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Wireless Internet users can secure their wireless activities from eavesdropping by using the "UofM Secure" wireless network. Some configuration changes may be necessary.
For assistance, contact your network administrator or Office of Information Technology help staff.
The Office of Information Technology offers a number of technology training courses. Please visit the Technology Training website for a complete listing of courses.
Web Development: Essentials—XHTML
Mar 1, 1:00 p.m.–4:30 p.m.
Walter Library 210
Macintosh/Windows
Excel 2007: Managing and Analyzing Data
Mar 1 & 3, 1:00 p.m.–4:30 p.m.
90 Blegen Hall
Windows
SAS Programming I—Essentials
Mar 2, 4, 9, 11, 1:00 p.m.–4:30 p.m.
90 Blegen Hall
Windows
Google Calendar: Effectively Managing your Calendar
Mar 3, 9:30 a.m.–12:00 p.m.
90 Blegen Hall
Macintosh/Windows
Web Development: Essentials—Cascading Style Sheets
Mar 4, 1:00 p.m.–4:30 p.m.
Walter Library 210
Macintosh/Windows
Google Calendar—Learning Byte
Mar 4, 9:30 a.m.–9:50 a.m.
Mar 4, 10:00 a.m.–10:20 a.m.
Mar 4, 10:30 a.m.–10:50 a.m.
Mar 4, 11:00 a.m.–11:20 a.m.
Tech Stop, 1st Floor Coffman Memorial Union
Seminar
Gmail: Effectively Managing your Email
Mar 8, 1:30 p.m.–4:00 p.m.
90 Blegen Hall
Macintosh/Windows
Excel 2007: Spreadsheet Basics
Mar 8 & 9, 8:30 a.m.–12:00 p.m.
90 Blegen Hall
Windows
Collaborating with Web-Based Tools
Mar 10, 8:30 a.m.–12:00 p.m.
Walter Library 210
Macintosh/Windows
Web Development: Working Effectively in the University Environment
Mar 10, 1:00 p.m.–4:30 p.m.
Walter Library 210
Seminar
Moodle 1.9: Creating Basic Course Web Sites
Mar 15, 1:00 p.m.–4:30 p.m.
Walter Library 210
Macintosh/Windows
Google Calendar: Effectively Managing your Calendar
Mar 22, 1:30 p.m.–4:00 p.m.
Walter Library 210
Macintosh/Windows
UMConnect 7: Web Conferencing for Meetings
Mar 23, 9:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m.
Walter Library 210
Windows
File Storage—Learning Byte
Mar 24, 2:00 p.m.–2:20 p.m.
Mar 24, 2:30 p.m.–2:50 p.m.
Mar 24, 3:00 p.m.–3:20 p.m.
Mar 24, 3:30 p.m.–3:50 p.m.
Tech Stop, 1st Floor Coffman Memorial Union
Seminar
Web Accessibility Issues and Techniques
Mar 24, 1:30 p.m.–3:00 p.m.
Walter Library 210
Seminar
Geographic Information Systems: Analyzing Data and Creating Maps
Mar 25, 8:30 a.m.–4:30 p.m.
90 Blegen Hall
Windows
Moodle 1.9: Collaboration
Mar 29, 1:00 p.m.–4:30 p.m.
Walter Library 210
Macintosh/Windows
Wikis: Collaborative Content Development
Mar 29, 8:30 a.m.–12:00 p.m.
Walter Library 210
Macintosh/Windows
Web Development: Dreamweaver CS5 Basics
Mar 30, 1:00 p.m.–4:30 p.m.
Walter Library 210
Macintosh/Windows
Gmail—Learning Byte
Mar 24, 2:30 p.m.–2:50 p.m.
Mar 24, 3:00 p.m.–3:20 p.m.
Mar 24, 3:30 p.m.–3:50 p.m.
Mar 24, 4:00 p.m.–4:20 p.m.
Tech Stop, 1st Floor Coffman Memorial Union
Seminar
Excel 2007: Managing and Analyzing Data
Mar 30, 8:30 a.m.–12:00 p.m.
90 Blegen Hall
Windows
UMContent: Contributor Basics
Mar 31, 1:00 p.m.–3:30 p.m.
Walter Library 210
Macintosh/Windows
Relational Database Design Basics
Mar 31, 1:00 p.m.–4:00 p.m.
90 Blegen Hall
Seminar
OIT staff will share information about free technology training opportunities and a variety of digital technology consultation services and faculty development programs as exhibitors at the Professional Development Fair on March 8, 2011.
