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The Digital Media Projects Office and Computing & Communication Services maintain the great majority of teaching technology at Ryerson. These services include:
- Blackboard
Ryerson's Learning Management System (LMS) was recently upgraded to the latest version. In addition to the CCS training sessions, instructors might also find these quick tutorials helpful.
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Ryecast
The Ryecast service can be used to provide live lecture, seminar, and event broadcasts as well as provide a home for streaming video and audio on demand.
- Media Services
The Media Services department within CCS handles all Presentation Technology Equipment and services. If you are going to be using a podium for one of your classes, Media Services has posted a series of training videos.
The DMP also provides a variety of services for faculty and instructors looking to expand their teaching to include technology such as videocasts, blogs, or survey tool:
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Faculty Suites and Production Studio
The DMP has two multimedia computer labs available for the exclusive use of faculty, staff and graduate students. Tools include flatbed and slide scanners, video and audio editing software and hardware, CD and DVD burners. The Production Studio can accommodate audio and video recordings which can be used for podcasting, webcasting, multimedia, DVD and CD projects.
- Weblogging (Blogging)
Blogs are available for faculty interested in integrating blogging into their course. Blogs can be installed inside Blackboard or using Wordpress templates installed on the Ryerson site.
- Wikis
The DMP will use JSP Wiki to set up a class wiki for any faculty interested in using wikis for instruction.
- Surveys
The Opinio survey tool is available for research conducted by faculty, staff, and graduate students.
- Clickers
If you would like to take clickers for a test-drive, a sample set is available at the DMP.
Interested in podcasting or videocasting? There are some free tools available to help record and edit your audio.
- For Mac users, the Garageband recording studio program and the iMovie video editing software comes as part of the iLife suite.
- For PCs, Windows Moviemaker is available as a free download.
- For both Mac and PC, Audacity is an open source sound editor.
- For any computer with an Internet connection, Myna works as an online audio editor.
- Don't forget to make your podcasts or videos accessible! Include transcripts of sound recordings or caption your videos.
To help get you started:
Interested in Web 2.0 tools like blogs and social networks? Here are some resources for...
Blogs and Wikis:
Social Networking:
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The Ryerson Library has developed numerous tools that can be of assistance to both faculty and students when doing research and writing:
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RACER allows users to order books and articles not available at Ryerson from other libraries at no charge.
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RefWorks is a web-based bibliographic citation manager.
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LibX is a browser plugin that lets users quickly check to see if resources found on the web are available through the Ryerson Library.
- Library 2.0
These web applications include the Google and NetVibes Search Gadget, Ryerson Library Lookup from Amazon/Indigo/Google Books, Ryerson Library Catalogue applications for Facebook and Firefox, and Get It Buttons in Google Scholar.
- askON is a real time chat information service provided to Ontario university students by university libraries and librarians.
- Mobile Library
The Ryerson Library main page as well as the university homepage and the library catalog are available as mobile sites for use on smart phones.
In addition to Ryerson tools, there are plenty of free research and writing tools scattered all over the web:
- Zotero is a citation management system that lets you save citations for journal articles, magazines, books, webpages and more from within your browser. These can be synced with any computer, shared with research groups, and exported to Word to automatically generate pre-formatted bibliographies and citations.
- Mendeley lets you set up your personal research paper database from multiple sources: Extract bibliographic data from PDFs automatically, grab citations and documents off web databases with a single click, and sync with other reference managers."
- Visual Understanding Environment (VUE) "is a concept and content mapping application, developed to support teaching, learning and research and for anyone who needs to organize, contextualize, and access digital information."
- The Delicious social bookmarking site lets you save bookmarks, edit tags, and share links easily. Visit the LTO's Delicious page.
A good filing system, version control, and frequent backups can save scholars a lot of headaches. Here are some of the LTO's favorite tools:
- Dropbox is a handy alternative emailing yourself the latest version of files or taking your USB key when you leave the house. 2GB of file storage are available for free.
- If you have work spread across multiple computers, Logmein will allow you to access your PC and Mac desktops remotely.
Further advice on staying organized:
"The LTO Best Practices" is produced monthly by The Learning & Teaching Office of Ryerson University. Our November issue will be on "Dossier Development."
Do you have any thoughts, suggestions, or best practices that you would like to see appear in this newsletter? Please send all submissions to michelle.schwartz@ryerson.ca. We look forward to including your contributions in our next issue!
Location: Kerr Hall West, room KHW373.
Phone: 416.979.5000 x6598
Email: lto@ryerson.ca
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