Durham Blackboard Users’ Conference

Posted on 15 January, 2009 by Ashley Wright

I attended the ninth annual Durham Blackboard Users’ Conference on January 8th and 9th. This was my second attendance at the conference, however, this time I presented at one of the sessions along with my colleague.

We presented on a project I am involved with at work which is about lecture and event capture implementation and use (ReCap). From the feedback we’ve received it was a successful presentation, with several questions fielded afterwards. I think in the near future we will be welcoming several visits from other HEIs and FEs about our service.

Full details about the conference can be found here.

Here is the PowerPoint presentation of our talk.

Durham Bb Conf 2009 Lecture and Event Capture

View more presentations or upload your own. (tags: university newcastle)

The facilities offered by Durham University for the event were first class. The Calman Learning Centre was a great venue, well equiped, spacious and a great vista of Durham City with the Cathedral being the focal point. I look forward to the next one in January 2010.

Hood 2.0, It’s a web 2.0 world

Posted on 9 September, 2008 by Ashley Wright

http://seesmic.com….How could it be used in your institution for learning and teaching?

Demonstration materials: Practical exercises, e.g. medical techniques, fine art techniques. demoing how to do things…?
Question and answer session both synchronous or asynchronous. Explain scenarios. Online community to create good practice…..not just in 1 institution but globally.
Study diary – e.g in medicine present their elective…i.e. report back on their work for the last 6 months.
Students generating own content and post via mobile device(s). Could be social or in response to tasks set by lecturer….
Portfolio of evidence: e.g. Performing an archaeological dig, medical practice, teaching practice on PgCE.

http://www.flickr.com/

At Newcastle Uni within medical sciences faculty, undergrads training to be doctors while on electives are encouraged to take photos covering 4 topic area (Spirit of the elective being 1). They then upload to a site for voting and comments, a prize is given in each category to the student body. The wining photos are also printed and displayed for a time. Currently done on-line in a VLE but could easily use Flickr to broaden the appeal beyond Newcastle Medical Students.
Similar to previous comments: could be used to demo prototypes, e,g, fashion products, mechanical products…..this could also be made private or invitation only on Flickr.
Publicity and marketing tool for the University. Show the world that there is more to Newcastle than a night out in the Bigg market
Publicise and record events that have happened or are about to? May need some moderation?
Create a community around a photo set…e.g. photos of a conference, symposium, seminar
Create a web quest using images of the locale or campus. Might be useful for “freshers” or new members of staff to the Uni?
Field trips: Upload content via phone/device. Obtain quick feedback and use geo code. Orienteering, team building. take pictures at check points.

http://www.jaiku.com/

Practice summarising skills…140 characters only, useful skill to have for technical writing, applications, interviews

http://qik.com/

Quick and easy way to publish video on the web at low cost

Implication and uses:

Live events/lectures. Cheap alternative to web-casting?
At Newcastle we use a lecture/event capture package by echo360 (Lectopia). Branded as ReCap (www.ncl.ac.uk/recap) Poster stand 13….see you there!

http://www.gabcast.com/

First ALT-C Next Week

Posted on 5 September, 2008 by Ashley Wright

My first ever attendance at the ALT-C, hosted at Leeds Uni (my home town). Looking at the programme of activities it is crammed with lots and lots of events I’d like to see, which would prove impossible within the timescales! However to help with this, 3 of my colleagues are attending so we should be able to spread out and cover the main areas. I’m looking forward to hearing George Siemens talk and also David Cavallo (one Laptop per child).

I’ll post my thoughts on the conference as soon as I can after the event.

101 Web 2.0 Teaching Tools

Posted on 28 July, 2008 by Ashley Wright

Thinkfree reflected logo

Here is the full link to this resource 101 tools.

Here are a few of them to browse:

Awasu - A state-of-the-art feed reader that comes loaded with features for both casual personal use and professional, high-powered information management
MyProjectpages.com – Built by teachers for teachers, use myprojectpages.com to create structured online inquiry-based learning activities for the courses you teach that enable your students to engage in meaningful learning experiences while online.
Slideshare – Share presentations online, either openly or with a group. Add other features to them such as audio and join community groups. Discover and promote your interests professionally
ThinkFree – Online FREE office package. Allows you to create docs, spreadsheets, presentation and web documents. No need to download any software…comes with 1 GB storage

Free Courses Online at the Top 10 Universities

Posted on 14 July, 2008 by Ashley Wright

Top 10 Universities With Free Courses Online

#1 UC Berkeley

Berkeley offers podcasts and webcasts of professors lecturing. Each course has an RSS feed so you can track each new lecture. For printable assignments and notes you can check the professors homepage, which is usually given in the first lecture or google their name. Even though the notes, homework and tests are not directly printed in the berkeley website, as they are in MIT and other courseware sites, it’s not a problem to find them.

