Martin Philip, Academic Liaison Librarian, offers tips on using Google Q&A to add interest and interaction to your teaching presentations
Shared from the Lib-Innovation blog.
I've always been a default Microsoft PowerPoint user, however Google's recently added Q&A feature to their Slides product may have persuaded me otherwise.
PowerPoint still seems to be the most ubiquitous piece of presentation software. It's certainly the one programme that I've spent most of my student and professional life using and the one I'm most comfortable creating slides with.
Nowadays, however, there are many presentation programmes to choose from; Google Slides, Apple's Keynote, Prezi, Canva to name a few. They all essentially do the same thing which is to present your topic and/or ideas, using, texts, graphics, photos and video.
Read more of this post at: Lib-Innovation: Using Google Q&A in large teaching sessions
Showing posts with label IT. Show all posts
Showing posts with label IT. Show all posts
Friday, 10 February 2017
Thursday, 24 November 2016
Knowing what you think
Joanne Casey explains why your thoughts matter to us, and reports on changes made in response to feedback.
We are a customer-focused service, and we work hard to ensure that what we offer - in the Library, IT Services, or the Archives - meets your needs. So getting feedback from you, whether it's positive, negative, or a request for a new service, is important to us. It helps us to find out more about what you want and to identify how we can make improvements to our services.
We collect your feedback in a variety of ways; by email, in person, on comment cards, via Facebook and Twitter, or on the new comments board at the Library entrance. We respond directly to any comments that are submitted with contact details, but we also bring all the feedback together in a monthly report, reviewed by managers, and decide how we can act on it.
We look at what you tell us, we discuss whether improvements are possible, and we respond.
In the past year, we have:
The answer to your comments won't always be 'yes', but if it is 'no', we'll explain why.
For example, we've had a few requests for a microwave in the Library. There are lots of reasons why we can't provide this; the lack of a suitable space, problems with keeping it clean (it's not the responsibility of University cleaners to clean kitchen equipment), and cost (a standard domestic microwave wouldn't be a suitable choice). However, we've passed on this feedback to the University, and there's now a discussion underway about allowing students who live off-campus to access College kitchens.
We've also had lots of feedback about our turnstiles, and we know that several of you don't enjoy having to scan your cards to leave the Library. However, the information that we collect on use of the Library - how long people spend here, which departments or student groups are using the Library most, when people are most likely to come in - is really valuable to us in identifying how we need to develop our services (rest assured, we don’t retain any personal data from the turnstiles). So, whilst we understand how you feel, this isn't something that we plan to change.
We get lots of good feedback, about our staff and about our services. This matters to us, because it shows what we're getting right. We always make sure that these comments are shared both to managers and teams, so that our colleagues know that they're making a difference. Recent highlights include:
We are a customer-focused service, and we work hard to ensure that what we offer - in the Library, IT Services, or the Archives - meets your needs. So getting feedback from you, whether it's positive, negative, or a request for a new service, is important to us. It helps us to find out more about what you want and to identify how we can make improvements to our services.
How we gather feedback
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| The well-used Library comments board |
What happens next?
If we can change in response to feedback, we will...
- Adjusted loan limits, so that you can now borrow up to 75 items at a time (previously 50 items)
- Increased the initial loan period from four weeks to eight weeks
- Edited the wording on the renewal screen in My Library account to make the renewal process for interlending items clearer
- Begun providing IT support in the evenings and at weekends, and introduced an appointments system for more complex IT queries
- Increased student spaces in the Library buildings, by opening up former staff offices and the old IT Support Office for student use, as well as opening up the meeting rooms on the second floor of Fairhurst to be used as study spaces in the evenings and at weekends. Over the coming year, it’s likely that other staff will move out of the Fairhurst and these spaces will also become available for study use.
...but sometimes we have to say no
For example, we've had a few requests for a microwave in the Library. There are lots of reasons why we can't provide this; the lack of a suitable space, problems with keeping it clean (it's not the responsibility of University cleaners to clean kitchen equipment), and cost (a standard domestic microwave wouldn't be a suitable choice). However, we've passed on this feedback to the University, and there's now a discussion underway about allowing students who live off-campus to access College kitchens.
We've also had lots of feedback about our turnstiles, and we know that several of you don't enjoy having to scan your cards to leave the Library. However, the information that we collect on use of the Library - how long people spend here, which departments or student groups are using the Library most, when people are most likely to come in - is really valuable to us in identifying how we need to develop our services (rest assured, we don’t retain any personal data from the turnstiles). So, whilst we understand how you feel, this isn't something that we plan to change.
The positives
- Thanks as ever for the super speedy response! 1
- Thank you for the years of endless support #uoygraduation 2
- A huge thank you to @UoYITServices who have been brilliant helping with our move. Great team!
- Exceeded expectations, teaching was excellent and fun 3
- You are THE MOST WONDERFUL IT SUPPORT SERVICE IN THE WHOLE OF YORKSHIRE
- Brilliant library and very helpful staff. I just love wandering around exploring the books and journals on the shelves. A great atmosphere for learning.
Thank you all, and keep telling us what you think!
Who the compliments were for, where not stated.
More information
Who the compliments were for, where not stated.
- Library Twitter feed
- Library
- Borthwick Institute for Archives
Find us on Twitter:
Read more about how we gather & respond to feedback:
Wednesday, 29 June 2016
Before you leave...
Jamie Clark of IT Support explains what you need to do with your IT account when you're leaving the University.
If you're leaving the University soon, you might have wondered when you'll lose access to your IT account. This depends on whether you are a member of staff or a student. Students can still access
their IT accounts for 90 days after their official course end date. Staff accounts will close one day after their employment ends (as required by research funders and auditors).
We would encourage anyone leaving the University to think about the data you have stored in your account. You might have data in your University filestore, Google Drive or email account. What will you still need after you leave?
Whilst it's tempting to take everything with you, you need to be aware of the University's Information Security policies. You must ensure that you do not take anything that would be considered restricted or confidential information:
A common query we get from leavers is how to export University emails to a personal Gmail account. We recommend a tool called Got Your Back if you want to keep the labels you've assigned to your emails. Got Your Back is a command line tool, so it looks a bit daunting at first, but we've put together step-by-step instructions. Or you might prefer to use the simpler Google Mail Fetcher method, but keep in mind that this is much less flexible. It can't export a subset of your emails (it will take everything in the All Mail section of your account) or keep any labels.
You also need to think about whether you own any files that will still be needed by your colleagues and transfer these to someone else. We often get requests from people who need to access files in a former colleague's closed account. We can only provide this once we have received the appropriate authorisation. This creates a delay which may cause problems for your colleagues.
The same applies to any non-personal accounts. For example, if your team uses a shared email address you need to make sure you get in touch with us to nominate a new owner. If you don't this account will also close when you leave. Then we can only transfer the account after we receive authorisation and in the meantime your colleagues won't be able to access it.
It's best to start thinking about all this as early as possible and make sure you leave enough time to take care of everything before you leave. Don't put it off until your last few days, as this doesn't give us much opportunity to help you if there are any issues.
For further guidance (including instructions on how to export data from your account) take a look at our website:
 |
| 'Goodbye' by woodleywonderworks used under a Creative Commons licence |
their IT accounts for 90 days after their official course end date. Staff accounts will close one day after their employment ends (as required by research funders and auditors).
We would encourage anyone leaving the University to think about the data you have stored in your account. You might have data in your University filestore, Google Drive or email account. What will you still need after you leave?
Whilst it's tempting to take everything with you, you need to be aware of the University's Information Security policies. You must ensure that you do not take anything that would be considered restricted or confidential information:
A common query we get from leavers is how to export University emails to a personal Gmail account. We recommend a tool called Got Your Back if you want to keep the labels you've assigned to your emails. Got Your Back is a command line tool, so it looks a bit daunting at first, but we've put together step-by-step instructions. Or you might prefer to use the simpler Google Mail Fetcher method, but keep in mind that this is much less flexible. It can't export a subset of your emails (it will take everything in the All Mail section of your account) or keep any labels.
You also need to think about whether you own any files that will still be needed by your colleagues and transfer these to someone else. We often get requests from people who need to access files in a former colleague's closed account. We can only provide this once we have received the appropriate authorisation. This creates a delay which may cause problems for your colleagues.
The same applies to any non-personal accounts. For example, if your team uses a shared email address you need to make sure you get in touch with us to nominate a new owner. If you don't this account will also close when you leave. Then we can only transfer the account after we receive authorisation and in the meantime your colleagues won't be able to access it.
It's best to start thinking about all this as early as possible and make sure you leave enough time to take care of everything before you leave. Don't put it off until your last few days, as this doesn't give us much opportunity to help you if there are any issues.
For further guidance (including instructions on how to export data from your account) take a look at our website:
Friday, 22 April 2016
Space Apps working with IT Services
Pedro Ribeiro of Computer Science writes about live-streaming at the Space Apps Challenge.
