In September 2019, there was nearly always a student standing at the Pitt Print stations inside the labs, residence halls, and academic buildings. In offices all around the Pittsburgh campus, the sound of printers was the white noise of a busy department. Heat and the scent of toner emanated from the machines, while documents emerged at a remarkable rate. That fall, students printed over 6.1 million sheets of paper, while Ricoh multifunction devices in Pitt offices processed a whopping 15.5 million sheets. What a difference one year and a global pandemic make.

The University is in the planning process for migrating from Box to OneDrive. Pitt IT will provide additional information about migrating to Microsoft OneDrive for personal cloud storage as the project moves forward. In the meantime, whether you’re new to OneDrive or have been using it for ages, here are some neat features to make the most of working in the cloud!

The start of a new term is a great time to reassess whether you have all the technology resources you need to be successful. It’s even more important when virtual teaching, learning, and working is the norm due to the pandemic. Here are some tips for starting the semester strong.

The spring semester has begun! Most of you have a semester of remote work under your belt, so now’s a great time to consider what you can do to make things easier should you choose to learn at a distance. Here are five tips and tricks for acing remote classes.

Just as the current academic year began, continuing to adapt to the pandemic remains a necessity for the start of the new calendar year too. Fortunately, Pitt Information Technology has quite a few resources to help students, faculty, and staff stay engaged and productive while remaining physically distant. Though not all are new, with so many changes taking place in 2020, there may be some you haven’t heard about.

It’s a new year, and with it comes annual resolutions. Maybe you’ve vowed to study harder, increase your fitness level, or to lose weight and get more organized? But have you thought about resolving to make better use of technology? If not, I say it’s not too late. Here are my top 4 for 2021.

“Second verse, same as the first.” That was in a lot of my old summer camp songs, and the phrase has been coming to my mind a lot lately. This spring will look a lot like the fall, with the University offering hybrid and virtual instruction. Fortunately for instructors eager to prepare, Lecture Capture (Panopto) makes pre-recording presentations easy.

The nature of being a higher education and research institution means that universities have a lot of information to manage—everything from grades and tuition payments, to employment records and research data. Protecting the confidentiality and integrity of the information we collect is essential and, in many cases, required by law.

Techies are a unique bunch. They love their acronyms—and they couldn’t care less if their alphabet soup means something totally different to everyone else. When they talk about WAPs, they’re talking about something that’s the gateway to much of the knowledge you gain and entertainment you consume. During a typical year, it’s used by more than 7,800 students living in more than 30 buildings across campus. It’s available 24/7 and has 12,500 active devices connected to it on the average day.

As with nearly everything else this year, Pitt’s academic calendar is different for 2020-21. Students are facing an extended staycation, with lots of free time on their hands. Many faculty and staff will also have a slower pace of work between semesters. So what’s a Panther to do with so much downtime until the new term begins? Pitt IT has some great ideas: