RSC NewsFeed

A clever tool bar designed to help students with literacy difficulties to interact with text on screen is helping schools, universities and colleges to save money across the UK and internationally.

MyStudyBar is the latest initiative from the JISC Regional Support Centre Scotland North & East and consists of a collection of freeware and open source software specially selected to help students with literacy difficulties (planning, reading, writing, vision and voice). Although MyStudyBar is designed to support learners with literacy-related difficulties such as dyslexia, the toolbar can offer potential benefits to all learners.

Thousands of downloads from as far afield as New Zealand and Australia equal savings of more than half a million pounds as the commercially equivalent price of the applications on a single MyStudyBar download is around £120. Garth Ritchie from the Ministry of Education, New Zealand, comments that the package “will make it easier to get assistive technology to the students in schools for whom it would not be considered otherwise. [JISC’s] work has direct spinoffs for inclusive education around the world.”

The tool bar includes a range of tools to support inclusion such as mind mapping, screen masking, word prediction, talking dictionary, text-to-speech, different saving options and voice recognition.  Together, these have been designed to support the complete study cycle from research, planning and structuring to getting across a written or spoken message.

Since it was launched in early 2010, thousands of individuals and organisations have downloaded MyStudyBar, from the John Moores University in Liverpool to the Fundación Todos Podemos Ayudar in Colombia. As Andrew Edis from New College Nottingham comments, “We have already distributed 16,000 USB sticks containing free and open source software …right across the college. I must say I’m impressed with this – in times of financial squeeze the fact that MyStudyBar is open source is a major plus.”

MyStudyBar has been produced by the same team at RSC Scotland North & East which created the award-winning AccessApps software suite.

More information on MyStudyBar

Software collections that make up the EduApps family

by m.bohn@jisc.ac.uk (Maike Bohn)

MyStudyBar is a new tool to help overcome problems that some students experience with studying, reading and writing. The tool consists of a suite of portable open source and freeware applications, assembled into one convenient package. Easy to install, simple to use, handy and effective, MyStudyBar provides comprehensive learning support at the desktop, where it’s needed. And the icing on the cake is that it’s COMPLETELY FREE to download and use.

MyStudyBar has been produced by Craig Mill and the team at RSC Scotland North & East which created the award-winning AccessApps software suite and, though primarily designed to support learners with literacy-related difficulties such as dyslexia, offers potential benefits to all learners.

Key Features

MyStudyBar puts a range of individual and essential tools at your fingertips, designed to support the complete study cycle from research, planning and structuring to communicating in writing or speech. MyStudyBar has 6 sections; each has a drop down menu offering personal choice, flexibility and independent learning, particularly for learners who require additional  support. And, with over 15 apps to choose from,  it’s the perfect study aid.

Examples include: Xmind for planning and organization; T-Bar for customising font and colour backgrounds; Lingoes – a talking dictionary; LetMeType for help with text input, and Balabolka for converting text to audio. And, just in case that’s not enough, there’s even a speech-to-text facility (for users of Vista and Windows 7) to let you talk to your computer.

You can use MyStudyBar straight from a USB stick (if, for example, you’re using a machine that’s not your own) or you can install it directly to the desktop (technical staff in colleges or universities also have the choice of installing it on the network for everyone to use). However you choose to use it, MyStudyBar pops up on your screen like this:

So How Do I get It?

You can download the application from the RSC Scotland North & East website:
Click here to download

Once you’ve downloaded the zip file, you need to extract all of the contents and put them into the root drive (the top level, e.g. E:\) of your USB stick.
Click here for a video to guide you through that process.

(If you already have experience of downloading AccessApps, you’ll find the process very similar. )

MyStudyBar for XP and Vista/Windows 7

There are two versions of MyStudyBar, one for Windows XP and another for Vista/Windows 7. The main difference between the two is that the version for Vista/Windows 7 takes full advantage of that system’s excellent built-in speech recognition capabilities which were not previously available.

