ITM501 slp1 â (2 to 3 pages double space courier new
and a reference page)
The purpose of the Session Long Project is to give you the
opportunity to explore the applicability of the Module to your own life, work,
and place in space and time, and to experiment with the Module to see how the
otherwise academically rigorous presentation of a topic may, with more or less
work and/or trauma, become “up close and personal”. This is done in a
number of different ways — sometimes cumulative papers, sometimes practical
hands-on experimentation with a tool of some sort, sometimes reflections on a
place of work or life. The common thread is personal application, aimed at
demonstrating a cumulative knowledge and understanding of the course’s
material. The main purpose
of the written parts of the assignments is to show that you’ve had some
experiences doing the project, that you’ve thought carefully about what they
mean for your own education, and that you can make some personal applications
of this meaning to your own professional and/or personal understanding.
Demonstrating this understanding is actually considerably more important than
carrying out any specific step in the project instructions.
For this course, the Project will take the form of hands-on
encounters with information tools and resources of several forms. Each Module
will feature some information technology experience to which you can apply
yourself and hopefully stretch the bounds of your familiarity with our
increasingly information-rich but sometimes painfully crowded professional tool
chest. It’s almost inevitable that for any given Module, some of the class
members will already have had some experience with the “tool of
choice”; when it happens to you, please resist the temptation to lay into
the faculty with a claim that we’re not teaching you anything new; we assure
you that even if it’s known to you, it is NOT known to a good many of your
colleagues, and they’ll be glad for the opportunity. If you do have such
experience, regard it as a minor gift of time from the Powers in charge of
Session Long Projects; the write-up will be a piece of cake for you. You can
use your spare time to dig further into another site or tool, or even to use
the Threaded Discussion forum to share your experience and evaluations with
your colleagues.
It is a good idea to be sure that your computer is appropriately
protected from the bad Guys Out There. There are some security precautions that
are particularly important to observe before setting out on any Internet
excursion, including these projects. In particular, it is essential that if you
are going to download anything from the Internet, that you have adequate virus
protection and anti-adware/spyware/malware screening on your systems..tuiu.edu/CourseHomeModule.aspx?course=57&term=96&module=1&page=custom2″>Please
review our suggestions for preparing your
computer for active Internet use before diving headlong into that world.
(Accessing anything on the Internet entails some degree of risk
for exposure to computer viruses and their relations and to various varieties
of “malware” (adware, spyware, etc.) Most of you are already
running some form of virus protection software (if not, shame on you!); many
are probably running some adware/spyware protection as well.
If this is the first you’ve heard about these issues, we
strongly suggest that you carry out some key steps that are simply part of good
computer hygeine
Check out the performance of your present anti-virus
program. Compare it with at least one other; a reasonable place to
start looking for an alternative would be PC Magazineâs comparative
reviews of security programs (.pcmag.com/category2/0,2806,1639157,00.asp”>http://www.pcmag.com/category2/0,2806,1639157,00.asp).
Another source for shareware and advice is Kim Komando’s website, .komando.com/”>www.komando.com; she
does a radio show, among other things. If youâre firmly committed to
free alternatives, take a look at brighthub.comâs Best Free Virus
Protection for Windows (.brighthub.com/computing/smb-security/articles/88397.aspx”>http://www.brighthub.com/computing/smb-security/articles/88397.aspx).
Alternatively, or better, in addition, put your system through
one of the reputable online virus scans from a major vendor. These
include .trendmicro.com/”>Trend Micro’s
Housecall, .pcpitstop.com/antivirus/AV.asp”>PC Pitstop
Virus Scan, or any of those described in .about.com/cs/softwarereviews/tp/aaonline.htm”>this
reference from About.com.
Take a look at spyware/adware blockers. As an
introduction, look at .firewallguide.com/spyware.htm”>Firewallguide’s
summary of the problems. A good starting place to look at
alternative remedies is TechNewsWorldâs article on .technewsworld.com/story/33188.html”>Free Utilities
To Annihilate Spyware, reviewing popular and free
programs. If possible, download one or two of them and install them
on your machine; try them out at removing bad things from your system
(you may be surprised — as an example, I recently ran a scan on one of my
machines and found 286 new threats â and Iâm a reasonably savvy and
careful computer user!)
