Tools – Susan Greig

Goodbye TREE

It’s sad to close a service, especially one that you were involved in developing – but it is also a chance to reflect on what was learned from the process.

TREE was conceived in 2014, when our website was still using the somewhat clunky Polopoly content management system (CMS). The original vision was to develop an interactive tool aimed at teaching staff, to help them find out about the technology tools we offer and how these can be used for teaching and learning. We had ambitions to develop an interactive system that allowed people to rate our services add comments. We used extensive user consultation to develop requirements for this tool which I wrote about in a previous blog post – Setting out on an Agile project journey: Part 1, User Stories and Poker Chips.

Interface for TREE (Technology Resources for Educational Enhancement)

TREE went live in summer of 2014. It was developed in Drupal – and its appearance was much cleaner than our webpages at the time. However, even with very limited content we had issues with the available search options.

Our main stumbling block however was with encouraging people to author content, and in keeping this content up to date. This required duplication of their effort as they were often already maintaining very similar content on service webpages.

We soon realised that there is too much overlap between TREE and our university webpages. Also, in 2015 our university website content management system changed from polopoly to Drupal. This has made it more user friendly to maintain webpages and offers better functionality than the previous CMS.

By creating a different web tool we were creating another place to direct staff too, this required an effort to promote, when staff were already going to our well recognised website in search of similar information.

We experimented with different channels for promotion – I set up the TREE Twitter account. I now see that I only posted 34 tweets – but I’m sure at least an hour of agony went into each composition! This was on top of email correspondence, print articles and some of my earliest blog posts. This experience introduced me to digital marketing and promotion and I learned that this requires a clear focus and vision and time to devote to development.

Screenshot of the TREE Twitter account — The TREE Twitter account

Lynda.com, which the University of Edinburgh subscribed to last year, has several courses that look useful for those interested in this area https://www.lynda.com/learning-paths/Marketing/become-a-digital-marketer

What we did right:

We learned from users – through comprehensive requirements gathering and later usability testing. People don’t all use websites in the way you think they will or that you do. Taking the time to consult with users on requirements and to sit with users during testing provides amazing insights.

We built relationships through requirements gathering and consultation and from this developed large mailing list.

What we learned:

If you can, put information where people are already looking for it – publicising a new website is hard! It’s much easier to improve content in the place people were going to look.

What I did in my holidays…Become a Manager with Lynda.com

Since summer 2016 the University of Edinburgh has provided a licence to Lynda.com online courses for staff and students. I spent some time in my Christmas break looking at this. I had already started to explore Lynda.com, watching several videos and completing the course ‘Learning with Lynda.com‘ which I’d recommend as a good starting point for those new to the resource.
Completing a course (which as far as I can see this means watching all the videos) gives you a certificate of completion – and this can be easily shared, for example on Twitter, Facebook or on your LinkedIn profile or downloaded as a PDF and printed out.

I found the course I completed interesting but I still wasn’t sure yet how to use Lynda.com for my own development – the courses are very short (most of them can be completed within an hour or two) – and are well presented and relevant – but the library is vast and offers many subjects relevant to my work (for example Education, Design and Business) . Each course give you certificate – I wasn’t sure what my next step was – beyond collecting a long list of certificates? Then I found the feature called Learning Paths that collates a selection of courses around a goal and this answered my question. I decided to take the next step and tackle the one to ‘Become a Manager‘ – which is made up of 9 courses:

1. New Manager Fundamentals
2. Hiring Your Team
3. Onboarding New Hires
4. Delegating Tasks to Your Team
5. Leading Productive Meetings
6. Managing for Results
7. Performance Review Fundamentals
8. Building Accountability Into Your Culture
9. Rewarding Employees

I was at home over the break so I decided to access this via the Lynda.com App on my Android tablet or phone as I usually have one of these devices to hand. The App gives a reduced selection of the Lynda.com features but does mean you can download content – so you can download a course when you have Wi-Fi and watch even when you don’t. The videos can be watched full screen and you can easily skip about within the course structure. Progress was synced to my account across multiple devices and progress watching the downloaded content was synced next time you had a connection.
Unfortunately the App doesn’t give you access to the ‘My Goals’ section of Lynda.com where you access the Learning Paths. So this first thing I did, to work around this, was to go to my laptop and add all the courses from this Learning Path to a Playlist – as I could see this via the App. Then, in odd pockets of time over the holiday, I watched the videos and worked through the courses. It was easy to squeeze this into odd moments – I would watch a couple of videos when I was cooking, or when I had a few minutes during the day. They are generally bite sized (I’d say three minutes on average) and include good recaps – so stopping and starting isn’t much of an issue. This activity probably replaced some time I would have spent reading the news or twitter online.

After a chunk of videos, say three or four, there is a short quiz and I found these really helpful to check if I’d understand what I’d just watched. Though the interface for questions on android devices was frustratingly temperamental – it requires you to drag the correct answer off the screen – but sometimes took several attempts to register this. I did persevere though, as I really wanted to check my answers.
Many of the courses also come with exercise files which can’t be accessed from App, but I will probably take a look at these now I’m back in the office – as several of them are templates that maybe useful in my work.

The App also doesn’t allow you to bookmark videos (which you can do on the website) and this I did miss, when watching the courses there were one or two videos that resonated, and that I wanted to go back to again or to discuss with colleagues – without the bookmark option it’s going to be harder to find these again. Hopefully Lynda.com will add this feature in time? I see in the App that I can share videos in various ways, so next time I will try to email details of key videos to myself.

