jewellverse – The Hilltop Monitor

A one-year reflection on Jewellverse

Taylor Tummons — Sat, 10 Oct 2015 03:11:07 +0000

It has now been a year since William Jewell College implemented Jewellverse. The College began providing each student with an iPad, hoping to enhance the learning environment with modern technology.

The College has embraced Jewellverse, and iPads are becoming central to the education provided at WJC.

“According to a student survey last spring, 72 percent of the respondents said iPads were required for two or more of their classes,” said Elise Fisher of the IT Department at WJC.

Many students use their iPads even more than that.

“I use my iPad in every class. I am utilizing its benefits the entire class period,” said Tony McBroom, senior nursing major.

The iPads have reshaped the structure of in-class learning and have influenced students’ entire school experience.

“I use my iPad out of class just as much. It has basically become my main electronic resource,” said McBroom.

The iPads consolidate many of a student’s educational resources. McBroom appreciates the convenience and simplicity they provide.

“I can turn in assignments, work on papers and work practically anywhere as long as I have wifi,” he said.

Jewellverse’s implementation has reduced the amount of paper the College is using. McBroom guesses that he uses about 90 percent less paper than he did before he received his iPad. The same goes for the WJC staff.

“Student Life embraced the technology by immediately going paperless in the dorm check-in process,” said Fisher.

Most high schools do not provide each student with the technology that is provided by WJC. Although this is another change first-years face, some see this as immediately beneficial.

“The technology is convenient. You always have your iPad with you and everything is in one place. It makes things a little bit easier,” said Sutton Porth, first-year.

Students and faculty have largely approved of the transition and have embraced the technology.

“We have gotten positive feedback in the form of testimonials from the community. Students appreciate the ready availability of course materials in iTunesU and other apps, faculty report saving time and paper using iBooks and staff have created iTunesU courses and iBooks to guide students through registration and financial aid processes. All report the technology has improved the student experience,” said Fisher.

Feature photo by Kyle Rivas. Graphic by Kelsey Neth.

AFE: Languages Department hacks Jewellverse, removes English from iPad settings

Alexandria Acord — Wed, 01 Apr 2015 15:00:41 +0000

After weeks of speculation and investigation, school officials are finally close to tracking the culprit behind the infamous iPad language hackings that have rendered the Jewellverse system virtually unusable for non-bilingual students. An informant in on the plan has revealed that the deed is in fact linked to the Foreign Language Department, who intentionally coded a bug to remove the English function from all iPads. However, it remains a mystery as to whether or not it was the work of a handful of rogue students or the entire department itself.

“I was never able to gather enough information to know if it was an isolated incident, but we can only hope it is,” the informant, who chooses to remain anonymous, said. “If not, the results would be devastating, no matter how much people underestimate the language students. One department going against the College would be bad enough, but five languages teaming up would be almost impossible to disperse without compromising education for noninvolved students.”

No matter who the guilty party is, the bug has already done irreparable damage. Many students have reported having a more difficult time understanding their homework than usual and have simply given up on completing it, leaving classes weeks behind schedule. Whispers have already begun to circulate about William Jewell scrapping its summer curriculum to make up for this loss, causing advising counselors to pull caffeine-fueled all-nighters . Whether or not the rumors have been confirmed, the fear is very real, as at least five advisors have become so physically drained that they cannot leave their desks, leaving other departmental professors rushing to fill their teaching slots.

Close monitoring of the language classrooms and inside jokes among students have led investigators to clear the names of certain major players in the department, due to common user error with classroom devices. Nevertheless, members of the faculty remain suspicious.

In the meantime, while the culprit is still at large, Jewell technology experts have tested new translation capabilities that will be are. The current update is very rudimentary and isn’t to the level to translate homework yet, but the debuggers aim to have a system up that “at the very least will be better than Google Translate” within two days’ time.

However, a select number of students, including Branson Carmichael, junior, have found a far simpler solution to the problem.

“The moment the glitch showed up, I turned my iPad on and off again,” Carmichael said. “Worked just fine for me after that.”

New York Times student pass boasts great layout, advanced content

Alexandria Acord — Fri, 20 Feb 2015 16:00:43 +0000

New York Times is good for quick news and research, if you don’t mind the ads.

William Jewell College Student Senate, the Pryor Leadership Studies Program and Library Services have teamed up for the latest effort to expand the iPad-based “Jewellverse” into the world of news media. Starting this semester, all students, faculty and staff have access to “The New York Times” online newspaper through a school-wide subscription. Typing in www.NYTimes.com/Passes and registering with a Jewell email will activate a special “Academic Pass”—essentially a free subscription to one of the most renowned newspapers in the country. While not an app in the purest sense because it opens within Safari rather than having its own domain, it still has many merits when it comes to keeping up with current events.

