RSC East Midlands newsletter "intouch" - Spring 2006

intouch

Forthcoming

EVENTS January 27th 30th 31st

The Learning Journey, South Deep and Surface Learning MIS Forum

February 1st 8th

TBA 20th 23rd

LRC Forum & I Skills Meeting Using Mobile and Wireless Technology in Teaching and Learning Specialist Colleges Forum The Learning Journey, North Learning Journey: Next Steps

March 2nd 2nd 3rd 7th 8th 14th 16th 17th 28th

ILT Forum Technical Forum Assessment Effective Management of e-Learning MIS Forum Round 4 NLN Materials for ACL The Learning Journey for Scientists E for Access Tutoring

April 4th 27th 27th

the termly newsletter produced by RSC East Midlands

FOCUS

ON...

The Loughborough College Camel This particular CAMEL is Collaborative Approaches to the Management of e-Learning. It explores the development of a community of practice amongst e-learning practitioners working on aspects of promoting Lifelong Learning.

The project is being undertaken by two FE colleges - Loughborough College and Leeds College of Technology - and two universities – Staffordshire and Greenwich. During the current academic year they are meeting at each institution to exchange ideas, problems and possibilities. Loughborough will share its experience of e-progress files, distance learning in leisure courses, developing a database system to manage learner administration through integrating college systems and accessibility.

The project is run by JISC infoNet, ALT and the HE Academy as part of the HEFCE Leadership, Governance and Management programme.

Ray Heasley is the Manager of Knowledge Systems at Loughborough College and leads the project there. He says, “We have enjoyed the diversity of approaches, meeting a variety of people and reflecting on what we are doing

Hints

and

ourselves. We have learned that e-learning has a benefit for a particular setting rather than being an end in itself.”

Although the project acronym was originally unintentional there is a parallel between camels and e-learning: they both make something happen in places where it would not otherwise be possible. Members of the team were inspired by the Oxfam Unwrapped initiative which offered the opportunity to buy a camel for a community in Africa. By suggesting the sending of donations rather than Christmas cards, the project team eventually raised enough to buy 3 camels, a calf, a donkey, and, to support education in the community, 300 school dinners, a school desk and chair and some training in modern methods and techniques for a teacher.

For more details of the CAMEL project, go to www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/camel/index_html or contact Ray at ray.heasley@loucoll.ac.uk. For the real camel, go to OXFAM unwrapped, at www.oxfamunwrapped.com

Tips:

Windows Movie Maker Movie Maker might sound exotic and expensive but if you have Windows XP® you already have it! It is a very useful addition to multimedia, probably the easiest video editor available today and it’s free. Try it and you may be surprised how easy it is.

Limitations are that • only wmv, avi and mpeg files are supported • flash cannot be imported One advantage is that files are highly compressed - a 30 MB file will reduce to around 8 MB. There are options to add transitions, titles, and 2-D special effects.

Staff Development and ILT Strategy Managing Learning Activities using LAMS Hard and Soft Skills

For further details see our website

www.rsc-east-midlands.ac.uk

The interface shows the preview pane on the right and the Storyboard/Timeline at the bottom.

Having imported clips into Movie Maker you can edit on to the storyboard. Clips are dragged onto the timeline and sound can then be added.

Movie Maker allows you to preview in real time.

Volume 4 • Issue 2

Spring 2006

Welcome from the Editor I N S I D E Here at the RSC we are always considering ways in which we can usefully extend our support to the sector and recently we have been discussing how we might support learning providers who are involved in the rebuilding, refurbishment, or relocation of existing premises.

We are currently undertaking an audit of such work going on in the region and are planning an event in May that will enable colleagues to share their experiences and disseminate good practice. If you would like to contribute to this event, please get in touch.

All RSCs will soon begin supporting providers to improve information security practices and James Higham our Technical Advisor, has already undertaken training to enable us to offer this support in our region. See the article on page 3 for more information.

Finally, we will be running our second regional e-fair on 22 June 2006. You won’t want to miss it, so put the date in your diary now! If you would like to contribute to the event, either by delivering a workshop, or by helping out in some other way, then please do get in touch.

