Thu, 28 Mar, 2024

Technology Series: The IT Club

By Ankit Pradhan

There are different clubs such as the DWIT News Club, Media Club, and Sports Club etc. in DWIT. These clubs are maintained and run by the students in collaboration with the administration. These clubs have the responsibility to conduct all the operations that fall under their dominion. For example, the Sports Club maintains all the activities regarding sports while the News club reports the latest news inside and outside the college. IT Club looks after all the problems regarding internet network and lab maintenance. It also checks if the students are misusing the college internet, lab resources and other things concerned with IT. It has been more than one year that the IT club came into existence. Now it has become one of the most active and busy club in DWIT. At first all the problems regarding IT and college’s lab was maintained by some other IT experts but the administration and students came up with the idea that these small problems, after proper training, can be solved by students themselves. Students would get the chance to learn. Furthermore, instead of paying an outsider to maintain labs, the college thought that it would be better if they pay the students who are working in the IT club for maintaining the lab and solving other IT problems. Currently, the IT club is the only club that is being paid. The college pays the members on the basis of hours they have worked. At first, the work of the club was limited i.e. to maintain the lab as there were few students but as the number of students increased, the work load also increased. The IT club doesn’t just maintain the lab now; it also maintains the network and Wi-Fi supply around college.  Now the students have also started repairing the lab computers themselves and recently, the students were given training in repairing UPS. They can solve small problems like checking the battery, fuse and replacing the battery of the UPS. Members of the IT club were also given a certain idea regarding the internet, how to check it and how to troubleshoot the problems. Moreover, the concept of virtualization was also introduced to the members of IT Club. In the past few years, PCs, laptops, tablets, net-books, and mobile devices have proliferated in the academic institutions. Students and teachers similarly want to use the device of their choice to access their data and applications from any location across the campus and outside. Virtualization is the facilitator that makes user-centric computing a reality. The concept of virtualization is very broad and can be applied to devices, servers, operating systems, applications and even networks. In a virtualization environment, a single physical computer runs software that abstracts the physical computer’s resources so that they may be shared between multiple “virtual computers.” Each virtual computer may be running a different operating system from all of the other virtual machines on the physical machine. DWIT is planning to construct a lab management system based on decentralized, client-side software virtualization technology that fulfils the requirements of fast "switch over" time between consecutive lab sessions. Moreover, unlike working on a single assigned PC, when the student moves to a different location, such as from the classroom to a lab or library, the student’s entire workspace appears on whichever workstation or device the student is currently using.