participate in or learn from to better help me understand what life is really like for faculty and students - and staff in other units. And I also think about ways we can systemically improve ITS' overall appreciation for the daily life of others because I strongly believe that that perspective is fundamentally critical to designing and deploying useful services. That's the thinking behind trying to organize a fairly sizable effort for move-in weekend, for example.

Someone shared with me a youtube video this week made by some students at another university. While all story tellers exercise editorial control over their material, this video is sobering even if one takes the most cynical of views - in my opinion. I highly recommend watching it as we think about how students' perspectives and needs should be reflected in our strategic planning discussions.