ITS Fall 2011 Newsletter

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Continued on page 2 Continued on page 2 Software & Training Updates See what’s New! Page 2 Video Conferencing: A Reality... Welcome to the 21st Century! Page 3 News of the SCC WEBERNET Intranet, banner ads, mobile site & more! Page 5 T he District Information Technology Leadership Council (ITLC) is a standing council with the mission to advise, provide input, and develop recommendations regarding information technology infrastructure, processes, services, standards, and systems to the district- wide Information and Instructional Technology Governance Council. ITLC is also charged with identifying and completing district-wide collaborative projects designed to improve the efficiency and/or effectiveness of information technology use within the district. ITLC membership includes the senior IT leaders from each college and the Vice Chancellor of IT along with his direct reports. The ITLC is chaired by Dustin Fennell,Vice President of IT at Scottsdale Community College and co- chaired by Ed Kelty,Vice President of IT at Rio Salado College. The ITLC was established in January 2011 and has been meeting twice a month in an effort to make significant positive impact toward the vision of leveraging technology to enable success. One of the monthly meetings has a strategic focus, while the other monthly meeting has an operational focus. In January the ITLC held a two-day retreat where Maricopa IT leaders participated in a facilitated discussion on the role of the COI/IT Leader in higher education and MCCCD. The IT leaders also identified common priorities in an effort to create opportunities for collaboration and efficiency. As a result of the retreat and continued effort of the ITLC, the following are a few examples of work currently underway: Virtualization – a work team established to develop the design document for the District-wide desktop/application virtualization system that will support all MCCCD students and employees. TCO & ROI – a work team established to define and develop new models for calculating and comparing costs and potential value of operational and capital information and instructional technology projects and expenditures. IT Training – a work team established to identify and develop a plan to meet the top 3-4 areas of training needed consistently across the district. News in IT NEW HOURS FOR ITS SERVICES! Help Desk personnel are now available in the Student Tech Center (located in IT-101) during regular STC operational hours. New hours for the Student Tech Center: Monday-Thursday 7:00AM-7:00PM Friday 8:00AM-4:00PM Saturday 8:00AM-4:00PM SPONSOR AND STUDENT FILM SHOOT REQUEST FORM UPDATE! R25 Development is in progress to provide automated online services to replace the current process. Keep an eye on the Daily Buzz for more details. ( ( INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY SERVICES ( ( Providing Solutions to Enable Success Volume 3 | Number 3 | August 2011 TECHtopics ( ( I N F O R M A T I O N T E C H N O L O G Y L E A D E R S H I P C O U N C I L 2011 2011 Information Technology Leadership Council Update SCC 24 8/17/11 Gecko John

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The Information Technology Services department of Scottsdale Community College, Fall Semester newsletter of technological updates.

Transcript of ITS Fall 2011 Newsletter

Page 1: ITS Fall 2011 Newsletter

Continued on page 2

Continued on page 2

Software & Training UpdatesSee what’s New! Page 2

Video Conferencing:A Reality...Welcome to the 21st Century! Page 3

News of the SCCWEBERNETIntranet, banner ads, mobile site & more! Page 5

T he District Information Technology Leadership Council

(ITLC) is a standing council with the mission to advise, provide input, and develop recommendations regarding information technology infrastructure, processes, services, standards, and systems to the district-wide Information and Instructional Technology Governance Council. ITLC is also charged with identifying and completing district-wide collaborative projects designed to improve the efficiency and/or effectiveness of information technology use within the district.

ITLC membership includes the senior IT leaders from each college and the Vice Chancellor of IT along with his direct reports. The ITLC is chaired by Dustin Fennell, Vice President of IT at Scottsdale Community College and co-chaired by Ed Kelty, Vice President of IT at Rio Salado College.

The ITLC was established in January 2011 and has been meeting twice a month in an effort to make significant

positive impact toward the vision of leveraging technology to enable success. One of the monthly meetings has a strategic focus, while the other monthly meeting has an operational focus.

