It has been a fast but great summer at Centre! I’ve been busy getting to know the people here and spending lots of time with our ITS staff. One of my major tasks over my first three months here has been to do a comprehensive review of technology operations and resources across campus and give recommendations for changes and enhancements. This report has been given to our Academic Dean, Stephanie Fabritius and she will be passing this on to the Senior Staff for comment and discussion. After this, I will be sharing the ideas and initiatives with the campus in group gatherings over the Fall term. More information on dates/times/places soon!

We have also been looking at systems and resources here on campus and have made a few changes that we think you will love. I’ll try and give a quick overview below but please read the next few pages to get a full description of the projects that we have been developing so that your work with campus technology can be more efficient and convenient.

We have made some great new enhancements to the Centrenet campus portal (https://centrenet.centre.edu or just https://cn.centre.edu) to make it more of a central “intranet” portal. We’ve added some new links to most used systems like email, Moodle, Google Apps and others that, if you login to the campus portal first, will automatically log you into most of the systems without having to reenter your username and password- a true central connection point for our internal Centre campus community. And more enhancements are on the way!

Along with this, we have adopted a new Helpdesk ticketing system for ITS that will give you the opportunity to create support tickets directly from the Centrenet page OR initiate a live chat with a support person in ITS. Once again, just login to the Centrenet portal, click the links and your user information is automatically filled in! We also would like to invite you to the new ITS website at http://helpdesk.centre.edu/ or http://its.centre.edu/. You will find lots of links to information from setting up your mobile device for campus use to ITS policies.

Lastly, Human Resources has asked if I would do a presentation for one of their monthly “Lunch & Learn” sessions on Thursday, September 19 at 11:30am in the Nichols Dining Room in the Campus Center. As I mentioned, I have just completed my initial review of technology on campus and have made some recommendations for the future. I invite our faculty & staff to come, have lunch and share your thoughts on the review and new ideas about technology here at Centre.

As always, my door, email and phone are always open to your thoughts and ideas. Please call me at x5572 or email me at keith.fowlkes@centre.edu. Have a great Fall 2013 term!!

Keith Fowlkes, M.A., M.B.A. Centre College - Director of ITS & CIO keith.fowlkes@centre.edu | x5572 direct

CENTRENET UPDATE

Exciting new technology developments for Fall 2013!

A TECHNOLOGY NEWSLETTER FROM CENTRE COLLEGE INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY SERVICES

Fall 2013 Edition

Updates on the Centrenet portal 2 Centrenet mobile is here! 3 The Jenzabar Report (admin system) 4 Microsoft Work-at-home program 5

Fall, 2013 Edition

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New Centrenet to be a central place for access

Daniel Clark replaced Kristi Burch (who moved to CTL) last Spring. Daniel comes to us from Toyotomi America as a CAD/CAM specialist.

Russ Strunk replaced Tyler Chelf as our User Support Coordinator in July. Russ comes to us from SAIC, a governmental contractor specializing in helpdesk and technology support operations.

Chances are that you have already seen these guys in action but please welcome them to the Centre College family!

Welcome Daniel Clark & Russ Strunk to User Support

Over the summer, ITS has been working on a new way for campus users to access the most used systems at Centre. The new “Centrenet Launchpad” is available now on https://centrenet.centre.edu/. IF you login to the portal first, many of the links in the Launchpad will automatically log you into those systems without reentering your username and password. It’s a great homepage for you to navigate many of the systems you use every day at the College!

Another new feature of Centrenet is the “Technology Support and LiveChat feature. Just login to the portal at https://centrenet.centre.edu/ and you can click the ticket to start up a support request OR click the LiveChat button to text chat with an ITS support person between 8am to12noon and 1pm to 4pm- Monday through Friday. Just a few more ways to make things easier for you to get help when you need it.

Access your Centre Files from anywhere on the web!

Another very exciting development available in the Centrenet Launchpad now is a new service that allows you to access your files via the web through a drag and drop interface. The system from Cerberus Software is much like Dropbox.com or Box.com for cloud file storage, organization and retrieval.

Try it out today on https://centrenet.centre.edu with the link in the new Launchpad titled “FileCentre Webaccess.”

