The benefits of lurking in higher education

Posted on by Sally Burr
Student -2

flickr photo by CollegeDegrees360 shared under a Creative Commons (BY-SA) license

Inspired by the journal article Online Discussion Forums in Higher Education: Is ‘Lurking’ Working?, International Journal for Cross-Disciplinary Subjects in Education Mazuro and Rao (2011), we take a look at the benefits of lurking in online learning spaces in HE.

Lurking to some may have negative overtones, but why is this? A lurker is defined by the Cambridge Dictionary simply as ‘someone who reads the messages in a chat room without taking part.’

Whilst this definition indicates a level of passivity in terms of overt engagement, it does not mean that learning cannot, or is not, occurring. Read more ›

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Posted in Study Direct, Technology Enhanced Learning

Camscanner: turn your phone or tablet into a mini-scanner

Posted on by Nicholas Botfield
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flickr photo by Carollainy shared under a Creative Commons (BY-SA) license

This blog post will review CamScanner, an app that allows you to turn paper to PDF using only the camera on your mobile device. Scan anything from mathematical equations to your shopping list and then edit, organise and share your files in a variety of different ways.

The CamScanner app allows you to:

  • Take a photo of your paper document and turn it into a PDF (you can also take a photo of many documents and batch them together)
  • Edit lighting and contrast to ensure optimal legibility
  • Use the pen tool to free form annotate on top of the original document or highlight areas of the document using the highlighter
  • Add text notes to the documents
  • Either email your document to other recipients or upload it to DropBox,
  • GoogleDrive, OneDrive or Evernote
  • Share your document with other CamScanner uses to have multiple editors

    • Read more ›

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Posted in App review, Technology Enhanced Learning

Clever apps for smart researchers

Posted on by Anne Hole

flickr photo by Jason A. Howie http://flickr.com/photos/jasonahowie/7910370882 shared under a Creative Commons (BY) license

Once upon a time research meant mountains of paper, tapes, card-index systems and hours spent trying to find just the right note or adding bibliographical references. Today, mobile devices and cloud-based apps make life as a researcher easier and less stressful. Here are a few apps that you can use to streamline your research life. Read more ›

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Posted in App review, Technology Enhanced Learning

Could you be a TEL Champion? Learning with Open Badges

Posted on by Anne Hole

TEL Champion badgeTechnology Enhanced Learning were thrilled recently to award the first TEL Champion badge. Open badges have been awarded for a range of TEL workshops over the last year and Lucia Guzman from the Sussex Centre for Language Studies (SCLS)  is the first to collect the 5 badges necessary to earn TEL Champion recognition. Read more ›

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Posted in Technology Enhanced Learning

Take 5 – online bitesize courses for Sussex staff

Posted on by Kitty Horne

Take 5 is a series of bitesize online courses that offer academic and professional services staff at the University of Sussex the opportunity to gain an insight into five interesting learning technology topics including;

  • blogging
  • Twitter
  • apps
  • podcasting
  • open education

These short self-study courses aim to provide an introduction to these topics, highlighting the ways in which each learning technology can be useful in a teaching and learning context, and in day-to-day life.

Take 5 will be hosted on the university’s Virtual Learning Environment (VLE), Study Direct, making use of many of the resource and activity tools available. Read more ›

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Academics, are you LinkedIn?

Posted on by Sally Burr
Rolodex

flickr photo by renaissancechambara shared under a Creative Commons (BY) license

Academic.edu, Mendeley, Researchgate are among a growing range of online professional networking tools that support academic practice and are increasingly used by academics to further their professional learning networks (PLNs). These platforms typically offer members a social space within which to share ideas about teaching, highlight their latest research and showcase their work. If you use these platforms, you might also want to consider joining LinkedIn, the professional business networking service. Read more ›

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Posted in Technology Enhanced Learning

Top tips for designing presentations

Posted on by Pete Sparkes
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flickr photo by ImagineCup shared under a Creative Commons (BY) license

This post introduces a few simple yet effective techniques for designing slideshow presentations.

Make sure your slides are complementary and not a distraction

Simultaneous use of speech, images and text can increase the cognitive load on your audience. Make sure that your audience focus on listening to your presentation rather than reading it;  slides are there to benefit your audience and not act as a script.

Minimise use of text, be concise and use images which complement and reinforce your points rather than distract from your speech. If you need to use a lot of text then consider moving it onto a hand-out sheet. Watch the following short (5 minute) video on Richard Mayer’s ‘Cognitive Theory of Multmedia Learning’ for more information. Read more ›

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Claudia Eberlein – using a LiveScribe pen

Posted on by Nicholas Botfield
Livescribe pencasts

Livescribe pencasts

To celebrate TEL’s one year blogiversary in conjunction with the recent University’s Teaching and Learning conference, we would like to celebrate examples of innovative teaching practice at the University of Sussex. In this post we will look at the use of a Livescribe pen.

What is a Livescribe pen?

A Livescribe pen uses a camera and a microphone to record what is written (when used with digital paper) and synchronizes the notes with any audio. It creates a ‘pen cast’. The recordings are then stored on the pen and can be imported to Study Direct (Moodle) as a playable pdf file. This means that the students are then able to play the notes as if they were being written live. You can view an example of a Livescribe pencast or watch the short Livescribe video. Read more ›

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Posted in Technology Enhanced Learning

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We are the Educational Enhancement team at the University of Sussex. We publish posts each fortnight about the use of technology to support teaching and learning. Read more about us.

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This work by Educational Enhancement, University of Sussex is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at https://blogs.sussex.ac.uk/tel/.