Thursday, April 21, 2011

Keeping up to date - alerting services

ISS will be running a training session on 'Keeping up to date - alerting services' on 3 May.

What: Keeping up to date - alerting services
When: Tues. 3rd May 12 – 1
Where: PC Room 3 in the Library

This session will look at the various e-mail and alerting services which you can use to keep up to date with new books, journal articles, conferences, etc. It will include a demonstration of Zetoc and ticTocs, two services for keeping up to date with new journal papers.

To book a place, please email b.r.mathias@swansea.ac.uk

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Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Call for teachers to share resources

At the start of a new academic year, JISC is encouraging lecturers and trainers to share their teaching materials - as a competition highlights useful resources from across the UK.

David Kernohan, programme manager at JISC, said: “We are fortunate in this country to be developing a community of people willing to share their teaching resources, but what we lack is a coherent way of highlighting the best examples of such collaboration.

“Competitions like this one show what we all know instinctively – that sharing can benefit not just your colleagues but also your own teaching reputation and that of your university or college.”

The competition was run by JorumOpen, the UK’s national repository for educational materials created under a creative commons licence.

Louise Egan, Jorum communications officer, said: "This competition aims to champion learning and teaching resources from all backgrounds and subject areas. We were delighted to have received a great number of entries, and see the high standard of resources being shared amongst our community of users."

The resulting winners of the competition are all excellent examples of how to make learning more interactive and are available alongside the other entries at Jorum for anyone to re-use.

First place went to a resource that explains photosynthesis using 3D models of the key molecules involved. Its author Katy Jordan has used the kit to teach undergraduates at the University of Cambridge.
http://open.jorum.ac.uk/xmlui/handle/123456789/7023

An interactive module from the Open Dementia E-learning programme, funded by the Department of Health, came in at second place.
http://open.jorum.ac.uk/xmlui/handle/123456789/7022

The University of Wales Institute in Cardiff claimed third prize for a resource called ‘Making the creative process visible’, a series of films documenting how ceramics students develop their ideas.
http://open.jorum.ac.uk/xmlui/handle/123456789/2027

Contributing to open repositories helps resources to be discovered more widely. Currently over 80 UK universities are involved in the pilot open educational resources programme run by JISC and the Higher Education Academy with all outputs made available via JorumOpen.

Explore what we’ve learned and how sharing resources can benefit your organisation through our dedicated briefing paper at

To contribute to Jorum or find resources, visit http://www.jorum.ac.uk

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Wednesday, December 02, 2009

The Association for Learning Technology’s Open Access Repository

The Association for Learning Technology’s Open Access Repository was formally launched at ALT’s annual conference ALT-C in September and is now available. The repository represents a long-awaited development in ALT’s work and services as it allows users to contribute assets and make them available via the repository. Since it went online the repository has had about 10,000 visitors, browsing, searching for and downloading journal articles, conference presentations, links to webinar recordings and similar content.

The repository currently contains post-prints from the ALT’s peer-reviewed journal ALT-J from its inception in 1993 to Vol. 16 (2007) and will be updated periodically with new volumes 18 months after publication by Routledge. The repository also contains items relating to:
  • ALT-C conference
  • ALT events and webinars
  • Learning Technology topics, events or publications
  • ALT Members
  • ALT’s Certified Membership Scheme – CMALT
  • ALT Special Interest Groups such as the recently established Learning Environment Review SIG (LERSIG)
It will be extended further to cover:
  • exemplars of best practice
  • guides for good practice in design & use of education technologies
  • research papers
  • sector reports related to e-learning
  • wiki-based content that can be added to and extended by practitioners

For further information or if you would like to contribute assets visit
http://repository.alt.ac.uk
You can also create your own user account on the repository homepage.

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Thursday, February 26, 2009

Using 'Web 2.0' Tools?

There are lots of useful 'Web 2.0' tools around and many of them can be used for learning and teaching. However, before doing so there are a number of issues you need to be aware of. LIS have produced a series of questions that you need to ask before using external 'Web 2.0' tools, such as Blogger, Twitter and Facebook; particularly if you plan to use them in learning and teaching.

