Student Parliament meeting – feedback invited
| April 22, 2010 | Posted by Brian Lake under Learning Technologies, Web Services Blog |
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I attended the student Parliament today on behalf of Web Services. We had an interesting conversation about where Guildford Online – our portal and learning environments – are going . Some of the highlights:
- A new GO! upgraded environment will be available in May for trials, and launched for the new school year. This will be a fairly substantial redesign, within the limits of the software we’re using at the moment. The current environment is a bit of a mess, and we’ve been working to redesign it to be more useful and convenient.
- Student email is also a bit of a pain. I wanted to make a point here – you should be able to use whatever email you like, but you should always count on having a good college-based email account. We can always reach you there in case there is a problem with your own provider. If you want to forward your email, no problem. But you’ll always have that resource available to you, and it’ll come with a gig of storage and be linked into the exams calendar and VLE environment. It will be genuinely useful – and it’ll be convenient. No logging in – its just there saying “you have new messages” when you log into go. And its yours for life. You’ll always have an address at Guildford or Farnham that lets you keep in touch with friends.
- Passwords: You’ll have one password. No more of this multiple password stuff. Your network password gets you access to everything.
- iTunes: We’re making lectures, videos, podcasts and course materials available on iTunes. If you want to have a look around while you are browsing the iTunes store, you’ll find Guildford college. You’ll find the same info in GO! It’s just a different way to make the material available to you.
- Facebook: We have an “official” Facebook page for The College’s campuses. You’ll see links to them on www.guildford.ac.uk and www.farnham.ac.uk. We’ll be pushing relevant information out to these pages, so become a fan.
Speaking of facebook – what about unblocking it? My thinking right now is that the LRC and study areas are for just that – studying. You don’t want to be waiting forever for a computer while someone tends to Farmville. So we might restrict access to facebook in research/classroom environments, but if you’re using your own laptop or the wifi network Facebook is open.
We want to be more permissive, but make sure that people who need to use computer facilities for study can. Tell us what you think.
And remember – don’t just comment on this article, comment on all of them! We’re tweaking the look and feel – this blogging service will launch for student groups and staff in the fall. We’ll be offering a series of pre-made templates. I’m working on something a little more snazzy for this site .
