 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
|
What's New?11/20/09, Wireless Access Problems? Tell Us Where! Students, we want to hear from you about wireless problems on campus.
If you have encountered wireless access difficulties, please tell us
about them with as much detail as you can provide. If the problems turn
out to be with your computer, we can help you directly. More
importantly, your reports will direct our attention to 'cold spots',
signal interference and other wireless difficulties that need fixing.
Using the feedback we get from you, we will respond quickly to resolve
those problems wherever they may be on campus.
10/12/09, Printed Directories Available A small number of printed directories are ready for pick-up in Telecommunications, Humanities 316. Call ahead to x.6000 before you come by - we will not send directories through campus mail. Note that the online directory (at www.macalester.edu/directory.html) is updated daily. Printed directories are intended for on-campus use by individual faculty and staff who absolutely need them, not for students or entire departments. If you find errors in a directory entry, please notify Employment Services at x.6280. 09/21/09, Wireless Improvements, Summer and Fall 2009 Improving wireless network access on campus is an ongoing project. Here's the progress we made over the summer of 2009:
During Fall semester 2009, our priorities for wireless improvements are Kirk Hall, George Draper Dayton Hall and residences in the Stadium. If you live in one of these locations, you may encounter ITS staff mapping current signal strengths and coverage patterns, installing new wireless equipment or re-deploying existing equipment for greater coverage. Other locations on campus will be addressed in Spring 2010. Improving wireless access does NOT mean just installing more wireless transmitters (we wish it were that simple). If two wireless transmitters' ranges overlap, both will "pull back," thereby reducing the signal still further. More often, our technicians will work to relocate existing wireless access points for optimal signal strength and minimal overlap. Older buildings' construction, with more stone, concrete and structural steel, pose additional challenges. You can help ITS set priorities for Spring 2010 wireless improvements by reporting areas where the signal is weak or nonexistent to the ITS Help Desk at x.6525. The more detail you can share with us, the better we will be able to plan. It is helpful to say "the signal is weak in room 201," and even more useful to say "the signal is strong by the hall door in room 201, but gets weaker as you move to the north wall." See our Wireless Access page, www.macalester.edu/its/services/wireless/. 08/21/09, Student Password Reset Procedures Students, your password gets you into most of the electronic resources you'll use at Macalester, including your e-mail, the 1600grand portal and Moodle. If you forget your password, you can reset it yourself using the password self-service tool on the ITS Web pages. Go to http://www.macalester.edu/its/ and look for the first entry in the gray column on the left, labeled 'Password Self Service.' (You can also jump directly to it, http://activate.macalester.edu.) When you first activated your accounts, you were "challenged" to answer five questions with unique personalized information. Using the password reset tool, you'll be asked two of the same questions. When your answers match those you've already given, you'll be able to enter and confirm a new password. The password self-service tool is available 24/7, every day of the year, and is easily the most convenient way to reset or change your password. If you want to have your password reset for you, bring a picture ID - your student ID card, driver's license or passport - to the ITS Help Desk in Humanities 314 during Help Desk hours. Students who are studying abroad or away from campus can call the Registrar's Office at (651) 696-6200 and ask that the Registrar verify your identity to ITS. Once your identity is verified, your password will be reset and Help Desk staff will relay your new password to you by phone. In order to keep your personal information confidential, we will not accept password reset requests submitted over the telephone or via e-mail. 08/04/09, Student Network Registration Summary:
Details:
Starting in Fall 2009, you will need to register your computer on both the wired and wireless networks, the latter using the 'Macalester-Student' network segment and the student wireless network key (shared via e-mail on July 28). Also, registration will be required twice during the academic year, once at the beginning of Fall semester, then again at the beginning of Spring semester. Registration will be a quick process if your computer's operating system is fully updated and patched, and you are already using antivirus and antispyware software (which we provide for free). If it is not, registration will take much longer, so do yourself a favor and update before you arrive on campus.
