You’ve been asked to schedule a Centra event, and know nothing about Centra. You need to know how to make a self running PPT or a Producer movie or a personal address book in GroupWise. You’re supposed to edit your county site in TECO, then add forms to a PDF document. Where can you get the help you need — when you need it?? It’s at your fingertips. Just browse over to the EIT Learning Resources page at
http://eit.tamu.edu/resources.html
There you’ll find recorded training events, tips, blogs, links and more, including:
To get information on a specific topic or application, navigate to the bottom of the page. Type in your search criteria and choose to search EIT pages or the Web. A search of EIT for “GroupWise” returns over 100 results, from Technical Documents and Resources to TNT articles.
More than 260 public Centra recordings are available 24/7 as well. Click the Centra link from the EIT Learning Resources page, then click the Public Recordings link and browse, or search by topic or instructor name. IT specific topics include:
Centra Basics - Getting Started TECO Basics Centra Preparing & Leading HTML demystified Using Centra for Delivering Educational Programs Web concepts GroupWise Calendar Power Point Tips & Tricks Using GroupWise to Plan & Organize Using Adobe Acrobat Excel tips & tricks PDFs, Forms, and More Distance Ed -Delivery & Development Tools
You can you get the help you need — when you need it. It’s at your fingertips. Just browse over to the EIT Learning Resources page at http://eit.tamu.edu/resources.html
The Brazos Valley Macromedia Users Group -Summer Wilson The Brazos Valley Macromedia User’s Group will meet on May 16th from 11:45 to 1:00pm at MicroAge in College Station. For more information visit http://bvmmug.tamu.edu .
The Brazos Valley Web Guild -Summer Wilson The Brazos Valley Web Guild will meet on May 5, 2006 at The Kaffee Klatsch (in the Garden District). For more information visit http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bvweb/ .
4/21/06 - Supervisors-- Building an Inclusive Environment
4/28/06 - Supervisors--Recruiting
Enroll or browse upcoming events or learn more about Centra by clicking the Centra Symposium link from the EIT webpage or going directly to http://eit.tamu.edu/centra.html . Playback any of the 100+ recorded sessions from the Public Recordings link at http://centra.tamu.edu/main/tce .
On the web, kids can learn about great things like ancient history, how to write an essay, or how to be a friend. They can also learn about not so great things. And not so great people can find them. But there’s nothing we can do about that. Or is there??
What can we do to protect children from the bad that’s lurking online?? There’s not an easy, foolproof way. It’s an ongoing battle. But there are tools, like filtering and monitoring programs, and websites and other resources that can raise our awareness and help us in the battle.
There are a number of filtering and monitoring programs available, programs that can do things like filter explicit content, log text chats, and limit online time. Some can email daily logs of sites visited and instant messenger conversations and restrict internet access or access to a specific application (like IM) to a certain timeframe, like 7-9pm M–F and 12-2pm Sat. At home we use CyberSitter to filter content, maintain logs, and cut off internet access at 10pm, our kids’ bedtime. A review of a number of programs is online at http://internet-filter-review.toptenreviews.com/ and more can be found by Googling “parental control software”.
If kids are using instant messenger (1M) it’s important to stay aware and involved. Ask who they’re IMing, and tell them to say hi for you. Or create your own account to IM them, and see when they’re online. It's important to learn the IM language, too, so you know what is meant by PAW (parents are watching), PIR (parents in room) or PLOS ( Parents Looking Over Shoulder). Visit sites like http://www.netlingo.com and http://www.noslang.com/dictionary/full to learn more. Warning- some terms are not for the faint of heart.
Monitoring kids’ online activity may make you uncomfortable, and whether to do so or not is certainly your choice. My children know I keep track of what they’re doing online– it’s a condition of them being online at all.
Kids are likely to say we’re overly suspicious and overprotective, but, as I tell mine, it’s our job to do what we can to protect them from bad things, on the street and on the web. For more information about internet safety and parental controls visit http://kids.getnetwise.org/tools/ and http://www.staysafe.org/toolbo x/. Read about IT security at http://eit.tamu.edu/security.shtml .
Tip of the Month: Moving GroupWise Archives
by Greg Thomas
GroupWise e-mail messages mysteriously disappear when they reach more than 90 days in age. This is an automatic function of the mail server that prevents storage space from becoming critically low due to old e-mails piling up. It’s a necessary process.
Recycling saved e-mail messages such as meeting announcements or program schedules is an effective tool that saves time and hassle in the future. But how do you do that? Archiving is one option that works really well. The more you use it the better and easier it gets. When an item is archived, it moves from the mail server onto the your PC. The archive (and the mail in it) stays as long as you wish or until you get a new computer. Does this mean that you have to lose you valuable library of archives every time a new computer shows up on our desk? Not at all. Moving archives is as simple as copying a folder from your old computer’s hard drive and pasting it onto that of the new machine. Most people are perfectly happy to allow GroupWise to create its own archives folder in the default location. This folder contains several files and subfolders, so moving it all in one piece is the best way to go. To verify where your archive is being stored:
Now locate your archive folder. A simple way to do this is to use Windows Explorer. You can launch Windows Explorer a couple of ways:
Using Windows Explorer (Figure 3) on the old computer, browse to the archive location. Keep in mind an archives folder with only a few messages in it will fit onto a floppy disk, but the folder can get pretty big if you have lots of archived messages. That’s when the USB pen drive comes in handy. To copy and move the archive to the floppy disk or USB drive:
On the new computer, it’s very important that the folder is pasted into the same location as it held on the old machine. That’s because, by default, this is where GroupWise will expect to find it. The good news is that if you were using the default archive location, it is in the lowest, and most easily accessible, directory of the hard drive. There’s no need to go drilling through multiple layers of folders and subfolders. To paste your archive onto the new machine, use the same process with Windows Explorer as used to copy it, but in reverse (e.g. Locate the folder on the disk or USB drive, copy, browse to the same directory as the old machine on the new computer, paste). It’s that easy. Next time you open archives on the new machine, all your old archived messages will magically appear. If you have questions about specific steps to use in Windows Explorer or moving files and folders in general, just contact your regional technology specialist or any of the friendly folks at EIT.
Coming Soon: How to combine archive folders from different computers or mailboxes into one group on a new computer. It's easier than you might think!