Shri Footring

Great to see so many colleagues from ACL Essex at the retirement lunch, but very sad to be saying bye to Michael Bowes, Head of ACL Essex.

Adult Community Learning, Essex was a great place to work and I have very happy memories of some wonderful colleagues. Miss working with you all on a day to day basis, and will specially miss Michael, who was a constant source of personal support and encouragement. I don’t want to replicate the speeches or what I wrote on the card, but thank you Michael and everyone else for making my time with Essex so worthwhile and enjoyable.

Probably I was invited to this celebration in my capacity as e-learning advisor specialising in support for ACL (rather than as an ex-employee!). All of us at the JISC RSC Eastern (and beyond) would like to thank Michael for his fabulous support and involvement with our work at county, regional and national level. Enjoy your retirement What a good thing that Essex County Council provides such excellent facilities for the over 50s!

Here are some of the links mentioned at our meeting:

Staff development / The E-Guides Programme:

E-Guides training programme:
http://www.niace.org.uk/Conferences/TrainingCourses/eguides.htm#Programme

All resources used on the E-Guides training courses are available to all, free of charge on the Excellence gateway, and I would definitely recommend a look:
http://teachingandlearning.qia.org.uk/tlp/eguides/

Gadgets:

A review written by my colleague Ben:
http://info.rsc-eastern.ac.uk/news/show_story.asp?nid=359

We also talked about the busbi and flip video cameras. Another colleague has written about those here:
http://kev-brace.blogspot.com/2008/08/gadgetastic.html
Online resources:

NLN Materials: http://www.nln.ac.uk

There is an extensive range of resources on the QIA Excellence Gateway in the Skills for Life section.

Social Networking

Example of a site offering the facility to create your own private social network for the sharing of news and resources:

Ning: http://www.ning.com

General advice and information:

RSC Website: www.rsc-eastern.ac.uk

TechDis Website: www.techdis.ac.uk

eLPS tool: A range of good practice exemaplars as well as a downloadable version of the tool are available from the NIACE website:
http://www.niace.org.uk/exemplars/index.htm

Two days of JISC RSC UK meetings on providing SMT support and e-progress review were extremely useful. Attending the second one at ULCC involved walking past my beloved Bedford Square which brought back many happy (ancient) memories of working in London!

Are the people who learn most from a course the tutors who actually write it? What if learners could re-write the course? Would that enhance their learning? What if content was free, and what really mattered was the quality of support/feedback and accreditation?

A fascinating new idea is due to be trialled at a Univerisity on Thursday 18th September. A group of tutors are planning to have a go at writing an entire course on learning supported by Web 2.0 technologies in one day, at a staff development workshop. It forms part of Schome research into new systems of education. It is a very Open project, so I’m sure they would welcome you if you wanted to join in!

Forum discussion:
http://www.schome.ac.uk/forum/index.php?topic=2599.0

Course page (this will be populated by workshop participants on the 18th Sept):
http://www.schome.ac.uk/wiki/Learning_through_Web_2.0

Discussion on course page:
http://www.schome.ac.uk/wiki/Talk:Learning_through_Web_2.0

Arrived at the Staff Development, Pedagogy or Technology session to find a number of RSC colleagues there already

The UK Profile / family - Access or Inclusion session was possibly the most moving that I have attended. A thought provoking analysis of the digital divide from Rebecca Eynon was followed by a presentation from Vivienne Drake on Sheffield Family e-Learning Project. Well worth a look.

Elluminate recordings from day 3

The reflections session included one of the most exciting examples of using Web 2.0 as an integral part of learning on a course that I have seen. I was spellbound by Helen Keegan’s paper Design principles and learner empowerment in the exploration of the digital self . That class sounded like a lot of fun!

Liked the Skills Clouds.

Also attended the keynote and the invited speakers session.

Elluminate recordings from day 2

Highlights of the day included the launch of the new JISC publication Effective Practice with e-Portfolios 

Would recommend watching the keynote speech by Hans Rosling on Elluminate.

Attended the Games, Reducing barriers, Mobile Learning and of course the Emerge Users and Innovation Reception.

Impossible to attend all the sessions that looked interesting. Happily, managed to catch up on Denise Kirkpatrick’s presentaion on Elluminate afterwards. Would thoroughly recommend that one to anyone interested in Open University’s VLE experiences.

Elluminate recordings from the 9th September

Thanks to Southend Adult Community College for the invitation to speak at the staff conference. Here are some of the links mentioned in my presentation.

Southend ACC Egyptian Dance Video on the QIA Excellence Gateway: http://excellence.qia.org.uk/page.aspx?o=163047

Explore the RSC Eastern WebsiteThe QIA Excellence Gateway: http://excellence.qia.org.uk/

News Section, Learning for Adults: http://excellence.qia.org.uk/page.aspx?o=155802

RSC Eastern: http://www.rsc-eastern.ac.uk

Community Area: http://www.rsc-eastern.ac.uk/RSC_files/community/index.html

Events: http://info.rsc-eastern.ac.uk/events/

NLN Materials: http://www.nln.ac.uk/

JISC Services:

TechDis: http://www.techdis.ac.uk

Netskills: http://www.netskills.ac.uk/content/index.html

JISCmail: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/

Intute: http://www.intute.ac.uk/

NIACE: http://www.niace.org.uk/

E-Guides: http://www.niace.org.uk/Research/ICT/EGuides/programme_delivery.html

E-Guides Training Programme 2008-09: http://www.niace.org.uk/Conferences/TrainingCourses/eguides.htm

“Web 2.0″ and Social Networking Examples

 Examples of sites which list useful tools

Webtools (by Andrew Hill): http://ahi2000.com/studyzone/webtools

Teach Web 2: http://teachweb2.wikispaces.com/

Examples of Wikis

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki

PB Wiki: http://www.pbwiki.com

Example of a Social Networking Site:

Ning: http://www.ning.com

Examples of places you can host a blog:

Wordpress: http://www.wordpress.com

JISC Involve: http://jiscinvolve.org.uk (if you have an email address ending in .ac.uk)

Twitter: http://twitter.com/ (microblog)

Example of Social Bookmarking

RSC Eastern Del.icio.us: http://delicious.com/rsceastern

Example of Photograph Sharing

Flickr: http://flickr.com/

Example of Video Sharing

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/

VideoJug: http://www.videojug.com/

A Few Examples of How Colleagues are using Technology to Enahance Learning:

Bedfordshire and Suffolk RSC Workshop: http://ilt4rarpa.pbwiki.com

West Suffolk College: http://wscelearning.blogspot.com/

Long Road Sixth Form College student Blogs:
http://longroadfilm.co.uk/
http://www.longroadmedia.com/

Languages Blog: http://joedale.typepad.com/integrating_ict_into_the_/

Virtual Worlds:

Second Life^®: http://secondlife.com/whatis

Myerscough College: http://www.rsc-northwest.ac.uk/content/view/577/262/

College of North West Londong (heating and plumbing curriculum): http://excellence.qia.org.uk/162063

Rotherham College of Arts and Technology: http://excellence.qia.org.uk/page.aspx?o=159416

Second Life^® and Virtual Worlds (QIA EG): http://excellence.qia.org.uk/page.aspx?o=156377

Second Life^® Education Wiki: http://simteach.com/wiki/index.php?title=Second_Life_Education_Wiki

Schome: http://www.schome.ac.uk

Education UK: http://www.sleducationuk.net

Not possible in real life: http://npirl.blogspot.com/2008/05/syncretia-revisited-exhuberant-elegance.html

Al-Andalus - a re-creation: http://al-andalus.wetpaint.com/?t=anon