During my tenure in the Classroom Technology Support department at UC Irvine, I played a crucial role in ensuring the smooth operation of AV equipment and computers across more than 180 rooms. My responsibilities were as follows:
1. AV Equipment: Assembled, installed, and maintained projectors, audio systems, document cameras, and interactive whiteboards in classrooms. Ensured proper calibration for an optimal learning environment.
2. Computer Configuration: Specialized in configuring classroom computing systems, involving complex software installations, peripheral integrations, and network connectivity optimizations to support seamless educational processes.
3. Technical Training & Support: Delivered targeted training sessions for faculty, incorporating hands-on demonstrations and advanced troubleshooting techniques, thereby promoting efficient technology use in pedagogy.
4. Systematic Maintenance: Regularly inspected and tested AV systems and computers, identifying and addressing potential issues before they impacted classroom activities. Recommended upgrades for enhanced functionality.
5. Technical Customer Service: Delivered high-level customer service by actively listening to the needs of professors and staff, providing timely assistance, and communicating technical concepts clearly.
This role significantly developed my expertise in AV and IT infrastructure management, enhancing my technical capabilities and solidifying my role as a key contributor to the educational technology landscape within my department. My contributions underscored my commitment to leveraging technology to enrich the learning and teaching experience.
1. AV Equipment: Assembled, installed, and maintained projectors, audio systems, document cameras, and interactive whiteboards in classrooms. Ensured proper calibration for an optimal learning environment.
2. Computer Configuration: Specialized in configuring classroom computing systems, involving complex software installations, peripheral integrations, and network connectivity optimizations to support seamless educational processes.
3. Technical Training & Support: Delivered targeted training sessions for faculty, incorporating hands-on demonstrations and advanced troubleshooting techniques, thereby promoting efficient technology use in pedagogy.
4. Systematic Maintenance: Regularly inspected and tested AV systems and computers, identifying and addressing potential issues before they impacted classroom activities. Recommended upgrades for enhanced functionality.
5. Technical Customer Service: Delivered high-level customer service by actively listening to the needs of professors and staff, providing timely assistance, and communicating technical concepts clearly.
This role significantly developed my expertise in AV and IT infrastructure management, enhancing my technical capabilities and solidifying my role as a key contributor to the educational technology landscape within my department. My contributions underscored my commitment to leveraging technology to enrich the learning and teaching experience.
I took the initiative to develop a couple tools to streamline the process of checking the schedules of over 180 classrooms at UC Irvine and another tool that queries all of our equipment in said rooms and reports any offline equipment every single morning by checking through around 1200 devices we have on campus. Recognizing the inefficiency and user-unfriendliness of the existing scheduling portals' mobile front ends, and the issue of only finding out certain equipment is offline after its reported rather when it happens, I sought to create a more efficient solution.
Using my expertise in spreadsheet applications and data manipulation, I designed and developed a Google Sheet to automatically scrape our 2 scheduling sites we use for checking classroom schedules. This tool eliminates the need to manually log in to multiple portals and navigate through cumbersome interfaces. Instead, it pulls the necessary information directly from the scheduling portals in real-time, providing instant access to the up-to-date schedules of all classrooms. This was created solely by myself within the first couple months of working here at UCI and is utilized by nearly everyone within my department and other departments I have shared it with. While the other scheduling sites (25live specifically) is better for the fact that it can check multiple rooms at once, which is useful if we need to move a class it is also horrendous to use on a mobile device and is only really useful for that purpose.
Below is an example of it on a desktop browser and then a mobile device.
Key Features and Benefits:
1. Seamless Data Integration: The spreadsheet tool seamlessly integrates with the scheduling portals, pulling data directly into the spreadsheet without the need for manual input or data entry. This ensures accuracy and saves considerable time.
2. Real-Time Updates: The tool fetches live data from the scheduling portals, ensuring that the information is always up to date. This eliminates the need to rely on outdated or incomplete information and enables quick decision-making.
3. User-Friendly Interface: The spreadsheet interface is designed for ease of use, providing a clear and intuitive layout that allows users to navigate and search through the classroom schedules effortlessly. It simplifies the process of finding available classrooms for specific time slots or events. There is one drop down menu and everything is alphabetized.
4. Enhanced Efficiency and Productivity: By automating the process of checking classroom schedules, the tool significantly reduces the time and effort required for this task. It empowers my colleagues to quickly access relevant information, make informed decisions, and optimize classroom utilization.
By creating this automated Classroom Schedule Checker, I demonstrated my ability to identify inefficiencies and develop practical solutions to improve workflow and user experience. This project highlights my skills in data manipulation, spreadsheet applications, and problem-solving, as well as my commitment to enhancing operational efficiency within my team.
The this sheet serves as an example of my innovative approach, technical proficiency, and dedication to delivering user-friendly solutions. I enjoy contributing my skills and experience to the OIT Team at UC Irvine, supporting the university's mission of providing efficient and effective technology solutions for the campus community.
1. Seamless Data Integration: The spreadsheet tool seamlessly integrates with the scheduling portals, pulling data directly into the spreadsheet without the need for manual input or data entry. This ensures accuracy and saves considerable time.
2. Real-Time Updates: The tool fetches live data from the scheduling portals, ensuring that the information is always up to date. This eliminates the need to rely on outdated or incomplete information and enables quick decision-making.
3. User-Friendly Interface: The spreadsheet interface is designed for ease of use, providing a clear and intuitive layout that allows users to navigate and search through the classroom schedules effortlessly. It simplifies the process of finding available classrooms for specific time slots or events. There is one drop down menu and everything is alphabetized.
4. Enhanced Efficiency and Productivity: By automating the process of checking classroom schedules, the tool significantly reduces the time and effort required for this task. It empowers my colleagues to quickly access relevant information, make informed decisions, and optimize classroom utilization.
By creating this automated Classroom Schedule Checker, I demonstrated my ability to identify inefficiencies and develop practical solutions to improve workflow and user experience. This project highlights my skills in data manipulation, spreadsheet applications, and problem-solving, as well as my commitment to enhancing operational efficiency within my team.
The this sheet serves as an example of my innovative approach, technical proficiency, and dedication to delivering user-friendly solutions. I enjoy contributing my skills and experience to the OIT Team at UC Irvine, supporting the university's mission of providing efficient and effective technology solutions for the campus community.
Connectivity Scout
This is another tool I developed within about 4 days using python and google sheets. I know there are other paid solutions and or solutions that require a lot of hoops to jump through for checking offline devices so I figured I could make the tool myself in a couple days and tailor it to our department. The unfortunate part of using other tools is that pre-existing data cannot be entered into their database as easily, for example we have a few spreadsheets with all of our equipments names, IP's, and room names so the tool I created integrates those existing sheets my team uses so editing or adding to my Connectivity Scout is very little hassle.
Currently we have a lot of offline devices and this tool is helping my team iron out all of them and also letting us know what equipment likely needs replacing and what equipment seems to fail the most so we can have it in mind for keeping extra replacements. Below you can see the front end of the information. This tool can run about every hour so so but until all of our devices are ironed out I have it running once a day as to not have the sheet being flooded as it already at 11000 rows.
Below is an example of all of our equipment's IP's that the tool parses
Below is an example of the python code that runs for this tool every day, around 350 lines of code were used
