The CALL Facility now has dual monitors on each workstation! Well, not all of them. The Instructors stations (#37 & #38) are connected to the VDP and can project to the entire room. And room is needed for laptops and materials at each station.
The idea to install them came from a Poster Session for Linguistics, described in an earlier post! It was so successful that the monitors at HSD (in storage) that were headed to be recycled, a box of HDMI-DVI dongles and some DVI cables were found …. DUAL MONITORS! And at absolutely no cost at all! I joke that I found a penny under a station, so my budget not only came in UNDER budget .. but showed a profit!!!!
There are combinations of Portrait and/or Landscape and relatively easy to switch around. I will survey students throughout the summer to see what combination might be preferable.
Most students are away for the summer and fewer classes are actually scheduled so it will still look like ‘new’ equipment for September!
Thanks to colleagues T, H and G for helping me set them up! Those cable trays are heavy, awkward and filled with .. cables! LOL! And a very green mini-project, saving tech from a landfill too!
I recently found out just where my ‘CALL me Bog‘ blog … ranks here at OAC at UVic in terms of number of Posts and number of Views! NOT that anything I write here is ‘earth shattering’ but … it might just be able to kick up some dust from under an old serial port keyboard some days! LOL!
So, the Top 5 OAC websites at UVic for number of Posts are:
Yeah, okay, comparing Apples and Oranges and … WINDOWS! But all the rest are all Faculties, Departments, Groups, Organizations, etc. so … maybe I am the #1 individual blog! But each of those sites are amazing and I have actively followed My UVic Life and UVic Teach Anywhere. I recommend them all!
CALL Me Bog Page Views
And one more stat is the number of Page Views and with that I rank a bit higher! CALL Me Bog is #7 in Page Views at 13,624!! Always room to improve, grow and get more Views and more Posts and Pages!
The gap to move up is fairly significant so I doubt that I can move up too much with Page Views! But you never know when one of my Posts will go viral at UVic! To Infinity and Beyond! LOL!
And some more mini-updates in CALL – almost done putting in .. TWO MONITORS AT EACH WORKSTATION! Only 5 left to go! I will update the next post, next week with a photo! YAY DUAL MONITORS! Many thanks to my colleagues T, H and G for helping me out and setting them up!
PS: I have a new laptop and monitor and .. added another one too!
Trio Grande
Stay tuned for when all the monitors are installed! .. SOON!
More of a ‘Back to the Future‘ vibe as CALL hosted a Poster Session for Linguistics near the end of the semester! A poster session might sound boring but … never in CALL and this one was QUITE UNIQUE!
7 groups needed to present a digital ‘Poster‘ on a computer, with a monitor that could display in Portrait … literally! So SK (Instructor) came down a day ahead and we literally FLIPPED the new monitors (from last August refresh) in CALL … et voila … PORTRAIT MODE! I had to change the preferences to Portrait but that was a few seconds on each computer!
SK had a sample .png file, copied it to the desktop and it worked perfectly with the basic viewer software on each platform (MAC/WIN)!
All the groups had to do was login with their Netlink credentials, copy the file to the desktop and view it as Full Screen and it worked perfectly!
And I am going to recycle some older monitors (from HSD! Thanks H!), slowly, and try to outfit as many workstations in CALL with DUAL MONITORS! That will be very useful and welcomed by all users of CALL! I will have a mix of Landscape and Landscape/Portrait for students to try!
The CALL Facility will be the first and only drop-in classroom/lab that has both Mac and WIN computers, webcams and dual monitors! And so much much more too!
CALL New Layout
For a quick recap of many new additions and updates, go to this post.
All the new furniture has arrived in CALL! Okay, that is not necessarily ‘new‘ news! But I have repositioned the furniture to allow for better distancing, better sight lines and better viewing of the entire CALL Facility, at least from my perspective. The old layout is after the new layout photos below.
CALL Layout I
CALL Layout II
CALL Layout III
The best feature of this new layout (thanks to rolling desks!) is distancing to make sure everyone has enough room, should they want it. There are lots of open workstations for students and of course, all new computers from last August too.
You might notice that the LARGE rolling whiteboards are not at the back of the room. I have moved them into strategically ‘hidden‘ locations in CALL!
