TKF Proposals Selected!

The following is a complete list of the presentations selected for TechKnowFile Conference 2010. This year's lineup is looking better than ever. Thank you to all who submitted.

Client Services and Support Stream

Extra, Extra, Hear All About It! Explorations in Calendaring Technology for Promulgating Events
John DiMarco, Computer Science

University life is full of events to add to one's calendar: seminars, lectures, symposia, and other gatherings. But the Department of Computer Science's user community uses pretty much every IT calendaring system under the sun. How can we promulgate departmental events so that as many people as possible can add them easily to their calendars, regardless of what calendar system they use? We do not have a complete solution yet, but progress has been made, and there are promising avenues to explore. See what we've done so far, and consider some directions for the future.

Who is minding your website?
Yvonne Heath, Greg Mount, Michael Clark & Ted Sikorski, Presentation followed by open discussion & questions.

Is your IT department stretched to its limit? No in-house resources? Web Services has affordable options for you. Hear about UofTs new LAMP service, Wordpress and Drupal content management systems. All hosted and maintained by us.

Unicorns via Horses, Horns and Glue: Automated Software Deployment in Windows
John Hancock, Computer Science

Unlike many versions of Linux, Windows doesn't have a built-in application deployment mechanism like Apt or Yum. There are excellent commercial packages available, but they can be expensive. Explore how to create free, automated, silent MSI and EXE installers for Windows that can be deployed through Active Directory or PStools. I'll talk about the challenges of creating these using VBScript, Autoit and other software and scripting languages, strategies used to create silent installers for a wide variety of commonly used applications, and the challenges going forward in keeping up with new installation and security technologies.

Atlas: Lab Reporting and Monitoring Tool
Elias Karamitsos, Information and Instructional Technology Services

Atlas is a computer lab monitoring and reporting tool developed by UTSC Information and Instructional Technology Services to enable the Student Help Desk document incidents and student inquiries and track lab policy violations. It provides real-time graphical view showing printer status, workstation usage and account log on duration. Atlas front end component runs as an active desktop application on the help desk computer making it easy and practical to account for all user inquiries and incidents and therefore provide statistical reports that are representative of the actual volume and type of student inquiries and issues encountered in the labs.

Making the most of the team you have: How to help your staff help you help
James Lawson, Information Commons

Doing more with less is a necessity of most client services on campus. This presentation will focus on practices that will make your service point better both for your clients and your staff.

Topics will include:

• How to structure work-flow: Designing for a self-directed team
• How to hire for fit: Modeling the work environment in the selection process
• Getting professional work from casual employees: Tools and tips from the trenches
• The key drivers of employee engagement: How your leadership matters

Boot from VHD in Windows 7
Jai Pandey, University of Toronto Schools (UTS)

The ability to boot from a VHD file was introduced with Windows 7. This feature, coupled with the use of differencing disks enables easy backups of entire hard disk images and creation of restore points. Differencing disks are also useful when there is a need for a base hard drive image that needs slight customization for different groups of users or workstations such as staff and students.

In the presentation I will demonstrate:

• How to create a VHD using GUI and command line tools
• Installing Windows 7 into a VHD
• Creating boot entries in the boot manager
• How to create a differencing disk
• Backing up and reverting disk images
• Using the Disk to VHD tool to convert physical disks to VHDs

Designing a Website that Students Will Enjoy
Chad Holden, I+TS/Integrated Client Services

In this presentation we will give you industry tips and tricks on designing the best looking website while keeping in check with the University's web standards guidelines, focusing on Designing for Usability, Functionality and Accessibility.
Co-Presenter: Michael Clark

UTORmail - a bit on the past, more about the present, and lots on the future
Paul Ruppert, I+TS/Integrated Client Services

Email at UofT is in a state of flux. Here's what we know about communicating with our students. Here's what we have learned from looking at outsourcing options.
If you have an opinion, please bring it to this session. Together, let's help make an informed decision on the future of email at the University.

Windows 7 Deployment Methods
Ian Thomas and Tony Castro, I+TS/Integrated Client Services

This session will provide an overview of the various Windows 7 deployment methods and the benefits and drawbacks of each.

