CLIPP Board

Digital Literacies

I recently attended my first JISC Learning and Teaching Practice Experts Group [EPED], which was its 20th meeting.

This group meets regularly to help steer and inform (and be informed)  the JISC e-elearning programmes.  I was invited along by Sarah Knight who heads up the curriculum delivery programme and was responsible for the very useful Design Studio infokit, which is one of the many excellent quality  infokits to help busy educators embed technologies.  Starting from a curriculum design perspective  has really got be the most effective approach?

This meeting covered updates on many JISC funded projects currently in the research phases. The day included very interesting presentations and project updates, including an overview of the TLRP Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) Programme, by Richard Noss, Director of the TLRP-TEL Programme, Institute of Education.

The TEL programme has two new publications out (to download) covering digital inclusion and digital literaces. On the subject of digital literacies and supporting learning in our modern times, Helen Beetham gave a very good presentation that is synthesising the outputs of many JISC projects on this topic of the learners expectations and digital literacy. Her slides (summarised) said.

As knowledge is increasingly accepted as being multi-modal, always potentially capable of digital capture and sharing, then the significance of ‘the digital’ as a separate space for living, learning and working may recede. … We are not rethinking some part or aspect of learning, we are rethinking all of learning in these new digital contexts.

The (Oxford Brookes) SLIDA and JISC LLiDA projects are investigating this support for our 21st C” learners.  Helen’s work with the LLiDA project is a meta analysis of learners and institutions views of digital literacies and the support (or not) thereof.  The LLiDA wiki site is choc’ full of interesting discussion papers. You could download any of these and and run in-house workshops, to garner views and opinions -to help integrate the use of technologies.  Especially this one : challengesv2.doc | Meeting the needs of digital learners. The “pinch points” at the end of this doc’ are especially pertinent to help understand how to effectively support learning in an increasingly digital age – please read on:-

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Selected Highlights from the JISC Digital Media Blog

The JISC Digital Media Blog is an invaluable resource of articles, advice and demonstrations of how digital media can enhance the learning and teaching experience. It is well worth subscribing to an RSS feed for this excellent blog. Here are some recent articles which caught my eye.

Free Online Image Editing Tools

Where to find Images, Video & Audio

Sign language interpreting and subtitling

Open Source is not the same as Free

Operating Your Camera Remotely

Using images for educational purposes

Digital distribution of teaching presentations

Resources for mobile learning

JISC’s regular newsletter – Intermedia – is now also available, hot off the press.

A few links for Online Teaching Aids

Top 20 Sites No Teacher Should Start The 2010-2011 Year Without

Top 25 Websites for Teaching and Learning

4 New Features That Make Google Docs Even Better

12500+ Search engines & Web directories

20 Best Photo Editing Software For Free Download

Top 10 Photo Fixing and Image Editing Tricks

100 Excellent Online Lectures for Educators

Wallwisher

Demo Wall

We (support services as Aston) just ran an introductory session on using a VLE. It went well, combining theory and practical hands on. In this session we tried a new approach at some Just in Time training needs analysis. You know the drill; you are delivering some training and are met with uncertain/mumbled responses to your constant checking of learning during the session. Are your learners merely being polite with their positive noises, affirming their understanding of the previous topic? How can we really know if that their objectives are being met? Why not try out wallwhisher.com in any training or indeed learning scenario. Wallwisher is a very simple to use virtual sticky note space. We set it up at the onset of the session to allow delegates to post up their expectations. Towards the end of the session we collated the responses and ran through their primary objectives, offering to recap certain aspects of the session, and offering further advice and support for those areas we could not cover adequately.

It really is very easy to set up and use. It took me 10 minutes to set up (logged into “my walls” using my Gmail login), and most delegates had a go. Use it for training or in class to check learning, and hand over locus of control to the learner. Give it a go, it could enhance your current methods?

Love your library? Love this video!

You may be familiar with this year’s NFL Superbowl standout advert for Old Spice. It’ a masterpiece of one-take filming that is funny, inventive and of course, memorable. It’s also this year’s advertising phenomenon, having captured the American public’s imagination and turned its star – Isaiah Mustafa – into hot property.

Here is a follow-up ad. And another. And another. Here’s how they made it. And here’s some responses to viewer‘s questions. And a remix.

Anyway, the best video reply I’ve see so far is for studying at the Howard B Lee Library at Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah. It is wonderful, simply wonderful. And a great example of how universities can market themselves and communicate their messages, internally and externally, effectively and excitingly.

ALT/eLN free webinar – How to run a virtual classroom session

At the beginning of next month ALT will be running a free online seminar about effective practice when running a virtual classroom session. The session takes place at 12:00pm on Monday 2nd August. We have just extended our Eluminate license and plan to have Blackboard integration running for the start the start of the next academic year, so if you plan to use it I would suggest that this workshop would give you a good grounding in how to run a successful session.

More and more education and training providers are making use of web conferencing as a way to bring learners together for events that would have previously been conducted in the classroom, or which may not previously have been practical or economic on a face-to-face basis. Effective virtual classroom sessions go way beyond webinars or online meetings to involve all participants as much as or more than the physical classroom, through the use of a wide variety of multimedia and interactive techniques. In this session, Clive and Barry will share the benefit of their extensive experience with virtual classrooms to help you both assess the potential for the greater use of live online learning in your organisation and ensure that the sessions that you do deliver are as least as successful as your face-to-face events.

