TECHNews

On Monday, December 14, Classroom Technology will begin an effort to upgrade Windows-based lectern computers from Windows 7 Professional to Windows 10 Professional.  The effort will also include upgrading the memory and hard drives to enhance the overall performance.   In IT, several of us have been using Windows 10 since it was released in summer 2015, and we expect you will like it as much as we do. Our goal is to configure the computers, so that Windows 7 users can quickly adapt to the change.

The list of classroom technology rooms impacted by the Windows 10 upgrade is shown below.  To avoid impact to Wintersession classes, we will prioritize the work so upgrades in Wintersession classrooms will occur in December.  Further, we plan to complete all lectern computer upgrades before the beginning of the spring semester.

Unlike individual computer upgrades, Classroom Technology plans to perform a clean install of Windows 10.   After the Windows 10 installation, Microsoft Office 2013 will be installed along with commonly used applications, such as Firefox, Chrome, Adobe Acrobat Reader, etc.

To prepare, we are asking impacted instructors to please take the following steps.

1. Transfer all personal files from the Classroom Technology machines to an external source.  We recommend UM Box, UM Google Drive or an external drive.
2. Get up to speed with Windows 10 using these online training videos from Microsoft.  If you can take monotone voices without falling asleep, this 30 minute video does a nice job of summarizing Windows 10 features.
3. Attend one of our Windows 10 training courses during finals week.  Check back in January, because we’ll add more classes the week before the spring semesters begin.

If you have questions or need additional support, please contact Jimmy Ball or umct@olemiss.edu.