The Wiki Service has been moved out of pilot phase and is added to the list of ITS services. Wikis can be used for things such as instruction, research or just general collaboration. Access rights can be set to allow any allowed user, including users outside of campus, to edit pages through a web browser. For more information on the Wiki service, go to http://wiki.uiowa.edu/.

Nominations are now being accepted for the President’s Instructional Technology Innovation Award. This award recognizes creative uses of technology in teaching at the University of Iowa. The award is presented at a ceremony in the fall semester and includes a $5,000 cash prize.

Nominees for this award may be any University of Iowa faculty or staff member who has used technology in innovative ways to prepare or present materials in an instructional setting. Teams may also be nominated (students may be part of teams led by faculty or staff). The technology should be “in place and operational” and have been used in a University instructional setting. Nominations may be made by any University of Iowa faculty member, staff member, or student, and self-nominations are encouraged.

Nominations are due Friday, May 2, 2008, at 5 p.m.

More information about the President’s Instructional Technology Innovation Award and the nomination process – including an online submission form – is available at http://at.its.uiowa.edu/atac/awards2/.

Planning continues for the new campus data center, which is expected to open on the UI’s Oakdale campus sometime in 2011. Currently, ITS manages primary and secondary data centers on the main campus.

Data centers are complex facilities, and whether new or old, they require periodic down times so that maintenance and upgrades can be performed. This work – which can take the form of electrical, mechanical, network, or firewall infrastructure maintenance – can require extended outages. (The most visible example of this type of maintenance was the electrical work that took place at the primary data center in June 2007, which required that we shut down the entire facility for several hours.)

Scheduling infrastructure work requires considerable coordination, and it’s important that it occur when it is least intrusive for the entire user community. It’s also important that we have key staff and vendors on-site … and all this coordination can takes weeks – or even months – of advanced planning.

To that end, the Systems & Platforms department in ITS has reserved the following dates in 2008 for data center infrastructure work that may require extended outages:

Saturday, June 14 & Saturday, October 11

The dates were chosen to coincide with periods of low IT activity at the UI. And while the dates may or may not be used for maintenance, it’s important that they’re reserved well in advance, just in case. A list of dates for 2009 will be developed later this year. Generally, SPA staff will reserve three dates each year, in January, June and October.

Managing the data centers for the UI is a complex undertaking. SPA is implementing processes to ensure that our customers’ receive the very best possible service with the least amount of interruption.

For a list of frequently asked questions about data center maintenance, visit http://helpdesk.its.uiowa.edu/articles/datacenter.htm.