Discovery Commons Blog

Reducing Redo, Refresh and Reformat

Adobe Day

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ADOBE CS5 INVITATION:
JULY 14 9-12:30.
Adele Sedra Auditorium, Bahen Centre  (BA 1160)

Discovery Commons is delighted to be the host for Adobe Day at the University of Toronto.

Adobe is proud to present the Adobe Creative Suite 5 exclusively for University of Toronto’s staff, instructors & students — and you’re invited.

Join Adobe’s CS5 expert(s) at the Bahen Centre Information Technology Building, Adele Sedra Auditorium (BA 1160) for a complimentary 3 hour session designed to deliver an informative and revealing look at how CS5 can help graphics, web, video educators like you prepare today students for tomorrow’s creative challenges.

The 3 hour session will be divided into 3 sessions: Graphics, Video, Web. Breakfast will be served at 9am.

Graphics session  9:30 – 10:30 will cover Adobe PhotoShop, Illustrator, InDesign, ePortfolio, Catalyst
Video session  10:30 – 11:30 will explore the Production Premium Workflow. Adobe Story, OnLocation, Premiere Pro, After Effects, Encore, Soundbooth.  Will also show off integration of HP hardware and Adobe suite, especially with hardware acceleration.
Web session 11:30 – 12:30 will include Catalyst, Flash Pro, Flash Builder 4 with integration with php/coldFusion, AIR, Dreamweaver

Space is limited, so please register on-line at: https://admin.med.utoronto.ca/forms/dc/adobe

Discovery Commons Blogs have moved!

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Our Blogs have just been migrated to the University’s cloud computing platform.  This migration will improve the availability of our blogs, and won’t affect our users.

This central platform is more reliable than what we used, and also allows us to put in more hardware resources as needed.  Many thanks to the folks at IT+S for their help.

Olympic Medical Clinic Tour in the JJ MacLeod Auditorium

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Olympic Medical Clinic tour

The screen in the JJ Macleod Auditorium recently became a window into the athlete’s medical clinic at the Vancouver 2010 Olympic games.

Thomas Zochowski, a second-year medical student, would have liked to have taken a field trip to the clinic in person, but realized that by using readily available technology and the existing facilities here, he and others could see the clinic without taking a trip across the country.

Mr. Zochowski has an interest in the area of sports medicine and is one of the leaders of the Interest Group in Sports Medicine. He approached Discovery Commons as a partner in helping to facilitate the technological link between students here at U of T and Antoine Atallah, the Olympic clinic’s medical mission manager. While originally conceived of as a video-conferenced link, the communication technology that was decided on in the end was Skype; the Vancouver site does not have the equipment necessary for video-conferencing and so the internet-call application was chosen.

Mr. Atallah used his laptop camera to give a tour of the Olympic clinic, which was projected onto the large auditorium screen, and he shared, among other things, the composition of the Olympic medical team, the layout of the rooms, and how the clinic equipment is typically used. Students in the auditorium were able to interact and ask questions. The quality of the sound from Vancouver, directed through the auditorium speakers, was exceptional.

The opportunity to see the clinic equipment, including the Olympic team’s physio table with its Canadian flag upholstery, and hot and cold tubs to assist with workout recovery, was invaluable. While video-conferencing technology, had it been available in Vancouver, may have resulted in a superior video image, nothing was lost in the Skype call with regard to the immediacy of the interactive experience. This event is an excellent example of making good use of existing technology to create enhanced learning opportunities.

Engaging Students in the Online Environment Using Virtual Labs, Virtual Office Hours and Captured Video

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Online courses are becoming increasingly popular, in part because they offer students more flexibility with “just in time learning”, but also because, with a measure of forethought and creativity, they can be designed to support in-depth reflection and participation. Whether you currently offer an online course or if you simply post a few course materials on Blackboard, this seminar will engage you in the process of creative course design in an online environment.  Please join RCAT on Monday July 13th from 2-3 p.m. (with discussion time after) as we host Dr. Chris Perumalla for a presentation and discussion of his online web course in physiology.

Robarts Library, 4th floor-RM 4049
13 July 2009, 2:00 PM to 3:00 PM (with discussion time after)
Register Here: <http://tinyurl.com/rexndn>

Using Social Bookmarking and Newsfeeds to Manage Information

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Social bookmarking can be a powerful way for people to store, organize, share and search their favorite websites, images and videos. In this session, we will explore some of the common social bookmarking sites-how they work and their different functionalities. We will also examine how they can be used to benefit a variety of educational settings.

Julie Hannaford recently became the Director of OISE library; she has been with OISE since December, 2003. Even though her position has changed dramatically, Julie still enjoys having the opportunity to work directly with students and faculty on research questions and supporting them in their academic endeavors. She has a keen interest in Web 2.0 technologies and enjoys exploring how they can be used in educational/academic settings.

Robarts Library, 4th floor-RM 4049
17 June 2009, 2:00 PM to 3:00 PM
Register Here: <http://tinyurl.com/oupvnv>

Assessment of Learning using ePortfolios Web Conference

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Join the Office of Teaching Advancement, the Teaching Assistants’ Training Program and the Resource Centre for Academic Technology for this web conference opportunity.

