RSC NewsFeed

Image Door and Grapevine, Assos by tallguyuk from Flickr used under Creative Commons.

We’re almost there and here it is, the final version of NewsFeed for this session. You may be looking forward to turning the key in the lock and closing the door on 2009-10 (while you contemplate dropping down to a different gear for a few weeks) but the pace of technology never slackens and this month has been no exception to that rule. In fact, this edition is so hot you’ll need your shades on to read it.

Here you’ll find news from the JISC, as usual, and updates on the latest in e-assessment and accessibility. We report on a Scottish success at the Chelsea Flower Show (that most English of institutions) and take a close look at a webcam you can build yourself without breaking the bank.

We have features that will interest staff in travel and tourism and food prep and a feature which listens in to the latest developments in audio software online (extending a trend which has marked this year’s collection of NewsFeeds). We have a competition from JORUM, online office apps from Microsoft and ‘born digital’, a glimpse into the future of of the ancient art of storytelling.

The mix as usual then, sourced from all points of the digital compass which brings us neatly back to the subject of travel and the vacation to come. We’ll be back in early September with the first issue of NewsFeed for next session and if there’s anything you’d like is to feature in the coming academic year then please let us know using the comment facility. If fact, you’re welcome to use the same channel if you have any comment on any item in this issue.

So thanks to all our readers across Scotland’s colleges and far beyond. Sit back and relax as the delights of NewsFeed unfold….

JISC
JISC Awards: Green Computing & Outstanding ICT
PowerDown from University of Liverpool wins the Green Gown Award for ICT and the OU wins a THE Award for OpenLearn
Additional e-book Titles for FE
Titles in the e-Select Top 100 Collection have been selected according to their relevance to FE and provide demonstrable discounts for colleges
New Website from JISC Collections
Enhanced resources catalogue and online ordering service are just a couple of the features available on the new site
JorumOpen: A Quick Overview and Competition Details
Open repository for educational content under a Creative Commons licence, and a chance to win cash prizes for innovative learning resources

Technology Focus
DIY Webcam Close-up
RSC Scotland N&E comes up with a simple solution for those looking to provide close-up demonstrations in your teaching

Assessment
SQA e-Assessment Update
Training available for those looking to take advantage of the SQA’s Deskspace e-Portfolio solution
Scottish e-Assessment Awards 2010
Submit your entry for this year’s Scottish e-Assessment Awards which highlights best practice and innovation in the country – part of the eAssessment Scotland conference
The ‘Martini Model’ Extends to Exams
Secure assessment solutions to support the ‘anytime, anywhere, anyone’ model of assessment

Online
Free Web-based Office Applications now Available from Microsoft
Microsoft releases the beta version of its own free online versions of Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote
‘Inanimate Alice’ – The Future of Digital Storytelling?
The story of a young girl growing up in the first half of the 21st century told in a way that wasn’t really possible before the 21st century
Live Web – Insert & View Web Pages Live in PowerPoint
Insert web pages into PowerPoint and refresh pages in real-time so you don’t have to go outside your presentation

Accessibility
The British Assistive Technology Association
RSC Scotland North & East recently becomes an associate member of the British Assistive Technology Association (BATA)
Guidance for Staff Working with Disabled Learners
Guides that deal with issues such as skills, knowledge and understanding that staff need to appropriately support learners with additional support needs

Resources
Sound Investments: Audio Software
Full mixing desk with over 50 simulated musical instruments, streaming MP3s, and sharing your content with others
Internet Research Skills
Internet for Food Safety is a free online tutorial to help university students develop their Internet research skills

Misc
SAC Wins at Chelsea and the Gardening Scotland – Can You Do Better?
A hearty congratulations to SAC and a set of online resources to set to work on your own gardens
Oddcast Widgets: Putting YOU in the Movies
‘fully-functioning, embeddable applications’ which allow you to insert an image into a recognisable piece of video
YouTube Adds Online Video Editor
Browser-based editing making it easy to add existing videos, trim clips, add a new soundtrack before republishing at a click of a button

Travel
Trains & Boats & Planes
Monitor live aircraft traffic flying through European airspace, follow Tube trains in the London underground, or find cheap train tickets
Your Face in Space
Send your face and your image into space on board one of the final two shuttle flights
TripWow: Make a Travel Slideshow In Minutes
Map out your journey and supplement with images and nuggets from your travel journals, or share your experiences in a travel guide

Snippets
Final Cut: June Snippets
Online drawings, 3D models, strip the audio from YouTube videos, open clipart and a succinct explanation of the Creative Commons licence

The Scottish e-Assessment Awards 2010*, recognise excellence and innovation in using e-Assessment, to improve the educational experience of learners.

Organised by the UK’s e-Assessment Assocation and JISC Regional Support Centre Scotland North & East, the Awards are offered in the following categories:

• Formative e-Assessment
• Summative e-Assessment
• e-Portfolio/ePDP
• Mobile e-Assessment
• Facilitating e-Assessment
• Innovation

Entries for the Awards are being accepted now, with a deadline of 16th August for submissions. All entries for the Awards must be submitted to SeAA@rsc-ne-scotland.ac.uk using the Submission Form available here.