This year is the fifth edition of NASA's International Space Apps Challenge. For the fourth time the local event, on Saturday 23 April, is being hosted by the Department of Computer Science at York. We expect up to 60 attendees to sign-up, making this the biggest edition of the Challenge at York. Attendees form teams and collaborate with other locations and or virtual participants all across the globe. On Sunday 24th April, teams present their solutions to our panel of academics and industrial representatives, with the winning teams receiving prizes locally, but also competing globally with other locations. The global winners get a chance to attend a NASA launch.
Traditionally, locations have been encouraged to live-stream from their sites, so that people all over the world can get a feeling for what it is like to compete at each location during the weekend. York is no exception, and so we have live-streamed our event every year and published recordings of every team presentation on our YouTube channel. The facilities provided by YouTube to do live streaming are fantastic and accessible to everyone. Here at York we have, year after year, improved on our solution, starting with standard webcams, and ending with a multi-cam Raspberry Pi-powered solution.
An excerpt from last year's live stream:
We are very grateful that this year IT Services have offered to supply us with a dedicated 8-core virtual machine to accommodate our video mixer and live streaming solution. Essentially our set-up consists of Raspberry Pi cameras streaming H264 (encoded in hardware) to a local server, where we can conveniently decode the stream, overlay additional text and graphics, and re-encode it in a format suitable for YouTube. This year we are aiming to have a fully fledged streaming capability by having a live video mixer hosted on the IT Services-provided VM. This is something that can only be successfully achieved by allocating dedicated resources to the task. The video mixing software we use is called Snowmix (with an underlying dependency on gstreamer) and has originally been developed by Copenhagen Suborbitals, an amateur space agency, who specifically developed this piece of software to cover their rocket launches.
We plan to start our live-stream on Saturday morning (23 April), provided everything goes according to the plan. Much testing has been done over the last few weeks, but of course, in the spirit of a hackathon we are also raising the bar for ourselves and trying new ideas.
If you would like to join the Challenge at York you can do so by registering at:
The event is free, but the number of places is limited, so hurry!
You can follow us on Twitter @SpaceAppsYork or at facebook.com/SpaceAppsYork, and of course you can watch the live stream at the link below once the event is underway:
This year is the fifth edition of NASA's International Space Apps Challenge. For the fourth time the local event, on Saturday 23 April, is being hosted by the Department of Computer Science at York. We expect up to 60 attendees to sign-up, making this the biggest edition of the Challenge at York. Attendees form teams and collaborate with other locations and or virtual participants all across the globe. On Sunday 24th April, teams present their solutions to our panel of academics and industrial representatives, with the winning teams receiving prizes locally, but also competing globally with other locations. The global winners get a chance to attend a NASA launch.Traditionally, locations have been encouraged to live-stream from their sites, so that people all over the world can get a feeling for what it is like to compete at each location during the weekend. York is no exception, and so we have live-streamed our event every year and published recordings of every team presentation on our YouTube channel. The facilities provided by YouTube to do live streaming are fantastic and accessible to everyone. Here at York we have, year after year, improved on our solution, starting with standard webcams, and ending with a multi-cam Raspberry Pi-powered solution.
An excerpt from last year's live stream:
We are very grateful that this year IT Services have offered to supply us with a dedicated 8-core virtual machine to accommodate our video mixer and live streaming solution. Essentially our set-up consists of Raspberry Pi cameras streaming H264 (encoded in hardware) to a local server, where we can conveniently decode the stream, overlay additional text and graphics, and re-encode it in a format suitable for YouTube. This year we are aiming to have a fully fledged streaming capability by having a live video mixer hosted on the IT Services-provided VM. This is something that can only be successfully achieved by allocating dedicated resources to the task. The video mixing software we use is called Snowmix (with an underlying dependency on gstreamer) and has originally been developed by Copenhagen Suborbitals, an amateur space agency, who specifically developed this piece of software to cover their rocket launches.
We plan to start our live-stream on Saturday morning (23 April), provided everything goes according to the plan. Much testing has been done over the last few weeks, but of course, in the spirit of a hackathon we are also raising the bar for ourselves and trying new ideas.
If you would like to join the Challenge at York you can do so by registering at:
The event is free, but the number of places is limited, so hurry!
You can follow us on Twitter @SpaceAppsYork or at facebook.com/SpaceAppsYork, and of course you can watch the live stream at the link below once the event is underway:
Monday, 18 April 2016
Cyber Essentials: IT security across the University
Matthew Badham explains why Cyber Essentials accreditation puts the University ahead in bids for research grants.
Maintaining good cyber security - and being able to demonstrate that we do so - is increasingly important. It protects your account and data, and it's a requirement of many funding organisations when they consider allocating research grants. Good news then that in December 2015 the University of York was awarded Cyber Essentials accreditation covering all managed desktops and laptops.
Cyber Essentials is a government supported scheme which is designed to help organisations protect themselves against security breaches. It considers everything from the infrastructure of our network to your desktop PC or laptop. Our compliance with the standard demonstrates that the University meets fundamental security standards for all supported IT provision. Gaining Cyber Essentials certification gave us the opportunity to review all the precautions we have in place, ensuring that we provide an optimum level of security.
Having worked through the checklist of standards required, we can now be confident that we meet all the key requirements, both for the certification, and for funding bodies.
If you are a using a managed desktop you can be reassured that you are protected by the systems that the University has in place. Increasingly, funding bodies and organisations are seeking assurance that the IT systems of those applying for research grants are compliant with basic security standards. Quoting the University's accreditation is a useful way of providing this assurance and of enhancing your bid.
Developed by the government and industry, the accreditation is held by an increasing number of organisations who want to demonstrate to customers and external companies that they are taking essential precautions with their IT security. We are one of the first Universities to gain it.
Any managed Windows desktop or laptop, and the infrastructure behind your connection. If you are using an IT Services managed desktop or laptop, and saving your files on central filestore, then you are covered by the certification and can specify this on grant applications for sensitive data. If you are using managed iMacs, managed Linux desktop, or unmanaged devices (eg OS X or unmanaged Windows laptops) you are not certified. Unmanaged devices can't claim this certification because we can't ensure that they meet the required standards in areas like updates, patching, and use of anti-virus software. However, we will look at including certification for managed Linux and Apple devices in a later phase of this work.
Having successfully achieved the first stage of accreditation, we are now working towards the next stage of accreditation called Cyber Essentials Plus which will require us to meet an even higher level of security standards.
If you'd like to find out more, please contact IT Support who will forward your query to Arthur Clune, the Assistant Director of IT Services (Infrastructure).
Maintaining good cyber security - and being able to demonstrate that we do so - is increasingly important. It protects your account and data, and it's a requirement of many funding organisations when they consider allocating research grants. Good news then that in December 2015 the University of York was awarded Cyber Essentials accreditation covering all managed desktops and laptops.
What is Cyber Essentials and why do we need it?
Having worked through the checklist of standards required, we can now be confident that we meet all the key requirements, both for the certification, and for funding bodies.
How does this help me?
If you are a using a managed desktop you can be reassured that you are protected by the systems that the University has in place. Increasingly, funding bodies and organisations are seeking assurance that the IT systems of those applying for research grants are compliant with basic security standards. Quoting the University's accreditation is a useful way of providing this assurance and of enhancing your bid.
Who has Cyber Essentials?
Developed by the government and industry, the accreditation is held by an increasing number of organisations who want to demonstrate to customers and external companies that they are taking essential precautions with their IT security. We are one of the first Universities to gain it.
What does Cyber Essentials cover?
Any managed Windows desktop or laptop, and the infrastructure behind your connection. If you are using an IT Services managed desktop or laptop, and saving your files on central filestore, then you are covered by the certification and can specify this on grant applications for sensitive data. If you are using managed iMacs, managed Linux desktop, or unmanaged devices (eg OS X or unmanaged Windows laptops) you are not certified. Unmanaged devices can't claim this certification because we can't ensure that they meet the required standards in areas like updates, patching, and use of anti-virus software. However, we will look at including certification for managed Linux and Apple devices in a later phase of this work.
 |
| Image courtesy of www.itgovernance.co.uk |
What comes next?
Having successfully achieved the first stage of accreditation, we are now working towards the next stage of accreditation called Cyber Essentials Plus which will require us to meet an even higher level of security standards.
Any questions…
If you'd like to find out more, please contact IT Support who will forward your query to Arthur Clune, the Assistant Director of IT Services (Infrastructure).
Tuesday, 1 March 2016
That sinking feeling...
The horror of losing your work can give you nightmares. Tamsyn Quormby and Pritpal Rehal tell you how to save safely and avoid that sinking feeling...
One of the most common problems that the IT Support team come across is people losing their work, or finding that their files have become corrupted.
