PowerPoint & Pecha Kucha

Might be a useful approach for future teaching and learning materials hence inclusion here... PowerPoint - e-learning, blended-learning, multimedia, PowerPoint.

Referencing with RefWorks

Now I'm a member of staff here at NTU but I'm also a student doing post-graduate work.

I'd been meaning to try and get to grips with RefWorks for some time and a few days ago I finally did. I had to adapt my way of working but once I did it proved to be very effective. There's a really useful add-on too which allows you to import book from Amazon into your RefWorks database, which did't quite work as I think it should be was nonetheless pretty useful. The real benefit came when I finally wanted to create my set of References and it simply churned them out in a style and file type of my choosing.

Holocaust Memorial Day

Don't need to say any more really but if you ever get the chance to visit the Imperial War Museum there is a special gallery dedicated to the holocaust. Grim but worthy.

Just the kind of thing...

4.8 Public Comment on University Policy and Administration
4.8.1 'Public comment' in this context includes public speaking engagements, comments on radio and television, letters to newspapers, and expressing views in books, journals or notices. All media requests for information and enquiries that relate to the University must be referred to the University's Press Office.

This section doesn't mention what might be called Web 2.0 channels (which surprises me) but what does the last sentence mean? If The Guardian (or whoever ) seeks my opinion on working at NTU or a policy of NTU do I have to check with the Press Office? Surely not but it is not clear and HR are suggesting this is all part of our legal contract of employment.

Still alive...

I haven't updated this blog for some time as I tend to concentrate on the blog for my third year module; The Internet, Computers & Society. Furthermore I'm currently firing off the odd work related posting on Twitter is even quicker and easier than logging into here, especially from my phone.

And of course everything tech or work related took second place to my parents in 2009...

Small Office Home Office (SOHO)?

Something that has delayed my plans for new revision materials, including multimedia "stuff" (see last post), is the lack of space I have at both home and work. York House was a bit of a dump but at least it was a more spacious dump than Chaucer - which is nice but lacks both identified office space and just spare (quiet) corners (or complete rooms) in which to sometimes work, especially spontaneous creative work.

Home is relatively small and my wife correctly reminds me that our conservatory is not an office and so now and again I clear out (or take *back* to my office) assorted materials. It would be so nice to have more room to keep all my bits and bobs or to leave out things like Camcorders all plugged in and ready to go... (either at home or work). Instead I spend lots of time and energy constantly sorting, hiding or otherwise putting away and getting out things without actually getting much done. Or as much as I'd like or otherwise could...

Blogger, NOW and YouTube

I've been off work lately because my mother recently passed away so I'm very grateful for a combination of Blogger, NOW (Nottingham Online Workspace) and YouTube. More to the point my third year Economics students are/will be for as I play catch up with my planned revision materials/sessions for their impending exam.

A mix of text, images, audio and video can be fairly quickly generated (I hope/plan) to give them a full range of revision materials that should suit any number of learning styles.

Comic Book Art

Really posting this to remind me to go back to look at use of Comic Life for producing educational materials.

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...

Module Option Talk Video

Cheap and cheerful video capture of the option talk that I gave yesterday to the second year Economics students. They were sitting through a series of presentations to help them choose their optional modules for next year. I was a bit under the weather and forgot a couple of tricks/props I was intending to use but it seemed to go okay anyway...

I've also posted this on the actual module blog but am copying it here too as an example of the kind of thing you can do with little in the way of equipment. It isn't snazzy but it does the job... which you can see here:

Video Feedback er Video...

Short rough and ready screen capture that does the job of telling colleagues how I recently tried using video to give students faster and more effective feedback when used in conjunction with traditional feedback for some third year coursework. All rather low tech but seems to have been effective - formal feedback in due course. I trialled this on my third year Economics module, The Internet, Computers & Society (ITEC30011).

Please note the first video that I play hasn't been picked up by the screen capture software but the audio has - and the subsequent video clips are okay - both video and audio.

