NEWS
DoIT sets up student web space
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by Carrie Breneman
Tuesday, September 7, 2004
Students at the University of Wisconsin now have access to more than e-mail with new online services offered by the Division of Information Technology.
DoIT representative Meg McCall said one of the most exciting changes to online services is the addition of My Webspace. Students and faculty alike have 100 megabytes of free space on the Internet that can be used as a personal website or for file sharing.
Brian Rust of DoIT’s communications office said the space is great for working on a collaborative project. A group of students can have access to a single file on one users’ website and edit the file as needed, eliminating the need for everyone to have their own copy of the file.
Students interested in My Webspace can follow the instructions listed at https://mywebspace.wisc.edu in order to set up a webpage.
DoIT has also made changes to how students communicate with UW faculty and staff. Students are now required to use their WiscMail accounts in order to receive correspondences from UW or instructors. Forwarding WiscMail to other accounts is “very easy,” McCall said, by changing their settings from their personal e-mail page.
Other conditions of use were added to student e-mail accounts. Junk mail filtering will help battle spammers. DoIT preset the filters to “medium,” attempting to allow minimal junk e-mail into inboxes.
Rust said the filtering could be adjusted. At the same time it can block mail lists by storing them in the junk mail folder instead of in the user’s inbox.
Ben Dahl, a UW senior, said spammers had been a problem with him over the past year, but he has noticed the junk e-mail has not been as prevalent since the filters were introduced.
An e-mail sent out by DoIT Sept. 1 encouraged students to check their junk mail folders every few days since legitimate e-mail can find its way into the folder containing spam.
Another feature new to UW students is the free desktop client, Oracle, an easy-to-use interface for online calendars such as WiscCal. Oracle allows users to import class schedules, game schedules and set up meeting times with outside groups for class.
Students can read each other’s free times at a glance with the WiscCal service.
The program also allows students to see when professors have free time to schedule appointments. The program can be found on DoIT’s website.
To better understand online services like WiscMail and WiscCal, there are free short courses available through Software Training for Students, Rust said. Students can also learn about creating a web site on My Webspace.
Though many students are computer savvy, some may not use the entire space allotted to them. Dahl said he does not plan on using his 100 megabytes of web space, but noted it would be convenient to share pictures from his trips overseas with friends using the online database.
Funds to make the improvements possible came from a payment given to DoIT.
“All of the changes have been made through a student tech fee,” Rust said.
