Following the (freezing cold) Easter break, we're back with news of guaranteed sun every day from now until the end of August. This may not be quite accurate, but we do have reliable news of the next e-Olympics event at Inverness , and a host of information about online resources, conferences, ICT developments and funding and training opportunities.
As always, we welcome feedback on NewsFeed (or any RSC service you may have used) through the RSC website.
The Olympic torch will be heading up the A9 in time for the 21st and 22nd of April, when Inverness becomes the latest college to host the e-Olympics training event. This gives lecturing staff the chance to plan and produce online learning materials over two intensive days of activity, with support from RSC staff and experts in accessibility and interactivity. This will be the fourth e-Olympics event to be held since the flame was first lit in September last year. Details of all of the e-Olympics events (past and future) together with examples of the kinds of material which have been created, are available on the e-Olympics website.
The National Learning Network team has been conducting a consultation exercise over the last few months on the best way to deliver NLN materials to colleges. The present download authorization system has been in use since the Network's inception, but there have been frequent calls for improvements to make access to the materials simpler, and the consultation asked colleges to respond to a list of more than a dozen possible options for change.
The closing date for the consultation has passed and the votes have been counted and the results of the exercise are now available online.
Digital images are a quick and effective means of adding depth to presentations and online learning, but their use is often hamstrung by copyright issues. JISC-subsidised image collections such as SCRAN or Education Image Gallery are one way round this problem, since the material which they contain has already been copyright-cleared. There are a number of other image sources which are available on the Web, and Robin Good's ‘Master NewMedia' site has an interesting article which offers an interesting overview of the range of such image collections (some of which may still need copyright checking, though, so be careful!). Visit MasterNewMedia for more details.
The Newspaper Marketing Agency is an umbrella organisation representing most of the national tabloid and broadsheet newspapers. It acts as the marketing outlet for the sale of press advertising space, and contains a mass of information on newspaper circulation and readership, as well as case studies of how clients have used newspaper advertising space effectively, all of which is ideal for students of advertising, journalism and marketing. In addition, it offers a range of downloadable front pages from both current and 'classic' issues of most of the major newspapers, which would be useful for communication and media studies teaching, and for design or publishing studies.
Front page downloads are available from NMA's website.
This is the title of a 450-page textbook which has been freely released under a Creative Commons license by Athabasca University ( Canada 's Open University). The book has four main sections devoted to different aspects of Online Education : Theory, Infrastructure & Support, Design & Development and Delivery, Quality Control and Student Support. There's a mass of interesting and useful material contained within these sections, covering topics such as copyright, teaching practice and library support. The book is available as a PDF download from the Athabasca website.
Digitised Ordnance Survey mapping data has been available online to the Fe and HE community through EDINA for some time now, and the resource has now been extended by the addition of historic mapping data covering the period 1843-1995. This is intended to be an integral part of the Digimap suite of mapping services which enables users to view maps through their web browser, save them for printing and download the historic map data for use in geographical information systems.
Further information on the Digimap Historic Map Service is available on the EDINA website.
Keynote is one of the main providers of market assessment reports, widely used for secondary research in tourism, leisure, business and marketing courses. Eduserv (the JISC-supported education charity which hosts the ATHENS service) have negotiated an agreement to provide Keynote material, in both paper and online formats, at a reduced price on behalf of the FE community.
Go to the Eduserve site to find out more about content and pricing.
A previous edition of NewsFeed (15.02.05) featured Engineering Signs and Science Signs, two online glossaries of technical sign language terms for deaf students of science, engineering and the built environment. These display nearly 2,500 technical terms as short video clips using either QuickTime or Windows Media Player and are available from engineeringsigns.ac.uk and sciencesigns.ac.uk.
The company behind these two resources, Direct Learn, has now been commissioned by the Department for Education and Skills to produce a similar guide for the ICT curriculum area. This is intended to support Deaf students and their interpreters studying ICT and computing in FE, but will also be of general interest to any student who needs additional support with specialist terminology or who is studying sign language. To help them develop the resource, Direct Learn are looking for source material in image, video or text format illustrating or explaining ICT terms which they can use or adapt for the glossary. Direct Learn will acknowledge source and copyright in each case whenever material is used. If you feel you may be able to help with the development of this new resource, contact Geoff Minshull of Direct Learn directly.
You could save yourself £100 a year, and your College could save £5,000, simply by turning off computer monitors, according to a new study from computing magazine PC Pro. Even though modern TVs and monitors are far more efficient than in the past, many users have fallen into lazy habits and simply walk away from their machines at the end of the day, leaving the screen saver running – and continuing to draw power. Sounds familiar? Read the PC Magaizine article and a BBC article to see how bad the problem is, and what you can do about it.
