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As part of our regular programme of NILE maintenance and improvements, this summer there will be two short periods when work will be completed. There may a disruption to the NILE service during these periods.
On the weekend of 25/26 June, the software that underpins NILE will be upgraded to the latest service pack.
On the 26/27 July, NILE will be linked to the staff / student login system.
In preparation for these changes, all users need to ensure that their passwords and email addresses on NILE match those on the main University IT systems, before 25th June. For more details, please see the upgrade information page.
I’ve known about this tool for a while, it was developed in the MS Lab, and it’s a free tool to create 360 panoramas and virtual tours. I’m using the iPhone app at the moment, testing it out. The stitching isn’t perfect, ideally I’d find someone with a fish-eye lens and a digital stills camera, but for a quick and easy 360 tour, Photosynth is pretty good. I’ve uploaded it to the Photosynth site and also embedded a panorama in my NILE training module. The School of Health wanted to look into posting up little tours of their facilities, so this might be of use. UoN marketing paid a company to produce virtual tours a while back but the cost was silly, they may try a use video to achieve the same effect.
This is my first effort, so the stitching is bit off but you get the idea.
Link to Photosynth 360 panorama
Image via CrunchBase
There is no denying that as new technologies go, Twitter is here to stay (as much as any web tech ever is). With a user base of 175 million, it regularly features in the news, albeit sometimes alongside disparaging comments about users posting what they were eating for breakfast. So is it actually useful, and something that you should be paying attention to? I think so, and here’s why.
What actually is it?
Technically, it’s a ‘microblogging’ tool. If that means nothing to you, don’t worry, you’re not alone. Basically it’s a place where people can post short updates (no more than 140 characters, think the length of a text message before the phones that allow you to type forever). These are (mostly) public on the web for anyone to see.
Why is it useful?
Different people have different ideas about this. Below are some of mine. Feel free to add your own thoughts in the comments.
Twitter for CPD
I should probably point out first that my social media accounts (like my email addresses) have clearly defined purposes – Facebook is for personal conversations, and LinkedIn and Twitter are for professional ones. Rarely if ever do the two cross over, which keeps things nice and simple. This means I have a clear idea before I start of the kind of information I want to find on twitter – some people have more than one account to do this kind of filtering.
Although there is undoubtedly a lot of nonsense posted on Twitter, the power of the tool is in the ability to choose who you follow (following someone means you see their updates, or ‘tweets’). For me this is an organic process – over time I might meet people at conferences or see their twitter accounts on email signatures, or recognise names that are well-known in my field. The trick is to gather a list of people that are talking about things you will find useful or interesting (and of course this is why people would follow you, too…)
Following these people gives me a list of updates that I can quickly scan through when I have a few spare minutes (each one is only 140 characters remember), to get an idea of what’s new in my field. Having people follow me means I can post questions, and, if I’m lucky, get answers from someone who knows. It’s also a source of peer review, for everything from informal ideas to papers for publication.
Twitter for marketing
A number of companies, organisations and HE institutions have accounts on Twitter. This allows them to send out updates, as well as track what’s being said about them by other users. You can see some reviews of how universities are using Twitter on Brian Kelly’s blog: he’s covered 1994 Group Unis and Russell Group Unis.
Twitter for learning and teaching
Aside form simply keeping students updated and recommending resources, teaching staff are finding a range of creative ways to use twitter for learning and teaching. The most common ones are:
- ‘crowdsourcing’/collaboration. Using hashtags (a unique word or set of characters with a # sign in front of it) allows you to collect together tweets posted by a range of different users, as long as they all contain the same hashtag. This could allow you to collect resources and information from a group of students. A great example of this way of collecting information is Tim Burton’s collective scriptwriting project.
- ‘backchannels‘ and classroom voting. Having a hashtag for an event or lecture gives you the opportunity to display feedback from the audience during the event. Or, if this sounds a bit scary, you can use polling software like twtpoll to ask specific questions on twitter. Any student with a smartphone or laptop can access twitter in the classroom.
Follow the Learning Technology team: @LearnTechUoN
You can get some more ideas from the links below. Also, look out for training sessions from the LT team.
50 ideas on using Twitter for Education (Cooper-Taylor Training)
Eight Reasons an Innovative Educator Uses Twitter (The Innovative Educator Blog)
The ‘utility’ of Twitter in teaching and learning (JISC RSC)
100 ways to teach with Twitter (Emerging EdTech)
Report on L&T experts group meeting 23rd March 2011 (#jiscexperts11)
Attended by Rob Howe
The main aims of the day were:
- To update the group on the findings from the Supporting Learners in a Digital Age (SLiDA) study
- To update and consult with the Experts on emerging findings from the Lifelong Learning and Workforce development programme
- To update and consult with the Experts on emerging findings from the e-Portfolio Implementations Study
Rhona Sharpe presented on the SLiDA project and interim findings. A number of breakout sessions allowed members to explore some key themes in more depth. I attended the session on ‘strategic emphasis on course design for blended learning.’ The group noted the importance of the correct departmental setup and good promotion of this. Robust technology should be available and staff need to be competent in its use — staff digital competence may need to be addressed (noted that there may be subject differences in enthusiasm and adoption). The use of the CAIeRO process at Northampton does help address a number of the previously mentioned issues. Case studies were noted as valuable but often difficult to obtain. Example from Winchester at wblb.wordpress.com
The group indicated that induction should not be an option and it does impact on retention.
