Wow - a productive first day!
Long's Electronics in Birmingham is a vendor at the show. They will be able to provide quotes on classroom technology type equipment for us! Benny Bliss will be a good contact at Long's.
Attending a great session about eportforlios. The presenter had researched multiple eportfolio options - many of which were expensive, hosted off-site, a huge learning curve, and a history of multiple follow-up support needed. Therefore, the eportfolio system selected is Adobe Pro Extended (the Extended allows 3D rendering of cad drawings). Way cool. Totally think this is a super, cost effective model. They have the students upload their portfolio to Share - a hosting service not associated with the university. They also use Adobe Connect Pro for allowing students to upoad student teaching video files.
After the presentation, I met Ron Richard, National Sales Manager for Higher Education, from Adobe. I told him about MSU's Flash Media Server and our need to use Adobe products for solutions. However, I told him that there were way too many Adobe products with confusing names and we didn't know how all of this fit together. Ron totally agreed with me and recognizes this as a problem with the Adobe products. He indicated that the FMS and other products are not marketed and bundled effectively for higher ed. I requested a sales team come to MSU and pitch products to us. He was eager to comply with an engineering sales team based upon problems/solutions we described. He also said there would be a possibility to feature MSU as a case study since these types of questions are not unusual. Eeep - more presentations for MSU!!!
Went to a good session on going green. Got some good ideas to help with Class Tech initiative.
* show the energy impact so users will be more informed (we have a probem with users not turning lectern completely off)
* The thing that gets measured gets done. Measure usage.
* Messy edge (as opposed to the bleeding edge - I'm on the messy edge for so many projects).
* "Ready, Fire, Aim mentality - just liked this
School House Rocks was amazing - hearing one of the main composers perform was just the short of phenominal !!!
Digital Signage presentation - learned a lot about applications (communication, menu board, way finding, interactive donor wall, financial market analysis labs). Apparently the "financial market analysis labs" are very hot for College of Business schools.
Schools for Facebook - this product is 1.5 years old and has been piloted with 5 universities. This is an absolute genius product that is 100% no-brainer. Facebook app that is an "official" site of the university. The app interfaces with banner to assign classes, groups, etc. Product starts with potential students and continues with alumni groups. I talked with the President and the CEO-CoFounder.
No comments:
Post a Comment