INFORMATION SERVICES
April 2004
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to Information Services
Announcements from the Bulletin, Today, Notification-L
04/30/04, Mulberry Tip
Ever replied to an e-mail, and accidentally replied to everyone the
e-mail was sent to, instead of just the sender? Here's a Mulberry tip so
you can never embarrass yourself like this again! When clicking the
'Reply' button, hold down the Option key (Macintosh) OR
the Alt key (Windows), and Mulberry will automatically reply only to the
sender of the message, not to the whole list. [Bulletin]
04/30/04, Faculty Members, Who's Minding the Store?
Many academic departments lose the services of their department
coordinators over the summer. Also, faculty (even chairs!) leave campus
for research trips, conferences and vacations. Students, newly-hired
faculty and other colleagues will try to call your department over the
summer, and it is very frustrating for them if their call simply
vanishes. Do them a favor by changing your telephone greeting to reflect
your absence.
Academic departments without coordinators should set extended absence
greetings on the main departmental phone number, noting summer hours (if
any) and perhaps giving the chair's number as an alternative. Individual
faculty members are encouraged to set extended absence voicemail
greetings saying when you expect to return. Clear instructions on how to
set such greetings, as well as assistance in doing so, may be obtained
by contacting Kelly Borke, telecommunications manager, at x6566. Thank
you! [Bulletin]
04/28/04, Register for 10th Annual Classrooms
of the Future Conference
Macalester will host the 10th annual Classrooms of the Future Symposium
on Tuesday, May 25. Sponsored by the Associated Colleges of the Twin
Cities, the theme is "Learner-Centered Learning."
Classrooms of the Future is an opportunity for higher education
professionals to come together to talk about their practices for
teaching with technology.
Pre-conference hands-on workshops are offered the day before the regular
symposium. A registration fee is required to secure your seat. Workshops
include "Computer Literacy for Academic Professionals" presented by Ted
Fines (Macalester CIT).
To register for the symposium and/or the workshops, go to
http://www.associatedcolleges-tc.org/cotf.
For more information contact Brian Longley (Media Services), Jean
Beccone or Dave Collins (Library) or Pete Rogan (CIT). [Bulletin, also 4/30]
04/28/04, Media Services Closed for Two Hours Thursday
Media Services will be closed temporarily from 4:30 to 6:45 PM
Thursday, April 29, for an all-staff gathering. Please plan accordingly.
[Bulletin]
04/26/04, End-of-year IT Purchasing
The College's fiscal year ends Monday, May 31. Business Services
mandates that we must take delivery of all items by this date in order
to be charged against FY 03-04 budgets - it is not sufficient simply to
place the order before May 31. If you are considering an institutional
hardware or software purchase, please do two things:
1) be certain that you need the item. Spending remaining funds just
because you have them is wasteful of limited college resources.
2) contact David Sisk, C.I.T., immediately at x6745. We cannot guarantee
that vendors will fill orders as quickly as we would like. Items ordered
after April 30 are not likely to be delivered in time to meet the FY
deadline.
Thank you for your understanding. [Bulletin, also 4/28, 4/30]
04/26/04, A Telecomm Tip
When leaving a message for someone, please leave your direct phone
number and last name if the recipient is not familiar with you. You
would be surprised at how many calls to the switchboard ask for "Mike
(or any first name you'd like to insert), please." Thank you!! [Bulletin, also 4/28, 4/30]
04/22/04, Internet Connection Restored
Our Internet connection was restored at 1:30pm today, after an outage of
about an hour and a half. Qwest found and repaired the problem with our
connection, and Internet traffic is back to normal. [Notification-L]
04/22/04, Internet Connection Down
The campus Internet connection went down shortly before noon today. It
looks like the problem is with our physical connection to our Internet
service provider. Qwest Communications has been called to diagnose the
line. On-campus network connections are not affected. E-mail from
off-campus will be queued and sent when our connection is restored, on
the schedule of the sending machine. We will keep you posted when we
have new information. [Notification-L]
04/19/04, Kirk Hall Network
Lightning during yesterday's thunderstorm has damaged some of the
networking equipment in Kirk Hall. We have replaced one network switch
which was destroyed by the electrical spike. The remaining switches
have some damaged ports, which we are working to identify. The network
cards inside some of the computers in Kirk Hall have also been damaged.
If your computer cannot connect to the network, it may because your
computer was damaged, or because the port on the switch it was connected
to was damaged.
Please call the Help Desk at x6525 if you are experiencing network
problems. We are working to resolve them as quickly as possible.
