H323 Test Sites in Polycom Address book Format

Posted on April 7, 2011 by J Scott Christianson

Note: All information related to H323 and SIP Test Sites and Numbers can now be found at it’s permanent home: http://www.kalvideo.com/test-sites. Sorry for any inconvenience.

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Election Night Watch Parties in Columbia MO

Posted on April 3, 2011 by J Scott Christianson

Here is a map of the watch parties for the April 5th municipal election. Be sure to go vote and then celebrate or commiserate with the candidate of your choice. Zoom out for view of all parties.

 

View Election Night Watch Parties in a larger map

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ICANN approves xxx TLD
For years, I have not understood why the ICANN didn’t impose some level of regulation on the adult content available on the Internet. Right now, just about anything can be made available on the Net, and, in the most bizarre twist of roles, the federal government has demanded that schools limit access to this material through various content filters as a condition of receiving federal “E-rate” funding for technology. This has led many schools to limit access to tools like Google and other search engines that can display all sorts of adult images based on a given search term. It’s like allowing an adult bookstore to place a magazine rack full of pornography outside the school and then demanding that the principal make sure no students see it.

This past month, the organization that makes most of the decisions about how the Internet will be organized – the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN – approved the creation of a .xxx domain so adult material could be categorized and easily filtered out by parents and schools. This is a long overdue measure, but hopefully one that will start to make it easier for schools to provide access to the Internet.

Posted on March 21, 2011 by J Scott Christianson | Leave a comment

College name game is a troubling trend

Posted on March 21, 2011 by J Scott Christianson

A friend of mine runs his small IT consulting business from his house in St. Charles. Regardless of the fact that his company consists of himself and his little schnauzer, he has adopted the title “president and CEO.”

When we are given the freedom to pick our own titles, we tend to give ourselves a title that reflects our aspirations, not reality.

The same seems true of Missouri’s colleges and universities. Central Missouri State University, a moniker that the state institution of higher learning in Warrensburg has held for 34 years, changed to the University of Central Missouri, or UCM a couple of years ago. Not to be confused with UMC, a designation that the Columbia campus of the University of Missouri recently downgraded in favor of MU, not to be confused with MSU, which is the former SMSU.

Sometimes the logic behind these name change games is Continue reading →

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Chris Sanders and I have an idea that we’d like your input on.

Posted on March 14, 2011 by J Scott Christianson

But first a little background…

For the past couple of years, I have had the opportunity to work on various projects at the Russell D. and Mary B. Shelden Clinical Simulation Center (where Chris works as Technical Director). This center is one of several such centers for medical simulation across the country, part of an evolving trend toward using highly fidelity simulations for medial education and professional development. These simulations take many forms.

Some are done with actors who have been trained to represent the “standard patient.” In this case, medical students meet, diagnose and consult with the actor/patient in a specially designed exam room, which is equipped with multiple cameras and microphones so that instructors can watch, record and provide feedback to the students.

In other cases, the students work on an advanced mannequins. These high-tech mannequins range from Continue reading →

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We can’t afford manned mission to Mars

Posted on March 11, 2011 by J Scott Christianson

When I was a teenager, one of my few acts of organization was a scrapbook containing every news clipping I could find on the space shuttle and NASA’s space program. To me, the development of the space shuttle was the next step toward a future in which I could purchase a ticket to the moon, Mars or the next galaxy; all places that while cold and desolate were much more interesting than my eighth-grade classroom.

During the early ’80s, many others were likewise enthused about a reusable space vehicle and continuing U.S. leadership in manned space travel. While early unmanned missions such as the Voyager and Pioneer space probes and the Viking probe to Mars were successful, they were limited in their abilities. It seemed clear any real space science would require lifting real scientists off the ground, and the space shuttle seemed to be the perfect machine for manned space travel.

Now, 28 years after the first space shuttle took off, NASA officials are in the process of retiring the remaining shuttles and replacing them with two more conventionally designed rockets, the Ares I and Ares V. NASA has more ambitious plans for these rockets, however, than just replacing the shuttle’s orbital hauling capabilities. Namely, it plans to return humans to the surface of the moon, establish a base there and then use it to launch a manned mission to Mars — an extremely expensive, dangerous and misguided plan given the challenges currently facing our planet. Continue reading →

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How does technology-related anxiety affect educational technology adoption?

Posted on March 5, 2011 by J Scott Christianson

It is hard for those of us who deal with educational technology to understand why some high-school and college instructors are so reluctant to use new technology or to even use well-proven technology to make their courses more effective or productive. In the age of YouTube, Blackboard, Wikipedia, Wimba, and Twitter, and with years of research showing how technology can be used to increase student mastery and retention, why are some profs still suck using the overhead projector and the copy machine?

There are certainly institutional and personal factors that encourage or allow this type of luddite behavior, but perhaps one of the main factors preventing the adoption of educational technology is the level of anxiety that instructors feel about using–and depending on–educational technology in the classroom. This anxiety has influences on the integration of technology into the curriculum ranging from decreased participation in training sessions to outright refusal to use the technology. Current and previous research supports the assumption that the level of-related anxiety that an instructor experiences directly affects their willingness to use technology in the classroom.

Continue reading →

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Weekend Rant: I’m turning into an old fuddy-duddy

Posted on March 4, 2011 by J Scott Christianson

Well, it is really happening. I’m starting to become an old fuddy-duddy. While I’m not a full-grown coot yet, I can tell that “the change” has started.

I should have seen it coming back in 2004 when Matt Blunt was elected governor at age 33. I always knew there would come a day when Missouri would elect a governor who was several years younger than I, but I had assumed I’d at least have one or two gray hairs by then. I chalked it up to random chance at the time but can see now it was an omen of bad things to come…

This past year, Continue reading →

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Installing short-throw Projectors in rooms with low ceilings.

Posted on February 26, 2011 by J Scott Christianson

Short throw projectors have a lot of advantages for classrooms and conference rooms:

  1. The short image throw allows for presenters to approach the screen without interfering with the image or having to look into the projection light.
  2. The short image throw also allows for several projectors to be placed in a small room, making it ideal for videoconferencing, or I-TV, classrooms.

However, the installation of these projectors can be complicated. A small change makes a big difference in the projected image with a short-throw projector. I recently learned a few lessons installing a couple of Sanyo PDG-DWL100 projectors in a classroom. Continue reading →

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