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Academic Computing and Communications Center | |||||||||
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ADN Construction Update |
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| Instructional Technology Lab | ||||
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Preparations are underway to open the Computer Center's Instructional Technology
Lab (ITL) this spring. You'll enter the ITL through Room 181 on the first
floor of the Benjamin Goldberg Research Center, right by the Computer Center's
main office and most of our programming staff and networking equipment.
One of the main purposes of the ITL is to offer faculty and their assistants another place on campus where they can digitize instructional content, obtain and create multimedia objects, and develop and author interactive multimedia and hypermedia. We are designing the ITL to address the whole spectrum of "going digital." Faculty who are new to computers may start by using a word processor or presentation software to create class materials, or use optical character recognition to digitize their existing class notes to put them on the World Wide Web. Others may want to pursue a more involved project by authoring interactive courseware for the Web or for CD-ROMs. The ITL will have about eight computers, mostly high-end IBM-compatible PCs and Apple Macintoshes, running MS-Windows and MacOS. They'll have lots of peripheral equipment, like color scanners, digital cameras, a color laser printer, a CD-ROM recorder, and removable disk storage devices. These tools can be used, for example, to prepare photographs, slides, videotapes, and text -- anything that can be digitized -- for use with your multimedia and hypermedia projects. There will be lots of software too -- word processing, desktop publishing and graphics-editing software, multimedia and hypermedia authoring software, conversion utilities, and so on -- to make it easy to put multimedia projects together for distribution on the Web, CD-ROM, or network servers. We also have plans to make the ITL both a test bed and an actual site for advanced high-bandwidth ATM network applications, including video on demand, video conferencing, and distance learning. We'll experiment with other emerging technologies, including ISDN, wireless networking, and computer telephony. Most of all, we hope to have multidiscipline consultants and programmers in the ITL to help you use the ITL's hardware and software and to help you with your authoring too, including writing CGI scripts, Java, JavaScripts, and other programming that fits the bill. We are very exited about the ITL, and about offering UIC faculty and staff another resource for developing multimedia and hypermedia projects. Comments are appreciated; please send them to |
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| Digital Classroom News | ||||
In case you didn't know, the university now has a third digital classroom -- Lecture
Center D2. It opened this spring, and while it does not have the new decor
and all the capabilities of B1 and E1 LC, it does have two high-powered network
computers that can project to a large videoscreen. The computers are a Pentium
120 Windows PC and a PowerMac 9500/132. Both have lots of memory, a large hard
disk, a CD-ROM player, and the UIC standard "digital classroom software suite":
We'll have four more digital classrooms this fall when the remodeling of Lecture Center C is completed. All four C lecture rooms (C1, C2, C4, and C6) will have computer and multimedia capabilities similar to B1 and E1 LC. Better yet, as the university administration continues to show its commitment to instructional technology, plans are underway to deploy additional digital classrooms (large and small). |
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| Coming Soon to BGRC: Macs! | ||||
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The west-siders among you may have noticed the construction in Room
105 of the Benjamin Goldberg Research Center. Unfortunately, the contractor
was unable to complete the renovation over winter break as we had originally hoped.
Nonetheless, we will reopen the lab as soon as we can.
The good news, though, is: Macs! Yes, we're putting lots of Macs in BGRC 105, 23 Power Macs 7200s along with 13 Pentium 75 PCs. Also, the room will be partitioned (well, actually it already is; that part of the construction is done), so one half (with 19 Power Macs) can be reserved for classes, leaving the other half free for public use. And the other good news is: chairs. If certain parts of your anatomy have become sore while writing term papers in BGRC in the past, you'll have something a bit more civilized to sit on this time. But please, no sleeping at the terminal. It will still hurt if your face falls into the keyboard. |
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| New Lab in SEL | ||||
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We've opened another new MS Windows lab in SEL -- SEL
2058, with 27 Pentium 100 PCs. This will reduce some of the overcrowding in
the other east-side labs, for now at least. However, this is the last open space
in SEL, so we are actively looking for more space elsewhere to continue adding
new seats.
The SEL 2058 lab has a new feature: a permanently mounted projector for displaying computer screens to a class or seminar. The new projector will be much more convenient to use than our current LCD/overhead projector system, and will also give a much higher quality display. Naturally, instructors can reserve this room for their classes, if the display and PCs will be of use to them. For more information, or to make a reservation, call the CSO at 3-0003 or send email to consult@uic.edu. |
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| The ADN Connection, March/April 1996 | Previous: Research Super-Computing the the Fast Track | Next: Faculty Computer Camp |
| 1999-9-2 connect@uic.edu |
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