PRESENTATION TODAY
THURSDAY, FEB. 4TH 11AM-NOON IN THE CLIC
On Thursday, February 4 from 11-12 in the CLIC, Dong Uk Cheong, a scholar visiting the Curry school from Korea , will present about the use of the virtual world Second Life to increase pre-service teachers' opportunities to practice teaching and reflect upon it. In a pre-service program at the Korean National University of Education (KNUE),  Dong Uk first taught his students how to use Second Life, and then assigned them to teach a lesson to one another in it, after which they discussed and reflected upon their efforts and success. Please attend, so as to begin a conversation about how virtual worlds, simulations, and cases all present further opportunities to learn for our students here at Curry. --Dr. Sara Dexter

IES NEWS FLASH

Institute of Education Science (IES) Newsflash is an e-mail-based alert service designed to inform doctoral students, faculty, and researchers about new content posted to the IES website. You can also sign up to receive the News Flash email alerts which include information about workshops that focus on IES data sets, as well as other news updates. If you apply, get accepted, and attend an IES workshop, it will make an excellent professional development listing on your resume and provide innumerable networking opportunities!

These workshops are often held in Washington, D.C. For example, The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, recently announced an advanced studies seminar on the use of two databases from NCES’ Crime and Safety Surveys program; these include the 2007–08 School Survey on Crime and Safety (SSOCS) and 2007 School Crime Supplement (SCS) to the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) databases. The SSOCS is designed to support research on a wide range of topics pertaining to school crime and safety from the perspective of school administrators; while the SCS/NCVS is designed to support such research from the perspective of students ages 12-18. Unfortunately, the deadline for applying for this training workshop was January 30th. However, additional opportunities will continue to be reported on the News Flash service.

The training sessions are free, usually vary in length from 1/2 day to a week, and are a great networking opportunity. If you are interested in applying, please do not hesitate to contact Dan Berch, Curry's Associate Dean for Research and Faculty Development. He can advise you about the application process and the experiences the training affords to those who are selected to attend.

MEDIA TABLE IN THE CLIC
Due to high interest from students, we have negotiated a longer loan period for the Media Table. The table will now remain in the CLIC until Feb. 10th. Try it out with a group of friends! Have your friend bring in his or her laptop and plug it into the Media Table. Then, you and another friend can plug in your laptops. Each laptop has a unique puck-shaped handset attached. When a handset is tapped, the laptop associated with the handset displays on the large LCD panel attached to the media table. This is a great collaboration station. Come, try this out, and share your opinions with the CLIC staff to help us ascertain if a unit such as this should be considered for purchase. Already, a couple of student groups have been using the station during their committee meetings.

WHICH PHONE IS BEST?
During the holiday season, you probably saw and heard lots of commercials about new cell phones with better calling plans and features. It can be overwhelming trying to unravel coverage maps, hidden costs, 3G networks, and whether a Droid (aka Google's NexusOne), an iPhone, a BlackBerry, or some other device is your destiny.

To help you figure it out, the UVa Tech Connect community has a fantastic opportunity for you.

Join us on February 23, 2010 in Newcomb Hall for the UVa Mobile Communications Fair, and get answers to the questions that matter to you. Whether you are planning to buy a new cell phone, hoping to learn about smartphone apps that can improve your life, or wanting to know more about potentially harmful aspects of mobile communications, this is the event for you.

Best of all, the event is free of charge! We’ll have vendors at the Fair to show off their newest creations, ITC staff on hand to get your smartphone working on the UVa network, and a full day of wonderful sessions and great refreshments.

Come join us! You don’t have to stay the whole day – just select the sessions and events that interest you. This promises to be an event filled with information and fun!

We are asking participants to register for the event so that we can plan accordingly. To register or find out more information, please visit http://itc.virginia.edu/techconnect/mobilefair/
--the UVa Tech Connect community representative

"This event is also a great opportunity for educators to learn more about smartphones and what they can do to facilitate and support your professional life as an educator. You can also explore how this technology can be successfully  integrated into the learning, teaching and research environment." --Kay Buchanan, Head Librarian-in-Residence, Curry School of Education

CURRY BOOK MART
The Curry Book Mart is a website for students to buy and sell books. The website has a Google spreadsheet that can be edited by textbook buyers and sellers. 

This semester the Research Computing Lab (RCL) in the Brown Science and Engineering Library has a variety of RCL workshops for graduate students including "Best Practices for Creating Research Data" on Tuesday, February 23, 2010 from 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. in the Brown Science and Engineering Library Electronic Classroom. This session will offer an introduction to databases, data file creation, data quality control and quality assurance. It will also discuss some of the important principles around metadata creation that provides description of your data, creates more access points, and more.

NEW BOOK by DR. DANIEL DUKE TITLE: Differentiating School Leadership: Facing the Challenges of Practice (table of contents)
Location: Alderman Library; 2nd Floor New, Mezzanine Level
Call Number: LB3013.3 .H343 2010
Search VIRGO: See if this book is checked out or on the shelf.