Recently, a student came to us when she was unable to access the work stored on her USB stick. She'd been working for hours, and saving her files regularly, but when the thin client she was using was accidentally rebooted, the USB stick became corrupted. We used every trick in our armoury, but we weren't able to restore the files for her. She showed remarkable forbearance at receiving this news; a single tear, and a muttered curse. But it was desperately frustrating to know that if she'd been using the virtual desktop to save to her central filestore instead, the sudden reboot would have caused her no problems.
Not everyone is able to be so sanguine in the face of lost work. Every member of our IT support team has had to console a student or member of staff in tears of distress and frustration when their work has been lost - this can happen when a USB stick becomes corrupted or lost, or when a laptop is stolen or irreparably damaged.
Our advice is simple and unchanging:
Don't rely on a USB stick as the main storage method for your work: Not only can the data easily become corrupted, but the device itself is also easy to lose or break.
Don't save the only copy of your work to the local drive of your computer. If work isn't backed up elsewhere, it will be lost if your computer is stolen or damaged.
So, how should you save and back up your work? We recommend the following:
Every member of the University has a central filestore, their H: drive, with 2Gb of storage allocated to them. Your central filestore is regularly backed up and you can access it from pretty much any device (PC, Mac, Linux, mobile devices...) whether you're on or off campus:
Google Drive offers storage 'in the cloud' (hosted and backed up in multiple locations) that you can access via a web interface or an app wherever you are. As a member of the University of York, your Google Apps offers unlimited quota.
If you lose your work, always contact IT support for advice. We'll do our very best to help you. But to avoid disaster, keep your work safe by saving it to your central filestore or Google Drive.
 |
| See ya later, alligator by Jason Mrachina Used under a Creative Commons license |
Recently, a student came to us when she was unable to access the work stored on her USB stick. She'd been working for hours, and saving her files regularly, but when the thin client she was using was accidentally rebooted, the USB stick became corrupted. We used every trick in our armoury, but we weren't able to restore the files for her. She showed remarkable forbearance at receiving this news; a single tear, and a muttered curse. But it was desperately frustrating to know that if she'd been using the virtual desktop to save to her central filestore instead, the sudden reboot would have caused her no problems.
 |
| A single tear by Lauren C Used under a Creative Commons license |
Our advice is simple and unchanging:
Don't rely on a USB stick as the main storage method for your work: Not only can the data easily become corrupted, but the device itself is also easy to lose or break.
Don't save the only copy of your work to the local drive of your computer. If work isn't backed up elsewhere, it will be lost if your computer is stolen or damaged.
Where to save your work
So, how should you save and back up your work? We recommend the following:
Central filestore
Every member of the University has a central filestore, their H: drive, with 2Gb of storage allocated to them. Your central filestore is regularly backed up and you can access it from pretty much any device (PC, Mac, Linux, mobile devices...) whether you're on or off campus:
Google Drive
Google Drive offers storage 'in the cloud' (hosted and backed up in multiple locations) that you can access via a web interface or an app wherever you are. As a member of the University of York, your Google Apps offers unlimited quota.
Lessons learned...
If you lose your work, always contact IT support for advice. We'll do our very best to help you. But to avoid disaster, keep your work safe by saving it to your central filestore or Google Drive.
Tuesday, 6 October 2015
Five reasons to consider buying a Chromebook as your next computer...
Thinking about your next computer? Planning your Christmas list? David Barrett has some advice for you...
Almost everything I do at work makes use of Google tools - Gmail, Google Calendar, Drive
(containing docs, sheets, presentations), or is browser based (Jira, LucidChart, HipChat), so when my Windows laptop needed replacing I decided to give a Chromebook a go.
It's been nearly a year now and I don't regret that decision. In fact,
if you don't need to install and run specialist software as part of your job, I'd recommend doing the same.
Here are five reasons why:
Pre-Chromebook, my use of Microsoft Office was dwindling. Using Excel to enter my working hours into a spreadsheet was the highlight. But now my timesheet is a Google sheet, so problem solved. Drive is a great way to collaborate on, share and store docs and sheets I'm working on. I've found it far more flexible than working off a shared drive.
All I needed to add were a couple of cheap, plug & play accessories; an HDMI to VGA adapter lets me connect to projectors or screens in meeting rooms, and if I need a wired connection, the USB to ethernet adapter sorts that.
But what if you're not online? The Chromebook and Google Drive does a reasonable job of caching recently used docs so you can type away when offline and changes are synced when you connect to the Internet again.
Printing? When I really have to print something I use the York Print Plus EPrint service. This works by emailing a copy of the doc you want to print to ypp-eprint@york.ac.uk. It's as simple as that.
It's also just as easy to take files away as it is on a traditional laptop. The Chromebook has its own internal storage if you really want to store files, or downloads outside Google Drive and my device has an SD card reader, and of course USB for external storage.
A couple of times I've had to attend a webinar using GoToMeeting, or Blackboard Collaborate, both which require a Java client to run. In these cases I've logged onto the Virtual Desktop Service (VDS) and accessed a Windows 7 desktop in a browser tab.
The technology used to access the Desktop is called HTML5 and is a core part of the Chromebook which does not require installing any special software. IT Services have enabled the HTML5 feature on the VDS so anyone on "any client device" can access Windows/Linux desktops and applications.
Chromebooks are really cheap compared to mid-range Windows laptops. The cost of the laptop I replaced could buy six Chromebooks.
From pressing the on switch it's ready to accept your login details in seven seconds. Once logged in, it's another couple of seconds before it's loaded the Chrome browser and you're ready to go.
The battery goes a long way. The longest period of time I've managed to use it without recharging is two days. Its internal storage is a solid state drive, which provides fast read times and low battery demand.
It also doesn't appear to get slower the longer I use it, which seems to be a feature of Windows machines, as updates are layered over each other, week after week.
The device is encrypted, security is built in, and the whole device is self updating. This is all out of the box and doesn't require you to do anything.
So far, so good. I've found my Chromebook to be an excellent bit of kit and easily up to the job.
If you cannot use one for your main day to day computing requirements, it's certainly worth having one for general office use, taking to meetings or conferences. With its low cost and in-built security, it's a much lower risk than taking an expensive laptop out and about, and is also highly shareable.
 |
| Acer C7 Chromebook by Luis Roca Used under a Creative Commons license |
(containing docs, sheets, presentations), or is browser based (Jira, LucidChart, HipChat), so when my Windows laptop needed replacing I decided to give a Chromebook a go.
It's been nearly a year now and I don't regret that decision. In fact,
if you don't need to install and run specialist software as part of your job, I'd recommend doing the same.
Here are five reasons why:
Number 1: It does pretty much everything I need it to do
Pre-Chromebook, my use of Microsoft Office was dwindling. Using Excel to enter my working hours into a spreadsheet was the highlight. But now my timesheet is a Google sheet, so problem solved. Drive is a great way to collaborate on, share and store docs and sheets I'm working on. I've found it far more flexible than working off a shared drive.
 |
| HDMI to VGA Adapter by SparkFun Electronics Used under a Creative Commons license |
But what if you're not online? The Chromebook and Google Drive does a reasonable job of caching recently used docs so you can type away when offline and changes are synced when you connect to the Internet again.
Printing? When I really have to print something I use the York Print Plus EPrint service. This works by emailing a copy of the doc you want to print to ypp-eprint@york.ac.uk. It's as simple as that.
It's also just as easy to take files away as it is on a traditional laptop. The Chromebook has its own internal storage if you really want to store files, or downloads outside Google Drive and my device has an SD card reader, and of course USB for external storage.
Number 2: You can use the Virtual Desktop Service if you really need to use Windows
A couple of times I've had to attend a webinar using GoToMeeting, or Blackboard Collaborate, both which require a Java client to run. In these cases I've logged onto the Virtual Desktop Service (VDS) and accessed a Windows 7 desktop in a browser tab.
The technology used to access the Desktop is called HTML5 and is a core part of the Chromebook which does not require installing any special software. IT Services have enabled the HTML5 feature on the VDS so anyone on "any client device" can access Windows/Linux desktops and applications.
Number 3: Price
Chromebooks are really cheap compared to mid-range Windows laptops. The cost of the laptop I replaced could buy six Chromebooks.
Number 4: Performance
From pressing the on switch it's ready to accept your login details in seven seconds. Once logged in, it's another couple of seconds before it's loaded the Chrome browser and you're ready to go.
The battery goes a long way. The longest period of time I've managed to use it without recharging is two days. Its internal storage is a solid state drive, which provides fast read times and low battery demand.
It also doesn't appear to get slower the longer I use it, which seems to be a feature of Windows machines, as updates are layered over each other, week after week.
Number 5: Security
The device is encrypted, security is built in, and the whole device is self updating. This is all out of the box and doesn't require you to do anything.
Conclusion
So far, so good. I've found my Chromebook to be an excellent bit of kit and easily up to the job.
