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RSC NewsFeed – October 19th
2004
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The new issue of Newsfeed sees the long-awaited release of Round
Three materials from the National Learning Network : there are over 200 new
learning object goodies for you to download and use! We’ve found a tool which
will let you create timelines for online learning quickly and easily, we have a
free trial of a major new teaching resource for hairdressing and we’ve got some
free searching resources from both Microsoft and Google. All this AND some
major new reports from The Scottish Executive, delivered straight to your
desktop courtesy of the two RSCs.
Did you like this Newsfeed? Please help us to help you
by offering feedback through our website at www.rsc-ne-scotland.ac.uk/rscne/contact.html.
---------------------------- CONTENTS ------------------------
- NLN release Round
Three materials
- Resources for
Online Learning
·
Online Timeline
Creation Tool
·
Free Hairdressing.com
Trial for Colleges
·
Using Digital Images in
Teaching : New Support Resources
·
Online Learning Design
Exemplars
·
Create Your Own Virtual
Walkabout
- Scottish Executive Reports on FE in Scotland
- Microsoft V Google
Round Two : New Desktop Search Tools Available
·
Lookout for Outlook …
·
But Check Out the New
Google Desktop Search Tool as well!
·
How Does Google Do It?
The Secret Revealed …
·
A Reminder : Look After
That Data Before Someone Else Does It For You!
- Text-to-Speech
Conversion : Is This the Future for Class Handouts?
- e-Olympics MP3
Prizewinner takes the podium
- Security Warnings
from Microsoft
- Celtic WebCT Users
Group
- JISC joins the
Digital Library Federation
- Open-Access
Publishing Gathers Speed
- JISC Funding
Opportunities
- Training and
Events from the RSCs this month
--------------------------------- 1 -------------------------------
NLN release Round Three materials
The
National Learning Network have just released more than 200 new learning objects
which are available to Colleges to download from their catalogue. These cover: Key skills, Maths, Basic skills, Office
administration, Geography, Psychology, Catering, Construction and Sociology.
Three
replacement Biology and Sports Science learning objects have also been
released, which have been amended as a result of feedback received. (Functional
issues with these objects have now been resolved and NLN advise colleges to
download these materials again to ensure they have the revised and fully
functioning versions).
Click
onto the NLN site at http://www.nln.ac.uk/materials/Common/displaynews.asp?id=433
to access the new materials.
Remember
that every College has one or more members of staff who are authorised to
download material for class use : the download procedure is described on the
NLN site at http://www.nln.ac.uk/materials/technical/register_download_materials.asp
If
you have problems with downloading or using any of the NLN objects, remember
that you can contact either of the two
RSC Curriculum Advisors for help and assistance :
Hugh
Dailly (RSC North & East at Telford
College) at Hugh.Dailly@ed-coll.ac.uk or on
0131 315 7701
Joan Walker (RSC South & West) at jwakl001@udcf.gla.ac.uk or on 0141 558 9001 Ext 2115
--------------------------------- 2 -------------------------------
Resources for Online Learning
Online Timeline Creation tool
Timelines
are a helpful and student-friendly way of showing important changes across a
host of disciplines. (Have a look at the new Sociology resources in the NLN catalogue to see some
examples). The University of British
Columbia’s
(UBC) Instructional Technology centre has a very useful little tool for
creating timelines which can be saved and used/reused as a learning object in
online environments. It’s easy to use and has options for creating vertical,
horizontal and 3-D timelines based around text, sounds and or words in various
combinations.
Click
on http://www.learningtools.arts.ubc.ca/timeline/
to go straight to the tool, and on the Learning Tools index page at http://www.learningtools.arts.ubc.ca/index.php
to see some of the other interesting open-source tools under development at
UBC.
Free
Hairdressing.com Trial for Colleges
Hairdressing.com is a new resource developed by JISC
in partnership with Jordan Burr hairdressing. The site is aimed at UK Further
Education colleges and has been designed with ease of use in mind. It caters
for a variety of learning styles through step-by-step guides, with a simple
navigation system and useful glossary section. This interactive site can cater
for unlimited numbers of concurrent users and enables teachers to support their
course preparation and their students' coursework and revision from any
location with a computer and Internet access. All content can be downloaded
using Adobe Acrobat so can be included in teachers' individual course
materials, course packs and student portfolios.
Free 60 day trials are
available to Further Education colleges by visiting http://www.jisc.ac.uk/index.cfm?name=form&formid=1303863625
Post-trial, the resource will be available at special rates
to UK Further Education colleges,
exclusively through a JISC licence.
Using Digital Images in Teaching : New Support Resources
The JISC-funded Technical
Advisory Service for Images (TASI) have just released ten advice
papers, part of a new section on 'Using Digital Images in Teaching Resources'.
These provide a succinct guide for anyone wishing to use images in their
teaching resources, and cover areas such as sourcing and capturing digital
images, and web delivery. The guides can
be downloaded in pdf format, each easily printed onto A4, from the TASI site at http://www.tasi.ac.uk/advice/using/using.html
Online Learning Design Exemplars
The concept of ‘learning
design’ is increasingly attracting attention . The Australian Universities
Teaching Committee have supported the development of a Learning Designs website
which illustrates the learning design development process. The site contains exemplars,
categorised by focus ( including concept/procedure developing, project/case,
and role-play), guides, such as on
how to develop mental models of non-visible physical phenomena and generic ILT tools,
such as an online self and peer assessment tool, which have been developed out
of the learning design process
The Learning Design site
is available at http://learningdesigns.uow.edu.au/
JISC have increasingly
been funding work in this developing area, through the IMS Learning Design
standard specification and the piloting of the Learning Activities Management
System (LAMS) prototype. You can read about the background to these
developments at http://www.cetis.ac.uk/content2/20031105152011
and about the LAMS project at http://www.lamsinternational.com/index.html
The JISC-funded report on
Learning Design specification can be downloaded from www.jisc.ac.uk/uploaded_documents/ACF83C.doc.
Create Your Own Virtual Walkabout
The Archaeology Data
Service have produced a simple introduction to creating virtual ‘walkabouts’,
intended for field studies students but with potential application to other
areas such as art & design. Their site contains examples of virtual
walkabouts already created, as well as a tutorial which will lead users through
the stages of creating a walkabout of their own from images taken in the
field. Viisit http://ads.ahds.ac.uk/learning/walkabout/
to begin your own walking tour
--------------------------------- 3 -------------------------------
Scottish Executive Reports on FE in Scotland
The FE Sector
The
Scottish Executive have issued their Annual Report on the Further Education
sector in Scotland:
Sections
include: key developments in FE, Extending FE to all, Quality and
modernisation, FE and the workplace, Funding for learners, FE in the wider
context. The Report is on the Executive’s website at http://www.scotland.gov.uk/library5/lifelong/feis03-00.asp
The Need for a Professional Body
The
Executive are also still open to responses on their consultation paper ‘The
Need for a Professional Body for Staff in Scotland’s Colleges’. This
important paper explores the need for an organisation to represent the sector
and formulate policy in areas such as continuous professional development and
mutual recognition of qualifications between schools and colleges. The
consultation paper is available at http://www.scotland.gov.uk/consultations/lifelonglearning/npbssc-00.asp,
and the response questionnaire can be completed (up to the closing date of
Tuesday 30th November) at http://www.scotland.gov.uk/consultations/lifelonglearning/npbssc-02.asp
School/College Collaboration
The
Executive has published the findings of two research exercises into the topical
issue of collaborative links between schools and Colleges. What school pupils
think of FE Colleges is covered at http://www.scotland.gov.uk/cru/resfinds/ell16-00.asp,
while the results of a general literature review into ‘Collaboration between
Schools and FE Colleges in Scotland’
is available at http://www.scotland.gov.uk/cru/resfinds/ell15-00.asp.
The strategic and management issues involved in such collaborations is dealt
with at http://www.scotland.gov.uk/cru/resfinds/ell14.pdf
Scottish Economics Statistics
2004-10-20
Finally
(although not exclusively for FE) the Executive has just published its survey
of Scottish Economic Statistics for 2004. This provides a comprehensive range
of official information on the Scottish economy, with chapters on key
macroeconomic indicators, statistical information on enterprises, innovation,
the structure of the industrial sectors, the labour market, household income
and expenditure and the public sector. The report is available from http://www.scotland.gov.uk/library5/finance/ses04-00.asp
--------------------------------- 4 -------------------------------
Microsoft V Google Round Two : New Desktop Searching Tools available
· Lookout for Outlook ….
If you use Outlook, the email application, and need to search for emails, files and desktop projects such as calendars, contacts or notes, then Lookout is an free add-on which will enable you to do it in the fastest possible time. The Lookout tool for Outlook can be found at : http://www.lookoutsoft.com/Lookout/
· But check out the new Google Desktop Search tool as well!
This
is a desktop search application that provides full text search over email,
computer files, chats, and web pages. Using this, Google claim, users can
search their personal items as easily as they search the Internet at the moment
using the main Google search engine. Desktop Search creates
an index of searchable information which is stored on the user’s own computer. Email
search results, for example, are organized into ‘conversations’, so that all
email messages in the same thread are grouped into a single search result. In
addition to basic searching, Google Desktop Search promises new ways to access
relevant and timely information. When web pages are viewed in Internet
Explorer, Google Desktop Search "caches" or stores its content so
that the user can look at that same version of the page later, even if its live
content has changed or the user is offline.
Further details and FAQ’s about the application are
available at http://desktop.google.com/about.html
The download itself is available at http://desktop.google.com/
·
How
Does Google Do It? The Secret Revealed …
Google has become the search engine of choice for many
Internet users, but the formula for its amazing search success rate has been as
closely guarded a secret as the recipe for Irn-Bru. Two articles from The
Economist magazine help to explain the way that Google works : A general
explanation is available at http://www.economist.co.uk/printedition/PrinterFriendly.cfm?Story_ID=3171440
While
an explanation of the page-ranking system which is at the heart of Google’s
success can be read at http://www.economist.co.uk/printedition/PrinterFriendly.cfm?Story_ID=3172188
·
A
Reminder : Look After That Data Before Someone Else Does It For You!
The increased searching ability that both Lookout and
Desktop Search promise has some personal data security issues. Both tools
basically make it easier for the user to search and find data by indexing what
is stored on the computer’s hard drive, whether the data is email content,
internet search history or whatever. If someone else has access to the computer
(unauthorized or authorized) then these search tools make it much easier for
them to find the user’s data too, which could be irritating, embarrassing or
compromising – depending on the user!
Visit http://searchenginewatch.com/sereport/article.php/3421621
for an interesting review of the security issue in this context
--------------------------------- 5 -------------------------------
Text-to-Speech Conversion : Is This The Future for Class
Handouts?
Seamless and natural
text-to-speech conversion has largely been the stuff of science-fiction movies
up until now. However, work being done by the American telecoms giant AT &
T has been improving what can be done in this area. Visit http://www.research.att.com/projects/tts/demo.html
for an entertaining
example of this facility, which also illustrates where we may be with
accessible audio support for text files in a very short period of time.
-------------------------------- 6 -------------------------------
e-Olympics
MP3 Prizewinner takes the podium
Gillian Robertson from Dundee College
has been chosen (at random) from the list of e-Olympics participants as the
winner of an Advent MP3 player/recorder. The device had been used at the event by
the TechDis presenter, Alistair McNaught, to demonstrate how to record and use
sound files for interactive learning and the RSC decided that it would make a
topical prize for one lucky participant. Gillian was delighted when she was told she
had won. “This is great!” she said. “I was thinking of buying one of these for
myself after I saw just how easy they are to use, but now I can go straight
ahead and start using it for my classes – and perhaps record some music for
myself as well!”
News about the prize, details of the
teams involved in the e-Olympics and links to the learning objects they created
can all be found on the RSC’s website at http://www.e-olympics.org.uk/.
-------------------------------- 7 -------------------------------
Security Warnings from Microsoft
Microsoft have released two
new security bulletins advising users of vulnerabilities in the SMTP and NNTP
components of many of their products,
including Windows 2000, 2003 and Exchange 2003/2000.
In both cases, this
vulnerability could potentially lead to remote system level compromise ; more
details and the patches needed to solve the problem are available from :
SMTP :
fhttp://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/MS04-035.mspx
NNTP : http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/MS04-036.mspx
It is worth pointing out
that on Exchange 2000 the NNTP component is installed and enabled by default, while
on 2003 it is installed but disabled. Both of these vulnerabilities could lead
to remote compromise of Exchange servers
if they are vulnerable, and sites should test and implement these patches or
relevant workarounds as soon as they can.
