NTU Policy Updates

Just seen an email sent earlier today from HR about updated staff policies. Amongst the other stuff I found this statement:

Staff should avoid activity that might adversely affect the reputation of the University or bring the University into disrepute.

Would this include Blogger and Twitter postings? YouTube videos? What I might say down the pub? Comments on the websites of the BBC, Guardian, Times Higher or whoever? Given there is an approaching general election would this include staff who legitimately stood for election but who put forward controversial issues - whatever they might be and however democratic?

I know this is a constant theme of mine but I think employers interfering in employees private lives (with the possible exception of where they break the law) is all rather feudal. What you can say... What work you can do outside of your "main" work... Surprised too that the European Union does not have a view on this - Human rights anyone?

Wide Screen Option

Ahh yes YouTube has gone wide screen by deafult(16:9 I think) and it means that new video postings onto some of the older template designs look a little odd/broken. Maybe I'll get around to working out the workaround...

Blogger/YouTube Worksheet

Following my success in the Economics Network Annual Learning and Teaching Awards 2007 I will be publishing a guide to just how I embedded the videos into my blog account.

Whilst the more technically inclined amongst you may be thinking it is easy I bear in mind that not everyone is technically minded. It is also important to think about the WHAT and WHY and not just the HOW.

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/

JSWEC 2007 Swansea

Joint Social Work in Education conference (JSWEC) 2007.

I was there at the invitation of the Social Work and Policy Subject Centre, with whom I have an e-learning consultancy role. One of my jobs at the conference was to record video interviews with some of the keynote speakers and authors of key texts who were present at the conference. I was also working as an event photographer capturing lots of “goings on” and capturing some informal video footage for later use in some training materials.

There will be some formal video footage on the SWAP website in due course but I’ll also be putting together some short video montages using free software, and then showing people just how I did it, so that people can learn how to do it for themselves.

NTU-Tube Anyone?

Just booked my placed at the Annual Learning and Teaching Conference.

NTU ALT-C

Looks like a couple of good sessions though I've missed out on some of the more popular ones. I had thought about doing a presentation this year but at the time the notification came around I was just so busy that I didn't want to commit myself to yet another thing. As it happens I would have been able to put some together.

What? Well I would have done a short presentation on using services like YouTube to communicate with students whether they're attending NTU full-time, out on placement or full distance learners. Here's an example of the sort of thing I've been doing with one of my modules. I use a blog and embed video clips hosted by YouTube into it.

The Internet, Computers & Society

Some clips are ones I've found elsewhere and linked to (so no copyright worries - don't even mention proscribing deep linking to me!) and others are ones I've created. Some of the current ones are short clips produced in a range of styles. I then demonstrated these to the students and used SurveyMonkey to collect feedback on their preferences. All part of my normal reflective practitioner good practice and in this particular instance it will make a contribution to my PGCHE course.