Last edited: 27 March 2000
The botany web site has been, for the most part, moved to the College server from its previous digs at Geocities. The work in converting page formats is ongoing at this time.
The botany text book came in on Thursday 23 September 1999. There will be no laboratory book this term - the book that was ordered was reported as being out of print by the source from which the bookstore tried to order the book.
No further work other than supporting the existing software in the laboratory has occurred. During October a purchase order will be cut for LiveMath 3.0. The math web pages remain, for now, on Compuserve.
Much of the training material that the MSS has developed is now accessible on the College server. This includes the following materials:
Excel Training
Introduction to FrontPage
Using Word to write math tests
Throughout the month computer help desk type assistance has been provided to the faculty and staff of the Department of Natural Science and Mathematics as well to students in the science/math computer laboratory.
Assistance has been required on a nearly daily basis, including ongoing support in Excel to a member of faculty who has been through the Excel training twice. Anecdotally this suggests that while group training is useful, ongoing one-on-one support after the training is crucial.
Areas of assistance include email, Microsoft Word usage, and Microsoft Excel usage. Assisted with hardware problems the Gateway in F103 has been having. Monitor was replaced with a spare monitor from A204.
Both Brian Lynch and John Gann have learned to use the new Kodak Digital camera. Brian has used the camera both with his marine science students and on research trips into the mountains to collect gobis (small stream fish).
Brian Lynch has been a self-starter on building an academic support web site for his students, I've provided assistance as needed but for the most part he has been teaching himself the ins and outs of building web pages.
In mid-September a re-conditioned print cartridge was loaded into the Hewlett Packard LaserJet 6P printer. As of early October this cartridge continues to function properly.
The laboratory monitoring work-study crew is proving to be capable, competent, responsible, and trustworthy. Leaders among the crew include Filomena Bruton, John Paul Ori, Earl Edgar, Graham Henry, and Emma Mori. The newer freshmen members of the crew include Carmen Chon, Tony Tosie, and Delila Waltu.
Internet access has been switched from a local proxy server using a dial-up connection running at 45300 bps to a 10Base-T connection to the College server. The work study students report this connection is "slower" than the dial-up connection. The direct line in the laboratory (320-8676) was disconnected in conjunction with the switch over.
An informal tally of evening computer use indicated that 80% of the evening use is email and chat. Only 20% of the computer use is for academic purposes based on student self-reports.
Internet support and assistance has been provided to Morgan Solomon as part of the Pacific Algebra Network. Morgan comes out to the College to access the Internet support for the Hawaii Algebra Learning Project.
As more faculty members get access to the Internet via the College server, there appears to be a need to run a workshop in building and posting web pages to the local College server.
An update of the transition document with status of items is now posted on the College
server:
Title III Transition Issues
Began to become acquainted with the new XML/XHTML standards for web pages. In conjunction with learning XHTML also learned to use Tidy (http://www.w3.org) to perform XML conversions and the HTML-kit also available from w3.
Learned new HTML meta-tag to redirect browsers:
<meta http-equiv="refresh"
content="1; url=http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/danaleeling" />
Future usefulness dependent in part on the development of a botanical/herbaria XML Document Type Definition.