-------------------------------- 8 -------------------------------
Celtic WebCT Users Group
The inaugural meeting of
the Celtic WebCT Users Group will be held on Friday 26th November from 2.15pm - 4.30pm in the Wolfson Suite at Edinburgh
University Library. Staff supporting WebCT in universities and colleges in Scotland, Northern
Ireland and Ireland
are invited to attend to hear Steve Clark from Birmingham
University discussing Birmingham’s experience in
deploying WebCT. The organisation and aims of the group will also be discussed
and refreshments will be available.
Further details about the
Users Group can be obtained by contacting RSC North & East on 0131 315
7674.
The booking form for the
event is available at http://www.celticwebct.org.uk/.
--------------------------------- 9 -----------------------------
JISC Joins the Digital Library Federation
The American Digital
Library Federation (DLF) has announced that the Joint Information Systems Committee
(JISC) has joined it as its first ally from outside the United States.
The DLF was founded in 1995 as a partnership organization of 38 academic
libraries, and four related ‘ally’ organizations, that are pioneering the use
of electronic-information technologies to extend their collections and
services.
More information about
the DLF is available at http://www.diglib.org.
--------------------------------- 10 -----------------------------
Open-Access Publishing Gathers Speed
A head of steam is
currently building under the issue of enabling full-text open access to publicly-funded research papers.
Sparked off particularly by 'Free for All?’, a Parliamentary Select Committee Report
released over the summer, the Scottish Confederation of University and Research
Libraries (SCURL) launched a Draft
Declaration on the issue last week, which they hope that all universities
will eventually sign. According to SCURL, "the timely,
universal and organised dissemination of advances in scientific and public
policy research is fundamental to the proper operation of a modern
society...For Scotland, this means not only gaining access to the fruits of
research from throughout the world but also exposing the endeavours of our
researchers as widely as possible to the world at large". Open access
promises to be good for institutions, good for individual academics, and
- especially - good for students, who are likely to welcome it with open
arms.
The Select Committee Report can be viewed at http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm/cmsctech.htm
SCURL’s Open Access Declaration is at http://scurl.ac.uk/WG/SSISWGOA/index.html
There are two Open Access Archives within Scotland, hosted by Edinburgh and
Glasgow universities :
Edinburgh: http://www.era.lib.ed.ac.uk/index.jsp.
Glasgow: http://eprints.gla.ac.uk/
JISC has been working to
support open-access publishing with publishers, and commissioned a survey of
authors’ opinions on the issue earlier this year. Information on this can be
found at http://www.jisc.ac.uk/index.cfm?name=news_openaccess_0304.
It has also supported an
institutional repository project (HaIRST) operating across three Scottish
universities and ten Glasgow FE colleges, details of which can be found at http://hairst.cdlr.strath.ac.uk/.
--------------------------------- 11 -----------------------------
JISC Funding Opportunities
JISC offers regular
funding opportunities across both the FE and HE sectors, generally by calling
for project proposals which tie in with work areas identified by the various
JISC Committees. You can check these opportunities, or look at the work of
completed projects, on the JISC website at http://www.jisc.ac.uk/index.cfm?name=funding
--------------------------------- 12 -----------------------------
Training & Events
Learner-Centred Process Review Workshop : Wednesday 3rd November
‘Process Review’ is a method of analysing organisational processes in order to improve their efficiency and effectiveness. A ‘Learner Centred’ approach does this by putting the learner at the heart of the review process, focussing on the benefits to learners of each and every activity undertaken by the institution.
This interactive JISC infoNet workshop is aimed at senior and middle-managers with either cross-college or administrative responsibility in Further Education. By the end of the workshop, delegates will be able to use a variety of simple and rapid approaches to improve processes for the benefit of their learners.
Making Moving Images Work :
Thursday 4th November 2004 [RSC N&E] & 2nd February 2005 [RSC S&W]
Making Moving Images Work is a one-day workshop with practical ‘hands-on’ sessions in a computer lab environment run by the Advisory Service for Moving Pictures and Sound Online. It aims to simplify the processes of working with online moving images and show step by step the basic tools and skills needed to create dynamic and stimulating resources for learning and teaching.
Places for both of these workshops are still available, and can be booked by ‘phoning RSC Scotland North & East on 0131 315 7674 or by going to the RSC website at http://www.rsc-ne-scotland.ac.uk/rscsupport/training.html
Costs are subsidised under the Funding Council’s eMerge programme and are fixed at £50 per delegate.
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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