Program Sessions and Tracks
Pre-Conference Workshops
PRE1: Developing a Secure Intranet with Plone
Andy Mrozkowski, Mars Hill College
Plone is a free, open-source content management system for developing Web-based collaborative tools like intranets, extranets and portals. In 2005, Mars Hill College underwent a project to unify on-campus communications through an intranet channel. After evaluating several vendors, the free, open-source solution Plone was chosen. This session will describe installing Plone on your server and adding/removing common components. We will then add third-party vendor components (also for free) to add additional functionality to Plone. Finally, we will explore "styling" Plone to match your institution's identity using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) within Plone's Web-based administration forms.
Who should be interested in Plone?
- Institutions evaluating Microsoft's SharePoint.
- Institutions investigating private, secure chatrooms/bulletin boards.
- Institutions desiring collaborative Web sites with user-supplied content.
- Institutions wishing to eliminate "global email" as a campus communications method.
This session is scheduled for Sunday, Oct. 22, from 1:00 PM to 4:30 PM.
PRE2: Developing & Maintaining Web Content: An Idea Generating Workshop
Douglas Tschopp, Augustana College
This popular WebDev workshop is a great way to start off the conference! Using some of the cornerstone topics in communications and public relations, this workshop examines the development of good Web content. The second half of the workshop looks at research techniques available for developing and assessing Web sites.
This session is scheduled for Sunday, Oct. 22, from 1:00 PM to 4:30 PM.
PRE3: Introduction to PEAR (the PHP Extension and Application Repository)
Jason Pitoniak, Rochester Institute of Technology
As a higher ed Web developer you're short on time, short on resources, but definitely not short on projects. Every department wants the latest and greatest features added to their Web site, but Web applications take time to build and maintain.
Imagine abstracting your database calls, easily controlling your Web forms, and effortlessly connecting to (or even providing) Web services from your PHP applications. Or maybe you'd like to simplify data reporting, perform unit testing, manage files, or even manipulate images. The PHP Extension and Application Repository (PEAR) is a structured PHP code library that offers many packages that can save you time and that help eliminate many of the common frustrations of Web application development. PEAR packages make it easy for you to do all these things and more.
This workshop will introduce you to PEAR and the many useful resources you can find in it. We'll learn what PEAR is all about and how to install and use the PEAR Package Manager in both Windows and Unix environments (including how to install a local PEAR library in your own account when you don't have root access to the server). Finally, we'll look at several of the most popular and most useful PEAR packages and see how to make the most out of them. Intermediate experience with PHP is recommended.
This session is scheduled for Sunday, Oct. 22, from 1:00 PM to 4:30 PM.
PRE4: Thinking Outside the Table: Designing with CSS and XHTML
**WORKSHOP IS FULL**
Bryan Hantman, University of Maryland School of Nursing
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) established Web standards, designed to deliver the greatest benefits to the greatest number of Web users while ensuring the forward compatibility of Web pages. Although today's browsers support standards, many designers and developers in higher education continue to use structurally meaningless methods of marking up Web pages. These Web professionals create invalid, inaccessible sites that unnecessarily drain the already stressed resources of university IT departments. Designing with Web standards simplifies page design and lowers the cost of production and maintenance while delivering sites that meet accessibility laws. Standards-based sites are also more compatible across nontraditional Internet devices.
In this workshop, we will work individually to develop a standards-based Web site. The hands-on workshop will introduce you to XHTML (Extensible HyperText Markup Language) and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). For those with laptops, please have a text editor and the current version of Firefox installed, as well as other browsers your institution may support. You will walk away from this workshop with a basic understanding of CSS and XHTML, and you will be able to build Web sites using CSS and XHTML. "Thinking outside the table" means Web designers are able to develop CSS-based pages that resemble table-based designs. In this workshop, we will have fun with the following topics:
- XHTML structure and formatting
- Creating, applying, and formatting with styles
- Styling layout, lists, and tables
- Validating CSS and XHTML
This session is scheduled for Sunday, Oct. 22, from 1:00 PM to 4:30 PM.
