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Spring 2007 It's been a Banner Year After over a year of hard work, Oakton went live with Banner student information system in February of 2006. After a successful roll out of the student system, Information Technology is now engaged in converting our Financial system for roll out on July 1, 2007. We are also working towards a conversion of our HR/Payroll system with a target roll out of January 1, 2008. Starting the morning of Friday, February 16th, Banner will be shut down for the installation of the Banner Finance and HR/Payroll modules into the production system. Service will be restored by Tuesday, February 20th.   During this installation, all other online services WebCT, webmail, the Oakton home page and even the non-banner parts of myOakton will be available.   On and off campus access to all other computer services should also be available. WebCT/Luminis Integration Last fall IT began rolling out the integration features between Luminis and WebCT. Now all WebCT classes are automatically populated with student IDs in conjunction with registration. Students and faculty can also use the single sign-on feature to move seamlessly from myOakton's My Courses channel into their online classes. A myOakton group has also been established for online faculty to stay abreast of online learning developments. Upcoming Luminis Features Luminis, the web portal to our student record system (Banner), has many features that we will be rolling out over the next year. Already Group Studio is being beta tested by a few groups, and we are gradually introducing the calendar function with the group studio roll out. We are looking at changing several of the "tabs" such as Student Buzz, and adding additional optional content channels. E-Way online office supply ordering system is one channel that was recently unveiled on a limited use basis. SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) As you may or may not be aware, Oakton uses Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption technology on a number of web servers to ensure the security of passwords and confidential information.     To reduce costs, Oakton had previous relied on what are called "Self Signed" certificates.   These provided encryption, but not a high level of assurance that the site was actually Oakton Community College.    Recently we completed the move from using self signed certificates to using certificates provided by a commercial certificate authority. The only obvious change is that users will not receive a security warning when accessing any of the secure Oakton websites such as webmail or  myOakton Spam Spam Spam Oakton has in place server-side software that helps determine if incoming email is probably spam; if the software thinks it is spam, then it tags the piece of email. Oakton email users can set up a filter to move any email tagged as spam into another folder, so it doesn't clutter your inbox. Directions on how to do this are available at http://www.oakton.edu/resource/it/mailguide/sievespamfilter.pdf Thunderbird is coming Oakton is converting from using Netscape Messenger as a client to using Thunderbird. Our conversion is planned during February, and we'll be working on moving users to this new system over a period of about a week. For those of you who are not aware, Thunderbird is an open source email program that is descended from Netscape Communicator.  It offers a full featured, easy to use interface that should be straightforward for current Netscape users to adjust to.   It also has lots of new wonderful features.    Thunderbird is not a Web browser or a web page creation tool, it is just an email client, so users will continue to use Internet Explorer (preferred) or Firefox for web browsing and other tools such as Dreamweaver for web page composition.  Web links in email will open in the user's preferred browser. Look for more details in upcoming emails. Wifi at Oakton Our wifi coverage has expanded, and now includes the following locations: Des Plaines: Library’s first and lower floors and part of the second floor, cafeteria, Cyber Café, Student Street; Adjunct Faculty Offices (2742, 2171, 2759), Business Institute, Tenhoeve Wing, and the Performing Art Center Lobby. By the end of Spring term Wifi will also be available in all open labs (1860, 1835 and 2622). RHC: Cafeteria, library, courtyard, Cyber Café outside of Public Safety, Distance Learning Classroom, Early Childhood Development Center, P103/P104 corridor, Pavilion Link Corridor, P132 corridor, P250 and P150 Rooms, and the Open Lab. If there are other areas where there is an academic need for wifi access, please contact the Help Desk, ext. 1965, or helpdesk@oakton.edu with your request. Academic Computing Labs and Computers in Classrooms This last year saw some rewriting of our guidelines in our academic computing labs, and the addition of a family-friendly open computer lab in 1860. More information about our guidelines can be found at http://www.oakton.edu/resource/it/labguide.htm. At Des Plaines we now have two classrooms, 2629 and 2633, that offer seating for 32 students and we've done remodeling in both the HIT lab (2846) and the ELT lab (1731). This year saw the first wave of flat screen monitor purchases for academic use, and most of our open labs now have flat screen monitors. In addition to computer labs, we also have worked with Instructional Media Services to expand the presence of permanently installed projectors and computers; currently all but four classrooms at Des Plaines and two classrooms at RHC/Skokie have computers and projectors permanently installed in them. To help keep these rooms at their best, please be sure to turn off the equipment when you're done! Information for Faculty Besides the information already available through IT's website for faculty and staff (http://www.oakton.edu/resource/it/), IT has put together a welcome back letter for all Faculty which covers more general information about labs, software, and other commonly asked questions. A copyof the letter is available online at http://www.oakton.edu/resource/it/FacultyLtrSpr2007.doc. New Faces and Old Friends This last year has seen the hiring of several new faces: Manish Varma, Computer Lab Coordinator at RHC; Craig Friedman, Microcomputer Technician; Jeff Moro, Senior Systems Administrator (and Advisor to the Ultra Club - U nix L inux T echnical R esource A lternatives); and Dan Ridolfi, Manager of Systems Administration and Operations. Please welcome them aboard! December saw the retirement of Joanne Maginniss, Systems Manager. Joanne had worked at Oakton for over 20 years and her knowledge, humor and caring will be missed. IT Workshops Please register for all IT workshops through the Center for Professional Development's online registration. Date Course/Workshop Days Time Campus Room Facilitator 2/14/07 Calendars & Groups Wednesday 1:30-3:00pm RHC P232 Julia Gray 2/20/07 Calendars & Groups Tuesday 1:30-3:00pm DP 1836 Dann Foster 3/21/07 Thunderbird Intro Wednesday 1:30-3:00pm RHC P232 Julia Gray 3/27/07 Thunderbird Intro Tuesday 1:30-3:00pm DP 1836 Dann Foster 4/4/07 Accessibility Wednesday 1:30-3:00pm DP 1836 Dann Foster 4/11/07 Working with PDFs Wednesday 1:30-3:00 DP 1836 Jessica Lee 4/19/07 Dreamweaver Sites/Templates Thursday 10:30-Noon DP TBA Dann Foster 4/25/07 How'd They Do That? PDF Slideshows Wednesday 1:30-3:00 RHC P232 Jessica Lee   Past news available at newprojectarchive.htm   Past news available at newprojectarchive.htm

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