So, you’ve downloaded the files, unzipped them to the correct location and now you’re ready to roll. To get you started we’ve provided some useful help materials, including screencast tutorials on how to get the best from all of its  components:

• Introduction to MyStudyBar
• XMind and mind mapping tutorial
• T-Bar and screen masking tutorial
• Lingoes and dictionary tutorial
• LetMeType and word prediction tutorial
• Windows Speech Recognition overview

If you do use MyStudyBar with your students, we would be delighted to hear how you get on – who knows, perhaps it will feature in the next exciting edition of NewsFeed!

Back issues of NewsFeed have featured news of simple point-and-shoot video cameras and the potential they offered for use on colleges. In this week’s guest contribution Donald MacLean, Learning Technologies Manager at Perth College, describes how that potential was turned into a reality across college.

The Camera

Staff at Perth have been using Creative Vado digital video cameras as a quick and easy way to create visual content for portfolios, diaries, curricular content, promotional materials and our VLE.

The Vado is fairly cheap (£40-£50) and extremely easy to use with a manual that barely covers two sides of A4, and the camera controls are extremely simple and intuitive. The camera is the size of an iphone, and therefore non-intrusive in comparison to camcorders or larger professional cameras. It is charged via the built-in USB connector, and video files are uploaded by the same method. It has a capacity to film one hour of high quality video, or two hours at standard quality. Videos can be uploaded to a local drive, or directly to YouTube if required. It’s aimed at the personal video market, but has obvious attractions for education due to its price, ease of use and relatively high quality output.

The Idea

The Learning Technologies Centre (LTC) at Perth College purchased a handful of the cameras in 2008 as part of a research initiative to try out new ideas and new equipment. Staff with an interest in new technologies were targeted, and within weeks video content was being created, edited and placed on the College VLE. The LTC now holds a fairly sizeable stock of the cameras, and staff can borrow them to experiment with video and decide if they would like to purchase a camera for further work in their own department. Many staff have purchased cameras for personal use – a sure sign of a quality product.

Pedagogy

Use of the Vados forms part of the College’s Take 5 Initiative, which aims to connect people, skills and resources across the college to develop excellence in learning and teaching, including the best use of ICT. They have been used to personalise learning materials by making lecturers visible for distance learners, and delivering lectures online. Videos are used as personal introductions to learning materials and inserted as introductions to formative assessments.  They are used in classrooms to retrospectively assess technique in practical and vocational areas and to record these for permanent storage and incorporation into learning materials. Video has obvious attractions for students who find text challenging, and the audio element is useful for those with visual impairments.

Use

Vados are used widely in support areas as well as curricular areas:

• Core Skills Communication and Language School staff have recorded student presentations (stored as evidence for external verification in some instances).
• Marketing have enabled students to record video diaries for quality evaluation purposes.
• The College Health and Safety Officer has recorded site visits and created instructional material related to local fire procedures.
• Other curricular areas areas such as Complementary Therapies (massage technique), First Aid and music (drumming technique) have used the Vados for immediate technique appraisal. Video is displayed on a Smartboard for class discussion. In the first two instances the video is destroyed at the end of the session. The drumming videos are stored for future use by students.
• BA Child and Youth Studies have recorded introductory video for electronic formative assessment objects on the VLE which helps to explain what the students should expect from the assessment and adds a personal touch to the learning experience.
• Students in Social Vocational Studies recorded their experiences at Fire College, an initiative designed to foster citizenship skills and team work. This footage was used to create a DVD which was distributed to students and parents.
• Support staff have used the Vados to record specialist seminars for storage and dissemination after the event.

Limitations

The equipment does have limitations. Sound quality can be poor if the subject is not close to the camera, and there is no external microphone jack on the camera. This is not an issue if a soundtrack is to be added by the user at a later stage (e.g. voiceover or music). Performance in low light is acceptable, but not brilliant.

Outcomes

Vados have proved very popular with staff  mainly thanks to the ease of use of the camera itself, the ease of video transfer via USB, and the easy file management involved in copying and playing back files. Video editing is also relatively easy with a free tool like Windows Movie Maker. File sizes are relatively small and do not tax the individual PC or the College network.

