ITS @ Belmont University

While the campus has grown the number of telephones have grown as well. Also, add to that alarm circuits and fax machines. Oh, I forgot, voicemail boxes. The campus uses Nortel systems and last May upgraded
to a Succession 1000 switch preparing the campus for VOIP.

Here is the lowdown on the numbers....

3797 total phone circuits
1019 digital (975 are in staff/faculty offices)
2778 analog phones

of those 2778:
approx. 1600 are student or student phones
approx. 950 are faculty/staff phones
approx. 125 fax/elevator/alarms/emergency phones
102 for VM connectivity and PRI (38/64)

also, total number of voicemail boxes?

3300 voice boxes, of that total 1802 are non-voice boxes (menus and mail boxes where messages cannot be left)

Posted by Randall Reynolds at 08:30 AM | Permalink

If it is early summer, then it is time for a mission trip and a blog to read about Belmont students, faculty, and staff during that trip. Paul Chenoweth began using Belmont's MovableType software two years ago as a tool to allow families, friends, churches, and our campus to follow Betty Wiseman's sports evangelism teams. This year, Paul and his wife, Debbie, are travelling with Betty and 13 Belmont students to Venezuela. The Venezuela Journal is online now and features a number of stories, images, and a video clip.

Each year, these journals become a little more sophisticated and each year the mission journals reach a wider audience. Paul explains:

"Using a blog from an overseas location is no more difficult than writing and sending an email. The effect is radically different. Once an email goes out, the readership normally stops with the recipient and the life of the email ends with the computer's trash bin. With a blog, the stories stay online as an archived record. We didn't understand the impact of that at first, until we saw that these blog/journals continue to have visitors months and years after trips are over.

Students discover that blogging is a natural extension of email-type connnections with consideration that, literally, the whole world has access to the stories. We provide guidelines for use to protect personal privacy and always have someone on campus with access to the blog, just to cover any unintended blunders.

This year, we will experiment more with digital pictures using a universal camera card reader and a software application called Flickr. If time allows, we may try our hand at video teleprompter work using some new laptop software...but finding time AND Internet access concurrently can be quite a challenge."

The team departs on Monday, May 15th and will return to Nashville on May 26th. You may follow the news from the 16 person team by reading their blog, The Venezuela Journal. If you are interested in receiving an email update when new stories are posted, please add your name to the subscription list using this form.

Posted by admin at 02:00 PM | Permalink

Yep. One year ago today, this blog-turned-newsletter began...and it began very quietly and without fanfare. For most of the year Randall Reynolds picked up the torch for writing on this site as an effort to better communicate what is going on behind the scenes in technology at Belmont. It is an odd sort of feeling that any sort of technology news is even necessary...in Information Technology Services, we like to believe that if no one notices what we are doing, then we are getting the job done. Then again, when things go wrong in ITS, and services such as email or internet access disappear for even a moment or two, the phones start ringing! So, the ITS@Belmont News blog is an effort to give people a peek inside Belmont's technology world, let you know when system changes and updates might affect your schedule, and generally keep the campus abreast of the good stuff that is going on behind the scenes on your behalf. Take a look at this top 10 list as an example.

It is Saturday morning, early, and there will be no party to celebrate this momentous occasion in blog-turned-newsletter history...but it is worth a token mention. I lift my coffee mug to my cohorts who keep technology moving at Belmont. Salud!

Posted by Paul Chenoweth at 05:05 AM | Permalink

Thought you knew everthing about Information Technology Services at Belmont University? Well, here's my July 2005 list of facts that may or not be interesting, but its a view of ITS that many on campus may not know. While the list is certainly not comprehensive it is at least short. enjoy.

Top 10 Fast Facts:



1. ITS blocks over 100,000 spam emails a month


2. ITS support over 3500 telephone, faxes, alarms and cameras on campus


3. ITS supports around 900 faculty, staff and lab computers


4. ITS provide 70 channels of cable TV (BTV) on a fiber based distribution network


5. This fall RESNET will have 2000 teenagers on our campus residential network


6. ITS supports over 24 computer labs on campus


7. We have over 150 wiring closets on campus for voice, data and cable TV


8. We use a high speed wireless transmitter to connect Ocean Way and Studio B saving Belmont the expense of T1's (about $12K a year)


9. Our web sites receives an average of 6-10 million hits a month (one of the first schools in TN with a web site in 1994)


10. Our Network is up 99.96% (down less then 2 hours over the year)

Posted by Randall Reynolds at 09:43 AM | Permalink

Today I am giving a short talk about Blogging at Ticua. This is really all I have to say.
If you would like to comment please do so.
Randall

Posted by Randall Reynolds at 09:57 AM | Permalink