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RSC NewsFeed – June 15th 2004
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Welcome
to the final Newsfeed for this academic session. As regular readers will be aware,
this miscellany of news and information on ILC and ILT events relevant to FE
and HE in Scotland appears fortnightly during term time, but over the summer –
or the ‘silly season’ as it’s often referred to by seasoned hacks – the flood
of news dries to a trickle while many readers have deserted their desktops for
more interesting locations. NewsFeed will therefore
appear at monthly intervals over the summer.
Look out for bumper issues on the 27th of
July and the 24th August and we’ll resume normal fortnightly
publication in the new session.
How do you like your NewsFeed
done? If you like it rare, medium, or you just want to say WELL DONE to the RSC
teams who produce it regularly for your delight and edification, please let us
have your feedback through our website at www.rsc-ne-scotland.ac.uk/rscne/contact.html.
We are keen to respond to any suggestions you may have about this news service.
Till we meet again . . . all the IT news that’s fit to follow follows…
---------------------------- CONTENTS ------------------------
1.
MIMAS Open Forum
2.
New Developments
in KnowUK
3.
Viewlet Builder
Workshop
4.
TONIC an Online Introductory
Course from NETSKILLS
5.
Funding
Opportunities from JISC
6.
All the News
that’s fit to Print
(1) 19th Century News is BBC News
(2) First Draft of History or Chip Wrapping? NLS Exhibition on Scotland’s
News
7.
Using Educational
Computer Games and Simulations for Post-16 Learning
8.
More Information on the BBC Creative Archive Initiative
9.
Training &
Events
--------------------------------- 1 -------------------------------
MIMAS Open
Forum
The MIMAS (Manchester
Information and Associated Services) Open Forum 2004 will be held in Manchester on Wednesday 30 June 2004 in Crawford
House at the University of Manchester. MIMAS is a
JISC-supported national data centre providing the UK FE, HE and research
communities with networked access to key data and information resources to
support teaching, learning and research across a wide range of disciplines.
The Open
Forum brings together users, teachers and support staff interested in online
information and learning resources and presents news of current and future
developments at MIMAS and in the academic information environment.
This free
event includes talks:
- Use of NLN materials in FE
- Census
2001
- e-Science
-
Repurposing data for teaching
- a JISC Collections Strategy update
and practical
sessions on
-
Socio-economic resources at MIMAS
- MIMAS
Bibliographic Services
- Using the Access Grid - with presentations
from the Resource Discovery Network.
The full programme
can be accessed at http://www.mimas.ac.uk/news/mof2004/
Also the
MIMAS Newsletter for June is now online at http://www.mimas.ac.uk/focus/04jun/
--------------------------------- 2 -------------------------------
New Developments
in KnowUK
Some new
developments to the popular KnowUK resource are designed to add even more
information and value to this treasure house of information on the United
Kingdom. New and updated content includes:
* British
Qualifications
* Civil
Service Biographies
* Debrett's
People of Today
* Scottish
Parliamentary Biographies
* European
Parliamentary Biographies
* Greater London Assembly
Biographies
* Northern
Ireland Assembly Biographies
* Welsh
Assembly Biographies
* Libraries
Directory
* ProQuest
Gazetteer
* Sheltered
Housing for Older People
* Care Homes
for Older People
* Which? Ways
to Buy, Sell and Move House
* Willings
Press Guide
KnowUK
became multi-lingual this month with the addition of a new page -
http://www.knowuk.co.uk/jsp/fml/cymru.jsp which lists all the local information
pages in Wales in Welsh. For
full information on KnowUK take a look at www.proquest.co.uk
--------------------------------- 3 -------------------------------
Viewlet
Builder Workshop
Viewlet Builder
is the leading authoring tool used to create audiovisual Flash movies (called Viewlets) that show how
software and systems work. Let’s say you want to demonstrate a particular
technique in PowerPoint. Start up Viewlet Builder, carry out the process
on-screen and as you do so Viewlet Builder records every keystroke and mouse
movement then
assembles these screenshots in a slide show. You can then add notes to the
individual slides explaining exactly what is happening at each stage of the
process. (see http://www.qarbon.com/products/viewletbuilder/index.html
for more information.)
RSC Scotland North &
East is holding a Viewlet Builder workshop on Monday 21st of June
and there are still a few places available. For full details of the event and a
booking form go to: http://www.rsc-ne-scotland.ac.uk/rscsupport/training.html
--------------------------------- 4-------------------------------
TONIC an online introductory course from NETSKILLS
TONIC is a course of
instruction on using the Internet produced by Netskills with support from the
JISC. TONIC is an easy-to-understand, structured overview of networking and the
Internet which offers step-by-step, practical guidance on a range of topics.
Use of the TONIC course is free, but you need to register in order that the
system can track your progress and achievements during sessions. The TONIC tutorial
is available here:
http://www.netskills.ac.uk/TonicNG/cgi/sesame?tng
--------------------------------- 5 -------------------------------
Funding Opportunities from JISC
June 2004
ICT Awareness & Training Programme for the Arts & Humanities Comunity in the UK
Deadline for proposals: 17 Jun 2004
Funding of up to £100,000 is available for the development of an ICT
awareness and training development programme targeted at the arts and
humanities community.
A National Online Resources Requirement Survey
Deadline for proposals: 18 Jun 2004
Proposals invited to undertake a National Online Resources Requirement
Survey of the UK Further and Higher Education communities.
