General « Informasietegnologie

General

Maties app launched

Friday, August 26th, 2016

screenshot1 The brand new Maties App was launched in the Neelsie last Wednesday. But before you experience serious FOMO, we have all the inside info for you.

The Maties app is a collaboration between Information Technology and Maties Sport after they envisioned a single place for staff and students to engage with hosted activities on campus.

Among the benefits are the promotion of an active lifestyle and getting students and staff involved with competition-based leaderboards. Users of the application will be able to follow their favourite Maties sports team to see the latest results, fixtures and news. Students will be able to keep track of their cluster or residence’s placing on campus-wide competitions.

The goal was to provide a mobile application that can serve as the initial base for further development together with stakeholders and at the same time offer immediate value to the user and university alike. In the long term you will see a larger variety of events as they get listed on the Maties App. Users will be able to get a personalised list of events they are attending and interested in – just add it to a phone’s calendar or share it with friends.

As with other social media platforms, you will be able to see how many people are also attending your event or activity. You will be able to check in at events by means of a QR code. No need for a paper ticket, just check-in at events using your app.

On the other side of the user spectrum, event organisers can disseminate important events and get students involved and active. At the same time, organisers will get an idea of how many people are interested and who have indicated that they will attend an event. No complicated form is needed since the user is already logged in and we know who is attending the event.

Additionally, users of the app will receive notifications of event information and changes, as well as campus-wide communique. Any message can be sent directly to users’ phones via the app and it can be targeted to a specific event, or to demographic (e.g. staff, students, or everyone) This function will be especially helpful during emergency situations when it is necessary to notify staff and students of important information and updates.

Curious to see what it looks like? Watch the video here or read the article on the SU homepage.

The Maties App can be downloaded for free from the Google Play store. Please let us know what you think and how we can make it better?

Tags: maties app
Posted in Apps, General | Comments Off on Maties app launched

Science in your backyard

Friday, August 5th, 2016

frog-1445779__180 Everyone can’t have a career in science, but nothing prevents you from taking part in various projects and contributing to important research. Thanks to technology, being a citizen scientist couldn’t be easier.

Citizen science, also known as crowd science, crowd-sourced science, civic science, volunteer monitoring or networked science, is scientific research conducted, by amateur or nonprofessional scientists. (www.wikipedia.org)

Joseph M. Hulbert elaborates further in his article, Citizen science tools available for ecological research in South Africa:

“Ordinary citizens can participate in research from their home computer, in their own gardens, or in the great outdoors – without any expertise in the field. Many citizen science projects and opportunities exist in South Africa – ranging from monitoring bird migrations to identifying and mapping distributions of fungi.”

One of the most popular fields where citizen science is practised is amateur astrology, but others include butterfly counts, ornithology, citizen oceanography and even art history. In South Africa CS projects include the Stream Assessment Scoring System (miniSASS) and at the University of Pretoria members of the public are helping researchers to identify Phytophthora (“plant destroyers”) species present in the fynbos. The main purpose of the research is to survey plant disease in the Fynbos Biome. By finding the locations where the disease is spotted, faster action can be taken and the conservation of Fynbos will be benefitted. Read more about the project here.

The University of Cape Town’s Animal Demography Unit (ADU) is responsible for many local citizen science projects. The unit has created various Virtual Museums, including the MammalMAP website where you can submit photos and add to a growing database of the habits and distribution of mammals in South Africa. If you’re not into mammals, there are virtual museums for anything from frogs and butterflies to starfish and sea urchins.

Joseph M. Hulbert mentions two other local projects, OrchidMap and Aliens of the Cape Peninsula. OrchidMap is also one of the projects hosted by Virtual Museum and consists of nearly 3000 geo-referenced records for orchids being added since September 2014. Members of the public can upload images and locations of orchids on the database. Aliens of the Cape Peninsula attempts to locate new alien plants and their distribution on the Cape Peninsula.

If you are interested in being a citizen scientist and putting your photography and science skills to good use, here are a few tools you can use –

Ispot is a South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI) initiative. Since its launch in June 2012, it has contributed to the nearly 400 000 international observations of 30 000 different species reported by mid-2014.

WhatSpecies was started by a parent who wanted to help her children identify insects and plants. Subsequently, the website’s layout is friendly and accessible for a younger audience and it tries to engage youth on various social media platforms.

Virtual Museum, as mentioned earlier, is hosted by the Animal Demography Unit at the University of Cape Town. There are 17 different projects that citizens can participate in hosted on Virtual Museum alone.

