If you have time, complete these exercises now during the exercise session or later on your own

1. IT-services

During the orientation on Thursday (Services for Aalto students) you will learn more about the general IT services in Otaniemi campus. In Into you can now read about the It services. Read carefully the IT Policies and Guidelines.

2. Remote connections

2.1. Command line connection
There is a programme called PuTTY Tray in Aalto's Windows workstations for command line connections. PuTTY is an open source program which you can download also to your home computer.
With command line connection you can edit and transfer files between, e.g., your home computer and Aalto disk space in a text-based interface.
  1. Open the programme Putty Tray by searching with its name or from the programme menu: Start - All Programs - Putty Tray.
  2. On the Host Name line write the address of the general purpose server: kosh.aalto.fi. Check that the port is 22 and Connection Type is set as SSH. Choose Default Settings from Saved Sessions list and press Save. The programme will also later suggest the same server for you. Now you can log in by clicking Open.
  3. If PuTTY remarks that the key of the server is not in the register, answer Yes if you're going to use the remote connection also in future, otherwise answer No.
  4. The program will ask for you username and password.
  5. The remote connection is ready when the prompt shows up. Now you can try out the same functions with the command line as with the graphical user interface: move between directories, transfer, edit and copy files from a directory to another etc.
  6. Close the connection with the command logout.
2.2. Transferring files
There is a programme called WinSCP in Aalto's Windows workstations for transferring files. WinSCP is an open-source programme which you can download also to your home computer.
You will now learn how to transfer files between, e.g., your home computer and Aalto disk space in a graphical user interface.

  1. Open the programme WinSCP by searching with its name or from the programme menu: Start - All Programs - WinSCP.
  2. On the Host Name field write the address for the general purpose server (kosh.aalto.fi) and on the User Name field write your username. Open the connection with the Login button.
The programme's window has two parts. In the left-hand side you can see the contents of the workstation you're working on and in the right-hand side the contents of your home directory in the general purpose server. You can copy files from the workstation to the general purpose server and vice versa by dragging them with the mouse. Usually there's no need to transfer files between Aalto's Windows workstation and Aalto disk space, because the disk space can be seen also from the Windows workstation. You will now practice transferring, because one often needs to transfer files between a home computer and Aalto disk space.

  1. Go through the general purpose server directories.
  2. Now you could  transfer a file from the server to your workstation.
  3. Close the connection (Session - Disconnect) and the programme (Quit). You can also close the programme directly from the Quit button. The programme will close the connection at the same time.

3.Turnitin

Turnitin is a help for practising scientific writing. Practically, it is a submission box where an originality report is generated of the submitted texts and a teacher can give feedback on the submission with assessing tools. You can read more here.

There is an independent Turnitin originality check submission box available in MyCourses. You can use the space for practising the tool. Take an old text of yours or create a new one by writing something yourself and add a random paragraph from a random internet page.  

4. E-mail

Go to Aalto mail (mail.aalto.fi) and familiarize  yourself with the functions. If you are using some other e-mail, redirect your Aalto e-mails there! Students are recommended to use Aalto e-mail as their primary e-mail address.

5. Wiki

There is a wiki environment for students and staff in Aalto Univerity: AaltoWiki (https://wiki.aalto.fi/).
In AaltoWiki every student can set up a wiki space for example for team work. In addition, every student can have one personal space.
Visit the wiki pages and create a personal space if you want.
Last modified: Wednesday, 4 September 2019, 1:53 PM