What did I get from following a learning path that I wouldn’t have got from just choosing nine courses on management that I was interested in? I think that answer lies in the collation, basically I did watch courses that I wouldn’t have selected – because I was interested in the overall goal. This was on the basis that someone with more experience than me had selected appropriate courses and that therefore the relevance would become clearer to me in time. Some of the courses listed I didn’t initially think looked interesting or relevant – the course ‘Managing for Results’ for example, was much more relevant than it looked on the face of it. A couple of the courses used slightly different language (it being authored in the US) – for example ‘Onboarding New Hires’ is what I would have called New Staff Induction – so I wouldn’t have been able to find this by searching for it despite the relevant content. On the minus side, the legal aspects where focused on the US context, this was clearly stated but I still felt I had to watch through them to complete the course!

Once I completed the course I went to my laptop and added the certificate to my LinkedIn profile. This displays nicely and it links through to show the details of the Learning Path and the courses it contained. This would be valuable to staff and students for evidencing their knowledge and skills.

So having spent time exploring what it means to Become a Manager with Lynda.com – I’m now ready to relate this to my current work – feeling better prepared and more confident to develop my own experience as a manager in 2017.

The ‘Become a Manager’ Badge from Lynda.com on my LinkedIn profile

ALT Scotland: Sharing Stories: enablers and drivers for Learning Technology in Scottish Education 7th June 2016 #ALTC

Earlier this month I had the pleasure of speaking at ALT Scotland SIG about our plans at U of E to support a group of staff through Certified Membership of the Association of Learning Technologists (CMALT). This was hosted by Dundee and Angus College – which has recently opened the ‘Learning Lab’ – more about this later. The programme and videos of the event are now online.

It was a friendly meeting, small enough for some group-wide discussion and including opportunities to meet and talk to other participants. The programme offered an interesting range of presentations and it was great to hear about the projects going on in other institutions in Scotland. Here are a few of my highlights.

Scott Connor and Keith Smyth talking about becoming an etextbook publisher

I was interested to hear Scott Connor and Keith Smyth from University of the Highlands and Islands talking about the eTIPS project – sharing their experiences of becoming an etextbook publisher. The first publication is How to write a Research Dissertation by Keith Smyth and Frank Rennie (a Kindle book priced at a very reasonable £1.99). They are now working on a second Book titled “Undertaking your Research” – these are practical books aimed at getting students started, they chose to look for subjects with a broad reach rather than being discipline specific. Both books will also have companion websites.

They chose to distribute the book with Kindle which is free to use as a publisher but there were problems with integrating with Library System and this locked them in to Amazon as the only delivery route.

Scott and Keith are enthusiastic about the possibilities of this publishing route. They suggested it as a way of disseminating student research outputs as it’s quicker than traditional publishing routes. They also mentioned the implications for the academic as author – institutions less dependent on traditional forms of publishing. They saw possibilities of students as digital scholars – publishing the ‘best’ student work, they noted that the ‘best’ may not simply relate to high marks, but instead mean most relevant work in terms of impact beyond the University.

Gavin Boyd – App-Smashing – and mobile learning

Gavin Boyd from Edinburgh College showcased his inspiring use of mobile blended learning. He began by producing short teaching videos but found these were not being watched on Moodle. So he started using QR codes within learning materials so students could link from their smart phone at key moments in learning.

For example: Percentage increase (Singapore bar) Q & A By Gavin Boyd

These he created by “App-Smashing” – using multiple Apps to create one video. The tools used were:

Tellagami – to animate a video Avatar
Explain Everything – whiteboard on iPad – save to camera roll
YouTube – Splice two streams together

These have received a very good response and Gavin recently received a student nominated teaching award.

Visiting the Learning Lab

For our mid-afternoon break we were invited by Joy Howat to visit the Learning Lab in Dundee and Angus College.

LearningLab (3) — Touch me….I’m interactive. The Learning Lab at Dundee and Angus College photo by Susan Greig CC BY

This space opened last November and is stocked with new technology so staff can explore the possibilities of the up and coming technologies. The staff are not developers – so the focus is on looking at what is already available. The room is a flexible space, it contains all movable furniture so easy to reconfigure. The technology provided includes:

LearningLab (2) — The Learning Lab at Dundee and Angus College photo by Susan Greig CC BY

Virtual Reality headsets – to explore existing apps such as Learn to cook or Public Speaking Simulator
3D capture – which links to iPad for hand held scanning
3D printing – from the 3D capture or from sources such as thingyverse
Drones – sports interested in Arial views also building surveying students – easy to access roofs
Pro-Bots – basic programming, Problem solving, Team building, Numeracy

LearningLab (4) — 3D printed objects at the Learning Lab at Dundee and Angus College photo by Susan Greig CC BY

So far they have delivered 60 hours of introductory sessions. The Learning Lab can be booked to use as a learning space by staff and students. On the strength of trying the technology, some departments have gone on to purchase the technology they tried.

Learning Lab - 3D printing in progress photo by Susan Greig CC BY — Learning Lab – 3D printing in progress photo by Susan Greig CC BY

I was really lucky to get the opportunity to be 3D scanned during the session and to leave 15 minutes later with a perfect (tiny) 3D model of my head. I also tried the VR headsets, enjoying a vertiginous ride on a tiny roller coaster. I then tried my hand at programming the robot cars, and was pleased to see I had not forgotten basic geometry.

There was a real buzz after the hands on session and it gave everyone a boost of energy before we moved on to the final presentations of the afternoon.

The ALT Scotland SIG was an inspiring day out in Dundee, it was great to connect with colleagues from across Scotland, to explore technology and see how other Institutions are using and supporting it.

