Let’s Panic Later flickr photo by wackystuff shared under a Creative Commons (BY-SA) license
I recently wrote How to overcome barriers when using tech in your teaching.
The post inspired me to think of more ways to introduce technology into your teaching, especially if you are new to using technology, worried, reluctant – or all three. Read more ›
flickr photo by mkoukoullis shared under a Creative Commons (BY-NC) license
There are many exciting events lined up for Digital Innovation Week which began yesterday (Monday 28th November 2016) and runs through until Friday.
Today, we are looking at the Spherical Photography session which will be held on Friday 2nd December 2016, 10.00-11.00am.
The workshop for staff and students will be led by Dr Ben Jackson, who describes himself as ‘one of the library’s contributions to the new Sussex Humanities Lab project’. Read more ›
Digital Innovation Week 28 November – 2 December 2016
In this first of five blog posts that we’ll be publishing as part of Digital Innovation Week here at the University of Sussex we interview Professor Peter Hartley ahead of an invited seminar he will be delivering here at the University on Tuesday the 29th of November alongside Professor Keith Smyth. The title of their seminar is ‘Opportunities and Challenges in the Post-Digital Age’ and we started by asking Peter exactly what he meant by the term ‘post-digital’. Read more ›
Image source: CC0 Public Domain. Free for commercial use. No attribution required.
There is an updated version of this post.
How can we use multimedia content to make learning more effective? The traditional approach to teaching in higher education tends to limit learners to reading texts, listening to lectures and discussing ideas in seminars. However, we learn better, and are more interested in learning tasks, when information is presented in diverse ways – so why not try something different? Read more ›
“Creative Commons 10th Birthday Celebration San Francisco” by tvol is licensed under CC BY 2.0
As members of a University, we all enjoy a fair amount of freedom to reuse and distribute copyrighted material to our colleagues and students, under the framework of our Copyright Licensing Agency (CLA), Newspaper Licensing Agency (NLA) and Educational Recording Agency (ERA) licensing agreements.
Specific exceptions to copyright even allow us to copy works not covered by CLA, NLA and ERA, within certain limits.
However, whilst under these exceptions we might, for example, be able to use a copyright image to directly illustrate an educational point, we don’t have carte blanche to use it in a more general illustrative way within our teaching materials: a Bleddyn Butcher photograph of Nick Cave might justifiably be used to examine the iconography within images of popular musicians, but using it as the background to a presentation slide titled “looking to the future” would probably be seen as a breach 1. Read more ›
flickr photo by frankieleon shared under a Creative Commons (BY) license
Today we are looking at the barriers that can exist for some when using technology in teaching.
The use of technology in lectures and seminars can help to engage students, create opportunities for flipped learning and make resources more accessible and inclusive.
Below we consider three common technology fears and how to overcome them. Read more ›
Collaborative working online is an important skill for students and staff. This post looks at some of the tools which can be used to accomplish tasks together online and 
why it is important to introduce students to them.
You may have seen media coverage earlier this year of a ‘Digital skills crisis’. This followed two reports on digital skills in the UK; the Digital skills crisis Second Report of Session 2016–17 (House of Commons Science and Technology Committee) and Digital Skills for the UK Economy by ECORYS. The former reported that ‘almost 90% of new jobs require digital skills to some degree, with 72% of employers stating that they are unwilling to interview candidates who do not have basic IT skills’ (page 7) and the latter recommended that in order to address this need we ‘Ensure that digital skills are learned pervasively at all stages of education and training’ (page 5).
There are a range of possible models or frameworks for what are variously called digital skills or digital capabilities (for more on this see the slides from Jane Secker’s recent TEL seminar).
Read more ›
This week we are going to tell you about Office Mix – the much publicised add-on from Microsoft.
Office Mix is a free add-on for Microsoft PowerPoint that enables you to transform your slideshows into interactive presentations.
The additional features that Office Mix brings to PowerPoint allow for interactive elements such as quizzes and polls to be added, creating a far more engaging presentation within a tool that many people are already very familiar with. You can use Office Mix to create a new presentation or adapt existing presentations that you already have saved. Read more ›