Judi Millage, ILT Advisor (and very temporary editor)!

This issue Welcome Hinwick Hall College of Further Education: Accessible Entertainment Your place or ours?

On-site Training from Netskills RNIB College Loughborough: Moving on to Daisy Round 4 NLN Materials for ACL RSC Information Security Services The HE Academy: Supporting HE in FE Forthcoming events Focus on: The Loughborough College Camel Hints and Tips: Windows Movie Maker

Hinwick Hall College of Further Education: Accessible Entertainment In a residential college, the use of technology involving the delivery of music and video is a major part of the students’ spare time activities.

At Hinwick Hall, staff have often modified students’ own PCs so that those who use communicators or other access equipment can choose and control their own entertainment and these facilities are usually a great attraction for other students. The trouble is that when students leave they take all the equipment with them and it’s not available for the next generation.

The College’s ‘Straightforward Interface Project’ aims to solve this problem and provide extra accessible resources in classrooms as well. The production of four mobile accessible entertainment stations is being funded by the College’s successful Innovation fund bid. Each station will be a robust PC mounted in a mobile cabinet with wireless connection to the college’s network. The cabinets will have touch screens on a long extendible arm as well as radio keyboards and mice and will be able to accept control from the communication facilities built into students’ communication devices.

If you want to include PowerPoint® slides, then download a free copy of MS Producer: http://www.microsoft.com/office/powerpoint/producer/prodinfo/default.mspx This is essentially the same interface with the slide feature added to the timeline.

During the working day the cabinets will be available anywhere in the College and accessible by a very wide range of students. They will supplement the existing facilities providing the ability to project the screen onto the wall. In the evening the device will really come into its own. Moved into any of the communal or residential areas it will be able to deliver students’ own music from its amplifiers and will deliver music videos and films owned by the students through its screen or through a built in digital projector for larger groups of students.

Martin Cooke, ILT Advisor John Sewell, TechDis

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RSC Information Security Services

Your place or ours?

RSCs will soon begin supporting providers to improve information security practices…

On-site Training from Netskills As well as delivering a programme of public workshops at venues across the UK, Netskills can provide on-site training specifically for your organisation. This is a highly cost-effective way to train groups of staff.

Key Benefits On site training: • maximises staff development opportunities by bringing the trainers to the participants • makes more efficient use of participants’ time and skills • provides cost-benefits by reducing travelling time and expenses • offers peace of mind: Netskills attend to the professional needs of your staff, produce all the required training materials and ensure each workshop runs smoothly Workshops Available You can book any one of the Netskills range of workshops, covering topics including:

Information skills; e-Learning; e-Assessment; Mobile learning; Plagiarism detection and deterrence; Web site development; Internet security and legal issues; Database integration

During this academic year James Higham from the East Midlands RSC and a number of other RSC Technical Advisers are undertaking BSI Information security auditor training in order to better support learning providers with their information security requirements.

Customised Training Programmes

James is one of the RSC Technical Advisers who have already gained certification as an auditor in ISO27001:2005. They are planning a range of support activities which will benefit learning providers who have a willingness to improve their security practices or knowledge. These will include:

Netskills can also customise workshops and build flexible training programmes to meet your specific needs. Packages can include: • Training needs analysis • Organising and delivering training • Arranging BTEC accreditation for participants • Supplying training material for cascade training • Help towards OFSTED Inspections

Most institutions now rely heavily on information systems to support and drive their key business processes. Consequently, such systems are increasingly subject to audit to ensure that they are being managed effectively and that the integrity of the information they hold is being maintained. The Information security standard ISO 27001:2005 (previously known as BS 7799) is frequently used as the basis for many such audits.

• Onsite advice in information security • Website guidance and resources • Online Information Security knowledge development course

Further Details For more information, including costs and enquiry forms, see the Netskills institutionbased workshops page: http://www.netskills.ac.uk/workshops/ibw/

It is also planned to develop a direct information security health check service. This will be in pilot phase during the next few months, and it is envisaged that it will become a national RSC technical service during the next academic year.