The following criteria will be used by the judges to guide them in the evaluation of submitted entries:

1. Has a positive impact on learning and teaching
2. Demonstrates sound design principles
3. Supports and promotes inclusive practice
4. Engages and motivates the learner

When completing the submission form, please show how your entry matches the above criteria, giving more detail where there is a strong link with a particular criterion. The judging panel must be satisfied that the entry is of high quality, and offers significant benefits that differentiate it from other similar entries.

There may be a case where a submission technically qualifies for two categories – for example a formative assessment delivered through a mobile platform. In such as situation, submitting parties are encouraged to select the most relevant category. A single submission cannot be entered into multiple categories.

Winners will be announced at this year’s (free!) eAssessment Scotland conference, on the 3rd September at the University of Dundee. Last few remaining places available for this event – so if you’re planning on attending the UK’s largest annual e-Assessment conference, register your place now!

* The Awards are open to entrants who have developed products/processes in Scotland, or are using products/processes within a Scottish institution.

Click here to visit the Scottish e-Assessment Awards 2010 website

View the 2009 Winners here

 ROC Music Creator

RoC is part of the very impressive (and very free!) Aviary Suite of audio-visual software which already includes an impressive image and audio editor in its armoury. This latest addition brings a full mixing desk right to your desktop which will simulate over 50 musical instruments including piano, guitars and drums. Music loops and ring tones are easy to construct and you can add in your own vocals or voice overs. As with the rest of the Aviary suite, Roc Music Creator is well worth checking out.

IRADEO

Having honed your musical pieces to perfection now you want to share them with the world and this can be done by streaming MP3 files for free using a new tool called iradeo.  Sign up for the free service and it won’t be long before you can stream audio to the world. For a fuller introduction check out this article on makeuseof.com.

QLIPBOARD

Impossible to pronounce the name, maybe, but potentially this is a very useful addition to the audio store cupboard. With the free version of QlipBoard you can bring together images and sound, add text and annotate it, record a narration and share the finished product with your students (or with the world). Click here to check it out.

The RSC Scotland North & East recently became an associate member of the British Assistive Technology Association (BATA).

BATA aims to raise awareness of assistive technology and offers a range of resources to keep its members up-to-date via a newsletter and forum.

A basic membership is free (although you need to pay for a full membership) but provides access to many resources, plus it’s a great way to network and keep in touch.

To visit the BATA site and find our more click here.

Last week, RSC Scotland North & East ran a Hairdressing/Beauty Therapy event, where we had been asked to come up with  a idea for lecturers who wanted to demonstrate processes such as nail manicures, but were running into problems with large numbers of students crowding around a small space to watch their lecturers.

The solution that we presented on the day was fairly simple – a standard webcam (£12) attached to an anglepoise-like lamp stand (£15), which could then project a video image to a projector in the class. This meant that students could watch demonstrations from a reasonable distance, without missing out on any of the detail.

Another advantage was that all the action could be recorded for playback later and a mic on the webcam allowed for narration to be added at the same time. We used the Microsoft Moviemaker software which is installed with all copies of Windows for video capture and editing, and explored how the content could be uploaded to sites like YouTube, where it relatively simple to restrict access to your class, add annotations and even invite students to add their own comments.

If you’re interested in trying to do this yourself, my advice would be to look for an adjustable lampstand which is reasonable stable – it’s a little annoying to have the camera gradually droop as you record the session. The stand I’m using here had screws which could be tightened to fix the camera in a particualr position.

The webcam had an autofocus function which was useful, a 2.0 megapixel sensor (though 1.3 would be fine) and came with a bult-in mic. The most important thing is to ensure that you have a long enough cable to give you some freedom when positioning the camera to get your perfect shot.

If I have some time later, I’ll upload an example to YouTube of the kind of content you can create and add a link to the comments below.

I was lucky enough to attend the Chelsea Flower show this year, where I discovered that students from the Scottish Agricultural College had won a Silver for their Sustainable Highland Garden – an excellent achievement for the first time entrants! As you can imagine, there were a lot of people attending on the day, but I managed to quickly speak to Alan Boyd, one of the students who was on hand to describe their winning entry – apologies for the shaky video footage and nervous giggling, I’d drank a lot of coffee by that point…

Not content with their win at Chelsea, the students also presented at this year’s Gardening Scotland event and won a Gold! All of us here at RSC Scotland North & East are delighted that the team did so well and are looking forward to see what they come up with next year!

Suitably enthused, it also got us here in the office thinking about what we could be doing over the summer in our own patches of green. So we’ve come up with few online tools (well this is Newsfeed after all) that might help with any gardening improvements you might have planned…

BBC Gardening
The BBC are always a good source of online material – and their Gardening site is no expection. We recommend that you try out their Virtual Garden as a useful tool to plan a garden without getting your hands dirty!

