FAST FIVE for the week of November 4, 2012


Crowd-sourcing ideas for the next CANHEIT conference: This year CANHEIT organizers are asking the community to contribute to the conference content by submitting your ideas and suggestions. The conference will take place June 9-12, 2013 and the deadline for participating in the crowd-sourcing event is November 16, 2012. For more information check this link: Crowd-sourcing CANHEIT

Student innovation drives UTSC mobile app: What2Eat@UTSC is the inaugural winner of the University of Toronto Scarborough College's AppStar competition. The competition awards cash prizes for the best student mobile app software development. There were 13 finalists in the competition, and the list of useful apps reflects the imagination and creativity of the students. More information about the competition is here: Appstar competition and the list of finalist apps is here: Appstar finalists

   
UOIT delivers a mobile service: The University of Ontario Institute of Technology has released a new mobile app for iPhones and Android devices. The app provides campus news, events, course information, and location data. BlackBerry access is not yet implemented. UOIT mobility


The space race is on: University of Waterloo students are leading all other Canadian schools in a competition by Dropbox to earn free storage space for their school: Dropbox Canada Leaderboard


StFX's partnership with Apple: St. Francis Xavier is collaborating with Apple Computer to deploy Apple computers in faculty offices, classrooms, and student labs. Users are offered the choice of running Mac or Windows operating systems on the computers. Teaching and learning projects have benefited from the partnership and support costs are minimized because critical repair requests are below 4% on a five year life cycle. Apples at StFX

Bonus fun news: University of Toronto Mississauga had some special help this Halloween. Building blocks to a better help desk


FAST FIVE for the week of October 28, 2012


New Wireless at Kwantlen: A new wireless network will be installed at Kwantlen University this month. With 2.5 times more access points the new system will provide broader coverage, faster speeds, and more concurrent users. The system will deliver encrypted services and they will also be implementing EDUROAM. Kwantlen Wireless

Globe and Mail IT Student Survey: Congratulations to IT staff at McGill University and Queen's University for getting an A grade for student satisfaction with information technology. The latest annual Globe and Mail survey gave these two institutions the top grade. For further information on all the rankings, check this link: Globe and Mail Report Card

App Open Mic: The University of Toronto is sponsoring an application open mic event for their mobile device community. Attendees are encouraged to demonstrate their favourite mobile applications and workflows on a big screen in the Robarts Library. App Open Mic

Dalhousie Alert Test: Dalhousie University ran a test of its emergency notification system on Thursday. The system is designed to communicate emergency messages via a variety of channels including email, web, and text messaging. Dal Alert

One Million Downloads: McMaster University has hit the milestone of one million full text downloads from its digital commons service. This service currently stores 16,000 records of completed scholarly work, work-in-progress, and University created material and searchable and accessible worldwide. McMaster Milestone