New OWL (powered by Sakai) - University of Western Ontario

Vol. 18 No. 3 Spring 2012 ISSN 1198-8673 

In this Issue: 

New OWL (powered by Sakai) 1 

In the News 2 

Major Upgrade to the Corporate 

Calendar System 3 

Helping Hands Award 3 

The Open Experience: IM Clients 4 

Security Team News 5 

Poster Caption Contest Winners 6 

Fax Services 7 

Voice Conferencing Services 7 

Mobile Working Group 7 

Instructional Support Team and 

ITRC News 8 

My Alternative Spring Break 10 

ITS Information 11 

Subscribe to In Touch 

In order to join the mailing list 

(or to remove yourself if you 

wish to stop receiving it), email: 

in.touch@uwo.ca 

New OWL (powered by Sakai) 

ITS Instructional Support Team 

Summer Distance, Summer 

Evening, and Summer Intersession 

courses have begun and the majority 

of these courses are being taught 

using the new OWL. The home page 

at http://webct.uwo.ca/ provides links 

to both the old OWL (WebCT) and 

the new OWL (powered by Sakai) to 

assist instructors and students. There 

is a link for students taking Distance 

Studies courses to information about 

the instructor of the course and the 

learning management system (WebCT 

or Sakai) in which course is being 

off ered. 

Training 

Training in the new OWL has 

been running since early February and 

approximately 450+ instructors and 

administrative staff have attended. 

Information about training, including 

dates/times, and how to register, 

making plans to develop your course 

or project site in the new OWL, and 

documentation is available at: 

http://webct.uwo.ca/ 

owlfl ightplan/gettingstarted.html 

Training will continue throughout 

the summer. 

ITRC student consultants and 

members of the Instructional Support 

team have been assisting instructors 

to migrate content and set up 300+ 

courses in the new OWL ready for May. 

Migration usually involves moving 

the content from the fi le manager 

in WebCT to the Resources tool in 

the new OWL. Quizzes are moved 

using Respondus, http://www.uwo. 

ca/its/sitelicense/respondus/. Many 

instructors are fi nding that this is a 

good time to do some spring cleaning 

and are building their courses from 

scratch in the new OWL. 

More information about the 

new OWL and the progress of the 

OWL Flight Plan can be found at 

http://webct.uwo.ca/owlfl ightplan/. 

Please return regularly to this site to 

check the latest news.

Information Technology Services In Touch 

About In Touch 

Published quarterly by 

Information Technology Services 

The University of Western Ontario 

Editor: Merran Neville 

The purpose of In Touch is to inform 

our users about activities and events of 

Information Technology Services. 

Copyright © 2012 The University of 

Western Ontario. Permission is granted 

to copy in whole or in part provided 

that due credit is given to the author(s), 

the Division of Information Technology 

Services, and the University of Western 

Ontario. 

We welcome your comments, 

suggestions, and articles. 

The Editor, In Touch, 

Information Technology Services, 

Support Services Building, 

The University of Western Ontario, 

London, Ontario, N6A 3K7 

Phone: 519 - 661 - 2151 

FAX: 519 - 661 - 3486 

Email: in.touch@uwo.ca 

Web: http://www.uwo.ca/its/ 

Notices/Information 

• Scheduled System Maintenance takes place during 

Sundays, 3am - 12noon; Thursdays, 12am - 7am 

• ITS Services Document available at: 

http://www.uwo.ca/its/services.pdf 

Need help, have a question? 

• Call ITS Customer Support Centre: 

519 - 661-3800 ext. 83800 

• ASK ITS: http://askits.uwo.ca/ 

• Email using the web form: 

http://www.uwo.ca/its/helpdesk/question.html 

Page 2 

In the News 

Barb Sadler 

Brian Borowski, a staff member of the Network and Storage 

Operations (NOC) team, is featured in the June edition of the Reader’s 

Digest, (http://readersdigest.ca), in a very interesting article about his 

participation in a Western research project to gain new insight into how 

much information our senses can absorb. 

Brian was recruited for the echolocation research project by Western 

professor Dr. Mel Goodale, the director of the Brain and Mind Institute at 

Western and project lead. The article, entitled Bat Man, was written by 

Alex Hutchinson.


Major Upgrade to the Corporate Calendar System 

Andrew Filippi 

Western is embarking on an exciting 

new project to upgrade our corporate 

calendar system for the start of the 

2012 fall term. Upon completion of this 

project we will be able to provide the 

University community with increased 

selection when choosing a calendar 

program. You will be able to access your 

Western calendar from almost any calDAV 

compliant calendar program. The primary 

benefi t will come to anyone running a 

Mac. You will be able to confi gure your 

iCal to access your Western calendar. 

