CHS IT Newsletter
Volume 1, number 1
January, 2007
We are please to provide our first College IT
newsletter. We plan to publish it quarterly, coinciding with the start and
end of the Fall and Spring semesters. It will be archived on the College
website,
http://www.hs.iastate.edu/it/.
Please send your topic suggestions for future newsletters to
hsciit@mail.hs.iastate.edu.
Announcements
College Outlook users were moved to the ISU Exchange
(email)
server over the winter break. A list of migration frequently asked questions
is available at http://www.hs.iastate.edu/it/faq/iastatemigration.php.
The FAQ also
includes an explanation of the benefits derived by the migration.
The College VPN server will be decommissioned March 1. The server
on which this system ran has failed and a temporary server is
being used. Users should switch to the ISU VPN server immediately.
Please visit our
software resources
page for more information about PPP and VPN.
Software upgrades are scheduled for the college
servers the 2nd and 4th Friday of each month between 7 AM and 8 AM. Some
upgrades may result in brief interruptions of service, however, full
service should be restored by 8 AM on any given upgrade day.
If you have not already done so, please send your spring
course syllabi to Karla Embleton, embleton@iastate.edu, for inclusion in the College Course Portal.
IT Manager's Report
Welcome to the first CHS IT newsletter. We hope that you
will find these articles informative and useful. We will try to publish a
quarterly newsletter. Many times we will include links to more expanded
information in an effort to stay concise within the newsletter.
In this section, I would like to take the opportunity to
formally introduce the CHS IT staff. Managing the college servers is Michael Schmidt. Michael began his career with the former FCS College as
a student computer tech. He graduated from Iowa State University, then did
some contract work for Wells-Fargo, and later was hired as a temporary
employee by CHS as the IT team was formed. Michael is now with us on a full-time
permanent basis. Michael is very talented and provides great continuity as the
college merges and transitions its servers and services.
Another recently hired CHS IT staff member is our lab
manager, Keith Swanson. Keith comes to us after 8 years with ISU in
World Languages and Cultures as a support specialist. Keith is handling all
aspects of central lab computing including lab reservations, hardware and software
updates, equipment updates and repair, and lab monitor personnel. Keith is
quickly becoming acquainted with the college labs and will be glad to speak
with anyone who has classroom or lab computing questions.
Karla Embleton is the final
member of the IT team. Karla will continue with her traditional
instructional computing support roles including ClassWeb, WebCT, and
Mailman. Karla is also our IT communications liaison and now is responsible
for all IT announcements and updates, including the editing of this
newsletter.
Finally, we can not overlook the student techs we so
heavily rely on to go out in the field and assist you with your computing
problems. Our student tech team this spring will include: Lucas Tacker,
Tarun Bhatia, Tim Danzer, William Sondermann, Jared
Leonard, and Alex Wagner. These young men will do their best to
assist you.
We look forward to the spring semester as services are
transitioned to new servers and we will continue to put forth our best
efforts to ensure the technology needs of college are being met.
-- Sly Upah, Manager of CHS IT Services
Tech Tips
Tip 1: USB Devices Best Practices
Are you one of those that simply pull the USB flash drive
from the USB slot on your computer? If you answered yes, keep reading! When
you remove a USB device from your computer without safely disconnecting it first, you run the risk of corrupting the
information contained on the drive. Do you want to take the chance of losing
the day's PowerPoint presentation, or the dissertation that has taken months
to complete? Of course not. Follow the instructions available below to learn how to safely
disconnect USB devices from your computer.
Safely removing
a USB device from your PC
Safely removing
a USB device from your Mac
Tip 2: Scheduling Meetings using Outlook 2003 (PC Only)
Meetings - some of us enjoy them, and some of
us do not. Sometimes it is not attending the meeting that we find
frustrating but rather the actual coordination of the meeting time and
location that can be bothersome. Luckily, Microsoft Outlook 2003 tries to
make this task relatively pain free with a few easy to use tools. Whether
you are scheduling a meeting for yourself or someone else, after reading our tip sheet, you should find this task much easier.