In January the ITLC held a two-day retreat where Maricopa IT leaders participated in a facilitated discussion on the role of the COI/IT Leader in higher education and MCCCD. The IT leaders also identified common

priorities in an effort to create opportunities for collaboration and efficiency.

As a result of the retreat and continued effort of the ITLC, the following are a few examples of work currently underway:

Virtualization – a work team established to develop the design document for the District-wide desktop/application virtualization system that will support all MCCCD students and employees.

TCO & ROI – a work team established to define and develop new models for calculating and comparing costs and potential value of operational and capital information and instructional technology projects and expenditures.

IT Training – a work team established to identify and develop a plan to meet the top 3-4 areas of training needed consistently across the district.

News in ITNEW HOURS FOR ITS SERVICES!Help Desk personnel are now available in the Student Tech Center (located in IT-101) during regular STC operational hours.

New hours for the Student Tech Center:

Monday-Thursday 7:00AM-7:00PM Friday 8:00AM-4:00PM Saturday 8:00AM-4:00PM

SPONSOR AND STUDENT FILM SHOOT REQUEST FORM UPDATE!

R25 Development is in progress to provide automated online services to replace the current process. Keep an eye on the Daily Buzz for more details.

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Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) – a work team established to develop and conduct an awareness campaign to educate others regarding ITIL and its benefits, and to develop a plan for how ITIL may be implemented district-wide.

Communities of Practice (COP) – a work team established to create Communities of Practice for key IT service areas and promote participation in the COPs throughout the District.

The ITLC also sponsored a preconference session titled What it Means to be an IT Professional in Maricopa at the MCLI 2011 Tech Conference. More than 136 IT professionals across the District attended this session.

In addition to the preconference

session, there were seven sessions in an IT track throughout the conference.

These sessions were lead by different college and district IT leaders and staff.

This is an exciting time to be an IT professional in Maricopa as your IT leaders redefine how IT services are leveraged to enable success for all Maricopa faculty, staff, and students. This is also an exciting time to be a Maricopa employee as IT refocuses to enable your success! •

New Software Options on mySCC

With the availability of the new version of Microsoft Office (2010) in mySCC, “What’s New” workshops will be offered for SCC employees this fall on Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Publisher. The changes between 2007 and 2010 are minor (compared to the overhaul done from 2003 to 2007). The Office button has been replaced with a File menu (yes, it’s back!), which has the usual Print, Open, Save, etc. commands. Publisher 2010 has the biggest interface change: this page layout program now has the new tab and ribbon format (like Word, Excel and PowerPoint did in 2007). •

SoftChalk Lessonbuilder

SoftChalk has been updated to version 7 in mySCC. It has some great new features for delivering course content to mobile devices as well as an enhanced way to publish content to Blackboard. Speaking of Blackboard, we’ll have the usual workshops this fall, as well as special topics in Microsoft Office.

Training for Fall to include: MS Word 2007; MS Excel 2007; MS PowerPoint 2007; MS Publisher 2007; WordPress; Blackboard; and Respondus. •

Gainful Employment Disclosure

The US Department of Education recently released its final regulations requiring career college programs to better prepare students for “gainful employment” or risk losing access to federal student aid. The requirements for the gainful employment disclosures were met and are posted on the SCC website on all occupational certificate pages. This was a collaborative effort with IT/Web, Financial Aid, Institutional Research and Dean Hermanson’s Office.

Job Postings on Web

Did you know…you can post your temporary positions on the SCC website? All job postings that are entered through the Daily Buzz will automatically appear on our SCC Jobs page. To post a job visit www.scottsdalecc.edu/dailybuzz, login with your SCC network username and password and click Submit a New Announcement.

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Technology Software and Training Update

Stay tuned to the Daily Buzz for our Fall Training Schedule and other updates!