They are still IN CALL, and can be moved anywhere quickly. I just found that some students (not all!) were using them at the back to hide that they were removing their masks and eating in CALL. Masks must be worn at all times and no food or beverages in any classrooms at UVic. There are also 2 smaller rolling whiteboards too!
Thanks to EVERYONE for all your help and support over the past 2+ years. Without my colleagues support and friendship, I have no idea how I would have fared! THANK YOU ALL!
And how about a new feature every so often – a Throwback Link to topics … somewhat close to this one! LOL!
What an exhausting and long year since last August – my last full vacation!
And exhausting … for ALL OF US! I am so fortunate to have been able to work with such amazing and incredible colleagues at The Computer Help Desk over the past … 500+ DAYS! Yes, it has been that long since we started working remotely, late in March of 2020!
Without ALL of their support, humour, leadership, imagination, guidance and every single possible ‘intangible‘ that each and every single one of them, ALL BRING to our Teams meetings, emails, texts, GIFs, Emojis, Jeopardy, Quote Contests, it would have been impossible to accomplish a fraction of what WE ALL DID AS A TEAM!
THANK YOU ALL!
A few key UVic and BC websites for returning to campus in September for everyone!
I have been taking combinations of Thursdays/Fridays/Mondays to have a bit of a break, some breathing room and to relieve a bit of stress. August is my traditional full vacation time!
A personal challenge (since we started working remotely), was to contribute a daily OAC post, relating to languages, computers, graphics, words, culture, UVic, technology (old and new!), puns, The CALL Facility or anything informative, educational and perhaps even funny!
I have been learning more and more about WordPress and have found some neat tricks that have helped me out – teaser – that will be a future post!
I will scale back my ‘Daily’ posts in September as the Fall semester will be unlike ANY OTHER SEMESTER, anytime in the past 30+ years that I have experienced at UVic. I still plan on posting once a week, but that will depend on so many things! Let me correct that – it will depend on … EVERYTHINGthat is going on at UVic in September …. and probably until next year!
Full Disclosure: Sometimes I had 3 or 4 posts all whirling around madly in my mind at the same time … and other times … I had NO idea what I would be writing about, even as I turned my computer on! Blogging by the seat of my pants! Fun Fact – that is basically how I got through U of Calgary too! It’s true … REALLY TRUE! 🙂
Today, July 31/2020, is actually Day 134 since March 19th, my last full on-campus day at The Computer Help Desk / The CALL Facility. I am hoping we can all return to UVic relatively soon, under safe conditions and help students, staff and faculty with their work!
Not to worry . . .
August 31st to prep for
. . . Septem . . . PURR !!!!
So today, a plethora (I like dictionary.com!) of comics, cartoons, YouTube and other appurtenances (I likethesaurus.com too!)
I had started off with a theme of MS:Office and my long history with Excel, Word and PowerPoint. But I quickly found a far more interesting topic for today … Working From Home! I am forever the optimist (I hope!) and try to find the humour in most things (I try!) and quickly changed topics!
And today is a fairly busy day with some creative work in Teams for a Poll (Thanks to Kelly, Gary, Tomoyo and Heather!) and trying to be creative, relevant, funny, factual and learn a few new things every so often! Maybe this old dog CAN learn a few new tricks!
Some funny cartoons, websites and truly miscellaneous items for a quick post today.
Open Book Exams . . . . or . . . . My Favourite Textbooks
This may be the FIRST and ONLY blog post on the internet about … Favourite Textbooks! Textbooks are usually the bane of most students! LOL!
But I really enjoyed getting new textbooks, especially in Grade 12! For the first time, we had to venture to DOWNTOWN CALGARY to actually BUY AND OWN our textbooks! Previously, we were issued them, had to guard them throughout the semester and RETURN THEM at the end! But now, we could OWN THEM!
And what a great textbook for Grade 12 Math – ‘Modern Intermediate Algebra‘! And the trick was, to buy the book that had the ANSWERS IN THE BACK! Only a few of them DID have the answers, and I was lucky enough to get one of those! Quite an adventure for me at the time!
