Who Let the Dogs In?

The Brackett Library brought along some therapy dogs for the first time during finals week this semester. Apart from being very cute and being man's best friend, they proved to be calming for the students who went along to pet and be with the dogs.

What did the students think of this? Here are some of their comments:
"The support dogs in the library were one of my favorite things that Harding has offered. I went before a final and the chihuahua, Tyler, just snuggled up to me, sat there looking at me with his big brown eyes and any anxiety I had just melted away.  So many students were impacted by the power of these animals, one girl said that she wanted to take a dog into her final so she could pet him while taking her test."

"Thanks so much for doing this!!  This was a great idea".

"The best part of finals week--dogs to pet in the library!"

"...I could feel the atmosphere change.  It provided students the chance to step out of their stressful week. People were happier and more relaxed. It's amazing the power that animals have to soothe the soul."

And from a library worker: 
"The dogs provided a wonderful break for students, a moment in their hectic frenzy of final exams to slow down and enjoy something simple and fun.  :)"

Did you miss seeing the dogs on Wednesday? Not to worry they will be back this Friday (December 12) afternoon from 3.00pm to 5.00pm

While a lot of the students will have left the campus by then, those engaged in grading might want a way to relieve some anxiety. So come on over to the library on Friday from 3.00pm - 5.00pm to spend some calming time with a puppy.

Finally I want to share the feedback from the therapy dog handlers. This speaks so much for the great Harding community:

"Jean, just a short follow up on therapy dogs in the library.  I want to extend a heart felt THANK YOU for inviting ABLEPaws to your library.  I hope the event was everything you expected or even more.
My volunteers were so excited to be there and participate.  We honestly have never been thanked by so many different students/staff for coming.  It was wonderful to be a part of and witness.  
Please let me know if in the future we can be of service to your establishment again.  We look forward to serving you again.
Also on behalf of ABLEPaws my volunteers would like to thank you & the library staff for the gifts provided to our volunteers. The gifts were not necessary or required at all.  However, your thoughtfulness has touched our hearts greatly.  Steve, Nancy, Amy, Candee, and I extend a sincere THANK YOU as well as our fur babies!  
Thank you again,
TJ & Bella"

Thanks to Jean Waldrop the other library staff for this initiative. Jean sums it by saying:

"I always get a little anxious trying something new but the smiles on the student's faces and the positive comments I heard made me feel good about the decision to have therapy dogs in the library."

Harding Partners with Ritter Communication

During the week of Thanksgiving, IS&T will be moving our primary Internet connection to Ritter Communications. Ritter is headquartered in Jonesboro, Arkansas.

With its roots in northeast Arkansas, Ritter started as a telephone company providing the first dial tone to many rural communities.  Today Ritter serves 59 communities and more than 45,000 customers in northeast and north central Arkansas and west Tennessee with a full suite of communications services including high speed internet, voice, video, and broadband connectivity.

For the past several months, you may have seen Ritter trucks around Searcy installing fiber optic cable to extend their services into our community.  “We’re very excited to name Searcy among the elite ‘gig cities’ in the nation, and we’re excited to be the internet backbone for Harding University.” said Steve Smith, Vice President of Sales at Ritter.“

Ritter has had great success in offering local businesses in our service areas the kind of advanced broadband services typically found only in large metro areas.” 

Ritter has built their fiber optic network directly into Harding’s Data Center.  This will enable Harding to have a lower cost position, increase their user experience, and take advantage of the broadband connection for future growth applications.

Brackett Library Wants To Serve You

Brackett Library has been busy since the beginning of the semester.  The Library has been open 82 days this semester and has had 123,690 visits to the library, on top of the 66,290 visits to the Library web home page.

Our eight librarians, seven staff members and forty student workers have all taken the time to be prepared and enjoy serving you and our students.  The following is just a small list of ways that we can assist both faculty and students:

• Recommend a Book – This link can be found on the right hand side of the library home page.  If there is an item that you think the library should consider purchasing, just fill out the information for us.

• Research Help – There is a librarian or trained staff (our Information Assistant) available for you 74 hours a week.  (The library is open 84 hours a week so librarians are happy to schedule a time to meet with you if needed).

• Study Space – The library is a place where you can settle in for some study time.  Downstairs provides a space to work in small groups while upstairs is for those who like it a little quieter.

• Suggestion Box – A link can be found down on the right hand corner of the library home page.  Your input matters!

What’s next?  We are already thinking ahead to one of our busiest times – Dead week and Finals Week!  And what are we thinking? Some possibilities are extended hours, late night snacks, and bringing therapy dogs to the library to help relieve a little bit of the stress!  

Necessary Security Updates and Downtime

Hello

A number of security vulnerability warnings have been issued recently. Usually the patches and fixes for these warnings can be implemented without any significant or noticeable downtime. 

However, there are some current security issues that need more immediate attention and will require downtime. The two most significant issues we must deal with are related to a vulnerability to our Oracle databases (POODLE) and security certificates which Google Chrome will flag as insecure starting sometime in November. Some updates will also be performed at the same time.

We will be working on correcting these issues on Saturday, October 25, 2014 from 7.00am to 7.00pm. A number of our services will not be available during this time.

The services that will NOT be available are: 

• The Oracle databases (all of them, including Banner)
• Pipeline
• Banner Forms
• Testing Lab Scheduler
• Argos
• Famis
• Appworx

Services that WILL be available are:

• Internet
• Email (use https://connect.harding.edu, not the Pipeline icon)
• M-drives and other shares
• Echo360
• Canvas (use the direct link - https://harding.instructure.com)

Thank you in anticipation for your understanding as these issues are addressed.

