Update: Laptop Classrooms, Resources

Hello, everyone. Here's the laptop classrooms news.

* We'll be doing a laptop classroom orientation session on the second day of WP orientation (Tuesday, August 15).

* Furniture for RB 106 and 107 will arrive on the 16th of August. That's unfortunate since it's a day after our orientation, but it's fortunate because it means (barring new calamities) that the classrooms will all be ready on the first day of classes.

* Everything else with the renovation appears to be on track.

* The new computers could arrive any time, though UCS can't give us an estimate of when they'll arrive. Our order went out to Gateway with the whole huge university order, and it didn't go out until the start of the new fiscal year. That means it's possible they'll come in later than we'd like, and I'm sorry about that. I'd much prefer to be able to guarantee you a couple of weeks to play with the machines before school starts.

* I've got a new set of resource pages online here:

http://abjohnson.iweb.bsu.edu/laptopready

* A note for your syllabi: Under course materials, you need to list something like "Short Ethernet cable." This is something students can pick up for about $10 at Best Buy (with a discount they tell me they're willing to offer), and maybe for much less through BSU, though I don't have an answer/price back from the Computer Showcase Center yet. Last year we provided Ethernet cables for connecting to the Internet, but not only was that a messy solution, since the cables were always all over the tables, it was (and is) also a maintenance problem, since students tend to break the connectors. So this year we're going to try requiring that they bring their own cables. (The reason we need to use Ethernet cables instead of wireless connections has to do with the limitations of the wireless network. If we have two classrooms full of students right next to each other doing internet-intensive things at the same time, the network will bog down and no one will get anything done. So we have to go with the old-school cable connections. It's like 2001 . . . )

And that's all for now . . .

Fred