IRT: News & Events: TechUpdates: Wednesday, April 2, 2008

1. Follow-up to Tech Alert--Windows Vista SP1 Notice
In accordance with the information provided in the last Tech Alert, Drexel IRT recommends that students and faculty who use the Microsoft Windows Vista operating system do NOT install Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) on their computers unless the computer came with the service pack pre-installed.
Be sure to check http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsvista/bb968859.aspx for current information about this update, as Microsoft has updated information about SP1.

For any questions or concerns, contact the IRT helpdesk at 215-895-2020 or contact an IRT desktop support technician.

2. Follow-up to Tech Alert--New Phishing Scam in Circulation
IRT’s last Tech Alert described the risks presented by a new phishing scam in circulation. However, as these scams continue to circulate, they evolve and therefore continue to receive responses to their bogus claims. Computers are still being compromised and being used to distribute SPAM under the responders’ addresses.
Recently Drexel University has been the target of phishing attacks. Emails have been sent to students and staff warning them that if they do not supply their username and password in an email, their account will be terminated. These emails are fakes even if they appear to be from drexel.edu or refer to a 'webmail' or 'university' account.
You should treat your password as you would your ATM card pin number. Never give it out to anyone, no matter what sort of persuasive argument they attempt to provide to you.
Reputable institutions, including Drexel University and IRT, will NEVER request personal information such as passwords, user IDs, and account numbers. DO NOT send such personal information via unsolicited email to anyone.

3. New Telephone Prefix for Drexel Phone Numbers
One of the challenges of the growth Drexel University is enjoying is that we are quickly running out of 895- telephone numbers. As a result, to accommodate requests for new numbers, we will be using 571 numbers that have been traditionally reserved for the Residence Halls. The first redeployment of 571 numbers was for the Drexel College of Law.
Starting immediately, requests for new phone numbers for new employees or new services will be accommodated by assigning a 571 phone number. However, 4-digit dialing between 895- and 571- phone numbers on-campus will be preserved for everyone’s convenience. For example, those with 571- or 895- prefixes can dial the same 4-digit extension, 2020, for the IRT Help Desk.

4. RESNET and MUSICSELECT
At the beginning of each term, students living in the residence halls, Greek housing, and on-campus apartments are required to register their network ports before they can gain access to the internet.

It is extremely important that, whether or not you have a desktop or a laptop computer, YOU MUST FIRST register your wired Ethernet port and primarily use it in your room. For one thing, it’s much faster than wireless; for another, it ensures that your hard drive and operating system are secure, clean and up-to-date. Dragonfly wireless service, while generally available within the residence halls, is better suited to mobile computing outside of the residence halls.

A word about music and video files. Drexel provides resident students with free and legal access to Napster and eMusic through http://www.drexel.edu/musicselect . Take advantage of this service while you’re here. Remember the FREE and LEGAL part. If you use peer-to-peer sharing software (such as LimeWire, KaZaA, BearShare, etc.) for downloading copyrighted music, video, or software, you could be asking for trouble. It is illegal to share these types of files without the license to do so. Industry organizations such as the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) are constantly monitoring for copyright violators, and eventually they will detect your illegal sharing and serve Drexel with a notice requiring that we disable your network access. (If you are lucky, that is. Hundreds of students around the country have been sued in federal court.) Even when you are downloading, your computer is sharing the files with others in the great, wide network. Do yourself a favor and get MusicSelect.

5. Edit and Rate Candid Campus Photo Captions
A new feature in DrexelOne now allows you to edit or rate the daily Candid Campus photo captions. On the Welcome page, once you click “Write/Rate captions,” a blank field will be provided where you can write and save your own caption for the current photo. Captions submitted by other students are also displayed, and each one can be rated based on creativity, humor, or appeal. The original caption that accompanies each photo will remain displayed on the Welcome page.

The “View Archives” option allows you to see the most popular (the highest rated) alternate captions for previous photos as well as the current photo and the original caption. Archives cover photos for the past month.

6. Office 2007 Online Tutorials
Have you downloaded Office 2007 and want to know where to get free tutorials on how to use it? Tutorials on all the programs offered in Office 2007 are located at: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/training/HA102255331033.aspx . Learn at your own speed in your own time!

News & Notes on Online Learning

7. Copying Your Old Course into a New One in Blackboard Vista
Faculty members who want to reuse a past Bb Vista section this spring term can learn how to do just that by watching a short video clip at this link: http://www.drexel.edu/irt/services/Bbvista/videos/copyContent/copy-content.html . Player controls beneath this video’s window allow you to pause it, rewind it, fast forward it, etc.
This simple copying process will turn your old section into a new one for this term. It strips out student contributions (and the like) from the old one while maintaining the student roster in the new one. Faculty can base any new section on any of their own old Blackboard Vista 4 sections (i.e., ones they ran in Bb Vista since summer quarter, 2006-07).
Anyone who needs additional information or assistance can contact the Online Learning Team at olt@drexel.edu.

8. 6th Annual e-Learning 2.0 Conference - March 20, 2008
Drexel’s 6th annual e-Learning 2.0 Conference on March 20 was a tremendous success! With more than 160 attendees and 36 presenters from over 40 institutions all over the region, this year’s conference was the best yet. The conference program featured a keynote presentation by Dr. Mark Milliron, President and CEO of Catalyze Learning International, on developments in Technology Use in Teaching and Learning with special emphasis on his recent interest in Retention of Online Learners. To access the conference presentations, including Dr. Milliron’s, an archive has been posted on our website at http://www.drexel.edu/irt/eLearningConf2008 . We look forward to many more successful e-Learning conferences in the future!