Rhona concluded by indicating that the next digital literacy workshops are now advertised.
The next main block covered how technology is supporting lifelong learning and workforce development. Two points noted in the introduction were the need for flexible institutional policies and a policy on information sharing. Xcri was mentioned several times as a standard for sharing course information between sites. Other potential sites useful to follow up were the maturity toolkit and the Pineapple project. (Apel processes). The projects represented were:
- Workforce engagement in lifelong learning -maturity toolkit3 , Peter Chatterton, University of Bradford
- Partnership investigations into accredited prior/previous learning4, Neil Witt, University of Plymouth
- Middlesex University skills & education planning tool5 , George Dafoulas, Middlesex University
- e-Portfolio based pedagogy for SMEs6, Alison Felce, University of Wolverhampton
- Technology enhanced learning to support a welsh centre for workforce development and Building Capacity project7 , Loretta Newman-Ford, University of Wales Institute, Cardiff (UWIC)
- Culture Campus Liverpool Portal8, Trish Lunt, University of Liverpool
A detailed discussion on the e-portfolio implementation study followed. This raised a number of questions which may be of use for Northampton’s own strategy within this area.
The final 3 sessions covered :
Circuit Warz – virtual worlds within Moodle
Aston’s development of a CMS similar to BITE
Concept linkage through C-link. This is a search and concept map builder which searches for links between two concepts and builds a map of the relationship. This tool could have potential use within a number of subject areas at Northampton.
Other points of note during the day:
The Jisc on air radio show – JISC’s L:earning and Teaching Radio show
Poss future call for digital literacy development site wide
The E4L Project (e-Learning for Learners) gathered a series of themed and categorised video clips of learners talking about their experiences of using technology when they learn.
The case studies represent learners from adult and community learning, further and higher education undertaking a variety of different courses from various subjects. These clips last anything from 20 seconds to 3 minutes and provide short, sharp and sweet experiences and opinions from the learners that can be used educate and inspire other learners, tutors, developers, management, etc. For each of the clips there is the opportunity to leave comments and reflections and read those left by others.
The TIGER project (Transforming Interprofessional Groups through Educational Resources) will innovate by collecting, developing and sharing reusable, customisable Open Educational Resources (OERs) designed for Interprofessional Education (IPE) in Health and Social Care between the three institutions, academics, their existing communities of practice, employers and the wider community in line with expressed sector requirements.
Keep up to date with TIGER by following the blog at : http://tigeroer.wordpress.com
You may or may not be aware that there were issues with pasting text directly from Microsoft Word into text areas within NILE (including Announcements, and Items). Generally most formatting and font sizes were transferred over incorrectly, resulting in your content looking messy.
You can now paste directly from Word using the MashUp feature within any text editor in NILE!
Rather than using the usual button from the tool bar to paste text, click on the MashUps button and select ‘Paste from Word’.
On the next screen press Ctrl + V on your keyboard to paste the text. You may still need to adjust line spacing, but font sizes and types will be consistent throughout the text.
Click ‘Submit’ once you are happy with the text. You can then choose all the usual options for the Announcement or Item and Submit that too.
There have also been issues with embedding YouTube clips into your modules on NILE. These have now been resolved: the procedure has not changed. If you think this would be useful and want to know how, have a look at the Embedding External Content into NILE guide.
On 11th March, 2011, Rob Howe attended Institutional Strategies for OERs hosted by SCORE. [A video review of the day should be available in a few weeks]. The notes below represent some of the key ideas I picked up from presenters during the day.
Tom Browne (Exeter) suggested that re-engineering material for OERs was not scalable and that designing for openness should be integral to design and delivery. Development of OERs at present are focused on the supply side (i.e. releasing what we have available) – this is understandable. He contrasts this with OER Africa which is being demand driven (i.e. producing material which is needed). Mention was made of the Open Exeter repository and of the tension between developing OERs for marketing and those which are produced for use on the course. (It was noted the amount of material which was used from the web without permission).
Melissa Highton (Oxford)indicated that successful development of OERs should build on existing workflows and not take significant extra staff time. She mentioned that the recording of lectures (video or audio) was very popular and assisted the adoption of iTunesU. It was noted that audio downloads were 3 times more popular than video. Building of capacity should be achieved through staff development, understanding and cultural change. Melissa questioned whether the Non commercial side of Creative Commons was too restrictive and prevented some academic staff from contributing material. Understanding of Creative Commons was seen as an essential part of OER education and development.
Stephen Stapleton (Nottingham) was involved in the setting up of U-Now in 2007, the Berlin project and the current Open Nottingham project. He mentioned the value of podcasts from senior management to encourage the take up of the service. Various reasons were given for OER release:
- Social responsibility
- Excellence in education
- Promotional opportunities
- Internationalisation
- Cost effectiveness
He stated the success of encouraging the release of module handbooks and of flash lectures (e.g. Politics in 60 seconds).
Particular mention was made of Xpert which is an OER search tool.
Cheryl Hodgkinson-Williams (Cape Town) reported on the development of the Cape Town OpenContent initiative. There was a discussion of the need for quality / reputation and the fact that tutors were given permission to upload directly to the repository.
Willem van Valkenburg (Delft University) discussed their repository ocw.tudelft.nl and the development of flash lectures. He suggested that iTuneU was more marketing focused. He stated similar values of OER development as heard previously (eg quality, new students, reputation).
Various sites were mentioned during the day which may be useful resources:
