UITS brings information technology to the forefront

All week, the University Information Technology Services is "Making IT Happen!" \nUITS is sponsoring the first information technology week on all IU campuses to raise students' awareness of available resources.\n"Students tend to use one area of technology and become adept in that area, but then miss out on other areas and resources that are available to them," said Michael McRobbie, vice president of information technology.\nThe featured speaker of ITweek is Brian Hawkins, president of Educause, a nonprofit organization that works with universities to advance information technologies. Educause works with more than 1,700 colleges and universities across the world. Hawkins' talks have been broadcast on the ITweek Web site, itweek.iu.edu.\n"In terms of the total information out there, we are collecting less and less," Hawkins said in his Tuesday morning talk. "We are living in the information age, but in terms of collecting it, it is becoming a dark age." \nFrom 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. today and Thursday, an information booth will be open in the atrium of the the Main Library. Today's programs include: learning HTML, creating personal homepages at IUB, a preview of the new online library catalog and a sneak preview of the upcoming Web-based e-mail client.\nThursday, programs include tours of the language labs, the Stat/Math center and the teaching and learning technologies lab. Tours and trials of state-of-the-art virtual reality technology are available in the advanced visualization lab, located in Lindley Hall room 135, from 1-4 p.m. Students can also visit the ITweek Web page for more information on any of the activities being sponsored. \nThis week is the first year of "Making IT happen!" If successful, it will be sponsored again in the future, McRobbie said. \n"There's so much information and technology available on this campus that hearing about it can become white noise, and you tend not to really hear about it," said Amy Lawson, a graduate student and UITS employee. "That is why we wanted to get out here in public where we can talk to people, pass things out, and let them know what is available"