Blog – Page 3 – Susan Greig

Not going to #ALTC 2016

I was very excited about attending ALT C this year, I’d registered, booked accommodation and travel, but a last minute family emergency meant I was unable to go. I was disappointed but knew that some of the sessions would be live streamed – so as I’d already blocked out my diary I went online to see what was available from my desk. Fortunately, I found that ALTC caters well for those #virtuallyattending – the keynote sessions are live streamed, as are all sessions from the Main Theatre, the programme is available online and Twitter allows some insight into the rest of the conference activity.

The Live Streamed Keynotes

As I sat in my office waiting for the first keynote and wondering how my experience will compare to watching it live in the auditorium?

As soon as I started to see from the pictures popping up on Twitter I realised that I was getting a front row seat!

29207985550_729d7802b6_z — The view from the back of the lecture theatre at ALTC during Josie Fraser’s Keynote Association for Learning Technology – Picture by Chris Bull CC BY-NC 2.0

I really enjoyed watching the five keynote from ALTC 16, all of which touch on many areas of interest and current concern for learning technologists (All of these sessions are now available on YouTube):

Keynote: Josie Fraser – In the Valley of the Trolls

The importance of recognising what Trolling is and what it is not?
Commitment to open education is an ethical gesture.
Being yourself online may be a privilege.

Keynote: Ian Livingstone – Code Create Collaborate

Importance of nurturing creativity.
Computer Science is the new Latin
Gaming is a force for good.

Keynote: Lia Commissar – Education and Neuroscience: Issues and Opportunities

What has neuroscience got to do with education?
Are there insights from neuroscience for education?
Debunking myths, questioning and growing an evidence base.

Keynote: Jane Secker – Copyright and e-learning: understanding our privileges and freedoms

Copyright is not scary!
The world needs young people who can problem solve and invent things.

Keynote: Donna Lanclos and David White – Being Human is Your Problem

You can’t ‘solve’ teaching and learning.
Openness, privilege and risk.
You are the institution.

It turned out that not just the keynotes, but all sessions from the Main Theatre were live streamed throughout the conference.

Virtually Connecting

There were also three sessions organised by an organisation called “Virtually Connecting” who arranged three Google Hangouts to connect virtual participants with those at the conference. I watched the live stream of the first session they offered, and then joined one on the second day with Fiona Harvey, Lorna Campbell and Teresa MacKinnon. After the session I asked a bit more about how ‘virtually connecting’ worked – I’d originally assumed these were organised by ALT, but it turns out that that ‘virtually connecting’ are a team of volunteers who participate at a variety of academic conferences to broaden access to virtual participants. I’m going to keep an eye on their Twitter account to see where else they turn up.

Tweets by VConnecting

Twitter

Attending a conference is more than just the sessions you watch, there is a social element and the networking opportunities. I was able to connected with people on Twitter by following the #ALTC hashtag, this gave me an insight into the perspectives of others, and allowed me to connect with new people.

Final thoughts

It was great that so much of the conference is openly available, I just hadn’t been aware of this – and wondered how many other people are aware of it? Next year I’ll make an effort to promote these opportunities more widely, through groups I’m involved in at the University of Edinburgh such as elearning@ed and through my support of the CMALT applicants group.

Even if you know you are not attending, it’s well worth blocking out some time during the conference to attend virtually – I’d never have been able to participate without this time.

I found that I particularly enjoyed the sessions that I watched with my colleague, as we could hear each other’s reactions to the talks and discuss them. Next year it might be fun to get together as a group and watch some of the keynote sessions together?

Next year’s conference, ALTC 2017 Beyond islands of innovation – how Learning Technology became the new norm(al) will take place from the 5^th to 7^th September 2017 at the University of Liverpool.

Whether I’m able to attend physically or virtually – I’m already looking forward to it.

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.

Elearning@ed 6th May 2016: Keynote – Dr Laura Gogia

Elearning@Ed has become a regular feature of the University of Edinburgh conference calendar – the first one was held back in 2003. I was really pleased to take part this year, to hear great speakers and to meet colleagues from across the University and to announce the CMALT staff development scheme – which I’m very excited to be part of.

Last Friday’s event offered a packed programme, my highlight was the keynote speaker – Dr Laura Gogia MD, PhD, (@GoogleGuacamole), Research Fellow for the Division of Learning Innovation and Student Success at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), USA. VCU is a large urban research focused institution with 31,000 students.

She described how in 2014 her institution started to offer RamPages “VCU’s connected learning platform” – a publicly visible WordPress site. Students maintain their own webpages and blogs. A significant portion of coursework is via blogging. Blogs are aggregated on course site, so students can use external sites if they choose.

Gogia explained that this model of teaching supports student agency and discovery. Students can peer into worlds they wouldn’t normally see in a course based structure. It supports authentic learning products. It was very similar to the approach I experienced as a student on the IDEL course, and I was really excited to see this implemented across a whole institution. It’s fascinating looking at the range of work that is posted on RamPages.

#CuriousCoLab slide by Laura Gogia Image from @Rubyonwheels

Gogia also discussed encouraging students to go beyond text as part of the course “Collaborative Curiosity, Designing Community-Engaged Research” #CuriousCoLab. She described ‘Creative Makes’ which challenges students to find visual imagery for abstract concepts, for example “community” – this was supposed to be a 15 minute activity but the students really enjoyed it and spent way more time on it, shared their creations and used the activity to network with each other. She also advocated multimodal final projects (something else I experienced and really valued, as an MSc Digital Education student) – for example students creating websites rather than essays – this meant students could follow their own interests.