If you would like to register your interest in any of these potential services or would like some support in Information security please contact James here at the RSC. Noel McDaid, RSC Northern Ireland

RNIB College Loughborough: Moving on to Daisy The RNIB Vocational College at Loughborough, in common with most colleges catering for students with visual impairment, has used tape recorders for years to provide information and course materials for their students.

The students use a standard tape player controlled by a footswitch. For some time the college has been making the recordings using digital technology but they have had to be turned back into tape format for the students to use because none of the conventional media players operate in the independent way that a tape player does. Every time the user wants to hear something he or she has to change the focus on the PC to the player and then change it back to the document or application they are working on.

The new standard in ‘talking books’ - called the DAISY format allows users to navigate through the structure of a document easily

The College’s successful Innovation bid is being used to bring the advantages of DAISY materials to learners. The College is working with a software company who produce a successful DAISY reader to make it work in the background with footswitches and across the college network. The college will also update their existing audio materials to take advantage of the features available in the new format using a utility written for the purpose. Staff training will take place across the college to ensure the advantages of the new format are available to all students.

For the College this will be the biggest change in learning methods since the college was opened and will radically enhance the way that learning materials can be used. The use of the new format offers significant advantages to those with all kinds of reading difficulties as well as the visually impaired.

John Sewell, Techdis

Round 4 NLN Materials for ACL The development of Round 4 NLN materials has created e-learning materials specifically for the ACL sector in the following subject areas: • • • •

Family learning Making learning work for you Modern foreign languages English for speakers of other languages (ESOL)

workshops will focus on how learning objects can support teaching and learning and participants will opt to join a group specialising in one of the four topic areas. Further information can be found at www.aclearn.net or you can contact Sharon Hutchings, ACL adviser at the JISC RSC East Midlands for details.

Sharon Hutchings, ACL Advisor

A series of subject e-learning workshops is being organised by NIACE to support the use of the new materials. These one day

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The HE Academy: Supporting HE in FE

and allows students to put in bookmarks to mark their place.

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It surprises many people that over one in ten higher education students in England, Wales and Northern Ireland are taught in further education colleges. With lifelong learning, widening participation, foundation degrees and links between the sectors firmly on the educational agenda, that figure is set to rise.

The JISC Regional Support Centres (RSCs) began supporting HE courses taught in colleges in 2003. Nationally, the RSC HE Advisers have been working with the HE Academy, who now have funding for FE support.

The senior adviser for the new HEFCE initiative, based at the HE Academy headquarters in York is Colin Rainey.

He has been busy making the connections and brokering the partnerships on which the success of the three-year £0.5m initiative will depend. ‘One of the key things that we need to do,’ he explains, ‘is to make the sector more coherent and to get the key agencies working together. There are a lot of organisations working in the field who are all doing good work, but we need to improve coherence and

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communications so that we can add value to the work being done in colleges. We’re working with the JISC Plagiarism Advisory Service, TechDis, the RSCs of course, and others to improve this coherence and join our work up.’

Disseminating examples of good practice is another important area where the RSCs will help. ‘People’s most precious commodity is time,’ says Colin, ‘and so we should avoid reinventing the wheel and make the most of what each of us is doing.’

The Academy is in the process of recruiting subject specialists at six of its subject centres. ‘For example,’ he continues, ‘one of them will be based at City College Norwich, linked to the subject centre at Oxford Brookes. These

new specialists will be people who have credibility in the college sector.’

One of the key challenges facing HE students in FE colleges is ensuring they have the same level of access to resources as those at HE colleges or universities. Colin Rainey agrees that this is a challenge in general for the sector. ‘Perhaps the single most important characteristic of the further education sector is its diversity,’ he says. ‘Some of the biggest colleges are more like universities, with dedicated staff for particular activities. This is far from the case for the smaller colleges.

So they may need more support. The RSCs, with their close knowledge of individual colleges, and in partnership with others, therefore have an important role to play in supporting HE in FE.’ For more information on how the Academy is supporting HE in FE, visit http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/1008.htm Philip Pothen (adapted from an original article in the latest edition of JISC Inform)

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