IT Services staff have become aware of a phishing scheme e-mail message that is circulating among members of our Illinois Wesleyan Community.  The subject of the message is “Dear my.iwu.edu Account Owner”  Some of the text from the message is below.

PLEASE REMEMBER:  IT Services staff will NEVER ask you to send your e-mail password to us or any of our vendors.  You are privately in control of your password credentials and should never share your password with anyone.

This email is particularly concerning and, in an awkward sense, timely, as we are preparing our move to Google. During this move you WILL be asked to CHANGE your password, but that request will come through official and established University channels on a secure IWU web page.

If you’ve received one of the fake e-mail messages, do not reply to it.  Simply delete it. If you have replied, please contact IT Services immediately at (309) 556-3900. We’ll work with you on an individual basis to get your account secured and back to working order.

Dear “my.iwu.edu” Email Account Owner,

This message is from “”my.iwu.edu”" messaging center to all “my.iwu.edu” email account

owners.

We are currently upgrading our data base and e-mail account

center.

We are deleting all “my.iwu.edu” email accounts due to congestion just

to create more space for new accounts.

To prevent your account from being deleted you will have to update it by

providing the below informations so that we will know that it’s a present

used account.

We have been sending this notice to all our “my.iwu.edu” email account owners

and this is the last notice/verification exercise.

CONFIRM YOUR EMAIL IDENTITY BELOW

First Name: ……………..

Last Name:  ……………..

Username/ID: …………….

Password:   ……………..

Date of Birth: …………..

Last week I attended the National Institute for Technology in Liberal Education (NITLE) Summit.  NITLE helps liberal arts colleges integrate inquiry, pedagogy, and technology.

The keynote speaker this year was John Seely Brown.  The topic of Dr. Brown’s discussion was A New Culture of Learning for a World of Constant Change

The morning plenary on day two of the Summit began with a wonderful discussion entitled The Future of Liberal Education – Coffee and a Conversation with Drs. danah boyd, Michael Wesch, Bryan Alexander, Katie Conboy, and Rick Holmgren.

The first Fall 2011 registration event took place this morning.  This was the first registration event using Banner 8.  Any changes to the system always increase the anticipation level of the ITS staff prior to registration.  We prepare for the event, but there is no way to simulate the high system load registration put on the hardware and software that supports the process. The process went smoothly and was completed shortly after the 7:30am start.

Thanks to all in ITS and at Sungard who wake up early to ensure the registration events are successful for our students!!

Teaching and Learning Workshop: Innovative Possibilities

The Office of the Provost, The Mellon Center and The Ames Library are hosting an Innovative Possibilities Open House in the Thorpe Center (Ames 301) on Thursday, March 31 from 3-5 p.m. Refreshments will be served.

Join your colleagues and learn how they have been integrating new technologies into the classroom.

* 3:00 – 3:30 — Sonja Fritzsche — Integrating video clips

* 3:30 – 4:00 — Leah Nillas — E-Portfolios

* 4:00 – 4:30 — Diego Mendez-Carbajo — Using Moodle in a writing intensive course

* 4:30 – 5:00 — Allison Weiss — Engaging technologies in the language classroom (Skype, Flip videos, tablets)

Please indicate your interest in attending any or all of these sessions so we may provide adequate seating.

Also, feel free to drop in at any time during the event to see demonstrations of some new and emerging technologies:

* Tablets (iPad2, Samsung Galaxy Tab)

* Document cameras

* Interactive whiteboards

* Flip videos

11:45am – 3/30/2011

The MyIWU Portal Server is experiencing problems and is being serviced to restore access.  More information will follow as it becomes available.

We apologize for any inconvenience the service interruption is causing.

***Update – The Mail Server and MyIWU are back in operation – 12:23pm.

Long distance phone service is down.  Campus phones are not able to make long distance calls.  Verizon is looking into the problem and hopes to have service restored soon.  11:30am

Update – 3/29/2011 – 1:00pm – Long Distance Phone service is restored.

We are sorry for any inconvenience the service interruption may have caused.

Please join us on Monday, March 21st from Noon-1:00pm in the Henning Room for an Educause Web Seminar hosted by Educause President Diana Oblinger, and special guest John Seely Brown.

Diana Oblinger and  John Seely Brown will discuss how the vision presented in Brown’s new book A New Culture of Learning is likely to impact higher education.

See http://educause.informz.net/educause/archives/archive_1350478.html

for more details.

Patrick and Rick are in California March 6th – 10th attending the OmniUpdate Users Conference.  OmniUpdate is the provider of the new Content Management System the University is adopting that is replacing the Luminis Content Management System.

The OmniUpdate User Conference provides a a great opportunity to interact with the staff and developers from OmniUpdate, as well as your peers from colleges and universities across the country that are using OU Campus.

Our Sungard DBA will be applying patches to Oracle

home and databases on the morning of 3/5/2011.

Banner will be unavailable from 7:30 AM – 12:30 PM

After careful planning and consideration, and with support from Cabinet and Student Senate, IWU is joining hundreds of other colleges and universities in moving their support of e-mail services and collaborative applications to Google Apps for Education.

Google Apps for Education helps deliver the advanced technology that faculty, staff and students need to communicate and collaborate. With Google Apps for Education, IWU will benefit from integrated e-mail, calendaring, online documents, and site sharing to the campus community.

Our plans are to move to Google Apps for Education in July of 2011.

What does moving to Google Apps for Education mean to you?

•    Google Apps for Education is a secure, private and stable platform.  Google guarantees a 99.9% uptime for e-mail, Google Docs (word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations) and Google Sites.

•    People using Outlook, Mac Mail, Thunderbird, Eudora and MyIWU will not need to make adjustments to send or receive e-mail.

•    Your @iwu e-mail address will not change and your existing mail will be preserved.

•    7+ GBs of storage means users rarely have to worry about a full inbox.  Multiple e-mail accounts can be consolidated if desired (ex. Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail, etc.).

•    Integrated calendar includes subscriptions, group calendars and resource scheduling.

•    Web-based applications are available to access from any computer or Internet-enabled mobile device.

•    Access documents remotely and collaborate in real time.

•    Microsoft Office files are completely compatible with Google Apps – Word, Excel, PowerPoint

•    Google Apps for Education allow us to provide improved services for the entire IWU community including alumni and retirees.

More information will be provided to the IWU community in the coming months.  We will be providing a timeline for implementation and offering informational and training workshops.

This is an exciting project and Information Technology Services looks forward to improving the services available to the campus community!