There are a vast variety of online resources available in
this area available for you to Google at your leisure.
Just be sure that you steer clear of the unfortunately
rather numerous .ehow.com/how_5960884_remove-malware-_anti-virus-pro_.html”>programs that
suddenly pop up on your screen, informing you that you have some
malware problems and that you need to download their “protection”
software right away. These are almost invariably malware themselves, and
if you download anything from them, it’s likely to be something like a
rootkit-based trojan like the one that a friend of mine contracted; it took me
over a week, numerous visits to several tech support websites, and countless
running of cleaning programs and rebootings before it was finally cleared.)
Most online demo sites, when you encounter them, will require you
to enter a name and an email address by way of registration; if this bothers
you, try using a pseudonym and a.tuiu.edu/CourseHomeModule.aspx?course=57&term=96&module=1&page=custom4″>
convenience free email account from Hotmail or Gmail or Yahoo, or just try some other name. All they want is a place to
send a password, generally. It is also possible that you will receive follow-up
inquiries from sites that you have visited. For a fuller discussion of these
issues,.tuiu.edu/CourseHomeModule.aspx?course=57&term=96&module=1&page=custom3″>please
click here to read our policy note/advisory on website relationships.
(In this class in particular, and in a number of the other classes in
the our programs, the Session Long Project involves interactions with
Internet-based resources including professional resource web sites and,
occasionally, downloadable or online software experiences. This is
appropriate, given the enormous proliferation of Internet resources and the
need for students to become conversant with these resources; we’d be remiss if
we didnât try to call attention to the increasingly interesting and available
materials available online. Happily, based on comments from the majority of
students seem very satisfied with this approach.
Unfortunately, like most of the rest of the world, the Internet does not
constitute a free lunch. In the areas that interest us, companies post
information because they know eventually it will profit them. These profits pay
for the maintenance of the sites, the development of the software, and for a
marketing infrastructure to bring in revenue. In other words, if you come
to the “showroom” and browse around, you shouldn’t be surprised if a
“virtual salesman” contacts you to see if you are interested in
purchasing something.
Students should be aware that there is a possibility that their interest in
online resources may be interpreted as a marketing opportunity. However,
this is not really a critical problem. I personally have been visiting such
Internet sites, examining demonstration software, and making use of
professional resources placed there by companies as part of a marketing
strategy, for a number of years. I receive e-mail messages and occasional
phone calls from sales personnel responding to inquiries that I make about
their web sites all the time. This is simply normal marketing behavior on
their part. By visiting their website, I do not incur any particular
obligation to the marketer other than that to respond civilly. There’s
nothing inappropriate about seeking information or even product demonstrations
from a web site when that information is made publicly available, as long as
you donât misrepresent the nature of your interest.
If I feel a need to explain why I was interested in a website, I just say that
I’m a professor teaching a course in the area, and that I’m interested in
exposing students to available products and services, including theirs.
I’ve had nothing but positive responses from those marketers I’ve talked with;
they’re often really pleased to find themselves considered as an educational
experience. For students who are so contacted, it is perfectly all right
to respond that you are a student in the College of Business Administration
studying the topic, in this case knowledge management, and that you might be
interested in the various products and services available from the firms
servicing the sector. I can’t imagine that any vendor would find such a
response inappropriate, unless they had specifically said that they were
interested only in responses from those who plan to buy. In that case,
you should not have made the inquiry in the first place, but such restrictions
are extremely rare.