Royal Horticultural Society
As well as organising the world’s most famous Flower Show, the RHS run a popular gardening forum, My Garden. It’s free to register  – you don’t need to be a member of the society and gardeners from all around the world are online to offer advice and tips.

My Gardening Guide
There are a number of online resources for gardening, but the Plant Encylopedia on the My Gardening Guide site seems particularly comprehensive with nearly 40,000 plants. You can search by any number of options including scientific name, common name, and plant category.

If you happen to know of any other online resources – then please let us know by leaving a comment below. Right, time to do some digging… where did I leave my virtual shovel?

The National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (NIACE) has published two guidance documents for lecturing and support staff working with disabled learners.

Working in consultation with stakeholders, teachers, learning support staff and disabled learners, the documents deal with issues such as skills, knowledge and understanding that staff need to appropriately support learners with additional support needs.

To find out more and download the guidance documents select this link.

The DeskSpace e-portfolio is available to all SQA Skills for Work candidates and is currently available to centres free of charge.

DeskSpace allows candidates to record their course evidence online, keeping everything together and accessible to teachers/tutors and assessors even when they are at more than one centre.   As well as uploading and submitting work, candidates can complete the Skills for Work NAB assessments online and the user friendly interface helps candidates structure their learning through the use of online templates. Feedback on the system has been very positive and more and more centres are offering this support to their candidates.

Deskspace Mobile

In addition, ‘Deskspace Mobile’ is currently being trialled in schools as part of a small-scale pilot.   Candidates are able to use their mobile phones to record evidence such as pictures and videos of practical activities for their Skills for Work courses, which can be sent straight to their e-portfolio account from their mobile phone. This is aimed to improve access to the e-portfolio where the practicalites of a skills for work course mean that there isnt always a computer to hand, and will allow pupils to record their learning immediately when out in the field. Deskspace Mobile will be available from August 2010 on a range of mobile platforms.

Training and Support

Training is available for all tutors wishing to offer DeskSpace to their candidates.  An online course is available on SQA Academy which tells you all you need to know to get started, while there are also face-to-face training sessions held throughout the year by an SQA Learning Technologist.  We are also happy to run a training session at your centre for ten or more tutors.

New training dates at the SQA offices in Glasgow have now been confirmed as follows:

• 31 August 13:00 – 15:00
• 8 September 13:00 – 15:00
• 17 September 13:00 – 15:00

The training is aimed at teachers/tutors delivering the Skills for Work course and wishing to use the DeskSpace e-portfolio, however it can also be a useful overview for management staff or centre IT staff. The trainer will introduce you to the DeskSpace e-portfolio and cover the key features of the system, as well as explain the registration process. There will also be opportunity for a question and answer session. A training event on Solar e-assessment will be held in the morning of the above dates. If you are interested in attending the morning session please note this in your e-mail to book a place or obtain further information.

To register your interest or book a place on a training session, or to obtain access to the online SQA Academy course please e-mail esf@sqa.org.uk.

How to sign up

The requirement for access to the SQA DeskSpace e-portfolio is to attend at least the online or face-to-face training course. Details of how to register candidates on the system will be supplied during the training. However, if you have any questions about the registration process please contact esf@sqa.org.uk.

Learning Technologist event 30 June

In order to further support the tutors using the system we are holding an information event for learning technologists and technical support staff in colleges on the afternoon of Wednesday 30 June at the SQA offices in Glasgow.

The event will run through what the tutors have learned so far, as well as time for LTs to explore the system and ask questions.

Other technologies available will also be shown, such as SQA GamesSpace (a 3D environment for assessment in selected SfW courses) and the SQA Academy which hosts an online training course on Deskspace. The event will last 2 hours with plenty time for questions and answers and there will be an opportunity to meet other technical support staff implementing the Deskspace e-portfolio. There is no cost to attend and refreshments will be provided.  Places can be booked through Donna Hamilton, ESF Adminstrator at Donna.Hamilton@sqa.org.uk

Further information

See the Skills for Work website for further information at http://www.sqa.org.uk/sqa/36536.html

Slimber.com is an online drawing application. It allows users to draw online, replay and save their drawings. Users can rate, comment and share drawings.

Download Sculptris if you want to make 3D models right there on your desktop. This trailer explains all.

Now you can take your favourite Youtube videos and convert them over to MP3 at no cost by using MakeItMP3.com.

The Open Clip Art Library project aims to create an archive of Clip Art which is placed in the public domain and therefore free for any use.

Thanks to the consistently excellent Free Technology for Teacher for this pointer to a succinct explanation of exactly what’s meant by Creative Commons.

The E-books for FE project has made approximately 3,000 e-book titles freely available to FE colleges across the UK, via the Ebrary platform. JISC Collections have recently announced the availability of an additional collection of titles available for purchase, allowing colleges to supplement their existing e-books provision. The titles in the e-Select Top 100 Collection have been selected according to their relevance to FE and provide demonstrable discounts for colleges.