David Dickens The Basics

A Guide to Personal Data Backup

In order to migrate your data off of Pepperdine sponsored data storage services, you will need to have some place to store all of your files. This article will serve as an overview of data backup solutions to keeping your data safe and secure in one place.

Common ways to back-up data include the following:

  • Flash or physical drive
  • Online backup services
  • Online cloud storage (like Google Drive, Microsoft One Drive or Apple iCloud)

Each of these options has its benefits and drawbacks in the areas of price, ease of use, security, and storage capacity.

Backup Option Comparison

Below is a basic comparison of data backup solutions. These are categorized by paid cloud backup services (I-Drive, etc.) at the top of the list, a physical drive option (flash drive, and lastly cloud storage services (Google Drive, etc.) at the bottom of the list.

ServiceCost /yrEncryption Remote AccessibilityStorage CapacityAdditional Features
I-Drive$79.50 ($59.62 for first year)Private encryption key availableFiles accessable from multiple devices 5 TBMobile app for remote access, can order a physical drive of all your data 
Carbonite$58.99Basic encrypted cloud dataFiles accessable from multiple devices UnlimitedAvailable integrated anti virus software for extra cost
Backblaze$70Private encryption key availableFiles accessable from multiple devices UnlimitedMobile app for remote access, can order a physical drive of all your data 
Flash DriveFixed Cost, $20-$80NANAHowever much you want to buy
Google Drive*$19.99, $29.99, $99.99Basic encryptionAccessible from any device on your Google account100GB for $19.99, 200GB for $29.99, 2TB for $99.99Integration with Google suite applications
iCloud$11.88, $35.88, $119.88Basic encryptionAccessable across Apple devices and online 50GB for $11.88, 200GB for $35.88, 2TB for $119.88Integration with Apple products and services like iPhone photos
One Drive (Microsoft)$19.99, $69.99Basic encryptionAccessable from any device on microsoft account100GB for $19.99, 1TB for $69.991TB option includes Microsoft Office suite of applications (Word, Excel, etc.)
*NOTE: Google Drive storage is included for no cost to current students as part of their Google Suite access that includes Pepperdine’s Google email service, Sheets, Slides, and Docs.

Why You May Need a Backup

Getting a backup drive for your files all has to do with assessing your need to protect your data and access your data remotely from the backup. Potential hazards to your data security that may warrant getting a drive include:

  • Viruses and malware that could corrupt, take or delete your data
  • Stolen or damaged computer
  • Corrupted files or accidentally deleted files

Good Practices for Data Backup Maintenance

Wherever you have your data backed up, it is important to make sure you follow some steps to maintain your backup system.

  • Backup Schedules; Set a regular interval to back up your data manually, or set your backup service to update data at a regular time interval. Additionally some services, either automatically or by your choice, will back-up data continuously every time you edit it.
  • Separate your backups – If you are storing your data on physical drives, it may be best to keep your primary device and your backup as disconnected as possible when not updating your files in order to minimize the risk of spreading malware or viruses that could corrupt your data on the backup drive.

If you have any questions about the information in this article, please feel free to contact Information Services at [email protected] or (310) 506-7425.

David Dickens Faculty

Opening Your Door with Your ID PIN Number

Step 1:

Take out your ID card and place it against the black sensor until the light on the lock flashes green (This will still work if your ID card is in your wallet).

Step 2:

Enter your 4 digit PIN number on the keypad after you have tapped your card and the indicator light has flashed green (If you do not know your PIN number please refer to the secondary directions at the bottom of this page).

Step 3:

After scanning the card, seeing the indicator light flash green, and entering your 4 digit PIN number the door should unlock and open normally.

How to Find Your Door Code PIN Number

Step 1:

Log onto WaveNet. From the employee tab on the top menu bar of your screen, select “ID card PIN Lookup” under the “EMPLOYEE RESOURCES” heading.

Step 2:

When prompted, agree to the terms of service in order to continue.

Step 3:

Enter your Network ID and password.

Step 4:

You will be redirected to a page that shows your ID card PIN number.

David Dickens Students

Adobe Acrobat Pro and Editing PDFs

We are often asked about a reduced cost or free license for Acrobat Pro for students, faculty and staff.

If you are using a Pepperdine University-owned computer, chances are it already has Acrobat Pro installed according to the University’s site license with Adobe.

If you are not using such a computer (note that the Law Library lab computers and the CDO student computers have Acrobat Pro installed), and you need/want to edit PDFs, you will need to find/install your own PDF editor.

Pepperdine University does not have special pricing for Acrobat Pro for use on a personally-owned computer.

