Six weeks before the term starts, I tell (as in verbal exchange shit) the person in charge of academic IT support that I want to post podcasts to the school's server space AND put a link on my course web page so that students can access the podcasts from any computer from any place with connectivity.
No problem came the reply followed by the standard "send me an e-mail."
A week later, I sent the required e-mail with the explanation that I wanted the school to host the podcasts and I would place a link on my course. I also provided the file names and file size.
I am working on it came the reply.
Three week (three weeks since the initial request and two weeks since the initial e-mail) before the term starts, I left a voice mail and sent another e-mail to the academic IT support person.
A reply! A reply! Oh joy, a fucking reply!<
You can put this stuff on Blackboard very easily wrote the academic IT support person.
No, I said. Blackboard is fucking evil. It reflects everything (and I mean absolutely everything) wrong with the higher education industry. I restated my request.
Okay, I am looking into it.
A week (five weeks since my initial request) before the term starts, I exchange a series of voice mails and send another e-mail that contains the file names, the file types, and the file sizes. Again, I restate my request.
The Friday before the term starts, I tell (more verbal exchange shit) the academic IT support person that I need to know whether my request can be met because the term starts on Monday. I want to show students how to access the podcast for the first class.
No problem. I am looking into it.
Monday comes with a message that a possible solution is in the offing. I meet the class and briefly mention the possibility of podcasts.
Tuesday arrives with a solution. It is not elegant or perfect but it will do. I have my server space and write instructions for students to access the podcasts
Wednesday, I explain how to access the podcast then I have a couple of students replicate the instructions. It works. Oh, joy!
Wednesday night, I receive the first e-mail from a student who cannot access the podcasts. Instead a list of linked, downloadable podcasts, the student sees a white screen. I know this student, who is one of the most supremely competent, confident, and patient people. I follow the instructions from my house and replicate the student's experience.
Those fucking idiots in the fucking IT department never understood what I asked for. They did not listen to my request. Everything I tell my students to do (listen to the instructions; listen to the data; listen to the text) those fuckers in IT did not do.
Yes, the podcasts are accessible but only if the student happens to walk by one of the four computer labs on campus. Do those fucking idiots in the fucking IT department understand how the internet is supposed to work? Do they understand the point of the internet?
The administration has frozen wages for the past two years and cut the retirement contribution. Plus, my department has had two new lines pulled and three open positions remain unfilled.
We could give raises, restore the retirement contribution, and my department could be fully staffed in one strategic decision.
Fire those lazy, incompetent fucks in the IT department and shut it down. Give every faculty member an account with box.net and tell him or her to manage his or her courses with wordpress.org. For the faculty who cannot give up Blackboard, then tell them to pay for it. Tell them to take the pacifier out of their mouths, chew solid foods, and wear big boy IT pants. If they can't, then they get an IBM Selectric II and some mimeograph paper.
Yes, Leo, they fuck you at the IT Department
"Fire those lazy, incompetent ****s in the IT department and shut it down."
ReplyDeleteGeez... someone from my Department (or many others) would think that I had written the above. There could be a separate web site for "College IT Misery".
PCs, networking, software... are they competent at anything?
A couple of years ago, I had a simple request for some system stuff that "they" needed to do on their end for some web pages I look after (couldn't do it on my end due to "them" restricting everyone's privileges). The guy said "what you are requesting is not possible!" I said: "Are you kidding? Do you want me to come over and show you how it's done?" [I thought, but did not say, "...you MFer!"] Somehow, the issue was resolved in about an hour.
Right now, I have a request JUST to have something installed on my office PC because I(!) can't do it because the GDMFing PC is locked down. It's just a simple installation of software that the university distributes to faculty/staff for office OR home use. After a week, no response.
The Asst Director of IT is surely tired of my snarkiness by now.
OMG are you me? I have had such a set of similar experiences, although I was told "Blackboard SHOULD be able to do this, but we don't know how". Also that "no one uses rss" and also that "no one uses IRC".
ReplyDeleteI am going to use libsyn for my podder, so students can get it from the iTunes.
Fuck Blackboard and the horse it road in on.
Hee! I meant rode!
ReplyDeleteBlackboard is fucking evil. I am having to use it for student secure submissions, but moire and more I am switching material over to Weebly. You can get a free educator's account, and they claim security for assignments. Already I have Weebly mirroring the Blackboard information, but at Weebly I control it.
ReplyDeleteAn alternative, if you have the skills, is to do what a friend of mine does and host her own website. Her faculty site redirects invisibly to the site SHE controls. If she expands her server space she is planning to le tme use it, but there are other alternatives out there.
Another colleague has everything on Google Docs, which he also has integrated with Blackboard so that his just looks as if it is on Blackboard. THe problem for me with Google Docs is their intellectual property policy, which means that, if they ever want to raise a stink, that all his work is theirs. Not going there.
My IT department is as bad as yours--they want everything uniform so they only need to learn one set of protocols (understandable, I have to admit), but that leads to lowest common denominator. I have worked around the damn Outlook server (use IMAP to access the web mirror that they have to provide, and then remember to clean out your mailbox now and then), and thankfully I know a superb instructional designer who goes to the Web 2.0 conferences and brings back USABLE stuff.
She has a lot of material here: learninginthecloud.wikispaces.com and I have a list of Web 2.0 and other useful sources here: http://digitalreformation.wikispaces.com/Useful+and+FREE+Web+Tools
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ReplyDeleteWhy not put them on BB until they get it sorted out?
ReplyDeleteIn my previous career I spent 10 years working IT. That experience made me more patient with genuine hurdles (and there are many), but, it also made me less patient with poor customer service. I once saw a help desk person answer a question with “they don’t pay me enough to know EVERY system.” That was about 9 am. By lunchtime he was gone. At my next job I saw an IT person who was always that rude, and often far worse. They promoted him. Argh.
