IT News

On Thursday, November 19, over 200 students, faculty, staff, and professionals participated in the first-ever UD Geospatial Research Day. GRD drew attention to UD’s excellence in the growing Geospatial field. IT was among 11 units contributing financial sponsorship and staff time to the event.

GRD included talks and posters in a variety of formats on often disparate themes. Presenters represented 5 of UD’s 7 colleges, including Agriculture and Natural Resources; Arts and Sciences; Earth, Ocean, and Environment; Education and Public Policy; and Engineering.

From Oct. 23 through Nov. 13, the University of Delaware hosted an international show of “Outsider Art†in the Second Life virtual community. Artists from the United Kingdom, France, Australia, Denmark and the United States contributed 19 works that were displayed throughout the UD Second Life islands. Several of the innovative pieces on display included interactive options, allowing Second Life avatars to become part of the artwork. Lance Winn, associate professor of art, opened the show with an address delivered simultaneously in Smith Hall and online in Second Life.

From Oct. 23 through Nov. 13, the University of Delaware hosted an international show of “Outsider Art” in the Second Life virtual community.

Artists from the United Kingdom, France, Australia, Denmark and the United States contributed 19 works that were displayed throughout the UD Second Life islands. Several of the innovative pieces on display included interactive options, allowing Second Life avatars to become part of the artwork.

“Over 80 people attended the show’s opening,” said Debbie Jeffers, IT-Client Support and Services. “We had about 35 people live on campus and about 50 ‘avatars’ participating in the presentation online.”

Jeffers indicated that the UD islands in Second Life saw 25% more visitors during the three weeks of the show.

IT Client Support and Services is taking the message of responsible and safe computing to Delaware’s high schools. The session, led by IT-CS&S student Residential Computing Consultants, offers information on topics such as phishing, personal identity protection, safe social networking, and illegally obtaining copyrighted materials.

The University of Delaware Learning Management System (LMS) committee held its fall meeting on Oct. 21 to discuss Sakai@UD and the future focus for the committee.

Mathieu Plourde, IT Client Support and Services, shared the actual number of courses that use Sakai@UD. For fall semester 2009, there are 978 Sakai@UD courses with only 21 courses remaining in WebCT. Plourde also updated the committee on the upgrade to Sakai@UD version 2.6 in August 2009.

The meeting included committee members discussing the evolving mission of the LMS committee. Now that the migration to Sakai at UD is nearly complete, there are new opportunities to incorporate technologies that promote the University's Path to Prominence strategic plan and to share best practices with University colleagues.

The University of Delaware's 2010 Winter Faculty Institute will begin Tuesday, Jan. 5, in the Rodney Room of the Perkins Student Center.

This year's theme, "Teaching in a Challenging Economy: Tools to Work Smarter, Faster and Easier,” is one that resonates with many educators today. The current economy is challenging most educators, both professionally and personally. At the same time, there are new research-based ideas for re-evaluating traditional teaching practices to make better use of time and resources.

The keynote address by Carolyn Jarmon, “Improving Student Learning while Reducing Instructional Costs: The Case for Redesign,” will concentrate on how more than 100 institutions across the United States are engaged in course redesign and the cost savings from which these institutions now benefit.

University of Delaware Information Technologies (IT) warns the UD community that a number of “phishing” scams in which e-mail users are being asked to provide their user names and passwords have targeted University e-mail users.
 
IT reminds you that the University of Delaware will never ask anyone to submit actual account information via e-mail.
 

On Friday, October 9, April Veness, associate professor in the Department of Geography, unveiled her students’ discovery learning project: Newark, Delaware: A Story of People and Place. The multimedia Mapping Project involved collecting, sharing, and crafting stories about life in Newark from 1900 to the present. Data for the project came from the Library’s archives, Newark residents, and international students. Moving the multimedia content to a digital platform makes the stories accessible to anyone with a computer.

Ben Mearns, GIS specialist in IT Research & Data Management Services, provided comprehensive GIS and Web support through spring and summer 2009 to enable Veness' class to fully develop their project.
 

During National Cyber Security Awareness Month, University of Delaware Information Technologies (IT) has reminded faculty, students and staff about the importance of being aware of threats to the security of the computers we use and the information stored on them.

“We want the campus community to remember that the topics we have raised this month are important all year long,” Scott Sweren, the University's Information Security Officer, said. “This week, we are reminding people to keep their laptop computers secure.”

Not a month goes by without a computer security breach being reported in the press.

According to Ian Janssen, director of University Archives and Records Management, you should start with some common sense steps. “Take simple precautions to protect confidential information, in both portable electronic storage media and hard-copy formats,” he said. “Always store confidential material in locked cabinets when stored within your unit, and limit physical access to only those individuals who actually need to use the information.”