August 2009 Addendum: I've since had the formal feedback from this module and it has been very positive. Over 90% of the students on the module viewed the videos and 100% of those who viewed their personal feedback videos found them useful. Over 90% of students also viewed the generic feedback video and 90% of those reported finding it useful. Something else that emerged (via both formal and informal feedback) was that having a video seemed to encourage students to read through the written feedback on their actual physical submission (since they told me so). Furthermore every assignment was collected by students, whereas many assignments (with their feedback) are often left uncollected.

I've since been asked to talk to the NOW VLE team (NOW being the Virtual Learning Environment used by Nottingham Trent University) about my use of the VLE for hosting the videos so expect some further outputs in due course. It is certainly my intention to repeat this next year and to expand its use where practical. It does involve some more work on my part but seems to offer big benefits to the students. So I'm thinking about the best ways to incorporate the use of video feedback, so as to keep it manageable, and thus encourage colleagues to consider its use. I'll be posting some video "How To's" and tips in the near future.

York House Update

Well another bunch of colleagues has just left York House. One colleague was telling me that they had been based in the building for 34 years. Many different offices over that time but 34 years in one building. A long time...

Having said that I came here as a student in 1985 and although I haven't been here the whole time since then I have been here most of the time. Where does the time go?

If you want to see more photos of York House then a search for York House NTU on Flickr brings up a number of collections featuring York House.

A Time to Diet?

Well we've just received the details of our new room allocations (School of Social staff are all moving from York House to Chaucer) and the plans confirm that we'll all be rather cosy... time for that diet.

Another Long Break!

Okay it's been another long break since I last posted to this blog.

I tend to concentrate my efforts on my third year module blog for Economists.

ITEC30011 The Internet, Computers & Society module.

You can see it on Blogger at www.phil-wane-ics.blogspot.com

But I've not forgotten this blog... in fact there are so many things that I have wanted to comment on over the last few months that I hardly know where to begin.

The Importance of Choice

I attended a presentation on the new new (impending) VLE at NTU yesterday.

An issue I raised (as I have done elsewhere) is whether any policy descision has yet been made about staff who currently use external sites to provide those things that the current VLE (the VLP) doens't. For instance I have a couple of blogs (this being one of them but the more active one is one I use to support a third year module) and I also use Flickr (a litle bit) and YouTube for video hosting.

Now the new VLE will support some of thes features (and I'll use them for some modules) but I don't wan to be told that it was all very well being an innovator and early adoptor but everything must now come in-house once support for such features becomes available. For some things I want to keep them external, one very good reason being that people outside of NTU can access them, and I believe this contributes to the global profile of the university. And contributes to the gloabal pool of knowledge. NTU doeosn't lose out be some of my materials being externally available but it can gain. Thoughts from colleagues most welcome.

Happy New Year! Very Peculiar Practice...

Wishing you all a Happy New Year.

The New Year is here and the new term beckons. I remember when 2008 was a date in science fiction novels... Santa was kind to me but something I'm really looking forward to is reading a couple of novels I treated myself to via Amazon just before Christmas.

A Very Peculiar Practice and A Very Peculiar Practice: The New Frontier, both by Andrew Davies. I'd lent the DVD of the first TV series (on the BBC many years ago) to a colleague and when he returned it at the end of last term it prompted me to search for the novels once again. They've been out of print for some time but Amazon gave me links to second hand copies via some kind of affiliated sellers. So everyone won.

The series should be compulsory viewing for anyone working in Higher Education.

Phil

PGCHE'd

Well I'm pleased to say that I've passed my PGCHE.

Post Graduate Certificate in Higher Education.

Great course if rather heavily assessed (given how busy we are). But that's a universal student gripe I'm sure. Even if I hadn't passed I would have gotten a lot from this course. I've changed some of my practices as a result of things I've picked up on the course and in other instances it affirmed that I was already pretty good stuff, which is of course why I got the title of University Teaching Fellow a few years ago. Still get lots of things wrong but nice to know also getting plenty of them right.

I would certainly recommend the course to anyone thinking about it and the assessment load has been lightened so really nothing to quibble about.

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/

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.