Because of the number of problems and the amount of time spent checking
both the computer and the switch, we may not be able to respond
immediately. We appreciate your patience. [Notification-L]
4/16/04 Information services survey
Thanks very much to the 400 of you who responded to the Information
services User Survey! We are now conducting focus groups of students
and soon will do so with faculty and staff to explicate the results.
You will see results and analysis on the Information Services Web
site before the end of the semester. That's http://www.macalester.edu/infoservices/.We
run the survey regularly and so the trend lines as well as current
data will be critical to planning improved services. [Bulletin, also 4/19, 4/21]
4/16/04 Information services consultant
An information technology planning consultant is making the second
of three visits to campus to explore strengths, challenges and opportunities
for information services. Here is the description of the purpose
of the exercise:
"Macalester College has begun a review of its information technology
(IT) environment (resources, support/services, and plans) to ensure
it is developing and deploying its technology-related resources
to most effectively meet institutional goals, campus requirements,
and future service expectations. The College has engaged Kaludis
Consulting, a higher education consulting firm, to perform this
review and to develop recommendations for resource and service development,
project priorities, and planning strategies."
Consultant Elliott Haugen will be on campus April 21 -23 and will
meet with multiple groupings of students, faculty and staff. If
you have questions or contributions to the process, contact President
Brian Rosenberg or Joel Clemmer. [Bulletin, also 4/19, 4/21]
4/16/04 Telecom tip
Want to immediately respond to a co-worker’s or student’s
voice mail message? After listening to a voice mail message from
an on-campus person, press 8, record your message, press #, and
follow the prompts. If you hang up and do not press the # key after
recording your response, you did not respond.
If you have any phone or voice mail questions that you'd like to
see answered here, call Telecommunications at x6566. [Bulletin, also 4/19, 4/21]
4/16/04 Internet bandwidth
We have seen some slow-downs in Internet access in mid-afternoon
recently. While counter-intuitive, they seemed to occur as the weather
improved. We are in the midst of changing our contract for bandwidth
to the Internet so as to increase it by 30% through the end of the
semester. [Bulletin, also 4/19, 4/21]
04/07/04 Brief network outage
We experienced an unexpected outage affecting our file and Web servers.
Staff are now bringing the servers back up and we hope to have service
restored shortly. We apologize for this inconvenience! [Notification-L]
04/02/04 Worms and Spam - Not!
Learn how to use Symantec anti-virus software and configure Scheduled
Update to keep your virus definitions fresh. Go to http://www.macalester.edu/cit/safecomputing/
and read all about it! Guidance on our anti-virus package, formerly
called Norton, is found under the name of your operating system
(e.g., Windows XP) at C.I.T.'s documentation library, http://www.macalester.edu/cit/docs/
While you're at it, configure your own preferences for spam control
by downloading C.I.T.'s SpamAssassin Config Maker for our software
page, http://www.macalester.edu/cit/software/.
[Bulletin]
04/02/04 Network Defense
In response to the virulent worm and virus outbreaks of last year,
we are investing in improved network defense. That will mean some
new procedures and rules, which we describe in one of our planning
documents found at http://www.macalester.edu/infoservices/planning/.
Look for "Network vulnerabilities?" [Bulletin]
04/02/04 Services to Off Campus Users
You can stay productive while off campus by using our Web-accessible
services. Among them are Webcal, Webfile and Webmail. They are available
at http://webcal.macalester.edu,
http://webfile.macalester.edu
and http://webmail.macalester.edu.
In all cases, your username and password are the same as for our
network and e-mail. The first, webcal, provides off-campus access
to our CorporateTime personal calendaring system. The second gets
you to your account on our networked file servers (the "H:
drive" in Windows) so that you can pull down your personal
files wherever you happen to be. The third is one of our two Web-enabled
e-mail options, SilkyMail.
SilkyMail includes the address book and preferences you may use
under Mulberry. Some computers have difficulty with the coding of
Silkymail and so we provide a second, less powerful, Web mail option,
called SquirrelMail (we are not responsible for these names!) You
can launch either package from http://mail.macalester.edu. [Bulletin]
04/02/04 Wireless at Macalester
Wireless network access has been expanded to several additional
buildings on campus in the last few months. You can currently get
wireless network access in the Library, the Campus Center, Humanities,
Old Main, Carnegie, Kagin, Olin/Rice, and the Weyerhaeuser Board
Room. Coverage in Olin/Rice is not yet complete, and additional
wireless access points will be installed to improve coverage in
that building. [Bulletin]
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