This is the age of the internet and those who are most adept at using it are the ones who get noticed. Personal and professional websites and blogs and other internet formats can make more people aware of your work and raise your profile, provided those are done well enough and take advantage of the kinds of things that search engines use when people look for information.Stop on by if you want to see it. I'll be posting the slides and my notes here afterwards. Update: The slides are online at Blogging at Case. Notes for the slides are available in the print out version. Audio of the presentation should be coming soon ( Murphy willing).
As a CWRU (Law) graduate who does not live in Ohio, I have been anxious to learn more about what was going on at CWRU ever since Dr. Hundert's resignation tipped me off to the fact that all was not well with the institution. I'm grateful for this BLOG because it has helped me get a sense of what led to Hundert's resignation and what the pressing issues are now at CWRU (as opposed to the carefully-worded letters from him and the Board Chair, etc., which told us outlanders very little about the actual situation). As a contributor, I'm interested in knowing that my donations are being spent wisely. It sounds as if some accounting is called for now - it also sounds as if the current Board of Trustees is too large, unwieldy and therefore incapable of real oversight. It needs to be comprised of individuals from all parts of the country -- who will be less parochial and more interested in making CWRU a nationally recognized institution. And indeed more board members should be alumni - the people who are the greatest stakeholders with respect to CWRU's reputation and future prospects.I like see all of the fostering of discussions and the community empowerment. It's good stuff. The conversations happen all over the place.
Since teenage boys are often crazy about technology, a number of universities, including Case Western Reserve, Seton Hill and MIT (which, admittedly, at 57-43, doesn't seem to have a problem attracting men), have launched admission-oriented blogs designed to offer an intimate, uncensored look at college life.
I think all mass communication should be handled by the department of communications here at Case.It is. All mass emails end up going through Marketing & Communications. I think the problem is, the people sending out the mass emails may not know or may not know how to use the other avenues of communication. (This is what we talked about in the meeting -- ways in which we could promote these other avenues.) Right now, we may have a case of "functional fixedness"; it may be perceived that all there is is email. We need a way to change that. It's going to get easier and easier to send out mass emails. That's one of the goals of one of the projects I am working on. Designated people will be able to sit at an email client of their choosings, send out a mass email, that email will go to a moderation queue, a certain select group of "Mass Communication Custodians" will get notified something is waiting for their approval, and they can approve it for dissemination. It's only going to get easier, which means there will be more of it. What we need is to raise the level of awareness of the other avenues of communication. And, we need to raise the awareness of the tools we have on campus that facilitate them. Leverage the Blog system for your department or organization's web page so you can have XML feeds and email susbscriptions to your updates like the ITS homepage. Use lists.case.edu to hand create your groups. People will be able to opt-in and opt-out (though, that can be disabled for a given list), but you can prepopulate a list with whomever you want. An email to listmaster@case.edu (depending on your requirements) can even have your list automatically prepopulated with our Directory data. I think that in between these:
I visited my alma mater ( Case Western Reserve University) last week to show my wife my old stomping grounds. There were a lot of physical changes to the campus, which were cool to see. But I also found out they recently started up a campus wide blogging system that hosts blogs for any student, faculty, staff and alumni. I think this is a great way for colleges to foster a sense of community and encourage discussion and interaction between students. I'm excited that the university *I* attended is at the forefront of promoting the use of blogs.
Awesome! Blog@Case's first podcast! — The Freedman Center in Kelvin Smith Library: Podcast. And, it worked!
Check out the RSS feed for the Freedman Center blog. It includes the following little snippet where the magic happens:
<item>
<title>Podcast</title>
<link>http://blog.case.edu/FreedmanCenter/2005/10/07/podcast</link>
<description>Testing a podcast & learning how MoveableType enclosures work on our blog system......</description>
<guid>http://blog.case.edu/FreedmanCenter/2005/10/07/podcast</guid>
<pubDate>Fri, 07 Oct 2005 14:51:19 EST</pubDate>
<enclosure url="http://blog.case.edu/FreedmanCenter/podcasts/10-07-05.mp3" length="4412159" type="audio/mpeg" />
</item>
Go head. Check it out in iTunes. Just point your podcast subscriptions to http://http://blog.case.edu/FreedmanCenter/rss20.xml and watch the magic happen.