Category Archives: Post for MiddPoints

Middlebury will Adopt Canvas

In January, 2016, the ACTT (formerly CTT) submitted a recommendation for Middlebury to adopt Canvas. We have received budget approval, and will begin the work of moving Middlebury into the Canvas service.

Thank you to all of the faculty and students that participated in the pilot. Your participation and feedback (Midd and MIIS) helped to make a strong recommendation. And thank you to Joe Antonioli, Bob Cole, Bill Koulopoulos, Stacy Reardon, Shel Sax and Heather Stafford for supporting these classes during the pilot.

Also, thank you to all of the schools that provided us with insight and the benefit of their experience with Canvas. We learned a lot from you.

There is a lot of work still to be done to move Canvas from pilot to enterprise, but we do hope that you take a moment to celebrate this milestone and the collective effort to get to this point.

ACTT In-Progress Project Presentation for GoogleApps for Edu and OneDrive

[This meeting was rescheduled from May 17th to May 31st.]

Tuesday, May 31st from 3-4pm
LIB 105A or Polycom 712833

The new ACT Team process includes in-progress project presentations. These presentations are meant to inform the community about how things are going, what has been done and what still needs to be done, what is going well and what are the challenges.

Agenda

In this meeting we will look at the GoogleApps for Edu and OneDrive projects.

In-progress project presentations are open meetings, anyone may attend. Please feel free to share the invitation with anyone you feel is interested in the topics discussed.

@MiddInfoSec: Preventing Device Theft

With an increasing amount of storage space and institutional connectivity on personal devices, the value and mobility of smartphones, tablets, and laptops make them appealing and easy targets. These simple tips will help you protect against and prepare for the potential loss or theft of a laptop or mobile device.

  • Don’t leave your device alone, even for a minute. If you’re not using it, lock your device in a cabinet or drawer, use a security cable, or take it with you. Middlebury has seen laptops stolen in the College library and from individual’s cars. Don’t assume your devices are safe because you feel at home with your surroundings.
  • Report any lost or stolen device promptly. Both institutional and personal devices may contain Middlebury data. Even if you only lose a personal device, work with the College’s Information Security workgroup to ensure that institutional or sensitive data is accounted for. Information Security may also be able to help you recover the device. If a device is lost or stolen contact the helpdesk at x2200 immediately.
  • Do not store extremely sensitive or internal data. Never store protected or sensitive data on your laptop. Refer to the Data Classification policy for clear definitions of data types. (http://go.middlebury.edu/dcp)
  • Keep your master and working copy of all data on network storage. Keeping your master and working copies of all of your data on Middlebury Google Drive or other secure network file storage such as Middfiles. This ensures that your data is protected and backed-up if your laptop is stolen or lost. Photos, papers, research, and other files are irreplaceable, and losing them may be worse than losing your device.
  • Record the serial number. Keep the serial number and asset tag of your device and store it in a safe place. This information can be useful for verifying your device if it’s found. This is especially important when you travel. Airport and police agencies may ask for this information when reporting lost or stolen devices.
  • Enable device tracking and wiping services. Use tracking and recovery software included with most devices (e.g., the “Find iDevice” feature in iOS) Some software includes remote-wipe capabilities. This feature allows you to log on to an online account and delete all of the information on your laptop. Mobile resources can be found here:
  • Apple iCloud: http://www.icloud.com
  • Microsoft Account: http://account.Microsoft.com/devices
  • Android Device Manager: https://support.google.com/accounts/topic/6160499?hl=e

 

ACTT In-Progress Project Presentation for GoogleApps for Edu and OneDrive

Tuesday, May 17th from 3-4pm
LIB 105A or Polycom 712833

The new ACT Team process includes in-progress project presentations. These presentations are meant to inform the community about how things are going, what has been done and what still needs to be done, what is going well and what are the challenges.

Agenda

In this meeting we will look at the GoogleApps for Edu and OneDrive projects.

In-progress project presentations are open meetings, anyone may attend. Please feel free to share the invitation with anyone you feel is interested in the topics discussed.

ACTT In-Progress Project Presentation Video Streaming Service

Tuesday, May 10th from 3-4pm
LIB 105A or Polycom 712833

The new ACT Team process includes in-progress project presentations. These presentations are meant to inform the community about how things are going, what has been done and what still needs to be done, what is going well and what are the challenges.

Agenda

In this meeting we will look at the Video Streaming Service project.

In-progress project presentations are open meetings, anyone may attend. Please feel free to share the invitation with anyone you feel is interested in the topics discussed.

