Ok, this will be my last email blog post, I promise! (at least for awhile)
One thing about being chair is you tend to think, I better keep a record of that. So I am always inclined to save emails, even my own outgoing messages, whereas prior to this I deleted like crazy. But the chair has to be ready in case there are any accountability issues to deal with. So I am constantly saving emails and trying my best to file them in a systematic way.
For awhile, I was keeping everything in online folders which I access through my various computers using imap. But, that quickly led to me getting the dreaded "email quota at 90%" warning message. That's a message you don't want to see. Plus, while mail on the macintosh is a good email program for handling tons of email on a server, Outlook on the pc side slows to a jurrasic pace whenever it encounters too much email on the server. Just one more of those little "macs are better" items.
With this problem in mind, I went to IUP's Academic Computer Policy Advisory Committee (ACPAC), of which I have been a longtime member, in hopes of getting the problem addressed. Naturally, it's a cost issue. IUP gives faculty 500 MB of storage. I think it is about the same for students. Google was giving people 2 GB (about 4 times as much) and recently jumped to 7 GB. Some people felt raising the quota would just encourage undisciplined email use. Probably true. But even the people who are really good at managing email have told me they often hit the quota warning. So I was pleased that IUP's Chief Information Officer (I think that's the right IT title--I have to check) said the quota will grow to 2 GB in the fall. Thank goodness. A lot of us need that.
One thing about being chair is you tend to think, I better keep a record of that. So I am always inclined to save emails, even my own outgoing messages, whereas prior to this I deleted like crazy. But the chair has to be ready in case there are any accountability issues to deal with. So I am constantly saving emails and trying my best to file them in a systematic way.
For awhile, I was keeping everything in online folders which I access through my various computers using imap. But, that quickly led to me getting the dreaded "email quota at 90%" warning message. That's a message you don't want to see. Plus, while mail on the macintosh is a good email program for handling tons of email on a server, Outlook on the pc side slows to a jurrasic pace whenever it encounters too much email on the server. Just one more of those little "macs are better" items.
With this problem in mind, I went to IUP's Academic Computer Policy Advisory Committee (ACPAC), of which I have been a longtime member, in hopes of getting the problem addressed. Naturally, it's a cost issue. IUP gives faculty 500 MB of storage. I think it is about the same for students. Google was giving people 2 GB (about 4 times as much) and recently jumped to 7 GB. Some people felt raising the quota would just encourage undisciplined email use. Probably true. But even the people who are really good at managing email have told me they often hit the quota warning. So I was pleased that IUP's Chief Information Officer (I think that's the right IT title--I have to check) said the quota will grow to 2 GB in the fall. Thank goodness. A lot of us need that.
Gian: I think a lot of people struggle with organizing and responding to large amounts of email whether work-related or personal. One solution which you may follow is to create separate email accounts for different needs. Then you can use Google email (Gmail) to aggregate (collect all your email addresses) into one account. That works on the same principle as keeping a central account where you can monitor all your student blogs. I'd like to work with you or another scholar (Ken Sherwood, Dennis Jerz) on a book about academic blogging. It has yet to be written. I also see a great value in blogs for collaborative peer assessment. Here's an excellent journal article which explores the affordances of blogging for writing assessment: http://www.iiisci.org/Journal/CV$/sci/pdfs/P965033.pdf
-Eric-