June 2014 Archives

Student email services have changed, on July 1st OIT will complete the process by discontinuing email services @eden (for New Brunswick students), @pegasus (for Newark students), and @clam (for Camden students).

Students began switching to Scarletmail accounts several years ago, so this change should only affect long-time students who set up their email accounts before the transition began. 

Students who still have eden, pegasus or clam accounts should change their email listing at the NetID "manage email addresses" web site to whatever their preferred email address is (change both the "delivery address" and "official address"). If you would like a Scarletmail account you can use the "manage services" tab on the same site to create a Scarletmail account, however you can also use whatever non-Rutgers email system you prefer.

Everyone sending email to a student should remove the "eden", "pegasus" or "clam" from the student's address, and just send to "@rutgers.edu" - provided the student has updated their email listing, the message will be directed to the students preferred email address. If the message is returned to you as undeliverable, try using "@scarletmail.rutgers.edu", and if possible ask the student to update their email address records. 

The eden, pegasus and clam UNIX systems will continue to be available to students for other purposes such as web site hosting. It's just the email portion of those systems that has ended. 


Yahoo and AOL severe mail problems

If you use a Yahoo or AOL email account or know someone who does, please be aware that due to recent changes in those services it may be impossible to send between those services and Rutgers email addresses (as well as many others). The messages will simply disappear. 

This is a complicated issue. For a description of the full problem see this TidBITS article, but briefly put, Yahoo and AOL may reject any email that is forwarded or redistributed through a third party. That affects two things at Rutgers:

  • @rutgers.edu email, which automatically forwards all messages to wherever the addressee wants
  • mailing lists (such as "listserv" and "mailman", but also may include Rutgers "RAMS" service and possibly course systems like Sakai, eCollege and Blackboard). Mailing lists give you a single address, when you send a message to that address it gets redistributed to a larger group of people, such as the students in your course. 

If you use AOL or Yahoo, and use those to send email to an "@rutgers.edu" address, it may not work (it depends on several factors that are difficult to predict. I did some brief testing, messages sent from Yahoo to my @rutgers.edu address did go through, but messages sent from AOL were never delivered). 

If you use other email services (Gmail, Scarletmail, Outlook.com, etc), and have your "@rutgers.edu" messages forwarded there, be aware that anyone who uses Yahoo or AOL may not be able to send you messages if they use your "@rutgers.edu" address. 

Anyone who uses AOL or Yahoo email should check their NetID Email Settings to make sure that their "mail delivery address" is set to use some other mail service (Scarletmail is a good choice). You should also change your "official Rutgers email address" to anything other than Yahoo or AOL, since that will be used for Rutgers mailing lists. 

If you use the Sakai "email archive" tool or RAMS to communicate with your students, you should check your REGIS roster to see if any of your students use AOL or Yahoo as their email address. You may need to ask those students to switch to Scarletmail or any other email service. Or you can send copies of your messages to those students individually. 

This issue must be fixed by Yahoo and AOL, there's nothing anyone else can do (and it appears that Yahoo may already be taking some steps to correct the problem). 

[edited to remove an inaccuracy]
Starbucks has announced that it will heavily fund the tuition costs for its employees who enroll in an undergraduate program at Arizona State University. 

"the company had considered other institutions but kept coming back to Arizona State because of its academic reputation and its ability to serve students on a large scale with its own faculty members."

Arizona State has begun implementing what it calls the "New American University" model that attempts to provide equal access to education to an increasing number of students using innovative methods.

More information is available at the Starbucks College Achievement Plan web page, and more information about the "New American University" model is available at the ASU web site

The Unizin Consortium

Four universities today announced the formation of the "Unizin" consortium, which hopes to jointly manage technical resources and learning materials in order to better shape the "digital learning landscape" (as opposed to leaving it to various, disconnected educational technology businesses). More universities are expected to announce their participation soon.

If it is successful, Unizin may have an impact on what technologies are available to universities, and how they work. Rutgers is not part of the consortium, but this may affect us in the long run. 

To read more about Unizin, read their announcement "Why Unizin", and their "Frequently Asked Questions". 
Previously we mentioned Microsoft Mix, a tool that allows you to create video presentations using Powerpoint. Unlike the older methods that turn a powerpoint presentation into a video, Mix inverts the process and lets you include video and other interactive components in a powerpoint presentation. But Mix only works on a Windows computer. If you're using a tablet, Explain Everything is a product that has a similar design.  

Explain Everything starts out as a blank whiteboard. Tool buttons on the left-hand side of your screen allow you to draw or type. You can also place images, sounds, videos, PDF and other documents, and web sites, all at the tap of a button. Naturally, you can add additional pages to your presentation - and if you add a PDF with multiple pages, each page of the PDF will create a new presentation page. Everything you add retains its individuality, so you can quickly and easily move, resize, or rotate the items on the slide.

Pressing the "record" button starts the narration. Everything that you do while recording becomes a part of the presentation. You can continue to edit and annotate your slides while recording. Explain Everything also has a video editor - you tap to show the recording timeline, you can then delete portions, re-record, or insert new recordings. 

Finally, save your file as an video (.mp4 file) or as a PDF file (with no audio), and your presentation is ready for distribution. 

Explain Everything is available for $2.99 on the Apple App Store and on the Google Play Store

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This page is an archive of entries from June 2014 listed from newest to oldest.

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