OnTechNews, published monthly, seeks to inform UW faculty, staff, and students about new and interesting technology to use in teaching, learning, work, and life.
Whether it's suspended operations due to a snowstorm, a campus lockdown because a bank robber is on the loose, or other emergency, the UW is putting technology to work to keep you informed. A new tool used by UW Marketing's Web Team posts the same alert banner on key UW Web pages (UW home page, UWIN, MyUW, and Emergency Management) with a single entry, replacing the complex manual processes and multiple people previously required. You can even sign up to receive UW alerts by text message on your cell phone and by email. Also, an automated "text-to-speech" version of the alert messages for the UW's information lines is in the works.
UW is a founding partner of the Kuali Student project, a consortium of higher education institutions collaboratively developing a next-generation student information and administrative system over the next four years. It will provide students with improved tools for finding courses, navigating programs of study, and seeking learning opportunities while addressing the UW's complex business needs. Details are online.
Last fall, the UW Information School's Project Information Literacy (PIL) Team conducted 11 discussion groups on seven U.S. campuses, including UW, to study how students conduct course-related and "everyday life research" in the digital age. A four-minute video, produced by the PIL Team in December, highlights some of the findings, including the use of Wikipedia as an indispensable, "pre-search" tool and consulting with librarians for help figuring out how to navigate complex information spaces and library systems.
A documentary about the first Pacific Rim Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition premiered on UWTV in December and is available on demand or for download. Students from UW Seattle's Information School and the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, as well as UW Tacoma's Institute of Technology, competed with Alaska, Idaho, and other Washington college students for this "Geeks Under Attack!" event. Nine teams tested their skills in protecting an enterprise network infrastructure and business information systems from attack, at this challenge organized by the UW's Center for Information Assurance and Cybersecurity, and Microsoft.
This UW-restricted digital library resource has nearly one million images in art, architecture, humanities and social sciences, and science and technology. It includes a set of tools to view, present, and manage images for research and learning-related purposes. Want to know more? Read the ARTstor blog, receive news through RSS, visit the Facebook page, and watch how-to videos on YouTube.
Instructors: In addition to exporting grades to Excel for printing or archiving, you can now edit scores or create new assignments in Excel and quickly import them into your online Catalyst GradeBook. Look for additional improvements soon. This quarter you will be able to submit final class grades online using Catalyst GradeBook, a collaborative effort of UW Technology, the Office of Information Management, and the Registrar.
Over 75 free computing-related workshops are offered every quarter by Learning & Scholarly Technologies at UW Seattle for all current UW students, staff, and faculty. The Winter Quarter schedule and workshop descriptions are online.
Can't make it to a workshop? Need help now? See the handy How-To Guides on the Learning & Scholarly Technologies online Help Center. You'll find step-by-step instructions for over 50 computing topics including software programs from Adobe, Apple, and Microsoft as well as the Catalyst Web Tools.
When faced with the time it would take to grade coding assignments from 200 UW students, Applied Mathematics Department Chair Nathan Kutz created a simple-to-use program called Scorelator that does so in seconds. Now he's offering other UW instructors who teach a large math, science, engineering, or other course that has programming-based homework the opportunity to test drive Scorelator for themselves. See the December UWeek article for details.
