Award Winning Teaching Blog

Economics Subject Network eLearning Winner

This morning I learnt that I'm the joint winner of this year's eLearning Award from the Economics Subject Network.

http://www.economicsnetwork.ac.uk/

For several years now I have delivered a Level 3 module for Economics at NTU called

The Internet, Computers & Society

I only entered the competition following the overwhelmingly positive feedback from students who took the module this year. It has a history of very good feedback but there was particular emphasis on some of the blended learning innovations I had introduced this year.

What especially motivated me was the positive response to my use of free Web 2.0 services like Blogger and YouTube in combination to provide low tech but effective revision aids. These were simply topic based revision videos that were no more than 10 minutes in length. Module feedback showed that these were both popular and seemingly effective.

Difficult to measure how effective but what they certainly did do was encourage some of the students to then seek out further materials from other sources. Great stuff!

Examples of the use of YouTube clips embedded into Blogger for teaching can be seen on the module blog itself at

http://phil-wane-ics.blogspot.com/

Annual Leave...

I'm currently on annual leave but will start updating this blog in the near future.

Although on leave (and enjoying it) I'm also logging in now and again, thinking about outstanding PGCHE assignments, and reflecting upon what changes I still have time to make for next year's teaching...

But thought I would post something so people don't think I've forgotten about the blog.

Merely having a break!

National Photo Competition Prize

Here is the image that recently took Second Prize in a photographic competition organised by the Social Work and Social Policy (SWAP) Subject Centre.

All entries will be added to a database of images for use in learning and teaching.

I called this one "Into The Blue" having noted that they all had predominantly blue screens and transforming the rest of the image to monochrome helps to emphasise this; the theme of the competition was Creativity and Technology.

White Rabbits!

Today is the first of the month and some people have the tradition that if the first thing you say on the first day of any month is "White Rabbits" then you will receive a gift. Something like that!

I think I manage it about one a year as like most people I usually manage "Oh God what time is it?" or something similar. I kind of managed it today so as a present to myself and to anyone reading this blog and I know there are some people (if only the PGCHE tutors who read the hard copy, which forms a neat addition to my PGCHE portfolio).

I will make a determined effort this month to make some regular postings, if only as a way of reminding myself of some useful events and developments that I might otherwise forget to mention or otherwise chase up. Since this blog is a type of reflective journal I find it useful to both reflect upon things and simply to remind myself to chase others up...

Expect postings on subjects as diverse as Gilly Salmon and podcasting, undergraduate plagiarism, and prize winning photographs.