“Assessment of Learning using ePortfolios Web Conference”
May 22, 2009 from 1pm-2:30pm
Location: Bahen Centre, Room 1240

Speakers:
Helen L. Chen, Research Scientist, Stanford Center for Innovations in Learning, Stanford University
Tracy Penny Light, Assistant Professor, St. Jerome’s University

“Student learning ePortfolios’ are personalized, web-based collections of selected coursework, artifacts or co-curricular activities, and (ideally) students’ written reflective commentary.” Source:  DiBiase, D., with contributions by ten others. (2002) Using e-Portfolios at Penn State to Enhance Student Learning: Status, Prospects, and Strategies. e-Education Institute, The Pennsylvania State University (http://www.e-education.psu.edu/portfolios/e-port_report.shtml)

Electronic portfolios (ePortfolios) have become a popular and powerful way to document, demonstrate, and reflect upon what students know and can do. They have developed beyond simply serving as web-based repositories for documents into tools for building and tracking student learning. In ePortfolios designed for learning, students create and store a variety of artifacts which they can organize into categories or analyze according to course objectives. Students also prepare written reflections on the artifacts they collect, helping them to track the progress of their own learning and set learning goals. One challenge associated with ePortfolios is how to assess them – how does an instructor track the development of student learning as the ePortfolio takes shape? Also, faculty and administrators face unique challenges using ePortfolios. Faculty must learn new skills and adapt to new technology, and they must also promote and nurture new ways of thinking about what their students are learning. Administrators must learn how to use ePortfolios to document student learning for both accreditation purposes and institutional improvement.  In this session participants will learn about ePortfolios in the context of:

•    Alignment of learning outcomes in course and program design
•    Assessment OF vs. Assessment FOR learning
•    Rubric-based Assessment
•    Collecting evidence of educational effectiveness : Tracking students’ progress toward course, department, program, and/or institutional learning goals
•    Case studies of ePortfolios for assessment of learning

Participants will leave the webcast with a framework for thinking about and implementing ePortfolios for learning and assessment on their campuses. In this session, related case studies and examples of actual ePortfolios will be provided.

Registration is available at http://www.ota-tatp.utoronto.ca/eportfolios.htm

Speakers:
Helen L. Chen, Research Scientist, Stanford Center for Innovations in Learning, Stanford University
Helen is a Research Scientist at the Stanford Center for Innovations in Learning in the Human-Sciences Technologies Advanced Research Institute at Stanford University. Through collaborations with national and international portfolio researchers, she co-led the development of Folio Thinking, a reflective practice that situates and guides the effective use of learning portfolios. Helen is a founding member and co-facilitator of EPAC, a community of practice focusing on pedagogical and technological issues related to ePortfolios. She is also a member of the national advisory board for the Valid Assessment of Learning in Undergraduate Education (VALUE) project led by the Association of American Colleges and Universities. Her current research interests focus on the application of ePortfolio pedagogy, tools, and practices to facilitate teaching, learning, and assessment and their implications for the design and evaluation of innovative learning spaces.

Tracy Penny Light, Assistant Professor, St. Jerome’s University
Tracy managed strategic learning projects for the VP, Learning Resources and Innovation, at the University of Waterloo. That work included introducing electronic portfolios to the campus in a number of programs including Accounting and Financial Management, History, Co-operative Education and Residence Life. Tracy’s ongoing research focuses on ePortfolio implementation and the ability for reflection in ePortfolios to transform the student experience. In addition to her teaching and research, she leads the University of Waterloo team who are members of Cohort III of the Inter/National Coalition for Electronic Portfolio Research, is a member of St. Jerome’s CASTL Institutional Leadership team, and was founding Co-Editor of the MERLOT Journal of Online Learning and Teaching (JOLT).

7th Annual Educational Achievement Celebration

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The Educational Achievement Event is an annual, Faculty-wide, forum sponsored by the Faculty of Medicine to celebrate, showcase and reward excellence in teaching. The program features an invited keynote address and poster presentations of projects supported by the Education Development Fund for Innovation in Medical Education and the Contuining Education Research & Development Fund. http://www.facmed.utoronto.ca/about/governance/council/celebrate.htm

KMDI: DIGITAL MEDIA RESEARCH AND INNOVATION

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KMDI AT 13: LECTURE SERIES

KMDI PRESENTS LECTURE SERIES ON DIGITAL MEDIA RESEARCH AND INNOVATION
(Next Lecture: Tuesday April 14th, 2009)

For 13 Years, KMDI faculty and students have advanced the frontiers of digital media, creating, interpreting, and studying novel digital media while always asking the fundamental question, “How does this improve society?” These talks celebrate the innovation and thoughtfulness of our knowledge media designers and researchers in exploring answers to this question.  Details for the next talk are below. More information can be found at
http://KMDIat13.utoronto.ca

TechKnowFile 2009

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The TechKnowFile conference showcases a series of engaging and informative presentations from members of the U of T IT community on innovative and effective uses of technology.  http://www.techknowfile.utoronto.ca/about.htm

First Annual CHEC-CESC Virtual Patient Challenge

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The Canadian Healthcare Education Commons – Collaboration pour l’éducation en santé au Canada (CHEC-CESC) is proud to announce the first annual CHEC-CESC Virtual Patient Challenge.  Cash and prizes will be awarded to recognize excellence in e-learning among Canadian healthcare educators and learners and highlight the utility of virtual patients for learning, teaching, and assessment. Submissions are invited from students, residents and faculty at recognized Canadian healthcare education institutions.  Submissions must be received by April 10th, 2009.

For more information, please contact:
Catherine Peirce
Project Manager, CHEC-CESC
Association of Faculties of Medicine of Canada
613-730-0687 x239
cpeirce@afmc.ca

The Canadian Healthcare Education Commons – Collaboration pour l’éducation en santé au Canada (CHEC-CESC) is an initiative of the Association of Faculties of Medicine of Canada (AFMC). Its mission is to support the healthcare education community by providing an inter-professional platform of web-based services, a database of pedagogical resources, and collaborative tools for educators and learners.

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