Yeah tonight's class went over like a lead ballon. A Skype update has apparently killed my mic. I got it to work in every other program on my pc, yet Skype doesn't see a thing. You guys can make fun all you want, but just like any good IT person should, I had a backup. The mic on my MS webcam was kickin and although it wasn't the pristine sound quality that is my podcasting mic it worked in a pinch and that is all that counts. (Take note of that folks, especially if you ever have to give a presentation. Always have a backup plan!) Since it was so nice outside I cut class a bit short after having talked about the news and checking out some networking games from Cisco. See you all next week.
This was a pretty good evening. We worked our way though chapter 6 activities in the lab. Keep up the good work on the online question sets. I'll think about what we are going to do for this coming Thursday. I'm still not sure if I want to meet in the lab, or have one more Skype session. Keep tuned to your email boxes as I'll let you know how things should go down come Wednesday evening or super early Thursday morning. Remember you guys are also going to be a part of the free computer tune up day on the 29th.
Wow an actual test. I was impressed. All but a couple of you managed to work together as a team during the class and get excellent grades on the exam. That goes to show what you can accomplish when you all put your minds to it. For those who did not join in the group and I know who you are. You better get those tests done before sunday at midnight. That was the cutoff.
Not a bad evening. We meet in the classroom and did the activities for chapters 4 and 5. I think we really may need to take the time to go back and install a server core version of 2008 since there seem to be more and more activities relying on running both at once. Man I guess the people who wrote the book think that every IT classroom must have some badass computers in it to be running an OS and 2 Server edition VM's all at once! Even with dual cores and 2 gigs of ram I think we are pushing those rigs now much less throwing in another VM. Sheesh! Continue working as the schedule shows. We will meet via Skype the Thursday we come back from break.
Great night tonight! Although the image was super huge we managed to get Server 2008 installed faster than we could copy the VM. It blows my mind that the new machines will not run the VM's because they are missing the instructions from the processors. I think everyone had a pretty good time getting a little hands on doing the activities from the chapters. It worked so well that we will meet again next thursday to finish up chapter 4 and possibly chapter 5 activities before spring break.
Again I suspended our lab day. I think it was for the best since 20 min arriving home the skies opened up with the snow. Since I had lab planned and not an online talk we met as long as my voice held out which was only for about an hour. I tried to lecture on chapter 4 but there is only so much you can say about DHCP. Most of the chapter was activities relating to DHCP. I will create a VM and have it ready for next week so we can all monkey with the settings and such. Keep working on the LabSims and the online questions.
Well I know we should have met tonight in the classroom but I really want to get the entire lab up and running so we can use the newer faster machines. I did get a good recording for this week with no dropped audio as far as I can tell. On the plus side my minidisc recording of the entire class is absolutely awesome. The sound quality is incredible, even better than what I was hearing back in my headset in real time. I will edit the recording and upload it to the website asap. We managed to get through the news, go over the LabSim, Blackboard items, and chapter 2.
Your assignment between now and next week is to have completed all of the labs in 0.0 and 1.0 in the LabSim as well as chapters 1-3 in Blackboard. BTW I also assigned the practice questions and wanted people to try them before saturday to make sure scores were getting recorded. So far nobody has tried them or emailed me so that I can take a look. You guys better get your game faces on because this stuff isn't easy by any means.
Good class tonight! We spent the first 30min or so going over recent tech news and then I lectured on chapter 1. Not much to that chapter, just a lot of system requirements and version variations with 2008 Server.
I recorded our session but for the second week in a row I forgot to press record on my mini-disc audio backup and again just like last time Camtasia drops the audio right at 50min and doesn't record anything but static for the next 20. I'm at a total loss here on Camtasia screwing up. I'm so sick of losing audio and I'm punching myself because I had backup and didn't use it. I can't find anything online as to why it is doing what it is. I'm not doing anything at all while we are talking to cause it. Camtasia just runs in the background and records away. I guess next time I will take a minor break and stop the recording and then start another and splice them together + I'll definitely be running the mini-disc backup.
The video that I do have will be posted later when I get time to crunch it and upload. By next week you are to have sent me your labmentors password and login. You can get on blackboard and begin your question sets. I have a little tidying to do there but I will have a list of due dates for you by the weekend. Have fun in the snow!
Great meeting tonight. Missing one or two from the class but other than that great attendance. I'm going to start giving points for meetings because that will encourage you all to attend regularly. I don't like doing that but temptation is very great to miss online classes. Anyhoo we talked about chapter 3 since it was basically a review from IT183. I did this because we still have several people without books.
After an hour or so I didn't want to go much further without books or software so we decided to talk about tech news. Unfortunately we got some interference and it killed about 20 min of audio. I edited out that portion of the video. The screencasts section has been updated with out newest edition. Please please please setup and test your audio and video connections before class. Skype has built in functions for you to do that. It only takes a minute or so to properly configure your connection so I'm at a loss as to why folks continuously fight their mics and webcams the entire time. To add something else, this is a class, please do not be gaming or doing other things while we are online it is very very distracting.
Met this evening to get a few basics out of the way. The syllabus is wrong. It needs updated to Server 2008. I listed the proper ISBN for the book/software bundle on the whiteboard. I would list it here but I ran out of the classroom without writing it down. I'll update asap.
We then downloaded Virtual PC and got it installed. Then we managed to install Server 2008 120 day trial ed. I'm glad I had everyone do this since the consensus was that you could do it and didn't need help. From what I saw you guys struggled with it. Folks virtualization is going to be a big part of what you do in the near future. You had better get on this and learn how it is done. Meeting via Skype next week. We will also meet in the classroom every 3rd thursday of the month, May being the exception. Skype ya next week!
