2022 Sessions
Here's a look at the sessions that were held in 2022 as part of Digital U...
Calendar of Events
Past Adobe Events
Level up your productivity with Office 365
In our last Digital U session for 2022, we were joined by a Microsoft expert who took us through a tour of Office.com. They showed us some key changes, artificial intelligent integrations and how each application works in synergy with the other, so you can get the most out of your productivity suite.
Word, PowerPoint, Bookings, To-Do, Outlook, Whiteboard, Microsoft Lists, and translator are just a few of the 22 applications available throughout Office that will be part of a productivity showcase!
Getting Started with Adobe Creative Cloud
Adobe’s Creative Cloud includes everything you need to get started from creating graphics, videos, web content, online portfolios and more – and it’s available to all professional and academic staff at Western. In this session, an Adobe Techxpert showed attendees how they can...
- Learn about the many tools available in the Adobe Creative Cloud suite
- Get examples of the different ways they can be used across the curriculum
- Be inspired to get started in Adobe
E-Signing Tools at Western – Adobe Acrobat Sign
Adobe Acrobat Sign is a convenient way to sign! The tool is a cloud-based e-signature service that allows the user to send, sign, track, and manage signature processes using a browser or mobile device, with security that you can trust. However, it is not for everything or everyone...it can only be used for certain documents.
This session included a brief overview and demo of Adobe Acrobat Sign, a look at some use-cases and a look at important details between digital and electronic signatures.
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Video Creation for Educators
Videos are an important eLearning tool and are a great way to keep any audience (especially students) engaged. It is the perfect rich medium for sharing information in an easily digestible format.
In this instalment, Adobe experts showed attendees through video creation tools Premiere Pro, Premiere Rush and Express.
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The 3D generation is at Western!
Ever wondered how to make awesome 3D content? Well, the 3D generation is here at Western!
As a part of Adobe’s Creative Cloud license, staff and students can now access the Substance 3D ecosystem, smart creative apps, and high-end assets to give you everything you need to make inspirational content. This introductory session covered:
- What makes up the Substance 3D Collection of apps and services?
- What training content is there available to learn Substance?
- Demonstration and walkthrough of two apps: Substance 3D Painter & Substance 3D Stager where staff were able to create a type of asset using the platform.
Past Events
Your Time Matters at Western
This Digital U session looked at how you can use Microsoft tools more effectively to help you manage your workload and increase your productivity.
The team from Priority Management, an elite corporate training organisation took attendees through five core time management principles that will allow you to be more proactive, focus on what is important, and enable you to achieve your goals through greater focus and energy. The session gave tips and insights, in to the capabilities of popular Microsoft tools, particularly in the areas of managing electronic information in Outlook, and utilising an electronic To-Do list in OneNote.
Yammering at Western
At Western, we love Yammer! It’s our place to build our community, engage with others and learn about what’s happening around the University.
Many people at Western use Yammer, but the functionality of the platform isn’t fully understood. Digital U collaborated with Toula Arronis from the Communications team to bring a Yammer Essentials session. The session covered how to communicate with colleagues, ask questions, create a poll and even look into insights and what makes a popular Yammer post?
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Combining the Cloud, Electronics and Christmas Spirit! - Cloudseeder
Nick Triantafillou, resident techxpert from Cloudseeder is renowned for his Vivid-inspired Christmas light installation in Wollongong. Nick combines his passion for electronics, the Cloud and Christmas to bring incredible user experiences to his local community!
During this session Nick taught about how he combines concepts and tools from the cloud with electronics and how he plans to outdo himself year to year with his lighting displays.
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Digital U Variety Hour - Office 365
Our Techxpert Josh Brown and Printer-xpert Alex Tan from ITDS hosted a Digital U Office 365 Variety Hour looking at some tools that we have all access to, but we might not use frequently:
- Microsoft Whiteboard
- Microsoft Forms
- Microsoft Stream (An internal Youtube where we can share internal videos without the ads )
- Microsoft To-Do
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Blender Series Part 1: A New Era of Open-Source Content Creation
Blender is the free and open source one-stop-shop for 3D creation. It supports the entirety of the 3D pipeline - modelling, rigging, animation, simulation, rendering, compositing, and motion tracking, even video editing and game creation!
With Blender, you can create anything from animated films, visual effects, art, 3D printed models, motion graphics, interactive 3D applications, virtual reality, and computer games!
In Part 1 of this 2 part series, Alex Tan from ITDS walked us through the platform, and covered common features like modelling, lighting, materials, geometry nodes and rendering.
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Improve your Digital Dexterity with Microsoft Teams
Most of us use Microsoft Teams daily, but with many new features rolled out in recent months, there’s a good chance you could be missing out on great MS Teams hacks that can make work life easier! Believe it or not, there is more to Microsoft Teams than instant messenger and a ‘meet now’ feature... While both are very handy, MS Teams has the potential to be an internal communications powerhouse!
Our resident techxperts Josh Brown and Alex Tan from ITDS explored:
- A quick overview of the basics – you’ll run through the platform and learn helpful shortcuts.
- How to set up and run meetings effectively using some hidden features, like Closed Captions, Doc share, Whiteboard etc.
- How you can stay on top of your inbox and improve the way you communicate with your colleagues by integrating your Outlook email with MS Teams.
- How to manage your projects effectively and collaborate on shared assets with your teams.
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Broadcast like a Pro: Optimise your Video Content with Open Broadcasting Software (OBS)
Have you wondered how some educators and facilitators create seamless and engaging screen casting experiences during a live tutorial or presentation? Chances are, they’re probably using OBS to optimise their video content!
This session introduced attendees to the OBS platform by our resident Western tech experts Josh Brown and Alex Tan.
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