Scheduling
Meetings with MS Outlook 2003
Is there something specific you would like to see
discussed in our Tech Tips? Please send your suggestions, comments, or
questions to hsciit@mail.hs.iastate.edu
Technical Services
In order to increase accessibility to all technical services provided by
ITS and the College of Human Sciences to CHS faculty and staff, CHS IT
Services has drafted plans to migrate all users' computers to the IASTATE
active directory. The switch will free up resources within the college so
that CHS IT Services can begin work on creating new technical services for
faculty and staff use. This will include a new file server for data storage,
as well as many other future services that are still being discussed.
For those who use currently use the college file server, expect these
changes:
- an increase of space from 300mb to 1000mb
- access to your files from any computer on campus that is on the
IASTATE active directory (most labs and offices)
- files stored in shared areas (U drive space) will no longer count
against your personal quota (P drive space)
As the migration date draws nearer, you will receive
announcements with more details.
Labs & Equipment
College computer labs, technology enhanced classrooms and
conference rooms, and equipment checkout are administered jointly by the CHS
Instructional Technology (CHS IT) group in MacKay Hall and the Center for
Teaching and Learning with Technology (CTLT) in Lagomarcino Hall. In
addition, individual departments often have their own equipment caches,
labs, and conference spaces.
Computer labs: The number and
type of computers varies from lab to lab so please check the informational
web sites or contact the appropriate lab manager for details.
MacKay Labs:
Manager: Keith Swanson, 294-0439,
swen@iastate.edu
Lab information:
http://www.hs.iastate.edu/it/labs
Schedules:
http://www.hs.iastate.edu/it/labs/reservations.htm
Lab reservations:
http://www.hs.iastate.edu/it/labs/reservations.htm
CTLT Labs & Classrooms:
Main Labs & Help Area: 294-6840,
ctlt-labs@iastate.edu
Manager: Clyciane Michelini, 294-6327,
clyciane@iastate.edu
Lab information:
http://www.ctlt.iastate.edu/labs/homepage.php
Open Lab Hours*:
|
Open Hours |
MacKay 106/108/113
|
MacKay 307 |
CTLT Labs |
2311 Food Science |
| Mon-Thur |
8am-9pm |
8am-9pm |
8am-9pm |
by key code |
| Friday |
8am-5pm |
8am-5pm |
8am-5pm |
by key code |
| Saturday |
Closed |
Closed |
Closed |
by key code |
| Sunday |
1pm-9pm |
Closed |
1pm-6pm |
by key code |
* In addition to the open hours, CHS students, faculty,
and staff can sign up for key code access to use the MacKay labs during
off-hours. Labs are
closed during academic breaks.
Printing tip:
If you are printing multiple page PDFs or PowerPoint presentations
from the web (WebCT, etc.) you will experience more reliable
printing if you do the following:
Download the file to the computer desktop and print from there.
When printing PowerPoint slides, specify that
they should be printed as handouts with 4 or 6 slides per page.
Print only a few pages at a time (no more than
10).
Equipment checkout: Equipment is
checked out through the CTLT (N108 and N031 Lagomarcino Hall). Faculty and
staff can check out laptops (including mobile labs containing 20 or 30
laptops on a cart), digital cameras, video recorders, iPods, and voice
recorders. In some cases, checkout priority will be given to those in the
teacher education program.
Other CTLT offerings:
a do-it-yourself economical poster printer ($1/square
foot)
a vinyl cutting machine for making signs and cutouts
an assistive technology station
a faculty development lab, where faculty can try
out various software programs and tools
Conference room/classroom: CTLT
has two rooms equipped for video or teleconferencing that can be reserved by
faculty and staff. The small room holds 10-15 people. The larger room holds
up to 30 people and includes a smart board.
Course Support
The College Course Portal (http://www.classweb.hs.iastate.edu/)
is the starting point from which students, visitors, faculty, and staff can
find many ISU course related resources, including links to CHS course web sites. It is our
goal to have all class syllabi archived at this site each semester, no
matter what mode is used for instruction.
