Anyway, last night wasn’t so bad, got to see one or two familiar faces, got to know my newer colleagues a lot more (like minded people they are).

…

Now… today, sitting in the main hall, listening to the housekeeping announcements. I’ll probably post more in a bit…

Friday (t-minus-3), was mainly spent tidying up some outstanding e-learning enquiries before the week’s end. There were a few relating to module materials hosting; some Moodle queries; and repling to a department who will be running some online examinations whilst we’re away at ALT-C. The rest of the day was spent  handing over some code for our new coursework submission system, an working out some last-minute oddities.

Saturday was mostly spent frantically looking for my wife’s laptop bag, to take to ALT-C. Although there was a brief interlude where we took one of our cats to the vet (cat is fine, just under the weather).

Today was spent packing, repacking, and charging various devices (mainly an exercise in finding the minimum number of leads for charging the maximum number of devices). I’ve spent the last two hours reading all the abstracts for ALT-C and working out my preferred options, and identified one or two that might be intersting to my colleagues.

I think that’s about it. Brief trip into work tomorrow, then on the train to Nottingham, and ALT-C begins…

I lean more towards the technology end of the Learning Technologist role; my background is in web design and development, with a bit of system’s administration and information management thrown in. In recent years I’ve worked on a few e-learning research projects, primarily related to e-assessment. In a roundabout way, I became a Learning Technologist for the University of Essex, in 2007.

Working for the university, I am currently involved in several  e-learning projects:

• Upgrading our QuestionMark Perception integration to version 5, for the new academic year. This is mainly working with the second of the three learning technologists, Marty (I know he’ll read this), improving our user interface, and integrating Perception with our student record system.
• Upgrading our online coursework submission service, which is an in-house development. Our third learning technologist, Alex, is working with one of our web colleagues, Janine (not on Twitter), to develop the main front-end website for users. Whilst I, work on the back-end services related to the system.
• Looking at digital lecture recording and subsequent podcasting to students. Those on the ALT-C mailing list will have seen that this is a very new and volatile issue for the sector, fraught with potential legal, quality assurance, and technical problems.

These are the three main projects I’ve been looking into this week, but this is in addition to the day-to-day user support and consultation. We work closely with our sister unit (Web Technology), and with the University’s Learning and Development team, based in Human Resources.

In the short-to-medium term, we’re hoping to take steps to reduce the administrative load for the three of us and departments across the University, which should mean that we can do more with the resources we have. Our longer term goals are to improve the quality of e-learning at the university, further embed it within teaching and learning, and continue to innovate and look ahead.

Crikey, looking at the clock, I’ve been working on this post for an hour and a half! I shall summarise with this; if you’re interested in the technical aspects of e-learning/learning-technology (.NET and PHP a speciality), and want to discuss ideas, give me a shout.

Anyway, it looks like I am now included in the ALT-C blogroll, you can see a link to all the others over at the ALT-C 2010 site. There was a bit of confusion as I had put all my ALT-C posts in a single category, but that’s now reorganised, serves me right for thinking it would be a ‘quick job’ at 10pm last night.

The amount of preparation that I still need to do for this year’s ALT-C is gradually dawning on me; I still need to work out which sessions I want to attend, and discuss any clashes/conflicts with my colleagues who are also attending; I need to work out what I am going to pack; I need to work out whether the EMCC has wireless, or whether I need to sort out mobile data… the list is a bit endless.

I’m going to leave it there for now, hopefully I’ll manage at least one post per day over the coming week or so, but I’ll also be tweeting a lot. You can find me over there as @bensteeples.

IIS4/IIS5 were aimed at classic ASP, which used CDONTS to send emails. CDONTS wasn’t aware of external mail servers, it assumed you’d run a single-box environment, so is hardcoded to use localhost and the cutdown SMTP service bundled with IIS: http://classicasp.aspfaq.com/email/can-i-use-a-remote-smtp-server-with-cdonts-newmail.html

IIS6 and above use the replacement, CDOSYS, which is aware of remote servers, so you don’t necessarily need your web server to run a local SMTP service: http://www.asp101.com/articles/john/cdosmtprelay/default.asp

IIS can still run a local/cutdown SMTP server, and this can still be managed via IIS.

IIS7 seems to further this concept and do away with local/cutdown SMTP service under IIS altogether. Although SMTP server can be installed on Windows2008, it’s considered a separate product (and not manageable from IIS7, IIS6 is used with it’s compatibilty mode); Instead, IIS has the option to use an external SMTP server.

http://weblogs.asp.net/steveschofield/archive/2006/12/19/iis7-post-23-vista-and-smtp-server-where-is-it.aspx (Note: Vista runs same ‘core’ as Windows 2008)

Just to give a recap on what I’ve been upto:

• I am now 29.
• I now know a little bit more about SQL Server and Windows Server, and a fair bit more about IIS6.
• I went to Bovington Tank Museum
• I had a drive about in a  Rally Car at Silverstone.
• I saw Blur play in Hyde Park

This struck me as odd.

Anyone born between those years would now be between 21 and 31, in five year’s time they’ll be between 26 and 36. So, by the point that our ‘five year plan’ has been realised, the student’s we’re aiming the strategy at will have graduated. Ok, there’s still the 30% of students who are postgraduates, plus those who are mature students (and hence over 21, and old enough to know better). But still, I can’t help but thinking we’ve already missed the boat.

The group we actually need to be focussing on are our digital natives, those born between 1988 and 1998 (and beyond). Looking at our plan, they’re now between 11 and 21, but in five year’s time that’d be 16 and 25. 16 is the age at which you start planning your future education, first with GCSE’s, and then with A-Levels two years later.

On top of this, you have to consider what it means to be a digital native. I was born firmly within the Generation Y era, and my wife is only just outside of it, but we are still left behind in some of today’s digital world (bebo anyone?). We can both remember getting on the internet in the early 90′s, but more importantly the ‘dark ages’ before that, when the idea of a schoolkid having the internet and a mobile phone was up there with moon bases and flying cars.
Someone now born in the era of the digital native, even at it’s lowest ebb of 1988, would have experienced the internet in some form or another by the time they started secondary school in 1999 (gonna party like it’s). And now we’re seeing that over 50% of 10 year olds have a mobile phone, rising to 95% of 16 year olds.

The landscape of the digital native is very different to that of Generation Y, and we should recognise that. We should start to plan for Gernation N.

Anyway, the aforementioned teahouse can be found in this view. You’ll want to stand at this point, to catch geisha entering/exiting the teahouse, geisha coming from the alleyway, and geisha coming from behind.

Check it out.