We’re almost on the starting blocks for the Accessibility e-Olympics, which get under way at the National e-Science Institute in Edinburgh on the 21st and 22nd March. Every college has a guaranteed place at the event, so if you haven’t claimed yours yet, get in touch with us via the web link below. There’s a strong visual theme in this issue of NewsFeed, with several interesting links to free online image gallery and image search resources. Both NLN and JISC are looking for feedback from you, and we have a mix of other topical items on accessibility and the online learning experience.
As always, we welcome feedback on NewsFeed (or any RSC service you may have used) through the RSC website.
Staff from all over Scotland will converge on Edinburgh’s National e-Science Institute on Monday and Tuesday next week to take part in the Accessibility e-Olympics event being organised by the two Scottish RSCs. The event is intended to take staff through the stages of creating an online learning object while considering what is involved in ensuring that the object is as accessible as possible to learners with differing needs. Representatives from the two specialist accessibility services, the BRITE centre and TechDis, will be in attendance throughout the event and there will be practical sessions looking at the range of assistive technologies which are available to help learners access material. The guest speaker for the event is the Scottish mountaineer, Jamie Andrew, who will be telling the inspirational story of his own battle to recover from the injuries he sustained while climbing Mont Blanc four years ago.
Delegate attendance at the event is subsidised under the eMerge project, which has allowed the RSCs to offer one guaranteed place to each Scottish college at the special rate of £50 for both days. To find out more about the event, or to register your interest, go to the special Accessibility e-Olympics website.
Funded by JISC, Education Media Online (EMO) is a collection of educational video material developed by the British Universities Film & Video Council in partnership with the Open University and is hosted by EDINA, the JISC-funded data centre at Edinburgh University. The wide range of material available is suitable for incorporation into many subject disciplines from history to geography, archaeology to healthcare, as well as the obvious areas of communication and media studies. EMO is available at http://www.emol.ac.uk/
The British Film Institute is offering free access to hundreds of hours of film and audio material through its ScreenOnline site. Registration is required to use the service, but once this has been completed, users have access to clips of material from some of the best of the UK film and TV industry’s output, arranged by themes (such as Newsreels, War. Comedy and Animation), by time period, by genre and by location. There are interactive guides for students, a glossary of terms in film studies and production, interactive timelines – and, of course, hundreds of film and TV clips to view. The site is ideal for media and communication studies students, but there’s also lots of material which could be useful for history, psychology and social studies too. Visit the ScreenOnline site where you can register for the service.
Blinkx.tv is an online video and audio search engine which allows users to search both US and British sites for sound and image material, which can be streamed direct to the desktop . Many search engine providers are developing this kind of tool - including Google with its beta Google Video - but Blinkx is the first to incorporate material from the UK, in the shape of BBC TV and radio broadcasts. It also offers some interesting features, such as the ability to understand conceptual as well as keyword searches (as Ask Jeeves attempts to do, for example) and a Smart Folder option, which automatically updates video content on themes previously identified by the user. Both of these are explained further on the Blinkx site.
Until now, people with erratic motor control of their hand movements (perhaps through Parkinson’s Disease or other conditions brought on by advancing age) have found it very difficult to handle the precise mouse movements necessary to operate even the simplest IT programs. The National Tremor Foundation has estimated that around three million people in the UK suffer from some kind of hand tremor, and many of these have effectively been excluded from the online world by their condition. Now an IBM researcher has adapted ‘steady-cam’ technology (developed for hand-held camcorders to filter out unwanted hand movements) to improve mouse control for tremor sufferers. The device will plug into a PC directly, and is adjustable depending on the severity of the condition. IBM have indicated their intention to work with a UK supplier to produce the device, with an expected price of around £70. For more information on this, see the BBC’s news story .
