Netskills Teaching Materials

Netskills provide workshops and training materials to enable the education community to make effective and sustainable use of innovative technology. 

The University of Birmingham has a Netskills Gold Scheme licence to use all of the Netskills training materials.  A wide range of modules are available and materials can be downloaded to assist in training, teaching or individual learning.  You just need to register as an institutional user. 

There are some very nice materials that might be used either in-class or as reference materials, including a focus on learning and teaching, web technologies, searching and information skills.

Have a look for yourself under 'module categories': https://www.netskills.ac.uk/tm/catalogue 

100+ Language Learning Websites

Jane Hart has helpfully put together an alphabetical list of websites where you can learn a language. Some sites provide content; others community; and a number have both. Some sites focus on learning one specific language, others cover a number of languages.The language learning sites in the list vary quite a bit:

Check it out at the Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies

How Can e-Portfolios Support 21st Century Learning?

This was a free, and rather good, workshop at Aston University (pictured) provided by JISC, which explored what we mean by e-portfolios and how e-portfolios can support 21st century learning. The most telling quote for me: "the portfolio is a learning approach, not a technology" (Trent Batson, 2009, see article). It is sometimes difficult to see past the technology and remember that it is used for particular purposes, in especial, for reflective practice - which is why e-portfolios seem especially popular on courses such as PGCE, nursing and medicine, where reflective practice is part of professional requirements. It seems to be a little more difficult to find a true purpose for the technology in other areas...

What did I learn?

• In implementing (any) technology for learning, take small steps and let it evolve.
• Buy-in of an organisation's IT service and technical support is essential.
• I don't know what I would really use an eportfolio for; if staff don't use them, why would students?
• But - Pebblepad might be a good electronic submission and feedback tool...
• Finally, instead of chanting 'reflect, reflect, reflect', it might be better to just start students with blogs, as a kind of reflection by stealth.

I took my digital recorder with me and captured a few thoughts from a few very nice people - so click here for an outside broadcast podcast with authentic Birmingham traffic noise to begin with.

Further information: http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/e-portfolios (a very substantial resource - especially if you click on 'View Infokit', which covers definitions, policy drivers, purposes, perspectives, choosing, implementing, embedding and possible futures).

University Procession on Degree Day, Birmingham (1901)

This film is part of the Mitchell and Kenyon collection - an amazing visual record of everyday life in Britain at the beginning of the twentieth century. Bring back the pipe...




Courtesy the BFI National Archive, and thanks for the heads up, Billy.

The Open Music Archive

Under copyright law, a music recording has two automatically assigned property rights: 

1. A musical composition has a property right;
2. a recording has a separate and independent property right.
   

These property rights are limited (in the UK) by the term of copyright in:

• a literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work to the life of the author plus 70 years;
• a sound recording to 50 years from the date of recording. 

Artists Ben White & Eileen Simpson have created The Open Music Archive, which attempts to gather recordings and information about recordings whose proprietary interests have expired and make them accessible to a wider public.

Much of this music, although legally in the public domain, is tied to physical media (for example gramophone records) and locked away in archives or private collections which are not widely accessible. And now it is - and it is tremendous! 

All of the sound files here are held in common by society as a whole, so have a listen, pass the link on, use the music in your podcasts...

Project Gutenberg: putting the e- into free books

Blogger nearly crashed - an OLiA posting, after all this time! Oh, yes - OLiA is back, baby, inspired by the doughty Web 2.0 bloggers. So, to business...

Project Gutenberg claim to be "the first and largest single collection of free electronic books" and who am I to disagree. There are over 27,000 free books in the searchable Online Book Catalogue and over 100,000 titles available at listed associate sites. The Project's 'Mission Statement' is "to encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks" - an extremely worthy aim that would fit in exactly with OLiA's own mission statement, if we had one.

So, what's the catch? Restrictions on use? Well, not really - this is the text at the start of every eBooks: "This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License (sic) included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org." 

Incidentally, the Project Gutenberg site is a very good, practical and well organised example of a wiki.