I continue to believe that this variety of assignment, flexibly administered
and with a relatively high degree of discretion in its accomplishment given to
the student, offers a significant advantage over the more traditional
experiential approaches. Excepting the occasional company inquiry, and
some administrative restrictions on Internet access imposed by organizations
operating in highly secure environments, there do not seem to be many downsides
to this approach. The price of participation in the marketplace is
generally just participation in the marketplace; companies make certain
resources available to the public and ask in return only that we evaluate these
resources and provide occasional feedback to the source. If a site states
that software downloading ought to be restricted only to potential buyers of
the product, I would not presume to violate that expectation. But this is
seldom the case; for the most part, companies are pleased to have anyone
experiment with their product, recognizing that second and third-hand
transmission of such information may be as valuable to their marketing strategy
as primary exposure.
If you are really concerned about maintaining absolute privacy, there are ways
to do so. While it is not appropriate to lie to companies about the
purposes of your inquiry, it may be appropriate to restrict the information
provided in some ways. For example, as an e-mail address, you might use
an anonymous e-mail account obtained from a public source such as Hotmail or
Gmail, which is kept for such encounters exclusively and does not directly link
back to you. Generally, the provision of information such as telephone
numbers is voluntary; just because a piece of information is requested
does not mean it has to be provided in full detail. Always feel free to
withhold any item of information that you do not feel wholly comfortable
sharing. For example, I almost never provide telephone numbers.
Having said all of the above, it, of course, remains possible that you may
encounter something risky or malicious as a result of doing something in one of
the SLPs. If you encounter any serious problems with any of these
assignments, or if anyone is providing substantially negative feedback to you
on your participation in their firmâs public offers of information, please let
us your professor at once, so that we can share this information and reduce the
possibilities for embarrassment all around. Conversely, if you have a
particularly positive experience at some company or site, we’d like to know
about that too. We hope that you will get substantial value from these
assignments, and that they will constitute a useful part of the learning
derived from this course in this program. We are always here to try to
help resolve problems; let us know if any emerge from these assignments, and
we’ll work something out.)
If you work in an area subject to security clearances and
regulations, or if the computer to which you have access is restricted in
critical ways in terms of what you are at liberty to download and use (because
of capacity, policy and/or security rules, or other factors) then your ability
to carry out the assignments as presented may somewhat compromised. Never Fear!
TUI is known for its flexibility and ability to reconfigure assignments
imaginatively, and we stand ready to help you here as well!.tuiu.edu/CourseHomeModule.aspx?course=57&term=96&module=1&page=custom1″>Please
click here to review our policy on assignments and national security. Alternatives are available, and while you might miss some
of the learning benefits of the assignment, you can still get a substantial
measure. Please let your
instructor know as soon as you can if you will be operating under any sort of
limitations on your computing capacity, so that you can work out suitable
arrangements.
(Very important if you
have a security clearance or work on a classified or partly classified computer
system
We know and understand that many TUIU students,
particularly those in the military, hold security clearances, work on
classified or partly classified computer systems, or otherwise operate in the
realm of national or corporate security. Since many of the TUIU faculty
have or have had security clearances in the past, we are thoroughly aware of
the issues involved and the restrictions placed on the individuals and the
information in the secure environment. We thoroughly support the
security clearance system and national security in all ways.
That said, the following cautionary note may be in
order. A number of SLP assignments and Threaded Discussion topics in this
course and other courses at TUIU may call for you to download software, analyze
and comment on your computer systems and procedures, or otherwise engage in
fairly intimate and revelatory behavior with respect to your system.
Here’s the bottom line: If at any point carrying out the requirements
of an exercise could lead to conflict with security regulations, breach
security in any way, or otherwise necessitate doing things to systems,
disclosing sensitive information, or anything similar, obviously Security Wins.
You are never required to do anything you’re not supposed to as part of a TUIU
course. Further, you will never be penalized in your grade or any other
way for not being able to carry out an exercise for security reasons.
All you need to do is to explain the situation to
your instructor, and appropriate adjustments can be made by either waiving or
substituting required parts of the assignment.
We hope that this note makes it clear that while academics
is serious business to us, so is national security. Inevitably, the two
will intersect in some ways during your TUIU schooling; just remember that we
understand what’s going on in the world as well as the academy, and we want you
to keep in good standing with both of us!)