Web useability guru Jakob Neilsen has published the findings of recent user research amongst ‘low literacy’ (LL) web users which suggests that – although they can read text(and are thus not illiterate) – they process written material differently from higher literacy (HL) users. Where HL users scan text rapidly, picking up clues on navigation and selection of material efficiently. LL users tend to ‘plough’ through material, having to read word-for-word and often have problems scrolling pages down because they can’t scan easily to find where they broke off reading previously. Neilsen’s site goes on to give suggestions for improving web readability based on this research. Read a summary of his findings.
The digital divide in Britain isn’t just a matter of income or class, but also of age. Although 62% of British people have tried the internet, only 15% of Britons aged 65 or over have been online, and many older people feel intimidated by an unfamiliar world of technology and jargon – despite the many benefits that information technology can bring, from online shopping for those who are less mobile to international contact with friends and family overseas or finding out about family history through online genealogical searches. The second national Silver Surfers' Day is being held on the Friday of Adult Learners’ Week, 27 May 2005 and aims to tackle the problem by allowing older people (defined as anyone over 50) to find out how the Internet and email can enhance their lives. ProQuest Information & Learning are supporting Silver Surfers' Day in 2005 and are making their KnowUK database (used by many FE colleges) available to all Silver Surfers' Day Event holders for a free trial during May. You can learn more about hosting a Silver Surfer event by going to the Surfer website .
The NLN Materials Development Team have been gathering feedback for the last few months on improvements and amendments that practitioners feel are needed to Round One and Two learning materials. These were the first to be developed and are now being examined critically. A programme of amendments will then be drawn up and is due to go out to tender during the spring of 2005. Revised materials should be available in Spring 2006.
Feedback is complete in some areas, but the Development Team are still looking for contributions in the areas of Business, Management, Office Studies ,Construction and Property (Built Environment), Engineering, Environmental Protection, and Science and Mathematics (excluding Application of Number). The deadline for submissions is Monday 21 st March.
For more information on the project, a list of the learning objects, and to contribute feedback go to http://www.nln.ac.uk/materials
Two million pages of British newspaper history are being digitised for the benefit of the UK Further and Higher Education Community with the Newspapers Digitisation Project: British Newspapers 1800 - 1900. The project partners, JISC and the British Library, invite you to choose which titles you would like to see included by filling in an online questionnaire . By doing this you will automatically be entered into a prize draw. The winners will have an all expenses paid trip for two to the British Library Newspaper Collection, held in north London, while runners-up will be offered £25 book tokens. You need to hurry, though. The deadline for submissions is the 18 th of March – so get that copy filed!
Puzzled? This kind of acronym overkill is a common problem with discussions about e-learning, but the Adult Learning Inspectorate (ALI) have produced a tongue-in-cheek video - done in a similar vein to the Two Ronnies - which looks at how their inspectorate approach the assessment of Information and Learning Technologies in teaching practice. The opening section of the video pokes fun at the glib use of such e-learning jargon, but the remainder is a helpful and timely reminder of what the inspection process is really looking for in ‘embedded’ e-learning. The video is available, you can also download a copy of the ALI report.
Virtually an Online Experience is a staff development game that can be used to help the participants understand what it is like to be a novice online learner. The aim is to ensure that participants are aware of the confusion and problems that novice learners often experience when working online (using a VLE, for example), and to help them think about how they might minimise or avoid these problems. The game is presented as a PowerPoint presentation.
JISC has invited tenders from consultants and research teams with suitable expertise to carry out a research study into learner experiences of e-learning, under the Pedagogy strand of the JISC e-Learning Development Programme. The research study will investigate learners’ current experience of e-learning, and their needs and expectations for the future. It will involve original research with learners in UK further, higher, adult, community and work-based learning. It will not involve desk research or meta-analysis of existing studies, which are being carried out by a separate team of consultants.
Funding of up to £90,000 (including VAT and expenses) is available for this study and one or more proposals may be selected for funding. It is expected that the study will involve approximately 160–200 consultancy days. The work should begin as soon after the 1 May as possible and must be completed by 30 April 2006. The deadline for submission of proposals is 14 th April 2005. Full details of the call.
JISC regularly announces opportunities to put forward proposals for funding in designated project areas. Details of current opportunities are available on the JISC 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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