ResNet: Residence halls switched to port-per-pillow
Major network upgrades were made to ResNet during the summer. The last two residence apartments (Stadium and Junction Apartments) were added to the network this fall, and all residences were converted to live "port-
per-pillow" connections..

facultEtools: WebVista is Here at Least Through August 2011

The CMS Review group recently concluded looking at the current use of our two CMSs, Moodle and WebVista, and put together recommendations on how to proceed into the future.

This process, of course, creates rumors. One rumor we have been hearing lately is WebVista will be gone at the end of this academic year.

This is not true.

WebVista will be here at least until our current licensing ends which is in August 2011. The license may be extended beyond this as Blackboard has extended WebVista's product lifecycle.

What is true is WebVista will eventually go away because Blackboard is transitioning to their newer product, Blackboard Learn 9. At this point we know Blackboard is intending to drop support for WebVista at the end of December 2012.

For more information on the CMS Review group's work and recommendations, please use the url below.

http://www.oit.umn.edu/cms-search

Google Services Coming This Fall

The Office of Information Technology (OIT) continues work on integrating Google applications for use at all campuses of the University. ITSS staff are collaborating on this project, since we run our own email system here. Services will be aimed primarily at students, although faculty and staff may opt in to use services as well.

At present, UMD will follow those on the other campuses for the opt-in process to use Google. We will be letting the other campuses work through the opt-in process before applying it to our email system here. We hope to be testing in November and making the service available in December.

For more information, please see the OIT Google Initiative site. http://www.oit.umn.edu/google-initiative
The Questions and Answers section http://www.oit.umn.edu/google-initiative/questions-answers/index.html is particularly good for those who want to see details.

National Cyber Security Awareness Month

October is National Cyber Security Awareness Month (NCSAM). NCASM, conducted every October since 2001, is a national public awareness campaign to encourage everyone to protect their computers and our nation’s critical cyber infrastructure.

The theme this year is "Our Shared Responsibility."

As the Internet becomes pervasive, we are online from home, school, work, and in between on mobile devices. Even when we are not directly connected, our economy and much of the everyday infrastructure we rely on uses the Web.

Ultimately, our cyber infrastructure is only as strong as the weakest link. No individual, business, or government entity is solely responsible for cyber security. Everyone has a role and everyone needs to share the responsibility to secure their part of cyber space and the networks they use. The steps we take may differ based on what we do online and our responsibilities. However, everyone needs to understand how their individual actions have a collective impact on cyber security.

For more information about NCSAM, and for links to additional online security resources, please see StaySafeOnline. http://www.staysafeonline.info

Email Message Size Limit

In order to optimize system performance and better align UMD e-mail services with industry best practices, ITSS will make adjustments to selected campus e-mail account parameters. This change will facilitate the upcoming optional move to Gmail this fall.

Effective Wednesday, October 14, the maximum e-mail message size will be 25 megabytes (MB).

For those who need to transfer larger files, I recommend using the UM enterprise system, Netfiles. http://www1.umn.edu/netfiles/index.html
Please note that mail messages over 25MB are quite rare for most of us. Just to see, I went through all my trash bin (lots of messages there) and the largest message was 1.3 MB.

Technology & Teaching: ITSS Workshop series: "How to deliver course related items students want electronically

http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/support/Training/workshop

This workshop series is focused on the core things that students want electronically." The first hour is an active session focused on a specific topic. The second hour is a hands-on open session of your choice (anything related to educational technology).

Have you been hearing anything about Google and the U? How about email conversion from Mulberry?

Come and learn more at our popular and informal overview TTT http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/support/Training/ sessions!

October 6: Google Apps for UMN: What are Google Apps? How are they useful? Why did the University strike a deal with Google to offer Google Apps for Higher Education?
October 13: Email Clients: No Mulberry...What should I use? Learn about converting from Mulberry to other email programs.
October 20: Gmail as your email: Google Apps for UMN will be available to faculty, staff and students in the near future. Come find out how Gmail can be your University email. You may be surprised to find out you can still use Mac Mail, Outlook or Thunderbird in addition to the Gmail Web version.
Check out the new UMN Google Apps Collaborative Learning Space! https://sites.google.com/a/umn.edu/glearning
Google Apps Collaborative Learning Space provides an opportunity to learn about using Google Apps for collaboration as well as to share related resources.
We are in the process of creating more learning opportunities surrounding Google Apps, email conversion topics, options and more! We will be adding them to this page as they become available: http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/support/Training/

Have suggestions for ITSS technology training? Complete the ITSS Technology Training Idea Form http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/support/Training/FORMS/ideaform.html

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