If you cannot use one for your main day to day computing requirements, it's certainly worth having one for general office use, taking to meetings or conferences. With its low cost and in-built security, it's a much lower risk than taking an expensive laptop out and about, and is also highly shareable.
 |
| Cockatiel sadly not included Acer Chromebook 11 by Kenming Wang Used under a Creative Commons license |
Monday, 22 June 2015
Wifi: not as easy as you might think
Why is managing wifi on a large scale so tricky? Matthew Seymour explains.
For those who remember a time before wifi, when internet access was via a slow modem and viewing videos an impossible dream, it often seems amazing we can move so much data, so quickly, without wires.
Wifi is now everywhere, almost... It's such an ubiquitous technology that we just expect it to be there, we rely on it and make the mistake of thinking it's an easy thing to implement.
The impression of simplicity is understandable because on a small scale, wifi is pretty easy. Scaling it up to a large building and campus is a different story.
To understand why wifi gets tricky for big networks it's helpful to know a little bit about how it works and one crucial way in which it's very different to a modern wired network. So here's a tiny bit of history.
Most computer networks are built with Ethernet. It was designed in the early 70s and has seen a lot of development over the years. In its early days all computers on an Ethernet segment shared the wire with everything transmitted on the network visible to all machines.
Because it was a shared wire, only one computer could talk at once and part of what made Ethernet so successful was the simplicity of the system for handling this. If two computers talked at the same time, both detected the resulting collision on the wire almost immediately. They'd both stop, then wait a random amount of time before trying again and hoping for the best. This is really effective, up to a point.
As you might imagine, as you increase the amount of data traffic you can reach a point where collisions become so frequent that all the machines spend most of their time waiting to try again. A previously fast Ethernet network could be brought to its knees by excessive collisions caused by too many computers, too much traffic or even a faulty computer belching out rubbish onto the wire.
Fast forward a few years and we no longer use a shared wire, each computer connects to a network switch capable of two-way communication and collisions are (or at least should be) a thing of the past.
If I tell you that wifi uses a shared medium (the air) and that only one station can talk at a time… does that sound familiar? Because we haven't yet found a way to provide a separate universe for each wifi user to occupy, this time there's no option but to share the air.
How different wifi devices use the network affects this shared air time. Older devices that connect at a slower speed therefore take up more air time. They talk more slowly, and while they’re doing so nobody else can get a word in. But even the latest, super fast Macbook with AC wireless will drop to a slow connection speed if the signal level isn't so good, or there's a lot of interference. What people do is even more significant: a single access point might support 150 clients happily if they're just doing email and a bit of web browsing; bursty traffic works well on a shared medium. The same setup might only support two clients streaming Netflix, which requires a reliable high speed connection.
Just as you begin to see how complex the picture is, there's a whole other challenge presented by the shared medium: wifi works in three dimensions.
Imagine our wifi network is a group of people sitting around a table. We know only one can speak at a time without words colliding into garbled nonsense that nobody understands, but it works because everyone's polite.
Now another meeting has started up next door. Because both groups can hear each other the number of people who can cause a collision by talking at the same time is increased.
Then another meeting kicks off in a room above. Because all three groups can hear each other, collisions become even more likely but worse still some of the people upstairs can't hear some of the people downstairs and vice-versa so collisions become almost guaranteed.
Wifi segments the network by using different channels so our three meetings could all take place on separate, non-interfering channels. But it's rare to have enough channels to go round, so for wifi to cover a whole building there's going to be some channel re-use going on across different access points between floors and they'll be in range of each other. This is known as channel contention.
Not only is wifi design challenging, it's also an iterative process because nothing stays the same. Not that long ago most people had one wifi device (laptop) now it's common to have a smartphone, laptop, tablet, console… and maybe throw a desktop into the mix too.
The way people use the network has changed dramatically too. More of us stream audio and video to our devices, placing a much greater demand on that shared air time.
As a result we're seeing some areas where a network design that worked really well for a few years starts to struggle as more is demanded from it. Because of the channel contention issue, just installing more wireless access points doesn't work, and often makes the problem worse.
IT Services are working hard and investing a lot of money in wifi but essentially all this boils down to: getting wifi right is hard and even when you get it right, it won't be right for long.
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| Netflix would need more than 23 days to buffer an episode of Game of Thrones (1) |
Wifi is now everywhere, almost... It's such an ubiquitous technology that we just expect it to be there, we rely on it and make the mistake of thinking it's an easy thing to implement.
The impression of simplicity is understandable because on a small scale, wifi is pretty easy. Scaling it up to a large building and campus is a different story.
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| There’s always a place to escape from wifi (2) |
Most computer networks are built with Ethernet. It was designed in the early 70s and has seen a lot of development over the years. In its early days all computers on an Ethernet segment shared the wire with everything transmitted on the network visible to all machines.
Because it was a shared wire, only one computer could talk at once and part of what made Ethernet so successful was the simplicity of the system for handling this. If two computers talked at the same time, both detected the resulting collision on the wire almost immediately. They'd both stop, then wait a random amount of time before trying again and hoping for the best. This is really effective, up to a point.
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| Network switches - loved by network technicians and kittens alike (3) |
Fast forward a few years and we no longer use a shared wire, each computer connects to a network switch capable of two-way communication and collisions are (or at least should be) a thing of the past.
But what has this got to do with wifi?
If I tell you that wifi uses a shared medium (the air) and that only one station can talk at a time… does that sound familiar? Because we haven't yet found a way to provide a separate universe for each wifi user to occupy, this time there's no option but to share the air.
How different wifi devices use the network affects this shared air time. Older devices that connect at a slower speed therefore take up more air time. They talk more slowly, and while they’re doing so nobody else can get a word in. But even the latest, super fast Macbook with AC wireless will drop to a slow connection speed if the signal level isn't so good, or there's a lot of interference. What people do is even more significant: a single access point might support 150 clients happily if they're just doing email and a bit of web browsing; bursty traffic works well on a shared medium. The same setup might only support two clients streaming Netflix, which requires a reliable high speed connection.
 |
| Wifi design for Ainsty Court, Halifax College |
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| Looking at the building in 3D shows that we don't have enough channels to avoid overlap |
Imagine our wifi network is a group of people sitting around a table. We know only one can speak at a time without words colliding into garbled nonsense that nobody understands, but it works because everyone's polite.
Now another meeting has started up next door. Because both groups can hear each other the number of people who can cause a collision by talking at the same time is increased.
Then another meeting kicks off in a room above. Because all three groups can hear each other, collisions become even more likely but worse still some of the people upstairs can't hear some of the people downstairs and vice-versa so collisions become almost guaranteed.
Wifi segments the network by using different channels so our three meetings could all take place on separate, non-interfering channels. But it's rare to have enough channels to go round, so for wifi to cover a whole building there's going to be some channel re-use going on across different access points between floors and they'll be in range of each other. This is known as channel contention.
Not only is wifi design challenging, it's also an iterative process because nothing stays the same. Not that long ago most people had one wifi device (laptop) now it's common to have a smartphone, laptop, tablet, console… and maybe throw a desktop into the mix too.
The way people use the network has changed dramatically too. More of us stream audio and video to our devices, placing a much greater demand on that shared air time.
As a result we're seeing some areas where a network design that worked really well for a few years starts to struggle as more is demanded from it. Because of the channel contention issue, just installing more wireless access points doesn't work, and often makes the problem worse.
IT Services are working hard and investing a lot of money in wifi but essentially all this boils down to: getting wifi right is hard and even when you get it right, it won't be right for long.
Image credits:
- By Ralf Kühne - used under a Creative Commons license
- By Dushan Hanuska - used under a Creative Commons license
- By Michael Himbeault - used under a Creative Commons license
Thursday, 28 May 2015
Macs-imising IT rooms
With a smattering of terrible puns, Adrian Young explains how we're going about providing iMacs for students.
Some months ago, a student asked why IT Services don't provide Apple Macs in our IT rooms?
Good question I thought, why don't we do this? Is it because the hardware is too expensive, or that the systems to provide the service aren't available or are equally expensive? I decided it was worth having a look into this further to see exactly what we could do.
Putting a managed Windows PC onto a desk is pretty easy for us - we've been doing it for many years and the systems we use to manage them are effective and powerful. To do the same for Macs needed thought and investigation. We couldn't use the same systems to manage the Macs as we do the Windows PCs as obviously they use different technology. We had already experienced this when developing the managed Linux desktop. The fundamentals are the same - it's still some hardware with an operating system and some applications - it's just that the hardware and the operating system are different.
The first thing to look into was how much more would it cost to buy Apple hardware as opposed to the PCs we get from Stone. If it was far too expensive then this wasn't going anywhere, and we would use the budget to buy more PCs instead.
Well, it turned out that it wasn't too bad. Yes, the iMacs cost more but not horrendously so - especially with the educational discount we get from Apple. Mac minis were cheaper but the spec for the hardware was lower than we wanted. iMacs provided the necessary spec and are a neater solution - an all in one system, without separate monitors or keyboards.
So, the financial aspect was ok.
