intouch
the termly newsletter produced by RSC East Midlands
COLLEGE
Forthcoming
EVENTS
FOCUS
October 28th
Newark and Sherwood College
ILT Forum
Smart use of Smart Technology: The NELI Project
November 6th 10th 19th 24th-25th 26th 27th
Technical Forum MIS Forum Project Management Ferl Annual Conference LRC Forum Microsoft Technology Day
9th 11th
otherwise be justified. Equally a pupil in the
strong links between its schools and the college.
secondary school may attend college (or visa versa)
NELI (Newark Extended Learning Initiative) aims to
with a laptop and still be able to draw on personal
develop further cooperation and teamwork by
files or shared resources located on their school’s
promoting and encouraging better use of ICT across
own network.
the full spectrum of education and training.
December 2nd
Newark and district boasts good relationships and
Freedom of Information & Records Management Using ILT in Health & Social Care Plagiarism & Electronic Copyright Workshops
Importantly NELI has a role in the proof of concept.
Based in Newark & Sherwood College, NELI is a
We have an enormous opportunity to evaluate
team of education and ICT specialists together with
different ways of doing things. As the technologies
extensive business experience promoting the
emerge, schools and businesses fitted out later in the
benefits of e-learning. Our primary aim is to
project
encourage resource sharing, developing skills and
infrastructures and methods of working than those at
training teachers, tutors and trainers in effective use
the beginning. The key is that all will have the same
of the technologies. We are not limiting ourselves to
connectivity to shared resources.
the schools and college: the private, public and voluntary sectors are also key partners in this project.
January
may
have
significantly
different
NELI relies on collaboration & cooperation between partnership approach between North Nottinghamshire
training but the project is providing the ICT
Learning
infrastructure to enjoy seamless communication.
Council and the Learning and Skills Council.
Partnership,
Nottinghamshire
Sharing is crucial to the success of NELI; the team
enabling both children and parents to benefit from
shared between schools, or being able to employ a
Melvin Millard, NELI e-learning Team Leader
For further details see our website
specialist teacher, the costs of whom could not
mmillard@newark.ac.uk 01636 680680 x 277
14th
21st
home education opportunities with school laptops. It is possible for teachers to visit another school, to logon and be able to access resources or their pupil’s records from their own school. This suggests the possibility of “teacher sharing”: the costs of teachers
As the new academic year gets underway, I am pleased to announce that RSC East Midlands has been granted JISC funding for another three years. This will enable us to continue to work alongside you all, offering you guidance and support as the use of ILT becomes more widespread in the teaching and learning process. On a personal note, I am particularly happy to be given the opportunity to continue to build on the excellent working relationships I have formed with so many of you and I hope to replicate this as our remit expands to include support for specialist colleges and higher education, in particular small HEIs. I’d like to take this opportunity to wish you all success in the coming year and if we can be of help in any way please do get in touch. As always, if you have any comments about this newsletter, or you would like to contribute an article, perhaps for the College Focus section of the next newsletter, email us at support@rsc-east-midlands .ac.uk Judi Millage, ILT Advisor
welcomes contact from interested parties, whether it
Meet the new Manager
is for more information, or sharing expertise and experience or suggestions on how we may continue to push the barriers of e-learning for the benefit of the whole learning community.
www.rsc-east-midlands.ac.uk
INSIDE This issue
Welcome Meet the new Manager The Technical Advisory Service for Images: An introduction JISC Services: What’s on offer? RDN Virtual Training Suite: Five new internet tutorials for FE students Specialist Colleges Connect to JANET University for Industry
County
Using the Internet for Learning & Teaching in FE E-learning: Creating, Converting & Re-using content with VLEs Using ILT in PE & Sport Science
13th
Welcomefrom the Editor
many institutions with its foundations in a strong
NELI not only promotes resource sharing and
Wireless networks have been designed to be “leaky”,
Autumn Volume 1 • Issue 4
Forthcoming Events College Focus: Newark and Sherwood College
Hints & Tips: Investigate your College She came up to me when I was having a coffee before the weekly expedition Internet Connectivity Problems around Sainsbury’s. “You won’t remember me,” she said, “but you were my economics tutor twenty years ago. I’d decided to give up my A level course and get a job, but you told me that if I wanted to go to university later, I could. That stuck in my mind, and now I’ve decided to go for it. I start next week. I just wanted to say thank you for what you said.” And she walked away.