HOWEVER, there is a regular Adobe educational discount that students, faculty, and staff would qualify for. That product is significantly reduced from their regular pricing. 
You can link to the educational pricing for Adobe Acrobat here:  https://www.adobe.com/acrobat/pricing/students.html

Note that Adobe has made their entire Creative Cloud product very attractively priced when compared with the price for just Acrobat alone. For just a few dollars more a month you can have access to many more premium products from Adobe. If that isn’t interesting to you… then you will probably want to investigate other solutions…

You should also note that most word processors and other software will output in PDF format.  Granted, that won’t help much when you want to edit or modify PDFs but there are alternatives to Acrobat Pro that may be helpful to you and will be much cheaper.

There is a free service from Adobe called Acrobat online where you must create an account with Adobe to use their “free” software.  We have not tested this but it appears that they will use your Adobe account information to market paid services to you: https://www.adobe.com/acrobat/online/pdf-editor.html

Finally, you may find some success in online guides/websites that review PDF editors. As an example, Toms Guide is a pretty well established site that we refer to now and then.  They have a guide to PDF editors that may be helpful to you if you don’t want to pay for the Acrobat Pro subscription or sign up for Adobe marketing with their “free” offering: https://www.tomsguide.com/best-picks/best-pdf-editors

Finally, if you have a Mac, you will find that the built-in product “Preview” is a great tool for annotating your PDFs if that is all you need to do.

Free and discounted software for students: https://lawtech.pepperdine.edu/free-and-discounted-software-for-students/

David Dickens Students

Tablets in Law School? Not So Much.

While the tablet revolution is changing the way many people think about computing and has turned upside down many aspects of how companies deliver services, these changes have not fully made it into the law school experience.

It’s true that with a keyboard, a tablet can be a great tool for typing, even outlining in a law school class but a tablet still is not a system that is supported for computer-based examinations here at Caruso Law.

At Caruso Law, students are not required to use a computer for exams but we do encourage it and you will find that we use the same system that the California Bar Exam uses (as well as many other state jurisdictions).

The iPad, Android Tablets, and any other tablet-based systems are strongly discouraged for law students as a primary computing platform.

It is our intention to guide law students toward the best possible computing experience during their time in law school. As a law student you have a significant challenge in front of you (law school).  Because of the intense nature of the law school experience you should have the best computer suited for your needs.  This is not to say that you should not own a tablet at all, rather feel free to add a tablet to your stable of tools that includes a reliable laptop.

When taking notes in class, preparing outlines for study, drafting documents, and especially when taking exams, law students should have a reliable laptop computer. Tablet systems have come a long way but are not supported for the administration of exams at Pepperdine University School of Law.

Law students are strongly encouraged to acquire and maintain a reliable laptop computer while in law school.  Use of a tablet system (iOS, Android, Windows RT on an MS Surface (cheap but ancient and not supported anywhere anymore)) is strongly discouraged and is not supported for exam administrations.

David Dickens Faculty

Laptop/Travel Preparation – Law Faculty

If you are planning a trip and will bring your university laptop with you, there are a few things you should do before you get too far along in your planning:

  1. Contact the Information Services Team to schedule a pre-trip checkup of your university laptop
  2. If you are going out of the country, you may need to plan for an adapter or other means to plug in and charge the laptop. Here’s a pretty good resource for checking the power plug requirements around the world: https://www.power-plugs-sockets.com/
  3. Consider your internet connectivity options in that location. Pepperdine offers a WiFi service called “EduRoam” that will enable you to use a trusted network at participating locations. The important thing here is to set up your EduRoam account from a trusted network (your office) before you leave.
  4. Make sure you have backups of your important data. Part of the checkup mentioned in #1 above will include a review of your installed auto backup system.
  5. You will also want to ensure that you have your active research and any course materials synchronized to Google Drive. If you need help with that, the Information Services Team will be glad to assist.
  6. Familiarize yourself with Wifi Calling if you are traveling outside of the country and may not be able to make international calls, or if you are traveling to an area where cell service may be limited. Wifi Calling is a great option if you do not wish to pay for international cell service or may only have access to wifi and not strong cell signal.
  7. If you will need to sign into your device with Secure Connect but will not have access to a secondary device, consider generating one time pass codes to take with you so you can still log in. You can generate multiple codes, each of which will last up to 90 days and will allow you to sign into your account once without another connected device.
  8. Consider how you plan to carry your computer with you… will you use a laptop bag or will you check it inside your luggage? If you plan to carry it with you, note that you must remove it from its bag at the TSA screening checkpoint.
David Dickens Services, Students

Print Credit for Students at Caruso School of Law

On the first day of each term students enrolled at Caruso Law will receive $30 of non-refundable, non-transferable print/copy credit to be used through the University’s copy/print system called PaperCut.

PaperCut manages the copy and print functions of the Sharp Multi-function printer/copiers.

Note that the credit provided by the Caruso School of Law each term does not carry forward if a balance remains at the end of the term.  The first day of a term is the first day of classes. The last day of a term is the day before the start of the next term (first day of classes for Fall, Spring, Summer).

New students will not receive credit until the first day of classes.

The credit provided by the Caruso School of Law can only be used for copy or print jobs.  This credit cannot be used at the cafeteria for food purchases.