So — that’s the general SLP approach for this course. If you have
questions at any point about what to do or how to strategize your exercises,
please contact your instructor for illumination and assistance.
Module 1 SLP assignment:
As your project assignment for module 1, you are to experiment
with alternative web browsers and compare their utility and features. As you
undoubtedly know, a web browser is simply a piece of software that requests and
then decodes and displays the files that make up Internet pages. Certainly
Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Mozilla’s Firefox are by far the most
commonly used browsers, but there are probably at least 50 to 70 others that
are available for public use, and virtually all of them have their staunch fans
and supporters. Two other major players in the game are Google’s entry Chrome
and Opera, which has been through many versions and is very popular
particularly in Europe. Different browsers appear to have different degrees of
utility depending on the materials to be accessed and the used to be made of
the material by the recipient. So for this exercise, you are to compare the
performance of your most commonly used browser, whatever it might be, to at
least two others that you can either download or access directly online, in
terms of the way they perform on several basic kinds of Internet tasks.
A fairly complete list of possible browser candidates can be found
in Wikipedia’s list of web browsers (.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_web_browsers”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_web_browsers). There are also numerous browser comparison sites that
you may choose to examine and use as a basis for your choice of tools. If you
mainly use one of the Big Three, it would be most beneficial for you probably
to try one of the other majors and one of the lesser known ones.
For each browser, try to use it to at least access, if not actively
work with, each of the following type of common web sites:
A news site (newspaper, cable news outlet, etc.)A sports siteA large retail operation (Amazon.com or BestBuy.com might
be good examples)A travel siteTUIU’s CourseNet siteIf possible, a private site used in your workplace
(obviously, nothing too confidential!)A social networking site (Facebook, Twitter, etc,)Something else that you use frequently, if possible
When you have had a chance to conduct your comparative evaluations
and make notes (it may be helpful to take screenshots if possible — the key
combination ALT-PRNTSCRN will copy the active window into your computer’s
clipboard, and you can then use PASTE to insert the resulting picture into your
Word document), please prepare a
brief summary of your experiences with the different browsers, identifying any
differences you detect, your overall assessments of their respective utilities,
and for what, what you may have learned from the exercise about yourself, and
how you may be able to apply this learning to your own future understanding.
PLEASE NOTE: If for various reasons you do not have the
flexibility on your computer system to actually try out alternative browsers,
you can still do the assignment by doing some online research about alternative
browsers and reporting the results of your inquiries. It’s not going to be
quite as fun as hands-on experimentation or quite as revealing, but you can
still show that you understand the issues and demonstrate your ability to learn
lessons for yourself from such research. After all, as we noted above, that’s
what these exercises are mostly about anyway. You will never be penalized because your computer system won’t
allow you to do something.
Try to have some fun with this!
SLP Assignment Expectations
LENGTH: 2-3 pages typed and double-spaced
The following items will be assessed in particular:
The degree to which you have carried out the assignment
completely, or clarified why you could not and investigated alternativesYour ability to describe your experiences clearly and draw
conclusions from them, not just narrate eventsYour ability to focus on the overall purposes of the
assignment, not just its specific stepsYour use of some in-text references to what you have read,
where appropriate; please cite all sources properly
ITM501SLP2 -(2 to 3
pages double space courier new and a reference page)
Well, now that you’ve finished or at least made substantial
headway on this module case, wasn’t that a lot of fun? Specifically, being
turned loose on the Internet with only minimal guidance about looking for
successes or failures in business intelligence applications? Some of you have
probably had considerable experience with this kind of open-ended search,
either in your educational program or in your work or elsewhere; some of you
may well not have tried this sort of information search process since the days
when your fanciest information appliance might’ve been a well-worn World Book
Encyclopedia over in the corner. Probably you’re somewhere in between — it’s
hard to see getting to this place in your educational program with us without
having some degree of background in Internet searching and information sorting
and retrieval, if only the variety performed on your behalf by various Internet
vendors of products and services.