These factors have led to a rapid adoption of a tool which can quickly and easily create visually attractive content adding value both to curricular content and to the learner experience. Expansion of video use into support and marketing areas are testament to the fact that this tool is not only cheap and easy to use, it’s also good fun to use!

Click here for a short You Tube piece on the camera.

Some colleges and universities have taken the decision to block certain social networking tools such as Bebo and Facebook seeing them as a potential threat to their systems and a source of distraction to their learners. This last guest contribution of the year from Cherry Hopton (Course Leader for NV, HNC and  HND Arts & Social Sciences at Angus College) shows how such tools can be used positively in teaching and learning.

In Jan 2009, I set up a Facebook page for Social Science at Angus College.  In the first month, 20 students joined – around a third of all our social science students.  Today we have 153 students registered with the site – about half of whom use it on a regular basis. Students from each cohort are appointed site administrators and are able to control content and invite others to join.

Setting up a Facebook site is technically very easy – no special IT skills required.  Our site features:

• Discussion threads – currently 22 discussions ranging from Marxism and Psychoanalysis, the BNP and the thorny question ‘Has Christmas in its current form had its day’
• We have a photo album – student trips and celebrations are recorded
• Links – to TV and radio programmes, podcasts and websites – and discussions surrounding these links

There have been concerns expressed  – especially in the teaching media – about potential abuse of such networking sites.  We have not had a single problem to date.

I am often asked why bother when we have a VLE ?  Our Facebook site includes ex-students, now at University, who offer support and are able to speak from a position of ‘being there’.  It includes academics from other institutions – we proudly boast Greg Philo of the Glasgow University Media Group as a member.  It allows students to post and interact in a more flexible way than the VLE – and they feel it is more ‘their site’.  We can go ‘off topic’ and discuss a range of social and political issues not directly related to the curriculum – the debate on the night Nick Griffin appeared on Question Time was equally as vibrant as the programme itself.

Another great benefit is that students who lack the confidence to talk in class often find their feet and raise their status through using the site. One student who had a severe speech impediment was able to gain a high level of recognition in his group as he was able to display his knowledge and supportive nature through text rather than speech.  It is a way for those who are unsure of speaking publicly to show they know their stuff – and recognition on the Facebook site often leads to recognition in class.  It enables learning from one another outside the formal classroom – open and available 24 hours a day.

I’ve often been able to allay fears about a 9am assessment the following day at 11pm at night – or later.  Such small interactions may seem like an intrusion into the lecturer’s personal life and time, but I would rather spend five minutes in the evening online reassuring a student than engage in the paperwork and misery that surrounds a failed or missed assessment.

Our Facebook site is a safety net and a self help group – there’s always someone there to help with exam nerves, a reference for an essay, a query about homework or a DVD that is both amusing and sociological (yes, such things do exist !).  We have a focus on Co-Operative Learning and Status Treatment techniques within our teaching team which means we’re very keen on reducing power dynamics in the classroom and getting students to see one another as an important resource.  It also means we’re always looking for ways for those with non-traditional academic skill sets to be able to find a niche and display their expertise. Facebook has helped students who were perhaps not the best producers of essays to show their talents in terms of ability to choose just the right clip to illustrate a point, theory or concept.  Facebook has become an integral part of our teaching toolkit.

Let’s start with a surprising statistic: global greenhouse gas emissions from ICT are comparable to those of the aviation industry[1], each generating around 2% of global emissions of carbon dioxide (CO₂)[2]. Admittedly aviation emissions have a greater impact on climate as they are released in the upper atmosphere but nonetheless this statistic certainly places ICT into context as a global contributor to climate change and demonstrates a key area that we must target for change.

The irony is that ICT can and should be used to increase energy efficiency and reduce emissions in other sectors, such as transport and manufacturing. Indeed, within FE and HE, ICT is becoming ever more ubiquitous, providing many benefits such as improving accessibility for disadvantaged groups and reducing environmental impacts by substituting virtual for physical activities. The downside to this is that as the use of ICT grows, its emissions are likely to increase despite improvements in efficiency. It’s estimated that ICT will be responsible for 3% of global emissions by 2020.[3]

Within FE and HE, a recent study carried out on behalf of the Joint Information Services Committee (JISC)[4] demonstrated that the many benefits of ICT are being offset by ‘hidden’ environmental costs and that UK universities and colleges:

· currently use nearly 1.5 million computers, 250,000 printers and 240,000 servers;
· will have ICT-related electricity bills of around £116m in 2009; and
· are indirectly emitting over 500,000t of CO₂ from ICT electricity use.