University faculty and staff must constantly evaluate how to be more efficient in the work that they do. This is the "new normal" of declining budgets in higher education.
The Office of Information Technology (OIT) provides a number of common good services to help the University accomplish just that. In November, we talked about the Data Center Modernization Program, a collection of eleven different projects which aim to create significant efficiencies and cost savings for the University of Minnesota, not to mention reduce risk to private data and minimize our carbon footprint. Read Data Center Modernization Program. This program seeks to completely rethink the way we offer hosting services for applications, data, and servers. By familiarizing themselves with this repurposed suite of services, OIT's customers can ensure that they are maximizing these efficiencies and spending their resources wisely.
What's in It for ME?
Besides creating efficiencies for the University and offering advantages to the institution at large, this program creates opportunities for individual departments. By leveraging common good services that are provided to you at no cost, you can be more strategic about how you use your own resources. Instead of running servers and supporting infrastructure, you can focus on the activities that are critical to your department, the activities that make you stand out from the other departments.
In the past few months, different departments, colleges, and administrative business units from around the University have begun leveraging these services. William Bear from the Humphrey Institute, for example, says that his relatively small department has very limited IT resources and must focus on activities that add value to the college: "The more time I can free up, the more time my staff can spend on developing and supporting critical applications and working with customers." Server hosting, however, is a commodity that doesn't really add any strategic value that is unique to the college. "A server is a server," he says. "It just needs to meet the business need."
William adds that in addition to having more time for his staff to focus on more strategic activities, his department didn't have enough full time staff to keep up on the demanding work of server administration. "We just didn't have enough staff to ensure that we were keeping the servers up to date."
Curtis Coffer and Cau Huynh from Alumni Relations explained that for them, moving to OIT hosting services was primarily a cost saving measure: "Two years ago, our unit was forced to cut approximately 14 percent of its operating budget," Curtis explains. "I looked around, and I asked 'why does an organization with 25 staff need a server closet?' Surely, there had to be a centralized resource we could leverage rather than providing this service for ourselves." Curtis adds that since moving all of their hosting off of their old servers and into the OIT managed virtual environment, their membership database and their accounting application have both performed flawlessly.
Curtis explains that there were other benefits to making the switch as well: "What happens when [the system and network administrator] wants to take a vacation? I wanted to move to a more structured, standardized support environment that wasn't dependent on one person--one that followed a University best practices model for supporting servers." Another advantage that Curtis identified is disaster recovery and backups. "We are now at a tremendous advantage for being on the central systems. OIT provides backups of our systems as well as disaster recovery services. There are things that OIT does. It was time for us to stop doing them ourselves and focus instead on the activities that are core to supporting alumni."
Mail Delegation, a feature that allows Gmail users to provide access to their University email account with co-workers, now is available in Google Apps for the University of Minnesota.
Mail Delegation can be useful for people who want others to have access to read or respond to mail on their behalf. For example, you can delegate email rights to up to 10 others, such as administrative and executive assistants, in your unit. This feature is recommended primarily to access a supervisor's email in order to complete correspondence on their behalf. For privacy and security reasons, it is not recommended for general use at the University.
The delegate also has access to the the other person's contacts. However, users won't be able to give delegates permission to change their account password or settings, or chat on the user's behalf.
Any messages sent by a delegate from another's account will include both names, and will show the sender as Your Name (sent by Delegate Name). Each account will open in a different browser tab or window so you can view both accounts simultaneously, all while signed into your primary account.
To grant access to another account, click Settings in the top right corner of Gmail. On the Accounts tab, you'll see a new section where you can Grant access to your account. The account added will receive a verification email with links to accept or deny access. Once the account accepts and you've refreshed your browser or logged in and out again, you'll see a small down arrow beside the email address at the top right corner of Gmail which can be used to toggle between accounts.
If someone has granted access to their account to you, you can access it by clicking the down-arrow next to your email address in the upper-left corner. Select your delegate's email address from the drop-down menu.
Signing out of any one of the accounts will sign you out of all the accounts you're currently viewing. You can revoke a delegate's access at any time.
Instructional information and a short how-to video on setting up Gmail delegation are available at the Google Help Center. For further questions or information, contact the technology helpline at (612) 301-4357 (1-HELP on campus), or via Live Help.
The 2011 Quality Fair & Forum is an annual event to highlight and learn from the work of our colleagues at the University of Minnesota. The 2011 fair and forum will focus on the power of collaboration and the many ways we can learn from the expertise around us. Colleges and units will demonstrate their most notable quality improvement projects or initiatives completed over the past year. For more information visit the Quality Fair website.
Fair & Forum Highlights:
