This issue of NewsFeed opens with an amazing free access offer from Digimap, one of the most powerful online resources in the JISC Collection with huge potential for use across the FE curriculum. If you haven’t already seen this demonstrated, have a look at the resource and think about getting your College or University to sign up for access! Items 2 and 6 are a bit puzzling, but reading through them will make all clear in the end. We also have some interesting Technonuggets for you to get your teeth into, news about plagiarism research and a major expansion of broadband part-funded by the Scottish Executive. Also be sure to have a look at the varied range of workshops we are offering in the coming weeks, on topics ranging from the use of mobile technologies in teaching to MLE and VLE development.
As always, we welcome feedback on NewsFeed (or any RSC service you may have used) through the RSC website.
The Ordnance Survey digital mapping service, Digimap, is now available to the FE sector free of charge for the academic year 2005-6 under an agreement with JISC. The only requirement for institutions to access the resource is that they hold a current Ordnance Survey Education Copyright Licence, which costs £145 + VAT for FE colleges.
Digimap enables staff and students to view and print on-line maps of any location in Great Britain at a series of predefined scales, and query and display postcodes or place names. Since the materials are copyright cleared for educational use, they can be incorporated in teaching and learning materials such as course packs, lecture notes and presentations, as well as Virtual Learning Environments. To find out more about this exciting offer, go to the JISC website.
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) is the organization which is responsible for ‘policing’ the advertising industry. It draws up the Code of Advertising Practice and responds to complaints from both industry and the public. The ASA has just released its Annual Report for 2005, which details complaints information for the year and reveals which broadcast and print advertisements have drawn the most complaints during this period.
The ASA’s website has the full report online, where you can find out exactly why Channel 4’s advert for its ‘Shameless’ series drew the most non-broadcast complaints during the past year. The site also has an excellent collection of teaching material available in the ‘Schools and Colleges’ section of the site. Try working through the four available sub-sections on Social Responsibility, Children & Advertising, Taste and Decency and Controlling Advertising.
It seems incredible, but new research has indicated exactly this! Overwhelmed with electronic communications via email, phone calls and text messaging, users can develop an obsessive urge to check information sources repeatedly and respond to them immediately. This ‘infomania’ can, apparently, lead to reduced levels of intelligence greater than that caused by smoking marijuana. Inhale for yourself by going to the 'Infomania worse than marijuana' article and breathing deeply! If you’re still sceptical, look out for the Technonuggets we’ve sprinkled through this edition of NewsFeed, then find out more about communication overload. It’s not all gloom and doom though : for a more positive take on communications overload, see the following No information overload just yet.
An experiment conducted by Loughborough University which encouraged students to buy essays from a number of ghost writing companies advertising on the internet has found that the essays provided were of questionable quality. “As well as breaking the rules on cheating [by buying such essays] students are taking a big risk”, according to Professor Charles Oppenheim, one of the researchers involved. The largest on-line firms produce more than 500 essays per week costing from £80 to £800, but they defend their low quality as a deliberate action in order to lend authenticity to the submissions. An Essays-r-Us spokesman explained that the firm is simply responding to demand: “We are sometimes asked to write at an overseas student level and the mistakes are done on purpose … the client gets what he/she orders”. Read the full story in The Telegraph.
This is the subtitle to an interesting profile of Oxford Brookes University plagiarism guru Jude Carroll, published in today’s Education Guardian. Carroll has been the prime mover in bringing this contentious topic to the attention of the HE and FE communities, and the article is a useful summary of the way in which thinking on the topic has evolved. Issues covered include the ‘restricted view of learning’ which she believes is common in secondary schools, and the conspiracy of silence about the topic amongst academics which, she says, ‘implicitly endorses the legality of plagiarism’. Read the full article online.
Source : Times On Line.
The Creative Archive Licence Group is a collaborative venture between the BBC, the British Film Institute, Channel Four and The Open University, formed on April 13th 2005 to promote the use of a single, shared user licence scheme for the downloading of moving images, audio and stills.
Each of the participants owns the rights to a substantial archive of material and the licence (inspired by the example of the Creative Commons mode seeks to open out access to these materials and make them available for creative use in ways which have not been possible up until now because of copyright restrictions. It may be a while yet before we can freely download last week’s Dr Who to cut and paste images of the Slitheen for the College magazine, but the CA Licence does hold out the prospect of at least some of the vast treasure-house of archived material held by these organisations being made available for public use.