And those are just the running costs. The production, and disposal, of ICT equipment also involves the release of many hazardous substances; consumes large quantities of energy and water, generates large amounts of waste; and sometimes involves dangerous and exploitative working practices.[5]

In response to these issues and in support of JISC’s approach to addressing “Green ICT”, the Environmental Association for Universities and Colleges (EAUC) is working in partnership with the Higher Education Environmental Performance Improvement (HEEPI) initiative to deliver our ICT Energy & Carbon Management Programme. Funded by the Scottish Funding Council, our two-year project started in February 2009 with the aim of promoting the use of the JISC-funded SusteIT Energy and Carbon Footprinting Tool. The activities of the project are open to all institutions but its operation involves a core group of nine institutions who have committed to measure their ICT carbon footprint and work towards agreed targets for reduced energy consumption. In return, this core group receives specialist consultancy advice on manipulating the technologies to help achieve this. The nine participants are:

· Angus College;
· Edinburgh’s Telford College;
· Stevenson College;
· West Lothian College;
· Edinburgh Napier University;
· Heriot Watt University;
· Queen Margaret University;
· University of Edinburgh; and
· University of St Andrews

Although the project is only half-way to completion we are already seeing significant benefits. For example, Angus College fast-tracked the use of the SusteIT tool and demonstrated very early on that significant energy, carbon and cost savings will be made in their use of ICT for relatively minimal capital investment. In addition, all participants are signatories of the Universities and Colleges Climate Commitment for Scotland and implementation of their Sustainable ICT Action Plans contributes towards their institutions’ delivery against the Commitment.

However, mdifying technologies is relatively simple; the real challenge is to change behaviour. According to a 2007 survey by the National Energy Foundation[6], 18% of office workers never switch off their PC at night or weekends and a further 13% leave it on some nights each week, producing a further 700,000 tonnes of CO₂ emissions. These statistics relate to standard office environments so the difficulties facing universities and colleges are magnified by the need to operate some facilities (such as computer labs and research equipment) longer than average working day.

Rather than trying to change user behaviour, it may be more effective to enforce change management through the use of intelligent software. For example, software designed by the University of Liverpool [7] which automatically shuts down computer systems after usage, is saving large organisations up to £13,000 in electricity costs each month. Universities with PC centres in 24-hour libraries could be losing more than 1 million hours of unused computer power each month. Systems experts have developed new software called PowerDown, which works by automatically shutting computers down if left unused for half an hour. Tests demonstrated that 1,600 library-based PCs alone were using 20,000 kW each week unnecessarily, equating to approximately £2,400 in current electricity prices. PowerDown has so far recovered 24 million hours of PC inactivity within the University of Liverpool.

Following the introduction of the Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009, significant legal duties have been placed on universities and colleges to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and contribute towards Scotland ambitious targets of 42% reduction by 2020 and 80% by 2050. With many investments having carbon and cash payback periods of between 9-12 months, sustainable ICT represents the biggest quick win area for institutions in delivering sustainable development and environmental and cost efficiencies. The EAUC is pleased to be working in partnership with JISC and the Regional Support Centres to ensure colleagues have the information, the skills and the knowledge base necessary to make the critical transition to sustainable ICT.

Andrew Chamberlain
Head of UK Programmes & Scotland Manager
Environmental Association for Universities & Colleges
achamberlain@eauc.org.uk

[1] http://www.parliament.uk/documents/upload/postpn319.pdf

[2]http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Information_Technology/Management/How_IT_can_cut_carbon_emissions_2221

[3] http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Information_Technology/Management/How_IT_can_cut_carbon_emissions_2221

[4] http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/documents/sustainableictoverview.aspx

[5] http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/documents/sustainableictoverview.aspx

[6] The PC Energy Report, National Energy Foundation, 2007

[7] http://www.liv.ac.uk/news/press_releases/2009/02/power-down.htm

Do you work with students in their urban or rural environment? Perhaps you teach outdoor education, tourism, design, landscaping or digital photography or video? PlaceBook Scotland is a social networking site dedicated to Scotland’s landscape. Students and tutors can use the site to create class groups, blogs and discussion threads.