Be sure to thank our Systems and Database Administration team for taking care of this. Who are they? Glad you asked. 

   

Jon WryeLyn BlansettPeter KirbyEric Bond

The 2014 Faculty Technology Showcase - September 25

The Center for Learning with Technology invites you to the fall Faculty Technology Showcase presented for teachers, by teachers. 

The 2014 Faculty Technology Showcase will unlock your classroom potential by exploring what fellow faculty are doing with technology in their courses, both online and face-to-face settings. Don't miss the poster style session format and the opportunity to start a conversation with faculty presenters about their creative uses of information and communication technologies in the classroom.

Event Date and Time: 

Today, 2014, 3:00 PM - 4:15 PM (Come early to the faculty meeting and visit with faculty presenters as they share their experiences with technology integration and learning.)

Location: 

Regions Room, American Heritage (2nd floor)

Attend for a chance to win a year subscription to Amazon Prime. Our first 50 attendees will also receive door prizes. 

Presenters:

• Echo360 - Travis McNeal
• Quality Matters Online Course Design - Chris Davis
• The Flipped Classroom & Pearson Labs - Lisa Ritchie
• Wii Remote - Dennis Matlock
• Camtasia - Steve Warren
• Canvas Rubrics and SpeedGrader - Keith Cronk
• Respondus 4.0 - Anessa Westbrook
• Ebeam and Collaborative Studio - Amy Cox
• Cross-Discipline Teaching - Daniel Adams
• Padlet and Socrative - Bruce Bryant
• Google Docs Collaborations - Bob Ritchie 
• Collaborative Classroom - Crystal Whittington & Rebecca Teague
• Powtoons (animated movies) - Paul Swann
• Social Media - Katie Ramirez
• Voicethread (University Site License) - Connie Shay

Hackers post millions of stolen Gmail passwords on Russian site - Are Harding's passwords safe?

No doubt many of us have seen a headline over the last few days about stolen Gmail passwords appearing on a Russian website. If you haven't you can read some news about it here: Hackers post millions of stolen Gmail passwords on Russian site.

As you know Harding uses Google as our email service. So are our passwords safe?

There is an article in this weeks issue of Computerworld that talks about the issue in general: What you need to know about the Gmail Password Compromise.

More specifically in regard to Harding passwords, John Nunnally advises the following:

"The Russians are releasing the data they have a little bit at a time to keep the story "hot", if for no other reason.  Four days ago they released these five million or so gmail accounts and their passwords.  ...Google is aware of no security breach that allowed this information to be accessed.  They believe these five million accounts were compromised by phishing schemes and malware that does keyboard logging, etc.  In other words, these gmail owners effectively gave away their account information.

Harding.edu accounts are not gmail.com accounts even though Google hosts our harding.edu accounts. So I seriously doubt this list of five million gmail accounts includes any harding.edu accounts.  But that does not mean these Russians do not have some harding.edu accounts in the billion or so account credentials they collected.  I spend a lot of time dealing with Harding accounts that have been compromised, so certainly a number of our Harding users give their credentials away just like these gmail account owners did.

Our conclusion at the time of the original August report was that most of the data was so old that it was of little consequence to most of us. Harding requires regular password changes which all but guarantees that any "old" passwords have been aged out already.  But of course if anyone is ever concerned, they are encouraged to go to password.harding.edu and change their password. They certainly do not have to wait until they receive expiration notices.

As a matter of record -- Anyone with accounts anywhere with passwords over a year old should change them immediately.  Once a year is certainly not too often these days. Hackers do not want you to know that they have your password.  So usually the only way you find out you have been hacked is when you realize your account has been abused. The primary defense we have is to change our passwords regularly in hopes that, if we are hacked, we will have changed our password before the bad guys get around to using it."

Ideas for safe computing

Hey folks.

It’s the beginning of the new school year and we have a new crop of employees that haven’t heard the speech about safe computing. It doesn’t hurt the rest of us to be reminded either. If you watch the news at all you know what a mine field it can be.

The IT department does what it can to protect your data, including FERPA protected student information. We've invested in anti-virus software, encryption software for laptops, encrypted wireless, servers and software to install updates, and a backup system that keeps multiple copies of school data. One copy is even out of state!

Still much of the responsibility falls to you. Here is a brief list of things you can do:

1. Passwords:
1. Choose a strong one with a few numbers mixed in. The password changing page will help you know if the password you are choosing is strong.
2. Never use your Harding password for other sites (online shopping accounts, other e-mail accounts, banking, etc)
3. Don’t write it down
4. Don’t give it away. If you get an e-mail message asking you to verify your user name, e-mail settings, etc. it will not be from us!
2. Phishing: Don’t click links in e-mail messages. Even if it looks like it’s from us. We may send a message saying “go to Pipeline and change your password” but we won’t send you a link.
3. Data: Make sure all of your important files are stored somewhere besides your computer. My suggestion is to store them on your M: drive or your Google drive. Hard drives do fail. We replace several each month. That conversation is sad for those who haven’t backed up their data.
4. Secure wireless: Not only is it secure, but it’s been allocated more bandwidth that the guest wireless.
5. Physical security: Close your office when you aren’t there. Also, a screen saver with a password helps cover you when you forget.

Along these lines we will be introducing a new product named Languard this semester. It is similar to the update product that we have been using except that it will update more than just Microsoft products. We will send more information when the time comes.

Feel free to contact us with your questions and suggestions. We are here to help!