Brainstormers

[j4]

If someone told you they could offer you Support for learners, teachers and researchers using "Web 2.0" technologies and mobile devices to access institutional systems ... what sort of things would you be asking them for? Please assume that they have reasonable quantities of time and money at their disposal, but that they would really prefer not to use up too much of that time having an argument about what "web 2.0 technologies" means. :-}

Comments

[caramel-betty.livejournal.com]

Depending on just what they mean...

• Access to things like Athens over t'Interweb is, for me, incredibly useful. The OU have a whole bunch of different databases and journals you can get access to once you're logged in.


• At work, using Outlook Web Access can be great (because a lot of our stuff is in Outlook) - getting access to email, public folders etc. is helpful. We also have Outlook Mobile Access which is ropey and less functional, but also useful for mobiles. More generally, access to any appropriate emails/forums/newsgroups/whatever can be helpful - even read-only access can help you find out that presentation you wanted to attend.


• I occasionally find myself wanting access to our internal directory system from my mobile, so I can grab someone's contact details.


• Easy access to timetables, planning mails - possibly the ability to sign up for text notifications of timetable changes for courses you're taking, or something like that.

[pizza.maircrosoft.com (from livejournal.com)]

... but Outlook Web Access is crippled in non-internet-explorer browsers )-:

Here, half the department seems to believe that variants on wikis are the way forward. I can't think of an obvious use case from j4's spec, though.

[caramel-betty.livejournal.com]

It's not great in non-IE browsers, but I find it usable.

I wouldn't necessarily suggest installing OWA, not least because academentics often use all sorts of random stuff that isn't happy with Exchange so they may not be using that to start with. However, the sort of functions that are available with it can be quite useful, so a handy-dandy Web 2.0 thingermy might want to look at providing something similar.

[pizza.maircrosoft.com (from livejournal.com)]

Well, specifically, the option I needed to use the other day (setting up email forwarding), is not available outside IE. Support suggested "find a machine with IE".

[nja.livejournal.com]

OWA is crippled but still quite usable, I'd say. Our people in charge of development keep telling us that blogsandwikis (one thing, apparently) are the future. I'm not convinced.