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More SmartClassrooms for Fall

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UCI has for some years been engaged in a process of upgrading classrooms to make better (and easier) use of technology in instruction. Dubbed “Smart Classrooms,” these facilities include a PC, audio/video connections for faculty laptops, Internet access, video and overhead projectors, VHS and DVD players, and a touch-screen control system.

Smart Classrooms are a project of the Division of Undergraduate Education’s Classrooms and Computer Support, with assistance from NACS. UCI enjoys over 60 Smart Classrooms, and 13 new ones, many in ICS, were completed last summer. UCI’s goal is to have all general assignment classrooms upgraded by 2008.

To use the Smart Classroom, faculty must authenticate with their UCInetID and password. Faculty who activated their UCInetIDs many years ago are encouraged to call NACS to verify that their UCInetIDs can be used with the current version of the authentication system.

Once a faculty member has used one Smart Classroom, she or he will find the same interface in every other classroom. From the lectern, instructors can control the computer, the VCR and DVD players, the projectors, and even the room lights. Smart Classrooms can even be controlled by an associate by remote control over the Web.

More information on Smart Classrooms, including a current list of upgraded rooms can be found at the DUE-CCS web site:

http://www.classrooms.uci.edu/

Manage Your Password

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An increasing number of network resources are accessible using your UCInetID and password. This is a convenience analogous to a master key, but as with such a key, you want to be very careful to protect it.

You should plan to change your UCInetID password with some regularity, perhaps once a quarter. NACS’s tools for managing your UCInetID have been improved in several ways which will make UCInetIDs more secure, and help you manage your password.

Choosing a password can be a daunting task. You must choose one that no one can guess but you can remember! To make passwords more difficult to guess, the “rules” for a valid password include:

  • Password must be between 6-8 characters.
  • Password must contain at least one alpha character [a-z]. Note that passwords are case-sensitive – they can have both upper and lower case letters.
  • Password must contain at least one non-alpha character, which is neither the first nor last character.
  • Password can’t contain any part of your name, forward or reverse.

The most significant recent change to these rules is that all the standard printable non-alphabetic characters are allowed, and since using such characters makes a password harder to guess or crack, NACS encourages their use.

With a more obscure password, there is always the risk that you yourself will lose your password. NACS now allows you to select a secret “question and answer” that allows you to reset your UCInetID password.

More information about UCInetID passwords is available at http://www.nacs.uci.edu/ucinetid/password.html .

Help for activating or resetting your UCInetID password is at http://ucinetid1.nacs.uci.edu/activate/menu.html .

Improved Activation Web Page

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Many network services are accessible using your campus network identity — your UCInetID. New staff and students use the “Activate” system to initialize their UCInetID and choose a password. Now, the system has been updated to make activation easier. In particular, the process for recovering from a forgotten password is now much simpler.

The previous system required users to negotiate several web pages. Now, all the required prompts are on a single web page, in four sections.

The first section is used to enter personal identification information. The second section permits you to select your UCInetID password. The third section is a new feature, called the Password Reset Question and Answer. By using this feature, you can reset your UCInetID password if it is lost or forgotten. (Previously, it was necessary to come to NACS with a picture ID.) The final section requires users to agree to the UCI Computer and Network Use Policy.

If an error occurs trying to validate the information, or if the password does not meet the required guidelines, then the user is returned to the same page with an error message indicating the problem. All other data entered is restored to avoid re-typing.

To access the activation system and password changers, go to http://activate.uci.edu/

Windows Labs Use UCInetIDs

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NACS has converted a number of computers in its drop-in PC labs to require UCInetID authentication.

For this initial phase, all the computers in Lab B (Engineering Gateway 1140) and half the systems in the NACS lab in HIB 343 use the new PC authentication system. If the system works as expected, NACS will convert all of its computer labs to the new scheme over the summer.

UCInetIDs (and their associated passwords) have been used as a means for delivering computer services for many years. Authentication is a term which means “proving who you are” to a computer. Certain computing resources need to be restricted to use by UCI affiliates and are thus tied to one’s “network identity.” Other times it is necessary, as with the recent student elections and changing one’s phone book data, to tie services to a single user.

In order to be able to use the PC authentication system, you need to sign up at https://authenticate.nts.uci.edu/nt/. A computer is available in the NACS labs for accessing this Web page. The new PC authentication program has been in place for only a few weeks and already over 1000 students, faculty, and staff have signed up.

NACS plans to offer other services in the near future through UCInetID authentication, including access to network file space for EA and E4E users. Authenticating from computer lab systems will thus enhance the range of services available to UCI users while working in the labs.

Fall Quarter Electronic Activity

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With the arrival of Fall quarter come the usual changes on campus – quiet campus walkways turn into bustling thoroughfares, parking spaces once plentiful are full by 9 AM, large crowds are found at eating establishments at mid-day. Similar changes occur in the mostly-invisible world of electronic communication.

Over 4,000 new students have initiated their UCI network access (“activated their UCInetIDs”) since the beginning of the summer. “Activation” is the process by which students learn what UCInetID they have been assigned, agree to follow UCI’s computer use policy, select private passwords for use with personal UCInetIDs, and receive EA (Educational Access) computing/e-mail accounts. UCI students are very well connected – 95% of UCI undergraduates have active UCInetIDs. In fact, only 40 of the sophomore class of 3,000 students have not activated their IDs.

In the past, the activation process occurred almost entirely at the beginning of the new school year. The process began in June this year, as new students attending summer programs were given the opportunity to activate early. As a result, over half of UCI’s new students activated their IDs before Orientation Week. This is an indication of the growing importance of network services among UCI students.

There are other signs of fall quarter activity – over 175,000 e-mail messages were processed on the student EA systems during the first week of class. Over 300 courses had active EEE Course Mailing Lists, and 1,212 messages had been delivered to subsets of 14,198 student subscribers of those lists.

The EEE (Electronic Educational Environment) Web server had links for 155 course web pages as of October 4th, an all-time high for UCI (establishing a UCI class Web page is at the sole discretion of UCI faculty, unlike other campuses recently in the news). The EEE server fielded 94,343 requests during the first week of class.

There are more visible signs of electronic activity as well, as NACS, Information and Computer Science, Biological Science, Library, E-Link, and other computer labs become very popular places on campus. As electronic activity continues to increase, NACS and campus computing supporters strive to keep up with it. This takes time, money, and patience, all of which are particularly precious commodities as the new school year begins.