jbrenner's Partial History of Florida Tech

Posted by $ jbrenner 6 years, 8 months ago to Education
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Gulchers will like slides 2, 32, 168, and 169 of the link below.

The link is way to big to attach. Turn the volume on your computer to its highest setting when running the slide show at

http://my.fit.edu/~jbrenner/bashur/3d...
name = fltech password = brenner

A quasi table of contents is at
http://my.fit.edu/~jbrenner/bashur/3d...
name = fltech password = brenner

I intend

1) to send this to my > 3000 past students to show how Florida Tech has improved over the last 20 years;

2) to help Florida Tech recruiting at both the grad and undergrad levels;

3) to get support for some of our new research initiatives;

4) to have both Florida Tech's Development Office and our administrators use this to attract people interested in exchanging their value for our value;

5) to use Nanoflorida 2018 as a catalyst to make some improvements here at FIT;

6) to show how seemingly disparate research and teaching goals do actually have common themes (slide 171);

7) to use this to help catapult Florida Tech up in the national rankings;

8) to break this up into a set of much smaller YouTube videos to drive Internet traffic to FIT and to our department in particular;

9) to start a course incorporating more building and testing into the chemical engineering (ChE) and biomedical engineering (BME) curricula via a two credit elective wearable sensors course described on slides 161-166; and

10) to start an Honors Program at Florida Tech, as described on slide 167, including the wearable sensors course in item 9.


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  • Posted by coaldigger 6 years, 8 months ago
    Jim, I am sharing this with my granddaughter that I have mentioned previously. She is currently a sophomore at North Fort Myers High School and is in the Cambridge program. She was recently offered a chance to enter a program at Florida Southwestern State for her Jr and Sr years of HS which would mean she would graduate and enter college as a Jr. She didn't want to exit the Cambridge program so they worked it out so she can do both. I have no idea what she wants to be but I expect it will be something entirely of her own choosing. She is an Ayn Rand enthusiast and came in second in the Sophomore essay contest on Anthem. She will write on The Fountainhead this year and Atlas Shrugged next. That may not work because she has already jumped the gun on Atlas and Dagny is her role model.
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    • Posted by $ 6 years, 8 months ago
      One of our best graduates is from that high school. She is the only student we have had who got all three degrees from my department.

      Both of my kids went through the Cambridge Program in middle school, but not high school.

      I look forward to meeting your granddaughter.
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  • Posted by ObjectiveAnalyst 6 years, 8 months ago
    Hello jbrenner,

    Congratulations on a very impressive presentation.
    I hope it proves fruitful.

    I only had time to give it a quick once over, but hope to find time soon to give it its due.

    If my plans work out I may be going into semi-retirement in your neck of the woods before too long (a year or two perhaps). If work becomes more prosperous than anticipated I may stick around here a bit longer. Things have been looking up lately.

    I would be most pleased to look you up. :)

    Hope all is well with you and yours.
    Respectfully,
    O.A.
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  • Posted by freedomforall 6 years, 8 months ago
    JB, please let me know when it's in a format that doesn't require installing a lot of MSFT programs I won't use. Office stopped being useful when MSFT changed to "ribbon" rubbish interface. Office 2003 still works although I never use ppt, I just do presentations with a video editor instead. Much easier for me to use a storyboard interface.
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    • Posted by mccannon01 6 years, 8 months ago
      freedomforall, I had no problem viewing the slideshow using "Libre Office" on an iMac and the Apple native "Keynote" worked as well. Libre Office is available free for Mac, Windows, or Linux systems. I did notice a few slides, out of the 172, where an image slightly ran over the text or where some text was on top of other text. I have no way of knowing if these anomalies were in the original slides or were a result of the translation from ppt. Audio worked out well.
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      • Posted by freedomforall 6 years, 8 months ago
        Thanks, mcc. I will look into downloading Libre Office;^)
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        • Posted by freedomforall 6 years, 8 months ago
          I did install it, mcc. It does allow me to display the slideshow but there is no audio.
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          • Posted by mccannon01 6 years, 8 months ago
            Not sure what is happening, freedomforall. I had to turn the volume up, but had no problem with it. If I get a chance later I will see if there is some kind of audio setting that needs to be set.
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            • Posted by $ 6 years, 8 months ago
              The audio level was recorded at too low a volume. On some computers, it can be heard at 100% volume on speakers. It is possible that you also have a manual trim on the speaker volume, too.
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              • Posted by freedomforall 6 years, 8 months ago
                Its not just the level, jb. I run my sound through a hifi system and the preamp is set to extremely loud, but there is no sound whatsoever when the slide show runs. Not a peep. (At this volume level, if I adjust the volume in windows by clicking the slider in the system tray, the "ding" sound is nearly ear-splitting; probably 80+Db.) Although the slide show doesn't actually "run"; it sits and waits for me to advance to the next slide. If there is a way to auto-run the slide show, it is not apparent.
                So I can advance the slides but the audio narrative explanation is absent.
                I downloaded one file only (nanotechminorprogramhistorywithaudio2.pptx), jb. Is the sound embedded in that file?
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                • Posted by mccannon01 6 years, 8 months ago
                  Hi, freedomforall. I'm running Libre on a Mac so it may not be the same as on a Windows system, but it should be very close. I also downloaded the same file as you. With that said, the slide audio (and slide show itself) won't "play" by selecting single slides from the slide thumbnails on the left pane. You have to use the menu on top by selecting "Slide Show > Start From First Slide" or select a slide from the thumbnail pane and then select "Slide Show > Start From Current Slide". These commands "play"the slide(s). Also, at "Slide Show > Slide Show Settings" the only settings I have checked are... Range: "All Slides", Type: "Default", Options: "Animations Allowed" and "Change Slides By Clicking On Background". Everything else is unchecked, for now. The other options are pretty much self explanatory, but these are the default options and I haven't changed them. When the show starts playing you can manually force it to the next slide early by clicking on the slide. You can stop the show by pressing the esc key. I'm no expert on this, but hope I am helpful.
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                  • Posted by freedomforall 6 years, 8 months ago
                    Thanks, mcc. I think it must be some difference between the mac and win versions. I "run" the slideshow as you describe ("Slide Show > Start From First Slide") and the first slide comes up and never changes- at least no change in a minute or so of waiting (and no sound whatsoever.)
                    My slide show settings have no "Type" setting at all but the rest match yours.
                    I guess that the programmers have some work to do.
                    Thanks again;^)
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                    • Posted by mccannon01 6 years, 8 months ago
                      Lets try a bit more before giving up. For the "...first slide comes up and never changes..." problem is likely because you're not set for automatic slide changes and you have to click on the slide to manually make it move to the next slide (or roll the scroll wheel if your mouse has one - my Mac mouse is "swipe" sensitive so I just slide my finger to change slides). Here's something you can check out and that is don't "play" the first slide, but look at it and see if there is a little "musical note" icon on the bottom right of the slide. Actually, all the slides that have audio have them, but most are hidden in the background by the author, except I can see it on the first slide. This icon represents an audio file attached to the slide. If you click on it once, you should see a banner pop up on the bottom of the Libre window showing audio test/play icons and graphs show up. These are the standard icons used to play audio/video files. Don't fool with the "right arrow in the film clip" icon, but you can experiment with the play (right arrow in circle), pause, stop, and repeat icons (hover the mouse over the icons and their definition should display). The first "home plate" slider shows progress in playing the file (or you can use it to select an audio starting point), then a timer, Then a speaker icon for sound/mute, then a "home plate" slider for volume. If you can't get this icon bar, then perhaps an error is happening and its text may display on the bottom of the Libre window.

                      If you don't see the music icon and you're daring, you can try hovering your mouse over a blank spot on the slide and try right-click (control-click on a Mac) to see if you can pull it out of the background and make it visible. Libre will mark the slide as "not saved" and will ask you to save the file when you're done. Your choice. If you mess up a slide, you can always select "Edit > Undo" to fix it.
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                      • Posted by freedomforall 6 years, 8 months ago
                        No music note. Lower right corner: There is a Grey box with a lighter grey question mark in it. In edit mode I can move the box but there is nothing behind it.
                        I suspect that box should have connected to a media file and it cannot find it.
                        I found the auto-play setting in the "Slide Transition" controls and set it to play each slide for 1 second. So it does that, but still no audio. I think there is a problem with the way this version loads Jim's file and it doesn't link correctly to the audio. The properties window when I have clicked on the question mark box shows controls for "Media Playback" but the start/end time display shows 00:00 / 00:00. (When the slideshow is "playing" the properties window shows the same thing.) That tells me that there is no media loaded.
                        see www.ohsorare.com/slide1playing.jpg
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                        • Posted by mccannon01 6 years, 8 months ago
                          Looks like you may be correct in that the icon is looking to link to an audio file that it can't find, thus the question mark. It doesn't necessarily mean the audio file didn't download correctly with the pptx file. It likely means the Libre programmers got the link right on the Mac, but have work to do on the Windows systems, just like you first suspected. I don't have a Windows machine to play with, but if you do a search on something like "audio missing from libre pptx" or similar line maybe there's a simple solution to the problem "out there". It may be as simple as downloading the proper extension. If I think of anything else, I'll let you know. Also, if you find the solution I'd appreciate it if you'd share it.
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                          • Posted by freedomforall 6 years, 8 months ago
                            mcc, I just installed the last PowerPointViewer from MSFT and it doesn't play the audio either ;^)
                            The MSFT site says they aren't supporting the PPViewer after April 2018. Good move MSFT. Doesn't work properly, best to end support costs.
                            Tried searching for a fix earlier and just now again. I did not find any posts for a windows fix.
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                            • Posted by mccannon01 6 years, 8 months ago
                              Hi freedomforall. Been busy today so I just got online. Sorry I wasn't much help. I did notice a few older posts on the Net discussing that the issue may be certain codecs may not be loaded on the machine trying to play the files. I'm not sure where else to go, but if something comes up, I'll let you know.
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  • Posted by $ 6 years, 8 months ago
    As part of the preparation of this massive PowerPoint document, I realized that Roald Dahl got his idea for Willy Wonka's musical lock in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory from ... Atlas Shrugged. A professor I took a class from named Mark Burns at The University of Michigan uses music to actuate valves in lab-on-a-chip devices. I have recently moved toward organ-on-a-chip devices in my research.
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