tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-106193662009-10-05T11:42:26.957+01:00Rachelnoreply@blogger.comBlogger115125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10619366.post-75412369645708243842009-10-05T09:30:00.004+01:002009-10-05T11:42:26.964+01:00

The BPS research digest recently featured a study that investigatedchildren's reports of factual and narrative information after a visit to a museum. The children were six years old and, perhaps of no surprise to parents, the children were able to recall a large amount of information. Of particular interest is that they could remember significantly more when they drew at the same time as

Rachelnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10619366.post-41960221316521773892009-07-31T09:29:00.009+01:002009-07-31T14:08:25.105+01:00

Last week I attended a workshop at Hertfordshire University as part of the ESCAPE project (Effecting Sustainable Change in Assessment Practice and Experience). We are working with the project team in developing an Appreciative Inquiry approach to evaluation.If you've not come across Appreciative Inquiry (AI) before, it's an approach to transformational change that focuses on the positive. It was

Rachelnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10619366.post-41998577972125172372009-07-29T15:33:00.007+01:002009-07-31T14:04:43.988+01:00

We provide the evaluation support for JISC's Curriculum Design and Delivery Programmes. (There's an interview with the programme managers in e-Learning Focus, which gives an overview of the background and intent behind these programmes.) As part of that we were recently asked how technology makes a difference to the processes we are focused on. We see technology as vital in our evaluation support

Rachelnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10619366.post-14211375544944301582009-05-05T09:47:00.004+01:002009-05-05T10:02:58.994+01:00

In the past week, the issue of the uptake of innovation or technology has arisen in two of our projects - one considering implementation of new LMS in the NHS, and the other at the usage of e-portfolios (and other e-assessment) in Further Education Skills for Work courses.So, I've been reading round the subject, looking at a variety of models - the most well known probably being Rogers'

Alisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01496517274231805262noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10619366.post-15624990324225583532009-04-24T11:55:00.003+01:002009-05-29T14:25:26.542+01:00

Back in March, I attended the JISC 2009 conference, aptly entitled Opening Digital Doors. It was one of those mega events, where you spotted people across the hall, but got caught up in the melee before you could speak to them. That said, I quite liked the informal nature of the drop in demos in the foyer, even managing to find out what QR codes really are, courtesy of Andy Ramsden.The morning

Rachelnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10619366.post-34897576157211129432009-03-23T21:14:00.000Z2009-03-23T21:14:42.723Z

Yes, this is a Lego Ada Lovelace, image by Dunechaser via FlickrAda Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging to draw attention to women excelling in technology. As part of the celebration, if that is the right word, I've pledged to blog about a female role model. Thinking about it, this is pretty hard, with a background in science I can only remember two female lecturers, a supervisor and

Rachelnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10619366.post-73493689083432594592009-02-23T10:54:00.006Z2009-02-23T11:35:19.787Z

We ran two evaluation workshops last month. Starting each day by exploring what evaluation is. This included some visual representations of how individuals thought of evaluation. Various themes emerged, some related to the overall process of evaluation, with several people referring to evaluation as a journey, some along twisting roads or with occasional diversions along dead-ends that may lead

Rachelnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10619366.post-7287460128661922322009-02-05T16:09:00.003Z2009-02-05T16:17:54.067Z

Having failed miserably to maintain any kind of consistent blog output, I'm going to try out the new toys route. I've just installed Scribefire, which is an add-on for Firefox. Looking quite easy so far, just click on the button and the lower half of the browser window becomes a blog posting panel. Hmm, no success in linking to my blog account... back to posting from blogger.I'm also going to try

Rachelnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10619366.post-67601441465696814162009-01-20T10:28:00.001Z2009-01-20T10:30:13.090Z

In another step towards global domination, Twitter has reached the UK parliament! TweetMinster has a (small) number of MPs registered (including the one for my area), and now boasts its first Lord! This could be one to watch... a demonstration of how technology can engage and involve Joe Average in the details of the political process, or just a short lived fad for some publicity?

Alisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01496517274231805262noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10619366.post-9014138250477753232008-12-01T16:44:00.007Z2008-12-08T15:45:45.004Z

Rather than sending out company Christmas cards, we are going to give a little time (and money) to help distribute Caring Christmas Trees on behalf of Impact Arts. We'll be helping out at a local distribution point on the afternoon of December 11th.I'm just about to order my tree, and look forward to collecting it hassle free. What a brilliant idea! If you are based in Dundee, Edinburgh,

Rachelnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10619366.post-88067045090033047462008-11-25T09:32:00.004Z2008-11-25T14:42:50.954Z

I love gadgets. After a tough week of waiting, and tracking their every movement from order to processing, from delivery centre to courier, our shiny new Samsung NC10 netbooks have arrived at last!Spec-wise, they seem to be market leaders - bigger hard drives (160gb but not SS), proper battery life (we're read reviews which suggest 6 hours unlike the Acer Aspire One's 2 hours), along with all the

Alisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01496517274231805262noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10619366.post-3589315332090247992008-11-20T16:43:00.002Z2008-11-25T19:01:51.037Z

Last week I attended the JISC Curriculum Delivery projects start-up meeting. JISC InfoNet are leading the support project that organised the meeting, and there were quite a few differences from the usual JISC programme meeting. The seating arrangements were perhaps a bit more relaxed than the norm, and the meeting itself was arranged on a seventies TV theme.One of the highlights on day one were

Rachelnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10619366.post-18333957525177228602008-11-10T16:43:00.003Z2008-11-19T17:19:22.099Z

Update from Innovating e-Learning 2008The closing days of JISC online conference saw some deep discussion. The session we were facilitating asked whether we should free the maniacs (or students!). Prof Mark Stiles was interested in the reasons education tended to be "controlling". He saw a downward spiral where embedding innovation led to regulation, which could act as a barrier to further

Rachelnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10619366.post-27846669762928673312008-11-06T23:58:00.005Z2008-11-19T17:17:16.274Z

Day three of the JISC online conference sees the opening of the second theme - "Going boldly into the dark". The session we are facilitating ('Achieving Transformational Change - making it happen') features presenters Mark Stiles from Staffordshire University and Peter Bullen from the University of Hertfordshire. Some really interesting and varied discussion has started on this first day about

Alisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01496517274231805262noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10619366.post-77805213171019564742008-09-09T09:08:00.002+01:002008-09-09T09:11:32.935+01:00

This news item on PublicTecnhology.net reports that the European Commission has launched a public consultation to search for the best strategies to boost Europes ICT research and innovation until 2020. The Commission believes that Europe is underperforming in both the level and intensity of its research and innovation investments, with only 33% of research and innovation in developed economies

Alisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01496517274231805262noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10619366.post-50373751542507716452008-08-04T13:03:00.007+01:002008-08-04T14:12:33.728+01:00

There's been lots of UK media coverage over the weekend of a Microsoft research study that used traffic on Microsoft's Instant Messenger (IM) to investigate global communication (See articles in the Guardian, Telegraph, and BBC.)The study captured anonymised data from June 2006 - specifically properties of 30 billion IM conversations (not messages, conversations!) among 240 million people. Of

Rachelnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10619366.post-54297384042918110162008-07-29T10:43:00.005+01:002008-07-29T11:57:46.891+01:00

Just trying out Cuil - a new search engine developed by former Google software engineers. It claims to index three times as many web pages as Google and ten times as many as Microsoft. Cuil uses this in ranking pages based on their content, concepts, inter-relationships and coherency, rather than how often pages are linked to or 'popularity metrics'.The whole interface is very different, just

Rachelnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10619366.post-79407100180865048742008-07-01T12:35:00.003+01:002008-07-01T17:02:02.456+01:00

Although details aren't yet available on the eLearning Alliance site, the next annual conference sounds to be a must attend event! Entitled Jock Tamson's Bairns (a reference to a Scot's saying meaning "underneath we're all the same"). The conference aims to question whether Web 2.0 marks a transformation in approaches to learning. Will this present further challenges in providing access across

Rachelnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10619366.post-76309080937050257472008-06-26T21:08:00.005+01:002008-06-26T21:29:29.517+01:00

I keep seeing blog posts with colourful word arrays. So, thought I'd join in. Here's Wordle's take on our delicious bookmarks.Essentially, this is a visual representation of what we have posted about the most, or at least the tags/labels we have used. It reminds me of some of the ways that cluster analyses are presented. There are some examples of these in Edial Dekker's slideshare on data

Rachelnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10619366.post-21145426408627722592008-06-13T12:22:00.002+01:002008-06-24T15:30:21.504+01:00

According to Top 10 Broadband, mobile broadband will be offered free with mobile phone packages as soon as 2009. This will increase the availability of cheap access to mobile broadband. It will also potentially make it more accessible for harder-to-reach groups, who sometimes have access to a mobile phone but not a fixed phone, as required for standard broadband.

Alisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01496517274231805262noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10619366.post-39122123599141534932008-06-11T09:33:00.002+01:002008-06-11T15:02:26.677+01:00

The new Learning and Skills Improvement Service (LSIS), as it was named yesterday, will bring together the work of the CEL (Centre for Excellence in Leadership) and the QIA (Quality Improvement Agency for Lifelong Learning). This new body is a sector-owned organisation dedicated to supporting excellence and leadership development in the further education and skills sector.(See full

Alisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01496517274231805262noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10619366.post-74177411588016731372008-06-10T09:19:00.005+01:002008-06-24T15:46:57.800+01:00

PublicTechnology.net report on the Samaritans' plan to roll out a text service to improve their reach to the most vulnerable young people.A pilot of the scheme was carried out during which over 10,000 texts a month were received, "with 63% of contact from people aged 10-24-years-old". They believe once rolled out nationally there could be a "rise of up to 1,000 texts a day by 2010 - that's one

Alisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01496517274231805262noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10619366.post-75794382728167702922008-05-27T14:00:00.004+01:002008-05-27T14:46:08.631+01:00

It was a week for assessment events - the e-Assessment Association Glasgow seminar, and a joint Assessment meets Enterprise meets Portfolio CETIS meeting. While the eAA is perhaps more focused on schools and colleges, and CETIS relates more strongly to HE, there was still some interesting links between the two events.Helen Ashton and Cliff Beevers gave a presentation at the eAA that covered some

Rachelnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10619366.post-71223737532010717822008-05-26T16:16:00.009+01:002008-05-27T14:54:26.117+01:00

I've just come across two interesting news items - one about the use of Web2.0 in the Health sector and another about using online games to encourage children to respond to a consultation about play spaces.Although the full text is not available without paying a hefty sum, the Executive Summary of the E-health 2.0 report is available. The report offers an overview of twenty "leading e-health 2.0

Alisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01496517274231805262noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10619366.post-24570146695349778362008-05-16T10:46:00.003+01:002008-05-16T10:58:30.126+01:00

This short extract in elearning papers from an article by Richard Straub discusses how "The idea of 'openness' is emerging as a dominant attribute of key developments in our economic and social fabric" and how with the emergence and increasing dominance of Web 2.0, we now have "the infrastructure and tools to operate in new ways in open systems".Yet collaborative, open souce, open access is not

Alisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01496517274231805262noreply@blogger.com0