As your project assignment for this module, you really don’t have
a whole lot of additional stuff to do, beyond thinking some about what you’ve
been doing and how you might be doing it better. As we noted in the case
assignment, the research that you did for this case was in fact business
intelligence work. Odds are you used at least some search tools to help you;
Google has in fact so largely cornered the search market that
“googling” has almost become a generic term on the order of
“band-aid” and “kleenex”. That’s not to say there aren’t a
lot of other tools out there offering to help as well; both Microsoft and Yahoo
have their own entries in the field, and there are oodles of more specialized
systems and procedures all playing on what is broadly known as the “data
aggregation” field. But no search tool does everything for you, any more
than the best hammer you own pounds all your metal nails in while carefully
avoiding your flesh ones.
So your assignment for this module is to write a short description of your business
intelligence search strategy that you employed during your work on your case.
What tools did you use? What help did you get? (Please note that it’s perfectly
all right to get help — everyone does (or ought to), including yours truly!)
How long did it take you? Any dead ends? Any unexpected breakthroughs?
Please conclude with 5 to 7 brief aphorisms or suggestions that
you might offer to a colleague about to undertake a similar exercise in
business intelligence, either as part of a school assignment or a work problem or
something else. Maybe they’re things you learned new here; maybe they’re things
you knew already and had confirmed. The important part is that you learned
something about the process of trolling the Internet for business intelligence
during the exercise. Now is the time to confirm it, both to yourself and to
your instructor. This part of
the assignment is as critical as your search description and analysis.
Incidentally, you’ll also be helping your colleagues here. It’s
our intention to compile a guide based on your suggestions and advice that we
can use both for newer students and for your own colleagues. So this is a real
case where you can do good by doing well!
SLP Assignment Expectations
LENGTH: 2-3 pages typed and double-spaced
The following items will be assessed in particular:
The degree to which you have carried out the assignment
completely, or clarified why you could not and investigated alternativesYour ability to describe your experiences clearly and draw
conclusions from them, not just narrate eventsYour ability to focus on the overall purposes of the
assignment, not just its specific stepsYour use of some in-text references to what you have read,
where appropriate; please cite all sources properly
ITM501SLP03 -(2 to 3
pages double space courier new and a reference page)
Since you’re smart enough be part of our MBA program and
computer-literate enough to be a TUI student, you almost certainly know what
Twitter is — you would’ve had to have spent most of the last couple of years
on the far side of Jupiter to have avoided hearing about it, even if you
haven’t in fact used it. If you have used it, then you’ve got a heads-up on
this module’s SLP.
.com/”>As Twitter
describes itself,
“Twitter is a real-time information network that connects you
to the latest information about what you find interesting. Simply find the
public streams you find most compelling and follow the conversations.
At the heart of Twitter are small bursts of information called
Tweets. Each Tweet is 140 characters in length, but donât let the small size
fool youâyou can share a lot with a little space. Connected to each Tweet is a
rich details pane that provides additional information, deeper context and
embedded media. You can tell your story within your Tweet, or you can think of
a Tweet as the headline, and use the details pane to tell the rest with photos,
videos and other media content.â
Obviously, this is one of the half-dozen most significant current
social media applications at work in the Internet. One interesting point is
that despite everything, they have yet to make any money, despite burning their
way through numerous rounds of venture capital funding. But this seems to be of
only marginal interest; something this powerful is eventually going to be
equally rewarding.
.twitter.com/”>Their
website is a great place to learn about this tool and what to do with it.
In addition, here are a couple of short interviews with company people sharing
part of the vision of what this is all about:
Garfield, B. (2010) The Point of Twitter. Onthemedia from National
Public radio. Transcript Retrieved November 15, 2010 from .onthemedia.org/transcripts/2010/11/26/03″>http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2010/11/26/03.
Audio version also available, same site.
Garfield, B. (2010) Interview with Eval Williams. Onthemedia from
National Public radio. Transcript Retrieved November 15, 2010 from .onthemedia.org/transcripts/2010/11/26/04″>http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2010/11/26/04.
