This can occur for a variety of reasons such as a server, system or ISP being overwhelmed, or your home network dropping momentarily. If this happens, try to reconnect.
Some things to look out for on your home network:
1) Are you too far from your wifi router? Make sure the signal is strong. If not, consider moving closer to the wifi router. Also, consider plugging directly into your router with a network cable if that is at all possible. A wired network is more stable than a wireless one.
2) Is anybody else in your house streaming (such as YouTube, Netflix, etc.)? If so, might have to ask them to stop. Depending on your home network, steaming an HD movie, for example, can overwhelm a slower home internet connection.
It is possible that your home Internet connection can be experiencing problems, especially if many people in the area / neighborhood / city are using it heavily. This may not be noticeable when browsing the web, or streaming video/audio in a one-way download; however it will be noticeable when doing live two-way video or audio. You may want to contact your ISP to ask if loads are high in your area. You can also try power cycling your cable modem and wireless router. If a video+audio call is choppy, try turning off video and see if audio improves.
You may have
received an email over the weekend about being added to Microsoft Teams.
That was me (Bob Evans). Microsoft Teams is part of Office 365 and is Microsoft’s flagship
tool for team collaboration which includes chat, videoconferencing, file
sharing, etc. It is a great tool for both local and remote
collaboration. And because it is licensed by Purdue, it is secure and not
being used for commercial data mining of University operations. Teams
will be replacing Skype for Business in July of 2021.
Here is a short
video that gives a quick overview of Teams:
This tool has
recently become available to the campus and last week I began staging Teams for
our College so people can use it if desired.
A “Team” has been created for each major department in our College.
Within each
department, “Channels” have been created for each office, center and/or
program. Channels are where the work and collaboration takes place (chat,
video, file sharing, etc.). If you see a “lock” icon next to a channel,
that means the channel is private and only accessible to the members of that
channel (a team includes everyone, but a channel can be a subset of the team).
Feel free to
check out Microsoft Teams. You can access it via any web browser by
logging into Office 365…
For those who
want to use Microsoft Teams and do not have the client app installed on your
computer/laptop/tablet/phone, you can locate the app using this web page:
Please send email to EdIT@purdue.edu if you have any questions or need an additional private channel added to your departmental Team. EdIT is still learning about Teams and we hope to learn together with all of you as this tool unfolds. Thank you! 😊
Robert Evans Director, Education Office of Information Technology Managing Director, Teaching Resource Center Chair, College of Education Safety Committee Purdue University College of Education
One of the recommendations for delivering content to students is
“synchronous” delivery. The Innovative
Learning group recommends using this method sparingly and focusing on recorded
content using tools such as Camtasia (free video and screen recording
software available to all faculty and staff) in combination with Blackboard and
Brightspace.
However…if you do need to conduct live video sessions with
students, and are not familiar with WebEx, I’ve created a brief 4 ½ minute
video showing how to access and launch your WebEx Personal Room:
If you need help with WebEx, feel free to contact the Education IT team and we would be happy to meet with you to provide more details (see additional help links at the bottom of this post). WebEx should work with any laptop or tablet with a built-in camera and microphone. It also works great on a desktop computer if you have a webcam. If you need to order a webcam — for WebEx or Camtasia – please contact the Education IT team.
For more about synchronous and asynchronous delivery, see “How
will you deliver content?” on this web site:
To download a copy of a video, select the “Edit” option under the “Actions” drop down menu. Once in edit mode, there is an icon at the bottom right of the video window which allows download in .mp4 format. The icon is a folder with a downward pointing arrow.
Let us know if there is anything we can do to help. Thank you!
— The Education IT team
P.S. Here are instructions from ITaP for using WebEx:
Once recorded, the recording will go into the Purdue Kaltura/Mediaspace system where the video can be shared with others. Log in here to see recordings:
If people are reporting that your emails are going into a Junk Mail or Spam folder, the people reporting the problem may need to adjust their spam filter settings. For tips on what can be done see:
2. Purdue is legally liable to protect and retain Purdue records, including student information regulated by FERPA that may be conveyed in email and email attachments.
