We are pleased, and honoured, to host the latest edition of Clayton R. Wright’s Educational Technology and Related Education Conferences Listing – the May 2012 Edition.
This is by far the most authoritative listing of conferences in educational technology globally. It is 68 pages long (so you probably don’t want to print) 
Click here to access the full listing
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A quick note from Jeremy Graham regarding the upgrade to our Learning Portal on May 11 and 12, 2012.
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Hi All. Just a reminder that our scheduled upgrade of the Blackboard Learn software that underlies the Portal will commence just shortly after midnight tonight. We will be out of service for the duration, and expect to be finished work by Saturday afternoon (the 12th).
Any significant progress updates will be posted at:
http://www.systemstatus.utoronto.ca/system/systems/portal
(which is also linked on our documentation and help site at http://www.portalinfo.utoronto.ca).
Best,
Jeremy
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Jeremy Graham
Technical Operations Manager,
Centre for Teaching Support & Innovation (CTSI),
University of Toronto
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NB from the editor: This is an annual upgrade scheduled a year in advance. The annual upgrade is meant to bring us better stability, improved performance and more functionality. Thank you for your patience while the work is going on. – AH
I am very happy to post a link to a fabulous site developed by my colleagues in the University of Toronto Libraries.
The Learning Objects and Open Courseware site is a selective list of major repositories of learning objects and open courseware that can be used in classroom teaching and online learning environments.
Learning objects take many forms, including animations, tutorials, videos, journal articles, and quizzes. Educators may include learning objects in their lessons and students may use them to complement and enhance classroom learning.
Open courseware is an entire course, often at the college or university level, that can be accessed without charge over the Internet. Some courses require only a browser to access while others require special software like iTunesU.
[ direct link: http://guides.library.utoronto.ca/learningobjects ]
Once again, please accept my sincere apologies if you have had trouble accessing the Learning Portal yesterday and/or today (April 17 and 18).
I can assure you that we would never intentionally take down the Portal, especially without prior notice, and especially not during exam time.
As I’ve reported here before, we have been having trouble with a database on which the Learning Portal relies. The trouble is not specifically with the Blackboard software, although this is of little comfort to all those trying to use the Learning Portal.
We have a dedicated team who are constantly monitoring the system, responding immediately when something goes wrong, and trying to analyze the causes as to prevent them from happening.
In the meantime, you can check the current system status at this website:
http://www.systemstatus.utoronto.ca/system/systems/portal
With sincere apologies,
AJ Hyman, Director, Academic & Collaborative Technologies, UofT
We are happy to announce that you can now access our
Learning Portal through your mobile device!
The Blackboard Mobile Learn app enables students to receive course notifications and updates to course content from their mobile device. The app can be used with both wireless and cellular networks.
While Mobile Learn is not intended to replace the main browser-based interface to the Learning Portal, the app does provide quick access to course Announcements, Grades, and contribute entries to Blogs, Discussion forums and Journals. New content should be added to the course using your computer desktop. Some media and file formats may not display on certain devices. Note the Mobile Learn app should not be used for assessment purposes such as tests, quizzes, surveys and assignments.
Not only can you view updates to the course, the Dashboard feature gives you the latest information on all of your courses and organizations in one spot!
Once you’ve downloaded the app all you need is your UTORid and password to access your courses.
Available on:
For more information, please visit these important websites:
PLEASE NOTE:
Blackboard Mobile Learn is developed by Blackboard, rather than locally at UofT. As such, we are unable to accommodate requests to extend or modify Apps.
Since Feb. 17th, users of our Learning Portal have had to deal with a series of unexpected ‘outages’ for our Learning Portal.
First of all, as the person ultimately responsible for this system, please let me extend my apologies for any difficulties, and let me assure you that the entire team is working very hard to eliminate these issues.
Second, I just want to clarify something about the outages. Many people have complained about ‘Blackboard’ because this is the software we use for our Learning Portal. For the record, the problem has not been with the Blackboard software, which has actually functioned perfectly well throughout. The problem has been, in fact, with a database application on which Blackboard relies.
This is little comfort to those who have attempted to use the Learning Portal and have not been able to, but I thought it important and fair to share some of the details.