Rather than assume your IT staff screwed up (and they may well have!) did you ask them WHY they only made the podcasts available onsite? For example, did they think there was a copyright problem? Copyright issues have given me headaches putting things on reserve at my school’s library.
As someone who has been on both sides of the desk on this, I suggest you approach the head of IT in a calm, professional manner. Don’t even HINT that someone on the IT staff was incompetent (let the IT head made that determination himself) and tell them that this problem is impacting your ability to teach the class and that it needs to be fixed immediately. Give them 24-48 hours, then, if they don’t fix it, bump it up a level to the department chair or the dean level.
Despite the fact that I think BB is truly evil and I loathe dealing with boneheaded five-generations-back tech, I agree with M. A. Mark about 1) presuming goodwill in conversations and 2) copyright. Copyright issues are thorny, and many people fall afoul of laws while thinking they are complying with them, esp. in the areas of "fair use" (much more restrictive than many think, esp. for readings that you use over and over).
ReplyDeleteActually, putting a podcast or a screencast/You Tube video is simple. If you have the Mp3 file of your podcast, go to the folder where you want the podcast to appear. Select "Add file." Upload it to Blackboard's File Manager from your hard drive. Voila ... a clickable podcast. Embedding video is even easier. Instead of adding a file, click "Create file" and select "use HTML" (do NOT bother with the HTML creator). Paste the embed code into the file, save it, and voila, an embedded video.
Those are about the only things that BB makes simple, but there you have it. If your upload is timing out, transfer your Mp3 file to a faster computer or one that is running windows (I can't upload mp3s from my Ubuntu desktop, so I save them in Dropbox and upload them with my Netbook.)
Don't even get me started on the IT department. Although I must admit, they just called me to let me know that they will be restarting the ticket system I instituted in the dean's office so that we can try and funnel the email shitstorms into the appropriate channels instead of people CCing everyone on needing curtains or something. (The curtains didn't show up yet, by the way, but the sun hasn't been out in weeks, so I'm okay here). This call is a definite step up, usually they just restart servers while I am in the middle of a class or something. But they have learned, painfully, that I kick up a fuss when they cock up. I also killed one of their pet projects, publicly. Got me a lot of brownie points from my fellow proffies.
ReplyDeleteThe reason that the people in the IT department often appear incompetent is that they are. If they could land a better paying job in industry they would be out the door in no time and leave their geek cups on the desk. But they don't understand half of what they are supposed to do, so they just do the bits they understand and hope the rest passes over.
Their job is to lock down securely all the systems so they don't get their asses whupped. The easiest way to do this is to not let people actually use the computers to do any real work. And Blackboard is brilliant at this. It is really and truly a nightmare. I'm a geek and I used to actually do research around this stuff. When forced to use Blackboard or any of its evil sisters (Note: Moodle is not evil) I just hook up links to my stuff that I put up somewhere else on the 'net. Of course, it has to be my stuff and not other people's stuff.
My secret solution for solving IT problems at the university is to instruct a student in the solution to what I want and send them over. They can show the "IT"-guys what to do, and then they can make a big show about what they offer to us. Of course, I realize that I am in a privileged situation, as I often know exactly what needs to be done so I can do what I want.
Our IT department also runs our web site, this pretty much sums it up: http://xkcd.com/773/
I've had my own fight with the IT department. I got stuck in a computer classroom for one class and a classroom with no technology at all for another. To split the difference, I bring in a computer cart to the one and don't use the computers much in the other. However, the lure of those pretty screens is too much for some students to bear, so I asked IT about getting that software that allows me to hijack the student computers from the main terminal because they WILL NOT pay attention. Their reply? "Shut all the computers down manually before class." Sure. Because there's only 30 computers and I've only got 10 minutes between the time the class before mine leaves and mine starts. All the time in the world. Snarl.
ReplyDeleteYou could host your own podcasts and bypass IT. Just Google "free podcast hosting."
ReplyDeleteDitto what Patty just said.
ReplyDeleteMy advice, if you're technically savvy:
- Buy a $200 computer.
- Install linux. (Ubuntu is nice.)
- Set up your own web server.
- Tell IT that you need a static IP address, DNS name, and open ports through the firewall. Get out brass knuckles and prepare for a fight.
- When they finally relent, simply manage your own web site.
At least, it worked for me. I've found that I can write my own online tools more easily than I can figure out the documentation for Blackboard.
I swear, I didn't write this post. I wish I had. Especially the last paragraph -- it is epic.
ReplyDeleteI am totally fed up with our IT department, and my work web site is about to move off the college server onto my own personal web hosting as soon as I have time to migrate it.
Our unit's IT support staff have an office which is always locked, and no one answers the door, and a phone line which when you call has the message "We don't check messages on this phone line." And if you try to get help from another unit's IT staff they say "you're not in our unit. we can't help you. bye." FML.
ReplyDeleteAnd we have campus-wide licenses for things like SPSS, Adobe Acrobat, etc, that last for one year, and EVERYONE KNOWS the exact date when the license expires, and yet every year there's a 3 week-1 month window of non-functionality between the old license expiring and the campus IT staff getting the new license installed. Fuckers.
Wow how'd you make tv in your magic light up note?
ReplyDeleteThanks Suzy From Square State! I had forgotten about that xkcd cartoon. By coincidence, I had an Email discussion with the Web Admin guy today about the horrendous change in the university web site and how it violates most UI principles.
ReplyDeleteHowever, if I sent it now, I would just look snarky. I might do so anyway.