Audio version also available, same site.
Your project assignment for this module is to become engaged with Twitter in some fashion.
·
This might entail setting up an account for yourself and learning
how to use it to communicate with others.
·
Or, if you can’t or don’t want to actually use the tool, you can
at least follow other people who are using it — your boyfriend or girlfriend,
Justin Bieber, VP Biden, or even, as a last resort, your instructor in this
class.
It will be a lot more fun if you can use it yourself and really do
something with it. There is an almost infinite range of things that can be done
with it; your job is to learn about at least a few of them that you find
interesting, and if possible to do some hands-on experimentation with it.
Your instructor will have one or more Twitter accounts to share
with you as the module approaches.
By the end of the module, you should have enough experience in
hand to present a short summary
of your experiences and your overall evaluation of Twitter,together
with your summary of your own learning and applications thereof, as before.
It’s perfectly fine to just write up this exercise as a paper in the usual
fashion. You won’t be disadvantaged in any way as far as grading goes.
If for some reason you are unable to access Twitter or otherwise
complete the regular SLP assignment, you may complete .tuiu.edu/CourseHomeModule.aspx?course=57&term=96&module=3&page=custom2″>this
alternative assignment; however, be sure to clear this with your
professor before you opt for this alternative!
However, as with the case, alternative ways of expressing yourself
might be interesting to experiiment with, perhaps even presenting your report
in the form of a series of tweets or interactions with your instructor or
someone else. When you have had this kind of experience, it seems kind of a
let-down to just write the ordinary kind of short paper that you usually write
for these assignments. This is definitely a situation where some degree of
creativity both in the conduct of the exercise and in the presentation of its
results will be rewarded appropriately.
Obviously, this is experimental; the school has never tried this
kind of an assignment or extended this degree of flexibility in its
accomplishment. But like the Internet itself, we have to keep changing and
extending ourselves, so we are giving this a try to see how it works.
SLP Assignment Expectations
LENGTH: 2-3 pages typed and double-spaced
The following items will be assessed in particular:
The degree to which you have carried out the assignment
completely, or clarified why you could not and investigated alternativesYour ability to describe your experiences clearly and draw
conclusions from them, not just narrate eventsYour ability to focus on the overall purposes of the
assignment, not just its specific steps â including, in this case, the
element of creativity in its interpretation and applicationYour use of some in-text references to what you have read,
where appropriate; please cite all sources properly
ITM501SLP04 -(2 to 3
pages double space courier new and a reference page)
In this module, you are to try out a free cloud-based application
â Writeboard [.com/”>http://writeboard.com/].
Itâs basically a collaboration tool. As their website says:
“Writeboard
makes it easy to…
Write without fear of losing or overwriting a good idea
Compare different versions of a document
Collaborate with colleagues on copy, proposals, memos, etc.
Subscribe to documents via RSS and be notified of changes
Keep your writings organized with .com/#backpack”>Backpack
integration
Writeboard
is perfect for…
Authors, journalists, PR folks, editors, and publishers
Bloggers or freelance/independent writers
Letter writers, songwriters, poets, comedians, creatives
Students, professors, and groups collaborating on a paper”
It is used entirely online, so there is nothing to download. However, if you do encounter any difficulties
accessing or using the tool, there is an .tuiu.edu/CourseHomeModule.aspx?course=57&term=96&module=4&page=custom1″>alternative
assignment available here; however, before you opt for it, please
confirm your choice with your professor!
As the project assignment for this module, you are to:
Identify someone with whom youâd like to collaborate on
something involving writing. It might be a work colleague, a friend, a
family member â as a last resort, if you havenât anyone else, let your
professor know and s/he will be your collaborator. Preferably, this would
be someone with whom youâve collaborated on some joint project in the past
using non-Writeboard tools.With your collaborator, pick out some written activity that
would involve you both. Sign yourselves up for a free Writeboard account.
Then use Writeboard to iterate on your project a couple of times back and
forth, hopefully making progress.When youâve had some experience with Writeboard, please
prepare a short review describing:The nature of your collaborative project and the person
you were working withyour experiences with using Writeboard to accomplish your
projecta brief summary evaluation of what you see as its
strengths, its limitations, and its value relative to other forms of
collaboration on projects. To the degree possible, it would help if your
review could discuss this tool relative to previous collaborations with
your present comrade; if this is the first time youâve worked with this
particular person, then you should use as your basis for comparison
previous collaborative projects undertaken with others.Your overall assessment of the value of using
âcloud-basedâ collaboration tools, relative to collaboration using
computer-based applications such as WordÃand email and/or
telephone and/or face-to-face interaction.
The last point in the report format above is very important. Be
honest and direct; your assessment is helpful to you and to others. If you
don’t find it helpful, say so and why, and try to explain what you would find
more useful in its place. But also do try to remember also that your education
isn’t yet finished, that things you don’t understand now and don’t yet see the
value of may turn out later on to be relevant and useful, and that the site’s
creators may know more about this than you do yet.
You may also want to consider possibilities for using social media
to document and summarize your experiences here, as in the previous module’s
assignment.
SLP Assignment Expectations
LENGTH: 2-3 pages typed and double-spaced
The following items will be assessed in particular:
The degree to which you have carried out the assignment
completely, or clarified why you could not and investigated alternativesYour ability to describe your experiences clearly and draw
conclusions from them, not just narrate eventsYour ability to focus on the overall purposes of the
assignment, not just its specific stepsYour use of some in-text references to what you have read,
where appropriate; please cite all sources properly
ITM501SLP05 -(2 to 3
pages double space courier new and a reference page)
One of the biggest problems with keeping information systems
running is that they are constantly developing major and minor operating
problems. Sometimes we can fix these ourselves by reading the manuals or maybe
just kicking the machine. On the other hand, learning to ask for help
effectively is one of the big Survival Skills in the new internet Age.
Fortunately, one of the best things that the internet has spawned is a
widespread community of help and support sites, many volunteer-staffed and free
to users, where a remarkably high level of quality support is available.
As your project assignment for this final module, youâll have a
chance to sample this network and maybe even get something fixed. You must have
some technical question or questions about your information system, tools,
practices, or features â something not working, something that youâve never
been quite able to figure out, or just a question about how something might be
done. It could be serious or it could be small in scope â but if you donât have
something bugging you about your system, you obviously arenât using it much.
·
So your first step is to figure out what your problem is.
·
Then you need to look for help. Gizmoâs has put together a list of
the best free technical support sites; itâs available at .techsupportalert.com/best_free_tech_support_sites.htm”>http://www.techsupportalert.com/best_free_tech_support_sites.htm.
Look over this list and pick one that you think could be helpful in addressing
your problem, whatever it might be. Or you might find another site entirely â
youâre not required to use only the ones on this list. You may need to log onto
some of the sites and get a sense of what questions are being asked and how
theyâre being dealt with in order to make your selection.
·
The next step is simple â ask your question, and see what sort of
answers you get. It might take a few iterations, or you might get an answer
immediately. Try not to make your question too simple-minded; youâll get more
out of the exercise if itâs a bit challenging, after all. See if things get
solved to your satisfaction.
·
Finally, you need to prepare a short report describing your
problem, where you went for help, how effective the interaction was, and your
overall assessment of the whole exercise.
·
Please conclude with a few sentences summarizing your sense of the
Internet as a problem-solving, as opposed to a problem-generating, system,
along with the usual attention to what you’ve learned and how you may be able
to apply that understanding.
This could be fun, as well as helpful and illuminating!
SLP Assignment Expectations
LENGTH: 2-3 pages typed and double-spaced
The following items will be assessed in particular:
The degree to which you have carried out the assignment
completely, or clarified why you could not and investigated alternativesYour ability to describe your experiences clearly and draw
conclusions from them, not just narrate eventsYour ability to focus on the overall purposes of the
assignment, not just its specific stepsYour use of some in-text references to what you have read,
where appropriate; please cite all sources properly