Winter/Spring 2006 |
Welcome
Shawn Beattie, ITS, editor
Welcome
to Augie Techknowledge
from ITS, an e-newsletter to share "what's new" in ITS and provide
useful tips
and articles on Information Technology and Educational Technology at
Augustana.
We hope you like it and find it useful. The newsletter will
be archived on
the ITS web site at
http://its.augustana.edu/techknowledge.
Enjoy!
In this issue:
Augustana's Network
Speed
Moodle
Datatel Update
Outlook shortcuts
Watch the new
residence hall
More tips!
Augustana's Network Speed
Currently our Internet connection to the world is
supported by 5 digital
lines called "T1" lines. This provides a total bandwidth of 7.5
megabits per second. Each T1 line can handle approximately 1.5 million
bits per second; a normal phone line using a conventional
modem can typically handle 30,000 to 50,000
bits per second, making each T-1 line the equivalent of about 30
dial-up modems. However, when distributed across as many as a
thousand simultaneous users, even a fast connection can be quickly
overburdened. You
can see a constantly updated graph of network traffic by going to
its.augustana.edu,
then selecting the General
tab in the left hand frame, then
Network Status.
You will see a chart like this:
Notice
that the traffic
generated by Augustana users, represented by the green line, at this
point was "maxed out". When this
occurs, web browsing can be sluggish and streaming audio or video can
be interrupted.
Slow Internet connection speeds can be affected by downloads (music,video,etc.), virus attacks, or just a large number of users. The ITS department uses "packet shaper" hardware and software that allows us to analyze more specifically what is generating the traffic. At the point where the diagram above was generated, 93% of the traffic was simple web browsing. So why won’t our five T1s handle this? The number of computers registered on our network has doubled since we last added to our T1 connection. To address this, Augustana is adding two more T1 lines this month. We are currently waiting for SBC to complete the installation. Our connection will then be about 10 megabits per second, or the equivalent capacity to about 300 dialup modems.
There are about 34 courses listed in Moodle at this time. The instructors for these courses are using moodle to post documents pertaining to their classes, holding online discussions, giving online quizzes, etc. If you have never used Moodle logon using your Augustana username and password. If you are an instructor let Shawn Beattie know and he will give you faculty rights. This will allow you to create an online course.
If you would like to use Moodle and have any questions, contact Shawn Beattie or Gil Koenigsaecker
Datatel/AIMS update
Upon
completion of this project, students can expect greater access, input
and
influence over their academic career. Advisors and faculty can expect
real-time
access to grades, classes and advisee schedules, allowing time for a
more
meaningful advisor/advisee or faculty/student relationship. Staff can
expect
greater access to information that is shared and managed by all areas
of the
College. This new system will mean that information that was stored in
many
separate databases will be consolidated. This will enable that
information to
be accurate across campus, usable in real time by different parts of
the campus
community, and provide a web access which was unavailable before. Our
older
legacy systems could not do this. The timeline for implementation is
very
extensive. First, it involves training for key campus community
members. Over
100 days of training will be provided by Datatel over the course of the
next 2
years. The system will ‘go live’ in modules. The
finance module is scheduled to lead off
in July of 2006, admissions in September of 2006, payroll in July 2007.
This
will be what Datatel calls the "vanilla" version of their system.
Once
it has
been up and running for year, a thorough analysis will be done to see
what customizations may be needed for our campus situation.
More details on the AIMS project can be found at http://campus.augustana.edu/aims.
outlook:calendar
shortcut to your own calendar
outlook:contacts
shortcut to your Outlook contacts
outlook:\\Public Folders\All Public
Folders\Academic\CSTL
CSTL public folder
Watch the new residence hall
Augustana's new residence hall is taking shape very quickly! To check on the progress of the construction, a webcam was provided by the construction company and was placed at Andreen Hall. If the new res hall has you excited, or you just like to watch large equipment - you can tune in online at:More tips!
If you are printing webpages sometimes you don’t get the whole page, the right hand portion is cut off. If you go to File, Print Preview first then click the print button there it usually will print the whole page. If not, you can click the Page Setup button (see below) and set the margins smaller, to say 0.25". This will usually let you print the full page.
If you place photos in Word, sometimes the file size of the document can get very large. There is a compress image button in the Word picture toolbar you can use.
Happy New Year from ITS!
Visit us at http://its.augustana.edu