Recycling Program set for August 5th

Saint Mary’s University and Apple Computers will once again offer a one day electronic recycling program to its employees on Wednesday, August 5th. The program is free of charge.

We will accept:
Cpu, monitor, printer, fax machine, television, scanner, cd drive, hard drive, laptop, vcr,desk-top size copy machine, projector, overhead projector, networking equipment, cables, keyboards, mice.

We will not accept:
Monitors with broken glass. CRT’s missing their enclosures. UPS battery backup system. Batteries of any type.

Bring your equipment to the drop off point located behind the gates of the Kulas-Connaughty Power Plant between the hours of 8:30AM and 4:00PM on Wednesday, August 5th.

The G:drive is moving

This summer, the iT department will be changing the location of your personal storage space. The G:drive will become the U:drive. This is in response to issues we have had on multiple computers whereas the G:drive disappears due to a media card reader or a personal thumb/flash drive hijacking the position.
By moving up the alphabet, we give the end user the ability to use more thumbdrives (which typically take up lower alphabet letters such as e, f, and g) WITHOUT having a conflict with your new personal storage space, the U:drive.

The U:Drive = Space for U.

Spartz and Bearbower Present in Chicago

Jason Spartz and Sarah Bearbower presented a poster session at the Educause Midwest Regional Conference in Chicago on March 21st. The topic was titled “Tracking Transformative Change with Classroom Capture at a Liberal Arts Institution.” The presentation content was co-created with Chad Kjorlien.
The presentation was well received by many. Gib Smart (Account Representative with Tegrity) relayed comments from Dr. Kelly Wilkinson (Director, Center for Instruction, Research, and Technology at Indiana State University) saying “she was raving about you guys, was very impressed…” While Bryon Glock, (IT Director at Western Michigan University) said “St. Mary's has had some great presentations the past two years. Keep it up!”.

Skype in the classroom

On March 28th, 2009 Michelle Cochran’s K-12 Reading Teacher class used Skype (http://www.skype.com/) as an instructional compliment. Michelle explained “We have one learner participating in the class from Afghanistan where she is stationed with the military. She joined us for the first time via skype!”

Michelle has been taking the GPDE 5190 course on Facilitating Blended Learning. She is also setting up a wiki page for the K-12 Reading Teacher course so Rachel Ryba, along with the other students, can continue to be involved in effective ways.

Michelle Cochran took this photo (below) during class while Shelley Jerviss was talking about a book/video, and showing it to Rachel via Skype. Rachel Ryba is in Afghanistan, she is a teacher at the Winona Middle School.

Tegrity unavailable Monday, Feb 16th - Thursday, Feb 19th

During The College February break we will be conducting maintenance on the Tegrity server. The server will be unreachable from Monday, Feb 16th - Thursday, Feb 19th.

If you would like to review recordings during the outage you may choose to download the recording to your computer.

If you are going to be recording during the outage, the recording will be saved locally to your computer and should upload after the server becomes available again.

New Helpdesk Plotter

New Service and Devices at the Helpdesk

Using Built-in Add-In Programs in Excel 2007

Add-in programs are small modules that extend the power of Excel 2007 by giving you access to a wide array of features and calculating functions not otherwise offered in the application. There are three different types of add-ins:

• Built-in add-ins available when you install Excel 2007.
• Add-ins that you download for Excel 2007 from Microsoft Office Online.
• Add-ins developed by third-party vendors for Excel 2007 that often must be purchased.

When you first install Excel 2007, the built-in add-in programs included with Excel 2007 are not loaded and therefore are not yet ready to use. To load any or all of these built-in add-in programs, follow these steps:

1. Click the Office button and then click the Excel Options button.
   The Excel Options dialog box appears.
2. Click the Add-Ins tab.
   The Add-Ins tab lists all the names, locations, and types of the add-ins to which you have access.
3. At the bottom, select Excel Add-Ins from the Manage drop-down box and click Go.
   Excel opens the Add-Ins dialog box showing all the names of the built-in add-in programs you can load.

Rearrange Your PowerPoint 2007 Slides

In PowerPoint 2007 to see an overall view of your presentation, you need to work in Slide Sorter View. From there you can rearrange the slides in your PowerPoint presentation.

You can switch to Slide Sorter View in two easy ways:

• Click the Slide Sorter button at the right side of the status bar.
• Select the View tab on the Ribbon and then click the Slide Sorter button in the Presentation Views group.

The PowerPoint Slide Sorter View is shown here. The following list tells you how to rearrange, add, or delete slides from Slide Sorter View:

• Move a slide: Point to the slide and then hold down the left mouse button. Drag the slide to its new location and release the button.
• Delete a slide: To delete a slide, click the slide to select it and then press Delete or Backspace.
• Add a new slide: Click the slide that you want the new slide to follow and then click the New Slide button. The Slide Layout task pane appears so that you can select the layout for the new slide.

If your presentation contains more slides than can fit on-screen at one time, use the scroll bars to scroll through the display. Or you can use the zoom slider at the bottom right corner of the screen to make the slides smaller.

Blackboard Training

The Helpdesk Training website has tutorials on how to use Blackboard.
Training link: http://www2.smumn.edu/helpdesk/training/
Shortcut to Blackboard link:
http://www2.smumn.edu/deptpages/~instructtech/sitefiles/general_tut_list.htm#blackboard

Malware at SMU

From Fritz Speck:

XP Antivirus 2008/2009, the nastiest piece of spyware I've seen in a long time. I'm starting to get several infections of it a week at work -- and these include computers with up-to-date antivirus where people don't have admin rights.

If you hit an infected web page, it will warn you of having thousands of viruses and insist you download the software to scan for it. The software "scans" and tells you that you need to buy their cleaner. They then have your credit card number and you still have the virus. The New York Times estimated that they make about $5 million a year through these tactics.

I've seen these warnings on thin clients (which are so locked down no virus could be on them), and they wouldn't go away until you restarted. I've seen it turn off automatic updates and hide from antivirus software. I've seen it put icons on your desktop even if you don't actually download the software (click on them and you will). It puts rootkits on your computer.

Nasty stuff. The best cleaner is Malwarebytes from http://malwarebytes.org. So far, that's always cleaned it up.

The obvious advice: If you hit a web site that warns you that you have viruses, don't download anything from there. Get out of there and scan your system with something you have reason to trust. I don't know anything about Malwarebytes.org

Note that if you try to get of the scam it will scream at you that you're about to ruin your computer. The safest way to get out of there is ctl-alt-delete and us taskmaster to close down the browser.

Several SFWA members seem to have been infected from the LOCUS web site. Be careful out there!

Francis "Fritz" Speck

Weekly PDA Training

http://sprintdss.com