| Volume 4 Issue 1 | September 2011 |
The CIS faculty is pleased to announce a successful search and welcomes Dr. Henry Felch (Henry) to the faculty. Henry is a native of "The County," and is pleased to return to Maine to teach at a local university. Dr. Felch joined the Army and served 22 years as an Armor crewman on a M1A1 Abrahams tank. He was stationed in many locations around the U.S., Europe, and Korea until he retired in 2004.
During the last two years of his Army career, he worked as the Director of Information Management (DOIM) Information Assurance division doing network security at Ft. Carson, Colorado. As part of his position, he did vulnerability assessments; deigned, implemented, configured, and monitored a state of the art network defense system. He continued to work in the same position at Fort Carson as a civilian after retirement.
Dr. Felch has also worked at Verizon business as a systems engineer/analyst/architect in the Security Solutions group. He was responsible for requirement assessment analysis and management of enterprise security product development. His extensive professional background will support the plans of the Computer Information Systems program to expand its offerings in the cyber-security area.
Dr. Felch has a Bachelor of Science from the University of Louisville in Training and Development, a Master of Education from the University of Louisville in Training and Development, a Master of Science in Computer Information Systems from the University of Phoenix, a Master of Science in Computer Science with a concentration in Computer Systems Security from Colorado Technical University and a Doctorate in Computer Science at Colorado Tech. His dissertation topic was Network Security. He has been teaching at Colorado Tech for over six years at all levels, undergraduate, masters and doctorate.
But its not all work and school -- he owns and rides a Harley Davidson Ultra Classic Touring Motorcycle and has traveled extensively on trips across the Colorado mountains, the U.S. west coast, and the United States. He recently completed a ride across the U.S. for the "Run for the Wall - LA to DC for Rolling Thunder" on Memorial Day in Washington D.C.
Henry will be sharing an office with Professor Mark Goodridge in Room 257 of the Richard Randall Student Technology Center. This fall, he is teaching the CIS101 Introduction to Computer Science ITV offering and the CIS350 Database Design and Management class in Augusta.
Join me in welcoming Dr. Henry Felch to our faculty
Taking Geek to a Whole New Level
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<p>And I thought that I had seen it all on the Web, but apparently not. I understand that this custom University of Maine license plate belongs to one of the Bachelor of Science in Computer Information Systems students, Stephanie Tasker.</p>
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Web 2.0 inspired design and GIMP graphics net Philip Guimond a $25 gift certificate to the UMA bookstore.
Phil's design was selected by Frear Hook, UMA Webmaster, as the winning entry in the Web Page Design Contest sponsored by the CIS251 Web Authoring Tools class that was offered for the first time this summer. The blended background, dynamic navigation bar, and over-sized header are inspired by the no-nonsense style of Web 2.0 design principles.
This site design will be incorporated into the Web component of the CIS251 class.
During the summer semester, six CIS students participated in an information technology (IT) internship. Although students all worked in IT-based organizations throughout the state, the learning experiences were broad and varied. Two students will complete the requirements this fall.
In what we hope to be an annual pre-internship presentation event, the CIS program invited all students who were planning on participating in internships in the spring or summer semesters to watch the presentations and to join the presenters and faculty for a "lite luncheon." The event, catered by the Cafe Guys was well attended as was the audience for the internship presentations. We would like to thank Jan Bunford, the administrator of the Melmac grant that sponsored this student retention activity. Faculty members, Diana Kokoska, Mark Goodridge, and Henry Felch were on hand to watch the presentations and assign grades to the semester-long projects.
Seumus Lowell was the first student to intern at Oxford Networks, a Maine-based company with offices in Lewiston-Auburn and Bangor. The CIS program sees this as a great opportunity for hands-on experience in the networking area.
In addition to participating in a full install, Seumus reviewed database records for the company. When asked what skills he found most beneficial for his internship, he responded "patience." He explained that every field has its own jargon and IT, in particular, seems to have acronyms for acronyms
The CIS program was very pleased that his organizational sponsor was able to attend the internship presentations to support Seumus.
Another CIS student will be interning at Oxford Networks during the fall semester.
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Occasionally, students perform internships in the organization in which they are professionally employed. Although not encouraged, it is possible if the student is engaged in an IT activity that is not within the normal scope of his/her current job description. Such was the case for Dana Libby. Dana who is a civilian systems administrator for the Maine Army National Guard at Fort Keyes, was selected to do a RCASWeb virtualization project. In layman's terms, Server virtualization, uses specially designed software to convert a single physical server into multiple virtual machines. One of the major reasons to virtualize servers is to reduce electrical and administration costs.
Dana commented that CIS270 Management Information Systems and CIS470 Project Management helped him understand the overall scope of IT projects and how the project could impact the entire IT department and the users if not done correctly and in a timely fashion.
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Another internship opportunity that exists for our students is the ME State Government Summer Internship Program. Government agencies submit projects and students submit resumes. A selection committee matches the project with a student's skill sets and offers a compensated 12-week work program. Jeana K. McCannell was selected to intern with the Department of Labor's Bureau of Unemployment Insurance as a technical writer.
The basic scope of the project was to develop wiki help pages to go with the Maine Department of Labor's new system for the Unemployment Insurance division. Jeana indicated that she used skills from many of her CIS classes in this project: html, database design, Oracle, PHP, and even a digital imaging class.
