New challenges

I am back. The past two weeks I have spent in Croatia. I met many friends, relatives, and numerous colleagues.

In one of the coming posts I will talk more about e-learning in Croatia. November 11th I have a presentation at the Croatian Academic and Research Network Conference ‘E-course for E-mentors – behavior-changing educational experience’… I have participated in numerous video conferences. However, this is the first time I will be only a long -distance participant.

More about that later…

Because, now we have more interesting things.

The new server is bought, same as the software. Chicago IT Help expert team is configuring the server and in 2 days they should start working here: changing the old servers with a new one.

And SVHATS numbers are growing, slowly but persistently.

Although the number of views is constant (now everybody knew how it looks like), the number of posts are visibly growing.

Check the graphs on this picture:

It is time to summarize…

Organization. “This week was interesting.” First 3 days I was working on our ‘hardware’. The challenge was to organize all staff we have. And we have a lot… starting from at least 150 electric supply cable cords for computers to 50 computer mice, 18 printers, and monitors. Newer staff is 7-10 years old and the older staff is older… Newer or older, there are a lot of very useful things. And it is good to have them organized.

Server/Laptop area. Then we reorganized the server area. Actually, if you come to Cabrini Connections now, it is now a laptop area. I assorted unused hardware in the other part of room, and then El and Chris and I moved the ‘set of newer servers’ next to ‘old one’, reorganized cabinets and… wow, we made a lot of space for laptops. So on Wednesday and Thursday we have 5 laptops in that area.

New laptops. When volunteers and students saw those laptops, they were very happy. ‘It is great that we have new laptops!’ were one of the comments. Well, the laptops are not new, but they are very useful. Also, all 4 Macs are now online. So now we have 7 more laptops + 2 more Macs working. You do not have to wait in line to do the SVHATS. Sounds good. Right?

Private Web server. As you probably remember, the SVHATS server was very slow, veeerrryyy slow. Therefore we upgraded the server and it should be much better now. Unfortunately during the upgrade process SVHATS were not working properly for a few hours. But now everything is fine. And fast!

To summarize, we have 18 computers for students and volunteers, much faster server and now we can focus on the SVHATS development, learning activities…

Activities. Did you try SVHATS Career Dictionary. It is an interesting and interactive learning activity through which each Mentor-Mentee team or each individual can add a term and description in the dictionary. Also they can add comments/suggestions to the dictionary terms submitted by your colleagues. And they will be able to suggest to you how to improve your terms.

Interesting, right?

There are many new things we will do now that I come back from Croatia!

Croatia? As you probably knew I left for Croatia on (Oct 4rd) and… No, no, I did not choose to have vacation when there are numerous interesting things happening in the Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection programs. I had a return ticket since last year. And this was the last term to use it. So it was use it or lose it.

New server. In meantime the new server should come: powerful PowerEdge 2900 III. Therefore now that I am back we should start implementing the new server, improving our network. Off course, we will have help of ChicagoIThelp.com.