Until now, Google has been the search engine of choice for most users, not only because of the reliability of its search results but also because of the steady stream of add-ons which Google has been producing for the product. These have included Desktop Search (for web pages and files) Picasa (for images) and Google Scholar (for research papers and textbooks) all of which have been covered in past editions of NewsFeed. While this has been happening, Microsoft's MSN Search has been getting attention as the 'next big thing' and former first-choice search engines such as Alta Vista and Yahoo (now effectively the same company) have faded into the background. But not any more.
Quietly, Yahoo has been developing a range of services which are either equivalents to Google's add-ons, or completely new services which Google doesn't offer at all, such as RSS feeds, or Creative Commons searches. Catch up with what's been happening in the latest round of the Search Wars.
The JISC has offered colleges the chance to indicate their interest in a major new online resource, the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) Virtual Library. This contains every peer-reviewed technical paper published by the Institution between 1836 and 2000 and has more than 18,000 illustrated papers, running to over 200,000 pages and includes reports, drawings and photographs by almost every leading British or British-trained civil engineer, as well as a range of papers on subjects related to civil engineering and construction. With much of the world's Victorian and pre-war infrastructure coming to the end of its useful life, the archive provides an invaluable resource for civil engineering academics and students, and for practitioners planning refurbishment or replacement projects.
Arrange for a free trial of the resource and see the full consultation document.
Staff in Further Education are often so busy with their own work that they rarely get the time to stand back from what they're doing and see it in a wider perspective. Conferences, seminars and user groups take time (and money) to attend, but they are an effective means of updating knowledge and skills, and a wonderful means of networking with colleagues in other institutions. So go on - get out and about a bit more!
The Eduserv Foundation (hosts of the ATHENS authentication system) has organized a symposium on collaborative e-learning which is being held in London on Wednesday 27 April. The event is structured around a series of seminars, looking at topical issues such as repositories, e-learning effectiveness, business models for content development and intellectual property rights. Get further details of the symposium, including the registration procedure.
The Colleges Open Learning Exchange Group (COLEG) Conference for 2005 is being held at Stirling Management Centre on Friday 22nd April with contributions from SFEU, SQA and the two Scottish RSCs. The theme for this tenth annual conference is ‘The College of 2015', and includes a keynote presentation from Professor Mark Stiles of Staffordshire University as well as a range of workshop sessions and seminars. For full details of the conference programme, and how to register, go to .
The third meeting of the Celtic WebCT User Group is being held on Friday 22nd April from 13.00 to 16.30 at the University of Stirling . All staff involved in supporting WebCT in Scotland , Northern Ireland and Wales are invited to attend. Full details of the meeting are available on the User Group website.
The JISC has issued two linked ITTs for the development of image collections. The first aims to encourage the development of an FE and HE community-based image archive, consisting of a network of resources which have been created or discovered by FE and HE practitioners for learning and research purposes. Details of this are available from the JISC website.
The second concerns the development of a collection of clinical medical images for educational use. This is a sensitive and complex area, where the need for consistency and rigour in documenting the rights to use material is critical. Details for this invitation. The closing date for applications for both invitations is 3rd May, and the total funding available is £70,000.
JISC regularly announces opportunities to put forward proposals for funding in designated project areas. Details of current opportunities are available on the JISC website.
eLearning materials can be expensive to create and maintain. Colleges need to make sure that materials made available online are copyright compliant to avoid the costs, effort and disruption involved with taking them down (not mentioning the potential costs of settling a copyright action nor the related bad publicity). Perhaps even greater in cost is the failure to make good use of other people's copyright materials through ignorance of the law, and the expense of reinventing the wheel.
Are you responsible for records management in your institution and need a brief introduction to it all? Has this become your role as a result of the Data Protection and Freedom of Information legislation? An Introduction to Records Management is a one-day event delivered by JISC infoNet, the Centre of Expertise in the Planning and Implementation of Information Systems The day is aimed at anyone who has been given responsibility for managing records in Further Education Colleges or Higher Education Institutions. No prior knowledge is assumed, although the event is suitable for staff with some experience as well as beginners.
If you are designing or implementing an MLE, reviewing your Records Management in light of the Freedom of Information Act selecting and implementing new information systems or simply interested in how you can provide a better service to students – then you're involved in a process review! These and many other activities can be handled more easily and effectively when a thorough analysis of the related processes is undertaken. This is a one-day workshop offered by the RSC and delivered by JISC infoNet, the Centre of Expertise in the Planning and Implementation of Information Systems.
All the above workshops are supported by the eMerge programme, and are offered to participants at the subsidized rate of £50. Full details of each of these, together with an application to request a place, are available at the RSC Scotland North and East website.
These courses and others are listed on the Scotfeict website which also lists other staff development opportunities for FE staff within Scotland.
Nationwide training opportunities are available on the NLN events database.
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