![[University of Waterloo]](/goldbar.gif)
| Yesterday |
Friday, February 27, 2004
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Editor: Chris Redmond credmond@uwaterloo.ca |
![[Cover shows science overpass]](/images/2004/0226calendar.gif)
The science complex
figures on the cover of the brand-new 2004-05 undergraduate calendar in its
printed version. It's out just in time for
"Pick Your
Plan Week" March 1-5, for students who need to change their major,
minor or option. Single copies of the calendar are available
to registered students at the registrar's office in
Needles Hall, at no charge. Extra copies are for sale ($10) at the UW bookstore
in South Campus Hall.
In a sign of the times, there's a new sentence in the
calendar this year, right up front on page 2:
"The on-line
Calendar is the official up-to-date record of courses."
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E&CE has announced that a web site is now available with updates on what's being done. "Thanks to the UW Microsoft Online Learning Initiatives (MOLI) in Electrical and Computer Engineering," the memo says, "undergraduate students will continue to have access to world-class laboratory studies and courseware."
The $2 million arrangement with Microsoft was originally announced in the summer of 2002, and quickly led to charges that the big software company was "buying" its way into UW classrooms with the part of the funding that would support the use of Microsoft's C# programming language in E&CE courses. (The rest of the agreement involved research projects and didn't come in for the same kind of criticism.)
Things were smoothed out by June 2003, when a more detailed agreement was reached, the department's memo says. "Over the past 9 months, substantial progress has been made towards meeting the ambitious goals of this partnership. . . . Two contracts have been signed.
"The first contract provides funding to support online learning development through the revision of existing laboratory studies and courseware in a total of 10 courses. The courses covered by the terms of the first contract range from 2nd year courses on electronics to advanced 4th year courses in wireless communication theory.
"The second contract provides funding to support the development of a new high-school outreach course designed to instruct prospective students in the use of computers and programming languages. This course, when launched in the Fall of 2004, will provide secondary school students with access to state-of-the-art software development tools and online courseware.
"Five co-operative education students have been employed to develop the online laboratory studies and courseware under the terms of the contracts. So far, enhancements have been made to three existing courses. Among the highlights, a completely new virtual laboratory study has been created to assist students with preparing to use advanced test equipment in 2nd year and 3rd year electronics laboratories. Students can learn more about the test equipment used in the course as well as interact with simulations of the test equipment in operation. Seven other courses will be enhanced over the next two years. It is estimated that a total of approximately 10,000 students will benefit from Microsoft Canada's support of the online learning initiatives.
"The high-school outreach course, referred to as ECE 050, will be the first of its kind in Canada. The course has been designed to provide high-school students with an understanding of the fundamentals of computing and computer programming. Students will be taught a variety of computer languages including C#, C++, and Visual Basic using a combination of lecture notes, animations, and videos delivered electronically.
"In the Fall of 2004, it is expected that participation in the course will be limited. However, this course will eventually be available to a wide audience of high-school students across Canada. It is expected that this course will also serve as a learning tool for students entering first year programs who wish to acquire a solid foundation in computer programming. Development of the course is currently in progress with completion of the first draft of the course materials expected sometime in August."
The robot is normally used in an electrical and computer engineering class to provide an introduction to the basics of robot dynamics and control. SCORBOT is used to investigate how a typical "pick-and-place" task can be performed using a robot. Students first "teach" the robot positions in the workspace and then write a program to execute the desired task. Issues of path planning, collision avoidance and repeatability are involved.
After the ribbon cutting, chemistry staff will pour liquid nitrogen into the "Great Lakes" exhibit at the Earth Sciences Museum, located in the centre's March Networks Exhibit Atrium.
The ceremonies begin at 10:30 a.m. at the centre, which is the home of UW's E&CE and earth sciences departments. Remarks from the VIPs present will be followed by tours of the five-storey building, which opened for use early in the fall term.
David Caplan, who is Ontario's Minister of Public Infrastructure Renewal, will be on hand to speak about the province's investment in the building (about three-quarters of the $43 million cost) "and commitment to strengthen Ontario universities", a UW news release says.
Today is a good day to confirm that the name of the building is Centre for Environmental and Information Technology -- not "Environment", not "Technologies", although I know I've committed both of those solecisms at times. The usual short form is "CEIT", but because standard UW building abbreviations can be no more than three letters, "EIT" is officially the abbreviation.
| WHEN AND WHERE |
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'The Nose from Jupiter', Touring Players children's show,
10 a.m., Humanities Theatre.