How to configure a Windows domain for smart card authentication
Ian Thomas, I+TS/Integrated Client Services

In this session I will walk through the steps required to configure a Windows domain for smart card based authentication.

IT Assessment Stream

Vegan Cats and the Oncoming Tsunami
Marden Paul, Office of the CIO

Vegan Cat problems represent a new paradigm in thinking about solving long term issues that humans tend to ignore until it's too late.
This session discusses historical examples of those who've successfully discovered these issues before it was too late, and some potential problems having university-related themes about which we should be thinking.

Network Monitoring With Open Source Tools
Glenn Attwood, UTSC Information and Instructional Technology Services

There are a number of high quality Open Source tools that can be used to gain an insight to the health and functionality of your network. This presentation will explore a few of these tools that are currently being used at UTSC. Each tool will be shown live with a discussion on the pros and cons. Tools show will be MRTG, Smokeping, Netdisco and possibly more as time allows.

 
Enterprise Applications Stream

Transforming the Business of Education
Graham Kemp, Enterprise Applications and Solutions Integration

The University of Toronto has an abundance of technology and resources to transform the ways in which the university conducts its business and needs to move away from the mundane processing of transactions. The technologies we have available and in particular the opportunity to change the way we interact with our students with the “New Generation Students Information Services” provides the impetus for change. This is not necessarily and technology issue but rather one of how we think of our processes and a willingness to look well beyond our immediate and local needs to the broader enterprise and service delivery for the future. This presentation will focus on how we can successfully transform our processes, using examples from the university community and beyond and discussing the challenges to be faced.

eMarX
Cesar Mejia, Andrew Wang, UTM Office of the Registrar

As a part of the NGSIS initiative, the University of Toronto Mississauga has been collaborating with the development of an application that will extend the functionality of ROSI Express, Student Web Services (SWS) using one of the UTM web applications (Electronic Marks Submission). The new project is called eMarX and it will use direct ROSI access to provide immediate and improved services to all students, faculty and staff. This project will develop the standards, procedures and polices for accessing ROSI (or the future NGSIS) and the joint development, enhancement and maintenance of all student services by EASI and any University unit that develops and maintains technical services.

Some important aspects of this project are:

• EmarX application is a port of the UTM Electronic marks/grade submission application to a java web application
• Running as a portlet on Liferay.
• To implement rich user web application
• On an enterprise platform using SOA.
• Using industry standard secured environment
• To establish standards for enterprise development at UofT
• To implement the UofT Admin Portal

Bringing Card Reading Technology In-house to Control Access and Information
Julia Bronfenbrener and Syed Kashif, UTSC Information & Instructional Technology Services

Information & Instructional Technology Services at UTSC will present a card-reading application that can be adapted for a variety of uses. Faculty, staff and student T-cards can be swiped to perform such functions as granting access to secured facilities and services, attendance monitoring, and generating automatic e-mails to card swipers. This presentation will show you how adaptable the application is using hardware that plugs into a USB port, and will provide you with ideas for using it to control access, gather business intelligence data, and disseminate information in small- and large-scale environments.

Romancing the Phone: How are we answering the call?
Michael Moncada, OISE, Education Commons

In the last couple decades, mobile phones (i.e. iPhone, Palm Pre, Android-based, etc.) and Internet enabled handheld devices in North America, Europe and Asia has made many leaps and bounds. Many universities have begun to embrace this new mobile venue by adapting their e-services to fit the handheld mobile form factor of these devices. This presentation aims to offer insight into the creativity and ingenuity that has been used at other academic institutions, and will provide simple recipes for tweaking and enhancing our new and existing e-services to make them mobile-friendly. In addition, you will be exposed to some exciting possibilities that could be used to fuel and propel U of T to the forefront of mobile development in the context of mobile services offered within a University environment.