Next question was would we be able to provide a similar service to that of the managed Windows PCs? What systems did we need so that people could log in, get to their filestore, use applications, and print? A quick proof of concept seemed to say we already had available systems to do most of the things we wanted to do.
So, the technical aspect was ok.
Once we had established that this could be a viable option we needed to look at some of the practicalities of doing this.
First of all where would we put the iMacs? Somewhere in the Library seemed the logical solution, it's a popular study space and a good place to try out new services.
Ok, the Library looked promising, but would we use one of the existing IT rooms or find somewhere new? Space is an issue and taking out some of the existing PCs could be problematic. What about the Fairhurst? There's some space there that we could use, and this means that the iMacs are close to the IT Support Office if anything goes wrong.
So, the practical aspect was ok.
Next question. What software do we put on there? Well we already have quite a few applications installed on the Windows PCs that we could use, so MS Office, SPSS, Endnote. That would be a good start. What about the old cliche of using Macs for creative stuff? Should we look at the Adobe Creative Suite? As it's expensive and we don’t have much call for it academically, we decided that we could look at that later. We'd launch the service with a standard set of applications, and see what feedback we receive.
So, the software service aspect was ok.
Now we know what hardware we want, we know what systems we want to run it, we know where to put them, we know what we want on them. It sounds like we're pretty much there.
The outcome of this is that we will be providing a small trial of iMacs on the 2nd floor of the Fairhurst building over the summer holidays. You'll be able to log in with your normal IT username and password, and you'll have access to your personal file store (H: drive): there'll be some familiar applications on there, and you'll be able to use York Print Plus.
We'll see how it goes and see if there is a sufficient demand to continue with this as a service. If budgets allow, maybe we'll expand it a little to other areas, especially for staff, and perhaps look at other software.
It's been an interesting journey to get to this point, there have been many discussions about the best way to do this, hopefully we will deliver a service that will be useful... we will certainly be pushing IT to the Macs.
UPDATE: The new Apple Macs were installed at the beginning of August 2015 on the second floor of the Fairhurst building (where the PC thin clients are). While we finalise the software suite for the Apple Mac service you can use the iMacs for browsing the web, printing and editing documents.
We need your feedback on the service, including suggestions for software and comments on your experience. Have you used the iMacs yet? If you have, please complete our survey here: bit.ly/imac-feedback
 |
| Delicious Apple by cheriejoyful Used under a Creative Commons licence |
Good question I thought, why don't we do this? Is it because the hardware is too expensive, or that the systems to provide the service aren't available or are equally expensive? I decided it was worth having a look into this further to see exactly what we could do.
Putting a managed Windows PC onto a desk is pretty easy for us - we've been doing it for many years and the systems we use to manage them are effective and powerful. To do the same for Macs needed thought and investigation. We couldn't use the same systems to manage the Macs as we do the Windows PCs as obviously they use different technology. We had already experienced this when developing the managed Linux desktop. The fundamentals are the same - it's still some hardware with an operating system and some applications - it's just that the hardware and the operating system are different.
Where to start?
 |
| iMac by Adam Maracz Used under a Creative Commons licence |
Well, it turned out that it wasn't too bad. Yes, the iMacs cost more but not horrendously so - especially with the educational discount we get from Apple. Mac minis were cheaper but the spec for the hardware was lower than we wanted. iMacs provided the necessary spec and are a neater solution - an all in one system, without separate monitors or keyboards.
So, the financial aspect was ok.
Next question was would we be able to provide a similar service to that of the managed Windows PCs? What systems did we need so that people could log in, get to their filestore, use applications, and print? A quick proof of concept seemed to say we already had available systems to do most of the things we wanted to do.
So, the technical aspect was ok.
The practicalities
Once we had established that this could be a viable option we needed to look at some of the practicalities of doing this.
First of all where would we put the iMacs? Somewhere in the Library seemed the logical solution, it's a popular study space and a good place to try out new services.
Ok, the Library looked promising, but would we use one of the existing IT rooms or find somewhere new? Space is an issue and taking out some of the existing PCs could be problematic. What about the Fairhurst? There's some space there that we could use, and this means that the iMacs are close to the IT Support Office if anything goes wrong.
So, the practical aspect was ok.
Next question. What software do we put on there? Well we already have quite a few applications installed on the Windows PCs that we could use, so MS Office, SPSS, Endnote. That would be a good start. What about the old cliche of using Macs for creative stuff? Should we look at the Adobe Creative Suite? As it's expensive and we don’t have much call for it academically, we decided that we could look at that later. We'd launch the service with a standard set of applications, and see what feedback we receive.
So, the software service aspect was ok.
Now we know what hardware we want, we know what systems we want to run it, we know where to put them, we know what we want on them. It sounds like we're pretty much there.
The trial iMac service
 |
| Pixel and her iMac by Mik Ayre Used under a Creative Commons licence |
We'll see how it goes and see if there is a sufficient demand to continue with this as a service. If budgets allow, maybe we'll expand it a little to other areas, especially for staff, and perhaps look at other software.
It's been an interesting journey to get to this point, there have been many discussions about the best way to do this, hopefully we will deliver a service that will be useful... we will certainly be pushing IT to the Macs.
UPDATE: The new Apple Macs were installed at the beginning of August 2015 on the second floor of the Fairhurst building (where the PC thin clients are). While we finalise the software suite for the Apple Mac service you can use the iMacs for browsing the web, printing and editing documents.
We need your feedback on the service, including suggestions for software and comments on your experience. Have you used the iMacs yet? If you have, please complete our survey here: bit.ly/imac-feedback
Tuesday, 12 May 2015
A wonderful new tool for our online research surveys
SPRU have found a new tool to manage research surveys (and organise Christmas parties too!) Rachel McAllister tells us more...
The Social Policy Research Unit sends out a lot of surveys. In the past these were on paper, and this can still be the preferred medium, depending on the target audience. More often now we will want to provide people with an online survey to fill in. We had used Survey Monkey and Jotform in the past, until a particular need and an international collaboration brought us to Qualtrics.
Back in 2013 we were working with colleagues in Melbourne Australia to deliver a tool to measure stress in people who worked in paediatric oncology units. It was a very carefully produced scientific measure and part of it needed to be in a particular format; a central column of statements flanked on either side by a scale of frequency and a scale of stress. None of the online survey systems that we had access to could reproduce this format until we found Qualtrics, which had a great amount of flexibility in its design interface. Another great benefit is that all the data warehousing for Qualtrics is in Ireland and so within the European Economic Area. This is an important requirement of many of our research funders and ethics committees.
Our collaborator in Australia suggested Qualtrics to us as they used it and knew its capabilities. Alongside this flexibility of design, it was very easy to learn how to use it. Our initial training session caused a real buzz of excitement amongst the researchers in the Unit as they grasped the possibilities that it provided for future survey work. As you use it, and the further into it you explore, it tends to reveal ever greater abilities, whilst remaining a very quick and easy way to do a plain, simple form such as "Who wants what food for the staff Christmas meal?".
We found it such a good tool that we invested in a license to cover the whole SPRU staff. It has been used to survey NHS providers about their services for people with dementia, social services practitioners about their reablement services, local authorities about how they allocate services to support carers, as well as to register people for conferences and events. One very useful facet is that it allows you to share the survey that you are creating with anyone (they do not need to have an account) which is excellent for collaborative working with other research institutions. As well as very sophisticated piping, looping, and merging functions within surveys it also allows you to distribute individual surveys to named people within panels of survey recipients. Responses are tracked and notifications sent to your email inbox if required. There are options to export the survey results into CSV, SPSS, Fixed Field Text, XML, HTML and zipped files which helps enormously with the further analysis of results.
We like it so much and saw how beneficial it could be to others on campus in their research endeavours that we took it to IT Services to request that the license be shared campus-wide. I advertised a demonstration of Qualtrics around campus, via all the IT forums, YorkExtra and emailing likely departments to ascertain interest. The demonstration could either be attended in person or via desktop hook-up to the online conferencing software that the presenter in the USA was using. There followed a useful discussion of the pros and cons of central financing of the software. Following up on the interest expressed at the demonstration, we managed to get buy in from about twelve departments. IT Services funded the rest of the license and Qualtrics became a tool for everyone on campus.
Now it is used a lot by students in departments and its ability to handle quite sophisticated requirements fairly easily has meant a lot less support is required from staff. There is a comprehensive help facility available to all users, which benefits staff who have traditionally supported students with this activity. Central University support departments were also keen to use it, with their need to monitor various aspects of student life or support services. It has found a niche throughout the University.
We at SPRU are delighted that for a smaller contribution we can retain this most useful tool. We wouldn't be without it!
The Social Policy Research Unit sends out a lot of surveys. In the past these were on paper, and this can still be the preferred medium, depending on the target audience. More often now we will want to provide people with an online survey to fill in. We had used Survey Monkey and Jotform in the past, until a particular need and an international collaboration brought us to Qualtrics.
Back in 2013 we were working with colleagues in Melbourne Australia to deliver a tool to measure stress in people who worked in paediatric oncology units. It was a very carefully produced scientific measure and part of it needed to be in a particular format; a central column of statements flanked on either side by a scale of frequency and a scale of stress. None of the online survey systems that we had access to could reproduce this format until we found Qualtrics, which had a great amount of flexibility in its design interface. Another great benefit is that all the data warehousing for Qualtrics is in Ireland and so within the European Economic Area. This is an important requirement of many of our research funders and ethics committees.
Our collaborator in Australia suggested Qualtrics to us as they used it and knew its capabilities. Alongside this flexibility of design, it was very easy to learn how to use it. Our initial training session caused a real buzz of excitement amongst the researchers in the Unit as they grasped the possibilities that it provided for future survey work. As you use it, and the further into it you explore, it tends to reveal ever greater abilities, whilst remaining a very quick and easy way to do a plain, simple form such as "Who wants what food for the staff Christmas meal?".
We found it such a good tool that we invested in a license to cover the whole SPRU staff. It has been used to survey NHS providers about their services for people with dementia, social services practitioners about their reablement services, local authorities about how they allocate services to support carers, as well as to register people for conferences and events. One very useful facet is that it allows you to share the survey that you are creating with anyone (they do not need to have an account) which is excellent for collaborative working with other research institutions. As well as very sophisticated piping, looping, and merging functions within surveys it also allows you to distribute individual surveys to named people within panels of survey recipients. Responses are tracked and notifications sent to your email inbox if required. There are options to export the survey results into CSV, SPSS, Fixed Field Text, XML, HTML and zipped files which helps enormously with the further analysis of results.
We like it so much and saw how beneficial it could be to others on campus in their research endeavours that we took it to IT Services to request that the license be shared campus-wide. I advertised a demonstration of Qualtrics around campus, via all the IT forums, YorkExtra and emailing likely departments to ascertain interest. The demonstration could either be attended in person or via desktop hook-up to the online conferencing software that the presenter in the USA was using. There followed a useful discussion of the pros and cons of central financing of the software. Following up on the interest expressed at the demonstration, we managed to get buy in from about twelve departments. IT Services funded the rest of the license and Qualtrics became a tool for everyone on campus.
Now it is used a lot by students in departments and its ability to handle quite sophisticated requirements fairly easily has meant a lot less support is required from staff. There is a comprehensive help facility available to all users, which benefits staff who have traditionally supported students with this activity. Central University support departments were also keen to use it, with their need to monitor various aspects of student life or support services. It has found a niche throughout the University.
We at SPRU are delighted that for a smaller contribution we can retain this most useful tool. We wouldn't be without it!
Wednesday, 21 January 2015
The weather outside is frightful...
The snow may be patchy so far, but it's cold out there. If you're staying home, Joanne Casey tells you how to access IT resources wherever you are.
Did you look out of the window this morning, and want nothing more than the chance to stay under the duvet for a few more minutes? Did your car refuse to start in the cold? We have the perfect solution...
Whether you're working or studying from home, you can access a host of IT resources from the comfort of your very own sofa.
Staff and students can access their University desktop from their own PC, Mac, Linux or mobile device. Connecting is quick and easy, and lets you access your filestore, and a range of applications. To keep the desktop in line with PCs in our IT classrooms and study areas, we've recently added Google Chrome to the list of available software.
The VPN provides a secure connection allowing your computer to access the University network when you are off campus. This means that you can use services including printing, filestores, restricted web applications (eg SITS), and licence servers to give you access to University licensed software. You can download a connection app, or access the VPN via the web.
The services that we offer to off-campus users include remote support (we can connect to your machine to help resolve issues), Google Apps (available wherever you are), and software for your own machine. To find out more, visit our web page:
 |
| Duck on Ice by Geoffrey Kirk. Used under a Creative Commons licence. |
Whether you're working or studying from home, you can access a host of IT resources from the comfort of your very own sofa.
Virtual Desktop Service
Staff and students can access their University desktop from their own PC, Mac, Linux or mobile device. Connecting is quick and easy, and lets you access your filestore, and a range of applications. To keep the desktop in line with PCs in our IT classrooms and study areas, we've recently added Google Chrome to the list of available software.
Virtual Private Network
The VPN provides a secure connection allowing your computer to access the University network when you are off campus. This means that you can use services including printing, filestores, restricted web applications (eg SITS), and licence servers to give you access to University licensed software. You can download a connection app, or access the VPN via the web.
Need more?
The services that we offer to off-campus users include remote support (we can connect to your machine to help resolve issues), Google Apps (available wherever you are), and software for your own machine. To find out more, visit our web page:
Stay warm!
Thursday, 8 January 2015
Weren’t we promised flying cars by now?
It may come as a shock to readers of a more mature vintage to learn that the classic futuristic film Blade Runner was set in 2019. Tom Grady wonders how close we are today to travelling by flying car.
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| 'San Diego Comic-Con 2007' by Jason Scragz. Re-used under a Creative Commons licence. |
And Marty McFly may have been using his hoverboard in 2015 but it doesn't look like we’re going to see them in Currys any time soon (though you can buy them on Amazon where a prominent disclaimer warns the unwary buyer: "this product does not fly"). But we might not be so far away from seeing Ridley Scott's replicants working in your Library.
Westport Public Library in the US recently unveiled a pair of humanoid robots whose job will be "to teach the kind of coding and computer-programming skills required to animate such machines". Named Vincent and Nancy, the two robots have cameras, microphones and motion sensors, and use sonar to detect walls. An article in the Wall Street Journal explains:
Vincent and Nancy can recognize faces and detect where sound is coming from. They have a "fall manager" that helps them right themselves after a tumble just as a human might, grunts and all. They can even "touch" and "feel" with the help of tactile and pressure sensors.
The robots come equipped with programming software, but embedded within that software are compatible programming languages, such as Python, that can be used to expand the capabilities of the NAO bots. Aldebaran [the manufacturer] also has a large development community continuously adding new behavior apps that facilitate everything from high-five gestures to a "wake-up" routine including yawning and stretching.This is what they look like (they're pretty cute):
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| Robot manufacturer Aldebaran's booth at an exhibition. Picture by Axel Voitier, re-used under a Creative Commons licence. |
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| Aldebaran robots like Vincent and Nancy (picture credit as above) |
Now, your initial reaction may be similar to that of Alex Petridis in The Guardian who observed that "there are people out there who'll say that taking 180-degree panoramic photos on your phone while you’re driving sounds incredibly dangerous - in fact, it sounds like the kind of thing you would find yourself doing immediately before accidentally running someone over". But who knows? will.i.am's invention could actually just be one step behind the realisation of Deckard's hovercar.
Further reading:
The Library has a couple of DVD versions of Blade Runner (Director's Cut and Final Cut) and we also have several books discussing its significance and genesis, as well as a copy of the draft script.- Future noir: the making of Blade Runner Sammon, Paul London : Orion Media 1999
- Retrofitting blade runner: issues in Ridley Scott's Blade Runner and Philip K. Dick's Do androids dream of electric sheep? Kerman, Judith, 2nd. ed., Ohio : Bowling Green State University Popular Press 1997
- The Blade Runner experience: the legacy of a science fiction classic Brooker, Will London : Wallflower Press 2005
Tuesday, 23 December 2014
Four rules for creating effective (and beautiful) PowerPoint Presentations
How good are your presentation and PowerPoint skills? Academic Liaison Librarian Ned Potter shares some hints and tips on how to make yours pitch perfect.
Creating and delivering presentations well is an increasingly key skill, both while you're at University and afterwards. You may have to present in seminars, and you may have presentations involved in your assessment - and many job interviews now have a presenting element.
With that in mind, it's useful to know what works and what doesn't in terms of creating an effective set of slides. Engaging slides make a huge difference in how much the audience remembers from your talk, and how responsive they are during it. Yet most PowerPoint presentations are awful.
This is easy to address when you know what matters and where all the useful resources are. One of our Academic Liaison Librarians has created this guide to the four most important rules for creating effective presentations, to help you out – check it out below:
Tuesday, 2 December 2014
Introducing Mobile Device Management
Pritpal Rehal investigates what mobile device management could offer the University.
One of the biggest IT demands over recent years has been for more and more access to wireless connectivity across the University estate. This has been fueled by the fact that many - possibly most - of us are adapting a mobile way of working.
Laptops, mobiles and tablets have become a part of our lifestyle. An important tool, they hold our personal data and become (to some) an extension of who we are. Just like your house or car keys, if you lose your mobile, panic sets in... you start checking your pockets, coat, man bag, your pockets again your coat... ahhh - you know the feeling.
Many of these devices are University owned, as well as (wait for it... another IT acronym) BYOD (bring your own device). So what's the problem? Is there a problem? What are we trying to solve?