When the credit applied to a student’s PaperCut account is exhausted before the end of the term, further copier or print use must be covered by funds provided by the student in their Waves Cash Global account.  If a student has funds in that account, there is no need for any action to be taken as the system will automatically charge the copy or print usage against the available funds on deposit in that account.  If there are no funds in a student’s Waves Cash Global account, funds must be added to make copies or print.

The Sharp Multi-function printer/copiers are located at all of the Pepperdine University Southern California campuses in student-accessible areas including the Pepperdine libraries.

David Dickens The Law School Classroom

Building a State-of-the-Art Classroom?

What should you consider when you are looking at a new facility, buildout of new classrooms in an existing facility, or just remodeling your current classroom? As anyone can guess, there’s a lot to consider. Everything from lighting, capacity, sight lines, and style of teaching and more.

The great shutdown from the Pandemic of 2020 taught us all more about distance learning, the importance of good lighting, cameras, microphones, and a good measure on how to approach student engagement and assessment under challenging circumstances.

It’s my hope that this blog will address the most important aspects of classroom design. My personal interests lie in the intersection of technology and learning with a lot of emphasis on practical logistics… that is making things work. It’s my belief that good classroom technology should extend and enhance the learning. How to make such technology accessible to all instructors while benefiting all or most students is the $64,000 question.

In the end this blog may raise more questions than it answers but that’s probably ok as there are likely more right answers than anyone can imagine because every school, every instructor, every student, and too often, every classroom is different.

So what can you expect from this blog?

I plan to post information on new technologies as they are released, links to articles on teaching that are topical or strike my fancy for some reason, occasional musings, reviews, rants, and war stories as well as content from collaborators and guests. We might stray a bit into digital signage, conference rooms, study rooms, and other areas that may relate more to communication technology and less to direct teaching and learning systems but a lot of that is related and all of it ties back to serving my own law school’s needs which all boil down to one thing … serving our students.

If you see something lacking, a big hole or a detail, I’m all for learning and adding it to the fabric of what I hope to be a large quilt of resources that will help those of us in legal education navigate through the decisions we have to make for our schools to benefit our students and support our faculty.

Phillip Bohl

  • Assessment Tools
  • Audio Visual Control Systems
  • Projectors & Screens and Large Flat Panel Displays
  • Camera Choices
  • Microphones, Speakers, and Audio Processing
  • Lighting and Lighting Controls
  • Lectern Design: Features to Consider
  • Providing Support to Instructors in the Classroom
  • Back End Logistics: Power, Racking, Conduit, Cabling, etc.
David Dickens Resources, Services, Students

PIN?

Using a PIN to access a University area with card swipe access — Where’s my PIN, What do I do if I forgot it or never knew what it is????

Every student, staff member and faculty member has a university-issued PIN or Personal Identification number for use with your ID card. Residential students use these all the time to enter their apartments or dorm rooms. You may not have needed your PIN until now.

The PIN is used in conjunction with the access control system at Pepperdine and is part of a two factor authentication system that requires a user to “have something” and to “know something” in this case you “have” your ID card which has a proximity chip in it and you “know” your PIN.

Don’t KNOW your PIN? Here are the instructions for retrieving your PIN.

PIN Retrieval App Instructions
1.Login to your personal WaveNet page using your Network ID and Password.
2.Select the Student Services tab and then ID Card PIN Lookup from the drop-down menu.


3.You will be prompted to read a disclaimer and select Agree.


4.You will then be required to login for a secondary security authentication.


5.The PIN information will displayed as follows:


6.If you are not currently setup in the access database you will be directed to the following screen: (You will see this screen for the first 20-30 minutes after your ID card is printed as the computer system updates. Check again soon.)


7.The PIN display screen will reset in 30 seconds and you will be re-directed back to the Disclaimer page. However, another session can be initiated by selecting Agree and following the process again as outlined.

This information is also available HERE with a visual guide: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-L99QWwGYkjbFri18VXNgcjzXKeYHIf4/view?usp=sharing

David Dickens Faculty

Reply All? How to turn it off by default

Ever get an email that was a personal reply to a group message? Was that message really meant for you? Not likely. Ever send one like that? I’m sure was an accident.

If you want to turn off the default “Reply All” feature in Google Mail here are some step by step instructions:

  1. Log in to your Gmail account. Navigate to the top right corner of your screen, and click the gear button which stands for settings. Then, click “See All Settings.”

2. Scroll down the list of available settings modifications, and click on reply instead of reply all for the default reply behavior.

3. Once you have modified your settings, you should get a notification that your settings have been changed. Alternatively, scroll to the bottom of your screen where you will see a button to manually save your changes.

That’s it!

IF YOU NEED ANY TECHNOLOGY ASSISTANCE, PLEASE FEEL FREE TO REACH OUT TO INFORMATION SERVICES AT (310) 506-7425 OR [email protected]. GOOD LUCK!