Plan for Windows Active Directory Deployment & Plan for Improving Internet Access by Voyage Io
Windows Active Directory Deployment
Novell Netware has been used in MPI for over 10 years. CSC has planned to replace it by a state-of-the-art Windows AD (Active Directory) environment. Our target is to complete the migration of all computers in the institute in 2008.
As of May 2008, CSC has completed the migration of user profile, network storage, and printing services of several administrative departments - CSC, SAG, PES, SCT and GRP to Windows servers. Other departments are expected to migrate within the remaining months.
From May 19 to July 31, CSC will change the settings of each academic staff’s computer. Our staff will contact each school to arrange appointments to perform the changes.
During Summer recess, CSC will change the settings of the school administrative staff’s computers as well as computers in headquarters’ computer labs and classrooms. The data migration of Student and Academic Staff Network Drive from the Novell NetWare servers to the Windows servers will be performed in August 2008 with further notice.
We will try our best to minimize the migration impact on users' operation, but your cooperation is highly needed. As a preventive measure, each teacher and school administrative staff is suggested to regularly backup personal data, especially before Summer recess.
Plan for improving Internet Access
In May 2008, CSC completed the upgrade of three internet broadband lines from 3Mb to 20 Mb. In order to enhance the utilization and efficiency of internet access, CSC has also merged these 3 broadband lines into a virtual 60Mb Internet access backbone with the adoption of NAT load-balancing technique. After the implementation, the traffic jam or low utilization issues found on a single broadband line will be resolved, thus enhancing the usage and efficiency of these broadband lines.
CSC has planned to increase the Internet access backbone from 60Mb to 80Mb in June. In addition, we are considering subscribing one more broadband line (20Mb downstream and 1Mb upstream) for delivering part of the web services to Internet users (e.g. Admission Web, Webmail, Adobe Connect Meeting), in order to ease the extremely high utilization of the existing 2Mbps leased line.
Teaching with IT
Learning Content Development System - LCDS LCDS "is a tool that enables you to create high quality, interactive, online courses. Virtually anyone can publish e-learning courses by completing the easy-to-use LCDS forms that seamlessly generate highly customized content, interactivities, quizzes, games, and assessments - as well as Silverlight-based animations, demos, and other multimedia". The content generated with LCDS "can be hosted in a learning management system".
MyStudiyo MyStudiyo is a web-based quiz making software that allows creating multimedia quizzes. Users need to register for a free account, to start a quiz and add questions into it. Questions may be supplemented with hyperlinks or images. "Simply add your own content to our DIY (Do-It-Yourself) quiz templates and create a customized quiz for your audience. After you’ve created your quiz, copy and paste a few lines of HTML into your website and you’re ready to go!"
25 Tools Programme Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies This online workshop "is intended for learning professionals who want to broaden their horizons in terms of the range of tools available for learning - in a very practical way - by getting to grips with 25 key FREE tools."
Contents of this programme include: Web browser - Firefox,
Email tool - gMail/Google Mail
Instant messenger - Skype
Social bookmarking tool - Delicious
RSS reader - Google Reader
Real-time messaging tool - Twitter
Online Calendar - Google Calendar
Office suite - Google Docs
Mind mapping tool - FreeMind
Start page tool - iGoogle
Blogging tool - Wordpress
Web authoring tool - Nvu
Wiki tool - PBwiki.
Photo hosting and sharing tool - Flickr
Presentation hosting and sharing tool - Slideshare
Video hosting and sharing tool - YouTube
Collaborative presentation tool - Voicethread
Podcasting tool - Audacity
Screen capture/ casting tool - Jing
Polling and survey tool - PollDaddy
Web meeting tool - Yugma
Live broadcasting tool - Ustream
Social networking tool - Ning
Course authoring tool - eXe
Course management tool - Moodle.
Learning with IT
The Story of Stuff with Annie Leonard The Story of Stuff is an interactive movie presentation about the origin of stuff, everyday objects we all possess. "From its extraction through sale, use and disposal, all the stuff in our lives affects communities at home and abroad, yet most of this is hidden from view. The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world. It'll teach you something, it'll make you laugh, and it just may change the way you look at all the stuff in your life forever."
HighWire Press Stanford University Libraries Free Online Full-text Articles (List limited to journals published online with the assistance of HighWire Press) ”HighWire Press is the largest archive of free full-text science on Earth! As of 5/4/08, we are assisting in the online publication of 1,880,373 free full-text articles and 4,755,845 total articles. There are 13 sites with free trial periods, and 44 completely free sites. 248 sites have free back issues, and 1047 sites have pay per view!”
