September Events, 2006

Paul Kates, Mathematics Faculty LT3 Liaison

Events Summary

UW-ACE

UW-ACE tutorials, system changes from updating to version 7.1, new documentation and public access to a course syllabus.

LT3 Events

The "Spirit of Why Not?" in Course Design: Using UW-ACE to Teach On-Campus and Distance Education Students Simultaneously

E-Merging Learning Workshop: Meet and Greet Session (for introductions)

TRACE Events

Teaching Large Classes
Consultation Session: Teaching Dossiers
Research Projects Workshop
Teaching Dossiers
Consultation Session: Research Projects
CVs & Cover Letters
UW's Certificate in University Teaching (CUT)
Instructional Development Grants (ID Grants: up to $1,000)

Lectures

David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science Fall 2006 Faculty Lecture Series

A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines: Limits of Truth and Mind

Library Events

Research skills workshops
E-journals for course resources

Lecture Podcasting

Maple and MapleTA

UW-ACE Events

Friday, Sept. 10-19, 2006

Overview of UW-ACE. Instructor: Sean Warren.

Using Gradebook in UW-ACE. Instructor: Jan Willwerth

UW-ACE Updated

UW-ACE has been updated to version 7.1 of the ANGEL learning management system. Here's a list of the most obvious changes to UW-ACE brought by 7.1:

Supported browsers:

UW-ACE Documentation

Documentation about the new look of UW-ACE (ala ANGEL 7.1) is available from the UW-ACE Help page:

And more UW documentation is under preparation. Several ANGEL documents about version 7.1 are also available:

Making UW-ACE courses part of the university community

As with earlier versions of UW-ACE, access to course content like the syllabus, assignments, FAQs, subject resources etc is controllable through settings made available to course instructors. Confidential information about names and grades is restricted and protected by default. Different access levels - instructor, student (in course), UW member, general public - can be assigned to each command tab and every individual item in the main Lessons folder. Instructors can thus share their course with potential students, other courses and faculty members or the general public.

By default, the Resources tab and the syllabus located within the Resources tab have public-access settings. Using the UW-ACE course seach feature, students can read the syllabus of any UW-ACE course.

UW-ACE course Lesson pages look like Windows folders by default, but they are not file directories. Each folder is a HTML web page that instructors can add to - text, style, layout and colour HTML features. Even JavaScript can be used. (See, for example, jsMath, a JavaScript program that translates LaTeX math expressions into LaTeX-quality HTML mathematics.)

LT3 Events

Event descriptions are clipped from the LT3 events page.

Thursday, September 28, 2006, 12:15pm-1:15pm

The "Spirit of Why Not?" in Course Design: Using UW-ACE to Teach On-Campus and Distance Education Students Simultaneously
Presented by Dr. James Skidmore.
Location: FLEX Lab, Lib 329, Dana Porter Library

This presentation will demonstrate how Prof. Skidmore developed two cultural history courses - GER 271/272 - in UW-ACE with the express intention of teaching them simultaneously as on-campus and Distance Education courses. The benefits of this approach for improving student learning and for strengthening both on-campus and DE instruction will be discussed, and Prof. Skidmore will demonstrate how UW-ACE enables this enterprise. Negative aspects, though few, will also be examined.

A question that you might want to think about in advance of this presentation is this:"If you are currently involved in teaching a university course, what parts of that course might lend themselves to being taught on campus and through distance education at the same time?"

Monday, October 02, 2006, 12:00pm-12:30pm

E-Merging Learning Workshop: Meet and Greet Session (for introductions)
Presented by Dr, Mark Morton.
Location: FLEX Lab, Lib 329, Dana Porter Library

Each term, the Centre for Learning and Teaching Through Technology (LT3) offers the E-Merging Learning Workshop to assist instructors in devising ways to use online learning technologies as effectively as possible.

The workshop entails a number of online modules (which instructors work through at their convenience over the course of about four weeks) as well as two face-to-face "coaching" sessions. Details regarding the objectives, parameters, format of the workshop are available at http://lt3.uwaterloo.ca/programs/ELW.