For further details on the Licence, see the BBC press release on the project, the BFI equivalent and the resulting Guardian article (which will explain the enigmatic headline above …)
Colleges and Universities in Scotland already enjoy significantly better internet connection capacity than many of their English counterparts (although not a lot of people know that). Now the Scottish Executive has joined forces with British Telecom to share the cost of a £30 million expansion to Scotland’s broadband community infrastructure. This move will see smaller, more rural communities such as those in the Western Isles – communities that would have been uneconomic to connect up to broadband under open market conditions – brought into the broadband fold.
The background to the project is covered in 'All of Scotland to get broadband', and information about the Connected Communities initiative in the Western Isles is available at connectedcommunities.co.uk.
Sources : Time On Line, becta.org.uk, The Telegraph
e-Merge is a programme of staff development activities funded by the Scottish Further Education Funding Council and delivered by the two Scottish RSCs and SFEU which has been running throughout session 2004-5. Over 1000 staff to date have benefited by taking part in activities organised under the e-Merge umbrella, from working with the SFEU staff mentors to participating in development projects or taking part in the e-Olympics events. This conference is designed to showcase effective practice within the programme and will feature the direct experiences of staff who have taken part in such activities. It’s designed to look at the delights as well as the difficulties, to assess the impact of e-Merge on individuals and Colleges and to begin to map out where we go from here.
To make a booking for the conference, contact Margaret Brotchie at the Scottish Funding Councils’ office on 0131-313-6620, or by email at mbrotchie@sfc.ac.uk. Further details of the conference are available on the Scottish FE Funding Council website, which also contains a downloadable registration form.
JISC are holding two Information Skills workshops in London on 6Th July, and in Manchester on 7th July 2005. The aims of the workshops are to provide delegates with an update on the status of current developments in information skills and gain feedback from participants to help inform the future work of JISC. Delegates will play a full part in the discussions during the day and make recommendations to JISC and other organisations on taking this area of work forward. The workshop is free of charge and will be of interest to heads of department, staff developers, information officers and information services/learning resources staff in further and higher education.
Further information about the workshop and an online booking form can be found on the JISC website.
JISC regularly announces opportunities to put forward proposals for funding in designated project areas. Details of current opportunities are available on the JISC website.
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.
MLEs are about joining up systems and processes for the benefit of the learner. The Government e-learning and Lifelong Learning agendas mean that MLE development (regionally as well as within institutions) is a necessity. Some institutions are struggling to link their VLE to essential admin systems while others are a long way down the road of full integration. JISC has produced the 'Creating an MLE infoKit' to highlight the issues and lessons learned to date - experiences from the sector are needed for it to grow and retain currency and the workshop is one way of getting involved with this community of practice.
Do you want to know how using your institution's VLE can help your students achieve the module learning outcomes? Are you using a VLE but want to take your practice to the next stage? Do staff ask you - how can I use a VLE in my teaching? - how can I make the VLE interesting for my students? If you answered 'yes' to any of the above then the 'Effective Use of VLEs' workshop is for you.
This workshop introduces the Effective Use of VLEs infoKit which has been written as a series of sections comprising in-depth resources and case studies drawn from both further and higher education which emphasise the underpinning pedagogy in the use of e-learning.
Does Mobile Learning (m-Learning) have the potential to change education? M-Learning can free learners from the classroom and enable them to study wherever and whenever they choose. Organisations can adapt academic and administrative functions to suit the demands of their new audience: the mobile learner, already comfortable with smart phones, hand-held media devices and Personal Digital Assistants. Many organisations are already implementing mobile technologies to support learning. However, what issues arise from such technologies? How suitable are they pedagogically and practically? This workshop explores the principles and practice of m-Learning. It is for anyone who is interested in using mobile devices in education, or whose organisations already are, or those who simply wish to know more about the emerging technologies.
This workshop is suitable for academics, administrators, businesses and anyone with an interest in learning using mobile technologies.
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.
Unsubscribe - email support@rsc-ne-scotland.ac.uk
Regional Support Centre Scotland North and East
Helpdesk 0131 315 7674
www.rsc-ne-scotland.ac.uk
Regional Support Centre Scotland South and West
Helpdesk 0141 558 4098
www.rsc-sw-scotand.ac.uk