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T he Media Center has upgraded to a new large format printer. The

Roland Versa Camm 540S printer can perform a variety tasks that we were unable to offer in the past. Now our ability to perform these services in house will result in lower costs and faster turnaround time.

New Services Include:♦ Vinyl posters and banners suitable for indoor or outdoor use ♦ Custom stickers & clings ♦ Larger poster sizes (up-to 54” wide) ♦ Cutout Vinyl Adhesive letters ♦ New Ink resistant to UV fading, water, and scratching

Our very own Ken “Gecko” Sliwa has added to his graphic design talents

to become the wizard…(or lizard) of large format printing. Please feel free to stop by the Media Center to see examples of his work, pricing and samples from the printer. •

SCC, along with the other colleges in the District, has recently acquired

the ability to hold interactive video conferences with each other. This can take place between two sites, or multiple sites may be bridged together in a single video conference. For those who remember the old inter-campus videoconferencing system used in the 1990s, be assured that this is very different and is state of the art in HDTV Video Conferencing Bridge.

IT-111 is the only designated room for scheduling video conferences at SCC. There are two steps in the process to reserve the IT-111 Conference Room for a District Video Conference Session. Those steps are as follows:

1. Use the R25 Event Calendar to check availability of IT-111 during the desired time frame. Use the online Event Request Form to request to schedule the space during an available time. Select the Event Requirement of District Video Conference Bridge on the Request Form to indicate your intention for use of this system in the space. Please submit requests to reserve the space no later than 3 business days in advance of the conference. To view availability of IT-111:https://webschedule.maricopa.edu/SCCE/scce_servlet/urd/run/wv_space.DayList

2. To schedule a Video Conference, use the District Video Conference Site: https://dst.sp.maricopa.edu/DWG/video/default.aspxSign in using the “Sign In” link at the top right, then review the master calendar on the left for an open date and video conference bridge [room.] Available bridges [rooms] are listed on the right. If a bridge [room] is booked, you will see it listed in the Master Calendar. Review the date that you

want to hold your video conference then select one of the available bridges [rooms] on the right and click “Add New Event.” Fill in the required fields, marked with a red asterisk, and any other information you have available. Once done, click on “OK”, your bridge [room] will be reserved. Please Note: ♦ Availability of the Conference Room does not guarantee availability of the Video Conference Bridge [room] at the same time frame. ♦ Participation in an Existing Video Conference only requires reservation of the IT-111 Conference room. Please submit requests to reserve the space no later than 3 business days in advance of the conference. Additional instructions for scheduling and connecting to a District Video Conference Bridge can be found at: http://kb.scottsdalecc.edu/KnowledgebaseArticle50408.aspx

Upgraded LARGE Format Printing Options

Video Conferencing Across the District Now Available

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We have

added over 35 Schedulers and Service

Providers to the SCC R25 system,

improving Academic and Event scheduling services for all users across the college. We have also implemented the SCC R25 Schedulers user group, which meets monthly to discuss scheduling process, system updates and usage, and provides a forum for collaboration amongst college schedulers. Finally, we created 25 new R25 articles, documents, and video tutorials in the SCC Knowledgebase. New and updated articles are being added often! So, check it out!Search our SCC Knowledgebase for R25! http://kb.scottsdalecc.edu/Knowledgebase.aspx

Coming Soon!♦ Development is in progress to provide automated online services to replace the Request to Sponsor and Student Film Shoot request forms!

♦ Watch the SCC Daily Buzz for R25 Event Calendar and Online Event Request training opportunities available throughout the Fall semester!

Combine repeating events on to ONE reservation for the entire semester or fiscal year.

