Douglas College Wrap Up Sree Steinbech and Ashley Valentine’s Day at Douglas On February 11" and 12", the Office for _ New Students will be hosting a Valentine’s Day event, which will include flowers and _ chocolates for sale in the concourse. Their annual “He Said She Said” celebrity dating ‘panel will also occur again this year. This "year will also see the inclusion of “Cupid’s Arrow,” a game where students use toy bows and arrows to shoot for prizes, as well asa mony compete: a es contest. ONS open house oS The Office for New Students will open their __ Office doors at the David Lam Campus so "Shes sOSeaRe Fae roe ml nee gees ‘room A1360. ‘Food and beverages will also _ be supplied by the ONS to help encourage : Coquitlam students to come on out and take part in this open house. Lecture on climate change _ On Tuesday, February 24" in room 2203 of - ‘ the New West Campus, Douglas College students are invited to see world-renowned botanist Richard Joseph Hebda speak about climate change. _ Hebda will lecture on climate change in British Columbia, the lessons from the past and some strategies for the future from ‘11 am—12 p.m. with a question period afterwards. Besides serving as an adjunct professor for the University of Victoria, Hebda also works for the Royal British Columbia Museum as a curator, and has served as an export advisor for the Province of B.C. for Burns Bog. He is a popular expert on climate change and has published and edited many books, and reports on the topic. _ For more information, please contact — Dave Waddington at 604.527.5230 or waddingtond@douglas.be.ca é i Brainify simplifies web searching for students By Ashley Whillans, Associate News Editor rainify (www.brainify.com) is a new website B designed to alleviate the stress of online researching for students and professors alike. Boasting itself as a website founded “for brainiacs and by brainiacs,” Brainify is a social bookmarking tool that aims to bring academics from around the world together to share their favourite web-based resources. Brainify works through participation. With universities, organizations and professors putting up tons of information on the Internet, the problem isn’t the quantity of academic online content, but organization of the available information. Academic Social Bookmarking allows students to look through websites previously bookmarked, flagged, and rated by other students or academics instead of resorting to broad and spam-ridden search engines. If a user is unable to find what they are looking for through Brainify, they can post their questions on the online forum, or perform an “education filtered” web search. “There are an amazing number of outstanding academic sites on the web,” Goldberg said. “If a great site exists, there is a student somewhere who knows about it. If a student has a question, there is another student somewhere who knows the answer. Brainify is about student-focused education, academic community, and peer learning.” “T [have] always thought it would be really fantastic for academic students to connect worldwide. Students have great social networks outside of school such as Facebook that go beyond the people that [are] around them, but not so much with their academic studies,” Goldgerg said. “When people start coming to Brainify, they find a few websites that work the best for them, bookmark them for their peers which not only saves time for themselves and others, but ultimately has the potential to help them do better in school.” An additional feature of Brainify is the “user Brainify.com ti Gh, reputation scale.” A user’s “reputation” is meant to represent the value of an individual’s contribution to the website. If a user is ranked amongst the highest “contribution” they have the potential to receive money for their efforts; Goldberg has in fact promised to distribute 30% of the proceeds, if ever sold, to these valued and “contributing” members. While the future of Brainify seems promising, it needs student support. “Brainify is going to live or die by word of mouth and if [the students] tell their friends, we can build something that could be fantastic for students all over the world. Hopefully Brainify will facilitate the creation of widespread persistent academic communities for all students,” Goldberg said. Goldberg is hoping that with the help ‘of students and professors, Brainify will become the place for students to find academic information online, saving time, money and most importantly, creating an academic community outside of the classroom. Murray Goldberg is also faculty member in the Department of Computer Science at the University of British Columbia, and previously founded WebCT. Conservatives could put fish farms at risk he Living Oceans Society is accusing the Conservatives of not Lelie enough with last week’s budget to help protect the environment. There has been a particular item that the government decided to include that bothers the society. The group has expressed great concern regarding the regulation and screening system in place for areas like aquaculture through the Environmental Assessment Act, which they believe could be thrown out all together by the Harper government at some point in the future. What bothers them is the fact that any project that costs less than $10 million will be exempt from any screening programs. Their concern is the possibility that this will lead to “sea lice infestations on juvenile wild salmon and other negative impacts from salmon farming” according to a recent press release from the group. Ironically, the Brian Mulrooney’s Progressive Conservative government initially introduced the Act well over 15 years ago when the Tories last had federal power. The goal was to ensure proper regulations were in place and that they were sustainable with aquaculture industry that was developing at the time, and has grown substantially on both of Canada’s coasts since.