For more information about the session including bio’s of the main speakers, check out the “How to run a virtual classroom session” workshop page on the ALT web site.

The workshop will be run using Eluminate. If you have never taken part in an Eluminate session or aren’t confident that you can “get it to work” I would suggest taking a look at the Eluminate computer checker, well in advance of the session so that you don’t miss any of the workshop on the day.

Techno-stress

I’m involved with the ‘Wellbeing Group’ as part of Aston First and have offered to develop a web page about ‘Techno- stress’ so here is my first stab at the idea.

The top things that cause techno-stress at Aston:

Email – actually this is probably the top ten ideas on its own, and I’ve already blogged recently about email management and ‘Search folders’ has to be a top tip. I’m not sure how the new student email system works in this respect? I try and keep my inbox to about 25 items, either unread or pending. I add a date(eg. 14/7:  to the start of the subject line for pending items so I can sort chronologically if required. I file or delete any other messages that have been read. I have about 20 folders for different topics, and sub-folders for some of them, much like I do for files on my PC or network Home drive, and printed only matter in the filing cabinet.

Still on the topic of email, my bright idea was to use different email signatures for the different roles that I communicate about, for instance AV-SUPPORT, External to Aston, AstBUG etc. but importantly giving enough information for recipients to reply at their own convenience like phone extension and other help desk details.

Web – again I’ve already blogged about how I use RSS to deal with internet information overload, but my bright idea was to set my browser home page to our Blog CLIPP Board, as the page that relates to communicating what is going on in the area that I work!

Archive – how many times have you lost that vital piece of information? I try and recycle most printed matter and always if I have an electronic version. Emails and attachments are relatively easy to find, especially if you use Search folders mentioned above – and it isn’t a duplicate or earlier version of the same document because I’ve deleted most of them once the topic or thread is actioned. MS Exchange can archive older messages automatically. These are very much personal things though, I usually tidy and wash up as I’m cooking too!!!

Teaching – My Powerpoint {insert software/hardware of choice} doesn’t work! All lesson plans should include items on ‘Resources’ and we are responsible to check them or try them out first. Anyone can book a room via email or phone and there is a Guild bookings desk in ASAP on Wed. 2-5pm. AV-Support can also help, and there are direct dial buttons from every pool room phone to: Emergency, Security, AV-Support; Room Bookings, Estates, ISA; and hopefully the Porters too soon. There is also a list of pool room resources and instructions on the Staff Intranet and in Celcat timetable system.

TimeOut – last but by no means least, take regular breaks. You can still do useful work while having a coffee and networking with colleagues, and because you are relaxed it is often more productive. You will discover someone else has the same idea, interest and solved the latest problem for you. Also, watch out for more bite sized sessions.

Panopto Recorder On A Stick + FAQ Update

So although Panopto is a great system, one of the previously unavoidable issue we have had with using it was that if we had visiting speakers giving lectures/presentations that we wished to record and they wanted to use their own laptop, we would have to install the recorder on their computer. I feel their is a few issues with doing this.

1. I think its a little intrusive to have to insist on installing a piece of software on someone from outside our institutions laptop.
2. Although its very quick to install, it still takes time that you often don’t have.
3. We have to remember to un-install the software so as not to breach any licensing conditions and maintain the spirit of the agreement, which again can take time, often when a guest speaker just wants to get going.

My colleague Adam read on the support site that we could create some “stand alone recorders” that could be simply plugged into a laptop and the executable run from the stick. All you do to create such a thing is to copy the Panopto Recorder folder (“C:\Program Files\Panopto\Panopto Recorder“), from an installed version of the recorder and paste it to the memory stick.

Over the past couple of weeks we have been trying this out, and with a good deal of success. It hasn’t been 100% successful but every time it works its less hassle than installing the software. The one main thing to remember is that the target computer has to have to have .NET 3.5 sp1 installed. I think there may be some others quirks though, that we haven’t identified yet, as one of the machines it did not work on categorically had the correct version of .NET. This has only happened once though and so I would highly recommend having a go at making some stand alone recorders.

On a different tack but still Panopto related I have updated the Aston Panopto FAQ today in relation to an number of issues, see point 7 and 12.

Bite size sessions

coffee | cupcake by weglet on flickr

Today we ran a very successful mini suite of bite sized drop in sessions in our collaborative learning suite.  Each of the group booths had a screen displaying the range of technologies that staff here at Aston can utilise to enhance their lectures/tutorials/distance learning courses.

The range of technologies on offer covers the whole gamut of tools from voting systems to lecture capture.  We (CLIPP) plus others were on hand to help explain the use of these tools to anyone who dropped in.  Coffee and muffins helped those attending to digest our tasty nuggets of information. And of course those relaxed informal conversations often lead onto proffering other bits of advice about what the lecturers and support staff could consider for other active learning approaches.

See the list of tools on offer here, together with some very interesting supporting case studies.  The feedback was so positive, that we’ll be replicating this model in the future, and perhaps move it around campus.