We've worked hard to develop and improve our IT Services Desktop PC platform, to provide a fully managed, adaptable and agile solution. Now the question is - can we deliver something similar for the emerging and growing mobile platform? Key to this is how we support and protect our data. Let me introduce MDM - Mobile Device Management.
MDM is designed to manage mobile devices, support users and, vitally, protect and manage corporate data. Over the last six months, IT Services have been working with various University groups who use mobiles to access data as part of the way they work. We ran a scoping exercise to find out how staff use their mobile device, what support they'd like to see, and how we could manage the data and devices en masse.
Information gathered from the groups suggested we look at a mobile solution. We are currently evaluating one MDM product, which offers a number of features including:
We will be testing the technology with a group of departments over the next few months and hope to gain a better understanding, so that we can make an informed choice about having MDM as part of our mobile strategy.
One of the biggest IT demands over recent years has been for more and more access to wireless connectivity across the University estate. This has been fueled by the fact that many - possibly most - of us are adapting a mobile way of working.
 |
| Photo by John Houlihan johnhoulihan.com |
Many of these devices are University owned, as well as (wait for it... another IT acronym) BYOD (bring your own device). So what's the problem? Is there a problem? What are we trying to solve?
We've worked hard to develop and improve our IT Services Desktop PC platform, to provide a fully managed, adaptable and agile solution. Now the question is - can we deliver something similar for the emerging and growing mobile platform? Key to this is how we support and protect our data. Let me introduce MDM - Mobile Device Management.
MDM is designed to manage mobile devices, support users and, vitally, protect and manage corporate data. Over the last six months, IT Services have been working with various University groups who use mobiles to access data as part of the way they work. We ran a scoping exercise to find out how staff use their mobile device, what support they'd like to see, and how we could manage the data and devices en masse.
Information gathered from the groups suggested we look at a mobile solution. We are currently evaluating one MDM product, which offers a number of features including:
- Delivery/deployment in various forms depending on the device owner - University or personal. This give us the flexibility to deliver relevant features and services, and to support a range of operating systems.
- A self service web portal allowing users to register and manage their own device
- Bulk central registration of devices
- Multiple workspaces within each mobile device, keeping work (encrypted area) and personal data separate
- Set global or local profiles, policies and access control to support the data (including mobile apps), users and devices
- Integration with our identity management system (IDM)
- Sharing single tablets to multiple users
- Create a University App Store to deliver required or popular apps to our user base
- Develop our own University apps
- Pre-purchase mobile apps, ebooks and other content for multiple devices
- Encrypted Secure Locker, allowing us to push University data content to all or specific users anywhere in the world. Ideal for sending documents to students during Freshers' Week. We can also 'time bomb' the data, so it will automatically removed from the device after a set period of time.
- Geo-fence a device, limiting where and when it can be used
- Remote wipe for phones that are lost or stolen
We will be testing the technology with a group of departments over the next few months and hope to gain a better understanding, so that we can make an informed choice about having MDM as part of our mobile strategy.
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| Laptop in the Grass by Simon Brown Used under a Creative Commons license. |
Friday, 28 November 2014
How do you solve a problem like the start of term?
Jamie Clark, one of our IT Support Specialists, explains how we made the start of term a more pleasant experience - for students, and for our staff.
The start of the autumn term is the busiest time of year for the IT Support Office. Last year we were
swamped with new students keen to get their laptops, tablets and phones connected to the university network. We literally had queues out the door for much of the first week and people were having to wait a long time to be seen. Overall, at the start of the academic year 2013/14, we received 1000 more queries than we had in the same period of the previous year, putting the IT Support Office under a great deal of pressure.
We understand that arriving on campus can be a stressful time for new students and we didn't want to make the same mistakes again, which is why in March we formed a Start of Term working group. We wanted to identify the problems from last year and make arrangements to reduce them as much as possible.
One thing working in our favour was that this time postgraduate and undergraduate students would be arriving on separate weekends, unlike last year, when everybody arrived over the same weekend. But we also identified several other areas where we could improve...
Last year the XpressConnect network setup tool struggled to cope with the amount of users configuring their devices for the university network, resulting in more students needing to visit the IT Support Office to get connected.
This year, thanks to the brilliant work of the Networking team, the XpressConnect setup tool was available off campus, meaning that for the first time new students could configure their devices for eduroam prior to arriving at university. This helped to lessen the load on arrivals weekend and also meant that new students could have one less thing to worry about on move-in day!
Last year we provided information about IT Services on the University's New students - welcome! page and our own Information for New Users page. IT User Guides were distributed to new students via their departments, with extra copies available at the Library, IT Support Office and Freshers Fair.
This year we wanted to keep those routes, but go one step further. In the first week of September new students were sent an email including details on how to get connected to the university network, where to get IT help and security advice. Further information was made available on our website and linked to in the email.
Last year we had half of all student accommodation covered by the wireless network and we operating a Remote Access Point (RAP) loan scheme to cover areas with no access to wifi.
Fast-forward to this year and the wireless network covers 100% of on campus accommodation, and as such we have retired the RAP loan scheme (relieving both the IT Support Office and the Networking team of an unnecessary administrative burden). We have however kept a stock of Remote Access Points to allow us to quickly deal with wireless issues and black spots as they are reported to us.
Last year the IT Support Office opened for the arrivals weekend to help new students get connected to the network. Unfortunately, we struggled to cope with demand and had queues out the door consistently throughout the first week.
This year for the first time ever we provided support on the postgraduate arrivals weekend as well as the undergraduate arrivals weekend. We set up IT Help Points in the Library foyer and the Ron Cooke Hub on both these weekends - we announced these in the emails sent to new students, and promoted them via colleges and on social media. This was also the first time we’d provided support at Heslington East. We wanted to ensure that residents on both campuses had equal access to help when they first arrived. We had twice the number of staff available on the arrivals weekend as last year too, and overall we found that new students didn't have to wait long to get help.
Last year one of the frequent challenges we had was understanding error messages written in other languages (some errors are difficult enough to decipher when they're written in English!) After English, Chinese is by far the most common language we see on devices brought to the IT Support Office.
This year we had help from former student Irene Chen Shen, who worked with us for two weeks across the start of term and was hired to help translate on-screen messages from Chinese to English. However, having worked in IT Support in China during her undergraduate degree, Irene was also able to assist with other walk-in queries and gave us a greatly appreciated extra pair of hands during the busy periods.
Hopefully the measures that we put in place made things as easy as possible for all the new students to get up and running upon arrival. We conducted a survey amongst the new students last month and the feedback we received has been largely positive. For example, 88% of respondents said that the email we sent out was useful, and nearly half said they successfully set up their network connection prior to arriving on campus. Moreover, satisfaction sampling for the first two weeks of term showed 98% of customers were happy with how their query was handled.
We also asked the IT staff who worked on the Help Points and in the IT Support Office for their thoughts, and overall the feeling was that things were much less hectic than they had been in previous years. The number of enquiries received during the start of term period was down by 1000 compared to last year, meaning that the numbers returned to the levels seen in 2012. This is especially encouraging when you consider that the wireless network was supporting more than 13,000 concurrent connections this October - more than twice the number seen 12 months earlier.
We're already planning for the start of the next academic year. Whilst we've made some significant steps forward this time around, we don’t want to rest on our laurels. If you've got any feedback for us on our start of term service, you can email us at itsupport@york.ac.uk or fill out our anonymous feedback form.
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| Jamie, in live action mode Photo by John Houlihan (johnhoulihan.com) |
swamped with new students keen to get their laptops, tablets and phones connected to the university network. We literally had queues out the door for much of the first week and people were having to wait a long time to be seen. Overall, at the start of the academic year 2013/14, we received 1000 more queries than we had in the same period of the previous year, putting the IT Support Office under a great deal of pressure.
We understand that arriving on campus can be a stressful time for new students and we didn't want to make the same mistakes again, which is why in March we formed a Start of Term working group. We wanted to identify the problems from last year and make arrangements to reduce them as much as possible.
One thing working in our favour was that this time postgraduate and undergraduate students would be arriving on separate weekends, unlike last year, when everybody arrived over the same weekend. But we also identified several other areas where we could improve...
Configuring devices for the network
This year, thanks to the brilliant work of the Networking team, the XpressConnect setup tool was available off campus, meaning that for the first time new students could configure their devices for eduroam prior to arriving at university. This helped to lessen the load on arrivals weekend and also meant that new students could have one less thing to worry about on move-in day!
IT information for new students
This year we wanted to keep those routes, but go one step further. In the first week of September new students were sent an email including details on how to get connected to the university network, where to get IT help and security advice. Further information was made available on our website and linked to in the email.
Completed wireless roll-out by start of term
Fast-forward to this year and the wireless network covers 100% of on campus accommodation, and as such we have retired the RAP loan scheme (relieving both the IT Support Office and the Networking team of an unnecessary administrative burden). We have however kept a stock of Remote Access Points to allow us to quickly deal with wireless issues and black spots as they are reported to us.