PRE5: Usability and Paper Prototyping
Rose Pruyne, The Pennsylvania State University
Wendy Jones, The Pennsylvania State University
Rob Dickerson, The Pennsylvania State University
Lynne Shala, The Pennsylvania State University
Stop coding for a minute and read this! Paper prototyping is a quick and highly effective way to incorporate user feedback into your Web page design and programming applications. Creating a working, coded user interface for testing requires a big expenditure of time, effort, and money. This hands-on workshop will show you how paper prototyping in the initial design (or redesign) phase bypasses that big expenditure and provides maximum speed and flexibility for testing your Web interfaces. All you need for paper prototyping is a group of users and *very* simple tools—paper, scissors, post-it notes, that sort of thing. Did we mention that it's also fun?
This session is scheduled for Sunday, Oct. 22, from 1:00 PM to 4:30 PM.
PRE6: Emerging Web Technologies: Building New Connections in Higher Education
**WORKSHOP IS FULL**
Mark Greenfield, University at Buffalo
Jim Leous, The Pennsylvania State University
Over the past few years, several emerging technologies are bringing fundamental changes to the Web. These technologies are at the core of the read/write Web and provide institutions of higher education new opportunities to connect and collaborate with all constituencies.
This workshop will focus on four specific technologies: RSS, blogs, podcasting and wikis. In addition to demonstrating how to create each of these technologies, implementation strategies and best practices will be reviewed. We will explore how applications of these technologies could be implemented in a variety of ways, including creating new conduits of interaction with both students and prospects; supporting teaching efforts inside and outside the classroom; constructing more efficient internal collaboration between faculty, staff and administration; and sustaining connections with alumni.
This session is scheduled for Sunday, Oct. 22, from 1:00 PM to 4:30 PM.
Post-Conference Workshops
POST1: Advanced CSS Workshop
**WORKSHOP IS FULL**
Daniel M. Frommelt, University of Wisconsin-Platteville
A hands-on opportunity to play with some advanced CSS concepts. Bring your laptops and an open mind. We'll cover many of the current hot design techniques: multi-column layout, faux-column layout, advanced image replacement techniques, advanced list manipulation, rounded corner boxes, son-of-suckerfish dropdowns, cross-column pull-outs, CSS hacks, and customized CSS for alternate devices. There will also be a discussion of emulators for alternate devices and a discussion about helpful tools for Web developers. Example files will be made available for the session that can be manipulated during the workshop. For those bringing laptops, please have a text editor and the current version of Firefox installed, as well as other browsers your institution may support. If you can not bring a laptop, you will be able to observe and work with the other participants. Final example files will be available at the end of the workshop. This workshop assumes a basic understanding of CSS and XHTML principles.
This session is scheduled for Wednesday, Oct. 25, from 1:00 PM to 4:30 PM.
POST2: Applying Professional Software Engineering Techniques in PHP to Nonprofit Web Application Shops
Jason Woodward, Cornell University School of Hotel Administration
Web application shops that build today's high volume Web sites use various traditional software engineering techniques to allow collaboration between developers and to ensure ongoing quality of the applications produced. But, many times these techniques are not known to or are out of the reach of small nonprofit Web application shops. In this workshop I make the argument that there are several easy to implement processes (both technical and procedural) small shops can utilize to greatly improve the quality of their Web applications. After making that argument I present several process techniques covering communication with the customer / end user and the structure of the software development processes and environment. I then move on to a detailed technical discussion of both preventative and reactive techniques for quality improvement with examples in the PHP programming language. I close with a technical discussion of the special software the Cornell Hotel School uses to facilitate the procedural processes discussed earlier.