Jeana's organizational sponsor was also on hand as Jeana unveiled her contribution to a multi-million dollar project.
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Steve Washburn did an internship project at the Central Maine Community College. At CMCC Steve worked in the information technology center under the supervision of Bob Boucher, the Director of Information Technology at CMCC. While there Steve imaged 125 new computers, upgraded 50 existing computers by installing more RAM and loading a Windows 7 image, and worked at the help desk troubleshooting computer problems. He also identified and solved a problem on a portion of the CMCC web site involving a conflict between HTML code originating in Microsoft Outlook and code originating in Web Expressions.
Our relationship with CMCC is very important as many of the associate degree graduates continue on to receive a Bachelor's Degree in Computer Information Systems from UMA.
What Mark Did on His Summer Vacation
This past summer, Mark Goodridge attended the 9th annual FOSSed Conference at Gould Academy in Bethel, Maine. Every summer the FOSSed Conference (www.fossed.com) presents a three-day series of seminars and presentations dedicated to promoting the use of Free and Open Source Software in Education (mostly for a lot of Linux fans).
Out of a packed schedule he attended seminars on server virtualization, fire-wall installation and configuration, designing a network-attached storage system with freeNAS, and screen-casting in the classroom.
The most interesting and rewarding seminar of the lot, however, was a presentation on Android programming, the somewhat involved process (it requires Java and XML) for creating Android apps. Mark plans on using what he learned in the Android seminar to add an introduction to Android apps in CIS 214 this fall and carry that theme over into CIS 314 in the spring semester with a full-fledged Android app project as part of the course requirements.
So now you have it -- Java on steroids!
Students in the CIS251 Web Authoring Tools class took graphics to a whole new level as they created professional graphics in GIMP and integrated them with a Web 2.0 design. As a final project, students created two home pages -- one using an imagemap navigation system and one using a dynamic navigation system. The home pages were to demonstrate some of the Web 2.0 graphic elements that the students learned to create in GIMP and html/css Web elements, such as gradient backgrounds, text effects, sticky footers, icons, badges, and animation effects.
Below are a few of the selected Web sites for you to preview. On the first two sample pages, the links goes to the actual Web pages because you cannot experience the full effect of the graphics and the animation unless you actually visit the site. On the other sites, pictures of the home page are displayed.
Jody Crowe's first site captivates the audience as she designs the home page for an online art gallery.
In Jody's second site, the Dreaming Dragon Bookstore, pay close attention to the two GIMP animations -- the dragon fading in on the header and the marbles rolling on the bookshelf. Refresh the browser to watch the animations again.
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Shelly Tripp's color schemes work perfectly with the topics she has selected. Notice the browns and beiges for the ridinginstyle site and the greens, golds, and oranges for the garden site.
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Marcia Moore created two very different sites -- one named Kimberly Enterprises, llc, which is for a small accounting firm. The client selected the image and Marcia added a matching navigation system.
The second site called Oldman.Me is a genealogy site that Marcia is creating for her parents. It just has that look and feel of a small coastal community.
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The next site was created for a pseudo client by Shaun Bourque. His selection of colors went well with his theme of hazardous waste. Notice the image with the mask that draws immediate attention and lets the user know the purpose of the site.
This new addition to our Web design and development track proved to be a popular course offering with 28 students enrolled for the summer session with Diana Kokoska as the instructor.
The CIS250 Web Animation - Adobe Flash was an online summer course with class delivery through Blackboard and instructed by Carol Churchill. There were 20 students in the CIS 250 Flash class.
Several students commented on how much fun they were having in the class and how much they were learning. They enjoyed working with the Flash timeline and creating animation starting with fish swimming across the stage and out of view to the same fish coming back onto the stage pulling a sign that would fade in and out of focus. They incorporated sound such as water bubbling to make the fish scene more realistic. Then on to creating animated buttons that took on a look of 3D when pressed. Students were amazed at how easy it was to create impressive web animation. However, they did learn early on how important it is to test each component throughout development.
Each student had three assignments due per week for a total of 27 assignments plus a final project that they were graded on. Their final project was in two segments. In the first segment, they had to create a text based proposal report, using a text editor such as Microsoft Word, documenting the goals and objectives of their actual final project Flash web site. They had to include the following in their written documentation:
a. Based on their web site goals, they had to develop a list of objectives. They had to have two or more goals and at least three objectives for each goal.
b. They had to develop an outline with categories that correspond to the objectives.
c. They, also, had to create a storyboard showing how all of their site pages and navigation system were organized
Instructor Churchill served as their client and had to approve their proposal before the student could start the actual web site.
In the second segment of their final project, they had to build an actual Flash web site that contained at least four pages with content. Each page had to have a navigation bar with buttons. The buttons had to include a movie clip animation that displayed when the pointer was over the button. When the button was clicked, the Flash player loaded a different .swf file at a specified level. They had to import at least two photos to their flash library and they had to use ActionScript code to load the photos into one of their pages. They, also, had to create a Flash web page that served as an order form and that perform calculation totals for a customer order using ActionScript to calculate the order form.
One student commented to Carol, "I'm having so much fun, I can't stop playing with this program."