Nikki Massaro Kauffman

Author Archives | Nikki Massaro Kauffman

Nikki Massaro Kauffman - who has written 37 posts on .eduGuru.

Nikki is a technology training coordinator with the Penn State University Libraries, responsible for technology training offered in the Libraries' 20+ departments and 30+ library locations.

Prior to coming to University Libraries, she served as an interim associate director of instructional technology and multimedia at the Penn State World Campus. Over the years, she's been a programmer, a database specialist, a Microsoft Certified Master Instructor, a continuing education instructor for seniors and adults with disabilities, and a high school English and communications technology teacher. Her interests are in the areas where technology, training, and communication intersect. She holds degrees in both computer science and in education.

Disclaimer: Nikki's views are not necessarily that of her employer's. Nikki cannot be contained.

Digital Tattoos? Who Gives a Shit?

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

6 Comments

I cursed on the Internet. My professional career is over. Let this be a lesson to all those little snots on social media that “everything you say and do on the Interwebs can be used against you in the nebulous future”.

Why Do I Tweet? I Do It for You

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

8 Comments

A good friend of mine, @jeffswain, over at the five-4-six blog, posed a really tough question and I’ve been asking myself ever since:

3 Things Higher Ed Can Learn from the iPad (for Better or Worse)

Monday, February 1, 2010

6 Comments

3 Things Higher Ed Can Learn from the iPad (for Better or Worse)

I’ve been thinking about this one ever since the big announcement came. Rather than give Apple the halo effect or the horn effect and hold it up as the model of what to do or what not to do, I thought these few lessons were a bit of both:

IMHO 7 Reasons Why Higher Ed Is the Toughest Gig in All the Web

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

16 Comments

IMHO 7 Reasons Why Higher Ed Is the Toughest Gig in All the Web

I was on Twitter last week when Mark Greenfield put out the following call:

Product Review: My Wishlist for the Lynda.com Academic Site License

Friday, January 22, 2010

2 Comments

Rather than spending time and money reinventing the wheel by creating Web-based tutorials for popular software titles only to sink more time and money into updating them with each subsequent version, schools can use a lynda.com academic site license to enable everyone on campus access to the entire lynda.com library of titles.

Data Collection #FAIL

Friday, January 8, 2010

5 Comments

Over the years and in various roles: technical, training, leadership. I’ve served on a number of implementation teams and used a number of data-collection applications: time-tracking, project-management, Web analytics, surveys, other statistics packages. What I have learned from these experiences is that there are three common ways to fail:

3 Ways to Build Knowledge Base #FAIL

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

3 Comments

I’m not sure why you decided to read this. Nobody sets out to fail, do they? Maybe you just wanted something to read while you had your lunch today. Or maybe you suspect I am being facetious.

Teaching Them to Fish: Strategy for Implementing a Knowledge Base

Friday, November 20, 2009

3 Comments

Teaching Them to Fish: Strategy for Implementing a Knowledge Base

In a previous post, I talked about how to start getting your internal knowledge into a knowledge base. But just because you’ve built a knowledge base, doesn’t mean people will begin using it. You need to ensure that content is maintained and that people know how to use it to find the information they need.

Kings of All Cosmos: How to Get Internal Knowledge Out There

Friday, November 6, 2009

1 Comment

Kings of All Cosmos: How to Get Internal Knowledge Out There

If you work in higher ed, you have people who have become fixtures. They roll up all of the tiny details, the business processes and procedures, into their heads like a Katamari.