Russ Strunk

Daniel Clark

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Centrenet access comes to your smartphone with mobileCentrenet YES! More great things for our campus community with Centrenet, Centre College’s central information portal for students, faculty and staff. If you have a smartphone, you will be excited to learn that we have recently implemented Centrenet Mobile. You can access important links, grading information, calendars, class schedules and more online through your smartphone browser (Safari, Chrome, Firefox, etc.). Just go online and visit http://cn.centre.edu/go for all the mobile goodness today!

Did you know that technology-related announcements such as planned outages, unplanned outage updates and advisories as well as latest IT news are available now on Facebook? We plan to begin doing update and training videos soon!

Visit us on Facebook at www.facebook.com /CentreCollegeITS and LIKE US!

New Centre College ITS Website is online!

Have you seen our new Centre College Information Technology Web site? The new site has answers to the most frequently asked technology-related questions at Centre College. You can also start up a tech request ticket for the Helpdesk, watch our online video blog and send us your comments on how we are doing serving the campus community.

Check it out today online at http://helpdesk.centre.edu !

Oh how I wish for a campus-wide events calendar…

Everyone who wants one central campus calendar of events, raise your hand! Yeah, ours are raised too.

Through the summer and fall, a group of people from across the campus are involved in a campus events management working group. This group is looking into software tools that may be able to address this central campus need.

If you have suggestions, please let us know! Email keith.fowlkes@centre.edu or post your suggestions to our ITS comments page at:

http://helpdesk.centre.edu/?q=contact

During the last week of May, a number of our users clicked on an email message that looked official but in fact was a very personalized fake message appearing to be from ITS. These caused a serious email mess in their inboxes. In an attempt to avoid this happening again, ITS is putting in place a new SUBJECT LINE TAG to give you one more indication that email is, in fact, from Centre College ITS.

In the subject line of legitimate ITS campus-wide messages (not messages to individuals), there will be one of the following tag lines from these ITS staff members to verify the message is a valid mass message: [CentreITS:CIO] [CentreITS:SYSADMIN] [CentreITS:HELPDESK] [CentreITS:ADMINCOMP] If you receive a mass message to campus users that does NOT have one of these tag lines in the subject line, please delete it. If you have questions about a message that looks suspicious, call us!

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All the latest information about our Jenzabar administrative system from Dave Frey, Associate Director for Information Technology

First I want to add my welcome to new and returning students, faculty and staff. We all have an exciting year ahead of us. I am the Associate Director of Information Technology Services and would like to share with you some information on one project we are working on currently.

Stacie Yates, David Abney and I oversee the college’s administrative computing environment. Our administrative computing environment Jenzabar CX and the Centrenet portal are due for a refresh in the almost 30-year-old underlying technology platform. The Jenzabar CX platform not only powers Centrenet but is the backbone for student billing, student records, payroll, housing, academic advising and the list goes on. Jenzabar is transitioning their CX product to a new browser based platform called Jenzabar JX.

At this point, we feel that it is a good time to look at the environment and determine whether Centre College should transition to Jenzabar’s new product (JX) or move to something completely different.

We have formed a committee to do a review of the administrative computing environment. This committee has already started discussing Jenzabar's product direction with the intention of inviting Jenzabar and other vendors to show us their products. The ultimate goal of finding a vendor/product that best fits Centre College well into the future is what this committee will strive to determine.

There is much work to be done and, even if we stick with Jenzabar and move to JX, we will be very busy this academic year doing database clean up work.

We hope that you have enjoyed the new updates to the Centrenet campus portal at https://centrenet.centre.edu and that you have chosen to make it your homepage for on-campus information and links.

If you have new ideas, please email me at dave.frey@centre.edu. We would love to hear from you. Thanks.

Frequently Asked Questions on Tech This issue is “how fast are wireless LAN connections?”

Wireless local area network (LAN) connection standards are set by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). These standards are set by the IEEE LAN/MAN Committee which is IEEE committee 802 so when you see different wireless LAN device specifications, you will notice that they are stated to be 802.XX compliant.

