As many Simmons students and faculty return to campus for the Fall 2013 semester, we’d like to welcome you back and to remind you of the services and support available from Simmons Technology.

If you’re new to Simmons, you can find technology quick start guides here. These guides will give you lowdown on setting up your account, getting online, checking your email, and more. You can also find answers to many common questions by visiting our support database.

If you need one-to-one assistance, you can stop by the Tech Desk inside the library during regular library hours or contact the Service Desk by calling 617-521-2222 or visiting servicedesk.simmons.edu/getsupport.

Whether it’s your first day at Simmons or just the first day of a new semester, we’re here to help you get the information you need.

During the Spring semester, you might have noticed something missing from the walls around campus. Those helpful screens that displayed information about upcoming events and campus news were suddenly gone, the result of an irreparable failure of our old message display system.

Over the summer, Technology worked with the Office of Student Life, Marketing, Advancement, Academic Communications and Student Financial Services to not simply replace what we had before, but to upgrade to a completely new system that modernizes the way we communicate across campus. The new digital signage system, which has been rolled out on the Academic and Residence Campuses, will allow student organizations to easily submit announcements about upcoming events, and provide Simmons staff and academic areas with a convenient way to communicate important information about orientation, registration, graduation, and other things students need to know right now.

Another upgrade comes in the form of rich media (videos, Twitter feeds, and more) and integration with Google Calendar. As you walk around campus, you’ll now see a daily calendar of student events provided by Student Life, along with other important news and announcements, all presented in a more engaging and timely way.

Early in the Fall semester, Technology will provide training to department managers and student leaders on how to submit content to the new system. If you’re interested in finding out more about how you can submit a student event announcement to the Student Life calendar or create other content for digital signage, we’ll be posting instructions at servicedesk.simmons.edu/faq very soon.

Even as we launch digital signage, we’re working to incorporate exciting new features and to consistently improve the service over time. If you have feedback about current content or features you’d like to see on digital signage, please send your ideas to [email protected].

This summer, the Moodle and Simmons Connection teams got together to implement a major upgrade to Connection by integrating personalized Moodle course content for students and faculty.

The new My Moodle Classes section in Simmons Connection displays your classes for this semester, along with course announcements, new forum posts, and recent course updates. Clicking on any of the courses in Connection will take you to that course’s home page in Moodle.

To find out more about using Moodle in Simmons Connection, check out this FAQ.

Although the Google Apps for Education project has ended, that doesn’t mean we’re going to stop sharing tips and best practices so you can make the most of your email, calendar, and other collaborative tools. Here are a few more helpful tips!

Add the Simmons logo to your signature
During training sessions, many staff members asked us how they could add the Simmons logo to their email signature. We’ve put together a brief guide to show you how to accomplish this with just a few clicks.

Use Templates in Google Drive
If you’re using Google Drive to create documents, spreadsheets, and presentations, but you’d rather not create everything from scratch, check out the Google Docs Template Gallery. Here, you’ll find templates for everything from business letters to budgets, and resumes to syllabi. These templates have been submitted by people around the world, vetted by Google, and rated by other Google Apps users.

Collaborate using Hangouts
Lastly, we’re excited to announce that Google Hangouts are now available to everyone at Simmons. Hangouts are video calls (much like Skype) that allow you to collaborate with colleagues and friends at Simmons. To start a Hangout, just click the video camera in the chat section on the left side of the screen in your Simmons Gmail. Then, you can add other people to the Hangout and begin chatting and working immediately.

The Data Stewards Committee is a group of 29 individuals from across all academic and administrative areas of the college with day-to-day responsibility for managing data for their respective departments. The purpose of this committee is to provide a regular forum to share data management best practices, ensure data integrity and accuracy, troubleshoot data management issues and to serve as a working group for delivering various data-related, campus-wide projects.

Recently, the Data Stewards have been hard at work on a number of focused projects that were determined to be priorities by the committee members.

Some of the 2013 projects include:

• defining and locating sensitive data for compliance with Massachusetts law
• addressing obstacles to requesting reports
• organizing AARC training
• creating a calendar of each department’s time-sensitive data needs
• producing a Data Standards Manual to map the flow of data in and out of systems, define various data fields, set up protocols to avoid creating duplicate records, determine how to resolve duplicate records that already exist, and define standard for data to improve consistency and integrity

To learn more, contribute to a project, or bring up a new data issue, feel free to reach out to Data Stewards Committee co-chairs Heather Roscoe, Director of Institutional Research, at [email protected], or Deborah Wahlen, Director of the Project Management Office in Technology, at [email protected].

Data Stewards Committee Members

• Lauren Bailey
• John Campoli
• Barbara Carter
• Anna Cottrell
• Izabel DeAraujo
• Louise Deraney
• Diane Dewar
• Jess Faulk
• Patricia Flaherty
• Susan Hacker
• Susan Keller
• Paula Malady
• Joan Martinez Cuerva
• Suzanne Mullarkey
• Sandra Northrup
• Victoria Nye
• Heather Roscoe (Co-chair)
• Brian Shetler
• Gretchen Syverud
• Roslyn Taylor
• Richard Thompson
• Sarah Tyrrell
• Deb (Bernstein) Wahlen (Co-chair)
• Jeanne Wallace-Buckley
• Nicole White
• Christine Williams
• Kelly Williams
• Jason Wood
• Kevin Wright