Core vs Context: Lessons From the Trenches of Application Development
Mark Hume, Education Commons, OISE

This presentation explores some real-world strategies for balancing application development demands for - functionality, speed, efficiency, robustness, flexibility, cost, usability, timeliness, supportability, scalability... you get the idea.
Topics will include:

• How to Recognize the Client
• Anticipating Change
• Focusing on the Application Purpose
• Avoiding Self-Inflicted Maintenance
• One for All and All for One (or déjà vu)
• Knowing What We Know

Learn about some techniques:

• Why serializing is your friend
• How to rely on the electricity
• About selective amnesia
• Minding your own business.

Implementation of Wordpress MU (Multi-User) for Campus Student Groups
Do Anh Vu & Won Yoo, Division of Student Life

Currently there are 116 Campus groups taking advantage of our implementation of Wordpress MU to manage their websites. Since its inception and implementation, more student groups have been choosing Wordpress over regular static HTML as their choice to manage their web content online. It’s fast and easy to start and just as easy to maintain for students with busy schedules. We will showcase our implementation and some modifications that were made in order to accommodate some of the student needs here on campus.

 
Information & Data Security Stream

Architecting Information Security - a Conceptual Overview
Martin Loeffler, I+TS/Information Security

Martin Loeffler, Director of Information Security at the University of Toronto, discusses what Information Security means in the context of Risk Management, and answers the questions: "How much security do you need?", "How can you prove it?", and "How will you know when you have it?"

Access to Web Services - What’s New and Not So New
Mike Wiseman, I+TS/Information Security

Interested in making one login name and password work with your various websites? Yes, it’s single sign-on and more! Access your favourite website and sit back as information about you gets transparently sent to the site. Don’t like that? Then tell the service that knows about you about what information to release. Don’t want the website to know your name? Then configure a pseudonym. Aren’t affiliated with an institution? Create your own ID! There are a number of technologies that enable this kind of functionality today: web single sign-on, federated access, SAML, OpenID, InfoCards, Shibboleth, Higgins. This presentation will sort through these and present how they might be applied to the University community web access experience.
Co-presenters: Mike Wiseman, Matt Wilks, Pete St. Onge

The Good, the Bad, and the Phishy
David Auclair, Jin Fang, Mike Peterson, Peter St. Onge, I+TS/Information Security

Phishing, Spearphishing, Botnets, Rootkits, Viruses, Spam, Brute force attacks, Denial of Service -- It's hard to read a paper without finding some news about a major 'cyber' attack on the front page. Newspapers may love a good headline, but what is the real story?
Based on information risks seen at the University, we will use a summary of the problems seen, the risks involved, and the end results to help paint a clearer picture of what is really happening. We will draw on these results and share the lessons learned, helping focus best practices to reduce information risks you face every day."

Infrastructure Initiatives Stream

Enterprise Infrastructure: Project Updates
Patrick Hopewell, EIS

Updates on the status of various enterprise infrastructure initiatives including, McLennan Data Centre, Campus Network, Enterprise Storage, and Server Virtualization Services.
There will be lots of time reserved for questions and discussion.

Residence Wireless Network Design and Implementation
Jason Chan, UTM Computing Services

This presentation will focus on the wireless network design and implementation using Meru Networks technology. Meru Networks was the successful bidder of UTM Residence Network RFP last summer. I’ll be sharing my experience on implementing their 4th generation wireless technology in our infrastructure.
Part one gives a brief introduction on wireless networking, which covers various differences between the wired and wireless architecture, followed by an overview of traditional channel planning and wireless network design. As well, IEEE 802.11abg standards and the new IEEE802.11n wireless technology including MIMO, benefits, and design consideration will be covered in this part.
Part two gives a technical overview of Meru Networks: Why have we chosen Meru? The technical differences between Meru and other wireless network vendors in the market. Single-cell versus Micro-cell, controller based architecture, traffic management, and simple configuration walkthrough will be covered in this part.
Part three will focus on the actual implementation of the new wireless technology into UTM Residence Network. There will be a brief introduction on the Network Access Solution that was deployed last summer and how we extend the solution to the wireless network. Design consideration, VLAN switching, RADIUS, QoS, and ESP integration will be covered in this part.
Part four of the presentation will be about wireless security and troubleshooting tips. For instance, RF interference, Rogue AP, Tools for troubleshooting, and a demo will be showed in this part.
Finally, there will be a Q&A section to wrap up the presentation.