If you are making a new reservation request for a meeting or event with multiple occurrences throughout the semester (i.e. Division meetings; Student Club Meetings; Monthly Department meetings; Workshops)♦ with different dates, same time, same location ♦ with different dates, different times, same location ♦ with different dates, different times, different locationPlease submit only One (1) On-Line Event Request♦ Use the COMMENTS field in the online request form to enter multiple rooms, set up instructions, as well as additional dates or meeting patterns, additional spaces and breakout sessions. Please check to see if you have an existing reservation before

requesting a new event.If you have an existing Tentative or Confirmed Reservation and you need to add dates, change or add rooms, cancel occurrence dates, or request any change to the existing reservation, please do the following:♦ Go to your email account; pull up the Event Request Receipt or most recent Event Confirmation email received from the system, and REPLY to the email to [email protected]♦ Indicate the required event changes in the email and Send. Please be sure the reservation reference number is included in the email subject line, and please always check availability of space before requesting additional rooms and dates.All changes to a reservation must be requested no later than 3 business days before the event date, 2 weeks in advance if possible!

NOTE: Support Personnel are carefully scheduled in advance to be available according to workloads and requirements of scheduled events and equipment needs. Finalizing the details of an event so the 2 WEEKS or 3 BUSINESS DAYS requirements can be met will assist Event Scheduling Services to accommodate your event needs.

R25 UPDATES What’s New?

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CONFERENCE ROOM Upgrades

The IT department has started a program to enhance technology resources in all of the conference rooms on campus. An IP conference phone will be placed in each room for telephone conferences. In addition, rooms without a projector or large screen LCD display will receive one or the other depending on the room

size. Permanently installed computers will

accompany all of these displays. This will eliminate the need to order laptop computers for meetings or

other functions. The computer will simply be there as is the case in our classrooms. If anyone wishes, however, to bring their own computer, they will have the ability to connect it to the existing display. Instructions on how to do this will be provided in the conference room.

The following rooms are currently being outfitted: AD-109, AP-218, BI Conference Room, IT-111, LB-128A, LC-307, LC-308, LC-422, ME-125, NS-103, NS-105, NS-122, NS-125, NS-126, SB-144, SC-164, SC-172, SC-209, and SL-104.

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IT/WEB DepartmentUpdates

CLASS ROSTER/NEW FACULTY OFFICE Hours and Course Syllabus Upload

We are starting another school year at SCC with much excitement and promise for the future in the IT/Web department. Here are a few things that we have in the works:

Intranet Coming Soon

We have come through a new website redesign that was launched in Fall 2010 and are now developing a new intranet that will be released to the campus in September 2011. Stay tuned for an email soon. (picture of site)-à See Mardy

SCC is going Mobile

The web team has been hard at work on an SCC mobile site. The site will link our students to their personal class schedule, student email accounts, events on campus, and the college map along with a host of other

information. SCC Mobile is due to make its debut Fall 2011. (picture of mobile site) à See Mardy

Advertising on the Web

Interested in advertising an event on the scottsdalecc.edu website?

The ITS web team is now offering ads in dozens of locations throughout the website. You can advertise special events, new class offerings, important messages to students and limited time promotions. Simply fill out the form located at http://www.scottsdalecc.net/information-technology-services/web/request-web-ads and please provide a description of the event or item for which you would like to have an advertisement created. We will then contact you for more information (i.e. your text for the ad copy, where appropriate, or to acquire or create

any graphics the advertisement may require).

Please allow a minimum of 5 business days before posting day to complete your ad.

Faculty and Department Websites….

Do you need a website to add course information for your students or a department website to showcase projects? Do you want the ability to put your own personal touch on your site?

SCC recently set up its own WordPress environment that is convenient for faculty to create content and set up ongoing interactions. WordPress is a very popular open-source blog tool and publishing system which allows you to interact with colleagues and students in a rich and flexible environment. If interested request a site at http://www.scottsdalecc.net/information-technology-services/web/request-web-site

Did you know this year…

♦ There have been over 30,000 pdfs downloaded from our website… this supports our SCC Sustainability efforts to be GREEN.

♦ On average every month we receive 45,000 visitors on our website from over 30 countries.

