CIT Training’s Spring Term 2006 Blossoms with New Classes

Spring is just around the corner. It is a time of new beginnings, so why not plan to take that computer seminar you have been thinking about? CIT Training’s wide range of classes is constantly growing to meet the needs of the NIH community. Many of our existing courses have been updated and a number of new classes have been added. As always, classes are available free-of-charge to NIH staff. Registration and course descriptions are available here.

New Classes

General Seminars – In the General Seminar category there are three new classes available:

• "Validating Information Models Using Natural Language" will provide tools for converting the requirements in an information model into simple sentences that are easily understood. This 3-day course will concentrate on helping experienced and inexperienced modelers better communicate their understanding of requirements to users.


• The first release for the new NIH Enterprise Ethics System (NEES) is scheduled to be delivered this spring. A 3-hour seminar entitled "NIH Enterprise Ethics System (NEES)" will be a hands-on training session to walk employees through the online submission process.


• "Test Preparation for the IT Professional" focuses on a step-by-step process to help those preparing for IT certification exams. If you are an IT professional with a certification exam in your future, this 3-hour lecture is a positive step toward success on that exam.

Web Development – There are two new exciting courses for web developers:

• "Beginning XML" is a gentle introduction to XML. It will cover all of the central XML technologies, including XSLT, XML, DOM, XML Linking, DTDs, and XML Schema.


• We predict that "Quick and Easy Web Development using Ruby on Rails" is going to be a popular course. This language and web development framework allows development and maintenance of dynamic Web sites and supports AJAX and Web Services.

Personal Computers – Three new offerings highlight the end user category:

• "Microsoft Windows Advanced Management Techniques" will cover tools one can use to effectively manage and diagnose the Windows operating system. It will feature tools from Sysinternals and Microsoft.


• "Integrating Word, Excel, Acrobat, Filemaker, and other Common Applications" will cover the integration of common software applications used in the work environment at NIH. After a 30-minute presentation the remainder of the class will be a hands-on exercise utilizing each application.


• Mozilla Firefox browser basics will be covered in "Firefox: Now That's One Cool Browser." Beyond the basics, the course will also cover a variety of interesting and useful browser extensions.

Statistics for Researchers – Students will have the opportunity to attend new courses in the always popular statistics category, including two new SAS classes and three S-PLUS offerings.

• "SAS Data Step Programming Efficiencies" demonstrates SAS Programming Language tools and techniques to already experienced SAS users.


• The SAS Institute returns to CIT Training to present "Querying and Reporting Using SAS Enterprise Guide." This 2-day course focuses on how to access, manage, summarize, and present data using SAS Enterprise Guide. Students will accomplish tasks such as accessing local SAS and Microsoft Excel tables and remote relational databases; creating user-defined formats; managing, manipulating, and joining data using the SQL query builder; generating descriptive statistics, tabular summary reports, and ActiveX graphs; and automating and scheduling tasks.


• "S-PLUS Introduction," "S-PLUS Command Line Programming" and "S-PLUS Lecture Series: Differential Expression, Biomarker ID, Safety Data Mining, Graphical & Tabular Reporting" will take you from beginner to experienced in S-PLUS. The entire series offers a full week of S-PLUS training.

Security – Two new classes are being added to our list of security related courses:

• "ProSight FISMA Application Module" guides the user through the ProSight FISMA (Federal Information Security Management Act) application and will explain the areas of system characteristics, POA&Ms (Plan of Action and Milestones) tracking, and PIAs (Privacy Impact Assessments).


• In "Identity Theft: What you Need to Know," Dawn Farr, CIT ISSO, will discuss the different security vulnerabilities that we are exposed to. In this seminar the students will learn how to protect their personal data from these types of attacks.

Seminars for Scientists – Many new scientific seminars are being offered this term and should prove to be of great interest to our scientists.

• Partek will present another new course this term entitled "Analysis of Affymetrix GeneChip Human Exon Arrays & Mapping Arrays for Chromosomal Copy # Analysis."


• Ingenuity Systems is offering "Ingenuity Pathways Analysis Training" which will cover basic and advanced usage of Ingenuity Pathways Analysis.


• Mouse Genome Informatics will be conducting a two hour seminar on The Mouse Genome Informatics (MGI) Database and how to gain integrated access to data on the genetics, genomics and biology of the laboratory mouse.


• "Surface based analysis with Caret, PALS and SumsDB" will be covering the latest developments in cortical surface based analysis.


• In "MATLAB for Scientists," Dr. Richard Shrager will cover the development of readable and efficient MATLAB code.


• Dr. Medha Bhagwat is adding "NCBI's Entrez Quick Start" to her growing list of courses. This course will provide tips on effective searching in Entrez databases such as dbSNP, Homologene, Unigene, Taxonomy, PubMed and Genomes.

As the technology around us evolves, the CIT Training Program is constantly growing and making an effort to stay in step with the changing IT environment at NIH. We welcome any suggestions and course ideas that may help the NIH community keep up with that evolution. We invite anyone who is well-versed in a topic to become one of our volunteer instructors. If you have a subject that you feel will be of interest to the staff of NIH, please give us a call. If you are a project lead and are rolling out a new or updated program, contact us and we may be able to assist you with your training needs.

Our Spring Term (February 1 – June 20) has just been published on our Web site. Please visit the site for full course information, to register for classes, to join our CIT Training mailing list, or to check out your transcript or current application status.

If you prefer, you may call us at 301-594-6248 if you wish to discuss course registration, teaching a class, or other training related issues.