News

■Starting with the Fall 2008 Semester UKIT has simplified access to the Mac computers in our labs by enabling students to login using their Link Blue computing account. This change requires new students to activate their Mac access before they will be able to use the labs, and may require some returning students to contact IT Support to have their accounts reinstated and their files restored. For more information, including how to activate your access, please consult our wiki article.
■For an overview of UK organizational structure with key individuals responsible for administrative systems, please click here.
■Reminder: Bb 8.0 Upgrade
The Blackboard servers will go down at 12:15 am on Tuesday, May 6 (immediately after spring semester grades are due) so that UKIT can perform the upgrade; servers should be back up by 8 am on May 6. All Bb Instructors are strongly urged to download the gradebook in their courses as a precautionary backup before the servers go down. "How do I download my gradebook?". The main change in this move to Bb v8.0 is that the Gradebook will become the Grade Center, with an entirely new layout. Learn more about the new Grade Center on the Grade Center Resources page.
■Office 2008 for Mac Now Available for Faculty/Staff

Office 2008 for Mac is now available to regular full-time and regular part-time Faculty and Staff of the University of Kentucky. It is available for download through the UK Download server.

The student version of Office 2008 for Mac is not available at this time, but will be released on the Student Download Server when the product is available. Students should note that they are only allowed one copy of the currently released Office Product. Students that download Office 2007 for Windows will not be eligible for Office 2008 for the Mac, and vice versa.

■UKIT coined the term "link blue" to define a directory account ( userid and password ) which can be used when connecting to many campus-wide systems. For more information click here.
■UKIT 2006-2009 Strategic Plan is available here.
Security Tip
■USB thumb drives and email enabled PDAs have become an extremely useful tool for keeping up with important data and transferring it between computers. However they can become a liability if they are lost, stolen, or damaged if you don't take steps to protect yourself.