Karl Kowalski on smart classrooms and Google Groups

February 28, 2011

University Relations

The Office of Information Technology currently maintains 55 smart classrooms across the Fairbanks campus. The rooms are varied from those that might have a projector in the room with a connection for your laptop to those that contain full-blown video conferencing equipment. Many of the smart classrooms have been installed with one-time money with no increase in annual operating funds to support them. As things begin to age, a large number of classrooms are becoming more difficult to keep operational.

OIT receives 30 percent of the annual TAB revenues to support smart classrooms and public labs. This fluctuates with enrollment, but is approximately $50,000-$70,000 per semester. The equipment is expensive to maintain. The bulbs for projectors, for instance, cost from $300-$500 per bulb.

Last Spring, OIT approached the TAB board for more funding and was given one-time money, provided we lowered the level of the classroom equipment to a basic projector, working screen and a place to plug in a laptop.

The next 10 rooms on the schedule were upgraded over the summer with new projection equipment, but it meant there was less computer equipment than there had been before. When faculty and staff returned to campus in fall 2010 they were surprised by the change.

Since that time, we received funding from UAF this year to order computers to put back in the classrooms. However, it costs $500-$800 for each of the computers, so in the long run fewer classrooms will be upgraded.

Chancellor Rogers plans to increase funding for smart classrooms. Once we've received the funding we'll work with departments to determine their specific needs.

Budgets are reduced and we're operating a tighter operation in OIT. We'll continue do the best we can with the resources we have. We appreciate your patience as we move forward.

If you have specific smart classroom needs in your building, please feel free to contact me at karl.kowalski@alaska.edu.

Google Groups

OIT has established more than 120 new Google Group accounts and is working with departments in configuring their accounts for their specific needs. The wide variety of ways departments use the group account functionality has made the implementation more of a one-on-one experience rather than a mass conversion. If you need assistance, please contact the support center and ask someone to come to your department and work with you.

The license for our internal spam-filtering program, Proofpoint, was up for renewal recently and we chose not to renew the subscription on the old accounts and instead accelerate the transition to Google Groups. OIT has been maintaining dual systems for more than two years and would like to move off the old system in an effort to realize some of the savings intended by the move to Google Apps.

Learn more about Google Groups by reading the Google Groups how-to's.