Accessibility Essentials Series
Techdis have two new informative publications/websites:
Making Electronic Documents More Readable
This guide has been designed to give practical step-by-step information to enable anyone reading material to amend its look and feel into a style which suits them. These hints and tips will not only be of great use to people who read documents on-screen, but also to those presenting material (for example, via a data projector) in different lighting conditions, or those who work in differing levels of light (for example, while working on a train). http://tinyurl.com/frkb6
Writing Accessible Electronic Documents with Microsoft® Word
This guide outlines the techniques people need to ensure the writing of accessible electronic information using Microsoft® Word. When producing electronic information the biggest accessibility gain is ensuring the user can amend the look and feel in a way which suits them. However, there are a number of font and structure techniques which can increase the readability for a larger number of people. http://tinyurl.com/ksznm Hard copies for your staffroom are available by contacting the Techdis team.
JISC Digitisation programme
Keep your eyes peeled to the web for the launch of a new set of digital resources developed for Higher and Further Education. All materials will be freely available for use in your online or face-toface courses and will be available by Christmas. Archival Sound Recordings Service This project will deliver a slice of the world’s rich audio heritage to your fi ngertips with up to 12,000 segmented encodings totalling 3,900 hours of sound recordings from distinct and unique collections including the ‘Sony Radio awards’ – Cutting edge radio dramas from the 80s and 90s and the ‘African Writers Club’. The resource will be available from September 2006. Visit the project website: http://tinyurl.co.uk/b0oq
18th Century British Parliamentary Papers
This project will deliver up to 945,000 pages from all surviving printed House of Commons and House of Lords Papers, Bills, Journals and Reports for the period. The resource will be available from January 2007. Visit the project website: http://www.bopcris.ac.uk/18c/
19th-Century British Newspapers at the British Library
Read all about Britain and the world from the Industrial Revolution to the Boxer Rebellion. This project will deliver up to 2 million pages, totalling approximately 10 billion words of British newspapers from 1800–1900. The resource will be available from September 2006. Visit the project website: http://tinyurl.co.uk/w25n
Newsfilm Online
3,000 hours of television news and cinema newsreels, taken from the huge collection of the ITN/Reuters archive, is to be made available online in high quality format for teaching, learning and research. The news fi lm will be delivered in downloadable form. The beta site is already live with a number of test recordings to view. http://tinyurl.co.uk/n9qq
New Resources
Old English literature: A hypertext coursepack
Developed as part of an English Subject Centre project this simple-to-use coursepack for Old English brings together some of the main ‘set texts’ in Old English used by UK universities. Each text has a running gloss with links to further notes, translations, images, explanatory articles, reading lists and discussion forums. http://www .english.ox.ac.uk/coursepack/
Web-PA Web-based peer assessment system
If you are exploring new forms of assessing face-to-face or online group work and want to save mountains of paper and potentially time and hassle too have a look at Web-PA. It is an online peer assessment tool developed by the Engineering CETL which provides an easy to use method for anonymous peer moderated marking of group work. It is currently being trialed in-house and could be a worthwhile addition to your software portfolio. Contact the team for a demo. http://tinyurl.com/mrdsl and Take a tour of the staff side of web-pa: http://eec.lboro.ac.uk/webpatour/
New Tools
Make long URLs shorter!
Many of you will be familiar with this free utility that generates a short URL in place of those ridiculously long ones that break in email messages and distort your word docs! http://tinyurl.co.uk
Presence in the online environment! Wimba Voice tools
This is a set of tools that allow you to create online listening and speaking environments (voiceboards – the vocal discussion forum), voice emails, live voice chat and you can embed voice announcements. Seamless integration with WebCT, Blackboard, Moodle etc. Expensive to purchase but I’ve heard good things about this set of tools. http://www.horizonwimba.com/products/voicetools/
Campfire
Campfire is a free web-based group chat tool that lets you set up password-protected chat rooms very quickly. The beauty of the tool is that you can save and archive the chat, share files and preview images etc all from outside your VLE! http://www.campfirenow.com/
Garageband 3
Creating Podcasts is definitely a hot topic at the moment and I have previously mentioned the free program Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/)which allows you to create and edit sound files easily. Mac users should also take a look at Garageband 3 which is a step up in functionality allowing embedded tracks as well as images to provide visual clues to a change in content. http://www.apple.com/ilife/garageband/
ProfCast
Now this is turbo-charged podcasting! ProfCast is for Mac users once more and allows you to integrate PowerPoint presentations, bookmarks, weblinks, screen captures all wrapped up with your amazing lecture for delivery to an MP3 player or Quicktime over the web. http://www.profcast.com/public/index.php
Revealicious
Anyone who uses the popular bookmarking site Del.icio.us http://del.icio.us/ will enjoy this set of creative visualisation tools which enable you to see your information in new and often stimulating ways. http://www.ivy.fr/revealicious/
New Publications
• William Rice, Moodle e-learning course development (PACKT Publishing, 2006 – ISBN: 1904811299) http://moodlebook.packtpub.com/
• David McConnell, E-learning Groups and Communities (OU Press, 2006 – ISBN: 0335212808)
• Shirley Bach, Phillip Haynes and Jennifer Lewis Smith, Online Learning and Teaching in Higher Education (OU Press, 2006 – ISBN: 0335218296)(Published 01/12/06)
- Where possible I try to recommend software that is open-source, free-of-charge, copyright-cleared, shareware or freeware
All URLs on this page were last accessed in September 2006
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