Marius Van Reenen, mechanical engineering, retirement luncheon, 11:30 a.m., Laurel Room, South Campus Hall. Ontario PC Campus Association convention in Waterloo this weekend; keynote speaker at Saturday banquet is Belinda Stronach, candidate for national Conservative leader; tickets $40, call 589-9700. 'Let's Dance Showcase', Sunday 1 p.m., Humanities Theatre. School of accountancy hospitality suite at Institute of Chartered Accountants of Ontario annual convocation, Sunday 4 to 6 p.m., Westin Harbour Castle, Toronto. Ziva Kunda, psychology professor, memorial service Sunday 7 p.m., great hall, Conrad Grebel University College. 'Afghanistan: Failed State or Struggling Democracy?" Lecture by Flora MacDonald, TD Canada Trust/Walter Bean Visiting Professor, Tuesday 3:30, Humanities Theatre. Smiling Over Sickness Charity Ball, March 11, Knights of Columbus Hall, tickets ($25 for dinner and dance) soswaterloo@hotmail.com. Proceeds to Hospital for Sick Children Foundation.
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![[Maxwell in uniform]](/images/2004/0227maxwell.gif)
Rookie
of the year in women's basketball in the OUA west division is the
Warriors' Gillian Maxwell, the team's leading rebounder. She and the rest of
the Warrior squad will be in action at Brock tomorrow in league semi-final
action, after defeating Guelph 56-37 on Wednesday night. (Maxwell had 10
points and 6 rebounds.)
Meanwhile, the men's basketball Warriors will face McMaster tomorrow in a playoff game in Mac's Burridge Gym. They earned the spot by defeating Laurier on Wednesday night. |
Meanwhile, students who were out on work term in the fall can pick up their work reports (the ones that were marked by co-op coordinators) at the Tatham Centre today.
Karen Armstrong's "The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness" promises to tell "that most revealing of stories: the spiritual journey of a renowned religious scholar". Armstrong will read and discuss her latest book tonight at 8:00 at St. Jerome's University, under the sponsorship of Wordsworth Books and the St. Jerome's Centre for Catholic Experience. The author of ground-breaking explorations into the points of confluence and departure between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam turns in her latest book to her own spiritual development, from the moment she left the convent in 1969, through her struggles with depression, epilepsy and roadblocks to her scholarship, to her present status as one of the most influential commentators on three of the world's great religions. Armstrong's works include a number of international bestsellers, in particular A History of God: The 4,000 Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The event takes place in Siegfried Hall at St. Jerome's. Admission and parking are free.
Saturday will be a big night for Leonard Enns, music professor at Conrad Grebel University College. "The Phil [that's the K-W Philharmonic Choir] and K-W Symphony," he writes, "are performing my choral-orchestral symphony, 'The Silver Cord', at the Centre in the Square." The work, premiered about ten years ago, is a 35-minute "profound setting of Ecclesiastes", publicity explains. "I regard this splendid work as one of the finest Canadian choral/orchestral works of the past decade," says Phil conductor Howard Dyck. Tomorrow's concert starts at 8 p.m.; phone 578-1570 for tickets.
A "coffee house with a poetic flair" is promised for Saturday night, hosted by UW's literary magazine, The New Quarterly. TNQ editors Rae Crossman and Erin Noteboom will be performing, as will blues and bluegrass musicians Lyle Friesen and Tom Nunn. There will also be time for volunteer readers: "Closet poet? Spoken word artist? Lover of language? Here's a chance to perform in front of a live(ly) audience who will be able to recall their favourites for a second round." Refreshments will be available all evening, 7:00 to 10:30. The event takes place in the coffee shop on the third floor of the PAS (Psychology) building, and admission is $5.
I noted a posting of interest from the "uw.nexus" newsgroup, for people -- and there are a lot of them -- who use the Nexus branches of the campus computer network. On Wednesday, engineering computing reports, "one of the Nexus active directory controllers databases became corrupted. It was not the result of a break-in or hardware failure. During its most recent tape backup, the server ran out of memory -- hard to believe with 1 GB of RAM. This caused it to corrupt its files. It appears to be a memory leak in Windows 2003. The server was restored from tape and live data, and we believe it to be fully updated. There are several redundant servers, which is supposed to allow the system to continue working in the event of a single failure. However, a bug in Windows 2003 caused the system to not quietly go offline, but rather return failures when users tried to log in. Now that the system has been restored, we believe the problem has been corrected. We apologize for any inconvenience it may have caused the Nexus community."
CAR
![[Yellow Craig Cardiff poster]](http://www.feds.ca/posters/craigcardiff.jpg)