April 2019

April 2019, Data Privacy and Security

Digital Spring Cleaning

It’s spring cleaning season, and just as it is a great time of year to clean up our physical stuff, it is also a great time to clean up our digital footprints. The National Cyber Security Alliance recommends that a great way to help yourself stay safe online is to take some time each spring to make sure your digital settings and files are secure. Some recommendations for digital spring cleaning are:

  • Review your online accounts, and delete any that you no longer use. Leaving unused online accounts open can make you more susceptible to cyber-attacks. Since you do not monitor the account regularly, you are less likely to notice when something is wrong.
  • Clean out old emails and files that you no longer need. Old files can often contain personal information. So, when you no longer need them you should throw them out and empty your trash.
  • Review the applications on your mobile devices and delete the ones you no longer use. Much like with old online accounts and files, old applications can contain personal data and should be deleted if they are no longer in use.
  • Check your web browser settings to make sure it is handling your data the way you want. Web browsers allow you to decide which information is saved and how your data is shared.
  • Back up your files to a portable hard drive or cloud storage service. Creating a routine for backing up your files can help to ensure that all of your data is recoverable if something were to happen to your computer or mobile device.
  • Update your passwords. It is important to regularly change the passwords that you use.

For more ideas about how to approach a digital spring cleaning, click here to view the flyer from the National Cyber Security Alliance.

If you would like to learn more about how to manage your privacy settings on popular systems and websites such as your web browser, social media accounts, and shopping accounts click here. These resources from StaySafeOnline.org provide information about what security and privacy settings are available on different websites, and instructions for how to manage those settings.

Announcement, April 2019

New Card Readers On Campus

The One Card Office and ITS are pleased to announce that, over the summer, the card readers on doors across campus will be upgraded. Instead of having to swipe your card, you will be able to tap your card flat against the reader to open doors (the tap directly against the center of the reader should last approximately one second). You will also be able to quickly see if a door is locked (red light on reader) or unlocked (green light on reader). The new readers look like the following, and may be mounted vertically or horizontally.

 

To ensure you are ready for this transition, there are a couple things you should do.

  1. Look at the back of your Clark ID. If the back of your ID looks like either of the two samples below (Note: The specific numbers that are highlighted may not be the exact numbers on your ID) then you have the ID required to use the new readers and you don’t need to do anything else. If you’re ID doesn’t look like either of the samples, then you should stop by the OneCard Office on the third floor of ASEC to get the correct ID (hours and location at https://www.clarku.edu/onecard).
  2. If you have the correct ID, there are two test stations on campus you can visit to test your ID and make sure it is not broken, and to make sure you are familiar with how to use the new card readers. There is one test station at the exit to the cafeteria (to the left of the popcorn machine) and a second at the ITS Help Desk in the Academic Commons. You can tap your ID against the test reader, and if it beeps, your ID is fully functional and you’re ready to go. If you don’t hear a beep, there are details on what to do at the test station.

Taking the two steps above will help ensure that your access to buildings is not interrupted as part of this transition.Thank you for your assistance as we work together to improve the security of Clark’s campus.

April 2019, Digital and Information Fluency

Showcasing Your Data with Animations in Microsoft PowerPoint

When it is time to present your data, sometimes printed files such as spreadsheets and documents are not as impactful as we would like them to be. This often means that we use programs such as PowerPoint to create digital presentations of our data. Yet, much like with printed handouts, it is easy for PowerPoint presentations to become flat and a little boring

PowerPoint has a set of tools that can help us highlight the data that is important, and that can add additional visual appeal to the slides that we create. These tools are called animations.

Often when people think about an animation in PowerPoint, they think about the fun special effects that can play in between slides or as a bulleted list appears on the screen. However the animation tools in PowerPoint also allow us to do much more such as highlighting a certain part of spreadsheet, fading a part of a document away to highlight another, adding motion to graphs, and adding effects to SmartArt so that the important parts of our data and processes stand out.

To learn more about how to use animations in PowerPoint, click here.

April 2019, Teaching with Technology

Boost Your Moodle: A Fresh New User Experience

After Spring semester you will find that Clark Moodle will look a little different and we wanted to share the news!

At the end of May, Moodlers will log in to find a more modern look, improved navigation and better accessibility. Some highlights include:

  • A new sliding navigation menu that allows for more space in courses for content
  • Navigation benefits including placing often-used links, such as Participants and Grades, above links to the Dashboard and other courses.
  • A more consistent experience between desktops and mobile devices.
  • A new access point for editing courses which makes creating and changing courses more convenient.

We hope you’ll find the changes refreshing and a benefit to your teaching and learning, and we look forward to working with you to help you learn all about the new Moodle layout.

We’ll be back in touch with more information about the change in the coming weeks. But if you have any questions about Moodle’s new look, please contact Joanne, Michael or Tim in Academic Technology.

(Example Course From the Moodle Upgrade)

April 2019, Tool Spotlight

Using Foxit Reader to Work with PDFs

Foxit Reader is an easy-to-use PDF software that is available for faculty and staff, and is already installed on all Clark owned computers. Foxit Reader allows us to view, create, and annotate  PDFs.

Specifically, some of the things you can do with Foxit Reader are:

  • View your PDF in read mode, full screen mode, night mode, or view just the text of the document.
  • Rotate your PDF pages, and delete any pages you no longer need.
  • View the pages of your file as thumbnails so you can rearrange them via drag-and-drop.
  • Have your PDF read aloud to you (if it was digitally created).
  • Add text to your PDF.
  • Annotate existing text and images with notes, shapes, and highlighting tools.

To access these features, and many others, Foxit Reader provides several tabs that give us access to the different tools.

For instance, the “Home” tab allows us to control how we view our PDFs.

The “Comment” tab allows us to choose how we would like to annotate our PDF so that we can add notes, callouts, texboxes, and shapes to our documents.

To learn more about Foxit Reader you can view the user manual inside of the application by opening Foxit Reader on your computer, clicking on the “Help” menu on the top of the screen, and then clicking on “User Manual”.

If you have any questions about Foxit Reader please contact the ITS Help Desk.