Changes to the Wireless Login Procedure

After our experience last week with the login procedure changing unannounced before class, I spoke with one of the Network Security people.  He apologized for the inconvenience and lack of communication about the transition.
Today, I received the following announcement about the change set to occur here in Malibu on Friday...

Effective Wednesday Oct 1, 2008 at the WLA Campus and
Friday Oct 3, 2008 at the Drescher Campus the wireless networks will have the
existing Vernier access manager systems replaced by the new computer
registration system. With the new system, computers will only need to be
registered once per term on the wireless network.

 

The new system provides more convenience and better
security. When you first use your computer on wireless under the new system,
open a web browser and you will be presented with the registration page. You
and your students should click the appropriate link from this page and then
follow the instructions on screen. Registration takes about 2 minutes and
you may need to reboot your computer to activate the new IP address for
your computer.

 

Questions about computer registration may be forwarded to
your usual local support and to the IT Help Desk until midnight weekday at
310-506-4357.

Problems with Assignments in Firefox 3

Several of you reported that you received errors when uploading assignments to Bb.  It appears to be an issue with Bb and Firefox 3.0 not getting along well.

Here is some info from Tech Support...

Good morning, Prof. Williams.

I subscribe to the Bb support listservs (a community of Bb admins at universities).  It seems like there is a known issue with Firefox 3 and Blackboard (7.2, 7.3, 8.0) regarding Assignment uploads.  Firefox 2 works fine, but Firefox 3 has an issue.

Apparently, Firefox 3 does not add the correct path when you "browse" to a file to upload in the Assignment tool.

Example listed in the listserv:
Firefox 2.0: this.LocalFile.value() = "C:\\Documents and Settings\\user\\Desktop\\stack.txt"
Firefox 3.0: this.LocalFile.value() = "stack.txt"

According to some of the respondents in the listserv, Bb has a temporary "patch" that will resolve the error.  We're asking Blackboard to schedule this patch on our test server so we can test and confirm that the problem has been resolved.

In the meantime, there are two possible actions that Firefox 3 users can take:

OPTION 1: INSTALL A USER AGENT ADD-IN

** A third-party add-in. Use at own risk. **

http://chrispederick.com/work/user-agent-switcher/

When installed, select the Internet Explorer user agent before clicking "Assignments" and before attempting an upload.  I have not personally tested this, but folks in the listserv suggested this as a workaround.

OPTION 2: USE IE or UNINSTALL FF3 and REINSTALL FIREFOX 2

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-older.html

(There is another technical option that involves manually adding a user agent string in Firefox' config file, but that would likely be too complex for the average user.)

*******************************

I hope some of the above information is helpful in the meantime.

We'll continue to research the issue and work with Blackboard to resolve.

Sincerely,
Alan Regan, MFA
Technology and Learning
Information Technology
Pepperdine University
(310) 506-6756

Blackboard Assignment Woes

Several of you reported difficulties uploading your assignments to Blackboard this morning.

I emailed tech support and here is their response...

 

Hello Michael,
Here are the parameters for file names that you can pass along: when uploading documents to Blackboard, be sure to follow the recommended file naming conventions. Use: Letters ("ABCabc"), Numbers ("0123456789"), and Underscores ("_"). Avoid: Spaces and Special Characters (!@#$%^&*()<>+='"`~:;,[]{}?/\|).
I will also investigate further and contact our Bb developer - if the file upload is accepted through the content system, it should also work as an attachment.  As you know, the recent upgrade has not been without issues, and there maybe something going on here that requires more attention.  I'll keep you posted.
Linda
*************************
Linda Wallace
Senior e-Learning Specialist
Graziadio School of Business and Management
Pepperdine University - GSBM 477
(310) 568-5651
lwallace@pepperdine.edu
http://bschool.pepperdine.edu
https://wikis.pepperdine.edu/display/GSBME/

P2P for Textbooks?

Given our topic this week about Peer-to-Peer networks and illegal file-sharing, I found yesterday's Marketplace Morning Report to be especially interesting...

Marketplace: Downloading textbooks on the sly