July 2004
JISC Circular 4/04: Call for Projects in Supporting Institutional Digital
Preservation and Asset Management
Deadline for proposals: 21 Jul 2004
An invitation to further and higher education institutions to submit
funding proposals for projects in institutional digital preservation and asset
management, with a specific focus on strategies and procedures for long-term
digital preservation and asset management.
Further details about all these opportunities are available at www.jisc.ac.uk/index.cfm?name=funding
--------------------------------- 6 -------------------------------
All the News that’s Fit to Print
(1) 19th Century
news is BBC news
"Newspapers
represent our culture in a unique way," Sir Ron Cooke, JISC Chair, reports
in "19th Century news going online" a BBC website news
feature published on 11th June, 2004.
Sir
Ron was referring to a recently-announced JISC-funded
project, 'British newspapers 1800 - 1900'. The £2million project, in
partnership with the British Library, will
consult FE, HE and the newspaper industry itself on what to digitise
from a range of out-of-print collections, including not only news
items, but advertisements, editorials, features, and photographs.
JISC and the British
Library anticipate that amongst papers included will be The Morning
Chronicle (a reformist newspaper with a young Charles Dickens as a reporter
and W M Thackeray as art critic) and the Morning Post (which engaged writers
such as Samuel Coleridge and William Wordsworth).
(2) First Draft of History or Wrapping for Chips – READ ALL ABOUT IT! at the National Library of Scotland
Scots
have long been among the world's most avid readers of news. In fact, people in Scotland read more than twice
the column inches of their counterparts in England, and in total buy
nearly 2.5 million Scottish-produced newspapers every week.
A
broad sample of what has fed this appetite for news throughout the centuries is
on show in National Library of Scotland's free summer exhibition. The
exhibition was launched on 3 June by Iain Martin, editor of The Scotsman. READ
ALL ABOUT IT! tells the story of news in Scotland, featuring material
from the millions of newspapers in the Library's collections. Also charted is
the development of news production, from what's believed to be the first
newspaper published in Scotland, in 1641, through to
the online 24-hour coverage of the 21st century.
Visitors can log on to
the latest online news, and discover the wealth of nearly 400 years' worth of
popular street literature in the Library's new broadsides web feature, The Word on the Street. To
complement the exhibition, competitions, workshops and talks are among the events taking place
throughout the summer.
READ ALL ABOUT IT! – National
library of Scotland (5th June to 31st October).
For full details of this
and other summer attractions at the National Library go to: http://www.nls.uk/news/index.html
--------------------------------- 7 -------------------------------
Using Educational Computer Games and Simulations for Post-16 Learning
Dr Sara de
Freitas, a Research Fellow at the School of Computer Science and Information Systems at
Birkbeck, is currently undertaking a study of the use of educational games and
simulations in post-16 education and training. The research aims to find out
how widely used games and simulations are and to describe how learners are
using them. As part of the research an online survey has been
created aimed at post-16 learners who are using educational games and/or
simulations called “Using educational computer games and simulations for
post-16 learning”.
If you use
educational games and simulations in your teaching please direct students to
the survey which is located at: http://infopoll.net/live/surveys/s25337.htm. It should take less than five minutes to
complete. Whilst the survey is primarily aimed at students, tutors are also
invited and encouraged to fill in the form. The responses will be collated and
written up in a forthcoming Learning and Skills Research Centre report. The
survey will finish at the end of June and one lucky participant will receive a
music voucher worth £20. The research is due to be finished by March 2005.
--------------------------------- 8 -------------------------------
More Information on the BBC Creative Archive Initiative
The BBC has outlined the broader
scope of its Creative Archive initiative with the first meeting of a
consultative external panel including other broadcasters and public sector organisations,
including JISC. The BBC Creative Archive, first announced by former BBC
Director-General, Greg Dyke at the Edinburgh Television Festival in August
2003, launches in autumn 2004 and will allow people to
download clips of BBC factual programmes from bbc.co.uk for non-commercial use,
keep them on their PCs, manipulate and share them, so making the BBC's archives
more accessible to license fee payers.
Access to the BBC Creative Archive
will be based on the Creative Commons model already working in the United
States (www.creativecommons.org) which
proposes a middle way to rights management, rather than the extremes of the
pure public domain or the reservation of all rights. Using the internet, it
offers rights holders the opportunity to release audio visual content for
viewing, copying and sharing but with some rights reserved, such as commercial
exploitation rights. So, in the case of audio visual material, the public are
allowed increased access but the exploitation of the same material in the
commercial arena by rights holders is protected.
Other panel members involved on
the consultative panel include Channel 4; the British Film Institute; the
British Library; ITN; The National Archives; the Natural History Museum; the
Museums, Libraries & Archives Council; senior figures from the independent
production industry; BBC Worldwide and Stanford Law Professor Lawrence Lessig,
chair of the Creative Commons project.
Read the full press release at:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2004/05_may/26/creative_archive.shtml
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Training & Events
A full listing of all the workshops currently being run by both RSCs in Scotland is available at:
RSC Scotland North and
East
www.rsc-ne-scotland.ac.uk/rscsupport/training.html
RSC Scotland South and West
www.rsc-sw-scotland.ac.uk/events.htm
These courses and others are listed on the Scotfeict website at:
www.scotfeict.ac.uk/events
which also lists other staff development opportunities for FE staff within Scotland.
Nationwide training opportunities are available on the NLN events database at
www.nln.ac.uk/events
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