Back on February 17, we attempted what should have been a routine upgrade to the database software. After rigourous pre-upgrade testing on the test server for the database, we ran the upgrade on our production server and it failed, corrupting the database. The vendor analyzed the situation and it turns out that there was a bug in their upgrade routine.
We did manage to get the thing running again so people could use the Learning Portal, but since then, we’ve had a couple of more crashes of the database as we recover from the original failure. As I said, our entire team is fully committed to making sure the Portal experience is stable and effective!
Again, my apologies and my thanks for your patience.
Avi Hyman, Director, Academic & Collaborative Technologies
(For Portal system status messages, please see:
http://www.systemstatus.utoronto.ca/system/systems/portal )
We are very pleased to announce that the University of Toronto has joined the Liberated Learning Consortium as its newest partner in the effort to increase access to information through the advancement of speech recognition (SR) technologies.
The Liberated Learning Consortium was founded to research and develop two interrelated applications: (1) using speech recognition technology to automatically caption spoken language and display it as readable text in educational environments; (2) using speech recognition to produce and disseminate accessible, multimedia transcripts. The Consortium’s ultimate goal is for speech recognition based captioning and transcription of educational media to become a standard for supporting diverse learning needs in learning environments. The Consortium strives to make these approaches widely available to improve access to information for persons with disabilities.
A number of organizations within UofT will come together to lead this new partnership. Accessibility Services, the Centre for Teaching Support & Innovation, Information + Technology Services, the Office of the Chief Information Officer, and the Office of Space Management will work collaboratively to evaluate the impact Liberated Learning concepts and systems have on students, faculty and university stakeholders. This group will also look at developing transferable models for successfully implementing speech recognition and related accessibility solutions in various learning environments.
The University of Toronto’s goal is to not only evaluate the impact SR technology has in a classroom environment but to evaluate the impact these technologies have on teaching and learning outcomes. Given its sheer size the university will provide consortium partners access to its large student population and large class sizes. This will enable Liberated Learning to continue its goal of fostering an environment where speech recognition based captioning and transcription of educational media becomes a regular fixture for supporting various learning needs in an educational setting.
If you are interested in SR technologies for teaching and learning, please let us know. Thanks.
As part of the academic planning process, UTM has established an Instructional Technologies Task Force (ITTF) to outline a vision for the instructional technologies that support teaching and learning at the University of Toronto Mississauga.
The ITTF is expected to create a shared vision for instructional technology at U of T Mississauga in support of student learning and faculty teaching; identify gaps and/or obstacles to achieving this shared vision; explore best practices and examine options for enhanced instructional technology support (e.g., human or physical resources); and recommend a sustainable model for instructional technology for the U of T Mississauga campus.
See http://www.utm.utoronto.ca/instructional-tech/ for more details.
The Ontario Universities Computing Conference is seeking session proposals for this year’s conference at the University of Toronto Mississauga on April 29th-May 1st. Please see the address below for full information and the submission link. The deadline for submissions has been extended to Friday, March 2nd.
Ontario Universities Computing Conference 2012 will be held April 29th – May 1st at the University of Toronto Mississauga. OUCC 2012 is an excellent venue to showcase your work and to collaborate with others who share your passion and interests.
This year marks a special partnership between the University of Toronto TechKnowFile (TKF) technology conference and the OUCC which will bring together higher-ed technology professionals to meet, discuss and see presentations on a variety of topics. OUCC provides a platform for IT Professionals from Academia as well as Industry to discuss, share and disseminate innovative and pioneering views on recent trends and developments in communications, IT, management and leadership.
Proposals are invited for original presentations in the categories below and should be submitted online via the web-based submission system between February 3rd and March 2nd, 2012.
Themes
OUCC welcomes presentations from participants regarding the following themes:
Each submission should be accompanied by an abstract of up to 150 words and indicate the applicable theme. Reviewers will evaluate submissions on criteria such as originality, significance, soundness, clarity and relevance. Authors of accepted presentations will be contacted by March 1, 2012.
Over the past several months, a number of primary stakeholders participated in a consultative process around the idea of creating a comprehensive mobile strategy at UofT. Out of those conversations a proposal has been developed (below), and through the circulation of this document we are furthering the opportunity for interested members of the community to participate and broaden the discussion.
Please see the full report here: UofTMobileStrategyDiscussionMemo
And please feel free to send comments to a.hyman(at)utoronto(dot)ca
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@ajhyman
