Daily Bulletin

Skyrockets in flight -- part of the celebrations as the Residential Energy Efficiency Project was launched in the Environmental Studies building on Friday.

Students create CD for ecology -- by Michelle Lehmann

Roger Suffling, of the school of planning, wanted to improve teaching areas of his Environmental Studies 200 field ecology course where students had experienced problems. "I wanted to beef up things that students found a little bit dry and technical," said Suffling. "The CD turns dry equations into a series of learning games that give students feedback."

The multimedia CD, called Lifetables, is an accounting system for tracking births and deaths of animals and plants. Early sections explain the concept of such tables and how they are constructed. "The interactive equations and tables involve the students as they do the reasoning and math to help build the information. Students actually construct pieces of the table which help them understand the formulas instead of just memorizing them," said Suffling.

A final section consists of four simulated field trips. Each field trip gives a detailed account of tree rings, tagging fish, marking seeds or tagging birds. "It's one thing to talk about seals, but it's even better to bring in a video about seals," says Suffling. "The more you can bring real things into the classroom, the closer you move students to real life situations."

It was possible to improve the ecology course with an interactive multimedia CD because of another course offered at UW. The creators of the Lifetables multimedia CD were Pascale Proulx, a computer science and fine arts student, and Kari Stashuk, a general science student. Both were taking Independent Studies 301a, Designing Learning Materials with Interactive Multimedia.

This interdisciplinary course is offered to third or fourth-year students in any discipline. During the winter term these students developed a prototype for Suffling; they were then hired for the spring term to finish the project.

"Students work in teams to build an educational multimedia project for professors on campus," said Kevin Harrigan, research assistant professor in computer science. He's associated both with the multi-university TeleLearning Network of Centres of Excellence and with UW's new Centre for Learning and Teaching Through Technology.

Harrigan said building a multimedia product such as the Lifetables CD requires people who know about writing, graphics, project management, programming, media, audio, video, and education and the ways people learn. "In a group you normally don't have all those areas covered, but if we grab people from different departments it seems to work," said Harrigan.

IS 301a has completed about half a dozen successful projects for professors in disciplines ranging from kinesiology to systems design engineering, he said. The projects available to students come from professors who approach him or the Centre with a problem that occurs for students each time the course is offered. The team of students design a prototype solution for that specific problem.

IS301a includes a lecture with Harrigan and the team once a week, with the remainder of the course being independent work between the students and the professor wanting the project. "Professors have been quite happy with the results of the projects," said Harrigan. "Now we want people to be aware of the course because we need both professors to bring project ideas to us and students to work on such projects."

Computing courses are scheduled

Where to go to become a teacher

Coming on Tuesday: the University of Western Ontario at 9:30 a.m., Queen's at 10:30, Ottawa at 11:30, York at 2:30, Lakehead at 3:30.

Coming on Wednesday: Nipissing at 9:30, Toronto at 10:30, Toronto's child studies program at 11:30, Windsor at 2:30, Brock at 3:30.

The deadline for admission to Ontario faculties of education for September 2000 is Wednesday, December 1. There's some competition for spots in teachers' colleges: for September 1999, the number of applicants went up after a four-year dip, to just past 30,000 (which is still well short of the 50,000 figure from 1990). The colleges admitted more than 4,000 students this fall, more than at any time in the past decade, the Ontario Universities' Application Centre reports.

Lectures, a videoconference, and more

The executive committee of the UW senate will meet at 3:30 in Needles Hall room 3004. On the agenda: many routine matters (including the list of people to receive their degrees at fall convocation on October 23. There will also be discussion of how the senate itself (which is scheduled to meet October 18) might review progress on UW's "Fifth Decade" planning report, Building on Accomplishment.

The seminar series sponsored by the Health and Fitness Group gets going today with "Stress Management: Responding to Daily Demands with Positive, Life-Enhancing Solutions", at 12 noon in Lyle Hallman Institute (Matthews Hall) room 1633, and at 7 p.m. in the LHI auditorium. (For the record: what had been the Mutual Group Auditorium is now, with that benefactor's recent change of corporate name, it's now the Clarica Auditorium.)

The tourism lecture series that's running this fall, jointly sponsored by geography and recreation and leisure studies, continues today with a talk at 3:30 (Arts Lecture room 124) by David Weaver of Griffith University, Australia. He'll speak on "Destination Development Scenarios".

The annual Imaginus poster sale in the Student Life Centre runs today through Friday.

A satellite connection hosted by UW will connect language teachers here to a "language teaching and learning" video conference at Boston University on Wednesday. Coordinating the effort from UW is French studies instructor Pat Aplevich, who, with former TRACE staff member Jo-Anne Willment (now at Dalhousie), co-authored a chapter in the book The Coming of Age of the Profession. That text will serve as the basis for discussion at the video conference, with a number of its authors acting as keynote speakers: Sponsored by the book's publishers, Heinle and Heinle, the video conference is being broadcast across North America, and will include a phone link to allow participants to talk with the speakers. The event will be held from 2 to 4 p.m. in Davis Centre room 1302. All are welcome, and an invitation has also been extended to language teachers at Wilfrid Laurier University.

The local Volunteer Action Centre advises that the Share the Warmth Coat Program needs help. "Volunteers are needed by the Salvation Army at the distribution centre to staff the reception desk and organize coats as they are brought in. . . . Community and Family Services of the Salvation Army will also soon need help with pickups, packing and answering the telephone at their Christmas Toy Centre and Christmas Bureau." If you might be able to help, you can get details from the VAC at 742-8610.

From an Ontario government news release: "The number of young people helped through Ontario Summer Jobs, 1999 soared above all expectations said Al Palladini, Minister of Economic Development and Trade. This year 61,525 students received assistance to find work or created their own summer job through Ontario Summer Jobs, well above the 53,500 expected to take part. 'We're proud of the success of this year's summer jobs campaign,' Palladini said. 'More young people found jobs this summer than any other year this decade, and our Ontario Summer Jobs programs have helped contribute to that success.'"

CAR

Editor of the Daily Bulletin: Chris Redmond
Information and Public Affairs, University of Waterloo
credmond@uwaterloo.ca | (519) 888-4567 ext. 3004
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