Most alumni stated that they liked the new look of the CIS computer lab, and had fun trying out new technology at the Open house.

There are more exciting events coming up at the CIS Sandbox. Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter if you are interested in joining our future events!

In the article, Matt featured four aspects how CIS Sandbox transformed an old computer lab into a collaborative learning space. There are brighter decorations and a more comfortable environment, the latest tech equipment and a new tutoring culture, a stronger online presence, and various events to attract students.
Please click the link of the name to view the entire article.

As Matt said, “Today, the Sandbox not only tutors students in CIS and IT courses, but also introduces students to tech tools they will need in their lives and careers.” Feel free to pass by and join us, and enjoy the technologies around you!

There are more exciting events coming up at the CIS Sandbox. Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter if you are interested in joining our future events!

Business Insider has an article this week entitled “11 Advanced excel Tricks that will help get you an instant raise at work.” They include:

• Vlookup
• Index/Match
• 3D Sums
• Using a $
• Arrays
• Goal Seeking
• Pivot Tables

We covered most of these in IT 101. Read the article for a great summary of how to use the familiar features, and take a moment over the summer to try out the new ones!

Don’t worry! The first Crunch Session was recorded!

Watch it here: http://ezwp.tv/V1F8Dkdt

During the session, we used a data-set provided by one of the professors responsible for making up the final. While the data is not the exact same as the one that will be seen on the final, it is said to be “comparable in format”. Here is the data-set: IT101FinalExamSampleDataSizzerKutz

As one of the tutors who gave the session, the students who came seemed to take away plenty from these sessions. While these were question driven sessions and therefore they do not cover everything on the final, most students coming to the Sandbox for help as well as most students who came to the Crunch Sessions are having trouble with the same things. Questions about pivot tables and functions in excel like vlookup, averageif, countif, iferror, and nested ifs keep popping up, while the only common problems in html are with using style to modify tags as well as understanding absolute and relative addressing.

If your final is coming up, and you still have some uncertainty about any of the preceding concepts, take a few minutes to watch the recording or stop by the sandbox for help. There might even be a hint or two as to the format of the final during the recording.

Studying for the IT 101 final and realizing you don’t remember what a VLOOKUP Function is?
Do you need help understanding what style to use to make your web page blue?
Are your 3D references in excel coming out 2D?

Then this review session may be for you!
Three sessions will be held on Monday, April 29th in the CIS Sandbox (Smith 234) at:
7:00-8:15 PM Register for Session 1
8:30-9:45 PM Register for Session 2
10:00-11:15 PM Register for Session 3

Note** This is a question driven review session.
Submit any questions you want answered ahead of time here:
http://bit.ly/ITCrunchSession

The CIS Sandbox does have a limited capacity,
so make sure you and your friends sign up early!
This review session is open to all students currently enrolled in an IT 101 section.

Be sure to follow the CIS Sandbox on Facebook (http://facebook.com/cisSandbox)
and Twitter (@cisSandbox) to receive study tips all week long!

Sample Excel File
IT101FinalExamSampleDataSizzerKutz It is similar to the one you will see on the final exam.

Near the end of last semester, I received an email from Professor Heikki Topi, my CS 350 professor at that time, about the intention to start a student-run organization on campus to represent the small but vibrant community of students here at Bentley preparing for careers in information systems. Upon reading this email, I thought to myself: “you know, there are like half a dozen accounting clubs; Bentley could use a technology club,” and so began my intent to help build the foundations for an organization for CIS, ISAC, and IDCC majors to interact with each other, network, and help further their knowledge and involvement of the broad field of information systems. Seeing firsthand the sluggishness of student organizational growth and the amount of work it takes to really establish something notable, I saw my involvement as a long-term investment to benefit the students of future classes, to give them an organization that I wish I had coming in as a Freshman three years ago. Little did I know, our early efforts started to pay off a lot earlier than expected.

