OnTechNews, published monthly, seeks to inform UW faculty, staff, and students about new and interesting technology to use in teaching, learning, work, and life.
A National Endowment for the Humanities Challenge Grant of $625,000 was awarded to The Simpson Center for the Humanities. It will seed a Digital Humanities Commons, the centerpiece of which will be an annual eight-week summer program for UW faculty and doctoral students focusing on collaborative digital projects. Also featured in the Commons will be one-credit graduate courses at the leading edge of digital humanities research. Details, including inaugural visiting scholar and course information, are online.
New functionality and other improvements to the administrative systems that run the UW's core business operations are reducing the administrative burden for researchers, faculty, and staff and providing better information for decision making. These immediate and upcoming efficiencies save both time and money and are being delivered to the UW community by the Office of Information Management and its partners.
During summer 2008, UW Technology and the eScience Institute undertook a collaborative project to increase awareness of current and future research projects at the UW and better understand the role of technology in these efforts. The ultimate goal was to identify resources and services that UW Technology and the eScience Institute can offer to help UW researchers maintain and build upon their remarkable record of success. Clear trends and directions emerged from the conversations with more than 100 research leaders. The report is online.
UWTV is now releasing its 2008 annual report detailing viewing information about UWTV videos, overall distribution, and audience trends. Among the most notable trends was tremendous growth in online viewership. UWTV videos were accessed online 4.55 million times last year. Look for detailed information at uwtv.org, where you'll find a new widget highlighting the top 20 programs of 2008, including several about technology. The second most popular UWTV video of 2008 was "Bill Gates Unplugged."
Several Learning & Scholarly Technology staff recently contributed chapters to the book Electronic Portfolios 2.0: Emergent Research on Implementation and Impact. The chapter by Tom Lewis and Janice Fournier, "A Catalyst Without a Mandate: Building an ePortfolio Culture at the University of Washington", outlines several strategies that contribute to effective ePortfolio adoption and use. The "Technology and Change" chapter, authored by Cara Lane, discusses how the specific ePortfolio technologies employed influence implementation and use.
Looking for more information about the global economic crisis? EconLit indexes economics literature from around the world, dating back to 1969. Compiled and abstracted in an easily searchable format, this UW-restricted resource is a comprehensive index of journal articles, books, and other resources in all fields of economics. It includes capital markets, country studies, econometrics, economic forecasting, government regulations, and monetary theory, as well as environmental, labor, and urban economics.
If you tune in via HuskyTV, the UW Housing Cable Service, you're set for the switch to digital television. Last month, engineers with UWTV enabled the UW Seattle cable system to receive and transmit both analog and digital signals. Rest assured, there will be no interruption to HuskyTV service when stations make the switch between March 14 and June 12, the final deadline for terminating analog broadcasts.
The Computer Vet is a free, UW Technology help-desk service that assists UW students, faculty, and staff with computer problems at two UW Seattle locations. You can get help with operating system updates, anti-virus protection, peer-to-peer software removal, and infected computers blocked from UW network access. Details are online.
A picture is worth a thousand words. When you need just the right image to enhance your paper or multimedia project, check the UW Libraries' Digital Images page for links to online image collections as well as tips for selecting and evaluating images and copyright and citation information. High-quality images of art, architecture, historical events, maps, photographs, advertisements, magazine covers, posters, and more are available.
Just when you've gotten good at spotting those email "phishing" scams, phone scams (termed "vishing", a combination of voice and phishing) are on the rise. Vishing refers to automated calls or text messages via phones and cell phones to gain personal information for identity theft. The Internet Crime Complaint Center provides more information and a way to report these hoaxes.