Visit: Berkeley Webcasts
Visit: Berkeley RSS Feeds
Visit: UC Berkeley on Google Video

#2 MIT Open Courseware

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is ranked 7th nationally in the United States. Many of the courses do not have video lectures. Instead, they have notes in PDF format along with tests and homework.

Visit: MIT OpenCourseware Course Listings
Visit: MIT OpenCourseware Online Textbooks
Visit: MIT Courses With Video Lectures
Visit: MITWorld Public Videos
Visit: MIT Pocast: ZigZag

Getting the Most Out of MIT OCW

Since MIT OCW is heavily based on opening PDF files it’s recommended you download FoxIt Reader, a freeware PDF reader that’s many times faster than the bulky and slow adobe acrobat. Also Ghost Script in combination with GSView is able to read pdfs, and post scripts files.

Download: Foxit Reader

#3 Carnegie Mellon’s Open Learning Initiative

Carnegie Mellon is a private research university ranked equal with Berkeley. Though registration is not required they have a registered user mode that allows you to keep track of your scores and progress. The courses are basically ebooks in a frame-based easy to use navigation system with an occasional powerful interactive Java Applet for practice and testing.

Visit: Carnegie Mellon OLI

#4 Utah State OpenCourseWare

Utah State has a very familiar structure as MIT OCW with large available course listing.

Visit: Utah State Course Listings

#5 Tufts OpenCourseWare

Tufts University in Massachusetts has a very familiar structure as MIT OCW with large available course listing.

Visit: Utah State Course Listings

#6 Openlearn

Open University’s OpenLearn supported by The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Contains many online course and a different style content management system, powered by Moodle.

Visit: OpenLearn

#7 JHSPH OCW

Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health offers health based lecture notes and assigments. You’ll find the JHSPH OCW website uses the same familiar navigation structure as MIT OCW.

Visit: JHSPH OCW Course Listings
Visit: Johns Hopkins University Podcasts

#8 Connexions

CNX.org is an open-content library of course materials developed by Rice University. It has a huge database of content which is very useful for people who know what they’re looking for. It does have ebook style higher level courses courses you can choose from.

Visit: Connexions
Visit: Connexions Course List

#9 Sophia

Initiative is led by Foothill College which contains 8 free courses.

Visit: Sofia

#10 University of Washington Computer Science & Engineering

Contains posted lectures and classnotes. Some of the courses even contain video lectures.

http://www.cs.washington.edu/education/course-webs.html

Notre Dame OpenCourseware

http://ocw.nd.edu/

Wikiversity

From the creators of wikipedia, Wikiversity describes itself as being a community seeking to create and use learning materials and activities. Wikibooks is also incredibly powerful already containing everything from a detailed guide to learning French to Organic Chemistry and Nanotechnology.

Visit: Wikiversity
Visit: Wikibooks

Archive.org Education

Visit: Archive.org Education

Honorable Mention: Peoi.org

Visit: Peoi.org

Explanations in Plain English

Posted on 8 July, 2008 by Ashley Wright

I’m not talking about the latest explanation from my energy provider, explaining why costs are increasing or my bank explaining funding charges – but a site called Common Craft. They produce, among other things, easy to follow and understand video clips about commonly used technologies and products.

I like them for the main reason that they are clear and “get to the point”. Here is an example of the wiki one they have produced and posted on YouTube.

Tangible Benefits of E-Learning in HE

Posted on 17 June, 2008 by Ashley Wright

JISC InfoNet Tangible e-Learning A series of case studies have been compiled by JISC infoNet, The Higher Education Academy and the Association for Learning Technology (ALT). The web page explaining the project, the publication and the list of case studies can be browsed to at this link .

Having read the publication it is interesting to see the wide range of tools being used across subjects and across the sector. Here are a few, to whet your appetite; e-assessment at Leeds Met (Applied Tech & Finance) and Nottingham Uni (Medical School), video-conferencing at Swansea Uni and e-portfolio system at Wolverhampton Uni (Nursing and midwifery).

Due to the nature of publications the case studies are about two to three years old. I think this document is intrinsically useful but also on a personal level gets you thinking creatively about how you would like to teach some topics yourself.

QA/QE in E-Learning

Posted on 11 June, 2008 by Ashley Wright

Qulity Street sweets On Monday I attended a one-day Workshop on “Effective application of quality assurance & enhancement procedures to courses using e-learning” @ the University of Teesside. The event was attended by practitioners in e-learning from across the HEI sector. It was a useful day for me to discover how other institutions view QA and what e-Learning projects are being undertaken on the Pathfinder projects.

The IoE delivered the workshop in a professional and engaging way.

Thanks for this quote from Bob Hunter at Birmingham Uni which is originally attributed to Lewis Elton @ UCL. The difference between QA and QE:

“QA is about doing things better and QE is about doing better things.”

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Category Archives: e-Learning