After an academic year unlike any other, this summer, as we prepare to return to something more closely approaching normal for the fall, will have an interesting mix of our normal summer updates and some specifically post-COVID changes.
Every summer we update the software installed on lab computers and on the “base image” we put / use on new computers going out to faculty and staff. Windows will be updated to the latest available build – Windows 10 build 2104 – and the standard version of MacOS will be Big Sur – Mac OS 11.1. We will continue to use Microsoft Office 2019 on both Macs and Windows computers. We keep web browsers as up-to-date as possible, so the versions of Chrome and Firefox that we install will be the latest available at that time.
We will be making some changes to classrooms over the summer as well. We will be removing the Logitech Meetup cameras from the 30 rooms they were installed in. While they filled a very important role during the pandemic to support mixed-mode teaching, they are not really designed for the classroom environment, and they have been prone to more failures than we are comfortable with. The rooms that have the more advanced camera-and-microphone installations will retain those. We will also be upgrading the AV setups in the LDC classrooms this summer.
The pandemic-induced need for social distancing, as well as a sudden and urgent need to provide computers to students (and second computers to faculty and staff without laptops working from multiple locations) meant that we removed a large number of computers from the computer labs and classrooms on campus. It also meant that we did not do our normal lab computer hardware updates last summer. This summer, we will be doing two years worth of hardware replacements in labs, and updating the software on all the remaining computers.
Lastly, we are developing documentation to help faculty and staff reconnect the technology they took home to support remote teaching and working. Updates will be posted in Carleton Weekly.