s
It’s because teaching touches lives that I work in education. I come to East
I see the RSC as the one-stop-shop for ILT support. As well as providing support
Midlands RSC from City of Bath College where I was ILT Development
ourselves, it is our job to make sure colleges can take full advantage of the
Leader and subject leader for teacher training courses, responsible for the
widespread services, materials and resources that are available. This year, in
Investigate your College Internet Connectivity Problems
development and implementation of ILT strategy. I have
addition to maintaining and refining the full range of curriculum, managerial
also recently worked with City & Guilds as a verifier,
and technical services we currently offer – helpdesk, web site, mailing lists,
Edexcel, FENTO and the LSDA as E-Learning Support
forums, site visits, training, events, newsletter and more – we will focus on:
H
i
n
t
s
Netsight is a JANET monitoring service developed by UKERNA. It allows colleges to investigate their own Internet connectivity problems.
&
T
i
p
Once logged in, the Netsight system greets the user with three main choices:
with BBC.co.uk, then it would be quite likely that one of the transatlantic nodes were non-operational.
The service consists of a number of small monitoring stations deployed at set points around the edge of the JANET backbone, one for each of the JANET regional networks. The East Midlands Metropolitan Area Network runs the monitoring system in our region. The EMMAN constantly monitors JANET’s links to the Internet and to the local regional network.
1. Backbone: this monitors the performance of the whole of JANET. This information is made available in both tabular and graphical formats. If any of the nodes here were displaying the ‘connection down’ symbol then this would explain any regional connection difficulties. For example you may be able to reach a college down south, but if any of the northern Metropolitan Area Networks were ‘down’ you would experience problems connecting to anything in the northern region.
The Netsight website can be found at http://nottingham.netsight.ja.net. The information specific to your college is protected by a unique username and password. If you are unsure of your username details, please contact either JANET Customer Service (mailto:service@ukerna.ac.uk) or RSC East Midlands (support@rsc-east-midlands.ac.uk).
2. External: this monitors the performance of JANET’s links to the rest of the Internet, such as the circuits to the US and the connection to the LINX (London Internet Exchange). Here would be the first place to check if you were having problems connecting to sites overseas. For example if you couldn’t connect to Microsoft.com, but had no problems
3. Regional: this monitors the performance and traffic levels on all the JANET customer access links within the local regional network. The information collected, covering traffic levels, packet loss and latency, is tailored and made available to each individual college. To access this information you have to be logged into Netsight. Once logged in an option to display ‘Your Sites’ appears in the Regional section. This information is useful because firstly it allows the user to see whether their college can actually see the ‘outside world’ at all. Secondly, by clicking on ‘Traffic’ it can notify a college of any abnormal network activity. And thirdly by clicking on ‘Reliability’, any downtime or dropouts in connectivity can be inspected and subsequently investigated.
Network Co-ordinator for the south west. • the newly launched FERL Practitioner’s Programme To me, ILT is not an end in itself but a tool in the toolkit available to teachers, support staff and managers. It is just another tool, to be selected when appropriate, but with a particular strength in giving learners ownership of their learning, so that it really
• more subject specific events • access to the full range of National Learning Network services • the connection of specialist colleges to the internet through JANET
is student centred. ILT makes learning
Outside of work, I choose to spend time exploring landscapes and making
more accessible to more people and
music. I play keyboards, including the pipe organ, and do a bit of choral
enables it to be tailored to the needs of
conducting. I look forward to working with you to ensure that our students
each learner.
can make the choices they want.
Chris Bell, e-Information Officer
w w w. r s c - e a s t - m i d l a n d s . a c . u k
• the needs of HE students both in FE and HE colleges
Chris Hill, RSC Manager
w w w. r s c - e a s t - m i d l a n d s . a c . u k