Monthly Archives: March 2010

I’ve been asked by a colleague how they might best configure 20-30 mobile phones for use in a teaching programme. This is an interesting mix of a Learning/Teaching problem mixed in with a technical task. You want the student to have a consistent experience, and you don’t want to set up 20 phones individually. The time and effort are considerable.

In an ideal world, you’d set up one phone, and deploy its configuration to the rest. On an iPhone/iPod touch, this is called enterprise deployment and is available here: http://www.apple.com/support/iphone/enterprise/. But what about Android and handsets like the HTC hero? An interesting commentary on the subject can be found here.

Long story short – its problematic. Managing the learning experience and easy deployment seem to be mutually exclusive goals, unless you’re using an iPhone. Blackberries have potential, but are more for the boardroom staff. Thoughts?

I’m pleased to announce that Guildford college has joined iTunes U - the free service provided by Apple through it’s iTunes Store. It will allow us to offer teaching resources including documents, videos and audio files through the iTunes store.

Of course “free” isn’t as cheap as it used to be. We’ll be setting up a video streaming server and taking an inventory of what we’ve got – who develops video, what we’ve got on hand, and who would like to contribute.

We’ll also be piloting a “technology-enhanced classroom” – an example of how typical technologies (computers, projectors) can be integrated into a classroom, combined with new technologies such as video-based lecture capture. We’ll be looking for interested parties to test this out and help us iron out the bugs.

Our approach is one I can describe using a gaelic proverb; “Beagán a rá agus rá go maith”. Say little, but say it well. This project is another piece of the puzzle. here are the others so far:

• Single sign on for all College services (one username, one password)
• Future-proofing our web servers and maximising uptime (boring but necessary tech stuff)
• Short-term upgrade of our Portal/Learning environment
• Blogs (blogs.guildford.ac.uk – in use now)
• Wikis (wiki.guildford.ac.uk - very much in beta stage)
• Access to exam results for teachers/students
• Location based services (whats available to you based on where you are)
• Lecture-capture service
• Tutorials and documentation making it easy to get started
• Gathering feedback from the College community as we go and making appropriate adjustments (making comments here helps)

Its a rather big puzzle. We won’t rush it – we’ll test the individual bits and adjust them to get the best result. Then we’ll integrate them into a single service for staff and students. But you’ll see minor improvements as we build towards the “official” launch of our new Portal/Web service. Remember – your feedback and suggestions are critical. Every technical change we make ripples out into the teaching environment, and will have consequences for how you do your job. Let us know what you think works, what you think doesn’t,and what you’ve seen that you think we should be doing. We will work it into our strategic planning.

The 10th Annual Irish Learning Technology Association Conference EdTech 2010 will be held in Athlone Institute of Technology on May 20th – May 21st 2010.

This is an annual conference event, successfully running for over ten years in Ireland. The conference is attended by a community of professionals from across third level higher education sector and from industry, who are all committed to the development and exchange of knowledge by sharing expertise and promoting best practice in technology-enhanced learning.

This year’s event will showcase more innovations and novel experiences from practictioners and researchers – all with the common interest of using ICT to benefit teaching and learning.

We invite papers from researchers and practitioners on a wide range of conference themes. This year’s EdTech 2010 conference promises to provide plenty of time and space for networking within a friendly and relaxing environment.

EC-TEL 2010: Fifth European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning | Sustaining TEL: from innovation to learning and practice

Looking for an alternative to the software you’re using? We’ve come across a great site called AlternativeTo. All you have to do is enter the name of your program, and you’ll be presented with a list of alternatives. Some free, some commercial. If you’re tired of the program you’re using to get a job done, then this may be for you.

Do you have any useful web sites that you rely on to sort you out? Tell us about them!

This blog has been a little hit and miss lately. Mostly due to other projects taking priority, but partly because we’ve been setting up a new blogging environment for Guildford based on our initial Web Services Blog. We now have a dedicated server, and we’re using WordPress Multi-user. We can now run thousands of blogs – for staff, departments, or teaching purposes.

This is one of our smaller projects, but it’s been growing into something much bigger. We’ll be talking more about our projects, and our strategic direction as a team. We’ll also be keeping it short – saying a little each day, rather than trying to say a lot.

We’ll be providing interesting links to teaching and learning resources as well – including interesting conferences or events that relate to online learning. Stay tuned!

Introduction to Web Services
Web Services provides support, development, training and advice to all staff in the area of e-learning and web publishing.
How and when we can be contacted
Location: F38b, on the 1st floor of the main building at Stoke Park.
Email: webservices@guildford.ac.uk
Opening Times: 9 – 5pm, Monday to Friday, throughout the year.

What we can offer you
Overall management and development of college internet and intranet websites
Training & support to the web owners (college website content providers) and to the intranet nominees Design & development of individual websites  (programmes, projects) to support & enhance access and retention of students
Web based course promotion (in collaboration with Marketing) Web applications, forms, online services (bookings, registrations etc.)
Online learning content development for courses
Guidelines and advice on online learning content development

GO! support
Design & development of web and online course components
Banners

Web graphics
Interactive animated components
Multimedia (web and CDs for teaching and promotional materials)
Digital video production & integration into learning material
Relational database design and development

One of the new services we’ve been working on lately is WordPress. its a simple to use blogging tool that lets you create a web log (or Blog) that is easy to update, that lets others comment on your posts, and can be useful to your teaching.

We’ll be saying a little more as we prepare tutorials and documentation.

If there is a common refrain at Guildford College, I would have to say its “how do I find that in GO?” That leads to a problem the Web Services team is faced with – how do we present information in GO! in a way that makes sense?

Which leads us to an easy enough question – what audiences are we catering to?

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