9. PDF Viewing Issues in Safari on Macs
Several faculty members who use Mac OS X computers and the Safari web browser have reported problems viewing PDF files in their Bb Vista courses. Our testing has shown this issue to be unrelated to Bb Vista, but rather due to an outdated version of the Adobe Acrobat Reader, specifically Versions 7.0.9 and below. If you use a Mac and Safari and have Acrobat Reader installed, please update to the latest version (8.1.2) to avoid any possible PDF-related issues. You can download Adobe Reader at http://www.adobe.com.

10. Inspect Your Presentation for Comments and Metadata
If you need to publish your presentation outside your organization, you may want to remove comments, notes hidden in the text, or other personally identifiable information. Oftentimes, this type of information is added to the document in the process of creating it. To remove this information:
1. Click the “Office” button, and then on the “Prepare” menu, click “Inspect Document.” (If you haven’t saved your document yet, you will be prompted to do so).
2. Select the items that you want the Document Inspector to look for. Most of these items will be selected by default.
3. Click “Inspect” to begin the inspection process.
4. You’ll receive a list of inspection results. Click “Remove All” next to any items you want to have removed from the document.
5. Click “Close” to close this wizard. You may want to resave your document now that this information is removed.

11. Version 4.0.1 of Impatica for Mac Now Available
For some time, PC users have been able to download version 4 of Impatica from the software site. Now, Mac users can also download the latest version of Impatica. Some of the major enhancements include: support for Office 2007 PowerPoint files, scalable playback, and a button on the console that allows the presentation to be viewed in “full screen” mode. Please note that the new version requires Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) in order to run. Users with an older version of the OS will be shown a generic error message stating that the software requires a newer version of Java. However, Apple only supports the required Virtual Machine on version 10.4 of the OS.
To download the program from the software site, go directly to https://software.drexel.edu , or go to IRT's Computer Marketplace at http://www.drexel.edu/irt/services/comp_mark/index.html and click on “Get Software,” followed by “Login to Download Software.” Remember to enter your Drexel username in the format abc123@drexel.edu . To access the registration code, click on the “Readme.txt“ link. You must enter all of the information in the Readme file exactly as it appears on this screen in order to register your copy of Impatica.

12. Make Your Section(s) Available to Students Outside of Regular Term Dates
By default, Bb Vista courses are available to students only between the official Banner start date (12:00 a.m. on the first day of term, which is a Monday) and the official Banner end date (11:59 p.m. on the last day of term, which is a Saturday).

However, the availability of your section(s) can be changed. If you want to open up your class a week early, for instance, you can do it yourself, on that particular date, by following the instructions at http://www.drexel.edu/irt/services/Bbvista/howToChangeDates.html. If you want to set a specific start date or end date (open a class up one week early, or, leave a class open one extra week, for instance), email olt@drexel.edu with the section name/number or section CRN as well as the date/time on which you would like to have the section available (or unavailable) to students. Whenever date adjustments are made, please note that students who are accessing your section outside of the Banner start and end dates must access Bb Vista directly at http://learning.drexel.edu , and not through the DrexelOne portal.

Bb Vista 4 Workshops for New Vista Users:

- Friday, May 30, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. in Korman 116
- Friday, July 25, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. in Korman 116 Bb Vista 4 Refreshers for
- Experienced Vista Users: Thursday, May 22, from 9 a.m. to noon in Korman 116
- Tuesday, July 22, from 9 a.m. to noon in Korman 116

Brown Bag Lunch Sessions:

- Thursday, April 24, from noon to 1 p.m. in Korman 116 (OneNote)
- Tuesday, May 13, from noon to 1 p.m. in Korman 116 (TurnItIn/MS Word Reviewing Option)
- Tuesday, June 24, from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., location TBD (Wimba
- Voice Tools/Classroom Showcase Event, sponsored by Wimba)

Impatica Demo and Training:

- Tuesday, May 13, from 1:30 to 2:30 p.m. in Korman 116 - Impatica Fundamentals - AND- How to Record Narration in PowerPoint!
- Thursday, June 19, from 1:30 to 2:30 p.m. in Korman 116 - Impatica Fundamentals - AND- How to Record Narration in PowerPoint!

Camtasia Demo and Training:

- Tuesday, May 13, from 2:45 to 3:45 p.m. in Korman 116 - Camtasia 5 Fundamentals
- Friday, May 16, from 9 to 11 a.m. in Korman 116 - Camtasia 5 Intermediate Thursday,
- June 19, from 2:45 to 3:45 p.m. in Korman 116 - Camtasia 5 Fundamentals Wednesday,
- June 25, from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. in Korman 116 - Camtasia 5 Intermediate

Dreamweaver Training:

- Wednesday, April 9, from 2 to 4 p.m. in Korman 116 - Basic Dreamweaver
- Wednesday, April 23, from 2 to 4 p.m. in Korman 116 - Intermediate Dreamweaver
- Wednesday, May 7, from 2 to 4 p.m. in Korman 116 - Advanced Dreamweaver

EndNote Workshop:

- Tuesday, April 22, from 1 to 4 p.m. in Korman 116

PLEASE NOTE: Reserve a seat at any of these workshops by emailing the Online Learning Team at olt@drexel.edu. See the schedule here: http://www.drexel.edu/IRT/services/workshops/index.html.

To read previous issues of the IRT Technology Update, go to http://www.drexel.edu/irt/news/technews/
To manage your subscription options to the IRT Technology Update and other Drexel Announcements, go to http://www.drexel.edu/irt/subscriptions. If you prefer to receive a plain text version, please email your request to mailreq@drexel.edu.

Modified: February 25, 2008

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