myMiami and Blackboard Enhancements Coming Soon

Blackboard and myMiami have become increasingly critical web services for the university community over the past several years. Both are heavily used on a daily basis by students, faculty, and staff. Over the past six months, IT Services met with groups across the university to investigate the future direction for these two services. Out of that investigation came a plan to combine the two services into a single service, based on Blackboard, and to enhance the newly combined service in terms of functionality and reliability.

The new Blackboard environment will allow the university to deliver targeted content and services to individuals based on their role at the university. It will also expand the university's ability to communicate through the use of surveys, discussion forums, announcements, etc. and to offer more services from a single location.

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Miami Joins Ohio's Third Frontier Network, Doubling Internet Bandwidth

Early Sunday morning 2/6/05, Miami "turned on" a fiber-optic connection to the State of Ohio Third Frontier Network - the most advanced state-wide computer network in the nation.

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Oxford Area Wireless Evaluation Planned for Spring

IT Services will be conducting a pilot project during spring semester to evaluate the ability to cost-effectively provide high speed network access to off-campus users using a 802.20 wireless solution. 802.20 is an emerging wireless standard designed to provide users with wireless service without having direct line-of-sight to the wireless antenna. Most other standards require direct line-of-sight to the antenna sending and receiving the signal. The equipment being evaluated is from Navini Networks and will be supported by NEC.

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MU Wireless Update

IT Services is now into the second half of the MU Wireless implementation. A few enhancements have been made to the existing service in the residence halls and the planning for the state-building (academic and professional buildings) installation is well underway.

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Employee Services Online

Last December, IT Services finished work associated with the release of a new BannerWeb module, Employee Services Online. This new addition to Miami's Banner environment allows all employees to access their personal information, such as pay stubs (retroactive to 1999, when the Banner system was implemented), W2 information, employee benefit information, and tax withholding status, at their convenience via the web.

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Integrating Technology into Teaching - Faculty Spotlight

Dr. Jim Aimers is a visiting Assistant Professor in the Anthropology department. He uses a combination of multimedia-enriched PowerPoint and collaboratively developed web sites to bring deeper meaning to his anthropology lecture courses.

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Spring Technology Training Opportunities

• Web-based Training Open Sessions Continue
  IT Services is continuing to offer open sessions for the entire University community on our web-based training tools.
• Spring Banner Navigation Training Sessions Announced
  There will be two Banner 6.x Navigation Training classes presented in the next few months.

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Residence Hall Network Access Management Services (NAMS)

Two new Network Protection Services are scheduled to roll-out to the residence halls beginning in mid-February and continuing through mid-April. The addition of these services is the next step in combating the problems created by viruses, spyware, and the negative impact of infected computers on Miami’s network.

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E-Mail Message Filtering Available on myMiami

An e-mail filtering feature has been added to the myMiami e-mail application. This filtering feature enables users to better organize their e-mail by automatically moving messages meeting specified criteria into designated folders. These filters can be configured to scan all messages or only unread messages based on the To, From, and Subject lines as well as the mail header and other content in the message.

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Banner System Planning

With the successful upgrade of Banner to version 6 in October, 2004, IT Services has begun to take on many new, exciting projects to bring more functionality to Miami's Banner users.

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IT Services Upgrading DNS and DHCP Services

To ensure continuity of network service, IT Services is in the process of implementing a new, significantly more robust, multi-server DNS and DHCP solution from Infoblox. The new servers will be housed in multiple buildings. With the new solution, network operations will be able to continue without interruption in the event of the failure of equipment in one of the buildings.

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Why No Firewall?

Several years ago, when the cost of a firewall ran to thousands of dollars, there might have been an excuse not to apply this protection between your home computer and the Internet, but today it is inexcusable. At this present time there exist armies of compromised computers, waiting to be directed against web sites and Internet infrastructure. All because they were left unprotected and easy picking for enterprising hackers. Could your computer be one of these?

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IT Strategic Plan Web Site - FY05 Mid-Year Update Added

A new document has been added to the IT Strategic Plan web site titled "FY05 Renewal of IT Strategic Plan: Mid-Year Review".

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