Feeling Competitive? E-Tutor of the Year 2006
Individually or as part of a team, are you using e-learning or blended learning in a novel way to improve your students’ learning experience? Does e-learning play an important part of your curriculum design? Are you being innovative in your use of e-tutoring and ICT to support your teaching? If so, then you can apply to the Higher Education Academy e-Tutor of the Year 2006 competition e-Tutoring strand.
If you or your team are developing e-learning tools (or exploiting underlying services) in a novel way to improve student learning or exploring a novel application of an existing technology or service in the context of student learning in Higher Education, then you can enter the e-Tool strand.
Now in its fourth year the e-Tutor of the year competition, sponsored by the Times Higher, the Higher Education Academy and ALT-C (The Association of Learning Technology) is pleased to offer two first prizes:
- • £1,000 from the Times Higher Education Supplement – for the e-Tutoring strand
- • A Tablet PC from Toshiba – for the e-Tool strand More details and entry forms can be hound on the Higher Education Academy website: http://www.heacademy. ac.uk/etutor.htm. The deadline for receipt of entries is 9 June 2006.
Learning on Screen Awards
The BUFVC (British Universities Film and Video Council) Learning on Screen Awards celebrate and reward excellence in the production of effective learning material which employs moving image, sound and graphics. The scheme is open to new content produced for broadcast, for online delivery or for distribution on physical media – CD, DVD or videocassette. The three main categories for entries are: General Education, Course and Curriculum-Related Content and Student Production. http://www. bufvc.ac.uk/conferences/ learningonscreen/.
New Resources
Launch of the JORUM service
JORUM is a free national collection of learning materials that is now live and available to all UK further and higher education institutions. The service is brand new and a key focus is to build a ‘community for sharing’. As a Jorum user you are able to search, browse, preview, download, review, reuse and repurpose the learning materials within it. To take advantage of the materials on offer, your institution or project must register at http://www.jorum.ac.uk/. A training and outreach tour promoting the new service has also been organised over the summer of 2006. I would strongly advise interested academics to register for one of these free events. See http://www.jorum.ac.uk/ news/tour.php.
BECTA technology resources
The BECTA (British Educational Communications and Technology Agency) website contains a wealth of information on the use of ICT in the primary and secondary sector, much of which can be extremely useful in HE contexts as well. The technology section in particular provides fact sheets, tips and examples of a range of technologies in educational contexts. See http://schools.becta.org.uk/ index.php?section=te.
JISC exemplars of Online Resources for Further Education
JISC (see p. 47 above) has commissioned a series of fi ve ‘exemplars’ which demonstrate how FE practitioners can use content found in online resources to support their teaching. The exemplars are available on CD-ROM or online from an ‘ac.uk’ domain and whilst addressing an FE audience they provide some excellent examples of how digital archives can be exploited to create engaging learning materials for students. See http://www.jisc. ac.uk/index.cfm?name=exemplars and http://restricted.jisc.ac.uk/exemplars_ fe/.
60 Second Shakespeare
The BBC have set the challenge to UK schools of creating their own 60 second interpretation of Shakespeare using fi lm or audio. Read about the project and view the growing archive of 60 second performances on the BBC website. http://www.bbc.co.uk/drama/shakespeare/ 60secondshakespeare/index.shtml.
New Tools
Thumbstacks.com
Is an example of a new kind of web-based service dedicated to design, delivery and sharing of presentations all done through your web browser – no need for a proprietary software programme. All you do is send your colleagues a web link! It’s very new but defi nitely worth a look. See http://www.thumbstacks.com/.
Writeboards
Writeboards are sharable web-based text documents that let you save every edit, roll back to any version, and easily compare changes. Unlike a Word document that’s stored at your offi ce on one computer, you can get to your writeboards from any computer in the world with an internet connection and a modern web browser. If you are involved in any form of collaborative writing – and let’s face it who isn’t these days? – then check out this innovative new online service, which again is free. See http://www.writeboard.com/.
New Publications
Some recommendations for your bookshelf:
• Willard McCarty, Humanities Computing (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005)
• Michael Hanrahan and Deborah L. Madsen, eds., Teaching, Technology, Textuality (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006). See The Teaching the New English web page on this site.
• Susie Andretta, Information Literacy – A Practitioner’s Guide (Chandos, 2005)