Psychology: an Introduction by Russell A. Dewey, PhD Introductory textbook covering the various topics across Psychology. The online book includes the following chapters: Chapter 01: Psychology and Science, Chapter 02: The Human Nervous System, Chapter 03: States of Consciousness, Chapter 04: Senses and Perception, Chapter 05: Conditioning, Chapter 06: Memory, Chapter 07:Cognition, Chapter 08: Animal Behavior and Cognition, Chapter 09: Motivation and Emotion, Chapter 10: Development, Chapter 11: Personality, Chapter 12: Abnormal Psychology, Chapter 13: Therapies, Chapter 14: Frontiers of Psychology, Chapter 15: Social Psychology, Chapter 16: Sex, Friendship, and Love.
Microsoft Office Community Clips A free screencasting software from Microsoft that allows capturing all desktop activities, along with audio. You may choose to record either the full window or just a specific region on the desktop.
With Office Community Clips you may quickly create videos about Office software. After installation, a small record button appears in Word, Excel and PowerPoint enabling the recording of activity.
Open Source Mac Open Source Mac is a list of free and open source quality software for Mac OS X. It covers a wide range of software. Software is grouped into categories such as Web Browsing, Email, Utilities, Video Playback, DC/DVD burning, Word Processing/Office Suites, Sound Recording, Graphics, Photo, Publishing, HTML/Test Editing, 3D Grapichs and Modeling among many others.
FotoFlexer FotoFlexer is a powerful online digital image editor with many features that usually can only be found in expensive commercial software. Features include photo retouching, large number of effects, layers editing, distortion, etc. "FotoFlexer was founded by Arbor Labs, a team of graduate students and alumni from the Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology, University of California at Berkeley (and just one MIT/Stanford alum too)."
Mutapic Mutapic is a free online picture generator that you can use to quickly create original artworks. Mutapic is a very simple tool to use. " To create new pictures use the Generate mode and to modify existing pictures use the Mutation mode".
IT Usage Tips
Custom Guide - Free Computer Training Quick References Learn on Demand "CustomGuide have released some Quick Reference Guides for Microsoft, Mac and Adobe products.
These printable quick references are free to use, distribute, and share!".
Opinions
Have some ideas and comments to share with us or the rest of the Campus on IT facilities and services. You can use theComputer Service Centre Weblog.
You are also welcome to send us contributions and suggestions about subjects you would like to see here, links to web sites, small articles, reviews of books or web sites, or any reports of educational experience you may want to share with others.
Credits will be given to the contributors in any section of this newsletter. To send your contributions please, contact:
MyStudiyo is a web-based quiz making software that allows creating multimedia quizzes. Users need to register for a free account, to start a quiz and add questions into it. Questions may be supplemented with hyperlinks or images. "Simply add your own content to our DIY (Do-It-Yourself) quiz templates and create a customized quiz for your audience. After you’ve created your quiz, copy and paste a few lines of HTML into your website and you’re ready to go!" 
This online workshop "is intended for learning professionals who want to broaden their horizons in terms of the range of tools available for learning - in a very practical way - by getting to grips with 25 key FREE tools."
Free Online Full-text Articles (List limited to journals published online with the assistance of HighWire Press) ”HighWire Press is the largest archive of free full-text science on Earth! As of 5/4/08, we are assisting in the online publication of 1,880,373 free full-text articles and 4,755,845 total articles. There are 13 sites with free trial periods, and 44 completely free sites. 248 sites have free back issues, and 1047 sites have pay per view!” 
A free screencasting software from Microsoft that allows capturing all desktop activities, along with audio. You may choose to record either the full window or just a specific region on the desktop.
With Office Community Clips you may quickly create videos about Office software. After installation, a small record button appears in Word, Excel and PowerPoint enabling the recording of activity. 
Open Source Mac is a list of free and open source quality software for Mac OS X. It covers a wide range of software. Software is grouped into categories such as Web Browsing, Email, Utilities, Video Playback, DC/DVD burning, Word Processing/Office Suites, Sound Recording, Graphics, Photo, Publishing, HTML/Test Editing, 3D Grapichs and Modeling among many others. 
FotoFlexer is a powerful online digital image editor with many features that usually can only be found in expensive commercial software. Features include photo retouching, large number of effects, layers editing, distortion, etc. "FotoFlexer was founded by Arbor Labs, a team of graduate students and alumni from the Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology, University of California at Berkeley (and just one MIT/Stanford alum too)." 
Mutapic is a free online picture generator that you can use to quickly create original artworks. Mutapic is a very simple tool to use. " To create new pictures use the Generate mode and to modify existing pictures use the Mutation mode".
"CustomGuide have released some Quick Reference Guides for Microsoft, Mac and Adobe products.