IIT
Expansion
Roberta Lembke, Director
Over the summer the IIT relocation and expansion project was completed. Last year the relocation project was begun when the former Media Services was moved into our Rolvaag facility to allow room for expanded programs in the Sciences. This summer the five staff responsible for supporting the administrative offices moved to Rolvaag. For the foreseeable future, IIT will maintain control of the former AdCC central computer and networking room, as well as the printer room. While most of the servers have been moved to the Rolvaag facility, two of the servers will continue to live in the Administration Building until they are removed from active duty. The fate of the former office space is unknown.
Our relocation and expansion project would not have been possible without the support of the Library who graciously allowed us to create offices in former Library stack and study space. We are also using space formerly occupied by the Macintosh classroom, RML 277. This expansion gave us the room to move one staff member out of a closet, two out of spaces never designed for offices, and another out of a room that only had 6’2” headroom!
In order to make the most efficient and effective use of our new space, a number of staff were moved to new offices. All staff who serve in more front line positions (Helpdesk, microcomputer support, and A/V and repair services) or have need for quick access to the servers room (systems management or networking) have offices in the original Rolvaag space. The remaining staff have been relocated to the new space which is somewhat off the beaten path!
Rolvaag 250 has returned to its original use as a computer classroom. Most will remember this as the former Macintosh classroom. This "new" set up is a split classroom, with one half Macs and one half PC's. This set up will make it a snap to teach a single workshop on some of the more popular applications (MS Office, Dreamweaver, etc.) in one room to both Mac and PC users. (If you would like to reserve Rolvaag 250 or 477, the PC classroom, for your class, please contact Janet Collrin at collrin@stolaf.edu.)
While many will view this project as simply a construction project,
it really is much more than that. This relocation and expansion project
marks the completion of over eight years of work to transform the former
Academic Computing Center, Administrative Computing Center, and Media
Services into a single organization, all under the same roof!
Instructional Technologies
IIT offers many different tools for teaching
Are you aware that St. Olaf has its own real-time chat server, that you can use a threaded discussion board in your classes, or that server space is created automatically for every class on campus for use in sharing and collecting documents?
New and not-so-new faculty may be surprised at the different tools and technologies that IIT provides for instructional use in and out of the classroom. Some of these services have been around for years; some are new this fall. For a complete overview of the various tools available to you for teaching, check out the Instructional Technologies document on the IIT web site.
A Note about WebCT
The WebCT server, which provides web-based course tools, was upgraded to the latest version. The interface has changed slightly, but most users won't notice any significant changes. Besides an improved Equations Editor (which allows for easy posting of mathematical formulas), WebCT now includes a WYSIWYG -- what you see is what you get -- web page editor.
The future of WebCT at St. Olaf continues to be a question that arises often, primarily due to the cost of the system. IIT is continuing to look at WebCT and other potential course management systems to find the right balance between function and finances.
Classroom Technologies
Over the summer, several classrooms on campus received new or upgraded technologies. Some of the changes include:
- Skoglund Athletic Center 112 now has a Macintosh, document camera, VCR, and projector.
- Holland 301 now has a technology cart with a PC, Macintosh, document camera, VCR, and projector.
- Old Main 20 and 21 now have a Macintosh, PC, document camera, multi-standard VCR (to play tapes from foreign countries), and projector.
- Old Main 2 received a new PC.
- Rolvaag Library 515 has a new technology cart with PC, Macintosh, document camera, VCR and projector.
- Rolvaag Library 4th floor now has a portable technology cart with a PC, Macintosh, VCR, document camera, and projector.
- Speech/Theater 227 and 216 both have new projectors and new Macintoshes
- Dittmann Center 204 has a Macintosh, document camera, VCR and projector with media link controller.
- Rolvaag Library 477 has a new projection system
Most classrooms that already had some technology installations in them have had upgrades to the computers or other equipment. On the computers, Windows 2000 is the standard operating system on the PC's and Mac OS X (10), with "classic" support to run older applications, is the standard on the Macintoshes.
Documentation on using the various pieces of technology in the classrooms
can be found at http://www.stolaf.edu/services/iit/classrooms/.
Faculty or staff teaching in any of the technology classrooms who wish
to receive
training on using the technology can contact classtech@stolaf.edu and
someone will contact you to arrange a time for training.
As most everyone is aware by now, worms and viruses are spreading across the Internet at record speeds. Across the nation, many college campus networks are in a state of meltdown; some have completely shutdown their networks until they can get control of the virus situation. St. Olaf, thanks to IIT's proactive stance on battling the latest viruses, has remained relatively unscathed.
To protect your computer and the campus network, as well as all of its data, it's critical that you have anti-virus software installed on your computer and keep it up to date with the latest virus definitions. IIT has installed Symantec anti-virus on all college-owned computers and and servers and scans all incoming e-mail messages for viruses, but students need to purchase software for their personally-owned computers.
Personally-owned computers that are identified as being infected and/or spreading viruses will be disconnected from the network for a minimum of two weeks.
During the summer IIT employee Alex Fraser resigned to take a position with Blake school in Minneapolis. Because of the timing, we elected to hire someone in a temporary position until after the start of the school year. We are thrilled that Tim De Chant '03 accepted our offer. Tim has worked for us as a student employee, specializing in Macintosh support. Tim has taken over as the primary Mac specialist and is supporting Alex's academic departments. Tim can be reached at x3790 or at dechant@stolaf.edu.
Fall Seminar Series
A record number of seminars being offered this fall.
This fall, IIT is offering a wide variety of computing seminars for faculty and staff. The seminars include such topics as using Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint, how to create web pages, image editing with Photoshop, using class folders, calendars, and remote access.
Complete seminar descriptions and schedule are available online. Space is limited, so be sure to reserve your place online if you plan to attend.
Spam, Spam, Spam
Do you read e-mail? Then you've probably gotten at least one message that was "spam", or an unsolicited commercial offer, usually for some product, get-rich-quick scheme, or legal service. Full definitions and more information about spam can be found at http://spam.abuse.net/overview/.
While there is no single or definitive solution to spam, there are a few things you can do to minimize the amount of spam you receive.
First, don't supply your e-mail address to commercial sites that share information with possible spammers (people who send spam). This can be hard to determine at times so, if in doubt, put in a fake address, or use a different address other than your St. Olaf address. For example, many people have e-mail accounts at Yahoo or Hotmail that they don't check often so they use those addresses to fill out online forms.
Second, use an e-mail program that has Junk Mail filtering available. Netscape Mail version 7.1 has Junk Mail filtering and catches a great deal of the spam and removes it from your Inbox before you ever see it.
Finally, if you do happen to get a spam message, never click on the "remove" link that is often included in such a message. Spammers usually lie (that's why the return address for most spam messages are fake) and the "remove" link is just a ploy to verify that your address is a valid one. Clicking on such links will only increase the amount of spam you receive.
IIT is working to limit the amount of spam that arrives to the campus, but it is difficult to positively identify all spam. What some people would call spam are legitimate commercial offers that others want to receive. This is why using an e-mail program that has junk mail filtering in place is crucial because each person can customize their own level of filtering. IIT does block some messages from arriving, but subject lines and spammer addresses are constantly changing and it's impossible to block everything.
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