Virtual Firewalls for All
Russell Sutherland, IT+S

Firewalls have typically been deployed and managed locally, at the edge of each network. This means purchasing, and maintaining both hardware and software. It is now possible to provide this same packet filtering function, at the network demarcation point, by activating a service module on the router. The advantages of this new central service will be presented.

To virtualize or not, with Hyper-V R2
Do Anh Vu, Division of Student Life

So, you have decided it is time to virtualize your servers. One evident solution would be to use a front runner of virtualization technologies, VMWare. There are certainly many reasons to choose VMWare but there are also cost issues to consider. Have you thought about Microsoft Hyper-V R2? Is Microsoft Hyper-V R2 ready for the enterprise? There is certainly more than one choice for virtualization these days. The Windows server environment of the division of Student Life has just undergone a complete hardware and software overhaul. The noise and heat of its former life has been replaced by a quieter, cooler, and more powerful and flexible computing platform. Come learn how we virtualized our Windows servers (and eventually our Linux servers), the tools and equipment you need to do the job, the benefits that we are enjoying, how we are now tackling the all-important disaster recovery issues, and how we are planning for business continuity, through Windows Failover Clustering and Hyper-V R2. Come learn from our experience and maybe share some of yours.

Teaching, Learning and Research Stream

Virtual Tutor Service: A new experience of online math tutoring
Zohreh Shahbazi, Computer and Mathematical Sciences

The Virtual Tutor Service (VTS) is an online tutoring facility that the Math and Stats Learning Centre (MSLC) provides to the first-year students at the UTSC. The service offers additional resources and live help outside of normal MSLC hours, including nights and weekends, during the fall and spring semesters. In this session, the VTS coordinator and TAs who conduct the service as well as one of the math course coordinators will talk about their experience of teaching and learning mathematics in the online sessions.

The Don Valley Historical Mapping Project
Marcel Fortin, Map and Data Library, U of T Libraries

Drawing from the wide range of geographical information available on the Don River watershed, including maps, plans, planning documents, and city directories, the project used Geographic Information Systems software to place, compile, synthesize and interpret industrial and environmental information and make it more accessible as geospatial data and maps on the web for students, researchers and the public to use. The work exemplifies the growing discovery in the humanities and social sciences of the power of Geographic Information Systems and computing in general as a research tool.

Upload, Download, Overload! An Empirical Study of Organization and Design Factors Contributing to Overload in Online Learning
Lena Paulo Kushnir, Office of the Dean, Faculty of Arts & Science

Students often complain of overload in online learning environments. This session considers factors such as students’ past online experience, the organization and relevance of online information, and level of task difficulty, all of which can contribute to students’ reports of overload. Participants were tested in various experimental conditions that manipulated the organization and relevance on online material that students had to learn. Findings suggest that busy online environments negatively impact experienced web-savvy students and that hypertext environments negatively impact all students. Literature that helps explain these surprising findings and considers variables that impact online learning is examined.

Innovative Engineering Instructional Technology Initiatives and Online Pedagogical Practices
Harpreet Dhariwal; William Cleghorn, Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering

Many courses in the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering take advantage of various online teaching tools to engage students in learning. This presentation will discuss the pedagogical practice and cover the development and implementation of academic instructional technology solutions that support online instruction. The presentation will introduce several technologies utilized by instructors in the Faculty to support online teaching and learning (tablet PCs, integrated document cameras), and will offer an introductory review of lecture capture (Camtasia Relay, MyMedia YouTube, iTunes, ePresence, Mediasite, etc.) In addition, the authors will demonstrate the innovative Multimedia Enhanced Electronic Teaching System (MEETS), which was developed in-house and in response to the growing need of effectively teaching courses with large enrolments while still allowing demonstrations, which have traditionally been limited to smaller classes. The MEETS was designed to be compatible for lecture capture to be used for online teaching and learning. In the teaching of University level engineering courses, it is critical to clearly explain and display content with appropriate diagrams and real time animations. MEETS is being successfully used to teach undergraduate and graduate courses in the Faculty.

