10 February 2009

My l33t skillz, let me show you them!

I was thinking: maybe something we could do to help people take advantage of our new tech integration peeps is to give everyone some idea of just what we can help with.  Our colleagues may not be sure what it is we know how to do (that they don't), what kinds of questions we're able to answer, etc.  So I thought it might be a good idea if we had some listing of skills/areas of knowledge to get people thinking about what they've always wanted to know about technology, but didn't know who to ask.

(Or maybe y'all have been swamped with questions, and I'm the only one who's just been answering the same old "Jen, can you make the DVD player/projector/computer work" kind!)

I'll start.  Some things off the top of my head that I can use/answer questions about/show someone how to use (better):

Equipment:
The laptop projector carts
The 140 lab
iPods

Software
MS Word
PowerPoint
PowerTeacher
iTunes
iMovie (Mac)
iPhoto (Mac)
Photoshop
Outlook
Adobe Pagemaker, which is probably not terribly useful anymore

Platforms
Mac OS 
Unix 
[I hate Windows, but I could answer basic stuff]

Programming/Markup languages
HTML
Javascript (it's been a long time, though)
Java (ditto)
uh... BASIC? *g*

Web things
Searching.  (how to use Google image search, e.g.)
Web 2.0: Facebook, YouTube, Wikipedia (it's not just evil or full of misinformation, honestly), blogs/LJ/fun RSS feeds (have the English teachers seen Samuel Pepys' blog?  Or Geoffrey Chaucer's?  Languagelog?), del.icio.us (which I absolutely love as a way to save links for other people!)...  but not Twitter.  I don't tweet.
Lots of world language/Latin specific things (how to use online dictionaries effectively!  Please let's teach people how to use online dictionaries *effectively*...).
Urban Dictionary!  For when you just aren't down with the kids' slang anymore.
Fun teacher websites that will do things like create word searches for you!
And many more, I'm sure.

Project types
Webquest
video editing (i.e. clips from digital source/ripped from DVD + music + titles + effects, etc.)/playing videos
Powerpoints
Basic webpage (I never learned CSS, fwiw)
Creating a podcast.
Create your own LOLcat!

Completely useless/obsolete things!
Gopher
Usenet
Telnet/ssh!  Lynx!  Emacs!  Pine! (I use these all the time, but I do know that most people, uh, don't, anymore.)
DOS and...
the Apple IIe!
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2 comments:

  1. GeoffFebruary 10, 2009 at 6:53 PM

    Nice posting Jen!

    I live in your obsolete filing :). I did not know you knew UNIX and all that programming stuff. Noleton (where the computer lab sign up sheets live), is a FreeBSD (UNIX) server, so if you feel like ssh'ing it up I can give you an account and you can play.

    I use http://w3schools.com/css/default.asp for my CSS and other web needs.

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  2. Jen FaulknerFebruary 10, 2009 at 10:41 PM

    I minored in CS. (And have used it pretty much not at all since.) I once had these grand visions of working on projects integrating Classics and technology (along the lines of the Perseus Project, and then, well, I went to grad school and lost all that enthusiasm for academia and so on...

    Nah, I realize it's not all completely obsolete (minus the Apple IIe -- man, I'd love to have one of those of my very own: Lemonade Stand and Oregon Trail *all* the time! *g*), but I couldn't really imagine any of our colleagues wanting help with it! It's in rather a different league from 'can you plug the laptop in for me'. :)

    Sure, I'd love an account. One can never have too many! :)

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