The Michigan Engineering information technology environment is continually evolving. In order to keep the College community informed about what’s happening, CAEN regularly posts news articles on this site. Important notices about current and upcoming service outages can also be found on the CAEN Service Status page.
On Thursday, June 28, Materialise will be providing a Mimics software workshop on the University of Michigan campus, sponsored by CAEN. During this hands-on training course, Materialise experts will take you through all of the capabilities of the Mimics Innovation Suite step-by-step. You will learn more about how Mimics can be used for Engineering on Anatomy. Registration is required to attend.
Topics will include:
This training course is ideal for both beginner users looking to get an introduction to the robust toolbox of the Mimics Innovation Suite, and experienced users looking to optimize their current workflow. For more information and a link to register, refer to the Materialise Hands-On Training Courses website.
The U-M Safe Computing group recently sent a notice to the University community that U-M resources should not be used for cryptocurrency mining. Outside of faculty-approved research and coursework, it is an inappropriate use of information technology resources, a violation of U-M policy, and potentially illegal. CAEN would like to remind the College of Engineering community that this includes running cryptomining processes on computers in CAEN Labs, and remote services like Windows Remote Desktop and the Linux Login Servers. For more information, refer to the U-M Safe Computing article, NOTICE: Do not use U-M resources for cryptocurrency mining, or contact CAEN with any questions.
Over the last few years, ITS has been working to transition sites off of CTools. The transition of CTools Course Sites to Canvas was completed over Summer 2016. Since then, ITS has been working on the transition of CTools Project Sites. Background about this transition was announced in the University Record, and is available on the main ITS CTools Project Sites Transition website.
As part of this transition, ITS recently announced that all remaining CTools Project Sites would become read-only on August 31, 2018, and remain available at least until July 1, 2019. This means that while site owners would be able to view and download the data stored on these sites after August 31, no edits or changes would be allowed. Project site owners can use a migration tool in CTools to review and delete sites, or download content to move to another service (e.g. cloud storage services such as U-M Google Drive or U-M Box):
Exemptions from read-only status will be granted for sites that contain export-controlled data. Site owners who need an exemption should contact the ITS project team with the name of the site, reason for exemption, and how long the site needs to remain active.
Due to the sensitive nature of export-controlled research, there are a limited number of compliant solutions that can store the associated data properly. A current listing of services where this data can be stored is available on the U-M Sensitive Data Guide. Engineering faculty site owners who would like assistance with choosing an alternative service to store their export-controlled data can contact CAEN to discuss the available options.
Collaborative peer annotation tools help students actively engage with textbooks or other reading materials in a course. Instructors assign textbooks, articles, or PDFs, and students annotate these documents and respond to each other’s comments and questions.
CAEN has run a local instance of one of these tools, nb, since 2015. This local service will be discontinued for Fall 2018. Instructors who wish to continue with nb can still use the free MIT-hosted service (where nb was developed).
An alternative service called Perusall has since emerged that provides many of the same features, also adds Canvas integration, and includes the ability to purchase and use textbooks from many publishers. As with nb, instructors can upload their own PDFs to Perusall, and there is no cost for instructors or students (except when purchasing textbooks).
If you are interested in trying one of these tools, Perusall’s help and support resources provide a good starting point. You can also contact CAEN to discuss the options, and get help with any questions you may have.
While most instructors opt for pre-set schedules to make recordings using the Lecture Capture Service, the system allows for manual control in cases where live movement of the camera or impromptu starting-and-stopping of the recording is desired. Previously, using the manual control required a web browser with Adobe Flash support. Flash has been superseded by improved web technologies, and we are happy to report that this last dependency on Flash has been removed from the recording system.
The functionality and appearance is very similar to the previous version. To try it out, simply create a manual recording and choose to connect with the new control interface:
Starting Fall 2018, the old Flash-based interface will no longer be an option. Also note that we still offer M-Cam for manually controlling the recorder from an iOS device such as an iPhone or iPad.