Opened for both arrivals weekends on both campuses
This year for the first time ever we provided support on the postgraduate arrivals weekend as well as the undergraduate arrivals weekend. We set up IT Help Points in the Library foyer and the Ron Cooke Hub on both these weekends - we announced these in the emails sent to new students, and promoted them via colleges and on social media. This was also the first time we’d provided support at Heslington East. We wanted to ensure that residents on both campuses had equal access to help when they first arrived. We had twice the number of staff available on the arrivals weekend as last year too, and overall we found that new students didn't have to wait long to get help.
Assistance for Chinese students
This year we had help from former student Irene Chen Shen, who worked with us for two weeks across the start of term and was hired to help translate on-screen messages from Chinese to English. However, having worked in IT Support in China during her undergraduate degree, Irene was also able to assist with other walk-in queries and gave us a greatly appreciated extra pair of hands during the busy periods.
Feedback
We also asked the IT staff who worked on the Help Points and in the IT Support Office for their thoughts, and overall the feeling was that things were much less hectic than they had been in previous years. The number of enquiries received during the start of term period was down by 1000 compared to last year, meaning that the numbers returned to the levels seen in 2012. This is especially encouraging when you consider that the wireless network was supporting more than 13,000 concurrent connections this October - more than twice the number seen 12 months earlier.
We're already planning for the start of the next academic year. Whilst we've made some significant steps forward this time around, we don’t want to rest on our laurels. If you've got any feedback for us on our start of term service, you can email us at itsupport@york.ac.uk or fill out our anonymous feedback form.
Thursday, 9 October 2014
Did you know it's National Customer Service Week?
The Information Directorate are providers of award winning customer service. This week, as Jackie Knowles reports, we used the occasion of National Customer Service Week to promote and share our story with a showcase event.
In March 2014 the Information Directorate were awarded the Customer Service ExcellenceⓇ (CSE) accreditation. CSE offers organisations an external, and independent, accreditation which looks in detail at those areas that matter to customers when it comes to services - aspects such as delivery, timeliness, information, professionalism and staff attitude.
Our showcase invited staff from across the University to come along to find out more about what we do across Library, IT and Archives and what makes us tick when it comes to providing our award winning customer service. It was also an opportunity for leaders and managers from other departments in York to find out more about the CSE framework - both the work involved in preparing for assessment and the ongoing commitment that is required. Holding CSE within Information helps us promote the University as a whole and a selection of other HE organisations have begun to gain CSE accreditation across the whole of their institutions, with many others waiting in the wings and considering following suit.
The afternoon was an informal drop-in based around having conversations with people and it was a great opportunity for us to chat to colleagues about our approach and our services. The CSE standard places an emphasis on developing customer insight and understanding the user experience - and for us, talking to people underpins this understanding. Providing cake along the way helps too!
Customer Service Excellence is a significant undertaking, especially for a department of our size, and although there was a lot of hard work involved in preparing for our initial assessment we have seen a range of benefits come out of the process. Our staff culture has changed and we now are certain that we put the customer right at the heart of everything we do. Our staff have been challenged via working on CSE to become more self reflective and always look to make continual improvements to the services we provide. But perhaps one of the biggest success stories coming out of CSE is how we've come together as a big team to make it all work. For a department made up of three distinct areas this was a particular challenge and CSE has given us a common language and framework to drive forward our work. This was evidenced throughout our work on CSE from senior level managers working together to put robust service standards in place, to a range of practical measures on the ground around sharing of good practice.
The achievement of the standard gives us formal recognition and a badge of quality - but the badge is simply the icing on the cake.
To find out more about our CSE accreditation please visit our Customer Service Excellence webpage or contact Jackie Knowles, Head of Customer Services for further information.
In March 2014 the Information Directorate were awarded the Customer Service ExcellenceⓇ (CSE) accreditation. CSE offers organisations an external, and independent, accreditation which looks in detail at those areas that matter to customers when it comes to services - aspects such as delivery, timeliness, information, professionalism and staff attitude.
Our showcase invited staff from across the University to come along to find out more about what we do across Library, IT and Archives and what makes us tick when it comes to providing our award winning customer service. It was also an opportunity for leaders and managers from other departments in York to find out more about the CSE framework - both the work involved in preparing for assessment and the ongoing commitment that is required. Holding CSE within Information helps us promote the University as a whole and a selection of other HE organisations have begun to gain CSE accreditation across the whole of their institutions, with many others waiting in the wings and considering following suit.The afternoon was an informal drop-in based around having conversations with people and it was a great opportunity for us to chat to colleagues about our approach and our services. The CSE standard places an emphasis on developing customer insight and understanding the user experience - and for us, talking to people underpins this understanding. Providing cake along the way helps too!
Customer Service Excellence is a significant undertaking, especially for a department of our size, and although there was a lot of hard work involved in preparing for our initial assessment we have seen a range of benefits come out of the process. Our staff culture has changed and we now are certain that we put the customer right at the heart of everything we do. Our staff have been challenged via working on CSE to become more self reflective and always look to make continual improvements to the services we provide. But perhaps one of the biggest success stories coming out of CSE is how we've come together as a big team to make it all work. For a department made up of three distinct areas this was a particular challenge and CSE has given us a common language and framework to drive forward our work. This was evidenced throughout our work on CSE from senior level managers working together to put robust service standards in place, to a range of practical measures on the ground around sharing of good practice.The achievement of the standard gives us formal recognition and a badge of quality - but the badge is simply the icing on the cake.
To find out more about our CSE accreditation please visit our Customer Service Excellence webpage or contact Jackie Knowles, Head of Customer Services for further information.
Monday, 6 October 2014
The perils of automatic captioning
Aimee Phillips finds the comedy moments in YouTube's automatic captioning (and then removes them).
I've been reviewing and adding captions to the videos on our YouTube channel, thanks to a gentle prod from our friends over in the University's Digital Marketing and Communications Team at one of their show and tell sessions.
We'd already added captions to our older videos, but the newer ones were still waiting to be done. In the interim, we'd been relying on the automatic captions, but these can be far from ideal. For example...
Which should read: "...each of whom offer the journal you need. Check the dates offered by each provider"
It's important to get this right, and not just so we don't look like we've lost the plot...
As Dan Wiggle pointed out in his presentation, captions are useful for a number of reasons, including:
They do a pretty good job of automatically matching up the timings, but if it's a bit out of sync, you can easily drag the text to the right place in the video:
My life was made easier by the fact that for most of the videos, we'd got a copy of the transcript saved, so I could just copy and paste it in.
For the ones where we didn't, it was relatively quick and easy to use the "Transcribe and set timings" option to type the captions myself. There's a tick box to choose to pause the video as you type, which I found very useful as my typing skills are distinctly average. Again, it automatically syncs the timings for you.
However, if you've got a lot of videos to transcribe, another helpful tip from Dan was to pay someone else to do it (he recommended CaptionsForYouTube). When you factor in what you've paid to have the videos made, it's actually a relatively low cost to outsource this work. Definitely worth thinking about.
If you haven't seen our YouTube channel yet, take a look:
We've got short how-to guides, a Library tour, and my personal favourite, a look into the world of the IT Support Office.
I've been reviewing and adding captions to the videos on our YouTube channel, thanks to a gentle prod from our friends over in the University's Digital Marketing and Communications Team at one of their show and tell sessions.
We'd already added captions to our older videos, but the newer ones were still waiting to be done. In the interim, we'd been relying on the automatic captions, but these can be far from ideal. For example...
Which was actually: "...as well, but your reading list will often include journal articles"
And...
Which should read: "...each of whom offer the journal you need. Check the dates offered by each provider"
It's important to get this right, and not just so we don't look like we've lost the plot...
As Dan Wiggle pointed out in his presentation, captions are useful for a number of reasons, including:
- they help our users with hearing impairments
- they're useful for overseas students who may struggle with regional accents
- people don't always want to have the sound turned up in open plan offices (or of course the Library)
- in general they can be handy for anyone who might have missed a word or two
So how do you add captions?
It's pretty straightforward. YouTube have provided a step by step guide for adding captions to their videos.They do a pretty good job of automatically matching up the timings, but if it's a bit out of sync, you can easily drag the text to the right place in the video:
My life was made easier by the fact that for most of the videos, we'd got a copy of the transcript saved, so I could just copy and paste it in.
For the ones where we didn't, it was relatively quick and easy to use the "Transcribe and set timings" option to type the captions myself. There's a tick box to choose to pause the video as you type, which I found very useful as my typing skills are distinctly average. Again, it automatically syncs the timings for you.
However, if you've got a lot of videos to transcribe, another helpful tip from Dan was to pay someone else to do it (he recommended CaptionsForYouTube). When you factor in what you've paid to have the videos made, it's actually a relatively low cost to outsource this work. Definitely worth thinking about.
If you haven't seen our YouTube channel yet, take a look:
We've got short how-to guides, a Library tour, and my personal favourite, a look into the world of the IT Support Office.
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