Tech hype: A review of emerging technologies
What is emerging technology? A standout conference session at Enriching Scholarship tackles these questions and more.
Monthly Archives: May 2017
U-M Box & Google Monthly Digest
U-M Box Box and Older Operating Systems U-M Google Streamlining the Messaging Experience for Android An update on the classic Google Sites deprecation timeline Making email safer with anti-phishing security checks in Gmail on Android U-M Google April Summary
U-M team takes home IMS Global Leadership Awards
Anthony Whyte and Lance E Sloan of ITS Teaching & Learning (TL) each received leadership awards at IMS Global’s Learning Impact Leadership Institute 2017 annual conference held in Denver May 16-19. Both were recognized for their work on the IMS Caliper Analytics™ specification. Also recognized was Charles Severance from the School of information who received the Bill Graves… Read More »
LSA & ITS team win President’s Staff Innovation Award
Congratulations to Jeff Dils, Victoria Green, Chris Mueller and MaryBeth Stuenkel (ITS), and Monika Dressler (LSA) for receiving the Presidential Staff Team Award for Innovation for ExamScan, a new service that digitizes hand-written and graded exams and makes it easier for instructors to return and review exams with students. ExamScan allows large classes to conduct literature-based, data-driven examinations… Read More »
CTools project sites migration
Thank you to the School of Public Health for partnering with ITS on the first pilot. We received valuable feedback from them and our other unit representatives. We have incorporated their input in the following ways: Migration approach: ITS will not automatically bulk migrate content. Instead we will hold regular clinics to offer 1:1 support and training on… Read More »
Assigning meaning to emojis
Why is 😂 more popular than 😃 ? Why is a person more likely to use 👍 or 😘 to express appreciation ? These represent the types of questions School of Information doctoral student Wei Ai and his colleagues answered when they examined the use of emojis by one million users through more than 1.2 billion messages. The researchers analyzed the relationship of the… Read More »
Mcity Open House
Thursday, June 8, 4pm – 8pm; NC90 Parking Lot Ann Arbor, MI 48105 (map) Come and explore the future of mobility with vehicle technology displays, walking tours, and the opportunity to volunteer in connected vehicle research. Please NO pets or bicycles. Parking and shuttle to Mcity will be available at North Campus Parking Lot # 90, accessible from Baxter… Read More »
Fauber receives Research Technical Staff Recognition Award
Kudos to Bennet Fauber for receiving U-M Office of Research’s Research Technical Staff Recognition Award for the computing support and training he provided to researchers collecting and analyzing data on the function and structure of the human brain. Fauber is a senior applications programmer-analyst for Advanced Research Computing-Technology Services. The Research Technical Staff Recognition Award recognizes staff members who… Read More »
Born accessible: Adding accessibility to product acquisition
While U-M has an obligation under Federal law to adopt products that are accessible to everyone in the campus community, not all vendors have the same obligations. To help address this gap, the Information Technology Accessibility Group (ITAG) of the Big 10 Academic Alliance seeks to create a common understanding with vendors of the accessibility requirements and considerations… Read More »
Large scale memory swapping
Operators of large computer clusters have long searched for an efficient way to share server memory to speed up application performance. Now, U-M engineers led by Mosharaf Chowdhury, assistant professor of computer science and engineering, have developed open-source software that lets servers instantly “swap” memory from other servers in the cluster when they run out, instead of writing to slower storage media… Read More »
ITS explores privileged access management
The ITS Identity and Access Management team is exploring Privileged Access Management (PAM) and third-party solutions to mitigate U-M’s cybersecurity risk exposure.
Get more from your data
Using Tableau Software’s visual analytics capabilities, the Analytics and Business Intelligence Team (ABI) helps Michigan Medicine units gain new insight from their data. (Formerly known as Fast Analytics, ABI is part of Health Information Technology & Services, HITS). Kelly Miller, application programmer/analyst with ABI, describes the basics of ABI and Tableau like this: “Imagine you have a pickup… Read More »
5 tips to travel safely with technology this summer
Whether you are planning a vacation overseas, a professional trip, or just a local getaway, you will likely take your smartphone, laptop, or other mobile device with you. Here are five tips to help you safeguard both your own—and the university’s—data. Require a password, passcode, or PIN for access to your device, and set the screen to lock… Read More »
HITS hosts successful electronic health records conference
Nearly 350 health care IT professionals from 11 different health systems recently gathered in Ann Arbor to share ideas and knowledge to improve patient care. The EHR Michigan User Group, or eMUG, is a collection of health systems in Michigan that use Epic electronic health records software. The 2017 eMUG conference was hosted by Michigan Medicine Health Information Technology &… Read More »
Online dating: What women want…
Recent research from the U-M School of Information (SI) shows that men who hope to get women to respond to them on online dating sites have a better chance if they create profiles that are more like the women they hope to attract, and yet can show they are distinct from other males. “Specifically, she is more likely to… Read More »
Voice service upgrades completed at Dearborn and Flint campuses
In March 2017, the Ann Arbor Information and Technology Services (ITS) Infrastructure team successfully completed a project that involved de-clustering the UM-Flint IP voice environment from Ann Arbor’s. This completed the IP voice de-clustering across all three campuses that began with UM-Dearborn in 2016. By separating the three campuses into smaller, more agile independent systems, Ann Arbor ITS… Read More »
Learn about AWS with free M Cloud workshop
The M Cloud and AWS teams are pleased to offer free, hands-on cloud computing workshops. There is no charge for the training: all you need is some time and an AV-equipped room that holds 25-30 people. We ask attendees to bring their own laptop, so you do not need to supply computers. Below is a typical agenda, but we can… Read More »
M-Write adds automated text analysis
M-Write, a program built on the premise that students learn complex material by writing, will expand in fall 2017 to add automated text analysis (ATA) to its digital toolkit. M-Write was created by U-M professor of English Anne Gere, director of the Sweetland Center for Writing, and Ginger Shultz, assistant professor of chemistry. M-Write helps students develop their conceptual… Read More »
The coming age of data monarchs
Jeff DeGraff, a clinical professor of business administration at the Ross School of Business, doesn’t believe that the web is truly as accessible and democratic as many would have us believe. According to DeGraff, the web is no longer the free and open space it was a decade ago. “It’s now a feudal system run by a handful of… Read More »
Apple acquires “dark data” startup Lattice
Apple has acquired data mining and machine learning company Lattice, co-founded by Michael Cafarella, a professor of computer science at U-M, and Chris Re, a professor of computer science at Stanford. (Cafarella was the co-creator of Hadoop, a widely used big data processing technology.) According to the Lattice website, the startup was born out of a Stanford research… Read More »