We want to know what makes a place distinct, and for your students to capture this using music, song, words, video or a photograph. This is their opportunity to create a record of the identity of a place – the good, the bad, and maybe even the ugly! Whether they’re in Glasgow or Gigha, Galashiels or Glen Affric we want them to capture the essence of their place and tell us about it.

The site is an important record of how we see and perceive our immediate environment today. You can search it to see what others have contributed about their place, and learn more about Scotland’s endlessly diverse and distinct landscapes.

View Full Album

(Images: Texture& Colour © Broken Dalek/ Sunrise and a Pipe Coating Machine, Leith Docks ©Robert Andrew Monteith Main/Old Cars in Rothiemurchus Forest©Fiona Driver )

PlaceBook will be formally launched at the Scottish Parliament on the 24th of June. It is supported by the Scottish Government, SNH, the National Trust for Scotland and Learning and Teaching Scotland.

Go to www.placebookscotland.com and join today!

Our guest slot this issue is based on an interview with Steve Bishop, IT Helpdesk Manager at Cardonald College. At Cardonald they’ve been using a very clever remote mouse/media controller (the MX Air from Logitech) which can be charged for up to a week at a time and has a range which should work in large classrooms and they are in the process of rolling this technology out to departments across the college. Steve had been looking for an alternative to costly interactive whiteboards and although there are similar products on the market Steve felt that this particular model met the college’s needs.

Steve provided a round of demonstrations to senior staff who were sufficiently impressed with the functionality to invest in more. As well as providing the tutor with the freedom to wander about the classroom rather than stand in front of the class. This means that they do not have to have their back to the class and can operate the computer and whiteboard tools from anywhere in the room. Using this type of device does mean that the irritating shadow encountered when using an interactive board is eliminated and in addition the risks associated with looking into the bright projector bulb are minimised. The ability to operate an interactive board without having to touch it means that the whole board can be fully utilized regardless of the height of both the board and the user and with a 10 meter range the MX Air can be used in larger rooms and even lecture theatres.

As well as providing the functionality of a wireless mouse, the MX Air is also a useful multimedia remote controller. Fast forward and rewind is controlled by stroking the arrowheads on the remote, a simple flick of the wrist moves between chapters on a DVD, while volume is controlled simply by moving the MX Air to the left or right.

There are also significant accessibility gains to be made. Learners with a variety of support needs e.g. those with mobility problems or with special educational needs can benefit greatly and are able to participate more fully in classroom activities when a device like this can be passed around the group.

Steve feels however that the great advantage of using this technology is that the tutor is no longer anchored at the front of the class, but has the scope to move around the group involving all students – even those in the back row – in the whole learning experience.

David McDade – Section Leader, Computer Networking at Stow College has integrated two complementary open source learning systems, providing a single sign on process for learners which minimizes barriers to study and reduces administrative overheads.

After an RSC demonstration of Mahara – the open source e-Portfolio system – David resolved to try to integrate it with the Moodle VLE that he had piloted with some of his students last year. With 10 years UNIX system administration behind him it was a challenge he couldn’t resist. His research revealed what he described as “a pretty comprehensive guide” to completing the job and the Moodle and Mahara forums provided guidance for his project.

Aware of issues for many students remembering passwords for the numerous systems that they use for learning, personal and social purposes, David’s aim was to develop a system which would mean that by signing into Moodle, students would also be able to access their e-Portfolio without the need to sign in again.

With a background in server administration, he had no problem setting up the server to host the applications once suitable hardware was made available, and he was assisted by the IT support team who donated a server and created a college URL for the site.

