Swanevent: E-Learning & Cakes

Following on from the successful demo of the £50 interactive whiteboard, it's time for the next E-Learning & Cakes session. E-Learning & cakes is an informal monthly, or so, gathering of any one interested in the use of technology in learning & teaching. An opportunity to find out what's going on in the University, share what you're doing or just find out a bit more about learning technology - and cakes.

• When: Friday 2nd May
  
• Time: 11:00
• Venue: Room 703 on the 7th Floor of the Library.

PhD Research: Can you help?

From Paul Hazel, School of Digital Media, Swansea Metropolitan University -

"The fundamental idea of my PhD project is to determine whether narrativizing e-learning materials can be shown to improve the student experience, i.e. improve learning outcomes, promote deep learning approaches, improve 'attendance', enhance emotional involvement with the learning materials, etc..

Consequently, I would like to identify someone who is either:

• Running an e-learning module as part of an Undergraduate or Graduate programme.
• Running a module that has a significant and compulsory element of 'distributed' learning, i.e. that is using e-learning for a substantial part of the course, ideally involving some element of summative assessment. Again, it needs to be an Undergraduate or Graduate programme.

Essentially, you would be the 'clients' and subject-matter experts, I would be the 'learning technologist' given the brief of producing the narrativized materials. I would welcome any opportunity to collaborate on publishing. Of course you would be able to keep and freely use any learning materials generated during the project."

Email/ E-bost: paul.hazel@smu.ac.uk

Download the Project Outline

Drop.io

A new tool / site has started up called drop.io ( http://drop.io/ )


.io is the Internet country code top-level domain for the British Indian Ocean Teritory and, as the founders of this site cheerfully admit, is greatly in demand to make your site look all cool and web 2.0 ish ... Having said that, the site isn't really all that web 2.0 ish at all ... but it is kind of cool !

The first part of its name pretty much sums up what they are all about. drop.io provides you a space into which you can drop almost any sort of file you want. You and others (depending on what options you select) can then access them later. One of the most intersting features is that you get round the need for viewers etc as all files are converted as you upload them (although the original uploaded file is kept available for download). Not all filetypes are supported, but they are working on it and if they can't convert it yet, they'll just store it and visitors will be limited to downloading with no streaming.

So far it seems to work with:

Audio:

• .mp3
• .rm (sort of - didn't work on one, but then worked on another after a long think)
• .wav
• .wma

Video:

• .asf
• .avi
• .mp4
• .mov (Quicktime)
• .mpg
• .mpeg
• .qt (Quicktime)
• .wmv

Office files (doc, xls, ppt) are not converted, just stored for later download, although you do get the option to send Word files as a fax.

You don't have to have an account, and you don't have to have a password (unless you want to) and it is easy ! This is a very simple and quick route to getting audio, video and image files onto the internet for others to access without viewer worries.

Community Blog?

The Community section of the Learning Lab has been opened up to a number of extra bloggers. In addition, anyone can comment on the posts - you don't need an account to join the discussion.

http://llcommunity.blogspot.com/

What is e-learning? You tell us!

For some time the Learning Lab has had an introductory guide to answer the question, 'What is e-learning?' In the past this document has been updated periodically by the e-learning team. However this approach doesn't really take advantage of the knowledge of the rest of the e-learning community. So, from now on the guide will be on the wiki and available for editing, adding to and commenting on. Every few months a new hard copy version with be produced, using the information on the wiki, for those who would like to read it offline.

You can find the wiki here http://swansealearninglab.pbwiki.com/What+is+e-learning?

Happy editing!

Event: E-portfolios, LEAP? PDP? What's all that then?

The next Lunch and Learn session will be on e-portfolios, LEAP and PDP by Chris Cardew. But what are e-portfolios, LEAP and PDP?

Personal Development Planning, PDP for students has been a requirement for University departments as a part of the everyday process since 2005.

The Quality Assurance Agency, QAA describes PDP as ‘Structured and supported processes to develop the capacity of individuals to reflect upon their learning and achievement and to plan for their own personal education and career development’

The need for an individual to reflect upon their learning on a regular basis is fundamental to making PDP work.

Is an E-portfolio a tool which can support and enhance this process?

The session will touch briefly on PDP, e-portfolios and reflection with some examples of web based tools that can be used as an e-portfolio.

• When: Friday 7th March
  
• What Time: 1-2pm
• Where: Staff Development Unit