Poster Sessions

Confirmed Poster Presenters and Descriptions

Best Practices When Creating a Custom 404 Page

Rob Dickerson, Database Administrator/Webmaster, Department of Crop and Soil Sciences, Penn State

This poster will cover suggested best practices when creating a custom 404 page for a Web site. The importance of creating a custom page will also be covered.

College of the Liberal Arts Scholarship Application System: Using the Generalized Interface for web application access to Penn State data

Edward (Ned) Balzer, Programmer/Analyst, College of Liberal Arts, Penn State

The College of the Liberal Arts has developed an online system for students to apply for scholarships. This application draws some student data from ISIS and integrates them with other data entered by the students themselves. The poster session will describe the architecture of the application and some of the security considerations that went into its design.

Growing an Open Source Community

Christian Vinten-Johansen, Information Technology Manager, Information Technology Services

Open source projects were born in educational institutions, but have long since evolved beyond that context. We are looking at the problem of translating open source methods back to .edu. The WebLion project is, among other things, an experiment in establishing an open source software project in the context of a Big Ten institution. How goes that process?

IPv6 Essentials for Web Developers

Derek Morr, Senior Systems Programmer, ITS, Penn State

IPv6, the next-generation Internet protocol, is an important technology to ensure long-term growth and smooth operations on the Internet. As Penn State deploys IPv6, web developers will need to add IPv6 support to their Web sites and applications. This poster will provide information on how to ensure that Web applications work with IPv6, including clients which only have IPv6.

Learning Management Solution - Implementation Best Practices and Gotchas

Ann Guerrisi-Hawn, Senior Systems Analyst, and Jennifer Basom, Senior Programmer/Analyst, Penn State College of Medicine at the Milton S. Hershey Medical Center

Learning management systems (LMS) are becoming an integral part of small- and large-scale learning environments that can provide users a range of capabilities and features. In an LMS, users can access and deliver training content and leverage a variety of training media to diverse groups, thus enhancing an Institution's knowledge level and promoting cross collaboration amongst students and teachers. An LMS typically also includes tools for tracking and reporting user-training performance. More specifically, an LMS provides the following capabilities:

• Registration for instructor-led training
• Assignment of instructional responsibilities
• Setup of courses and curriculum planning
• Delivery of tests and assessments
• Tracking and reporting of student progress and performance
• Generation of certifications and regulatory compliance reports

We will offer some best practices learned from our implementation of a pilot Learning Management System solution at the Penn State College of Medicine/Hershey Medical Center to deliver personalized learning and training to our Nursing staff. The solution stack includes Moodle LMS (an open-source LMS), Alfresco CMS and Liferay Portal. This session will cover best practices, from requirements gathering to go live.

New Penn State Access Account Storage Space (PASS) — What Web Programmers and Developers need to know

Phil Pishioneri, Manager/Research Programmer, Information Technology Services, Penn State

The PASS team will be offering a poster session to provide you with information about how to prepare for the mandatory move and answer any questions you may have about the upcoming changes and the services that are affected by this move. Those who would like further details can discuss with us the reasons for, and implications of the migration from DFS for PASS space to GPFS.

The Road to Collaborative Success: Overcoming Obstacles to Provide Hands-On Teaching and Learning Through Adobe Connect

Heather Huntsinger, IT Training Specialist, Penn State and Chris Lucas, Assistant Director ITS Training Services, Penn State

In the summer of 2006, ITS Training Services began to use Adobe Connect for instruction. This poster session will map the progression of events, including the challenges and successful experiences that were encountered in using this tool to deliver instruction. Methods undertaken to overcome the challenges will be highlighted, along with current successful implementations of using Adobe Connect to deliver both demo/lecture and hands-on training of a technology application to an audience at a remote location.

Groups and Roles at Penn State

James Vuccolo, Manager/Research Programmer, Information Technology Services, Penn State

UMGS allows developers to manage security groups for lots of systems such as Departmental Web Space, PASS space, and wikispaces. Owners of a UMG may update the group members via a simple Web-based tool or identify any number of assistants to update group membership.

WebLion Garage

Erik Rose, Programmer/Analyst, Information Technology Services, Penn State

The WebLion project has come a long way in the past year, and we're going to gloat about it for an hour. Admire the view from 10,000 feet as we showcase this year’s developments, including the faculty staff directory, federated searching of Plone sites (using wacky asynchronous SOAP calls), ready-to-go AD54-compliant templates, change your site with a easy color picker, integration with Penn State auth, and on-demand page distillation for mobile devices. You’ll also get a whirlwind tour of some of our more outlandish development practices, including code generation from UML, pair programming, and extensive abuse of wikis and ticket systems. Then we’ll spin some tall tales about next year's plans for world domination. Never heard of WebLion? Try http://weblion.psu.edu/