Cindy looks for
housing
Three months before
the beginning of classes, Cindy realizes that she needs to do something
about housing. She doesn't know a lot about housing in Berkeley, but
she knows where to start looking: the SIMS website. She browses around
the site and finds the "Tips for New Students" section. She reads anything
related to housing and living at Berkeley eagerly, until she feels she's
decided what she would prefer to do for housing. She wants to meet new
people, especially new people with whom she can practice her English.
She thinks the best way to do this would be to find another incoming
SIMS student to room with near campus (her backup plan is to try I-House).
The "Tips" section has a link to a housing-related bulletin board for
students. She looks at the housing bulletin board to see if any other
incoming students have posted a message looking for a roommate. A few
have, but each has followed up their original post with a message saying
they have found someone. This gives Cindy hope. In order to post, Cindy
first has to register with the system. She does so, and then posts a
message that she is looking for a roommate herself. She adds a fair
amount of detail to the post, because she wants people to get to know
her, and makes sure include her email address. After posting the message,
she faithfully checks the bulletin board (and her email) every day in
case there's a response...
Ed browses course
information
Ed is in the first
half of his first semester at SIMS. He has settled into the routine
of coursework and is beginning to think about the three semesters he
has remaining. He is not sure which direction he would like to go in
and would like to find out more about the different areas of study.
He decides to read about the courses offered and what other students
thought about how useful they were. After going to the SIMians course
critique forum, he begins browsing the list of courses. The title of
IS 213 catches his eye and he reads the reviews of the course. Liking
what he is reading, Ed checks out the courses that other students took
in conjunction with IS 213. After looking at IS 214, he has had enough
of usability courses. He remembers that he was getting pretty interested
in network systems at his old job, so he searches for courses that teach
about networking. He thinks he'll enjoy IS 250, so he decides to enroll
in the course. Unfortunately, his enrollment period hasn't started yet,
so he stores the course number in his personal profile for future enrollment.
Meg looks for staff
and old friends
Meg has just launched
her own, small Internet consulting business. She has managed to recruit
a clerical staff and is now on the hunt for professionals in information
management and systems. She is looking for two full-time employees and
perhaps one part-time employee who are knowledgeable in user interface
design and database management and who also have solid HTML and Java
skills. She thinks that SIMs students are likely to have these skills
and would like to advertise her job(s) to them. She was made aware of
the new SIMians bulletin board via an alumni newsletter and has already
established an account that will enable her to use the bulletin board.
Meg goes to the bulletin board and locates the job board. She first
reads some of the postings to determine the nature of the board and
realizes that it is being used both by SIMs students who are searching
for jobs and by employees who are attempting to recruit SIMs students.
There are also postings related to job fairs and other job-related matters.
She reads through a few of the latest messages and finds a message from
one soon-to-be graduating second-year student whose skills seem to meet
Meg's requirements. Meg obtains the student's e-mail address from the
posting and emails the student regarding the jobs she has to offer.
She also decides to post her job announcement on the bulletin board
hoping to attract the attention of students who have not posted to the
board. She wants to ensure that her posting attracts as much attention
as possible because she needs to recruit for her open positions in a
hurry to take on the growing amount of work her business is beginning
to receive.
After Meg has posted
her announcement, she recalls that she has been trying to reestablish
contact with a SIMs classmate with whom she was once close but whom
she has now neither seen nor communicated with in over a year. She has
tried e-mailing and phoning this friend but the e-mail address she has
is no longer valid and the phone number she has was disconnected with
no forwarding number. She goes to the SIMians alumni bulletin board
hoping to find out some information about her friend. She does not want
to look through every posting on the board to see if one is either from
or her friend or contains a reference to her friend so she performs
a search on the friend's name. If she does not find any information
via her search, she will probably post to the bulletin board inquiring
about her lost friend's whereabouts.
Annie searches
for technical help
Annie has been working
late in the lab on a Friday night, making good progress, but now she
has just gotten an incomprehensible error message from Cold Fusion.
Often in such cases, Kevin helps her, but she doesn't want to wait until
Monday to finish what she's doing. She knows from previous browsing
that there has been a lot of past discussion on Cold Fusion in the Tech
Tips area of the SBB, so she hopes maybe someone will have previously
posted the same question -- and the answer! She goes to the main Tech
Tips page and focuses on the search option. She enters a query consisting
of the terms "Cold Fusion" and "error" and part of the text of the error
message. A list of possible matches come up, including one that appears
to quote the same weird error message! She selects that link, and confirms
that the message relates to the same problem she is experiencing. She
selects the option to view the thread, and reads the replies to that
previous posting. The first reply she reads is not helpful, but the
next one gives her a hint what might be going on in her case. She goes
back to work, makes a small change in her program, and is delighted
to find that she is back in business. It's only 10:30, so she might
be able to finish this tonight!