May 2008 Archives

IT will be making updates to the following services during our regular Thursday night maintenance window between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m.:

• User volumes – Customers will not be able to save to their ‘S:’ drives for the entire four hour maintenance window. Please make sure all work stored on your ‘S:’ drive is saved prior to 10 p.m. Any data updated or created during this window will need to be saved locally to your computer.
• Subversion source control tool – This tool will be unavailable for up to one hour during the maintenance window.
• Oracle server accounts – Many Oracle accounts will be upgraded during the window to use RADIUS authentication. If you have trouble logging into an Oracle account after Thursday night, please call the Help Desk at 573-341-HELP.

If you have any questions about these issues, please contact the IT Help Desk at 573-341-HELP.

On Thursday, May 22 between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m. Windows servers and Linux servers will be unavailable for approximately 30 minutes. University research volumes will be unavailable for up to one hour. This is will occur during our regular Thursday evening maintenance window.

If you have any questions about this issue, please contact the IT Help Desk at 573-341-HELP.

As part of IT’s regularly scheduled Thursday night maintenance window, the following services may be unavailable for up to an hour and a half between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m.:

• Userweb, includes tilde sites (e.g. http://web.mst.edu/~joeminer)

• Deptweb, includes department web volumes not maintained in Documentum

• Dept, includes non-web departmental drives and volumes (e.g. department "Y:" drives)

IT has designated every Thursday night between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m. as a weekly network maintenance window. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact the IT Help Desk at 573-341-HELP.

Blackboard will be upgraded to version 8.0 over the summer. This version includes vast improvements in functionality and features. Here are just a few of the features that will become available:

• Grade Center – A new and much improved way of keeping track of students’ grades. This feature supports an interface similar to a spreadsheet, directed e-mail to students and the ability to generate progress reports.
• Blogs – Gives instructors and students the ability to create blogs and journals within a course, providing a structured and engaging forum for writing about course-related topics, projects and ideas, reinforcing critical thinking and reflective learning strategies.
• Wikis – Enables students and instructors to collaboratively create interactive, multimedia websites within a Blackboard course. In a collaborative online workspace, individuals and teams author, organize and present their work.
• Blackboard Scholar – This is a social bookmarking website that allows students and instructors to collect and tag links to online resources and share those resources with other interested individuals.

Missouri S&T Internet and Internet2 services were restored at 10:16 p.m. on May 11, 2008. IT has not received many details on the cause at this time other than the problem was on a fiber path between Jefferson City and Kansas City. MOREnet will be discussing this failure with Show-Me Technologies at their vendor meeting this week.

Missouri S&T is currently experiencing significant instability with our Internet services as a result of the severe weather that moved through Missouri overnight. Our circuit provider, Show-Me Technologies, is aware of the problem and is working to correct the issue.

IT is in contact with our Internet providers and will provide updates as they become available.

On Tuesday, May 13 between 5 and 6 p.m., the Documentum Web Publisher will be unavailable for up to 30 minutes while IT conducts routine maintenance.

If you have any questions about this issue, please call the IT Help Desk at 573-341-HELP.

In the last two weeks, customers should have noticed improved email performance when using Outlook to access email. IT has successfully installed new email storage hardware and moved all university email accounts to the new system. IT’s server team will be closely monitoring the system for the last two weeks of the semester before the summer when email usage is lower than normal. We will continue to make small adjustments as necessary.

We appreciate your patience this semester has we have worked to resolve this email performance issue.

If you have any questions, please contact the IT Help Desk at 573-341-HELP.

Margaret Cline
Chief Information Officer
Missouri S&T

Email is up and running again as normal.

University of Missouri System is currently experiencing bouncing of email bound for mailboxes outside of the University of Missouri System. Consequently, this interruption in email service is impacting Missouri S&T email also.

More information will be forthcoming as it becomes available.

Educational Technology would like to thank everyone who attended or participated in the first ever Missouri S&T Teaching and Learning Technology Conference. We would like to take an opportunity to thank everyone who helped make this a huge success.

* Thanks to all of the partner groups and vendors who contributed time, effort, and door prizes to the conference.

* Thanks to everyone who volunteered to help organize and run the conference. It went very smoothly.

* Thanks to all of our presenters who shared their knowledge and experience in using technology to enhance student learning.

* And finally, thanks to all of the attendees from both on and off campus. We could never have succeeded without you.

Educational Technology is already planning next year’s conference. We look forward to seeing even more people next year!

Presentations from this year’s conference are being made available on our conference web site Abstracts page.

edtech@mst.edu

On July 31, 2008, the umr.edu domain will be permanently decommissioned.

For our customers, this means umr.edu web addresses, umr.edu email and saved bookmarks will cease to function and the university will use mst.edu only. Missouri S&T email and web services are currently accessible by using both the umr.edu and the mst.edu domains.

What you can do to help

* Update your website bookmarks and email contacts
* Make sure your email contacts know about your new address (sample letter)
* Change your email footer
* Help us spread the word by telling your friends, family, alumni, potential employers,
research grant contacts, etc.
* Check out the name change timeline for campus IT services
* Get the latest updates about all things related to the name change from the Name Change Blog

Continue to check IT press for more information about changes taking place between May 1 and July 31. If you have any questions, contact the IT Help Desk at 573-341-HELP.