2016 Digital Day of Ideas (#DigScholEd) – Workshop – Make Your Own Chat Bot

A picture of a lego robot — Clockwork Robot by Adeel Zubair by Brickset CC BY 2.0

It was pleasure to spend an inspiring day at the University of Edinburgh on 18th May 16 for the fifth annual Digital Day of Ideas (#DigScholEd).

The day was gently paced, with three thoughtful keynote presentations from Karen Gregory, Lorna Hughes & Ted Underwood (videos are online) and ample breaks for refreshments and conversation.

In the afternoon I took part in a workshop to Make Your Own Chat Bot with Siân Bayne , Kathrin Haag and Stewart Cromar.

Sian started the session by giving an overview of ‘Twitter bots’ – programmes that produce automated posts on Twitter. She pointed us to some interesting examples:

Screen shot from the Dear Assistant Twitter Bot account

DEAR Assistant – I am a Twitter bot and I’ll try to answer your questions just like Siri, Google Now or Cortana.

Screen Shot from the LA QuakeBot Twitter Bot account

LA QuakeBot – I am a robot that tells you about earthquakes in Los Angeles as they happen

Screen Shot from Restroom Genderator Twitter Bot account

Restroom Genderator – random restroom gender sign generator. extant (and not so extant) genders with random symbols.

Siân questioned the idea that teaching jobs will be taken over my robots, referring us to the Oxford Martin Project – and the ‘Will a robot take your job?’ tool. In the 2016 Manifesto for teaching online she and colleagues say “Automation need not impoverish education: we welcome our new robot colleagues.”

Siân then talked about the ‘teacherbot’ project, which the teaching team developed for E-Learning and Digital Cultures MOOC. The teaching team programmed the Teacherbot to respond to questions from students on this massive open online course. To do so the project developed a Graphical User Interface (GUI) for teachers with no code experience to use.

After this introduction we had some hands on experience – using PandoraBots (Information Services have a subscription) which uses AIML Artificial Intelligence Mark-up Language – it can be used with Twitter but could also be used in other platforms. The team talked us through setting up a PandoraBots playground creating a bot and adding and editing responses. At the end of the session these were uploaded into the Teacherbot test account so we could test them on Twitter. It was really satisfying to see how easily this can be achieved.

This has left me considering… How could we use this? Could we offer service support for learning technology services? Do staff and students want to find out their answers on Twitter? Would it be useful for promotion or engagement activities?

Is this fun or practical? Or maybe a bit of both?

If you are interested in finding out more, take a look at Teacherbot – A Twitterbot pilot service.

Adventures in IDEL

Sunday afternoon at the Art Gallery – My Avatar admiring the work of Jilla Lamar in Second Life

Last year I had the privilege of being a student on the Introduction to Digital Environments for Learning (IDEL) course which is the foundation course for the MSC in Digital Education. This was funded by a the Institute for Academic Development (IAD) who as part of their support for the Online Distance Learning (ODL) community offer bursaries to staff who are working on or considering developing an ODL programme.

I work as a Learning Technology Advisor in the Educational Design and Engagement team within Learning Teaching & Web Services (part of Information Services). I applied for the bursary as I am increasingly supporting staff working on fully distance online programmes and as the number of ODL programmes increase this is becoming a bigger part of my job. For example as service lead on QuestionMark Perception assessment system I support several ODL programmes in the creation and delivery of assessments.

What did I get from taking part in IDEL?

It was really interesting to get a student’s perspective on the institution I work for. I expected to get this by being a participant, and to an extent I did, but the most interesting insights came from getting to know the other students on the course. Despite it being fully online I had plenty of opportunities to talk with other students through online tutorials, in Skype, Collaborate and Second Life and also from the discussion forums in Moodle.

A photograph of My collection of IDEL readings — My collection of IDEL readings

Each week we were given a range of readings, some core and also recommendations for further reading, a proportion of these were in alternative formats like videos, but the majority are journal articles. Not only did it make an impressive pile by the end, but also allowed me to explore the technology around reading. I had a go with Mendeley (reference manager and PDF organizer) and tried reading and marking up text electronically, After that experiment I quickly opted for printing out documents on paper – I have to admit that having access to a laser printer did help! Before finally considering screen reading software (TextHelp Read and Write 10 – for which the University has a site licence), as it turned out from a tutorial discussion several other students did their reading this way. Studying for IDEL was a great way to make the space and time to read and I enjoyed some thought provoking articles regardless of how I read them.

IDEL activities offer its students opportunities to use a wide range of tools, thanks to this I was able to re-evaluate applications I thought I already knew such as Twitter and Second Life and also to explore/play with new tools such as Powtoon Cartoon creator and thinglink to make interactive images.

A screen shot of the themes from my blog posts over the IDEL course — Themes that emerged from my blog posts over the IDEL course – appearing a Word Press Widget

One of the course requirements was regular blogging. I really enjoyed the reflective space of the blog and the encouragement to share my written reflection frequently, which was helped by the frequent feedback I received. We used WordPress and I like the fact that I was building up confidence in an openly available tool which I can continue to use for work or private projects in future.

The blog activity formed 60% of the assessment and the other 40% was a piece of work on a subject you selected, related to one (or more) of the course themes. I chose to create an Open Education Resource (OER) about OERS in HE – using the free website building tool Weebly. Completing it was hard, with the hand in date is just after the Christmas break, but-all-in-all a really useful experience. Choosing to create something ‘publicly viewable’ really did focus my mind and I think made me work harder!

Would I recommend IDEL to other Learning Technologists?

Absolutely. It’s a fantastic introduction to the possibilities of online education and the IAD bursary offers a great opportunity to take part in a highly regarded online master’s programme.