The numbers after 802 normally have equated to the transport specifications and the letter(s) has generally equated to the speed. When you buy a wireless LAN device today, you normally have the following:

Standard WIFI : 802.11b = (11Mbs or megabits per second)

802.11g = 53 megabits per second

802.11n = 54- 100 megabits per sec.

and coming soon…

802.11ac = 500 megabits per second

We have both 802.11b/g or 802.11n wireless LAN access on campus now. Speeds vary based on many things such as how many walls, trees, metal and even people are between your device and the wireless LAN access points (WAPs).

Just the

This article will be a regular part of our newsletter to help you find the most valuable iPad and Android apps from people around campus who are using these devices in their daily work and scholarship. Email us and share your app picks for the next issue!

This issue’s recommendations come from our own, Keith Fowlkes, Director of ITS and CIO. Keith has used the iPad on a daily basis since the very first generation iPad was released.

Keith uses several apps regularly. His favorite apps include:

Notability- for note taking, short recordings and basic sketching Keynote- for presentations and illustrations Auria – Multi-track recording software for iPad Dropbox – Cloud file storage software for iPad and Android

for iPad / Android Tablet

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Did you know that Centre College faculty and staff can purchase Microsoft Software for greatly reduced educational prices? Though our relationship with the Association of Independent Kentucky Colleges and Universities (AIKCU), Centre College faculty and staff can a purchase Microsoft Office for Windows and Mac work-at-home license for less than $15.

Students already have free access to Microsoft’s Office 365 (the web version of Microsoft Office) as a member of the Centre College family.

Adobe software can also be purchased online through the site from Bell Industries and AIKCU.

Just visit http://centre.onthehub.com online, select whether you are a student or

faculty/staff member, select the product you wish to purchase and register for an account.

This is just one more service that Centre College can offer to you as a part of the college community!

A collection of interesting statistics on information technology in higher education from the January 2013 EDUCAUSE Core Data Service Almanac

“Lunch & Learn” Faculty/Staff Session on New Review and Recommendations for Technology at Centre!

Thursday, September 19 @11:30am in the Campus Center’s Nichols Dining Room

Please come to this Human Resources sponsored “Lunch & Learn” session with Keith Fowlkes, Director of ITS & CIO.

Keith will be sharing his initial report on technology at Centre College and his recommendations for the future. Lunch is provided but seating is limited. Make sure to send an RSVP to Ben Nelson at ben.nelson @centre.edu and save your spot today!

Centre College just began instant messaging user support services this fall

43% of Doctoral institutions

offer help desk services via

instant message

49% of bachelors level colleges are considering or planning e-textbook

programs for the coming 2-years

45% of bachelors level

colleges are considering

or planning lecture

capture facilities for the

coming 2-years.

Centre College currently provides wireless network access to all residence halls, classroom buildings and selected outdoor locations.

81% of IT groups in higher

education provide

videoconferencing

services for research

purposes

65% of U.S. colleges support an open-source

CMS/LMS such as Moodle and Sakai for online

learning

Centre College currently

has a 250Mbs connection

to commodity Internet

95% of all bachelors level

colleges provide wireless

access to students in

residence housing

96% of all bachelors level colleges support tablet

computers (iPad/Android)

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2013-2014 Information Technology Services Staff Directory

Susan Kirkpatrick Technology Support Coordinator 859-238-5575 susan.kirkpatrick@centre.edu

Patrick Lowe Academic Systems Coordinator 859-238-5289 patrick.lowe @centre.edu

Russ Strunk Coordinator for User Support 859-238-6923 russ.strunk @centre.edu

Stacie Yates Database Technologist 859-238-5576 stacie.yates @centre.edu

Shane Wilson Network & Systems Coordinator 859-238-5546 shane.wilson @centre.edu

David Abney Web Developer /Programmer 859-238-5761 david.abney @centre.edu

Daniel Clark Technology Support Specialist 859-238-5537 daniel.clark @centre.edu

Keith Fowlkes Director of ITS & CIO 859-238-5572 keith.fowlkes @centre.edu

Dave Frey Associate Director of Information Technical Services 859-238-5543 dave.frey @centre.edu

You will always get the best and fastest response for your technology support calls by emailing our Centre HelpDesk at

helpdesk@centre.edu or start a support ticket at our campus portal at Centrenet.centre.edu! Our

technicians are notified by smartphone immediately We are here to help you!

Print this poster and hang it up for quick reference!