The UW placed fourth on this year’s Sierra Club’s annual ranking of the 20 greenest U.S. colleges, and has made the list for the last five years. According to UW Today, the UW is recognized for its sustainability initiatives, including SmartGrid to modernize, measure, and manage campus building energy consumption, and its commitment to limit its contributions to global warming.

Find some two thousand full-text reference handbooks in ENGnetBASE, an eBook collection that covers all areas of engineering (civil, electrical, mechanical, computer science, material science, nanotechnology, etc.) plus business management, ergonomics, food and culinary science, forensics and criminal justice, and more. Learn about topics such as transforming organizations, digital color imaging, and the technology of cookie production. Check the "Full Access Content Only" box in the top banner to get titles accessible to you on this UW-restricted site provided by UW Libraries.

Seattle startup Decide.com, brainchild of UW Computer Science & Engineering Professor Oren Etzioni, has progressed from analyzing price drops and increases on cameras, phones, appliances, and more to now assigning them to one of four categories, from “we love it” to “don’t buy it.” The new "Decide Score" feature uses expert and user reviews, aggregated and analyzed, to “determine if products are the best or worst,” reports GeekWire.

UW-IT is holding free introductory workshops for UW faculty and instructors who want to know more about using the Canvas Learning Management System. These 90-minute sessions are held in Mary Gates Hall at UW Seattle. Learn more and register for one of the sessions to get an overview of some of the key features of Canvas.

The K-20 Education Network has been bringing high-speed Internet to Washington students since 1996, “removing distance as a barrier to a great education,” reports a recent article in EDTECH. Designed and operated by UW-IT, the K-20 network now reaches more than 1.5 million students, with 99.8 percent of Washington classrooms connected. High school students take online advanced placement courses at the UW and medical practitioners at remote clinics videoconference with UW Medicine specialists, all using the network. A recent bandwidth upgrade addressed the increasing demands of mobile devices.

New functionality for Tegrity, the lecture recording tool, expands its use beyond for-credit courses at the UW. Tegrity Manager provides access to Tegrity to everyone with a UW NetID—students, faculty, and staff—for creating and sharing presentations, projects, training, and more, while controlling access (membership) to these “courses.” Learn more about Tegrity and Tegrity Manager, and sign up for workshops that start August 16.

The UW Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) is inviting UW faculty to change from the “in-class lecture, out-of-class homework” model to one where students “attend” lectures online and spend class time on case studies, group projects, complex problem sets, and other collaborative work. Supported by a CTL-facilitated learning community, faculty in this pilot project will be “flipping the classroom” for a significant portion of their Autumn 2012 or Winter 2013 course. Summer consultation is available. This effort supports the Provost’s Teaching and Learning in the 21st Century Initiative. Get details.