TRACE Events

TRACE Workshops

See the above link for registration details. Workshops are popular and seating is limited.

Teaching Large Classes

Consultation Session: Teaching Dossiers

Research Projects Workshop

Teaching Dossiers

Consultation Session: Research Projects

CVs & Cover Letters

Thursday, September 21, 2006

UW's Certificate in University Teaching (CUT) is designed primarily for UW doctoral students who are interested in pursuing an academic career. The CUT, run by TRACE and co-sponsored by the Graduate Studies Office (GSO), comprises three courses that work together to provide a comprehensive teacher-development experience.

Information sessions are scheduled later in September to provide more details and answer questions. For current CUT participants, the session is Thursday, September 21, from 11:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. in Needles Hall, room 3001. New CUT participants, or those interested in learning more about the program, should plan to attend a session on Thursday, September 21, from 2:00 to 3:30 p.m. in Needles Hall, room 3001. (Clipped from the TRACE - Teaching Matters Newsletter, September 2006.)

Wednesday, November 1, 2006

Instructional Development Grants (ID Grants: up to $1,000) are administered through the TRACE Office. The ID Grants are designed to help instructors improve teaching effectiveness. The next deadline for proposals is November 1, 2006. Information and the application form can be obtained from the TRACE link above. (Clipped from the TRACE - Teaching Matters Newsletter, September 2006.)

Lectures

David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
Fall 2006 Faculty Lecture Series
Room: DC 1302

Refreshments will be available prior to the start of each lecture, and a reception in DC 1301 will follow the last lecture on November 10th.

October 4, 2006, 7:00pm

A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines: Limits of Truth and Mind
Janna Levin, Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Barnard College of Columbia University.
Author of "How the Universe Got its Spots".

From Levin's recent book comes a strange if true story of coded secrets, psychotic delusions, mathematics, and war. This story of greatness and weakness, of genius and delusion, circulates around the parallel lives of Kurt Godel, the greatest logician of many centuries, and Alan Turing, the extraordinary code breaker during World War II. Taken together their work proved that there are limits to knowledge, that machines could be taught to compute, that one day there could be artificial intelligence.
(Continued at the link above.)

Visit the Perimeter Institute (above link) for tickets, available starting Monday, September 18 at 9:00am, and directions to the WCI auditorium.

Several reviews of Professor Levin's semi-fictional account of the lives and ideas of Godel and Turing are available on her reviews page. The first link is a short excerpt, rather than a review. Also available is the September 3, 2006 review from the Sunday Book Review of The New York Times, "Obsessive-Genius Disorder".

There are many other works of fiction covering mathematical lives and ideas listed at the Mathematical Fiction site of mathematics professor Alex Kasman (College of Charleston). See for example the novel Measuring the World and the short story The Mathematician by Daniel Kehlmann about Carl Friedrich Gauss, published this year. The search page is very handy for locating books on topics that appear in your classes. Students may enjoy a little suspense along with their mathematics.

Library Events

Library workshops about building research skills for graduate and undergraduate students begin Monday September 11th, 2006.

E-journal articles subscribed to by the library can quickly be made available to a class through eReserves, the library's online course resource system. In these cases no further copyright permissions are needed. See these library sites for more information:

Lecture Podcasting

Read about how and why to podcast lectures.

Maple and MapleTA

Read about teaching mathematics using the computer algebra system Maple and the computer algebra assignment and quiz system MapleTA.

Past Events

August, 2006
July, 2006
May, 2006
April, 2006 September, 2005
March, 2006 August, 2005
February, 2006 July, 2005
January, 2006 June, 2005
December, 2005 May, 2005
November, 2005 April, 2005
October, 2005

Liaison Information

Please contact me if you would like further information. Paul Kates, Mathematics Faculty LT3 Liaison, pkates@uwaterloo.ca, x37047

This page is located at www.math.uwaterloo.ca/~pkates/LT3/events.html.

More information about the services of the Centre for Learning and Teaching through Technology - LT3 is available at lt3.uwaterloo.ca/.

More information about learning and teaching Mathematics and Computer Science, plus a description of the services I provide as Mathematics Faculty LT3 Liaison is available here.