Friday, November 18, 2016

Week's End Report - Nov. 18th

Tip of the Week!

Ivy Tech Community College computing policies changed last week to begin blocking all shortened URLs from campus. That means that in order to access the IDC website, the Getting Started website, nor the Online Education website from campus you will no longer be able to use the links we had previously placed in all of our promotional materials. 

Below are links you can use to access the websites directly:

IDC Website:
https://sites.google.com/site/ivytechlafayetteidc/

Getting Started Website:
https://sites.google.com/site/ivytechlafayetteidc/getting-started

Online Education Website (please note that if you teach online this website is linked in your Course Information area, please replace that link with this one):
https://sites.google.com/site/itcconlineeducation/

Proctored Testing Update

The statewide proctored testing policies and procedures have recently changed. Please note that from now on the regional sites should no longer be receiving proctor forms. If you have a proctored test you will send the form to one the following addresses (depending upon your region):
  • proctorform-Lafayette@ivytech.edu
  • proctorform-Kokomo@ivytech.edu
The old distancetesting-[Site]@lists.ivytech.edu addresses are no longer to be used for distributing test materials to the instructional sites.

This saves a lot of work for you as an instructor. For example, if you are teaching an online course out of Kokomo and you have a proctored test you may have students taking the test out of Kokomo, Logansport, and Rochester but you will only need to send one proctor form to Kokomo and the sites will automatically have access to the form.

NewT Transition Information

The GWC region will be making the transition to NewT on December 2, 2016. Information will be distributed regarding twice-weekly webinars and some other resources that will help make the transition go smoothly. 

If you have any questions regarding NewT or the transition you may reach out to one of the following contacts:
  • Sonia Ninon, 317-921-4256, sninon@ivytech.edu
  • David Scheblo, 765-473-7281 ext. 9213, dscheblo@ivytech.edu

Training Opportunities

Google for Education free conference!

Education on Air: It Takes a Teacher
Free online conference on December 3rd

Speakers include: 
  • Eric Schmidt, Chairman Google, Inc.
  • Dr. Jill Biden, Second Lady of the United
  • Jahana Hayes, National Teacher of the Year
  • Lisa Thumann, Director of Professional Learning, EdTechTeam
  • And many more!
To register and view the complete conference schedule, visit the website:
https://educationonair.withgoogle.com/live/2016-dec

Student Centered Instruction Webinar
Join Jim Musgrave on November 29th at 1 PM (PST) for a free informational webinar on mobile, student-centered teaching through the Embellisher Mobile Publishing, Education and Training Platform.

To register, click on the link below:
http://go.onlinelearning-c.org/NS00HCaL000bGPM03q50i3F

Friday, November 11, 2016

Week's End Report - Nov. 11th

Tip of the Week!

Looking for good supplemental information for your courses? Check out Ivy Tech's new Virtual Library!

To access the Virtual Library, log in to Blackboard and click on the Library tab. On the following page, click on the link for your home campus.

From your campus's home page you can do a search, locate user guides, ask a question of your regional Librarian, access Noodle Tools to generate source citations, and much more!

The Virtual Library is invaluable for research, providing us with access to thousands of books and journal articles, vetted links to educational websites, as well as thousands of images and videos. Here are some examples of resources available on the Virtual Library:
  • Voices from the Days of Slavery - audio recordings of nearly 7 hours of interviews with former slaves from the American Folklife Center
  • George Washington Papers - approximately 65,000 documents from the Manuscript Collection at the Library of Congress, this is the largest collection of original Washington documents in the world
  • Invitation to World Literature - 13 video recordings aimed at helping viewers appreciate literary texts
  • And much more!
But the Virtual Library isn't only good for research! There are lots of resources available for entertainment as well as education, including:
  • Reel Time - an album from jazz musician Wynton Marsalis
  • The House on Haunted Hill - a feature film starring Vincent Price
  • Popeye for President - a classic Popeye cartoon
  • And much more!

Systems Information

There will be a statewide Windows Update installation over fall break. A few things to remember for this update:
  • When you leave for fall break please leave your college laptop and make sure that your laptop and/or PC are powered on (i.e. log off of your computer but do not shut it down)
  • If you connect your laptop to the wireless network, please make sure your laptop is off of the wireless network, but connect it to your docking station
  • If you take your laptop with you over the break, the next time your laptop connects to the network the update process will automatically begin
  • Should your computer update process initiate while you're present, you will notice the computer reboot multiple times and the update is expected to take up to 30 minutes; please allow your computer to go through the full update cycle
The update is currently scheduled to begin Thursday, Nov. 24th and run through Sunday, Nov. 27th. 

Friday, November 4, 2016

Week's End Report - Nov. 4th

Tip of the Week!

The statewide self-paced QM Custom Rubric Certification course is now available in Blackboard!

C4IT has developed a self-paced training for faculty and staff to learn more about the QM Custom Rubric in use for online courses at Ivy Tech.

To register, click here and follow the directions.

Systems Information

Blackboard experienced an outage on Saturday evening, Oct. 29th. The outage was reported shortly after 9 pm and was resolved by 9:20 pm. Please work with students who may have been impacted by this outage.

Sunday evening, October 30th, some users may have experienced issues attaching files to email. This issue was resolved on Monday, October 31st. Note this error effected only staff and faculty. Students are on Gmail accounts and were not impacted by this issue.

Email changes

The login screen for faculty email via Outlook Web Access have changed. The change took place at 9 am on Tuesday, November 1st.

Student email underwent an update around 10 pm on the evening of Weds., November 2nd. Email was down for approximately one hour while the update was made and now there is a new look and feel to the initial log-in screen. Students who typically access email via the link in Campus Connect should not notice any change.