This signifi cant upgrade involves: 

• Infrastructure changes, moving from 

a proprietary calendar protocol to 

what is emerging as the industry 

standard protocol for calendar 

systems – calDAV 

Helping Hands Award 

Merran Neville 

In April, Heather Woods nominated Tracy Laughton and 

Ihsan Rehman for the Helping Hands award. They received this 

honour at the Spring Resource Operational Retreat. 

In her nomination statement, Heather had this to say 

about Tracy and Ihsan: 

Tracy Laughton and Ihsan Rehman, both from Information 

Technology Services, have been a major help to me with my cable 

databases. You can approach Tracy and Ihsan any time and 

receive a smile and a “how may I help you.” They’re never too busy 

with their own work commitments to lend a helping hand. 

Congratulations, Tracy and Ihsan!. 

See http://www.uwo.ca/its/doc/newsletters/InTouch/hha.pdf 

for details about this award. 

• The migration of 65,000 calendars 

with the majority of usage coming 

from administrative units 

As part of the calendar upgrade, 

the system will be unavailable for an 

extended period of time; for example, 

over a weekend, to facilitate the migration 

of data. To maximize the calendar 

availability, a decision has been made to 

move only 18 month’s worth of historical 

calendar data. Access to historical 

calendar data which is not part of the 

migration will be made available for 

reference purposes only after the upgrade. 

We are working on making the 

transition to the new environment 

as seamless as possible from both 

the customer and technical support 

Page 3 

perspective. However, existing programs 

such as Lightning, Notifylink and Outlook 

Connector (SJOC) will need to be 

upgraded and/or reconfi gured to access 

the new calendar environment. 

Additional communication and 

details will be made available as the 

project progresses. If you would like to 

discuss how this project might impact you 

or the areas you support please contact 

westerncalendarupgrade@uwo.ca. 

Ihsan Rehman and Tracy Laughton


Instant messaging can be a very 

eff ective communication tool. There are 

several popular IM services, and each one 

has its own proprietary client software. 

Fortunately, there are many open source 

clients that provide more freedom and 

extra features, making it unnecessary to 

limit yourself to the offi cial software. 

In addition to the ability to modify the 

software, in my experience, open source 

clients typically have two big advantages 

over their proprietary alternatives. The 

fi rst is support for multiple IM services, 

which elminates the need to run multiple 

clients. Although I’m mostly only active 

on the Jabber/XMPP service, I have 

contacts using Windows Live Messenger 

and AOL Instant Messenger, and I can 

communicate with all of them through the 

The Open Experience: IM Clients 

Paul Lukasewych 

same application. The second advantage 

is support for encryption, either natively 

or through a plugin. I prefer to encrypt my 

messages, and it has been easy to do so in 

all the open source clients I have used. 

My fi rst experience with an open 

source IM client was with Adium on Mac 

OS X. To this day it remains my favourite 

IM client on any platform, with a fantastic 

feature set out of the box, and a very 

attractive interface. If you’re on a Mac, 

I can’t recommend this one enough. 

Windows users can check out Pidgin for 

a similar feature set (they actually use the 

same library underneath). These days, I use 

Kopete, the default IM client on Kubuntu. 

It has a few rough spots, but it gets the 

job done for now. It will be replaced by a 

new application in the near future, which 

Page 4 

I’m hoping will fi ll in the gaps. Other GNU/ 

Linux options include Pidgin and Empathy. 

Regardless of your platform, there 

is probably an open source IM client out 

there that will make your life easier. To fi nd 

out more about the ones I’ve mentioned, 

take a look at the links below. 

http://www.adium.im 

http://www.pidgin.im 

http://kopete.kde.org 

http://live.gnome.org/Empathy 

Adium Pidgin Kopete Empathy


I was speaking to a colleague recently 

and she commented on the fact that, in 

this the information age, we have been 

burdened with a need to recall multiple 

passwords, often accompanied by related 

details. For example, one might have 

a password for the bank, for Western, 

for a research computer one accesses; 

each with a URL, a login name and likely, 

password specifi c to that site, and so on. 

Once, I was helping someone with 

a computer problem, and accidentally 

knocked the mouse pad off the desk. As 

I reached down to recover the mouse 

pad, I noticed a yellow sticky stuck to the 

bottom which read “PW:s3cRe7!” (not 

actually what was written, but you get the 

idea). Hmm, I thought, decent password, 

but how secure is the system if the 

password is practically written in an easy 

to fi nd place? This raises the question, 

does this security control itself not pose its 

own security problem, especially if each 

site has some obtuse, hard-to-remember 

passwords? Clearly it does! 

