New Services and Improvements for 2008/2009
by Voyage Io

Launch of online Class Cancellation / Class Make-Up System

It is a new service for academic staff to submit cancel class or make-up class requests through internet. By correlating linkage made in Campus Venue Management System, Class Attendance System and Survey system, the whole paperless approval process can be completed on the web, and this system will generate email alerts to head of school, program coordinator, teacher and students of the related class automatically.

Benefits of Windows AD Migration Project

Beginning in late February 2008, CSC has started contacting departments to schedule the data and printer migration on some staff PCs. As announced in earlier notices and newsletter, CSC will deploy the Microsoft Active Directory to replace the aging Novell NetWare infrastructure starting from the 08/09 academic year.   All computers in the classrooms and computer labs at headquarters will join the Windows AD infrastructure under the “MPI” domain.  On August 28 3am, all faculty and students’ user data were migrated to a Windows server.  

This project is considered quite a large and complex undertaking (800+ computers and 3000+ users affected), and therefore it has been broken down into a series of migrations according to specific user groups of the Institute, administrative staff (departments), academic staff (schools), and students (classrooms and computer labs).   

The key benefits driving this Windows infrastructure upgrade are as follows:

• Increased Reliability and Management: The migration includes the replacement of old hardware (server, storage and network) and the modernization of legacy software.  New desktop and server management functionality will provide increased system monitoring and management capabilities.  
• Enriched  End-users Services and Experience:  Roaming profile saves user’s preferences, settings and browser favorites giving the user a consistent look and feel as they move from one computer to another.  Greater volumes of data storage cope with the demands of the user. Active Directory will allow CSC the ability to upgrade older IT systems and software applications to newer technologies (e.g. Windows Vista, Symantec Endpoint Security 11, Exchange Email server etc.)
• Decreased Operating Costs: Significant savings will be achieved once the Institute has migrated to the Windows AD environment because of the reduced software subscription fee, unified directory and network operating system, improved performance and service reliability, and the need to maintain legacy equipment will no longer be required.

Computer Lab. Hardware and Software Upgrade / Setup

• 36 PCs in lab. A203 have been upgraded to Core 2 Duo Computers (E8400 CPU)
• A new computer laboratory (13 x MacPro) has been setup in Magnification Court building for digital videos authoring and clipping
• The following software have been installed in all computer labs. and classrooms at HQ: 
  - Symantec EndPoint Security 11
  -  Kingsoft Powerword (金山詞霸)
  -   SPSS 16 (network version)
  

CSC bookmarks 08/09

Updated bookmarks for academic year 2008/2009 will be distributed to students and staff in September. The bookmarks provide information on quick links to access CSC and MPI services, as well as some general information regarding Macao.

Visual Understanding Environment (VUE)
Tufts University
The Visual Understanding Environment (VUE) project at Tufts University is an open source platform providing "tools for managing and integrating digital resources in support of teaching, learning and research". VUE provides a flexible visual environment for structuring, presenting, and sharing digital information.A quick video demo of Vue presentation features is available here.

Tools for Teaching and Learning
Schreyer Institute for Teaching Excellence, Penn State University
This site is intended to support academic staff on teaching tools. The materials and resources are structured into the following sections: "Course Design and Planning", "Teaching and Assessment Strategies", "Tools for Course Evaluation", "Tools for University Assessment", and "Scholarship of Teaching and Learning".

Learning 2.008 Shanghai Conference
The focus of this conference " is to widen our scope to include a broader discussion of 21st century pedagogy. Our discussions, workshops and main speakers will focus on topics such as film making (documentaries), project-based learning, alternative assessments, how we use new technologies effectively to increase student learning, the effects of social media, media literacy and exploring further the concept of personal learning networks."

Kigose
This search engine uses selected educational websites to perform the searches. A web citation builder is available to help users to reference the pages used as resources. You may search according to specific types of resources: Web Search, Video, Image, Maps and Sound. The site also offers a translation feature. All services rely on Google Custom Search Engine™.

CERN - The Large Hadron Collider
A Guardian web site about the " world's most ambitious scientific experiment: the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the European laboratory for particle physics near Geneva". The Large Hadron Collider"will smash particles together to recreate the moments after the big bang, producing a new golden age of discovery for physicists". The experiment started on Sepetember 10 and the "first collisions at high energy are expected about a month later with the first results from the experiments soon after". "There are many theories as to what will result from these collisions, but what's for sure is that a brave new world of physics will emerge from the new accelerator, as knowledge in particle physics goes on to describe the workings of the Universe."

Multimedia Training Videos
Teacher Training Videos
by Russell Stannard
Multimedia Training Videos is "a series of free learning videos to show anyone interested in multimedia how to use the main multimedia packages". Software includes Director, Flash and Photoshop.
Teacher Training Videos contains videos "created for teachers to help them to incorporate technology into their teaching": blogs, wikis, surveys, Second Life, etc. This site also includes a section dedicated to English teaching.

BugShooting
Bug Shooting is a free screen capture program for Windows with many features. Besides capturing screens, it also offers editing capabilities, such as: crop, resize, add geometric shapes, add arrows, add text, add images, rotate and flip. The "Delayed Capture" feature can be used for capturing menus.

EasyBib
With EasyBib you can compose, format, print or save your citation list. Start by selecting a source and fill in all the source details. Repeat these steps for all sources. Afterwards, you can either save the citation list online and edit it later or download it to your disk as a Word file. You may choose between APA & MLA (Modern Language Association) formats.

Acrobat.com
Acrobat offers 5 useful applications in one service pack: online word processor, web conferencing application, online PDF converter, file sharing and storage features. After registering you will be able to use these services from any Internet connected computer. No installation is needed. You get access to Adobe Buzzword, an online word processor, ConnectNow, an online web conferencing, ConvertPDF, an online PDF converter, Share, a file sharing service, and My files, a free online storage of up to 5 GB.

CUIL
Launched in July, Cuil is a new search engine that indexes "120 billion Web pages, three times more than any other search engine. Cuil (pronounced COOL) provides organized and relevant results based on Web page content analysis. The search engine goes beyond today’s search techniques of link analysis and traffic ranking to analyze the context of each page and the concepts behind each query. It then organizes similar search results into groups and sorts them by category."

PageBreeze
PageBreeze Free HTML Editor is a HTML Editor "which has both visual (WYSIWYG) and HTML tag/source modes. PageBreeze Free HTML Editor's design emphasizes simplicity and ease-of-use. You'll find that you'll be creating great looking websites almost instantly--with virtually no learning curve! PageBreeze Free HTML Editor is a completely free download for personal use and will never expire."

pptPlex
Microsoft Office Labs
"pptPlex is a plug-in that explores an alternate method for presenting a PowerPoint slide deck". With pptPlex, you can present your slides in a more dynamic and flexible way, zooming in areas of each slide for ex., instead of presenting a fixed sequence of slides. Requirements: Windows Vista/XP and PowerPoint 2007.

Using Cobian Backup to Keep File Revisions
Cyber Notes by Cyber Net
"Have you ever been working on a project where you wish you had a copy from a few hours or days ago before you made some changes? Most people never think about being able to setup a system that manages revisions of files (a.k.a. version control) because they think it’s too complicated, but it takes only minutes to do using the free Cobian Backup software."

Have some ideas and comments to share with us or the rest of the Campus on IT facilities and services. You can use the Computer Service Centre Weblog.

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Campus IT Newsletter Production/Editing Team
Chief Editor: Conceição Carvalho
Advisors: Colin Lai, Voyage Io
Technical Advisors: Simon Fong, Joe Poon, Joey Fong