A Nordic smorgasbord Foto: Magnus Fröderberg/norden/org CC BY 2.5 DK

Gogia’s own research has been around digital annotations, additional digital information added by students, so in Twitter this might be Hyperlinks, mentions, hashtags or sharing images and video. She analysed these annotations as a possible indication of networks and is considering if these are indicative of pedagogic connections?

This was a rich and inspiring presentation from which I picked a few tasty morsels of inspiration to share with you in this post. As ever the elearning@ed conference was a smorgasbord of inspiration which I will be dining out on for some time.

UPDATE:

Dr Laura Gogia has reflected on her keynote with this great blog post which offers a close transcript of the full presentation: https://googleguacamole.wordpress.com/2016/05/11/in-search-of-connected-learning-exploring-the-pedagogy-of-the-open-web/

My #connectedlearning #elearninged keynote https://t.co/y9eBEx9Cdf w/ thx for contributions from @jar @sbayne @fionamhale @salomemaloney

— Laura Gogia (@GoogleGuacamole) 11 May 2016

Behind the scenes at #OER16 Open Culture 19th & 20th April 2016

I’m writing a couple of weeks after I had the pleasure of attending the OER16: Open Culture conference.

This particular conference has been on my mind a great deal longer than most as I volunteered to take part on the conference committee back in August 2015. When I found out that this was to be hosted by the University of Edinburgh in 2016 and chaired by two senior colleagues Melissa Highton and Lorna Campbell, it seemed like a great opportunity to get involved. There are already some excellent blog posts written about the conference itself and I’ve added a few links at the bottom – in this post I want to give a view from ‘behind the scenes’ reflecting on my experience in the committee.

What did being on the conference committee entail?

I joined monthly virtual meetings in Collaborate – and ‘met’ others on the programme committee. I didn’t get very involved in the early discussions but observing kept me thinking about the event in the buildup. It allowed me to see how a large event is brought together and the different stages that need to happen.

One of the ongoing activities of OER16 was to promote the conference at key stages such as the call for submissions and when booking opened. I started tweeting about OER16 early on and ended up tweeting far more than is usual for me, I don’t think I was alone, by the end of the conference there were over 7,700 #OER16 tweets and it added a real buzz to the event to know that we were trending on Twitter.

My OER16 started at the beginning of the year when I reviewed submissions. Then as the conference neared and local knowledge became helpful I joined the site visit to the conference venue – considering logistics of room layouts and how this impacted ultimately on the programme. This turned out to be very helpful on the first day of the conference when I could not only find my way about but also provide directions!

The scale of the conference became apparent on the first day, Lorna Campbell gave the following stats in her opening speech:

OER16: The Numbers from a presentation by Lorna Campbell — OER16: The Numbers from OER16 Welcome presentation by Lorna Campbell

It was great to see all those months of planning come together. This conference is supported by the Association for Learning Technology (ALT) and I was able to learn a great deal from watching the experienced planning and organisational skills of Anna Davidge, Martin Hawksey & Mareen Deepwell in action.

I volunteered to take part in the social programme – making ice breaker postcards to hand out at the gala dinner on the first day. I’d had fun selecting images for these from the University of Edinburgh Centre for Research Collections (a great suggestion from Stuart Nicol) all of which have creative commons license. My colleague Charlie Farley very kindly did a fantastic job of getting these ready to print.

We handed out 4 copies of each of the 40 images and encouraged delegates to find the people with the matching cards. It was a nice way to encourage mingling and, I hope, give a nice memento. I was pleased to sees people matching their cards at the time and later on social media.

26574834735_4b0279003b_m — matching cards! Sava & Dan by Catherine Cronin CC BY-SA 2.0

Another aspect of the social programme was an activity in Actionbound organized by Simon Thomson which was great fun and even inspired colleagues and I to write poetry.

My chairing tool - the programme app and time warning cards — My chairing tools – the programme app and time warning cards

I chaired a couple of sessions – assisted by clear guidelines and some great tips from Lorna Campbell. I made good use of the very handy time warning cards provided! It was hard not to get distracted by the fascinating presentations and to keep my eye on the clock.

I have to admit that I’d not been to a previous OER conference (despite this being its seventh year) – I found it a very friendly conference which was very open to participation. I shouldn’t have been surprised by the level of participation as collaboration is very important to the open educational resources community – they are do-ers. At the end of the conference Lorna Campbell thanked everyone involved and it was fantastic to see just how many people had been involved. This conference drew together a creative bunch of people who share both their enthusiasm for openness and shared their resources and I really enjoyed being able to contribute to and attend the conference. It was an inspiring couple of days.

Next year’s conference OER17: The Politics of open – will be chaired by Josie Fraser and Alek Tarkowski (date and venue still to be announced).

If my post has inspired you, you can get involved in OER17 by joining the conference committee.

If you didn’t get a chance to go to OER16, don’t feel you’ve missed out, there are many great resources available for you to catch up with.

Recordings of the keynotes are available on the OER16 Conference website.

Radio Edutalk were there and captured several interesting conversation.

Maren Deepwell #OER16: Empowered Openness: https://marendeepwell.wordpress.com/2016/04/21/oer16/

Martin Hawksey, Open isn’t free: What are the costs https://mashe.hawksey.info/2016/05/open-isnt-free-what-are-the-costs/

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.