And if you do enjoy your IDEL experience, you can apply for a further bursary for a 20-credit course, which means you can leave with a PG Cert in Digital Education which is a great addition to your CV.

Links

IAD – Online distance learning Community (Bursary details on this page)
http://www.ed.ac.uk/institute-academic-development/learning-teaching/staff/networks/odl

Introduction to Digital Environments for Learning (IDEL) http://online.education.ed.ac.uk/content/edua11222-an-introduction-to-digital-environments-for-learning/

IAD Case Studies: IAD Bursaries https://www.wiki.ed.ac.uk/display/casestudies/Staff+Development%3A+IAD+Bursaries

Second GeoLocation in Learning and Teaching Event hosted by the School of GeoSciences: Tuesday 9th June

In February this year I organised the first GeoLocation in Learning and Teaching Event as part of the Social and Cloud based Learning and Teaching Service and was pleasantly surprised at the level of interest and enthusiasm. You can read all about this session in the accompanying blog post.

I was very pleased when Owen Macdonald, GIS Support Officer in GeoSciences contacted me to ask if we could work together on a follow up event which took place on Tuesday 9th June.

Photo of a map of Edinburgh in an old book — Map of Edinburgh, used under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 with thanks to Burns Library, Boston College on flickr

In this post are brief summaries of the presentations and links that the presenters have kindly shared:

Our first speaker was Anna Groundwater from History discussing digital mapping and history, she began by reassuring everyone that ‘it’s okay not to be a specialist in GIS and digital mapping.

She described the value of digitization and historical mapping within the History discipline and explained how they approach teaching students the potential uses and theories around maps and mapping.

This link will open a PDF of Anna Groundwater’s presentation which includes fantastic examples, resources and links (will open in a new window).

She introduced the idea of deep mapping or thick mapping where maps are augmented with additional data, e.g. layers of geographic information, images, chronology which can create richer artefacts for study and can bring new insights from analysis.

I was particularly drawn by the comments on the theory of mapping, Anna spoke of encouraging students to rethink the western oriented mapping of spaces to capture something of the human or of human behaviour within maps. She says ‘Mapping is not static, it’s a process, to tell a story’ and “GIS is not just a software tool, but an ‘approach to scholarship”.

Bruce Gittings from GeoSciences then described ‘Teaching with The Gazetteer for Scotland’. For those unfamiliar with the term, a gazetteer is a geographical directory used in conjunction with a map or atlas, and in fact the ‘Gazetteer for Scotland’ began as a project to update the six volumes of Groome’s Ordinance Gazetteer of Scotland (1885), and was originally envisaged as a book.

Appearances can be deceptive, the Gazetteer for Scotland, with its slightly dated interface (Bruce has been working on this project since 1995) might appear basic but behinds it’s simple exterior there is a wealth of information, functionality and teaching and project opportunities for students.

Bruce encourages students to engage with the Gazetteer for Scotland as part of their student projects from researching and writing entries to developing site functionality – with only the best work making it to the live site. He showcased an impressive tool which allows you to generate a PDF Guidebook for any area with information drawn from the Gazetteer of Scotland.

Please see the PDF of Bruce Gittings presentation for further details (will open in a new window).

Next, Carol Blackwood from EDINA showcased Digimap for Schools which is a subscription service that provides access to Ordnance Survey maps to primary and secondary schools across the UK. It’s a web based service, therefore schools don’t need to manage any software instillations. It’s aimed at students aged from 8 to 14. It includes additional tools to annotate maps and resources written by curriculum experts. It is also available to teacher training courses within institutions.

Mikaël Attal from GeoSciences demonstrated tools for topographic analysis for GeoSciences undergrads. GIS tools are used throughout the undergraduate programmes and Mikaël discussed the approaches used to support students who use them. He explained that combining geographical information with topographical gave another way of understanding what is happening in the landscape. He has produced many useful handouts which can be found on his webpages.

Here is a link to a PDF of Mikaël Attal’s Presentation (will open in a new window).

The afternoon was closed by Tom Armitage also from EDINA who demonstrated the FieldTripGB App. After downloading the App to our devices (it’s available from the Play store for android or iTunes App Store for Apple) we had a very short field trip – to capture information about all of the professors who’s portraits were displayed round the lovely ‘Old Library’ room where the event was held.

The tool allows you to design a data collection form via the FieldTripGB website and then your students can complete this on their device, these can then be uploaded to Dropbox to collate. The App really lends itself to crowdsourced data collection projects. There will be a new release of FieldTripGB soon, and we were advised to follow the @FieldtripGB twitter account for updates.

As the afternoon came to a close, I left this event with new insights into the useful GIS technologies that are embedded in both GeoSciences and History programmes and in the approaches used to share these with students.

I’m very grateful to Owen MacDonald for suggesting this event, and bringing together such an interesting group of speakers. Thanks to all to the speakers and attendees it was a most enjoyable event. We hope to bring together another event on this theme at the starts of next year so please do get in touch if you’d like to get involved.

Further Information:

About The School of GeoSciences:

In the School of GeoSciences we explore the factors and forces that shape our world. We aim to develop a better understanding of the coupled Earth System, that is, the interactions between the Earth’s geosphere, atmosphere, oceans, biosphere and cryosphere, the drivers of variability and change, and the roles and responses of humans in this complex interplay. With over 370 academics, researchers and research students, we are the largest grouping of geoscientists in the UK. Research activity is currently coordinated within three main Research Institutes – Global Change, Earth and Planetary Science, and Geography and the Lived Environment – and within many smaller research groupings that may reach beyond the School.

