ITS has been cascading newer PCs to full-time faculty.  We have completed 76% of the cascade and have only the Science Division FT faculty to complete.  We will hope to have those PC cascades completed by mid-May.

 

ITS receives approximately  1,000 Help Desk calls a month.  Most requests for assistance are completed within 3 days and 36% are complete within the same day.  The categories where most assistance is requested are hardware, printing, connectivity, and software.  Of course, at the beginning of each term Blackboard joins the list.

 

ITS has seen an increase in viruses on College computers.  We have tracked it down to the handy dandy flash drives that are very convenient to use to store data.  Unfortunately some of the flash drives were used in non-College PCs that were infected with a virus; then when those flash drives are put into a College PC the virus transfers itself to the College PC.  ITS has turned off the auto run feature on USB drive to remedy this problem.  This will not affect the use of flash drives but should prevent those viruses from spreading to College PCs.  The Oesterle Library was a prime source for the spread of this type of virus and since installing this fix the problem has all but disappeared.

 

More and more faculty and staff are using wikis and blogs.  A wiki is a collection of Web pages designed to enable anyone with access to contribute or modify content, using a simplified language.  A blog is a website, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics and video.  Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order.  The College has standardized on DokuWiki and WordPress for these purposes.  If you would like to use this software, please contact the Help Desk via email.

 

Two committees have been formed to look at the Resource Page for Faculty and Staff and the Resource Page for Students.  The task of those committees is two-fold: determine the organization of those pages and determine the links that should appear on those pages.  The committee for Faculty and Staff resources has already met once and the committee for Student resources will meet for the first time next week.  In the mean time, any comments or suggestions for those pages would be greatly appreciated.  Please email them to me and I will pass them on to the committees.