LIS News / Blog

Update 7:43PM: My.luther is now fixed.

7:08PM My.luther is currently down. We’re working to get it back up as soon as possible.

Headline of the Week: What if Employers Change What They Value?

One of my favorite professors is Clayton Christensen. He is at Harvard Business School. Clayton has popularized the term “disruptive innovation” in a series of books beginning with “The Innovator’s Dilemma”. He was interviewed by Mark Suster, an entrepreneur turned venture capitalist and blogger.

Present: Matt H, Matt B, Lynnette, Matt H, Eddy, Ryan, Jennifer S, Jennifer R, Diane

• Bioserver Demo – Eric Baack asked for a server for students to do some python scripting rather than using the lab laptops. This way instead of 30 computers each running one file for several hours, we have one server running all 30 files.

Headline of the Week: Signal and Noise

When Ann Hill Duin was interviewing on campus she referenced and suggested a new book she had recently read entitled, “The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail – but Some Don’t”, by Nate Silver. It sounded very interesting and at that time the reference was coming from a potential new college president.

As part of an effort to increase awareness and communication about Luther’s Energy Competition (http://www.luther.edu/sustainability/energy_climate/conservation/competi...), the homepages for both Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox have been temporarily changed. When opening either browser on Windows lab/classroom computers, students will be directed to Luther’s Building Dashboard site (http://buildingdashboard.net/luther/#/luther//). When faculty/staff log into a lab/classroom workstation, they will still have the LIS main site as their homepage.

Headline of the Week: University of Minnesota to Offer MOOCs

The MOOC phenomena feels like the rush for Internet eyeballs back in the late 90’s. I just hope it will not lead to million dollar sock puppet ads during next year’s Super Bowl.

In Thursday morning’s Star Tribune, front page news was that the University of Minnesota has signed on, along with another batch of 29 universities bringing the total to 61, to work with Coursera to deliver 5 MOOCs. It seems all the cool kids are doing it.

LIS would like to alert the Luther community to a new trend in phishing scams that has been emerging.

In the past, phishing attempts have been disguised as e-mails purporting to be from the Help Desk or a Systems Administrator. The messages tend to ask that you reply with your username and password or fill out a form on a compromised website. This information is then in turn used to gain access to e-mail accounts, credit cards, and so forth.

Recently, phishers have begun using Google Docs to gather this information.

Knuth, the server for the Olin Computer Science Lab was down for about 30 minutes this morning. The issue is now fixed and the CS Lab should be functioning normally once again.

Present: Matt H, Matt B, Bob E, Larry, Matt H, Eddy, Jennifer R, Jennifer S, Diane

• Transitions – We discussed the plans for Matt Hughes’ transition from the Help Desk to Workstation Support. Starting March 1, Matt will work in the Help Desk in the mornings and with Workstation Support in the afternoons.

Reminder to check out the various learning opportunities this spring on the LIS Training and Instruction Calendar.

I would like to especially draw people’s attention to a 3-D printing demonstration that will be happening in the library next week. Next Wednesday, February 27th at 4:00 p.m. in the New Books Area on Preus’ Main Floor, Luther senior Brit Indrelie will be demonstrating how a 3-D object can be scanned and that scan can then be used to “print out” a three dimensional replica.