Loosen Your Grip: Application Innovation through Research Partnership
Mark Hume, Seeta Nyary, Paul Steacy, Hyun Wook Jo, Education Commons, OISE

Supporting innovation requires the openness and flexibility to move beyond current systems, practices and concepts. As partners to research, developers, like researchers, discover significant results by embracing the creative process. This presentation demonstrates how a CFI project overlapped with administrative and instructional needs at OISE to produce a recombinant online environment orchestrating many tools, something greater than the sum of its parts. Our story is the cycle of decisions taken, constraints encountered, technical choices made, and lessons learned. Let’s discuss implications for the future of application groups across campus. Can we continue to make room for innovation?

The Effective Use of Multimedia in the Classroom and Beyond
Michael Murphy-Boyer, UTSC Information and Instructional Technology Services

Faculty often have amazing ideas about ways to enhance the learning experience in the classroom. The UTSC Teaching Enhancement Grants were created to help faculty realize their goals and make these ideas a reality. The team of developers in the department of Information and Instructional Technology Services help take these ideas and turn them into tangible, useful applications. Using a series of websites and video clips created from Teaching Enhancement Grants, this presentation will demonstrate how multimedia can be used as an effective tool inside the classroom and how it can help encourage co-curricular education.

Webcasting Re-flex-ions in the Graduate Classroom
Seeta Nyary, Scott Hollows, Education Commons, OISE

Flex-model education provides students the option of participating in person or via webcasting, together with required asynchronous collaborations. Recently, a group of OISE faculty, T.A's and supporting advisors piloted a proposed graduate flex-model program. The students were not the only ones to learn lessons, as we all explored this mixed mode of teaching and learning. We will review both technical and instructional foundational issues that arose, present participant feedback, and offer ideas for future renditions. We welcome discussion as we all move to more interactive and mixed models of learning.

MyMedia: UTL's Rich Media Delivery and Storage
- Sian Meikle, Gordon Belray, Bilal Khalid & Graham Stewart

The library has launched a content management system for serving and storage of rich media resources university-wide. Growing out of the University's pandemic planning in 2009, the Library developed a web application, MyMedia, consisting of a dedicated streaming server, user/management interface, and extensive data storage. In partnership with the University's Camtasia Relay server, the Library's MyMedia service provides the end-to-end ability to capture (via smart-classrooms and personal computers), manage, serve, and promote lectures and presentations. In addition to supporting Camtasia formats, MyMedia has been extended to support the wide variety of media content that is being generated at the university, allowing for individual uploads of a variety of media, server-side encoding to streamable formats, access management (authenticated or publicly available streams and downloads) as well as providing permanent play links and embed code for the redistribution of media content. MyMedia contains a comprehensive meta-data structure, and current development includes methods for bulk loading media and exploring multiple options for content discovery and delivery through the library catalogue, websites and RSS feeds. We'll be demonstrating the Media Server from the content owner's and content user's perspective, and providing a description of its technical architecture. We welcome any feedback and interest in using this service at the university.

Presenters:
Sian Meikle
Digital Services Librarian, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries
Gordon Belray
Information Architect and Imaging System Administrator, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries
Graham Stewart
Network Services Manager, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries
Bilal Khalid
Senior Web Group Application Programmer / Analyst, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries"

Curriculum Mapping System for Medicine
Katherine McConnell, Discovery Commons, Faculty of Medicine

The Curriculum Mapping System of the Faculty of Medicine is a tool that was designed in house to capture the systematic transmission of medical/clinical knowledge to medical students during their course of study in Undergraduate Medical Education.

The mapping system describes and catalogs all the learning activities (lectures, seminars, tutorials, labs, problem-based learning sessions, etc.) in the pre-clerkship years. Each activity is searchable by topic, with weighted keywords, and by the key educational objectives it supports.

The Curriculum Mapping System gives administrators, accreditors, instructors and students a detailed look at where specific topics are addressed and how educational objectives are being met.

We will discuss the challenges and opportunities inherent in choosing or building a curriculum mapping system.