About GIS and Digital Mapping within GeoSciences:

While mapping and spatial data are used throughout the School the bulk of GIS activity, including specific GIS teaching and research, can be found within Geography in Drummond Street which houses the School’s GIS Group. The Group are responsible for a cluster of MSc degrees including MSc GIS (taught and research degrees), and MSc GIS and Archaeology and have up to 30 years of experience in GIS! The School also employs a full-time GIS Support Officer primarily focussed on supporting these MSc degrees (e.g. practical development and delivery, teaching/learning support) but also providing a level of teaching and research support across the wider School to staff and students.

About GIS and Digital Mapping across UoE:

A level of consultancy and support are provided University-wide by EDINA, such as GIS training for non-geosciences staff and postgraduates.

EDINA is the Jisc-designated centre for digital expertise and online service delivery at the University of Edinburgh and may be familiar to you due to their extensive range of online services. EDINA runs the Digimap services which are an invaluable source of geographical/geospatial data to Higher Education

GeoLocation in Learning and Teaching Event Wednesday 25th February 2015

As part of the Social and Cloud based Learning and Teaching Service I recently organised an afternoon event focusing on Geolocation technology used in learning and teaching at the University of Edinburgh.

A screen shot showing a world map with lots of photos on different locations — Image is a screen shot from WikiMiniAtlas at https://wma.wmflabs.org

In this post are brief summaries of the presentations and links that the presenters have kindly shared:

Dr Hamish Macleod, Senior Lecturer, Education, discussed the INGRESS game which is produced by Google. It is a location dependant game based on google maps. It is a mobile game, but not a casual game (which requires little commitment from the user) it has a rich back story and ongoing objectives to capture portals. Hamish was interested in the learning potential of the collaborative elements and the possibilities of proposing missions within the game.

Dr Hamish Macleod – Presentation on INGRESS PDF (Will open in a new window)

Tom Armitage, Geoservices Support, EDINA presented on the mobile mapping and data collection app Fieldtrip GB.

A titbit for me from this session was the description of the ‘Urban Canyon’ effect, which explains why GPS reception can be so poor in streets flanked by tall buildings.

Armitage, Geoservices Support, EDINA presentation on app Fieldtrip GB is attached as a PDF (will open in a new window).

Dr. Anouk Lang, Lecturer in Digital Humanities, School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures discussed how she uses the SIMILE Exhibit platform, which runs off Google Maps API, to create an interactive map to use with students to explore the literary culture of Paris in the 1920s. Dr. Anouk Lang did not use slides for her presentation instead giving a live demo from her website, which you can access for further information: http://aelang.net/wordpress/mapping-modernist-paris/

The Map data is held in a Google Spreadsheet which the students edit (the students take this very seriously as they know that their contribution will be public). She emphasised the transferable skills gained by students. The precision required for basic coding forces them to pay attention to detail, for example, if they make typo’s the entry will not appear.

Duncan Shingleton presented on various location based research projects Design Informatics has done:

Walking though time – negotiating the streets of Edinburgh in 1860
Download the App from: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/walking-through-time-edinburgh/id381528712?mt=8

Comob – Networking people movements
Download the App from: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/comob-net/id326303438?mt=8

GoGet – Objects hitch hiking on the path of humans
Download the App from: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/coget/id843552747?mt=8

Treasure Trapper – Mobile game in conjunction with Edinburgh Museum and Galleries.
Download the App from: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/treasuretrapper/id898429541?mt=8

Mr Seels Garden – Food narratives in the city of Liverpool. This App uses local informational clouds, so only works when you use it in Liverpool.

Ghost Cinema – cinematic narratives in Battersea – also a local App.

Duncan Shingleton’s presentation PDF (will open in a new window).

Jonathan Silvertown, Chair in Technology Enhanced Science Education in the School of Biological Sciences – presented persuasively on his vision for “Virtual Edinburgh: turning the whole city into a mobile learning environment” taking us on a journey from Calton hill to King’s buildings to show how much data is already available just waiting to be linked up. We will watch with interest as this project develops.

Jonathan Silvertown “Virtual Edinburgh: turning the whole city into a mobile learning environment” PowerPoint Presentation – will open in a new window.

At the close of the session I spoke briefly about Wikipedia ‘nearby’ functionality.

Screen shot of Wikipedia Nearby on an android phone

This uses the GeoData extension for Media Wiki, which provides a structured way to store geo-coordinates for articles, as well as an API to make queries around this information. (source http://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/01/31/geodata-a-new-age-of-geotagging-on-wikipedia/)

It is designed for mobile (just download the Wikipedia App) but can also be accessed via the desktop – http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Nearby

It is aimed at getting people to explore their surroundings, so could be useful for tourists or new students?

This quote comes from a Wikimedia blog post:

“The mobile team has focused on using the Nearby page to surfaces articles in close proximity that lack images, inviting users to add one. Upon visiting those pages, the user will be prompted to illustrate the article, which they can do quickly and easily if they’re on a mobile device that supports taking and uploading photos.”

My colleague and I have tried to test this but can’t find the prompt to illustrate the article, or an easy way to upload photos? I’d be interested in hearing from anyone who has made this work?

Can you think of any uses to put this to with your students, exploring an environment using Wikipedia, setting up a scavenger hunt activities, or developing activities editing pages?

Thanks again to all the speakers for presenting at this event and to everyone who attended, it was a most enjoyable and inspiring afternoon.

Please do get in touch if you have any suggestions for topics or speakers you’d be interested in hearing at future events.

