Technology@Wooster

This semester Instructional Technology will offer training on Dreamweaver, iMovie, iDVD, flatbed scanning, and Audacity. These sessions will be held in Taylor 205 from 4:00 to 5:00, Monday through Thursday each week and will begin at a very basic level. As the semester progresses the sessions are expected to include more advanced topics. The schedule for these training sessions will be

What will you be able to learn at these sessions? You will learn how to create a simple Web page and how to manage a Web site; how to import, storyboard, and edit digital video and burn it to a DVD; how to scan photos at appropriate resolutions and scan documents to multi-page PDFs; and how to create an audio project using a number of different sound tracks. Again this may change as users become more advanced. Please direct any questions about these sessions to Jon Breitenbucher at x2207 or at jbreitenbuch@wooster.edu.

This semester faculty members wishing to work on projects in a quieter, more private setting than the instructional technology lab will be able to work in Taylor 211 on Thursday afternoons. They will also be able to get one-on-one help from Jon as he will be holding instructional technology hours in Taylor 211 from 1-5 on Thursdays for the 2007 Spring Semester. The space is equipped with three stations for doing anything from video editing to slide scanning. No appointment is necessary but if you want to send him an e-mail indicating you will be there, feel free to do so.

Colleague and ScotWeb will be unavailable from noon on Friday, February 2, until the morning of Monday, February 5. During this period, IT will be upgrading Colleague from software Release 17 to Release 18. It is necessary to perform this upgrade at this time because Release 18 is mandatory for the Colleague Advancement software that the College is in the process of implementing. Colleague Advancement is slated to enter production on July 1.

The changes in Release 18 are primarily technical and behind-the-scenes. Users should experience no substantive changes in the software’s behavior or appearance. On Monday morning it will be necessary for each Windows user to perform a simple procedure to update his or her client. Users will shortly be provided with the necessary instructions.

IT has been preparing for this important upgrade for a number of months, and folks in our client offices continue to test Release 18 to verify that it functions as required. We very much appreciate your patience as we take yet another critical step toward completing the OSCAR project. Please direct any questions that you might have about this upgrade to Marlene Brown at x2304 or mbrown@wooster.edu.

IT is pleased to offer a short training course on Microsoft Excel 2003. This course will meet for two three hour sessions- -9:00 until noon on Tuesday, February 6 and Thursday, February 8. All College employees are eligible to participate. Enrollment is limited to 15. To register contact Mary Schantz at x2039 or at mschantz@wooster.edu.

This course covers intermediate topics, extending the introductory course offered earlier. Topics to be covered include:

IT expects to offer both the introductory and intermediate Excel training courses again before the end of the current academic year.

In response to faculty requests, IT has made it possible to download class rosters from ScotWeb into Excel.  Instructions for this can now be accessed via ScotWeb.  The total number of class enrollees has also been added to the roster.  This had also been requested by faculty.

Over the holidays, IT increased the bandwidth of the College’s internet connection. Prior to the increase, available bandwidth was 24 megabits per second (Mbps), 12 Mbps, and 6 Mbps for commodity internet traffic, intra-Ohio commodity internet traffic, and internet2 traffic, respectively. Available bandwidth for general commodity internet traffic is now 36 Mbps, and available bandwidth for intra-Ohio traffic is 18 Mbps. Internet2 bandwidth is unchanged. Changes instituted by OARnet, our service provider, allowed us to make these increases without increased cost.

The College also made structural changes to our internet connection. We now have “last mile” connectivity to the Third Frontier Network. This direct fiber optic connection to OARnet amply provides for future increases and allows the College greater flexibility in managing bandwidth acquisition. These structural changes have the added benefit of lowering the cost to the College of providing internet access.

We in IT are very happy to be able to provide these service enhancements.