Purdue Email Policy: Users are reminded that any e-mail sent from a University Email Account or residing on University Email Services may be considered a public record under the Indiana Public Records Act (IC 5-14-3) and may be subject to disclosure. Users need to exercise judgment in sending content that may be deemed confidential or that they otherwise do not wish to be disclosed. Furthermore, email transmissions may not be secure, and contents that are expected to remain confidential need to be communicated via means other than email. Common examples of confidential contents include: student grades, personnel records, individual donor gift records, personally identifiable information, and data subject to federal and state laws or regulations, including but not limited to, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and the Gramm Leach Bliley Act (GLBA).
3. Using consumer email systems for Purdue email, when not contractually obligated to Purdue, causes Purdue to lose control of records, and circumvents Purdue access controls. Purdue has created access controls to protect and provide secure access to email. The security of 3rd party email systems cannot be guaranteed by Purdue. While some email users may be able to safely forward their Purdue email to a non-Purdue email account, employees who handle official Purdue data are bound by Purdue policy to ensure that Purdue data remains protected in ways that comply with all applicable laws and regulations.
4. The Purdue records retention policy must be complied with even if Purdue email is forwarded to a non-Purdue server.
5. Consumer email systems are typically commercial data-mining systems. Purdue students and employees may not consent to having the content of their email messages forwarded to, or entered into, a commercial data-mining system and tracked/indexed or potentially targeted with advertising, etc.
6. Caching a Purdue career account username password within a consumer email system (not an email client, but email systems/servers) that Purdue has not legally contracted puts Purdue systems and/or accounts at risk. Some non-Purdue email systems will offer to log into your Purdue email account on your behalf and pull your Purdue email onto their servers. It is OK for users to do this for their personally owned email and their own data, but this practice can put the data of students, and Purdue data in general, at risk.
7. When forwarding all Purdue email to a personal email account, a freedom of information act records request could impact someone’s personal account, and potentially bring personal email into litigation. Or it could cause Purdue to become out of compliance with laws that require Purdue to control and access Purdue-owned data.
Do you need to give someone access to your Outlook calendar? No problem! The following PDF document contains screen shots and steps for how to do this…
Please note that the process of giving someone access to your calendar is something that only you can do. The Education IT team does not have administrative access to the central Purdue Exchange server or your email/calendar account, so we cannot do this for you. However, if you encounter any problems with the steps found in the PDF document above, let us know and we would be happy to consult with you.
If you need to make a multi-point telephone call (up to 6-way) from a Purdue phone, here’s how you can do it…
1. You can call the operator and the operator can assist you in making a multi-point phone call at no charge (up to 6 parties). First, dial zero to reach the operator and let them know you need to make a call with up to 6 numbers. Then you’ll need to give the operator the phone numbers that you want to call. If there are long distance numbers, you’ll also need to give the operator your MURS number. The operator will make the calls for you immediately and charge your MURS number for any phone numbers that are long distance. You can make use of this service at any time.
2. All Purdue phones can make six way calls, but it requires a feature activation from the phone office. There is a one-time $10.00 activation fee to enable the phone to make 6 way calls, and then there are no additional charges for this service other than normal long distance charges. For more info about 6-way calls, see:
If you need to stream video to your students for instructional purposes, you can use the Purdue Kaltura Streaming Media Server. Information about the server can be found here:
If you receive a large amount of spam email from a specific sender, you can block that sender within Outlook. Blocking a sender causes all email from that sender to automatically move into the Junk Mail folder. To block a sender, simply follow these steps:
Right click on the spam message in your list emails.
Near the bottom of the pop-up menu, you should see Junk.
Hovering over that with your mouse brings up multiple options.
Click on Block Sender.
If a message is sent to your Junk E-Mail folder by mistake, you can follow the same steps and choose to never block the sender.
The bottom option on the pop-up list is for advanced options. From there you can change options about links, suspicious domain names, and permanently deleting junk mail (not recommended), as well as deciding how strict filtering should be. The other tabs at the top allow you to edit your safe and blocked senders lists. You can add individual email addresses (spammer@spammer.com) or domain names (@whatever.com). Adding domain names will allow/block all email addresses from that domain, no matter who sent it.
Occasionally spam email messages will slip through the Purdue PureMessage spam filter. If there is a specific spam sender that you need to block, you can follow these steps to block the sender:
