Tips for Streamlining Assignment Workflows
by Layne Nordgren After the first few assignments of the semester, you may begin wondering what you can do to streamline your workflow in collecting, grading, and distributing feedback for assignments. Though there are a number of ways to collect Assignments, such as by email…
Quick Tips for Improving Your Sakai Site for Students
by Layne Nordgren Now that the semester is underway and much of the heavy lifting of creating and populating your Sakai course site is complete, perhaps you’re ready to consider some fine-tuning to improve your course site for students. One option to consider would be…
Summer Technology Renovations 2015
by Patrick Wakefield For most people, the beginning of summer signifies the start of barbecues, campfires, and lazy river rafting. Unlike most people, the beginning of summer marks the start of something else for Instructional Technologies: install season. Every summer, a few classrooms are selected…
Sakai Rich-Text Editor Upgrade on Aug. 8, 2015
On Saturday, August 8, 2015, Sakai will be out of service from 7:00AM to 7:30AM PDT in order to upgrade the CKEditor , the rich-text editor in Sakai. The CKEditor is embedded within many Sakai tools including Lessons, Mailtool, Assignments, Announcements, etc. As a result…
Sunset for ½” VHS Videotape Players
by Layne Nordgren and Travis Pagel For over 25 years Video Home System (better known as ½” VHS ) players provided access to analog video recordings in classrooms. But as technology continued to improve, this format was gradually supplanted by DVD players. What this means…
Classroom Podium Videos Just Launched!
Instructional Technologies is proud to announce that three new “Classroom Podium” videos just went live via our YouTube channel and web site. Instructors can now easily familiarize themselves with classroom technology they will be using at the start of the semester, from the convenience of…
Recording an Album
by Patrick Colin Wakefield Last July I was contacted by a PLU music faculty member, Erik Steighner, about recording an album. Erik, as a saxophone professor, obviously loves music for saxophone. His dream was to record an album of modern chamber music for saxophone featuring…
Sakai 2.9: A Look-Ahead to New Features
by Layne Nordgren and Sean Horner New in Sakai 2.9 In a previous blog post and a corresponding email sent to all PLU employees last month about the Sakai upgrade to version 2.9 on Fri., June 6, we had alluded to forthcoming details about the new…
Stop Motion for Sustainability – Behind the Scenes
by Katie Martell Recently I collaborated on a project with the Wang Center for Global Education and PLU Sustainability. PLU was recently selected as a Finalist for the 2014 Second Nature Climate Leadership Awards , and i n short, our group was tasked with creating…
Lagerquist – Behind the Scenes (Pre-Installation)
by Patrick Wakefield Out With the Old The Lagerquist Concert Hall in Mary Baker Russel has been used for recitals and events since the building was constructed in 1997. While many people attend the events in the hall, few know of the work being done…