 

@MiddInfoSec: Don’t Get Hooked

You may not realize it, but you are a phishing target at school, at work, and at home. Phishing attacks are a type of computer attack that use malicious emails to trick targets into giving up sensitive information. Ultimately, you are the most effective way to detect and stop phishing scams. When viewing email messages, texts, or social media posts, use the following techniques to prevent your passwords, personal data, or private information from being stolen by a phishing attack.

  • Verify the source. Check the sender’s email address to make sure it’s legitimate. Remember that the name of the sender is not the important part. The sender’s email address is what you are really looking for. If in doubt, forward your message to phishing@middlebury.edu.
  • Read the entire message carefully. Phishing messages may include a formal salutation, overly-friendly tone, grammatical errors, urgent requests, or gimmicks that do not match the normal tone of the sender.
  • Avoid clicking on erroneous links. Even if you know the sender, be cautious of links and attachments in messages. Don’t click on links that could direct you to a bad website. Hovering your mouse over a link should disclose the actual web address that the link is directing you too, which may be different from what is displayed in the message. Make sure this masked address is a site you want to visit.
  • Verify the intent of all attachments with the sender before opening them. Even when you know a sender, you should never open an attachment unless have checked with the sender to verify the attachment was sent intentionally. Word and Excel documents can contain malicious macros which could harm your computer. Other files, such as zip files and PDF files, could download malware onto your system. Always verify the intent of attachments with the sender before you open them from an email.
  • Verifying a message is always better than responding to a phish. If you ever receive a message that provides reason to pause, it is always better to forward the message to phishing@middlebury.edu or to send a separate email to the sender to verify its intent, before clicking a link or opening an attachment that could potentially impact the security of your computer..
  • Change your passwords if you have fallen for a phish. If you think you have fallen for a phishing attack, change your password at go/password and then contact the helpdesk at x2200. It is also a good practice to change your personal passwords outside of the College.

 

Watch for phishing scams. Common phishing scams are published at sites such as http://IC3.gov , http://phishing.org ,https://www.irs.gov/uac/Report-Phishing. These resources will also allow you to report phishing attacks if you should fall victim outside of the College. Again, if you think you have fallen victim to a phishing attack, always start by changing your passwords.

ACTT Extended Team Meeting Agendas for April 19th and 26th, 2016

The new ACT Team process includes Extended Team meetings. These closed meetings allow the Team to work with expert staff and focus on evaluating solutions that inform recommendations.

Agenda

The next two meetings will be discussions with vendors that can help meet the needs for the Video Streaming Service project.

  • Tuesday, April 19th, 2016 – Panopto
  • Tuesday, April 26th, 2016 – Ensemble

Notes for In-Progress Projects April 12, 2016

The new ACT Team process includes in-progress project presentations. These presentations are meant to inform the community about how things are going, what has been done and what still needs to be done, what is going well and what are the challenges.

Agenda

In this meeting we will have two presentations:

In-progress project presentations are open meetings, anyone may attend.

RStudio

Albert Kim and David Guertin

  • http://rstudio.middlebury.edu
  • David creates accounts for faculty and students.
  • In the desktop version, each student needs to install multiple packages; with RStudio Server, a faculty or an admin installs all packages in one location and students don’t need to.
  • R Markdown: combines text, R code, graphics are embedded in one document. Standardized and easier to grade.
  • Some upper-level courses require students to download the desktop version of RStudio, it is important for them to understand this environment. The server version is most useful for entry-level courses and limited use within a course as it reduces the time needed to set up the software.
  • VPN may be necessary for MIIS to access RStudio, this should not be the case. David will work with Chris to see why this may be happening.
  • To go live, we would need to set up with Active Directory. Do we want people to add RStudio via the Course Hub using a self-service model, or do we them to contact AT? David and Joe will communicate about this.
  • Shiny Server Pro: create interactive apps and graphics without needing any tech knowledge. Graphics are interactive, changing the variables changes the graphic display in real time.
  • You can host apps on free shinyapps.io or you can install Shiny Server Pro and serve on your own servers. Free for academic institutions with proof of syllabus. The Middlebury-hosted service is much more responsive.
  • We would like to share these services with other faculty. Albert and Bill will communicate and set up a demonstration, possibly through CTLR programming.

