1. Kent Matsueda’s WAR Report for 12/1-12/7
Wow, I had to check. Actually, I'm in my third week here at IST and it's been a great start so far. I am
thinking of my friends back in WCLD and will need to make a visit to see them soon.
I think I’m going to have to pare down my WARs. Too much detail!
Table of Contents
Kent Matsueda’s WAR Report for 12/1-12/7 ............................................................................................... 1
Accomplishments ...................................................................................................................................... 2
MT4 Mobile Edits .................................................................................................................................. 2
Voicethread Mobile App ....................................................................................................................... 2
12/2 LD Community Meeting: 21st Century ID..................................................................................... 2
Department Resources ......................................................................................................................... 2
Ravi’s courses ........................................................................................................................................ 3
Flash training ......................................................................................................................................... 3
Ongoing Projects ....................................................................................................................................... 4
SRA 111 Kick-off .................................................................................................................................... 4
General Pipeline Discussion .................................................................................................................. 4
Immediate Decisions / Issues.................................................................................................................... 4
Flash in Drupal....................................................................................................................................... 4
Publishing PDF’s to the Web ................................................................................................................. 4
Back Burner ............................................................................................................................................... 5
Games, Sims, and Virtual Worlds .......................................................................................................... 5
Days off / Conferences .............................................................................................................................. 5

2. Accomplishments
MT4 Mobile Edits
I tried to edit my entry yesterday (11/30) for week 3 and remembered that while MT4 has a slick mobile
access to its interface, it's a real pain to edit existing entries because you have to do everything with
code and the iOS keeps trying to fix HTML code.
Voicethread Mobile App
Hmm, the app crashed on my first try. The app is still buggy. My identities under my account are being
displayed oddly. The first VT I checked out looks awesome. The interface preserves annotations and I'll
have to find an example with a video comment. I just tried to record some video and it looks great!
(Note to self: I was able to quickly move screencaps from iOS via Box.net)
12/2 LD Community Meeting: 21st Century ID
• New tools vs. our process – There are a lot of tools, but have they added value?
• Horizon – There was discussion and interest in mobile learning and augmented reality. How will
we make these tools and approaches useful?
Department Resources
I think I’m getting a better idea of how we work here and some of the infrastructure tools we have at
our disposal.
• SharePoint – OIDI contact info, HOL repository, WARs; intranet features: access to other IST
departments
• filescommon – IST-wide resource for sharing documents, a place to keep backups of our own
working documents
• Subversion – OIDI resource for course materials
• ANGEL Groups – used by Curriculum Committees and Development teams, Audrey just added
me (12/5) to about 100 new groups!

3. • Mapping server drives – Ravi helped me to map server space for our courses as network drives
on my desktop. It seems a lot more convenient than FTPing into the server as long as there
aren’t any problems.
VirtualLabs
There are a couple of virtual labs that I’ve checked out. The first one has MS Project installed on it. I
spoke with Ravi and he’s going to check on the second link because Project is apparently supposed to be
available to WC students as well. Make sure you’re using “dce.psu.edukkm11” to log in!
1. vlabs.up.ist.psu.edu
2. wcvlabs.up.ist.psu.edu
I’m sharing the files via Dropbox.com so that I can move docs from the virtual computer back to my
work machine. Drag-and-drop functionality would be nice, but this works OK for now.
Updated list of recommended browsers for ANGEL
I found this useful list while preparing my next round of request items for our Helpdesk.
Ravi’s courses
I met with Ravi and he reviewed the courses he’s supporting for the Spring ’12 semester. I walked away
with a high-level understanding of which courses WCLD are going to be supporting as opposed to the
ones IST is responsible for. One of the things I was able to get from him was a list of courses by priority:
1. 230
2. 402
3. Not yet populated as of 12/6/11
a. 295A
b. 495
c. 110
d. 331
e. 111S – 1 credit seminar
4. Don’t worry about the courses running through Evolution
We also talk about his impressions of OIDI’s relationship with our IT department and how the course
committees function. It was very useful to understand some of the background context from Ravi’s
perspective. We chatted about improving instructor training opportunities and the conversations
around group work in our courses.
I will be scheduling meetings with Lisa and Amy Stever to understand what their roles are.
Flash training
I’ve also been doing some catch up with CS5.5 and Flash 5.5 in particular since it’s been a while. I’ve had
the luxury of relying on multimedia specialists in the past and now realize that I may have to crank out
the ActionScript on my own again 

4. Ongoing Projects
SRA 111 Kick-off
Met with Ed Glantz (12/1) and I’m making initial preparations to meet with him starting after the New
Year. I’ve received the text book but did not get the instructor’s CD as I had hoped. Perhaps that’s
available as an online resource. The publisher also gave me 365-day access to the online version in
Coursesmart. I’m getting access to the ANGEL Groups and have created a DEV Group for the course. I
add my first student request for work related to the SRA111 syllabus! Bill is going to get going on that
today (12/5).
General Pipeline Discussion
John Fulmer stopped by to ask about upcoming labs that we’ll be working on. I’ll have to ask Amy what
is coming down the pike and how best we should communicate progress.
Immediate Decisions / Issues
Flash in Drupal
I worked with Ravi on solving one of his problems related to a SWF that wouldn’t load properly. It’s
associated XML file couldn’t be found. After Ravi showed me that the SWF worked locally, directly off
the server, and from the WC Evolution server, I was convinced that the problem was related to Drupal.
Drupal creates its own navigation URL’s that do not correspond to the “actual” directory structure on
the server. This problem only effects SWF’s that call external files like XML documents. Free-standing
SWF’s run perfectly fine, but when the SWF goes to call on a specific server location, we’re thinking that
it doesn’t match what Drupal is familiar with. That the relative URL in the SWF somehow breaks in
Drupal. The quick fix is that Ravi is going to create an image link to pull up the SWF in a pop-up which we
determined does work fine. I think this requires a lot more investigation if we’re going to use more
SWF’s that call external files in the future.
I just spoke with Ravi (12/5) and he’s now having troubles calling a simple image from his page in Drupal.
We checked the images on the server and they appear OK. When we checked to see if we could directly
view the images in the browser they wouldn’t display. We verified that other images and resources from
the same directory could be called on and they worked, so there’s a specific problem with the image
files that Ravi created as thumbnails for his SWF’s that should appear in his pop-out windows. I
recommended that he contact the Helpdesk and he’s sent a ticket on the issue. Update, Helpdesk
determined that we need to use uppercase “JPG” and the link will now work… sometimes I hate
computers.
Publishing PDF’s to the Web
How can I create Web-readable versions of PDF’s? I used to work with Dean so that he could convert my
documents into FlashPaper, but I think FP was phased out. I’d like to find a more “modern version” of
research I did on this earlier this year. For the time being, I’ll probably use Slideshare.net.

5. Back Burner
Games, Sims, and Virtual Worlds
Schedule a meeting in January. Finish with the initial draft based on Rick’s feedback.
Days off / Conferences
I’m going to be taking December 21-23 off in advance of the winter holiday.