David describes the process, “When you set up the certificates between the two systems, you can add a network server  block for Moodle on any course. When the student goes into any of the courses that they have access to, there is a link to their own e-Portfolio.” And the system can be set up to go both ways, so that a student could signing into Mahara could get access to their Moodle courses, but David has elected to set it up one way at the moment while users get to grips with the system.

With the technology in place, David is shifting his attention to the learning opportunities provided by the integrated system. Tools within the e-Portfolio system include personal development planners, CV builders and a system to record and document achievement and learning progress. Of particular interest to many of the students on David’s courses is the ability to make a CV available electronically to prospective employers, a facility which gives them a competitive edge and enhances their job prospects.

Feedback from the IT department has been very positive, particularly on how the systems integrate and the possibilities for future developments. Five staff in the Computing department are using the system over 15 courses and other departments are also interested in the development. Staff are confident that the technology is robust, with training offered by David and a support system in place to help staff exploit these new tools for learning & teaching.

Projects and experiences like this one at Stow College provide important evidence of the value of open source software. They also demonstrate the value of the support communities and the extensive knowledge base that accumulates as open source software develops.

Click here for more information on Moodle or more information on Mahara.

With the wealth of information available to everyone on the Internet these days, searching for reliable, quality-assured material to use in teaching can be a real headache. Where can you rely on to find good material? Who can you trust? What can you safely use?

It’s unlikely that your first answer to these questions would be ‘RCAHMS’, for the simple reason that you probably don’t even recognise the name. However the chances are that you’ve already come across material from our huge archive before – on television, in the press or in publications or exhibitions – without realising it. You may also have come across our material in Scran, probably the best-known online resource in Scottish education today, without realising that RCAHMS was one of the founding partners in Scran, or that Scran and RCAHMS have recently joined forces and are actually one and the same organisation.

The Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS for short) was founded in 1908 and has been surveying, recording and interpreting Scotland’s built heritage for more than 100 years. The archive created through this work documents the interaction between people and places from prehistory to the present-day, through the buildings they lived, worshipped or worked in, and the marks they have left in the landscape. The collection is huge, currently standing at nearly 15 million items, and includes both recent and historical photographs, conventional and digital mapping, reports from archaeological excavations, aerial photography and drawings and plans of all kinds. It is widely used by planners, researchers, authors and the media, and we handle scores of orders every week for copies of our material, which we can provide digitally or in conventional formats (for a fee) within 15 working days.

Village Bay, Hirta, St. Kilda with a cleit (food storage structure) in the foreground. Crown Copyright RCAHMS 2008 (DP 044808)

So far so good, but readers will be asking themselves: ‘How accessible is all of this to me – and how can I use it?’ There are several ways we can help. Firstly, we are open to the public and if you can come to Edinburgh you are welcome to see us, either in person or (if you give us notice) with a group. The RCAHMS Search Room at John Sinclair House is open to everyone on weekdays from 09.30 to 16.30, and you can consult original material from the archive or be introduced to the work that we do through tours of the building or guided presentations of archive material. Individual appointments aren’t needed, but if you want to come with a group, or are interested in seeing material from the aerial photographic collections, please let us know in advance by contacting info@rcahms.gov.uk. For those in education, our archive is likely to be of direct curricular interest for history, architecture, archaeology, photography and any cross-curricular studies involving design, urban or rural planning or construction technologies. The technology behind it is likely to interest all those studying the use and presentation of geo-spatial data, or electronic data curation and preservation.

The second way we can help is through our online services. The RCAHMS website at www.rcahms.gov.uk explains the work we do and also acts as a portal to the main RCAHMS database, Canmore, which allows users to search the RCAHMS archive and to access more than 100,000 images online. Canmore is free to use, requiring only a simple initial registration, and educational users can then download these images free-of-charge for use in their teaching, or use the map-based search interface to search for and display the distribution of significant sites in a local area. Images from the RCAHMS archive, together with material from a wide range of other providers, are also available through the Scran website which holds 360,000 fully-searchable, copyright-cleared items which can be downloaded for educational use, and 3,000 ‘Pathfinder’ teaching resource packs which gather items together into specified themes and subject areas.

