Brown Bag Lunch

The Faculty of Land and Food Systems’ Learning Centre is very pleased to announce the fifth session of its 2008 Brown Bag Lunch series!

Please join us next Wednesday for a seminar presented by Kirsten Starcher, New Media Developer in the Faculty of Education’s External Programs and Learning Technologies office.

Where: MacMillan Building Room 350 (2357 Main Mall)
When: Wednesday, March 26th, 2008, from noon to 1pm

The workshop will cover basic principles of accessibility, including:
* What is accessibility? Who needs it, and who benefits?
* Disabilities and the web: potential issues and adaptive technologies
* Adapting your website: images, fonts, links, structure & content
* Accessibility validators (do’s and don’t’s)

Kirsten Starcher will show you a proactive approach to accessibility: rather than simply reacting to problems, you’ll be able to anticipate and remove potential barriers in your courses, and to respond quickly to additional changes that may prove necessary.

Please RSVP to Duncan McHugh. Refreshments will be served. Feel free to forward this email to any interested parties.

Future sessions include:

• April 9th: Alison Wong on CoursEval (FNH 220)
• April 23th: Edmund Seow on backing up and archiving (MCML 350)
• May 7th: Shane Dawson on WebCT usage and teaching style (FNH 220)
• May 21st: Tim Wan (MCML 350)

The Faculty of Land and Food Systems’ Learning Centre is very pleased to announce the fourth session of its 2008 Brown Bag Lunch series!

Please join us next Wednesday for a seminar presented by Winnie Pang and Cyprien Lomas of the Faculty of Land and Food Systems.

Where: Food, Nutrition and Health Building Room 220 (2205 East Mall)
When: Wednesday, March 12th, 2008, from noon to 1pm

Most people have heard of weblogs and blogging, but few realize how easy it is to start a blog for themselves. In this hour-long session, the Faculty of Land and Food Systems’ Winnie Pang and Cyprien Lomas will introduce you to blogging culture, show you how to set up your blog, customize it and get it out to your target audience.

Please RSVP to Duncan. Refreshments will be served. Feel free to forward this email to any interested parties.

I hope to see you there!

Teaching & Academic Growth is presenting the fantastic Gardner Campbell from the University of Mary Washington in Virginia. His presentation, entitled “Computers As Poetry,” is today, Wednesday, March 5th, from 1pm to 3:30pm at Telestudios, 2239 West Mall. This session is definitely recommended for those interested in technology and learning. Details and registration info available here.

Please join us this Thursday for a seminar presented by Alan Levine, Vice President Community and CTO for the New Media Consortium.

Where: MacMillan Building Room 350 (2357 Main Mall)

When: Thursday, February 28th, 2008, from noon to 1pm

It was not long ago that producing multimedia digital content required expensive equipment and technical expertise; we are at the point now where we can do some very compelling content creation with nothing more complex than a web browser. In this workshop you will:

• Design a basic story concept that can be created in a web 2.0 tool using images, audio, and/or video.
• And then create it quickly using one of 50+ different web tools that are free to use.
• Plus, you will share in this wiki site your example and observations on the value of the tool

We are using the word “story” in a general sense; it may be a deeply personal one of the digital storytelling variety, or it may be a tale of a travel trip, or a simple multimedia presentation.

Alan Levine is the Vice President Community and CTO for the New Media Consortium. In this role, he explores and evangelizes new technologies to the NMC and other educational communities, with current interests in anything “cool” on the web (no matter the decimal point), virtual worlds, blogs, wikis, digital media, and anything that allows creative expression. Although he tends to say “ummm” a lot and never uses a script, Alan has presented at the League for Innovation, EDUCAUSE, and Syllabus conferences, as well as invited presentations for institutions in Oklahoma, Florida, Oregon, Ohio, Iceland, New Zealand, and Australia.

Refreshments will be served. Feel free to forward this email to any interested parties.

The Brown Bag lunch series is a series of discussions, presentations and hands-on workshops about technology use for teaching, learning, research, everyday use and (hopefully) fun. The sessions are open to all.

The Learning Centre is launching its 2008 Brown Bag Lunch series! Please join us next Wednesday for our first seminar, presented by Dr. Andrew Riseman, Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Land and Food Systems.

• Where: MCML Room 350
• When: Wednesday, January 23rd, 2008, from noon to 1pm
• Topic: Greengenes, an inquiry-based computer simulation

In this presentation, I will describe an immersive learning environment, created by the computer simulation ‘Greengenes’, and its effects on undergraduate science students’ competence in genetics. Our hypothesis was that the simulation would serve as a cognitive framework for enhancing students’ inquiry learning in the subject matter domain of the experiments. To test this hypothesis, the simulation and experiments were integrated into a one semester plant breeding class. Twenty-six students participated in the study. Pre- and post-tests were used to assess students’ abilities to assess genetic context, develop appropriate hypothetical genetic models for the observed data, and test their hypothesis using appropriate statistical methods. Our results indicate that the use of the simulation fostered significant changes in students’ scientific reasoning about genetics, in particular, hypothesis development and testing.

Please RSVP to Duncan.

Refreshments will be served. Feel free to forward this email to any interested parties.The Brown Bag lunch series is a series of discussions, presentations and hands-on workshops about technology use for teaching, learning, research, everyday use and (hopefully) fun. The sessions are open to all. Future sessions include:

• February 13th: Deb Wilson on RefWorks (FNH 220)
• February 28th: Alan Levine on 50 ways to tell a story using Web2.0 (MCML 350)
• March 12th: Winnie Pang & Cyprien Lomas on blogging (FNH 220)
• March 26th: Tim Wang on virtual worlds (MCML 350)

I hope to see you there!