Open world, connected world

Posted on by Nicholas Botfield

Open_Nick_Post

Nick Botfield, Learning Technologist for the Sciences, attended the Academic Practice and Technology (APT) Conference at the University of Greenwich, which focused on how teaching and learning can become more connected.

Waves of change

The conference was organised to ‘provide an opportunity to debate and explore the significant challenges for higher and post-compulsory education and training arising from these waves of rapid change’ (APT). The event promised to ‘be a forum where policy, practice and strategic developments can be explored, discussed and shared by practitioners and researchers in a vibrant and lively atmosphere on the university’s World Heritage Campus’ (APT)(and it did not disappoint). Read more ›

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Posted in External events, Technology Enhanced Learning

Digital, interactive and inclusive?

Posted on by David Walker

Image for MELSIG

Digital media and associated technologies afford many new opportunities to enhance and innovate in teaching and similarly to support and enrich student learning.

Used positively, these technologies can facilitate interaction and active engagement (both within the classroom and beyond), and support the development of learner’s reflective and self-regulatory capabilities. Digital media can be a great enabler for inclusive practice but it can also introduce significant challenges, particularly for individuals working within professional contexts.

Exploring these issues and attempting to address some of these challenges is the focus of a free, one day event being hosted at the University of Sussex by the Media Enhanced Learning Special Interest Group (MELSIG) on Tuesday the 9th of September. Read more ›

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Posted in Technology Enhanced Learning

Future fit: building a digital institution

Posted on by Pete Sparkes

Pete's post

How can recent innovations in educational technology be used to support university life?

This was the essence of  the debate at Building the Digital Institution, a recent conference held by the Centre for Educational Technology, Interoperability and Standards (Cetis).

Pete Sparkes from the Technology Enhanced Learning team traveled to Bolton to explore the issues of e-books and learning statistics.

Meeting digital expectations

Paul Hollins (Cetis Director) put forward the case that both technology and standards have important roles to play in enabling universities to meet the new and growing expectations of students. Phil Richards (JISC Chief Innovation Officer), emphasised the ongoing need to innovate and highlighted that in response to recent educational and economic changes, JISC have altered their focus to ensure that institutions receive value for money. Read more ›

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Posted in External events

Visualize learning: 7 sources for free images

Posted on by Sally Burr
Search help

Find an image using a Creative Commons search

It’s easy enough to find an image using a search engine. Simply type the word ‘orange’ into Google, for example, and 577,000,000 orange-related results are retrieved in just 0.47 seconds.

Which of these results, however, will find you an image rather than a mobile phone contract? Of the results that are images, which ones are freely available for you to use in your work?

The moral of the story is this; it’s easy to find a good image on the internet, but a more refined search is required to find an image that is free to use in:

  • a presentation slide
  • a web page
  • a Study Direct site

To clarify, when we say ‘free’ we mean:

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Posted in Images and Copyright, Technology Enhanced Learning

Language Tutors show and TEL

Posted on by Anne Hole

 

Fruits

A collage made with clipart images and Fotor.

The modern language tutors in the Sussex Centre for Language Studies are great at exploring opportunities to use technology to enhance their students’ learning – and sharing what they are doing with each other.

Anne Hole, the liaison learning technologist for Arts and Humanities was pleased to be involved in a recent ‘Show and TEL’ workshop organised by Belinda Hackney.

Three inspiring tutors showed colleagues what they have been doing with learning technologies and discussed where technology might be able to take their classes in future. Read more ›

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Posted in Technology Enhanced Learning

Remember everything with Evernote

Posted on by Anne Hole

 

Evernote image on t-shirt

Capture, store and organise your digital life

This week we want to introduce you to a great organisation and productivity tool called Evernote.

Evernote is basically a note-making app, but it does much more than that.

With tagging, reminders, sharing and a powerful search capability, it is a great productivity tool for organising projects, study or life in general.

Evernote lets you capture, store and organize material.

 

  • You can type text notes but also create notes by taking a photo, recording audio, attaching files, clipping web pages or emailing material to your evernote email address. On most mobile devices you can also add handwritten notes and diagrams (handwriting is now included in the Android app and can be done using Evernote and Penultimate together on iOS devices).
  • Notes are kept up-to-date across all your devices whether you are using iOS, Android, Blackberry, Windows, a web browser or a combination of the above. You can create a note on your Windows desktop computer at work, add an audio note to using your Android phone on the train and carry on working on it at home on your Mac laptop.
  • You can share notebooks with other people to collaborate on projects.
  • The Evernote system of tags, notes, notebooks and stacks makes it a very flexible environment that you can tailor to your preferred way of working.
  • With checklists and reminder emails it can double up as a to-do list organiser.

    • Read more ›

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Posted in App review, Technology Enhanced Learning

Digital devices take reading back to its social roots

Posted on by Anne Hole

 

e-reader imageWhen I imagine my ideal setting for reading a good book, I think of a comfy chair, a cup of coffee and some soft background music. Your perfect reading situation might be different, but it is likely that what you imagine is solitary.

We are used to reading alone, but this is a relatively recent phenomenon which only became possible because of historical developments in print technology. Now digital technology is creating possibilities for reading to become social again.

The Digital Reading Network symposium held at Bournemouth University on 19th June 2014 covered a wide range of topics related to reading digital texts, but two strong themes were ‘social reading’ and the different affordances of devices. Read more ›

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Posted in Technology Enhanced Learning

Managing your tweets with Tweetdeck

Posted on by Sally Burr
Tweetdeck bird

Tweetdeck bird by Uncalno

Keeping track of your tweets can be a challenge. Twitter can be fast, furious and the constant stream can be overwhelming for new users.

To help you make sense of your Twitter stream you can use a Twitter management tool such as Tweetdeck.

Using Tweetdeck, you can manage your tweets easily, organise them according to interests, and never miss a tweet again. You can even keep tabs on when you are mentioned in Twitter or follow a conversation using a hashtag.

Using TweetDeck is not unlike turbo charging your car – it’s a game changer. 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/.