New free workshops combining teaching best practices with technology applications will be held Thursdays at UW Seattle from February 28 to March 21 for UW instructors, offered by the UW Center for Teaching and Learning and UW-IT. Experienced faculty will present methods that help them manage large courses, "flip the classroom", and more. Then UW-IT Instructional Technologists will provide short technology tutorials and advise on best practices for using Canvas, Tegrity, and other tools. Get more information and register.

In response to the rising use of Canvas, the full-featured learning management system adopted at the UW autumn quarter, UW-IT now offers after-hours support most evenings, when instructors often work. Get help with Canvas in person (at UW Seattle’s Odegaard Undergraduate Library), via email, or by phone 8:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. Monday-Thursday, 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Friday, and noon to 10:00 p.m. Sunday. UW-IT also provides 24 X 7 service monitoring and escalation of urgent issues.

Explore Baltimore from 1893 to 1988 through the pages of the Baltimore Afro-American, one of a collection of digitized ethnic newspapers provided by the UW Libraries. The published word has long provided a means of building identity, sharing viewpoints, and disseminating media images for ethnic, alternative, minority, or marginalized communities. The Baltimore Afro-American exemplifies the role of a non-mainstream newspaper in reflecting the diversity, vigor, and strife typical of any multicultural society.

Need some ideas about how you can design your course using Canvas, the UW’s learning management system? The new UW Canvas model courses  let you explore, navigate, and get a feel for how to organize content, communicate with students, distribute and collect assignments, and even administer quizzes. Each model illustrates a different take on course design and shows Canvas's inherent flexibility, and new models are continually being added.

Now UW instructors can more easily import their Catalyst WebQ quizzes and CommonView workspace to Canvas, the UW’s learning management system. Respondus software, a free download for UW faculty and staff, helps you transfer WebQ quizzes to Canvas, can be used to create them in Windows, and offers archiving. The CommonView download feature lets you create an offline copy of your workspace to use in migrating your course content to Canvas or to keep as an archive. Get more information.

A new UW Indoor Alert system now provides emergency audio and/or reader board notifications in almost all UW Seattle buildings, a complement to the UW Outdoor Alert speaker towers. To receive text messages and emails about emergency situations related to the UW campus you are on, sign up for UW Alert, also available on Facebook and Twitter. If you are already subscribed, check that your information is up-to-date.