Welcome to the latest edition of Newsfeed, designed to bring you up-to-date information on current issues relating to the use of ICT for teaching and learning. A slim volume this time round as the wheels of FE grind slowly towards the end of term, but keep your eyes peeled and your email boxes open for the ETNA 2006 survey, coming your way in the near future. Watch this space……
Any feedback on NewsFeed? Anything you’d like to contribute? Please contact us through the RSC website.
Integration between systems is often cited as the key to providing the best possible IT service. But why is that? What does integration really mean and how can we achieve it? A new guide from OSS Watch addresses these questions, focussing on integration and service delivery. Although aimed at the system administrator, ‘Integration in service provision’ would be useful reading for all decision-makers in ICT, especially as technical detail is complemented by discussion of the wider context. The document examines what integration means and why it is important before introducing the fundamental components of integrating disparate IT services. Each component is then discussed in detail and a relevant case study from an academic context examined in each case. More info on The OSS Watch website.
JISC is currently planning a suite of projects that aim to support the provision of HE in FE. These projects will run as part of a wider programme of activity under the JISC e-Learning Programme that aims to explore practical approaches to supporting the sectors’ uptake of e-learning technology to support lifelong learning. Funds of up to £1 million (profiled over two years) are available within the HEFCE capital programme for these activities. More info on JISC infoNet.
The roadmap for the JISC Capital Programme outlines the calls for project proposals that are planned for release in April 2006, September 2006 and April 2007.
More info on the JISC website.
Major journals archive made available free to UK universities through a new JISC agreement with Oxford University Press bringing 135 years of scholarly resources. Online from 6th June 2006, the archive, totalling over 3 million pages from 300,000 journal articles, is being made available free of charge to the UK academic community in perpetuity. JISC and Oxford Journals, today announced an agreement which will see major collections of journal articles in the humanities, sciences, medicine, law and the social sciences made available to all higher education institutions, collections which include many of the leading titles in their fields over the last two centuries. The archive, if purchased individually, would cost in the region of £80,000 per institution.
Access the Oxford Journals Digital Archive
The NLN Materials Team are currently working with external suppliers to update a proportion of the Round 1 and Round 2 e-learning materials which were delivered to the FE sector over 2002 and 2003. The materials have undergone an in-depth review which has prompted the following changes: To meet revised technical and accessibility standards more in line with recent Rounds of NLN Materials Where possible, linear content will be disaggregated within the VLE navigation to make it easier to navigate and repurpose The content will be updated where statistics and facts are outdated and the curricula have changed.
The updated materials are due to be available to download to all sectors early July 2006. Vist fearl for more details.
The Resource Discovery Network (RDN) selects, catalogues and delivers high-quality Internet resources for FE and HE. New pages designed to be more user friendly for the Further Education Sector have been added.and can be viewed at: http://www.rdn.ac.uk/fe/
Improve your reading and writing skills with this new online game presented by Graham Norton - loads of other useful stuff too at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/raw/
" A great mix of FE & HE folk"
" Hearing others experience gives comfort that we are all at the same stage & facing the same problems"
Enthusiastic responses to the Learner Driver conference held at Heriot Watt University on the 31 st May to highlight the work being undertaken as part of the Scottish Funding Council's 'Transformation' projects. A flavour of the national – and international – perspectives presented can be gathered from the presentations which are now available on the conference website. www.learnerdriver.org.uk
Evaluate the next release of Microsoft Office products for testing and planning purposes with 2007 Microsoft Office system Beta 2. The beta release contains all the functionality of the regular release, but is not the final product.
The World Wide Web Conference is the global event to bring together the key influencers, decision makers, technologists, businesses and standards bodies shaping the future of the web. Podcasts, Slides, Posters and Wikis and an invitation to Banff for 2007 are all available from the conference website.
Connecting students and staff to the valuable resources subscribed to by UK educational institutions is essential to the sector. JISC has made this possible by funding the Athens service to provide usernames and passwords to users within UK education, putting us ahead of the rest of the world in providing a consistent and uniform access mechanism to a wide range of online content. To maintain that leading-edge status, JISC is developing the next generation access-management system based on 'Shibboleth' technology.
Institutions, publishers, service providers and other interested parties are now invited to attend the Federation Showcase on 18 July 2006 at One Great George Street in London. The event will showcase both national and international development work and outline the requirements and benefits of adopting federated access management.
For a more detailed programme and to register for the event please visit the JISC website.
This conference aims to address both technology and pedagogy, and is intended for anyone interested in embedding video and videoconferencing technologies within educational practice. DIVERSE is the leading conference on all aspects of video and videoconferencing in education - including the convergence of these technologies with online technologies, and the exploration of new possibilities such as telepresence learning, interactive television, virtual reality, computer games, and wireless and handheld access to moving images. Get the picture at the DIVERSE conference website.
This exciting two-day staff development event is aimed at librarians and staff involved in the organisation of learning resources within Scotland's Colleges. At the e-Olympics we'll lead you through the process of systematically planning and creating online learning sequences. This is now a tried and tested formula which has been enthusiastically received across the country.
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