ITS @ Belmont University

Betty Wiseman will be taking 6 members of Belmont's volleyball team plus coaches on a mission trip to Rio de Janerio in just a few weeks. The team will be competing internationally and will have a full schedule of ministry opportunities during their stay. As in previous years, there is a blog for the team to use for this year's trip.

Tony Howell, assistant volleyball coach, will be doing the heavy lifting while in Rio and is making plans to post new stories every day during the trip. If you would like to receive an email alert when new stories are posted, you may sign up online... no spam, just an occasional alert.

Blogs have become an excellent tool for mission teams to use while traveling abroad. The Rio Journal 2007 is the sixth time that Belmont University has hosted and supported a blog for student mission experiences. Although blogs are generally intended for long term use, the ease of publishing (even abroad) and the ability to convert blogs into archival sites makes the technology solution a good choice.

Be sure to check out the team's experiences on The Rio Journal 2007.

Posted by Paul Chenoweth at 11:45 AM | Permalink

There have been three major Internet events on Belmont's campus with live streaming. ITS provided streaming support for the ASUN volleyball tournament in November and FCC hearing on Dec 11th. In addition, Belmont hosted the Nashville Podcasting group on our campus in October. With the popularity of YouTube web services, streaming and viral videos have become increasingly popular. Streaming media on the Internet has become a viable way to get your message out there and market your efforts. This fall Belmont partnered with Apple Computer with an Itunes site where video and audio archives can be streamed to the world. The Nursing School purchased Mediasite to capture and stream classroom lectures for students. To get started all you need is a laptop, a video or audio source, and a host server. If you have a potential need for streaming please contact Randall Reynolds to help coodinate your streaming project.

Posted by Randall Reynolds at 11:01 AM | Permalink

If you have ever heard the expression, "We're a victim of our own success", then you may have an understanding of some of the challenges associated with Belmont's ClassFinder software. Originally, your ITS staff in partnership with DIS, wrote the code for ClassFinder to replace what had been a frustrating paper process for many years at Belmont. What was intended to be a tool for students and advisors, evolved into a marketing tool for people in Middle Tennessee who were not only looking for a university, but a university with specific classes...and real-time class schedules where they could actually see if there was capacity for them, personally.

With increased seasonal traffic from on-campus as well as off-campus users, ClassFinder often uses large portions of the www.belmont.edu server capacity...and that is on a server that already receives an average of 3 million hits a month. So, it is time for ClassFinder to find a new home, on its very own server: classfinder.belmont.edu

Testing on the new server has already begun for on-campus users. The change for off-campus will happen sometime during the Fall 2005 semester after we have a chance to give it a good work out. You will still find links to ClassFinder in the usual places on BIC and on www.belmont.edu, in essence you shouldn't notice any change at all in actual use...but ClassFinder has graduated to it's very own box (server)...with more opportunities to expand capacity than it had before. We hope that this move will improve service/speed and relieve seasonal pressure, particularly on our marketing server capacities.

Posted by Paul Chenoweth at 04:19 AM | Permalink

Today, Belmont launched a new, online Campus Bookstore. The e-commerce site is available for BU clothing, BU gifts and Bruin merhandise. All bookstore links on the www. belmont.edu web site are re-directed to the new online location.
Jo Ellen Hunter, bookstore manager, worked much of the summer months to prepare the new site so that it would be available by fall semester: "We are very excited about our expanded capabilities. Starting Monday, students may select and purchase their textbooks online. That is something that we have never been able to do and it should make a big difference in how quickly book orders can be filled".

The remotely hosted solution uses Logi-Text College Store Management software that allows for easier inventory control, online ordering, and management of the database driven interface.

...and for all of you coffee drinking Bruin fans, make sure that you stop by and get one of these. Every office, dorm room, apartment, and coffee table should not be without one...and now, it is easier than ever to purchase your gift items online...('sorry, I regressed into sales mode *smile*)
Paul.

Posted by Paul Chenoweth at 01:25 PM | Permalink

Individuals who use the Faculty & Staff Community page, www.belmont.edu/home , as their computer's default home page will notice a change in the appearance PLUS the addition of several news stories at the bottom of the page. These stories are automatically pulled from Belmont news and information blog sources around campus using a technology called RSS (Really Simple Syndication). The code for this particular feed to the Faculty & Staff Community page was written by ITS as an experiment in delivering faculty and staff related stories to a page used by many departments on campus. We hope to expand the use of this code for delivery of news and blog posts to individual department area web pages and to BIC...for now, let's see how this experiment goes.

If you have comments or suggestions, please use the comment link below this post...let us hear from you.

Posted by Paul Chenoweth at 09:30 AM | Permalink

Adding new features to ClassFinder has been a topic of discussion among Web Team members for several months. The original code, written by ITS and DIS three years ago, was designed to assist students and advisors in selecting courses from a 'live' list of available classes during registration. With increased traffic from a growing student population as well as increased traffic from prospective students, the old code needed an overhaul to accommodate the demand. Several modifications to improve processing time have been made during the last several months that are not visible to the user, however, added features have meant a change in the look and function. The latest version of ClassFinder is online now and includes the following new features:

New Features:
• Specialized search for classes offered on Belmont's CoolSprings campus
• A single source search for all classes (undergraduate and graduate) that Belmont offers after 5:00PM
• Custom searches for courses identified in Belmont's new BELL Core curriculum
• An instant update of subject headings when different a different term is selected (a bug in the prior version)

Continue reading "New Classfinder Launched" »

Posted by Paul Chenoweth at 05:16 PM | Permalink

Belmont's ClassFinder software application has been upgraded to better handle periodic heavy loads around registration dates. The changes in this release should go unnoticed by most users. Processing times for extremely large searches in music and music business have been reduced significantly.

This is the first of several upgrades in ClassFinder. Plans for an additional summer semester release will include additional search options to include time of day, available classes only, instructor, and location. The upgrade associated with this current release will make future improvements in ClassFinder options easier to execute and manage.

Posted by Paul Chenoweth at 09:39 AM | Permalink