Now Playing -
nothing.
Now Eating -
drinking, chocolate soy milk.
Now Feeling -
headachy.
Now Tweeting
- Melanie
When The Little Law School moved to its new digs, part of the plan was to eliminate some of the paper trails... contrails... entrails... Appalachian Frickin' Trails that were just everywhere. The weekly newsletter The Boss creates would be emailed to students and staff, rather than stuffed in 800+ mailboxes. Necessary daily info would be displayed on LCD screens, and also on our homepage. Exams would be taken on computer. Room reservations would be done online. Trees would be saved.
It's not going so well.
Computer exam software has its limits, as does our network, but IT is working on it. I'll give them that.
The newsletter is emailed, but now I also leave hard copies in a stand outside our office, in the student concourse, in the bookstore and at the main reception desk. And I throw out about half of those copies every week when the next edition comes out.
Teeny Dean, control freak that she is, wants to see and approve any room reservation proposed by a student organization before it's entered into the system. So there's a special room reservation form for that. MORE DEAD TREES.
The LCD screens have their limitations, so several bulletin boards have been installed around the building. 
And a daily "here's what's going on today" flyer is posted in the two main elevators. [Yes, I can now add "elevator wrangler" to my resume. Because there's nothing like standing around waiting to stuff flyers into holders in two elevators, which inevitably arrive at the same time, each loaded with students who 1. look at you like you're nuts, and 2. get pissed that you're keeping them from getting to class on time when you have to dash from one to the other.] But now The Boss has added detailed listings of the daily court calendar to the day's events. And wants it posted on the LCD screens and online. Which involves formatting and editing, because the online calendar has space limitations. And all the info doesn't even fit on the single page of the LCD screen! The screens were supposed to be a "one-stop shopping" method of disseminating information. But I feel we've fallen right back into the same pattern we had in the old building, inundating the students with so much information posted ALL OVER THE PLACE that they never even look at any of it! And these are students who have a hard enough time with reading comprehension as it is. I can't tell you how many times I've had students ask me, "Where do I hand in this form?" only to have me take it from them and reply, "Well, let's see...it says here that this gets returned to the Registrar's office...." THEY DON'T READ. And here we are giving them even more things to NOT READ. In even more formats to ignore.
It's frustrating. Everyone's gung-ho about building a better mousetrap, but the minute a glitch is found (as they always are with anything new) it's right back to the old ways, and then some. Never have I seen so many technophobes in one place.
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a very fine cat indeed - Friday, Jan. 17, 2014
happy new year! - Thursday, Jan. 24, 2013
this is where i am - Saturday, Jun. 30, 2012
this is how it is - Friday, Feb. 24, 2012
a very late last year's wrap-up - Wednesday, Jan. 18, 2012
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