Finding a solution 

I believe there are a couple of things 

to consider. From a security perspective, 

what is the problem with the yellow sticky 

note on the bottom of the mouse pad? 

The problem is that the password 

itself is a security control currently not 

being kept securely, and a single factor 

control at that. The terminology of 

‘single-factor’ and ‘dual-factor’ control 

is likely one most people are not aware 

of. Consider a hypothetical bank vault 

that we see in movies: can the bank vault 

Security Team News 

Jeff rey Gardiner 

typically be opened by the bank manager 

alone? Not generally. Most bank vaults 

are designed to have multi-factor controls 

so that the bank manager and at least 

one other person is required to open it. 

Likewise, most people have been to sites 

where they are required to log in, but they 

are also required to fi ll in a capcha code 

presented to them on-screen. This is 

another example where the second means 

of providing ‘identifi cation’ is unique to 

the person seeing the screen. 

Dual factor authentication is a security 

process in which the user provides 

two means of identifi cation specifi c to 

themselves; sort of like two pieces of 

identifi cation. A ‘factor’ is something or 

some information that is presumably 

unique to the person possessing it. A 

key issued to ONLY the bank manager 

is a ‘factor’, as is a password, or a capcha 

image which is time sensitive and limited 

to one use only. One factor could be 

forged or obtained by brute force, but the 

compromise of two unlikely. In our case 

of the yellow sticky note, that password 

was a ‘single-factor’ token, necessary for 

authentication essentially being made 

freely available to all (who bothered to 

look on the bottom of the mouse pad). 

This article started by observing 

that generally we all have trouble with 

one-factor authentication, so why am 

I bothering to introduce two-factor 

authentication? Does that not simply 

increase the complexity of the problem 

we’re trying to manage? The capcha 

option is an example of how we are still 

only required to remember ‘one’ password 

but our brain is required to interpret the 

‘capcha’ code. These codes are designed 

so that they are obfuscated with ‘noise’ 

to the point that, theoretically, machines 

or image recognition software, is unable 

to do what our eyes and brain can do, 

namely read the text. Regardless, multifactor 

authentication is much more secure 

than single factor authentication and not 

necessarily more diffi cult. Multi-factor 

authentication can use physical tokens, 

such as cards or other things. In general 

Page 5 

two-factor authentication is spoken of 

in terms of ‘something you know’ and 

‘something you possess’. 

Does that mean we should simply 

role out multi-factor authentication 

everywhere? There is a time and purpose 

for multi-factor authentication and a time 

for single factor authentication. Back to 

our yellow sticky problem. What if we 

determine that the system using this 

password is actually best served by a 

single-factor? We still have a problem, 

so what is the solution? Not writing the 

password on a ‘yellow sticky’ is an option, 

but that doesn’t solve the problem of 

people tending towards not remembering 

passwords in the fi rst place. 

What if we had a system so that we 

didn’t need to remember the password, 

but we could reconstruct it on a use by 

use case? That would help. 

Let’s suppose we have four passwords 

we must remember, each of which has to 

be at least 8 digits long both numeric and 

non-numeric - we need to remember one 

each for the bank, Western, our research 

computer and one for our blog hosted by 

a third party. Let’s also suppose we know 

enough to not use the same password at 

each place, and they are each relatively 

diffi cult (but secure) passwords. If we had 

a system so that some component of the 

password uniquely identifi ed its use in 

a non-dictionary way we could devise a 

system as follows: 

Bank: Bnk-s3cRe7! 

Blog: Blg-s3cRe7! 

Western: UWO-s3cRe7! 

Research: Res-s3cRe7! 

Such a system would help by 

reducing the number of things we 

needed to remember but still suff ers 

from two problems. First, if one of our 

passwords is compromised, the rest aren’t 

necessarily. Yet, if there is an obvious 

system to constructing them, they could 

all be compromised, which is essentially 

no diff erent than using one password 

everywhere. Second, not all systems allow 

the same features in a password such as


length or allowable characters. There is 

an other option, namely what if we could 

encrypt the sticky? 

As it turns out this option exists in a 

freely available program called Password 

Safe found at sourgeforge: http:// 

passwordsafe.sourceforge.net/ 

Password Safe allows you to store 

information about your password security 

in one encrypted, reusable, transferable 

safe. Along with the actual password, 

you can store URL, username, and other 

relevant information. 

Is it wise to put all of one’s eggs in 

a single basket? It is, if it will take the 

age of the universe to gain access to the 

basket - which is the case with Password 

Safe. A single password gives the user 

access to a unique asymmetric key pair 

(cryptography) that protects the safe’s 

contents, therefore one only need to 

remember a single password. 

