 "Photo: Justin Kenward")
New Year’s is a special occasion. Traditionally, we celebrate the holiday by drinking to excess, making grand promises of self-improvement, and remembering how to count backwards from 10.
Chaffey, however, has bigger plans.
This year will be a busy year for Chaffey’s Information Technology (IT) Services Department. IT has resolved to make changes that will streamline the school website, increase campus safety, and improve our technological resources.
Although it is a bold list of goals, let’s take a look at what these resolutions really break down to.
First under the microscope is the school website. If students are familiar with the website to add a class, check out a book, or access reference material from E-res, they probably have encountered one of the big issues with Chaffey’s website: login.
Each of these tasks requires a different username and password that has to be remembered and entered every time the pages are switched.
Enter resolution number one: single login. According to Michael Fink, Director of Technical Services, IT plans to streamline the site by providing a single login system. Just get onto the website, log in one time, and then renew books, check out E-res materials, and recklessly change classes to your heart’s content.
Fink also mentioned that IT will be adding a “web portal” to the website. A web portal displays information from different sources in a unified way. It is not clear what exactly this would look like, but one thing is for sure: if it will allow students to navigate the school website more quickly and easily (after their convenient single login), it could be a big improvement to students’ web experience.
IT’s second set of improvements would serve to increase campus safety. If safety is the last thing you wanted to think about this year, then do not worry, because someone else is giving it plenty of attention.
IT plans to add a technology called E911 to the campus. An E911 system automatically associates an address with a 911 caller, so that authorities know the location of an emergency quickly after receiving a call. In Chaffey’s case, Fink said the authorities would even know from which classroom a 911 call originates.
Fink also says IT will give some classrooms new speakers for the emergency notification system. Fink recounts that, in the past, students in classes that are apt to produce more noise (such as labs) have not always been able to hear emergency alerts.
Less dire, but perhaps more interesting to consider, is the general improvement to Chaffey’s technological resources. What does that even mean? For 2010, it means faster network performance and less computers.
Recently, Chaffey increased the bandwidth between the Fontana and Rancho campuses to 1 gigabit per second, which means that more digital information can be transferred between campuses every second.
As for fewer computers, this may sound like a cut to student resources, but it’s actually a benefit. Instead of providing dozens of servers (computers that provide resources to the campus), Chaffey can offer just a few by using a technology called VMware. VMware is a type of software that can create and manage virtual computers. A virtual computer is just what it sounds like: everything you would expect from a computer, except the physical computer itself. VMware still requires a physical computer to work, but one such system can provide multiple virtual computers to the campus.
Chaffey is actually already using this virtual computer technology. Last year IT used VMware to decrease the number of servers from 51 to just 7, and that is an amount of weight loss that any New Year’s resolution-maker can appreciate.
So there you have IT. Technology at Chaffey has promised to become easier, lighter, and safer this year, and those promises seem likely to be kept.
“We have a very technology friendly faculty and administration”, said Fink. “Everything we’ve wanted we’ve been able to justify and implement.”
When asked if he could make a resolution for the users of technology at Chaffey, Fink said it would be “to be more security-conscious on campus.” He even gave some tips on how to do so. No promises though — resolutions are always easier to keep if you have a little support from state finances and student fees.
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