Aerial view of Woden Law hill fort, Roxburghshire, Scottish Borders Crown Copyright :RCAHMS 2000 (DP677288)

The third way we work with the education sector is through specific project work. RCAHMS runs an active Education & Outreach programme with local communities throughout Scotland, while Scran works directly with teaching staff in schools, colleges and HE institutions. (Requests for fresh training are always welcome, and should be sent to Scran’s Marketing Officer Neil Fraser (neil.fraser@scran.ac.uk).

In this, our Centenary year, RCAHMS has two flagship projects currently working directly with local communities. The Treasured Places project has offered people across Scotland the chance to take part in an online vote for their favourite ‘treasured place’ and to record their experiences there. The result is a series of workshops with schools and local communities. An accompanying exhibition, ‘Creative Connections’, is currently touring the country. In addition, a major free exhibition of original material from the RCAHMS collection has just gone on show at Edinburgh’s City Art Centre.

The glove & lace department, Jenners Department Store, Edinburgh c1900. Copyright RCAHMS (Bedford Lemere Collection) SC 466078

Scotland’s Rural Past www.scotlandsruralpast.org.uk is a five-year project to research, record and promote vanishing rural settlements throughout Scotland. Working with local community groups and with people of all ages, it offers local people the chance to work with RCAHMS surveyors to identify and formally record the legacy of post-medieval rural settlement in their area. The ‘Learning’ section of the SRP website explains the opportunities available for schools to take part in the project and offers suggestions for further work.

Alan Muirden

Education & Outreach Operational Manager alan.muirden@rcahms.gov.uk

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In our changing world, consumers from all sectors require ‘just-in-time’ resources, from information to consumer goods, communication to financial services. Nowhere is this more evident than in education, which has grabbed the technological bull by the horns and embraced change in a way many would not have thought possible only a few years ago.

With the advent of technologies like Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs), interactive whiteboards, mobile learning, social networking, RSS feeds, video conferencing and many others, educators at every level have numerous tools to assist their teaching. But this activity generates a pressing need for resources and so traditional publishers and content owners are forced to evolve, ensuring products and services produced and used in the past are updated and packaged to fit the future

To this end, BBC Motion Gallery have partnered with JISC Collections to make available a vast repository of clips from the BBC archives for use within FE and HE. BBC Motion Gallery is the footage and clip licensing arm of the BBC which for many years has licensed clips of its programming to other broadcasters, film makers and advertising agencies. However, over the past few years, demand has grown within the educational sector for multi-media materials to complement traditional text books, or incorporate into online learning packages. The time seemed right to launch an online service specifically for the educational community and JISC Collections seemed the obvious partner in that enterprise.

The new subscription service (https://jisc.bbcmotiongallery.com) was launched earlier this year with 20,000 BBC archive clips ranging in length between 5 and 60 seconds. Material is harvested from across the BBC’s vast collections; from world-famous natural history programming to news and current affairs, from exotic locations to science and technology. Clips can be searched, viewed and downloaded in both Windows Media and QuickTime files, and once downloaded can be edited, uploaded to a VLE or project area and shared amongst students or staff.

Licences arranged through JISC Collections will allow staff and students from subscribed institutions access to a library of clips cleared for all educational purposes. The clips, which are of DVD quality and lightly watermarked can be used as a lesson-opener or discussion point, embedded into presentations, or, especially in the area of news and current affairs, used as a primary source for learners to study.

To augment the BBC’s amazing archive, the Motion Gallery has partnered with several other content holders, including some world-renowned broadcasters. Amongst these collections, which will be launched into the JISC site at regular intervals throughout the license period, are: CBS News (America), NHK (Japan), CCTV (China), and ABC (Australia). Adding these and other archives throughout the license period will keep the service cosmopolitan, fresh and relevant, delivering a unique educational experience.

BBC Motion Gallery, available on a 3-year subscription based on JISC Banding, has been well received in the first few months since launch. Currently a free 30-day trial of the service is on offer: try it and we’re convinced you’ll see the immediate value. To arrange your trial please email BBC Motion Gallery’s Business Development Director Paul Maidment at paul.maidment@bbc.com.