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
The next regional group meeting for those that are midlands based will be held at the University of Northampton (Park Campus) on Thursday 19th May 2011, 10-3pm. Having held several successful meetings during 2010 the midlands group aims to continue on a self funding basis for the foreseeable future. We look forward to seeing members old and new and the sign up sheet can be found:
Information about ELESIG
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The ELESIG group is the Evaluation of Learners’ Experiences of e-learning Special Interest Group and is supported by the Higher Education Academy. ELESIG is an international community of researchers and practitioners from higher and further education who are involved in investigations of learners’ experiences and uses of technology in learning. ELESIG members work together to share knowledge and practice and develop a shared repertoire of resources which will be of benefit to the community and the sector (http://elesig.ning.com). Originally started as part of the small grants scheme the group is now self supporting as a regional group and continues to be coordinated by Dr. Gemma Towle and Mr. Rob Howe from The University of Northampton.
There has already been several regional meetings held during 2010 as well as a NING site and Twitter Feeds for regular updates. This meeting will take place at The University of Northampton on Thursday 19th May 2011 from 10am till 3pm. (Further details will be sent nearer to this date).
Places are limited and the closing date for the booking form will be Thursday 12th May.
Whilst the event is free, a charge may be raised for booked places which are not used. Lunch is not included so feel free to bring your own or there are facilities to purchase lunch on the campus. Tea and coffee is provided though!
eLearning in Health Conference
27 – 28 June 2011
Conference themes
The conference themes are:
- Enhancing assessment and feedback through technology
- Using technology to improve collaboration across the Education and Health Sectors; including mobile learning in practice
- Innovative tools and technologies to support learning
- Releasing, sharing, and using openly accessible online teaching materials (OER)
- Using technology to enhance pedagogic quality whilst maintaining cost efficiencies
- Using technology to enhance digital inclusion and promote widening participation
- Using technology to support those with learning difficulties
- The role of technology in education for sustainable development
Developing Digital Literacies: A series of national workshops on developing learners and learning organisations for the 21st Century
A series of free workshops from the JISC e-Learning Programme on developing digital literacies will take place during May – October 2011.
The workshops will be held on:
26 May 2011, Goodenough College in London (in partnership with RSC London and RSC Eastern)
23 June, Maple House in Birmingham
22 September, The Studio in Manchester
6 October, The Bristol Hotel in Bristol
These workshops will offer the latest in organisational thinking and educational development around digital literacies. Participants will hear the outcomes of recent JISC-funded activity in this area and be given the chance to share their own experiences through structured activities. Proven resources in support of staff and curriculum development and institutional change will be available to download, adapt and use in participants’ own contexts of work.
The workshops will be suitable for:
Educational professionals with an interest in and responsibility for digital literacy. They may be located in:
e-learning teams; library/learning resource teams; educational or learning development; academic departments; careers/employability teams; outreach teams; other support services; quality; senior management.
The workshops will be facilitated by Helen Beetham (consultant) and author of JISC’s recent review of digital literacies and lead consultant on the Learning Literacies for a Digital Age1 (LliDA) project and Dr Rhona Sharpe or Dr Greg Benfield (Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development, Oxford Brookes University) of the recent JISC Supporting Learners in a Digital Age2 (SLiDA) study.
Further information together with the registration forms for the workshops, is now available from www.jisc.ac.uk/diglitworkshops
Julie Usher, Adel Gordon, Kardi Somerfield and Rob Howe attended the Blackboard Learning and Teaching Conference in Leeds (11-13 April 2011) and managed a hat trick of presentations along with Julie coordinating the first informal meeting of the Learning Objects Usergroup.
Twitter was actively used during the three days and you can review the stream of conversations.
The Northampton presentations covered:
Putting the TIGER into the Blackboard tank (Rob Howe) – a review of how the TIGER project is putting Open Educational Resources into the Blackboard environment.
Sticky Content: Creating Blackboard sites that keep students coming back for more (Kardi Somerfield and Rob Howe) – a report of Kardi’s URB@N project on creating engaging NILE modules and how this is influencing Northampton’s strategic direction.
Lecture capture using Panopto at The University of Northampton (Adel Gordon and Rob Howe) – a review of the first 9 months of implementing video capture using the Panopto tool.
As normal the networking was invaluable as colleagues from other institutions shared experiences and we were able to talk direct to suppliers. Looking forward to next year’s event in Antwerp !
RobH
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)
A couple of weeks ago lecturers from the School of Health and Information Services held a video conference call to colleagues in Malaysia. This was the first time we had all used Skype so I was nervous, but the call went perfectly. The audio was clear, the video sync’d to the speech and it was just like holding a normal conversation.
We also recorded the call using a Skype add-in called Vodburner which means the lecturers can look over the call and review the questions and issues raised.
Overall I was pleased with the way it went and I would encourage other tutors to try out Skype.
Online workshop: Introduction to Effective Distance Learning – Monday 11 April
by Helen Walmsley – Thursday, 17 March 2011, 04:04 PM
Online workshop: Introduction to Effective Online Distance Learning
Monday 11 April 09:00am – 17:00pm (BST) See your time here
Are you planning or reviewing your online distance learning provision? Would you like to explore ways of planning and designing the learning to save time, engage your students and be more effective? Would you like to reflect on a range of varied case studies and discuss them with other distance learning designers and tutors? There will also be chance to explore VLEs, social media tools, mobile technologies and test them out. This one-day workshop will include 3 sessions:
- Introduction to Online Distance Learning – models and issues
- Distance Learning case studies – a variety to explore, compare and review
- Tools for Distance Learning – delivery, communication, assessment and collaboration tools
Each session will be delivered with a combination of live web-conferences, forum discussions, group tasks and experimentation.
This workshop is aimed at practitioners new to, or with limited experience of delivering distance learning online. There will be an e-buddy system and plenty of support over the day. The facilitators are experienced designers and deliverers of distance learning.
If you would like to book a place, please email Gill Marino ldiadmin@staffs.ac.uk. The fee is £50 (free places available for staff and SURF associates)
