The universities’ “MyFiles” system provides all faculty, staff and students with up to 10GB of secure space to store , share, and back up their data files.
While the Web-based interface for MyFiles provides adequate functionality for backing up and viewing files, it is limited in the sense that you must in most cases copy your files to your computer’s Desktop before you can edit and save changes to them (Windows XP users can use Webfolders to get past this).
Once this connection is established, you will be able to open, edit, and save data to your MyFiles account without ever having to copy it to your hard drive; as long as you are connected, it will appear as if your MyFiles data is stored on your Mac instead of on the network.
For Mac users, this procedure greatly enhances the utility of MyFiles and will probably be their preferred method of accessing MyFiles data.
I’d very much like hear some feedback on this method of using MyFiles; let me know how it works out!
-Jim
(behnke@fordham.edu)
Photo Credit MacBook by kattni
Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic
As you know, in the Faculty Technology Centers, you have access to
Adobe Acrobat Professional and can create/edit PDFs. Some of you might also have the software on your office computer, but many of us do not have this product at home. In this week’s screencast, Jim will show us some of the free tools you can find on the web when you find yourself on a computer without Acrobat Pro.
Save All: Quick shortcut to save all documents
1. Hold the Shift key down
2. Select “File”
3. Click on “Save All” Note, you must hold the shift key down before you click on “File”. Also remember, you should check to make sure you have the correct location and name of the document before saving.
Cycle through documents quickly:
Press “Ctrl” + “F6” to jump from one document to the next
“Ctrl” + “Shift” + “F6” will jump you backwards.
Split screen view of multiple documents:
From the “Window” menu
Click on “Arrange All” to see/work with multiple documents on the screen at the same time
Click on “Compare Side by Side with” to view/work with two documents side by side
Hopefully, you have signed up for your AccessIT ID and have started using MyFiles as a way to backup or store your files online.
If you have, you are probably familiar with the basic features such as uploading, sharing, and downloading files but might not yet know about some of the other useful features you can take advantage of like Webfolders.
So what is a webfolder and why should you use it?
Good question, to get the answer, take a look at the latest screencast Jim has prepared for us:
The Blackboard course shells for the summer semester will be up on April 17th. We’ve started getting phone calls from teachers who want to start preparing their courses for the summer now and don’t want to have to wait so I thought I would post some easy to follow directions on getting a head start:
1. Archive a copy of an “old” course shell (Control Panel: Archive Course).
2. Modify the information in this course shell with the materials for your summer course.
3. When the new course shells become available, use the course copy feature to copy the material from the “old” course into the new course shell (Control Panel: Course Copy: Copy Course Materials into an Existing Course”.
**Remember, in order for your students to see your course, you must make the course available**
(1) Select the course you want to make available.
(2) Click on the Control Panel.
(3) Click on Settings.
(4) Click on Course Availability.
(5) Click on Yes and Submit.
These steps will make the course available, and allow students access into your blackboard course.
If you are new to Blackboard, or would like some help, you can email blackboard@fordham.edu or contact the FTC on your campus.
This tip comes via Crackberry.com which is one of the most trafficked BlackBerry community sites on the net. Chances are, if you are a Blackberry user you’ve already bookmarked this site for downloads/apps or Blackberry help. Here’s one of their helpful posts in the Blackberry 101 series on Keyboard shortcuts.
Hello ITAC blog readers, my name is James Behnke. I have been working with the Psychology Department since last November as their IT Liaison and will be a regular weekly contributor to this blog.
Having worked as a teacher, technical trainer, and I.T. Administrator for a school district, I am keenly aware of how important it is to foster information technology literacy an educational institution. In my efforts to assist members of the psychology department with their utilization of information technology resources, I’ve recently gotten into the habit of creating brief, Web-based multimedia tutorials commonly referred to as “screencasts”. These screencasts, such as the one below, demonstrate the technical operations and software features needed to accomplish discrete, useful tasks using various computer applications.
Going forward, I will be contributing more screencasts to this blog on a variety of topics that I hope will be of interest to members of the Fordham community and serve to raise awareness of the many useful information technology resources available to them.
I am hopeful that these posts will generate a lot of user feedback that will enable me to better target the needs of readers. If you have any questions or suggestions, I can be contacted by email at behnke@fordham.edu.
For the curious and those who want to explore creating their own screencast software demonstrations, the application that I use for creating screencasts is Jing. It is free and very easy to use.