Be warned though, lose that single 

password and you lose access to the safe. 

From the safe, you are able to securely 

(and invisibly) use the password as 

needed with the residual risk being a copy 

Poster Caption Contest Winners 

Page 6 

is put into the cache. This risk is far less 

than having multiple passwords, easily 

forgotten, spattered about on yellow 

stickies as back-up. 

Poster Caption Contest Winners 

A very successful poster caption 

contest to promote on-line safety and 

computer eWellness awareness in the 

University community concluded on 

March 16, 2012. Details about the 

winning entries are provided at 

http://ewellness.uwo.ca/campaign/ 

Winter2012/ 

Back row (left to right): Brian Dalrymple, Frank Van Sas, Henry Laparskas, William Handler 

Front row (left to right): Samantha Munro, Samantha Marren, Amanda Mckee Laura Maxwell


Mona Brennan-Coles 

 

Fax Services 

Fax usage is decreasing in most 

areas and as we move voice services 

to VoIP and retire the SL-100, this is an 

opportunity to provide fax services 

in a new way. Considerations include 

enterprise vs. hosted solutions; Western’s 

E-commerce policies; cost, ease of use, 

and clients for all desktops. 

We are issuing an RFP looking for 

enterprise and/or hosted solutions in 

May 2012 and anticipate a decision in 

early August 2012. Once a solution 

has been selected, we will prepare and 

communicate a deployment plan. 

Voice Conferencing 

Services 

Voice conferencing services provide 

a more cost eff ective way to provide realtime 

communications. The SL-100 Meet- 

Me-Conference service has provided very 

basic voice conferencing services. With 

the SL-100 retirement, we are looking to 

replace the Meet-Me-Conference service 

with one which is easier to use and 

provides self-registration facilities. 

We are issuing an RFP looking for 

enterprise and/or hosted solutions. 

Considerations include ease of enterprise 

vs. hosted, cost, ease of use, and ease 

of billing. We anticipate a decision in 

mid-August, 2012. Once a solution 

has been selected, we will prepare and 

communicate a deployment plan. 

Mobile Working 

Group 

The Mobile Working group, a 

University wide working group broadly 

focused on mobile computing, is 

facilitated by ITS and composed of 

interested University community 

members. 

The Mobile Working Group meets 

monthly to share updates and ideas/ 

information. Subgroups focusing on 

Mobile Device Management, Digital 

Rights Management, Apple devices, and 

Android Devices are working to provide 

information and recommendations 

via the Kiwi wiki and at the monthly 

meetings. Deb Tieszer presented the fi rst 

Mobile Working Group report to TUMS on 

March 29, 2012. 

Western Libraries, the Faculty 

of Engineering, and recently LHSC 

have joined the working group. We 

welcome anyone who supports and/or is 

responsible for using mobile technology 

in learning or administration. If you are 

interested in participating, please contact 

Mona Brennan-Coles at mona@uwo.ca 

or extension 82510 (519-850-2510 from 

off -campus). 

Communications among all Working 

Group and TUMS members are facilitated 

by: 

• Kiwi at https://kiwi.uwo.ca/display/ 

mobilewg/Home/ - read/write access 

for all TUMS and Mobile Working 

Group members 

• Mailing Lists – mobile-wg@uwo.ca 

and tums@uwo.ca 

• TUMS Meeting – report from 

Mobile Working Group - 

http://www.uwo.ca/its/tums/ 

Page 7


The Instructional Support Team 

and the ITRC hosted a reception on 

Friday, April 27, 2012 for the faculty who 

participated in the January Pilot of the 

new OWL (powered by Sakai). Faculty 

joined with their ITRC support person 

to present their experiences during the 

pilot. Feedback was very positive and the 

recommendations are greatly appreciated 

and will be shared with and will benefi t 

the University community. The photos 

demonstrate the bonds that developed 

over the course of the pilot. 

Some of the faculty participated 

at the Teaching Support Centre Spring 

Perspectives on Teaching held on Monday, 

May 14, 2012. They were in a panel 

discussion sharing their experiences 

with building and teaching with the new 

learning management system. See http:// 

www.uwo.ca/tsc/about/features/spring_ 

perspectives_ 2012/ for details. 

[Photos taken by Colby Gauld.] 