Once your computer is registered, you'll have full access to wired and wireless network resources, including Google Apps for Education (e-mail and calendar), Moodle (our course management tool), 1600grand (the College's Web portal), shared and private network storage space, personal Web space and the Internet. Guests on campus, such as your parents, may use our Macalester-Guest wireless network without registering. However, the guest network blocks access to all of the campus resources named above and connections are limited to 2 hours in duration. Using the guest network is not an alternative to registering. ITS and Library staff will be offering hands-on help with computer registration from 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM Friday September 4 (Move-in Day) and Saturday September 5, same times, in the DeWitt Wallace Library. You can also get assistance with computer registration from the ITS Help Desk, 314 Humanities building. If you forgot to bring an Ethernet cable, you can pick one up for free at the Help Desk. Other networked devices such as game systems and handheld wireless devices can be registered by contacting the ITS Help Desk, at x.6525 or via e-mail. 07/24/09, Wireless Network Security Improvements Fall of 2009 brings some major improvements to the wireless network at
Macalester. The biggest change is that we are subdividing wireless
access into three separate segments:
We expect that this change will dramatically increase our malware detection and remediation capabilities. This network split will be activated by 9:00 AM on Monday August 3. To prevent random outsiders from using (and potentially misusing) our wireless, both 'Macalester-Student' and 'Macalester' will require a one-time password, or 'key.' There will be separate keys, one for students and another for employees. We will publish and circulate these keys during the week of July 27-31. You will need to enter the key into your wireless device only once when prompted. These keys will remain in place through the end of Fall semester 2009. We will change the key in early 2010 and every semester thereafter, and each semester we will publish the new key in advance. For additional security, we are expanding student computer network registration. Previously all students living on campus had to register their wired network computers, so that we can associate a student's name with a computer in the event of network problems. This fall we will begin requiring students to register computers both wired and wirelessly. Faculty and staff, you should not share the 'Macalester' key with students or guests for any reason. Students, you should not share the 'Macalester-Student' key with employees or guests for any reason. Sharing the keys will compromise network security and place your networked information - your research, files, academic records and personal data - at risk. Be assured that guests will have limited access to all appropriate network resources through the unencrypted 'Macalester-Guest' wireless network. If you have any questions about splitting the wireless networks or the upcoming network key, please contact the ITS Help Desk at x.6525 or via e-mail, helpdesk@macalester.edu. 05/11/09, ITS Launches Sustainability Web Pages What is ITS doing toward making Macalester a greener campus? More than you might think - and we've been doing it for years. Today we launch a series of Web pages collecting information about what we have done and continue to do in support of the College's sustainability goals. We present useful information for you, on how to reduce your paper and energy usage (did you know that you can read a document online and take notes electronically as well?), plus links to statistics on overall College resource consumption. Fire up your browser and go to www.macalester.edu/its/sustainability/index.html. Celebrate Bonnie Alexander 4/24!
12/22/08, New Moodle Courses Created January 5; Fall Courses Archived December 29 To prepare for the upcoming semester, Spring class sites will be created in
Moodle by Monday, January 5 2009. Fall 2008 course sites will be moved to the Moodle
archive on Tuesday, December 29, and will be available there to help you build
your new course sites for Spring.
10/30/08, FREE ETHERNET CABLES for students! Students, did you know you can pick up a free Ethernet network cable at the ITS Help Desk? Well, you can - all you have to do is drop by Humanities 314 and ask for one. All residence halls and rooms have full wired Ethernet access. Plug in that cable and you're good to go! 07/25/08, Fall Semester 2008 Moodle Available Monday 7/28. ITS is currently updating Moodle, our course management system, and creating
new class sites for the upcoming semester. On Monday July 28, Macalester will
have fresh Moodle sites for your Fall 2008 classes. Sites from previous semesters
are archived and available at moodlearchive.macalester.edu. (Spring 2008 class
archives will become available Monday as well.)
06/06/08, Wireless Networking Upgrade Plan. ITS will begin an upgrade program this summer that will substantially
improve our wireless networking infrastructure and capabilities. Our
project will deliver several service improvements, including the
following:
03/11/2008 - Progress Toward Google Apps for Education. We are deeply grateful to the Macalester community for your patience as
we have wrestled with the recent e-mail outage and restoration process.
Currently, OCS Webmail is reasonably stable, and we will continue
working to keep this service available. These recent difficulties have
strengthened our belief that Google Apps for Education offers an
exciting array of services more suited to Macalester's needs than any
other tool we have evaluated - most especially stable, reliable e-mail
available across the Web.