The Cape Town Citizen website also contains ample information on becoming a citizen scientist. Also watch the SciShow’s video on Citizen Science on YouTube.

Tags: Research, research tools
Posted in General, Research | Comments Off on Science in your backyard

Free upgrades

Friday, August 5th, 2016

From 5 to 30 September we will be upgrading outdated staff PCs to Windows 10 – for FREE. The only requirement is that your computer’s specifications are adequate and that it’s capable of handling the operating system.

We will be upgrading the PCs in batches to make sure everyone gets a chance and the process runs as smoothly as possible. Subsequently, the upgrades will be split into two groups, one group in the first half of September and the second in the last part of September.

To ensure that your PC is one of those that receive a tech makeover, keep an eye out for our next Bits & Bytes newsletter in two weeks’ time, where we will list the information for the first group.

Posted in General | 1 Comment »

Office 365 is here

Friday, July 22nd, 2016

In 2014, due to rapidly increasing student numbers, Information Technology reassessed university’s e-mail configuration to avoid a shortage of storage space. Subsequently, student accounts were moved to Office 365, a cloud-based service which integrates with existing software used on campus.

office365

At the moment, staff e-mail accounts are hosted and maintained locally on our Exchange servers. However, as with the student accounts, staff e-mail accounts will also be migrated to Office 365 within the next few months.

Initially only the e-mail service, Outlook, will be hosted in the cloud, but later staff will also have access to their documents wherever they go via Office 365 applications, e.g. OneDrive, Word, Excel and Powerpoint.

Other than a welcome increase in e-mail storage space to 50GB, there are various other advantages:

less archiving due to more storage space
saves time and increases productivity
a new and improved e-mail web interface
better availability
more secure

Little or no e-mail downtime is anticipated during the migration. Accounts will be moved in groups, per department, to ensure as little disruption as possible. Communication on the matter will be facilitated through the Head of Department and secretaries.

If you have any questions, please contact the IT Service Desk at 021 808 4367 or helpinfo@sun.ac.za.

Tags: bank emails, Exchange, Office 365
Posted in General | 2 Comments »

Who is ISS?

Friday, June 24th, 2016

At the end of the month your salary is safely in your bank account. We consider this a given and hardly think about it. But who ensures it happens, without fail, every month?

Information is crucial and strategic for a knowledge-intensive and knowledge-producing enterprise, such as a university, to thrive. Institutional software solutions[1] form the basis of all institutional information systems and process most institutional information. Examples at SU include the Human Resources, Financial, Research Administration, and Student Information Systems.

Information Technology’s newly reorganised division, Institutional Software Solutions (ISS), led by Ralph Pina, is responsible for building, providing, maintaining and supporting reliable, innovative and sustainable institutional software solutions that meet the University’s needs timeously and over the long term. It comprises some 36 software developers, business analysts, and managers, all accommodated on an open floor in the new ICT Building.

Without these systems, you won’t be able to receive your salary or request leave. No financial transactions would be possible. Students would not be able to access examination results or register at the beginning of the year. Administration of student records would have to be done by hand.

These are just a few of the software solutions ISS is responsible for. In order to fulfill its crucial function, the ISS division has to:

manage relationships with solution and system owners (clients), external and internal IT partners, stakeholders, communities and vendors;
perform business analysis to understand and help refine institutional processes, and determine requirements;
develop software, which includes designing and coding solutions with the long-term in mind, and establishing and maintaining the necessary software development environment, skills, and knowledge;
maintain software over the long term;
integrate (connect) software applications and systems in order to orchestrate institutional processes, enable integrated reporting and integrated views of institutional information;
source software solutions by helping clients and partners to select solutions, and by brokering solutions i.e. facilitating the procurement of solutions;
support software solutions by monitoring operations, configuring systems, managing incidents, and problems, and helping clients and partners to train users;
architect data, software solutions and integrations in collaboration with the IT Architecture Function.
manage software solution development and implementation projects.

[1] University-owned or managed software applications (or solutions) that have a broad application across the institution, as opposed to specialised value for a single or few organisational entities within the university. The definition includes software such as web content management systems and mobile apps, amongst others. For example, a laboratory information system that has specialised value for only a single academic department or a single faculty would likely not be classed as an institutional software solution.

Posted in General, Our people | 1 Comment »

IT links

SU Links

Recent Posts

Categories

Archives