Links

For further details of these presentations Nicola Osborne wrote a live blog of the event which you can find here: http://nicolaosborne.blogs.edina.ac.uk/2015/02/25/geolocation-in-learning-and-teaching-liveblog/

Screencasting software: some thoughts on the best options

I have reviewed several software options, with both free and paid licenses, to assess whether it is worth replacing Camtasia Studio.

Resources:

www.teachertrainingvideos.com

www.andrewdouch.wordpress.com/2014/02/13/the-best-screencasting-software-for-teachers

Windows Media Encoder + Windows Movie Maker

This is software that can be downloaded for free with Windows, and in theory should work without problems on Windows machines to record the screen and edit the footage, respectively.

Although not its primary use, WME works as a screen recorder and creates files compatible with WMM. While testing it, I kept getting an error which made the recording useless. This occurred probably 8/10 times. I found no solution for the error after several tries, and it seems to be a known bug that occurs on Windows 7 and 8. Another potential issue with WME is the files it creates are huge (many GBs) which is great if you are after pristine quality, but for our purposes, it is unnecessary. Furthermore, I have noticed the quality of the recordings from WME is poorer than what Camtasia produces at a fraction of the hard drive space. I do not recommend WME unless absolutely no other option is available.

WMM would work well as a video editor, it has the capacity to add closed captions and callouts, and it has a user-friendly interface. It supports a variety of formats so it can be used with a different screen recorder if needed. Since WMM was not built specifically for screencasting, it requires some actions that do not have easy shortcuts, so it may be slightly time-consuming, but it is a powerful enough tool to get the job done.

List of accepted formats: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-GB/windows-live/movie-maker-file-types-faq

Download Movie Maker: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/get-movie-maker-download

Download Media Encoder: http://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/download/details.aspx?id=17792

Quicktime + iMovie

The OSX version of the WME+WMM combination. Quicktime player (Mac version ONLY) has the option to record the screen, and the resulting footage can be edited in iMovie. iMovie is user-friendly and a very good tool for basic editing. I haven’t had to work with iMovie for screencasting in the past, but from what I know about the software, it should be similar to WMM: powerful enough to get the job done, with a few workarounds perhaps. I did not test this combination myself as I am on a Windows machine, but drew my conclusion from past experiences, online videos and help forums.

VLC Media Player

VLC is free to download and an amazingly powerful tool with countless functions, one of which is recording the screen. It saves footage in multiple formats and is compatible with many different brands of editing software. However, it does not record audio (neither microphone, nor system sounds). Another limitation is that it only records fullscreen, and can’t record the secondary screen, therefore some cropping may be required in post-production. Also, VLC has no editing capabilities, so it would require additional software (like WMM, for example). The process of getting VLC to record the screen is not immediately obvious, the function is buried in the menu, but it can definitely be used in a screen-recording emergency situation if nothing else is available.

How-to: http://youtu.be/n-miLXpXiUw?t=8s

Download VLC: http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

Jing

Jing is free to download from Techsmith, and has a minimalistic and easy-to-use interface. It is easily accessible via the little bubble icon on your screen. It only records and has no built-in or online editing possibilities. You can record your screen, then have it automatically uploaded and share the link from www.screencast.com. It can also record audio from the microphone. It can record a specific, pre-selected area of the screen, so there is no need for cropping afterwards. It also allows you to trim the edges (beginning and end) of the recording before sharing. It is the ideal tool for a quick demonstration you need to share over the web. I would not recommend it for anything else though, as it only allows up to 5 minutes of recording.

The recorded footage can also be saved to the hard-drive. However, Jing only creates .swf files which are pretty much incompatible with any editing software, and if you have the time and luxury to use a video convertor such as TMPGenc or Mac Convertor which would resolve this, then you can probably use something better than Jing to begin with.

http://www.techsmith.com/jing.html

Snag-it

Snag-it is another tool from Techsmith, and it sits somewhere in between Jing and Camtasia. The recorder works similarly to Jing, and is very easy to use. It automatically uploads the recorded footage to www.screencast.com, and gives the possibility to download the file as well. It also has the integrated option to share the video straight to Youtube or Google Drive. It records files as .mp4 and other widely used formats, which can be played and edited on most platforms.

It has an online editing option, so you can use it anywhere, saving you the need to install specialized software on your machine. The editing is very basic, but is a big step forward from Jing. It allows you to add an intro or outro to the video, as well as cut out any unwanted parts. It doesn’t look like a proper timeline however, so you have no idea where your cuts or different portions of video are, you can only scroll/scrub through it. I’d describe it as the seek bar in a video player. You can use it to add closed captions. It also has some ‘special effects’ that I don’t really see the point of.

You can get a free trial of it, and here is a list of the features: http://www.techsmith.com/snagit-features.html

It costs ~£35.

While this is a decent tool, I would recommend screencast-o-matic over it, and the only major advantage I see in Snag-it is that it the video is easily movable to Camtasia Studio should you need to work on it more. But if you already have Camtasia, better just use that.

Screencast-o-matic

S-o-m is similar to Snag-it, but better (in my opinion) and cheaper/free. It’s web-based, so it can be used anywhere and does not require installing any software. It does give the option of a desktop install though, but I was unable to make it work. The web one worked well. One of the first problems is that it requires Java, and installing/updating that can be annoying. But once you get past that, it works. Secondly, it does not work on Google Chrome, so I used Firefox. Another slightly negative aspect is that it (the free version) adds a watermark to the produced video. The paid version removes the watermark and also allows editing online.