In mid January, the small bunch of us working to get the Bentley chapter of AIS off the ground discovered that the international parent organization hosts an annual conference and competition that student chapters can participate and compete in. As a means of getting to know the parent organization and thinking it could be a good way to market our under construction organization to the student body, we decided to give it a shot and enter ourselves as a team to compete for Bentley under the Systems Analysis and Design track.

For a few weeks, we sped through the process of analyzing the case materials given to us and extracting out the software requirements. From that, we put the skills from CS 360 into full gear and produced UML diagrams for the entire system, which were the main deliverables for the competition. A month or so later, we were pleasantly surprised to hear that we were selected as one of 20 teams, taken from a pool of around 90 entrants, to enter the final round of the competition and attend the 2013 AIS Student Leadership Conference in Rogers, Arkansas. After given a chance to make some tweaks and resubmit our diagrams, we set out early Thursday morning on April 18 for Logan to take a flight to the northwest corner of rural Arkansas.

At the conference, we were able to network with IS students from renowned universities around the country (e.g. Indiana University, Brigham Young University, University of Alabama, University of Arkansas) and learn more about the kinds of events different AIS student chapters put on for their members. We also got a chance to participate in the Walmart IT Summit, in which we were able to visit Walmart’s headquarters in nearby Bentonville, sit in on one of the company’s Saturday Morning Meetings, and meet with Walmart IT department recruiters and managers.

When it came down to the competition, we read up on all our materials, put on our game faces, and responded to a 15 minute Q&A session with the judges. The judges gave us extremely valuable feedback, mostly positive with some constructively negative, which in of itself made the whole trip worth it to me as a future business systems analyst. Ultimately, as we finished our “light hors d’oeuvres” of chicken fingers and fried spinach balls, a surprising delight compared to the crackers and cheese here up north, the awards ceremony began. As the plaque above shows, we placed second, just behind a team from BYU (for reference, BYU is #12 on BusinessWeek’s Undergraduate Business School rankings, and Bentley is #20), delightful news to an already delightful experience.

I would like to take this time to thank our president, fellow senior Eric Ohlson, Professor Topi and Professor Xu for all the guidance and support they have given to our team. I am graduating this semester, but my three other competition team colleagues and fellow Bentley AIS e-board members Brendan Colford, Mac Segura-Cook, and Alina Usmanov will be carrying the torch next semester, and they will without a doubt be preparing to send Bentley to even greater success at the competition next year. If any of you are interested in competing in the AIS case competition next year, definitely feel free to send me an email at hebert_ryan@bentley.edu and I will happily forward you on to the Bentley AIS mailing list!

I hope you all found my reporting of my time at the conference and competition in Arkansas interesting, and I hope you all really consider participating in the competition next year. As a soon-to-be Bentley CIS alum, it’ll be great to come back to the Sandbox in a few years and see some first place plaques on the wall near the green chairs.

We are seeking students interested in being part of the Excel Video Project. Students would film themselves talking about how they use Excel. Do you use it for school, work, activities, etc.? What do you like about Excel? Be creative and be yourself! The clips will be used for an educational video, to teach and to interest children in learning Excel (maximum length: 1 minute). The due date for the submission of these clips is April 30th, Reading Day. Please send all submissions to butler_alic@bentley.edu.
With the submission of a clip you enter a drawing to win a $25 Bertucci’s gift card.

Thank you. We look forward to seeing your video clips!

On Saturday April 6, we had our annual Accepted Students Day. Parents and prospective students took a tour of the Sandbox and learned all about our cool technologies like our SmartBoard, XBox, and touch-screen PCs. Our projects including an Android To-DO List App, a side-scroller game built in Construct 2, and all sorts of different Java, Excel and Access assignments.

If you missed it feel free to watch our minute long time lapse video of the entire event!

The presentation was useful and we are sharing it with you here:
There are more exciting events coming up at the CIS Sandbox. Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter if you are interested in joining our future events!