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ITS enhances internet services

May 11th, 2012 by

ITS is pleased to announce the following significant enhancements to internet services coming this summer:

  • A second main campus primary internet circuit is being installed that will double our internet speeds while providing enhanced network resiliency
    • This provides an eight-fold increase of main campus bandwidth since early 2011
  • Additional high speed internet connections will be added at San Jose, Santa Rosa, Sacramento, Pleasanton, and Presidio
    • This provides a 30-fold increase in network speeds since 2011
    • Note:  101 Howard is also launching with redundant high speed connections
  • ITS plans an acceleration of our roll out of next generation high speed wireless technology
    • This will result in faster wi-fi speeds while addressing weak signals in some parts of campus
    • Note:  This project will continue through the next academic year

These planned enhancements to internet speeds and network resiliency were based on your feedback and are designed to accommodate future bandwidth needs.

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USFsupport&answers provides 24-hour help and information when you need it

May 9th, 2012 by

The ITS Help Desk provides excellent support for your computer and USF applications, but it isn’t open all the time. You also might prefer to solve problems on your own. The easiest way to do this is to use USFsupport&answers, an online self-help resource that is available whenever you are.

USFsupport&answers combines a knowledge base to look for answers and a service-ticketing application to contact ITS only if you need to. The USFanswers library contains hundreds of USF-specific topics, and there are also thousands of general computer solutions from the RightAnswers content library. USFanswers has a search bar like Google, and you can also find solutions by browsing categories. Chances are, you’ll find the answer to your question.

ITS has also worked with departments all around campus to bring you non-technical solutions. We have answers to your questions about registration, fee deadlines, counseling, housing payments, Koret, and a lot of other stuff you want to know.

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CIT and Gleeson Library provide loaner equipment for students

May 9th, 2012 by

The Center for Instruction and Technology in the lower level of the School of Education building started lending equipment when faculty needed audio devices to record classes. Students who saw their teachers using recorders or video cameras then came to CIT to request equipment as well. With the growing popularity of equipment checkout, CIT now focuses on finding simple-to-use, good quality tools that can be easily learned by student borrowers.

For audio recording, CIT offers a simple iRiver MP3, and Sony digital recorders with built in USB ports, which also records in MP3 format. These have been used to record everything from academic counseling sessions to mock interviews. For higher quality recordings, students can also borrow microphones, ranging from basic Logitec desktop mics to the Blue Microphone Yeti, which has four different modes, including 2-way pickup for interviews or conversations. Podcast Factory is compatible with any microphone, and is used for exactly what its title says: to create podcast episodes.

On the video side of things, CIT used to provide tape cameras (some of which are still available), although real-time capture made these inconvenient. Real-time capture means that for every minute of film recorded, it takes an equivalent amount of time to transfer to a computer. This obviously created a real problem for students doing movie projects who needed to transfer hours of footage. For ease of use and portability, Flip cameras were purchased for student use, and although the video quality is very good, the audio can sometimes be comparatively low. Since the advent of Flip camera company’s purchase and discontinuation by Cisco, Creative Labs Vato is CIT’s choice for its ultra-portable replacement. If higher sound quality is needed, hard drive or flash card cameras are available for checkout as well. For movie projects, there are also a few tripods.

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ITS updates network equipment regularly to keep up with demand and change

May 2nd, 2012 by

The University of San Francisco has long been wired for internet connectivity. There are both wired ports and wireless access points available all over campus. Beginning in 2004, ITS began the procurement and installment process of wired, wireless, and other devices, which has continued to the present. Because of the rapid expansion of technology and Internet usage  in recent years, ITS has begun replacing older equipment as of 2011. ITS’s approach is to replace 1/7 of all equipment per year, or refresh the network, in other words.

Why refresh? Networking requires change; technology is constantly being updated and therefore outdated, and people always want to use networks for new services. For example, in the early 2000s, very few people watched video on the Internet. Today, video is the Internet’s number one consumable — it also requires significantly more bandwidth and speed to function. So, as there will always be demand for greater technology capability, ITS is here to install, fix, and update.

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AdvisorTrac and Tutortrac allow students to schedule appointments with advisors and tutors

May 2nd, 2012 by

AdvisorTrac and Tutortrac are scheduling applications used to make appointments with advisors or tutors, respectively. Both can be accessed by students in USFconnect, although in the case of AdvisorTrac, it is primarily used by nursing students, and will appear in USFconnect as NursingTrac. Students use AdvisorTrac to make appointments at the Learning Resource Center (LRC). Instructions on how to make appointments and post documents can be found on Blackboard.

The Nursing Lab uses AdvisorTrac to check in students, and has a document feature similar to Turnitin, the plagiarism prevention application used at USF. Mary Kate Wood, Assistant Dean for Administrative Affairs and Academic Support Services, said, “AdvisorTrac is better than Turnitin because the teacher can communicate more with the student and still have it be private. It is used by students to upload files, and then teachers can upload a response — all nursing students have to use it at some point.” She also noted that if AdvisorTrac is not responding, check the size of the document you are trying to upload (there is a maximum file size), or send a ticket to the ITS Help Desk about the problem using USFsupport&answers.

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Create and publish iPad text books and more with free iBooks Author

Apr 18th, 2012 by

iBooks Author is a free application from Apple that lets you use templates to easily create textbooks and more for the iPad. You can add your own text and images with simple drag-and-drop techniques and use “Multi-Touch” widgets to include interactive photo galleries, movies, Keynote presentations, 3D objects, and more. See the Mac App Store iBooks Author page for more product details.

The application requires Mac OS X 10.7.2 (Lion) or later, and is on the current USF standard image, so if you receive a new computer, it will be preinstalled. If you have the correct version of OS X but don’t currently have iBooks Author, you can submit an online request to the ITS Help Desk at support.usfca.edu to have it installed. If you have an older version of OS X, Lion is available from the Mac App Store for $29.99. Upon receiving the upgrade, you can send an online request to the Help Desk.

While the this easy-to-use program requires that the books be created on a Mac desktop or laptop, the  content can only be viewed through iBooks on an iPad or mobile device. The application encourages the creation of interactive books by providing what are essentially Apple pages (open templates for book-building with multiple theme options), and also allowing the application user to drop in video, hyperlinks, audio, and pictures.  The text is all in boxes, so users do not have to worry about text-wrapping.

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ITS staff represent USF at AJCU IT Management conference

Apr 16th, 2012 by

ITS staff recently represented USF at the 2012 meeting of the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities Conference on Information Technology Management (CITM) at Boston College. The conference exists to help members understand and fulfill the proper role of computing and information services, promote productive use of information technology, and facilitate collaboration between the member institutions. Indeed, a common challenge for the presidents of Jesuit schools is to ask CIOs join forces to get better pricing from vendors, which is difficult because each school has different legal and purchasing standards and different relations with vendors.

USF’s Information Technology Services CIO Steve Gallagher developed a national portal by which AJCU institutions can purchase inventory by the aggregate purchasing power of all 28 schools, each with a local portal which allows all of the schools to maintain total independence in their procurement processes. He demonstrated a working prototype of the portal at the conference. Over the past two years, USF has participated in many successful collaborations, particularly among West Coast Jesuit universities. Perhaps in recognition of USF’s active participation within CITM, Steve Gallagher was elected by peer CIOs at the other 27 schools as president of CITM for a two-year term.

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Retired USF computers find new life in African refugee camp

Apr 16th, 2012 by

When computers are replaced, they are often still perfectly functional, but ousted by an upgrade. So where do these computers go? Sometimes they are simply thrown in with electronic waste or donated to a local organization, but sometimes they are shipped across the world. Through a partnership with Jesuit Commons: Higher Education at the Margins (JC:HEM), ITS recently delivered 10 retired laptops to the Dzaleka Refugee Camp in Malawi, Africa to support one of the Community Service Learning Tracks that is being offered as a certificate program to educate refugees. Of the 10 computers, six were Macs outfitted with iWorks licenses and custom USF images designed by Mike Wineke from ITS. “We are always happy to be in the unique position of being able to contribute to very worthy projects like this one and are proud of being members at an institution that makes it a priority,” said ITS Resource Analyst Patrick Kao.

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Classroom Technology sprints to the rescue on a daily basis

Apr 16th, 2012 by

The Classroom Technology (CT) department designs, builds, and maintains Smart Classrooms here at USF. You may have seen them before, either sprinting across campus or helping a professor in your class. Yeah, you know those guys. Well, I’m here to tell you that they are not, in fact, doing wind sprints just to show off.  They’re running because CT received a call from a professor or a student about an in-class technology emergency, i.e., “Hi. We just watched “The Ring” and something crawled out of the television.”

To minimize in-class failures and/or emergencies, CT does both proactive and reactive maintenance.  Any problematic hardware is repaired or replaced as quickly as possible, but they also do complete “refreshes” of classrooms every five years.  They also provide support for faculty, including urgent assistance as well as proactive training.  (“Okay, so all you need to do is make a copy of the haunted video and show it to someone else. Then they die in 7 days and you don’t. Piece of cake.”)

Here’s how CT works: If a professor or student is having trouble in the room, they can contact the Help Desk. The employee will try to troubleshoot the problem over the phone — if that doesn’t work, CT goes into action. (Working in ITS is not all fun, games, and meme references, after all.) The CT member will look for a solution or a workaround, basically do anything they can do to get the class up and running as quickly as possible.

Aside from fixing problems and teaching classes, CT also has several current projects installing AV around campus, including the Nursing Simulation Lab, the new 101 Howard building, and the new CSI building–and that’s just what they do in San Francisco. They also just finished constructing new classrooms at the Pleasanton and San Jose campuses.

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SPSS now available campus-wide and at a discount for personal computers

Mar 22nd, 2012 by

SPSS is software used for data mining and statistical sciences. The Psychology Department, the social sciences, and any students thereof are probably familiar with this program. If you are a user of SPSS, you will know that it is very effective,  user-friendly, expensive, and great for any kind of analytics, but bad for your wallet. A lot of people don’t use SPSS because when you buy it on your own it can cost upward of a thousand dollars, which is cost-prohibitive to pretty much anyone who pays rent, not to mention the headache of dealing with yearly licensing.

However, ITS has now made available a campus-wide license for SPSS. What does this mean? Every computer on campus will be equipped with the program, everyone can use it, and if you want to purchase it for a personal computer, it is available at a significant discount from the USF eStore.

You can also use SPSS while not connected to the USF network on a university-owned computer — all you need to do is check out a Commuter License while still on the faculty/staff network. This will allow you to use the program for up to 30 days without a network or internet connection. Every time you run the application, SPSS checks your license against the licensing server. For more information on this option, please see our USFanswers solution What is an SPSS Commuter License?

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