It’s a special holiday episode of High Ed Hangout (we have holiday beverages!). We jump right in with our favorite note-taking apps and then transition to our yearly tech (and non-tech) Christmas lists.

What note-taking apps do you use?

• iCoud Notes or Google Keep (quick notes or lists)
• Google Docs
• Textmate
• OneNote (handwriting recognition)
• Bear
• Obsidian
• Nebo (handwriting cross-platform)
• Remarkable Tablet (e-ink)

What is on your Christmas list this year?

• Ken: new laptop M1 Macbook Air
• Dave: more smart plugs or smart lights
• Dan: Retropie Emulation for a new Pi (NES Pie Case)
• Scott: Arcade Cabinet for a pi

Non-tech list

• Dave: Kitchenaid Mixer
• Ken: D&D books
• Daniel: (he just orders what he wants)
• Scott: Bombas socks

Anyone purchased a webcam?

Do people in your meetings keep your video on?

Beard trimming…

It’s been a while since we’ve met, so we spend some time talking pandemic and lock-down, and what the work environment will look like when this is all over. Then we move into tech and talk a bit about the new Apple M1 chips.

Haircuts blah blah

How has social isolation been for everyone?

• Social distanced vacations?
• Lines blurred between work and home?

Will we go back the same way as before?

• Will certain places force the return to “normal” in-person?

Ken started playing D&D again (he started in 1977)

Who is buying a new mac (M1)?

• System on a chip

Playing Among Us for team building, Ken is using Zwift for bike riding

We still live in Covid-land so we talk about haircuts, Covid trackers that our schools are using or building, and what it will look like to come back to campus. We also sprinkle in a bit of Apple to try and add a positive spin.

• We all have haircuts except Dan (who is still very hairy)
• GVSU is building a Covid-19 self (health) assessment tool to use when campus reopens.
  • Simple form using GVSU credentials
  • Questionnaire asking about contacts and symptoms
  • Every faculty/staff/student needs to fill out this form every day before coming to campus.
  • How is this HIPPA compliant?
    • GVSU: HIPPA protected information is sent to the health department.
  • Have you looked at the Google/Apple contact tracing app?
• GVSU uses Visitour for phone-guided walking tours
  • Also use it for virtual tour 
• UALR just released official reopening tour
  • 100% back to campus in August
  • Board of trustees required a plan
• Apple WWDC Updates

We’re still figuring out this quarantine thing. Many of us need a haircut! We go over reopening plans and talk through what other schools have announced before going into how we list areas of study and majors on our websites.

• The state of Arkansas is officially OPEN! WOOT!
  • Lotsa weekend party barges!
• Anti-Mask League NPR Embeded Podcast
• The state of Iowa is open!
• GVSU slowly reopening for staff June 22nd – student plan is still to “reopen in fall”
• Iowa planning to open in fall, a plan is in the works
• UALR received a large donation for aid, also plans on opening in the fall
• Some schools are starting early and stopping in the Fall (Thanksgiving)
• What do you do with college areas of study?
  • UALR has a contact form on each area of study/major page.
  • GVSU central marketing maintains their areas of study pages and their catalog

Our various states are starting to open up and our schools are starting to discuss opening in the fall as well. What does that look like? Is it too soon? How do we make that happen?

• Arkansas is opening the state again! Yay?
• Iowa will be opening soon.
• The difference between virtual vs in person
  • Finding digital processes to replace old paper process
• Many companies might move to remote after this is over and not pay high real estate prices.
• Let’s turn university building into retreat space and think about how we use university building differently.
• Will we be able to work remotely after this is over?
• Is it safe to open colleges in the fall?
• We’re seeing a lot of announcements right now (up to May 1 decision date)
• DANIEL IS BACK IN HIS HOUSE!! (after it got hit by a tree in June)
  • Added a bunch of super-tech

The global pandemic has just begun, and we’re all adjusting in different ways. We talk about how we’re handling things personally, and how our universities are handling things (via policy and technology).