♦ We have written over 4 million lines of code. •

Providing Solutions to Enable SuccessTECHNOLOGY LEARNING CENTER

SCC faculty can now update their office hours online at the SCC Class Roster website. To sign in, adjunct faculty can use their instructor learner account and residential faculty can use their client account. On the main page after sign in, there will be an “Update Office Hours” button, which will lead to the Faculty Office Hours page. Please note, after change/update your office hours on that page, you must click the “Update” button to save all changes in the database. Faculty may also upload their course syllabus on the class roster site.

Department secretaries and administrative staff can also sign into the class ros-ter site to update the office hours for faculty in their department or teaching disciplines. Once they sign-in, there will be a link saying “Click here to update Office Hours for faculty in your department or division”, which will bring them to the Office Hours Admin page.

If you have trouble signing into the class roster site, please call the SCC IT Helpdesk at (480) 423-6274.

SCC Class Roster website https://weba.sc.maricopa.edu/classroster/Editor: Alice Kirk Design: Ken “Gecko” Sliwa

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mySCC Remains Head of Class

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Scottsdale Community College’s mySCC virtual computing environment continues to be a best of class model of successful virtual computing environments. Literally hundreds of colleges, universities, government agencies, K-12 school districts, and corporate organizations have contacted SCC to gain knowledge and insight on how to leverage virtual computing technologies to transform the way IT services are delivered and supported.

Matt Diglio and Vargha Mohebbi continue to innovate, deploy, and leverage virtual computing strategies to increase access for all students, faculty, and staff while focusing on delivering an excellent end-user experience. The ITS Help Desk continues to expand help desk services into the virtual environment in an effort to support virtual learners and employees.

Driving costs down while increasing access and improving service are major

CURTIS KIPP

manages the Help Desk, Media, Desktop Support, and

Student Tech Center areas. I am available, at your convenience, with any questions you may have. Please feel free to contact me at 36250. •

EREKA TREDE

is the Project Coordinator for the ITS Department. If there are any future/planned projects that require technology, whether it be new construction, a renovated space, additional computer or audio/visual equipment, Ereka will be the single point of contact to coordinate technology needs for these projects. •

MARDY WILSON

is the Web Marketing Coordinator and is your contact for email marketing campaigns, creation of digital publishing (ebooks), advertising on the SCC website, faculty websites, showcase websites, web updates and blogs and a host of other web related issues. •

KEN “GECKO’ SLIWA

is the Media Center’s point person for all of your poster, banner, stickers, large format printing and web banner advertising needs. He is located in the IT buildings Media Center and can be reached @ 36642. •

Worlds Biggest Company?Friday, 8/12/11

Apple’s stock fell for the day, but Exxon’s fell more. Apple finished with a

market value of $337 billion, beating Exxon’s $331 billion. A single share of Apple stock now costs $363.

Apple occupies a rarefied spot once held by General Electric and Apple’s own rival Microsoft. Exxon had held the top spot since 2005.

The power shift is a substantial milestone for Apple, which has enjoyed a triumphant comeback since the 1990s, when it struggled to stay afloat before its co-founder Steve Jobs returned to take the helm. •

benefits to computer virtualization. However, the single most important benefit is what mySCC means to SCC students who no longer have to make educational decisions based on the age of their computer or the software they can afford.

Based on their role with the college, mySCC currently provides students, faculty, and staff access to over 250 software applications via practically any computing device that can connect to the Internet. In fact, one student completed the Spring semester accessing mySCC from a Sony PlayStation 3! Windows computers, Mac computers, Linux-based computers, Android-based tablets/phones, Windows-based smartphones, iPhones, iPads, etc. can all take advantage of the mySCC service. Soon the Google Chrome notebook will support Citrix services and therefore be compatible with mySCC.

Your IT team continues to provide solutions to enable your success and is nationally recognized as being head of the class in successfully leveraging virtual computing strategies. •INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

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Providing Solutions to Enable SuccessWHO DO I CONTACT?

Miss the mySCC of Dreams trailer?Go to: mySCC Of Dreams Movie