Technology@Wooster

Members of the User Services staff will be on campus Saturday March 24^th and Sunday March 25^th from 9am – 5pm to provide technology support for students, faculty and staff involved in IS preparation. Staff members will perform hourly printer checks, cover help desk phones and will be available for students in need of last minute technology support.

User Support Specialists Michael Naylor and Robert Rybicki are now certified through the Dell^™ Warranty Parts Direct Program. To utilize the services of the Dell^™ Warranty Parts Direct Program, technicians are required to pass a Dell certification proficiency examination for each of the product families they intend to service and support. Michael and Robert have been certified to repair Dell servers, notebooks, and Optiplex, and Dimension desktops. The Office of Information Technology would like to congratulate Michael and Robert and thank them for their continued efforts in improving the support provided through the helpdesk.

IT previously announced that the DVD/VCR Combo units in Kauke would be replaced. The new units will be able to play DVD regions one through six and video cassettes in PAL, NTSC and SECAM formats. Ten units, those in the following locations, have now been replaced:

The remaining units will be replaced this summer.

This replacement does not impact the way in which users interact with or control the devices.

IT, Communications, Theatre, Purchasing, and Physical Plant have been collaborating on the development of a renovation plan for Wishart 102. One of the chief goals of the renovation of this classroom is the establishment of new standards for technologically-enhanced classrooms on the Wooster campus. The new design will reflect important lessons learned during the renovation of the learning spaces in Kauke Hall. The implementation of the new design in Wishart 102 will afford faculty and instructional technologists the opportunity to evaluate it fully, and their experience in Wishart 102 will inform the future development of technologically-enhanced classrooms on campus. The renovation of Wishart 102 is therefore seen as the development of a prototype.

The room will include a ceiling-mounted projector, motorized screen, dvd/vcr combo unit, speakers, amplifer, document camera, and, of course, a computer. The combo unit, amplifer, document camera and computer will be housed within a custom-designed podium located at the front of the room. The technology will be controlled using a Pixie Pro unit mounted on the podium. The renovation, however, goes beyond equipping the room with new classroom technology. The classroom furniture will also be replaced–with an eye toward flexibility in accomodating various teaching and learning styles. The goal has been to think holistically about the classroom space and the overall impact on learning.

Work will get underway soon after the end of the current academic year and will be complete by June 30. IT is excited to be working on a project of this nature, and is very pleased to be partnering with Communications, Theatre, Purchasing and Physical Plant. Developments will be published on the blog.

Over the last few weeks IT has been attempting to isolate the source of the slow printing to several of our public and departmental printers. We have recently moved the public printers behind a firewall to protect the printers from network traffic not intended for them. These steps have made a significant change in the speed at which those devices operate. User Services will be contacting individual departments to discuss the steps necessary to continue to move the devices to a protected network.

Vince DiScipio
Director Networks, Telecommunications and Systems

At 6:00 Tuesday morning we began a routine process to add disk space to the Faculty and Staff storage area. While adding the space we encountered a bug within IBM’s software on the storage server. This bug caused the existing space to become unreadable. We worked for several hours with support personnel from both IBM’s support partner and Novell’s support team to recover the data.

Late in the day Tuesday it became clear we would not be able to recover the existing data and initiated the process to restore the data from backup tapes. The total amount of information being pulled from the tapes and the recreation of the virtual server structure went well but was very time consuming.

The Student space was returned to operation on Tuesday, March 6th at 8:00 pm. There was no data loss on the student volume.

Faculty Space returned to full operation on Wednesday, March 7th at 8:00am. All files updated on the faculty volume between 2:00AM and 6:00AM Tuesday, March 6th are not in the restore.

Staff Space returned to full operation on Thursday, March 8th at 8:00am. All files updated on the straff volume between 2:00AM and 6:00AM Tuesday, March 6th are not in the restore.

Any data saved or modified on the Faculty and Staff volumes between 2:00AM and 6:00AM Tuesday, March 6th has been lost.

We will continue working with IBM over the next weeks to completely isolate the portion of the software that created the issue, and we will be updating the software on our storage server with the patched version.

Thanks for your patience and understanding during this service outage.

Vince Di Scipio
Director Networks, Telecommunications and Systems

After conversations with the vendor, IT is pleased to announce that the DVD/VHS combo units in all Kauke classrooms will be replaced. We expect to replace 10 of these units over spring break and the remaining units this summer. The new units will be able to play DVD regions one through six, and video cassettes in PAL, NTSC and SECAM formats. While the original intention was to support these regions and standards, the current units cannot accommodate this wide range. This replacement will not impact the way in which users interact with or control these devices. One of the new units has already been installed and tested in Kauke 038 with positive results.

The Energy Policy Act of 2005 extends Daylight Savings Time in the US by 4 weeks beginning in 2007. Daylight Savings Time will begin on March 11, 2007 and end on November 4, 2007. The time between the new DST dates and the original DST dates (March 11-April 1 and October 28-November 4) is referred to as Extended DST.

Most computer operating systems and applications are already updated to reflect this change. Others may require patches to be downloaded to operate properly with the change. The Office of Information Technology recommends that individuals install the correct update based on the operating system version on their computer. This should be done prior to March 11, 2007.

If you have any questions about Extended DST, please Contact the help desk at 330-287-3000 x4357 (HELP) for assistance.

Yesterday, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) announced that it had sent 400 “pre-litigation settlement letters” to 13 universities. Each letter informs the university of a copyright infringement lawsuit that RIAA is planning against a university student or employee, and asks the university to forward the letter to that student or employee. The full text of the announcement is available on the RIAA’s website. The announcement indicates that RIAA plans to pursue “hundreds of similar enforcement actions against university network users each month.”

Inside Higher Ed posted a story today on RIAA’s announcement. It indicates that, since 2003, the RIAA has filed about 1,000 lawsuits against students.