The editing is very simplified, and somewhat “destructive”. The editor looks similar to Snag-it’s tool, and does not show a proper timeline, it’s more of a seek bar. It gives you the option to trim and extract unwanted parts, but it’s not suitable for very precise cuts, because you aren’t exactly shown what you have on the timeline. It allows captions, which can be used in the free version as well. These captions have to be uploaded and manually “programmed”, in the sense that you have to type into a text file the start and end times for the display of each bit of text. This sounds repetitive and time consuming, but in fairness, it is no worse than pasting each line of the script from a text file into a more professional video editor, it only looks and feels more rudimentary.

The videos can be published into broadly used formats such as .mp4, which can be also downloaded to the hard-drive. You can also upload straight to Youtube or use s-o-m’s own server. I would recommend s-o-m for short, simple videos that require more attention than a basic record & share type of video, but nothing more complex than that. The editor is easy enough to use, has the advantage that is always available online and is cheap ~£10/year. I would recommend this over Snag-it.

http://screencast-o-matic.com/

They also have video tutorials for their editing features, which are very handy.

Camtasia Studio

Camtasia is the way to go in my opinion, if complex videos are required. It is a tool built especially for this purpose, and is easy to use if you have some experience, and easy to learn if you don’t. It can also be used easily for creating very simple videos.

Techsmith have great video tutorials available, and going through them once should ensure you have the knowledge you need to create your first video.

While version 7 is great at doing what you need it to do, it does have some limitations which I have come across. Camtasia 8 seems to have resolved many of these (though not all), and for this reason, I would prefer to work on 8. Furthermore, University of Edinburgh’s Information Services already have staff trained and experienced in Camtasia 8. The cost per educational licence is ~£116, much more expensive than any other software I have reviewed, but the features and options included are also incomparable to anything else below that price range.

IS Skills screencasting: https://www.wiki.ed.ac.uk/pages/viewpage.action?title=Producing+a+screencast+video&spaceKey=ISSC

Camtasia 7 tutorials: http://www.techsmith.com/tutorial-camtasia-7.html

Camtasia 8 tutorials: http://www.techsmith.com/tutorial-camtasia-8.html

TREE – A new online tool for teaching staff: Technology Resources for Educational Enhancement is LIVE

TREE (Technology Resources for Educational Enhancement) Logo

For the last year I’ve been working with my colleague, Steph Hay, on a project to deliver an interactive educational resource discovery tool, and we are really pleased that the beta version is now live: Tree (Technology Resources for Educational Enhancement).

So what is TREE?

The TREE tool is designed to act as a bridge between the technology enhanced learning (TEL) services offered in Information Services and those who want to use them.

The drivers for this project were the need to:

raise awareness of TEL services
provide information 24/7
provide information that people can find for themselves
communicate the versatility of our tools.

Anyone can access the tool but it is primarily aimed at teaching staff, particularly those new to the University.

I wrote about this project in a previous post where I talked about the requirements gathering process. To recap- we used an agile methodology for this project, keeping users at the centre of development throughout, from user stories for gathering requirements to frequent user testing.

I can’t believe how far we have come in the six months since I wrote that post. At that point it was still called the ‘Resource Discovery Tool’.

What’s in a name?

We started thinking about what to call this tool early in the project. ‘Resource Discovery Tool’ was too broad and non-specific, and for librarians means something more akin to a library catalogue. But it did lead us to some interesting conversations with our library colleagues. We collected name suggestions from participants in the requirements gathering sessions and then set up a survey in Bristol Online Surveys to poll opinion on these suggestions:

ASK (Academic Services Knowledgebase)
ASK FRED (Academic Services Knowledgebase Finding Resource Education Discovery)
Enquire Within
WhatTeachingTools?
TREE (Technology Resources for Educational Enhancement)

And the winner was: ASK (Academic Services Knowledgebase) (with ASK FRED a close second).

So why didn’t we call it that? Well, one of the fun things about working in a large institution is that there is so much going on, and it turns out that this name is already earmarked for another project. So we went back to the drawing board and sent out a second survey offering the choices:

GUIDE (Guide to University Information supporting Digital Education)
WhatTeachingTools?
TREE (Technology Resources for Educational Enhancement)

And so the winner was TREE (Technology Resources for Educational Enhancement). We were pleased with this name as we hope this name reflects what the tool is for and the acronym TREE offers interesting visual options for branding. Alas, it also offers Steph a world of pun options and word play became a large part of the TREE meetings and quickly infected our communications!

Photograph of A tree and the Mc Ewan Hall silhouetted against an orange sky — A tree and the McEwan Hall silhouetted against an orange sky

Growing TREE, from seed to sapling

We decided to build in Drupal, as the university website is also moving to this and there is in-house expertise to call upon when advice was needed. Continuing the Agile approach we went through four short build and checking cycles to reach this first live version. I say we, but really it was Steph who has worked the magic in Drupal on this project.

For each build we also undertook user acceptance testing (UAT), to check TREE was functioning as planned. For the first two rounds we send out test scripts (with a list of tasks) and asked users to complete these and email them back to us. This was great because testers could complete these when it suited them, from their own desks. However, it was difficult to frame tasks to test all aspects of the tool (for example how people react to a null search response) and it was not always clear from notes what testers had done at points. While the UAT was useful and successful, it did not allow us to do as much usability testing as we would have liked.

So for the last two rounds of testing we tried another approach called ‘accompanied surfing’. For this we booked a room and invited users in to sit with us as they worked through the tasks on the test script, talking through their thought processes as they did so. This offered a far greater insight into users expectations and search strategies than the earlier User Acceptance Testing.

TREE is currently in its ‘beta’ phase, which means that while fully functional and ready for use, there are further improvements coming and we are hoping for continued feedback and comments from users. These can be sent to us via the form on the on the Tree (Technology Resources for Educational Enhancement) website.

