March 8th, 2015 (Week 6)
For this week in the adventures of a TLT intern, I did not have class because of the makeup snow day. I find this ironic because we had a snow day on Thursday, the day before. Unfortunately, I had to miss two shadowing hour with site managers. I will have to make them up this upcoming week!
As for Help Desk shadowing, I continued to help write Footprints for Medha when she received calls. One of the more interesting calls involved a nursing student. Her professor was calling from the Department of Health Services regarding Virtual SINC Site. Before I learned about all the great services offered by the university and before I discovered Pharos Remote, I used to log onto Virtual SINC Site to release it from my account. After that, I did not use Virtual SINC Site as much. Anyways, the student was unable to open documents and files using a program called SAS on Virutal SINC Site. She was able to download the files normally. The other students in her class were able to open and edit files. We asked if she was on WolfieNet-Secure or on a VPN (Virtual Private Network) and if she was logged onto her own account. Medha then asked her if she was on the correct version. Apparently, there are two versions: Desktop and Mobile (Apps). In order to have to program work, the student had to be on the Desktop version. Luckily we were able to rectify the problem. However, Medha, the student, and I were still wondering why it would not work on the other version. For that, we placed it in the Footprint and assigned the ticket to Raul, the faculty member responsible for dealing with Virtual SINC Site. I was glad we were able to help her. In the process, we were able to learn more about what works and what does not work with the services offered.
Now that I think about it, it is not too difficult helping people at Help Desk. I love how I can help students, knowing that I guided them through a problem. Even if I might not know the solution, it would be a learning process for me as well. I feel that although we learn both as being site managers and student technologists, the latter have more opportunity to apply and share that knowledge directly with the users. Site managers seem to share their knowledge more with the student consultants. I hope I can figure out what position I want to be by the end!