And if you haven’t figured it out by now, I still have these textbooks! Yup, weird, but … I collect books of all kinds! A future post will be on REALLY OLD TEXTBOOKS that I have!
The next 4 textbooks are all from when I attended the University of Calgary from 1975-1982. Yup, some gap years in there to travel, live and work in Banff and explore the world! Might sneak an old photo of me in there somewhere too! LOL!
And how boring – a book on .. evaluating student progress? And even more boring, THAT IS THE TITLE TOO – ‘Evaluating Student Progress’!
And here I thought I would finally find out all the tricks and secrets of passing exams … and for the most part, I did pick up some ideas, especially when my first job out of university was evaluating exams, something called Item Analysis! And it was fun! Basically, how does an exam actually MEASURE student knowledge! Yeah, boring, but at the time, I actually USED this textbook in a real life setting!
And then one of my All Time Favourite themes – STATISTICS titled ‘Elements of Statistics‘! All kinds of neat formulas, algorithms and magical numbers with REAL WORLD RESULTS! And for the first time – a new studying technique! We were allowed to bring in a small 4×6 recipe card with ANYTHING WE WANT WRITTEN ON IT! This was such a great learning tool, that I used it in all my future classes! This forces you to actually STUDY and WRITE DOWN anything you were not as confident with, thus FORCING YOU TO RECOGNIZE AND STUDY YOUR WEAK POINTS! And it worked flawlessly! (At least, for me!)
This has been a bit of a ‘Top 10 Favourite Textbooks‘ countdown, except only a ‘Top 5‘ of them! My bad! And the next 2 textbooks bring back fond memories … and some not so fond …. of courses I took … sometimes twice and three times! How about them apples!
The BEST stat course EVER was on games of chance! And the Instructor LIVED HIS TEXTBOOK – ‘Basic Probability and Applications‘! When introducing himself, he said he might be late for some Monday morning classes as he would be enroute BACK FROM LAS VEGAS as he spent most weekends there …. GAMBLING! That is one amazing course intro! And he had his own TEXTBOOK TOO!
And my FAVOURITE TEXTBOOK OF ALL TIME is entitled ‘Excursions Into Mathematics‘ for the exceedingly misnamed course ‘Elementary Mathematics From and Advanced Viewpoint‘!!!
I took this course
… THREE TIMES … before I passed it! HARDEST.COURSE.EVER!
First time was with a friend and BOTH of us dropped it at Christmas as it was just too freaking hard! Second time was with my entire Education Year colleagues (9 of us!) and the 10th student in the class dropped it too – and he was in Honours Math at the time! Why did HE drop it? It was lowering his GPA!
Finally, passed the course in the summer, and all I did was Math for a solid month, literally every day, and got a B+ on it! YAY! The Instructor apologized to me .. I was literally ONE POINT AWAY FROM AN A- …. but I did not care. I HAD PASSED THE COURSE and could now graduate! WHEW!
Still, the textbook is awesome and even though I may have ONCE understood many classical concepts – it is like Quantum Physics, another favourite topic! I may not understand ANY of it … but it is as close to MAGIC as we will ever get in this crazy world/universe/multi-verse we live in! LOL!
Oh, and whenever there was a so-called ‘Open Book Exam‘ – they were the toughest exams in the history of education. You better KNOW YOUR STUFF, because if you spent the time looking for the answer in your ‘textbook’, you wasted so much time, you never finished the exam!
And as Steve Jobs liked to say … ‘… one more thing….’!
My favourite math book was my ‘Mathematical Handbook‘ that had all kinds of formulas and simplified explanations of my favourite theorems and numbers! Served me well all through High School and University!
And one more …. one more thing! If I didn’t include a dictionary … ANY DICTIONARY in this list, then I would be remiss! I had ve saved many of my old dictionaries, including my pocket French/English dictionary, but I now tend to use dictionary.com and thesaurus.com on an almost daily basis! Big thumbs up to both of those sites!
And not that many funny extra sites out there. I found most of them quite rude and in bad taste and many offensive. The only funny one is above. And just doodles on existing images in each book. Sometimes you win. Sometimes you lose. Sometimes … it rains! (Ask me about THAT quote, which literally comes out of … right field!)
And same with videos. Lots of bad taste ones out there, sand offensive ones, so today, only a compilation of Steve Jobs ‘One More Thing‘ below, to wax nostalgic today!
As long as there are words out there, there will be a site that Google finds!!
How about some computer cartoons and other media today! Maybe some old ones that make us chuckle from where we have come from! And a busy day today too! LOL!
To start, my favourite scene from Captain Marvel! Many of us from The Computer Help Desk went together to see this movie together (Thanks again Marcela!) and this scene was THE funniest for me!
Remember, it takes place in the 1980’s and Captain Marvel is from an incredibly technologically advanced planet! And even today … I often get to use the classic phrase … ‘It’s loading“! LOL!
And what would a Bog Blog Post be without some Homer Simpson memes!
And some Classic Bloom County from WAY BACK WHEN that many of you probably will never have heard of! My first car was a Black Subaru that I named … OPUS!
And Foxtrot always had a befuddled Dad playing around with their newest iFruit computer! The usual assortment of familh members, all with varying degrees of computer expertise from genius to … less than genius!
Cool Picture or Infographics and Language Learning
A picture is worth 1000 words. Never more accurate with Infographics! AndINFOGRAPHICSARE about words AND languages.
FULL Disclosure: I have zero artistic talent!
DOUBLE Full Disclosure: I once took an art class and … could barely sharpen my sketching charcoal!
I just missed out on a course about Infographics at the library yesterday. I am hoping they offer it again! And just what ARE Infographics? Well, according to Wikipedia:
Infographics (a clipped compound of “information” and “graphics”) are graphic visual representations of information, data, or knowledge intended to present information quickly and clearly.[1][2] They can improve cognition by utilizing graphics to enhance the human visual system’s ability to see patterns and trends.[3][4] Similar pursuits are information visualization, data visualization, statistical graphics, information design, or information architecture.[2] Infographics have evolved in recent years to be for mass communication, and thus are designed with fewer assumptions about the readers’ knowledge base than other types of visualizations.[5] Isotypes are an early example of infographics conveying information quickly and easily to the masses.[6]
I have liberally saturated some posts with Simpsons gifs and memes, and I probably shouldn’t have been surprised to find some Simpson infographics! LOL!
Confucious was right ….”I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.”
The topic of student teaching (practicums) came up at Digital Coffee today and the best and most powerful teaching lessons I remember, not only when I was a student teacher, but also AS A STUDENT, were always the most visually stimulating, interesting and sometimes, confusing lessons! But their impact is long-term, at least on me!
Oh, the stories that … could be a future OAC post about teaching ‘BG’ …. that is short for … BEFORE GOOGLE! LOL! Or even ‘BtI’ –Before the Internet!
Yup, I grew up when Amazon was ….. a river! And Social Media required … leaving the house!
And one of the most famous of ALL Infographics is something ALL of you have studied in school, potentially from about Grade 6 on … maybe even earlier – Mendeleev’s Periodic Table, 1869!
And I also discovered some ANIMATED Infographics, which takes visual learning to a whole new level! Okay, so the last one is a .. penguin! LOL! I bet you will remember THAT one, if only because it is such a black and white issue!
Click on each one to open in a new tab.
Visual LearnersMusclesPenguin
And the usual assortment of recently searched interesting links, videos and other cool stuff – but beware, you may now have an overwhelming urge to discover a new element and add it to the Periodic Table!
with such amazing and incredible colleagues at The Computer Help Desk over the past … 500+ DAYS! Yes, it has been that long since we started working remotely, late in March of 2020!
I will scale back my ‘Daily’ posts in September as the Fall semester will be unlike 
And today is a fairly busy day with some creative work in Teams for a Poll (Thanks to Kelly, Gary, Tomoyo and Heather!) and trying to be creative, relevant, funny, factual and learn a few new things every so often! Maybe this old dog CAN learn a few new tricks!
Finally, passed the course in the summer, and all I did was Math for a solid month, literally every day, and got a B+ on it! YAY! The Instructor apologized to me .. I was literally ONE POINT AWAY FROM AN A- …. but I did not care. I HAD PASSED THE COURSE and could now graduate! WHEW!
And some Classic 