Instructional Support Team and ITRC News 

Merran Neville 

Corey Meingarten, Law, Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood, ITRC, Mysty Clapton, 

support staff member for Law course Health Sci 4090B 002 

Graham Smith, instructor 

Geography 4000B, 

Samantha Marren, ITRC 

Tanja Coso, ITRC, Christine Guptil, instructor Music 3939B/Health 

Sci 3091B, Samantha Munro, ITRC 

Page 8


Jay Loftus, Schulich Medicine & 

Dentistry, Tyler Benning, ITRC, 

Deanna Grogan, ITS. Supporting 

Pharmacology 2060B 

Samantha Munro, ITRC, Eunice Gorman, instructor 

Thanatology 2231B, David Arromba, 

ITRC 

Page 9 

Kim Hoff man, ITS, Shaun 

Salisbury, instructor MME 

3380B, Jim Dobravec, 

Engineering


Editor’s Note: Rob Atkinson is a member 

of the Data Centre, Network and Storage 

Operations team in ITS. 

My experience as a Volunteer Team 

Leader for Western’s Alternative Spring 

Break program (http://www.asb. uwo. 

ca/) was fantastic! I had the great 

fortune of working with another Western 

staff member to accompany twentyfi 

ve amazing Western students to the 

Dominican Republic, so that we could 

teach English in a public school setting. 

I co-facilitated daily refl ection sessions 

with the Western students, while ensuring 

the safety and well being of the group. 

I was also involved in teaching English 

to the public school children. Initially, 

I wasn’t sure what to expect, but after 

meeting and working with the Western 

students for the fi rst time, I knew I was 

going to have fun! They were engaged 

and energetic, and we travelled to the 

Dominican without issue. 

After a long trip and a late night, we 

started our Orientation the next day by 

taking a walking trip around the town of 

Monti Christi, in the North West corner of 

the Dominican, only and hour from the 

Haitian border. The next day, we started 

teaching English at a local public school. 

In small teams of fi ve, our group taught 

some very basic, introductory English to 

all the grades. Simple phrases such as “Hi, 

my name is…” and “How are you today?” 

were taught, so that they would have a 

foundation to build on. 

Learning English in the Dominican 

is normally extremely expensive, so our 

free classes were well received. Working 

with the organization that set up this 

program, Outreach 360 (http://www. 

outreach360.org), we were part of a larger 

set of initiatives that is trying to bring a 

self-sustaining model of volunteer-based 

English learning and literature to one 

of the poorest areas of the Dominican. 

It was extremely rewarding and very 

educational working with both the 

Western and Monti Christi students. I 

really enjoyed working closely with both 

My Alternative Spring Break (ASB) 

Rob Atkinson 

sets of students, and getting to know 

everyone involved with the project. 

If you are interested in learning 

more about the Alternative Spring Break 

opportunity, please let me know. I’d be 

happy to share my experience. 

Page 10


ITS Customer Support Centre 

Voice & Data 

Administration Offi ce 

Computer Accounts Offi ce 

Computer & Network Operators 

ITRC 

ITS Non-Credit Courses 

Dial-in Line (all modem speeds) 

E-mail Postmaster 

ITS Support Centre 

ITS Training Lab 

ITRC 

Network Backup Service 

SSB 4100 

SSB 4230 

SSB 4320 

ITS Information 

For network backup and recovery service, please contact the 

ITS Legato Group: 

Email: legato@uwo.ca 

Web: http://www.uwo.ca/its/network/backup.html 

Commonly Used Numbers 

519 - 661 - 3800 ext. 83800 

519 - 661 - 3800 ext. 83800 

519 - 661 - 2151 ext. 82151 

519 - 661 - 3800 ext. 83800 

519 - 661 - 3525 ext. 83525 

519 - 661 - 2111 ext. 85513 

519 - 661 - 2151 ext. 82151 

519 - 640 - 5305 

519 - 661 - 3800 ext. 83800 

General Purpose Labs: 

NSC - 110 

SH - 1310 

Page 11 

ITS Mission 

ITS Open Hours ITS Vision 

Building hours and hours of opening for the various areas of 

ITS are listed on the web at the following location. 

Web: http://www.uwo.ca/its/about-its/hours.html 

Facilities 

We are committed to delivering the 

best information technology services 

and solutions in support of the 

teaching and research missions of the 

University. 

To be recognized as the preferred source 

of information technology services and 

solutions within the campus community 

and recognized as one of the leaders 

in the North American university 

community. 

http://www.uwo.ca/its/helpdesk/question.html 

http://www.uwo.ca/its/telecom/tele-install.html 

FAX 519 - 661-3486 ext.83486 

accting@uwo.ca 

operator@uwo.ca 

itrc@uwo.ca 

its-courses@uwo.ca 

postmaster@uwo.ca 

NCB - 105, 

HSB - 13, 14, 16 

SSC - 1000, 1012, 1032

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