Shri Footring

The comprehensive conference website is complemented by an active forum where you can find links to recordings of the main presentations.

http://info.rsc-eastern.ac.uk/events/event_details.asp?eid=607

RSC West Midlands have set up a regional forum to support those interested in learning and teaching in virtual worlds. The forum, which meets once a month, provides an opportunity for the showcasing of regional projects as well as a chance for all to have a conversation about emerging themes, issues and developments.

An announcement was made that RSC West Midlands are to purchase their own island to enhance their support for learning providers in the region.

The day included presentations from the following:

Wolverhampton University
Virtual Worlds Watch
The British Council
BKSB (NeverWinter Nights)
Wolverhampton University, Kriti Island
Daden Limited
Geminix Ltd
The Theatron Project
Skills in Services
Worcester University

There were also some informal updates including one from Staffordshire University and another from a group of Leverhulme Trust funded PhD students at Coventry University who are developing theoretical models for socio cultural aspects of virtual world interactions. http://cuba.coventry.ac.uk/leverhulme/

The muve blog was also announced, and participation invited:

http://muve.jiscinvolve.org

Many thanks to Jane Edwards and the RSC West Midlands team for the invitation to attend this event. It was extremely useful for me to be able to learn more about activities in the region and meet the people involved.

Virtual Worlds Mailing List: http://jiscmail.ac.uk/virtualworlds

For reasons which have now become obscure, the twitter tag for this event was #jiscfrisk (and occassionally #jiskfrisk). See related tweets below:

http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23jiscfrisk

http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23jiskfrisk

This week, I have been involved in two RSC Eastern online events: “Blogs, Wikis and more: Web 2.0 demystified”, one for information professionals on the 23rd February, and then again for learning and teaching professionals on the 25th February.

We’ve had some great feedback, and our trainer for both days, Marieke Guy has blogged about her experiences here:

http://remoteworker.wordpress.com/2009/02/25/squirmy-creatures-my-first-online-presentation/

 All resources from the event are available from our website:
http://info.rsc-eastern.ac.uk/events/event_details.asp?eid=616

We hope to offer more online events in the coming months. Look out for the next one, an ACL / WBL Briefing coming up on the 12th May:

http://info.rsc-eastern.ac.uk/events/event_details.asp?eid=600

The JISC Legal Toolkit (materials) from the Web 2.0 Legal Senior Management events is now available: http://www.jisclegal.ac.uk/Web2.

The document “Web 2.0 and the Law for FE Policy Makers” includes suggested wording for policy statements and is particularly straightforward and valuable.

Cambridgeshire E-Guides
I was delighted to meet with Cambridgeshire E-Guides in Cambourne on the 13th October.

This was the title of the presentation given by Terry Loane at our ACL e-learning forum on the 10th October. It is considerably snappier than what I had originally put in may email which was something like “Successful strategies for gaining tangible benefits from investments made in technology and staff development” !!

He expressed this idea even more concisely as “Making it happen!“.

He went on to talk about seven strategies which really work in practice:

1. Staff first, then learners
2. Make the most of enthusiasts
3. Think about Moore’s Chasm
4. Provide ‘quick wins’ that make life easier
5. Provide ongoing support for staff
6. Go for the cheap and cheerful approach
7. Don’t waste time writing an e-learning strategy! (The key words here being  waste time,  writing and e-learning! Terry explained how all organisation need a strategy, but ‘e-learning’ is not something which exists in isolation - it is part of everything else which happens in the organisation, so references to it would appear in all other strategies such as teaching and learning, staff development, estates and so on.

The full presentation is available from our website.

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