The guidance notes were adapted with permission from work done by Oxford University Computing Centre and can be accessed here-

Risk Analysis for Using External Tools (MS Word)
Risk Analysis for Using External Tools (pdf)

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Wednesday, July 09, 2008

The next 'Top 100 Tools'

We've had our own Top 10 Tools for Learning and you now have the chance to contribute to the Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies next list of the Top 100 tools. The website says -

"If you are a learning professional (e.g. teacher, academic, trainer, consultant, developer, practitioner, analyst, etc) and active in the field of e-learning, we invite you to contribute your Top 10 Tools for Learning. As we receive contributions we will compile, and then refine, the Top 100 Tools for Learning list."

You can find more details and submit your selection at http://c4lpt.co.uk/recommended/yours.html

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Thursday, June 12, 2008

Learn to use the top free tools - for FREE!

Following on from the recent posts on Top 10/Top 100 tools, The Centre for Learning & Peformance Technologies has designed a programme that is "intended for learning professionals who want to broaden their horizons in terms of the range of tools available for learning - in a very practical way - by getting to grips with 25 key FREE tools."

Find out more and sign up for free here - http://c4lpt.co.uk/25Tools/Tools/about.html

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Friday, May 30, 2008

Swansea's Top 10 Tools....

Following on from a previous post a group of people were asked to nominate their Top 10 learning tools to see if we could find Swansea's Top 10 Tools. The results are in as you can see below. Most people found it quite difficult to rank the tools so you will also find a list of all the tools mentioned.

To avoid any confusion, it was taken as a given that the Virtual Learning Environment is a useful tool and is not included in the list.

Rank

Tool

Votes

Type of Tool

1

Google Search

49

Search engine

2

Delicious

49

Social bookmarking

3

Powerpoint

38

Presentations

4

Blogger

30

Blogging

5

Clicker Software

26

Audience response system

6

Firefox

25

Web browser

7

Blogs

23

Blogging

8

Course Genie

21

E-learning activity creator

9

iGoogle

19

Personalised homepage

10

Netvibes

18

Personalised homepage



Honourable mention should also be given to Audacity, which came just outside the Top 10 with 17 votes.

Three of the tools are paid for and provided by the University - Powerpoint, Course Genie and Clickers software. The rest are 'free' tools.

If we add some of the 684 votes together, various Google tools got 116 votes, Blogging tools 66 votes and Wiki tools 52 votes.

Thanks to all those who took the time to vote

Full List of Tools

Asus EEE PC
Audacity
Beer
Blogger
Blogs
Cakes
Camtasia
Chat
Clicker Software
Conversation
Course Genie
Delicious
Discussion Forum
Dokuwiki
Dreamweaver
Elgg
Endnote
Facebook
Feedburner
Field Courses
Firefox
Flickr
Freemind
Google Alerts
Google Calendar
Google Custom Search
Google Docs
Google Reader
Google Scholar
Google Search
Google Video
Grazr
HEA E-Learning Materials
iGoogle
Image manipulation Software
iMovie
Interactibe Whiteboard Software
JSTOR
Lectures
Levleator
Library
Lynda.com
Movie maker
Netvibes
Nexus UK
PB Wiki
Picens
Powerpoint
Practicals
Projects
Quandry
Simulations
Snagit
Survey Monkey
Tiddlywiki
Video Creation Software
Video Jug
VOIP/Skype
Web
Wikipedia
Wikis
Wikispaces
Windows Live
Wireless Keyboard & Mouse
Word
Wordpress
WorldCat
You Tube

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Friday, May 16, 2008

Swansea's Top 10 Tools for Learning?

Following on from the recent post about The Top 100 Tools for Learning, it has been suggested that we might try and find the Top Tools for learning as used by Swansea University staff.


So, it would be really useful if you could list your Top 10 in order and then email them to Chris Hall (To make things easier, will take it as a given that the VLE would be in everyone’s list so you don't need to include it :-) ) We’ll then score them - 10 points for your top choice, 9 for your second and so on – and find out what the Top 10 are. If you can’t think of Top 10, list a 5 or a 3 or 6. Please feel free to pass this on to anyone else you think may want to contribute.


We’ll post the results here on the Learning Lab.

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Thursday, May 01, 2008

Top 100 Tools for Learning

The Centre for Learning and Performance Technolgies have produced their latest list of the Top 100 Tools for learning - http://c4lpt.co.uk/recommended/top100.html
Interestingly, delcious is now the top tool. Are we all becoming librarians? Also, Powepoint is the only paid for tool in the Top 10. Big movers include - Ning, PBWiki, Second Life and Slideshare, while Yahoo Groups and Bubble.us are among the fallers.

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