Guest Lecture to Marketing Students

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Earlier today I presented a lecture to Marketing undergraduate students in the Business School. It is the first time I have presented in the new Business School building and I was impressed with the facilities and layout of the room.

The presentation/lecture was about Blogging. So I gave a brief overview of the history and asked the students to perform a couple of tasks during the hour. I feel that it went ok. The only thing that didn’t work was when I tried to upload a blog post via my phone app. I think it was struggling to connect to the wi-fi. It worked fine an hour earlier on the main campus but not in Barrack Road.

It made a pleasant change to present to students. It made me realise amongst other things how far removed I am from them now in terms of age although at times I think I am on their level. Mentioning Friends Reunited got a laugh/perplexed reaction.

My Twitter account has been hacked

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Hi folks,

My twitter account – ashleyhwright has been hacked and someone is sending a message to my followers along the lines of….

I saw a really bad blog about you….{spam link}

Apologies if any of you have received one. I have reported it to Twitter and they will be in touch with me directly in the next 48 hours, or longer. Not much else I can do about it at the moment.

Blackboard Course Sites

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Blackboard Course SitesI have just signed up to experiment with the Blackboard (Bb) Course Sites feature. It allows you to create your own online course using Blackboard.
It offers a range of styles and technical features which will be of interest to those that are regular users of Bb. I like the broad range of CSS you can choose from, far more than are offered in the production systems offered in Learn and Organization. Will this be avialable in 9.1 later this year? I shall be having a look at this in depth this coming month.

One year Today since I started……..

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…..running or training for a run, properly.

By that I mean I recorded my running, bought some proper training shoes and stuck to a training schedule (in the main).

Back then I was 14 stone in weight and 41 inches circumference arounfd the belly button. I am now 13 St 5lb and 38″ circ. Apart from that my general health and fitness feels great. Rock ‘n’ roll I shall celebrate with a run this evening.

Ran 4.4  miles in about 10’06/mile. Felt good to be running again after a brief rest.

Here are a few clips and images from my running activities in the last 12 months.

Flickr Images from Edinburgh Marathon 2011

2010 in review

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The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

Healthy blog!

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads This blog is doing awesome!.

Crunchy numbers

Featured image

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 2,300 times in 2010. That’s about 6 full 747s.

 

In 2010, there were 7 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 43 posts. There were 23 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 13mb. That’s about 2 pictures per month.

The busiest day of the year was January 5th with 90 views. The most popular post that day was Durham Blackboard Users’ Conference .

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were twitter.com, facebook.com, pupillageandhowtogetit.wordpress.com, regdafishthinktank.com, and justgiving.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for ashley wright, ashley wright facebook, prezi accessibility, “ashley wright”, and font layout.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

1

Durham Blackboard Users’ Conference January 2009
1 comment

2

Kielder Marathon – Go on :-) comment May 2010
5 comments

3

Blackboard Teaching and Learning Conference 2010, Swansea, Wales April 2010

4

About me May 2008

5

Prezi – A different way of presenting May 2009

XPERT – (Xerte Public E-learning ReposiTory)

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XPERT – project is a JISC funded rapid innovation project (summer 2009) to explore the potential of delivering and supporting a distributed repository of e-learning resources.

It has a very useful search facility that allows you to attribute resources to the original creator. A great resource for finding and using images and video without fear of copyright infringement.

You can see what XPERT is about and why it is useful by watching this video clip:

ALT-C 2010 Reflections

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Me @ ALT-c 2010

Socialising at the ALT-C Gala Dinner

My main thoughts about the 3 days last week are:

  • Open Educational Resources (OERs) are gaining in prominence and importance
  • Use of smart phones/mobile devices in teaching and learning will increase dramatically after xmas 2010
  • Lecture Captue is pushing forward in HE sector but Copyright still unresolved
  • Pressures politically for all HEIs to use learning technology more effectively, and/or start using it
  • Lectures – Is it the most useful and efficient method for reaching large student cohorts? In some instances, yes it is.

Blackboard Teaching and Learning Conference 2010, Swansea, Wales

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Swansea Marina

Swansea Marina as viewed from the Maritime Museum

The notes listed below are some of my own thoughts regarding the conference. Comments from visitors welcomed as always:
http://www.bbworld.com/2010/TeachingAndLearning/content.asp?id=1621

Detailed Programme: http://bb.blackboard.com/Swansea2010Schedule/

Day 1

Conference Keynote – Ray Henderson

  • At Bb sales conference in January the overwhelming message that they received was regarding the Durham Conference and the issues clients had who had migrated to 9.0 in the summer. This cannot happen again…
  • Tripled the resource involved with handling/resolving case issues (don’t know the absolute numbers)
  • An approach of consulting, receiving feedback and suggestions from clients was very much stressed by Ray. As an indicator of this Continue reading →

Durham Bb Users’ Conference – Thoughts

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Durham Cathedral as viewed from Durham Castle 05.01.10

Durham Cathedral as viewed from Durham Castle 05.01.10

Hello all.

What a couple of snowy days this turned out to be! Although weather apart, I thought this was very well attended, even up to the very last session on the second day.

I find that of all the conferences, seminars or symposiums I have attended in the last few years this is without doubt the most useful and relevant to me in terms of my job role and day to day activities. The presenters are of a high standard and knowledgeable about what they do – which helps greatly as most of them are practitioners.

The main pointers I have gleened are:

  • Single sign on for multiple systems (external especially) is still a big issue
  • Institutional VLE regarded as the core tool and other tools/services added as required
  • If Blackboard make a mess of the release of 9.1 they are in big trouble with HEIs in the UK
  • Start promoting Bb 9 to staff asap
  • Students are not necessarily web 2.0 or more specifically web savvy/literate
  • Students are still students and we some times miss this issue in the web hyperbole

Many thanks to Malcolm Murray, the LT staff and Durham University for hosting a well run and professional event.