Course Objectives:
- To provide exposure to techniques for producing high quality,
- To provide hands-on PHP implementations of preventative and reactive quality improvement techniques
- To provide technical understanding of a framework built for achieving these goals
Materials:
- Annotated PHP source code
- PEAR DB driver subclass for Oracle
- Error handling / notification mechanisms
- Apache2 mod_perl dynamic configuration for development Web site provisioning
- Apache2 mod_perl filter for dev site URL rewriting
This session is scheduled for Wednesday, Oct. 25, from 1:00 PM to 4:30 PM.
POST3: RSS: More than a Blog Data Format
C. Daniel Chase, The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
We see orange XML logos on many blogs today. You might even know you can copy the URL into a feed reader and subscribe to a blog. But, really, what is RSS? If you click on one of those orange XML logos, you've seen RSS data. But, did you know there are at least three different RSS formats and another that may replace it? What content is RSS best used for, how can you produce it on your Web site, and how can you use other RSS data sources, better known as 'feeds', to supply content for your site? RSS leads to a different model of content management: Publish & Subscribe.
In this workshop you will learn about what content you should consider using RSS feeds for, from both a publisher and a subscriber point of view. The pros and cons of choosing which format you use will be discussed, as well as automated methods of producing multiple formats. You will learn how to publish your content in a feed so users can subscribe to specific areas of interest and receive updates of your content, without visiting the Web page of interest. You will also learn how your site can use RSS feeds from other publishers to supply Web content for your pages, such as current weather, local news, etc. Since it is so commonly seen in relationship to blogs, that relationship will be explored as well. While the focus will be on RSS as an XML-based data format, code for producing it will be in both PHP and Perl.
This session is scheduled for Wednesday, Oct. 25, from 1:00 PM to 4:30 PM.
POST4: Widgets, Gadgets & Gizmos Galore: Putting Your Content on People's Desktops
Don Albrecht, University of Rochester
This session will explore the extension of a Web site onto client desktops via the use of Widgets and Gadgets. All four major engines will be explored (Google Desktop, Microsoft Sidebar, Apple's Dashboard, Yahoo Widgets) as well as deployment to Web portals. These small applications are destined to be a ubiquitous presence over the coming years; they are also a powerful way to syndicate your content. This presentation will explore creating a generic branded widget that can be deployed to all four engines.
This session is scheduled for Wednesday, Oct. 25, from 1:00 PM to 4:30 PM.
POST5: Writing for the Web
Suzanne Wayne, The Pennsylvania State University
The Web has become an extremely important communications tool. Prospective students, alumni, current students, faculty and staff, as well as a number of other university partners all rely on the Web as their initial—and sometimes only—source of information. It is crucial that our Web sites have all the necessary information for each of these important audiences.
However, Web usability experts suggest that Web content should be 50% shorter than printed content to increase readability and reader retention. How do we communicate so much more information, with less content? In this workshop, we will discuss how to keep Web content concise while retaining the important information users are looking for.
Designed specifically for higher education professionals, this workshop will help you understand the writing style that works best on the Web, with specific examples from a number of academic Web sites. Participants will leave with strategies to help produce appropriate Web content themselves or support communication staff in this endeavor.
Topics to be covered include:
- Cut content while retaining meaning
- Organize your site
- Label your information and write clear links
- Know your audience and your purpose
- Fit your site into a larger communications plan
- Convert printed content to the Web — what to avoid
- Write for search engine placement
This session is scheduled for Wednesday, Oct. 25, from 1:00 PM to 4:30 PM.
POST6: Understanding and Implementing Web Accessibility
Sara Clark, Missouri State University
Chad Killingsworth, Missouri State University
Are you wondering if your Web site is accessible? In this workshop, we'll review the Electronic Information Technology Accessibility Standards (commonly known as the Section 508 Accessibility Standards) and discuss coding techniques for meeting the standards. Then we'll discuss how you can implement Web accessibility at your campus through the use of a policy, action plan, and review process.
This session is scheduled for Wednesday, Oct. 25, from 1:00 PM to 4:30 PM.
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