To have your course included at this site, send
your syllabi to Karla Embleton, embleton@iastate.edu. In your email note where your course materials
will be housed, i.e., WebCT CARDINAL, WebCT GOLD, the College Course Portal,
or at another site. If another site is used, include its URL.
As part of the College IT Services, Karla is available to
work with CSH instructors to design and post class materials on either the
college portal or in WebCT. You can also contact Karla to have her add
instructors, designers, and TAs to your existing GOLD account (you'll need
to provide their netIDs). Please allow up to 3 work days for materials to
be processed. An email receipt will be sent to you when the work is
complete.
Instructors wishing to post copyrighted materials should
work with Parks Library to create an e-Reserve site for their course.
Information about eReserve is available by going to the library website,
http://www.lib.iastate.edu/,
hovering your mouse over "Classes & Tours," then selecting Reserve from the
fly-out menu. The Library recommends that you request your eReserve site at
least five weeks before the semester begins, however, requests will be
handled at any time. Remember to create or request a link to your eReserve
account from your Course Portal or WebCT site.
Reminder: "WebCT CARDINAL" (WebCT Campus Edition ver. 4)
is being phased out. It will be available for the last time this spring.
Beginning in Summer 2007 only "WebCT GOLD" (WebCT Vista ver. 4) will be
available. For a list of WebCT GOLD training dates, see the Center for
Teaching Excellence (CELT) website,
http://www.celt.iastate.edu/events/.
To order a WebCT GOLD account, go to
https://webct.ait.iastate.edu/ISUtools/webhtml/designer/requestgold4.html.
You will be asked to supply the 6 digit section number for each section of
the course you are teaching. This number is available from the online
Schedule of Classes, http://www.adp.iastate.edu/cgi-bin/class.
WebCT GOLD is supported by Internet Explorer 7. As
with IE 6, check to ensure that Internet option settings are set to
prompt for downloads and that the browser is checking for a new page on
each click, rather than pulling old versions from cache. For
instructions on how to change these two preference setting, see
http://www.classweb.hs.iastate.edu/tips/IEsettingsWebCT.htm
WebCT Tip:
If you plan on having Testing & Evaluation transfer bubble
sheets scores to your WebCT GOLD course grade book, you will need to
provide them with the WebCT GOLD course ID number. You can find this
number by entering your course, clicking on the Teach tab, then
selecting the ISU Admin Tools icon. Below the heading
"Administrative Tools for ....". is a string of letters and numbers,
in rounded parenthesis, beginning with S2007-ISU-HSCI-. This
entire string is your WebCT GOLD course
identification number.
Training & Resources
Teaching and Learning Technology Workshops (including
WebCT GOLD training), http://www.celt.iastate.edu/events/
IT Online Video Library,
http://www.it.iastate.edu/training/videos/
-- provides instruction on
how to reduce spam and filter email in Eudora, Outlook, Apple OS Mail, and WebMail.
IT Computer Survival School,
http://www.it.iastate.edu/training/css/
TurningPoint Student Response System, "Clickers" --
information, http://www.celt.iastate.edu/TurningPoint/
CHS Course Portal Tips page,
http://www.classweb.hs.iastate.edu/tips/
-- short how-to instructions
for many common tasks in Office, WebCT, and html programming.
Online WebCT GOLD Training Materials -- all WebCT GOLD
instructors/designers should have access to a WebCT GOLD course called
"Training Materials". If you have not been enrolled automatically in this
course, email webct.help@iastate.edu
and request access.
Contact Information
For technical assistance: Help Center (Solution Center),
195 Durham, 294-4000,
http://www.it.iastate.edu/help/,
solution@iastate.edu
Newsletter contributors: Karla Embleton, Clyciane
Michelini, Mike Schmidt, Keith Swanson,
Lucas Tacker, Sly Upah
Please send your newsletter comments to Karla Embleton, 294-9198,
embleton@iastate.edu or
hsciit@mail.hs.iastate.edu