Further growth

I’m really pleased to have been involved in this project and it’s really satisfying for Steph and I to have created a live web tool, it’s a great feeling to see those user requirements turn into a real functional tool.

I’m also really pleased that this is just the start for TREE, as a phase two project has been agreed. Future developments may include:

extending the range of services included beyond those offered by IS
adding functionality to rate or comment on services.

We hope that TREE will be the ‘go-to’ site for any staff member at the University of Edinburgh interested in central services for technology enhanced learning.

Seeing the TREE in the woods?

Alongside further development comes raising awareness. We want to tell everyone involved in teaching in the University of Edinburgh about the TREE tool.

We are fortunate that so many people at the university contributed to this project and would like to thank all of them:

17 participated in requirements gathering workshops
143 completed the requirements gathering survey
14 took part in prioritisation events
47 individuals took part in user testing
many more provided help and consultation.

This is a large institution and it will take effort to make sure all staff in a teaching role are aware of the TREE tool. We are sending out emails and news items to every list we can access but would really appreciate help with this.

So please tell people about TREE

Please can you forward the TREE link (http://www.tree.is.ed.ac.uk/) to any list or person you think might be interested. Please add the link to any webpages, wiki pages or documents where you think it would be relevant, for example those you give to new members of staff.

I look forward to letting you know how the next phase of development goes in a future post.

Links:

TREE is a new online tool to help staff find out about the great learning technology on offer from Information Services http://www.tree.is.ed.ac.uk/ there is information about TREE, including an introduction video on our website.

We have been using the Projects Website to help manage the project and you can see further details of the project here.

Setting out on an Agile project journey: Part 1, User Stories and Poker Chips

Last March I was given an interesting new project to work on:

The aim of the project is to deliver an interactive educational resource discovery tool that enables staff or students to answer a pedagogic or learning question they are trying to satisfy.
The tool will act as a bridge between the technology enhanced learning (TEL) services and the people who want to use them.

The seed of this project had sprung up from several colleagues working in learning technology support, it was inspired by the Service Options Graphic which was created to give an overview of the services offered in the Learning Services Team.

Grid showing the Learning Services — Learning Services Grid Graphic

The graphic proved very useful as tool both for promotion and supporting staff but quickly people started to say ‘if only we could have an interactive version of this….’

Initially it was hard for me to see how to translate this excellent if vague idea into an online tool. Fortunately Steph Hay joined both Information Services and this project in September 2013. With our small team complete and a tight deadline we decided to use an Agile Project methodology. Learning from the expertise of others in Information Services who have already used this approach: https://www.wiki.ed.ac.uk/display/insite/Agile+Projects (Page behind EASE).

Agile projects are iterative and deliver more frequent releases of software. There is an emphasis on interaction and customer collaboration. They should be simple and reflective and take working software as the primary measure of success. [https://www.wiki.ed.ac.uk/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=174606387 (Page behind Ease)].

Steph was then lucky enough to see a presentation given by colleagues in Applications Development ‘Darwin, Finches, and Poker Chips: An Agile Journey’ which they would later present at the Educause 2013 Conference.

She came back enthused and said our first steps were clear, we needed to find out what users want and the tools for doing this were ‘user stories’ – and poker chips.

Gathering User Requirements

At the end of last year we started by running several requirements gathering workshops using the ‘User Stories’ technique. This allowed us to capture user requirements in everyday language without thinking about technology. User Stories are written in the form:

As a/an……

I want to…..

So that…….

The short workshops took 1 hour and started with a brief introduction to the project and the technique. We then moved on to the main activity of discussing the project and getting the participants to complete the User Story Cards. Evaluation of these events was positive and included some nice comments: “interesting, fun, worthwhile!”

We also undertook a survey of teaching staff which received 148 responses and from this were able to add some additional User Stories and to see that a number of the user stories gathered from the workshops had broader support.

After reviewing the User Stories we had a group of 41 requirements. We then gave each a weighting which reflected the amount of effort we estimated would be required to implement this. These were numbered in the Fibonacci number series: 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34 (this was as high was we needed). This sequence was used as the sharp rise in the numbers reflects the uncertainty that is introduced to any estimation as you become less certain of how to implement a requirement. It also allows an easier way to agree on the estimation of effort as the difference between effort 8 and 10 is difficult to quantify while a difference in effort between 8 and 13 is easier. Each requirement and its weighting was then printed out onto A4 card for the prioritisation events.

In January, to prioritise the requirements we ran ‘poker chip prioritisation workshops with users’. I had optimistically advertised the events as ‘both informative and fun’. (I may have even mentioned Vegas at one point, but was sensible enough not to put this in writing!). After a brief introduction we gave each participant 20 poker chips and asked them to read the requirements (laid out across several tables) and to play the correct number of chips (either individually or in together) to vote for an item. This led to some interesting discussion as proposals were made and deals where cut. Steph and I where both impressed that this technique fulfilled our original expectations: it meant we engaged fully with the requirements and had them reviewed by several groups of users.

Photo of user story cards and poker chips. — User stories and poker chips from one of the prioritisation events

Where next?

So now; we have a set of working requirements and will shortly start the first iteration of the build phase. The vague initial idea is starting to move towards something more tangible and as we are using an agile process there should be working software to test soon.

Also, we are currently surveying staff across the university to decide on a name for this tool, and so hope to have something far more meaningful to call it by the time we write the next blog post on the subject.

Links

Further details of this project are on the Projects Website.

You can subscribe to the project mailing list to be kept informed of project activity and to receive invitations to participate.