Perhaps one of its major strengths is its aesthetic setup. For those nostalgic for the feel of an ink-and-paper publication, “The New York Times” app comes about as close as anything computerized can with its famously distinctive heading and paste-up. With the exception of photographs, most of the layout uses a minimal black-and-white color scheme, further adding to the image of the traditional newspaper that many online news sources lack. One can click on particular sections or look through the “front page,” which covers a great amount of ground more than an average newspaper would allow. The emphasis is still on the headline of the day, but the online front page can fit pieces from some 30 different stories, allowing the user a good taste of current events possibly without even venturing to other sections.

Layout of an individual story on the New York Times site. Access by going to www.NYTimes.com/Passes and registering with your Jewell email.

The app features many more stories than websites such as CNN or USA Today, which can often take some digging through even to access news from several days ago. Its user-friendly and resourceful layout allows for no wasted space, keeping important items within easy reach without causing readers to search too hard for them. One new column for the well-known paper, “The Upshot,” is a particular asset, taking eclectic issues apart through data analysis and deft commentary. On a single day, topics can range from the upcoming Westminster Dog Show, to surges in occupational therapy cases, to calories consumed at Chipotle.

However, the app is not without fault, and its webpage-like setup is perhaps its greatest weakness. Pulling up the site gives users many of the same features as the app without subscription while there are some subscription-restricted areas that provide benefit, it generally seems to lack many of the bonus features that paid usership can give. For instance, the advertisement-free format that has worked for numerous companies cannot be found here: even a subscription will not remove the online ads that annoy the typical internet users. Still, lacking a few bells and whistles is hardly the worst problem to have, as it is one that is easily solved. For all other purposes, “The New York Times” app is a great place to begin both for news research and casual consumption.

New Jewellverse app enables remote computing

Luke Lockhart — Fri, 06 Feb 2015 20:17:32 +0000

Imagine if you had an app on your iPad that could access any computer on campus and use it just as you would sitting at its desk.

Instead of walking across campus on some days through brutal snow or pouring rain, you could use a computer in Marston Hall from the comfort of your dorm room. A new app that recently appeared on Jewell iPads is capable of just that. You’ve probably seen it by now; it’s called CAG.

Starting up CAG is fairly simple—all one needs to do is type in his or her Jewell ID and select a computer—but its purpose extends beyond the connectivity it provides.

“It’s basically a virtual desktop,” said Lan Guo, Director of Information Technology.

I quickly found out during the interview that it’s pronounced “cag.” It stands for Citrix Access Gateway.

The Citrix Receiver app (or just “Receiver” as it appears on the iPad desktops) has been capable of this function for some time, but getting it to work involved typing in a large web address.

“CAG is basically a shortcut,” Guo said. It is similar to many of the other Jewell apps like My Jewell.

The virtual desktop (properly referred to as an “image”) comes with an on-screen keyboard and right- and left- click. The whole system is surprisingly quick and behaves just like the computer it’s imitating.

Giving students easy access to virtual desktops changes the way technology access works on campus. Guo referred to these virtual desktops as “images,” and they’re part of a larger goal to distance Jewell from the use of computer labs.

Richard H. Burns, the Jewell servers and systems administrator, explains its many practical applications.

“It was originally centered around printing,” Burns said, referring to the fact that our iPads cannot directly access printers on campus. Apps like WebPrint exist, but not every task has an iOS solution. TimeForce, for example—the app used by student workers to clock in and out—doesn’t work on the iPad. There are elso examples of this specifically involved in academic studies.

“The Nursing Department uses many programs that aren’t compatible with the iPads. A student could access an image in Marston Hall and open up any program that would work on a Marston desktop,” Burns said. “CAG can go even further.”

“The same student could access a Cerner CAG found on Marston computers using Marston’s image,” Burns said.

In other words, CAG is the computer equivalent of the dream machines in the movie “Inception,” and a student could even (pardon the cliché reference) access a CAG within a CAG if they so desired.

The possibilities are endless with CAG in use. Burns particularly likes the fact that only one image, not several computers in a typical computer lab, would need regular maintenance and repair if needed.

“It’s much more practical that way,” he said. Burns and Guo hope to increase the use of CAG in the future, and a more in-depth tutorial can be found by going to the eHub website or asking one of their representatives.