Fun today! I managed to pre-order a Nintendo Wii from Amazon today. They started taking orders at 8.37 and had sold out by about 8.45!
Here's a youtube video for Wii Sports, (comes bundled with it...)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SdZm4XQRP8
Now the academic year is well and truely underway its time to start looking forward again.
The next major area that I'd like to look at are our computer suites. We have computer suites on both campuses which serve both open access and teaching purposes. Here's a typical suite:
For a long time now it's been thought that demand for open access computing would drop off as personal ownership of computers increases, and a number of University's are reporting that this is the case. However, for us this isn't happening. If anything the reverse is true, and as students make more and more use of social software (instant messaging, myspace etc) demand is increasing. Our students-to-PC ration is similar to the national average.
So how what sort of facilities should we introduce to cope with the demand? Are the sorts of computers suites that we provide appropropriate given the use of our PCs? Here are some possible solutions:
a) Add more computer suites - the same as the ones we have. On the downside, these aren't the most efficient use of space, and could be more friendly.
b) Re-design the main open access suites to make them more cafe-like, with access to drinks/snacks. This could be more space efficient, and more friendly, but would it be OK for work study related work?
c) Provide more computers in exisiting social space - eg short access computers in the refectories/canteens like these: http://www.realcaledonian.ac.uk/learningcafe_computers.html
d) Increase wireless networking, and provide better access to power, appropriate benching etc.
e) Have laptops to loan for the day, so you can work where you want.
My current thoughts are that we need a mix of approaches, but I'd be interested in your views.
Microsoft have announced that Vista, the new version of Windows will be available to corporate customers on 30 Nov, and to home users in January.
I'm still finding this one pretty hard to get excited about, but maybe that will change when I start using it. My feeling is that desktop operating systems are less important than they used to be as we move more and more to web based applications.
The University is committed to maintaining a modern IT environment, so we'll look at upgrading for the start of the 2007 academic year, assuming there aren't two many problems running it on our PCs. It's possible that we may need to maintain a mixed enviroment for a while, upgrading student and academic PCs first for example.
Any thoughts/comments would be most welcome.