 

Academic Cyberinfrastructure Inventory

 

  • The Project Team is learning a lot about our environment through working on this project.
  • Q: Why does the inventory include services like Facebook, Twitter, Scrivener, etc.?
    • We know these services are being used for academic work.
    • For comparison with similar services.
    • To track the continuum of moving from service to service over time.
  • A viewable/usable version of the inventory should include a filter for Middlebury-supported services.
  • Once the Project Team has completed the categorization phase, the project will be shepherded by the ACTT working with ITS to deploy the information in a web-accessible format. It will include search functions for faculty, staff and students, with some protected information behind authentication for staff that need to track dependencies, for instance.

Notes for Kick-Off on April 5, 2016

Agenda

We will be starting the new ACTT process with a Kick-Off meeting. This is an open, non-mandatory meeting for anyone who is interested in learning about the Academic Cyberinfrastructure Transformation Team to attend. We will introduce the new team members, structure, and thoughts on how the Team activities will be evaluated.

This is an open meeting, please share with anyone who is interested in learning about the ACTT

Notes

  • Mission: “Our mission is to evaluate and recommend technology services and innovations for teach, learning and research.”
  • Joe is teaching a course on “Design Thinking” this semester. Design Thinking includes an “Empathy Phase”

Q&A

  • Q (Melissa/CNS). How will information and requests trickle up?
    • “I have many day-to-day projects where I would love to have a license that exists on the Midd campus, but not the MIIS campus, or I would like to build a server with 1TB of storage to host a web site”
    • “My research center, CNS, is becoming such a large consumer of storage and bandwidth”
    • “On a request from Laurie Patton, I am researching a cloud services that could host our information”.
    • Answer – Joe – Anyone who wants to make a request for technology or technology services for academic use may approach the team. Happy to be an entry point for requests that may go to ITS or other groups.
    • Jim – we have to account for the resource requests during the budget request process.
  • Q (Melissa/CNS). We are a collection of researchers that become PI on large grants, we need to inform others of the implications on the projects that we are running…  So we can write it into
    • We are giving money to non-Middlebury developers to do things that could be done inside Middlebury
    • Jim: not necessarily opposed to using outside resources…
  • Q (Jim): May be Amy McGill can weigh in on the MIIS budget process and how funding decisions are made.
    • Amy McGill
      • MIIS Research Centers are funded with base productivity requirements
      • Campus community infrastructure is for day-to-day use
      • Research Centers seek their own funding for larger projects that need additional resources, they do typically provide for initial as well as on-going maintenance costs.
  • Q. ACTT contribution to the Strategic Planning Process?
    • t.b.d.
  • Q (Melissa/CNS).  Is it too early to start making suggestions for agenda items?
  • Q (Melissa/CNS).  I would love to explore the ability to share licenses across campuses.  We pay out of grant licenses for Tableau, for image processing software…  I drool over some of the licenses that the Geology department has.  This is not a simple request, but I would love to tackle it as a subject.
    • A (Zach/ITS-SR): Let’s talk; more productive if we can get an idea of the specific titles you’re interested in, so we can check what licensing models are available.
  • Q (Melissa/CNS).  I would love to talk about our data storage and access to bandwidth.  Because we use satellite images, large data sets, we are becoming something of a hog on the MIIS systems.   I would like to open a discussion on how we can meet CNS’s research technology needs including storage, bandwidth, and some security issues.
    • Joe: Has anyone done a “needs assessment for the department”?
      • We don’t have a department, we are a research center within a larger campus.
      • I have done a casual needs assessment. 13 TB of storage, external drives, google drives, drop boxes… Need access across three offices.
      • Jim:  ITS can help with a needs assessment and identify appropriate technology solutions, perhaps on campus or in the cloud, ideally consistent with other larger IT initiatives for Middlebury and work with CSN to identify, implement solutions.  We did this for the Middlebury DC office a couple of years ago that included the CSN operation there for example.
  • Q (Bob/MIIS).  Working toward equitable cyber infrastructure across VT and Monterey campuses seems like a an appropriate activity for the Team.

Actions

Joe to build form for collecting evaluation requests.

ACTT In-Progress Project Presentations for RStudio Server and the Academic Cyberinfrastructure Inventory

Tuesday, April 12th from 3-4pm
LIB 105A or Polycom 712833

The new ACT Team process includes in-progress project presentations. These presentations are meant to inform the community about how things are going, what has been done and what still needs to be done, what is going well and what are the challenges.

Agenda

In this meeting we will have two presentations:

In-progress project presentations are open meetings, anyone may attend. Please feel free to share the invitation with anyone you feel is interested in the topics discussed.