• April 1, 2008

Reminder: Technology open forums begin next week

by Amanda Tross, Office of Mediated Education,
and Lynn Carlin, Interim Vice Provost for Information Technology
published April 1, 2008

Help shape the future of the K-State technology service needs by attending one of the “Upgrade K-State: Tell Us What You Need” brainstorming open forums. Manhattan forums are scheduled April 8-10. The Salina forum is scheduled for April 17.

Session Time Day Date Location
Faculty and staff 3:00 - 4:30 p.m.
9:30 - 11 a.m.
Tuesday
Wednesday		 April 8
April 9		 Hemisphere Room, Hale Library
Students 9:30 - 11 a.m.
3:00 - 4:30 p.m.
Tuesday
Wednesday		 April 8
April 9		 Hemisphere Room, Hale Library
Campus IT staff 10:30 a.m. - noon Thursday April 10 Hemisphere Room, Hale Library
Central IT staff 8:30 - 10:00 a.m. Thursday April 10 Hemisphere Room, Hale Library
Salina faculty, staff, students 9:30 - 11 a.m. Thursday April 17 120 Technology Center (Salina)

These forums, sponsored by the Campus IT Needs Assessment Working Group, are part of a series of twenty targeted focus groups and open meetings being held this spring. These meetings are designed to gather specific ideas from a broad range of K- Staters regarding their IT needs and possible next steps to better align campus IT services with the most pressing campus technology needs.

For more information or to submit comments, visit the Upgrade K-State website. Results will be shared at the website later this spring and used by the Working Group to develop recommendations for Provost Nellis and the Computing Executive Committee regarding future IT services.

April iSIS training sessions

by Aimee Hagedorn, Information Technology Assistance Center
published April 1, 2008

New iSIS training sessions have been scheduled for academic and administrative department staff. Topics include advising in iSIS, financial aid inquiry, and class scheduling. Visit the iSIS training webpage to view the full schedule and register for a session. For questions about iSIS training, contact Brian Arthaud-Day at bcad@k-state.edu or 785-532-7657.

April IT training calendar now online

by Cathy Rodriguez, Information Technology Assistance Center
published April 1, 2008

iTAC's April IT training calendar is now online. All classes are free for K-State faculty, staff, and graduate students, but require pre-registration. Details are on the specific registration pages. Courses include:

  • Various eTips
  • Introduction to HTML
  • Introduction to Dreamweaver
  • Introduction to Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)
  • Dreamweaver and CSS

Reminder: Mathematica 6 presentation April 2

by Kathy Leonard, Computing & Telecommunications Services
published April 1, 2008

Cliff Hastings, a Wolfram Research representative, will be on campus to discuss Mathematica 6 in Education and Research. The meeting is 11 a.m.-12:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 2, in Cardwell 219. See the Mar. 25 newsletter for details.

eTips April 9: Using the calendar tool on K-State's central website

by Cathy Rodriguez, Information Technology Assistance Center
published April 1, 2008

Betsy Edwards will present an eTips session on "Using the calendar tool on K-State's central website" at 4 p.m. Wednesday, April 9, desktop webinar via Wimba. Do you need a basic, online calendar for your department, unit, or project?  Do you want your events posted in the University calendar or linked from the Calendar site?  Join this session to learn how to use a free tool that's available on the university's central web server.

Reminder: Sarah Silva will present an eTips session on "Color options when using K-State templates" at 11 a.m. Thursday, April 3, desktop webinar via Wimba.

eTips registration is required at least 24 hours in advance to allow time to add you to the session and ensure your workstation is configured properly for accessing the session.

TechBytes April 3: Getting around Final Cut Pro

by Cathy Rodriguez, Information Technology Assistance Center
published April 1, 2008

Ron Frank will present "Getting around Final Cut Pro" at 1:15 p.m. Thursday, April 3, in 501 Hale Library. Just enough theory... just enough windows.. and just enough keystrokes to turn your simple video footage into a masterpiece!

TechBytes seminars are free and open to the K-State community. The series is also video streamed live for off-campus viewers and others who wish to view it from their desktop. Use the "View live video" link on the TechBytes homepage to watch the next live video as it's being recorded. The TechBytes archives contains a wealth of information on IT tools and topics. It includes programs, handouts, videos, and resources from seminars in 2003 to the present.

IT by the numbers: iSIS statistics for week of March 21-28

by Aimee Hagedorn, Information Technology Assistance Center
published April 1, 2008

iSIS usage March 21-28, 2008 Statistics
Students who have enrolled in fall classes in iSIS 5,000+
Maximum number of iSIS sign-ins per hour 676
Maximum capacity computer system load reached 13%
Federal student-aid applications received and processed in iSIS 14,934

Security tip of the week

Security roundtable April 4: Secure remote access

by Harvard Townsend, IT security
published April 1, 2008

Do you use Microsoft's Remote Desktop (RDP) to connect to your campus Windows computer from home? Do you use file-transfer protocols such as TELNET to log in to a Unix server or FTP to upload files to a web server? If you do, then you need to attend this IT security roundtable on secure remote access because, in the future, you will not be able to use these tools on the K-State campus the same way you have in the past. All three pose serious security risks so they will be disabled in certain situations on campus within the next year. However, there are more secure alternatives, so come to this seminar to learn how to use them and to prepare for these changes.

At 9:15-10:30 a.m. Friday, April 4, in Union Staterooms 2-3, Josh McCune from iTAC will lead a discussion on secure remote access covering topics such as the risks of remote access, how to safely use Remote Desktop, and other options for remote access. Josh will demonstrate some of these tools and explain K-State's Virtual Private Network (VPN) service, which is an important tool for safely accessing K-State resources and will be your ticket to using RDP in the future.

The monthly IT security roundtable discussions are open to anyone at K-State and sponsored by SIRT. Join us this Friday and bring your questions and experiences to share with the group.

K-State Online

Compose long messages offline

by Sarah Silva, Information Technology Assistance Center
published April 1, 2008

When writing a long e-mail to your students from the Roster, compose your message in a text editor such as Notepad, TextEdit or Word and then paste it into K-State Online to avoid the system's timeout feature and the loss of your message.

The same holds true for the Message Board, Announcements, or Welcome Message. Compose long messages offline and save yourself (and your fingers) the aggravation of possibly having to do it all over again!

Student enrollment time

by Aimee Hagedorn, Information Technology Assistance Center
published April 1, 2008

How does a student know when it's their time to enroll?

On the Student Center page in iSIS, under Enrollment Dates, click the details link for the specific enrollment date and time.

Spotlight

South by Southwest Interactive podcasts available

by Sarah Silva, Information Technology Assistance Center
published April 1, 2008

South by Southwest (SXSW), a yearly conference and festival for the interactive media, film, and music industries, was March 7-16 in Austin, TX. The SXSW Interactive Festival, one third of the larger SXSW conference and festival, featured many sessions and panels given by some of the brightest minds in the interactive community.

If you didn't attend the conference, fear not, South by Southwest is now releasing all of the sessions as free podcasts. Check out the SXSW Podcast Page to take a look at currently available sessions. More will be released over the coming months. There's also a page on their website to subscribe to the SXSW Podcast RSS feed.