01/11/2008 - Jacob Dorer Receives District Council Outstanding Volunteer Award. On January 11, Jacob Dorer, Information Technology Services, was recognized for his community service at the 2007 Neighborhood Honor Roll Volunteer Awards Night. Following a welcome by Mayor Chris Coleman, the annual awards were presented by the St. Paul District Councils and the City Council. Excerpted from the award citation: "A Dayton's Bluff Community Council board member since 2002, Jacob has served as both President and Vice President, as well as on task forces and the Downtown St. Paul Airport Advisory Board. He is chair of the District Plan committee. He also spearheads the Mounds Park Neighborhood Residential Buckthorn Removal Project and maintains the Mounds Park Neighborhood e-mail group." 1/10/2008 - Spring 2008 Moodle being set up. ITS is currently updating Moodle and creating new class sites for the upcoming semester. This afternoon Macalester will have fresh sites
for your spring classes. 11/16/07, New link added to add E-mail Vacation Message In the sidebar on the ITS homepage, we have added a new link: Add an E-Mail Auto Reply Message We have added the link so you can conveniently add a vacation message when you plan to be away from the office. This feature was widely requested, especially with the holiday season approaching. 08/15/07, New Usernames and Password Self-Service Debut Banner has replaced Jenzabar/CARS as the College's central data system. This is an exciting opportunity, one that affects everyone at the College - extensively described on the Effectively Linking Macalester (ELM) pages. As part of the conversion, many business practices and workflows are being improved. One such improvement involves usernames and computer accounts, which are automatically generated within Banner when Human Resources creates a new employee record, and when the Registrar creates a new student record. Because new usernames are generated from it, Banner's rules apply to all accounts created after June 30, 2007. Existing Macalester usernames have not changed. New Usernames. Banner usernames may be up to eight (8) characters long. This new convention applies equally to students, faculty and staff. The default username is the first initial, followed by the first seven letters of the last name. If the last name is longer than seven letters, the remainder are dropped - as are hyphens, apostrophes and other non-alphabetic characters. For duplicates (multiple individuals with the same last name and first initial) the last character is replaced with a number in ascending order. The username is the first part of the Macalester e-mail address. Examples:
Before this change, it was usually possible to guess correctly what someone's Macalester username and e-mail address would be. Don't guess! It's no longer an effective strategy. If you guess wrong, you could send a message to someone other than your intended recipient - or send out a message that does not reach anyone at all. Instead of guessing, please check the online Directory. The Directory is linked from the College's main Web page and also through the 1600grand portal. You can access it quickly at www.macalester.edu/directory.html. Password self-service. For years, people have been asking for a way to reset their own Macalester account passwords, quickly and without having to call ITS for help. Good news! Our 'Self-Service' password page is now active, whether you've forgotten your old password or just want to create a new one. Go to the main ITS Web page and look in the left-hand column for the 'Self-Service' link, or go directly to http://idmprod.macalester.edu/. To augment security while giving you the control to change your own password, we have implemented a series of 'challenge questions.' Answers to these questions are unique to each individual, and yet easy to remember. Our questions are based on similar questions used by other secure Internet sites, such as banks. The self service interface displays the status of your password, as well as giving you access to change it. If you wish, you may still get help with resetting passwords by calling the ITS Help Desk at x.6525. As with usernames, the standard password convention has also been changed. New accounts are assigned 12-digit numbers as default passwords. Account holders are strongly encouraged to change their passwords immediately, to unique passwords that meet some simple requirements (passwords must contain between 6 and 15 characters and must have at least one number; some special characters may also be used). Please note that existing account-holders' passwords have not been changed. However, the next time you reset or change your password, the new convention will apply.
|
|
Bonnie Alexander, ITS, is retiring at the end of Spring semester 2009.
Everyone is welcome and invited to come and thank Bonnie for all she's
done for Macalester College. We'll gather from 1:30 to 3:30 PM on
Friday, April 24 in the Old Main Fourth Floor Lounge. Please join us!
|
Macalester College · 1600 Grand Avenue, St. Paul, MN 55105 USA · 651-696-6000 |