• Waiting on Spillers…
• Talking about MacOS updates (that’s why Spillers is late)
• Arkansas has a curfew 
• Michigan is in 100% lockdown (nothing by groceries)
  • http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/
  • https://ncov2019.live/data 
• Are all of our universities closed?
  • UALR still has people working
  • Residence Halls are all closed (minus select students who have nowhere to go)
• How do we deal with our parents?
• What technology are we using now that everyone is remote?
  • Slack, Zoom, Skype for Business, Blackboard Collaborate 
  • Online Class: Blackboard (GVSU), Canvas (Iowa)
• Working from home – UALR was a hard sell
• We don’t want to overwhelm students with coronavirus “we’re there for you” communications (like every other business ever)
• UALR state budget issues
• Everybody Tiger King on Netflix! (watching via Zoom)

It’s the first HEH of 2020! Grand Valley State is moving to PHP, so we chat with Daniel about the best way to make that move. We also chat about hidden nav menus and UX decisions for a university homepage.

GVSU wanted to switch to PHP (away from CF) and chatted with UALR about how to do that. Looking at Platform.SH (cloud).

HighEdWeb is in Little Rock, AR Oct 18-21, 2020

Dan is getting married!

• Tells us about the proposal

Thoughts about hidden web nav menus

• https://www.utk.edu/ 
• https://www.calpoly.edu/
• https://vt.edu/

https://www.nngroup.com/articles/hamburger-menus/

Ken wants a Logitech MX master 3 (we all do!)

• Sexy Mouse Video

Happy holidays loyal HEH listeners. We have a holiday-themed episode for you. We ring in the holidays (all of them!) with festive beverages and the tech items on our own Christmas lists. HEHH to all!

Holiday-themed drinks celebrating all the “holidays”

• Hanukkah
• Three Kings Day
• Winter Solstice
• St. Lucia Day
• St. Nicholas Day
• Christmas
• Kwanzaa
• New Year
• Mardi Gras

What is on your holiday/Christmas list?

• Ken – AirPods
• Dave – Gopro bird feeder, super binoculars that stream video 
• Scott – Smart Switch, Waffle Maker
  • Smart Pancake Printer
• Scott – Aftermarket car stereo with Car Play or Android Auto
• Scott – Retro game controller poster
• Dan – Smart surge protector to turn stereo components on/off
• Scott – LED strip for tv that colors based on TV image
• Daniel – A new house (wired for tech!), New headphones

Do we take care of projects over the holiday break?

It’s been 6 months since you’ve heard from us… we’re back! In this episode, we’ll catch you up on what’s happened the past 6 months and take a look at the new WT.social.

• Daniel had to move away when a tree blew into his house
• Scott went to AMA Higher Education Symposium
• Founders Beer lawsuit/issues
• Dave went to Big Data Conference
  • Joey Chen – gerrymandering trials
• Ken went to a (Library) Drupal conference in Vancouver
• Dan went to Midwest User Experience Design (MUXD)
  • Wasn’t good
• Ken has a long lost sister (who he visited in Vancouver)
• New Wikipedia Social Network
  • https://wt.social/

We take a trip down memory lane to some old PBS shows and transition to GVSU’s choice to put ColdFusion out to pasture. We look at the positives and negatives to alternatives for them.

• Ken remembers the PBS Zoom intro song (1999 version)
  • Zoom intro (1976)
• Daniel remembers PBS 3-2-1 Contact
• GVSU is changing away from ColdFusion to PHP
  • What frameworks?
• How do we migrate everything over?
• Can GVSU build a custom form builder in some 3rd party CMS?
  • WordPress Gravityforms
• It’s hard to recruit developers in ColdFusion
• Where to host? Locally or cloud?
• Conference options
• Decline in students
• Demographics and the Demand for Higher Education (book)

Daniel has a work emergency and joins us late. We take a look at our top podcast downloads and dig into details about Daniel’s plans for showing/hiding audience content on the UALR website.

• Admissions scandal
• The history of Founders Beer Company
• Our top downloads outside the US
  • South Korea
  • Google Home translation
• Mercator Map Projections vs Peters Projection
• Daniel had some Backtick issues (his emergency)
• UALR is creating an authenticated version of their site to show different information based on the user (students/staff/public/etc.)