This is one of the main questions that the VI International GUIDE Conference 2013, to be held in Athens (Greece) on October 3-4, 2013, will tackle, while providing a comparative analysis of the effects of governmental policies on new training and research strategies.
Major changes will take place by 2030 if school education is based on the active participation of the students themselves; the enthusiasm and engagement of digital natives constitute the new milestone for our educative systems.
“MOOCs and Beyond” is the title of issue number 33 of eLearning Papers, a quarterly online magazine published by the European Commission. Guest edited by Dr Yishay Mor, Senior Lecturer in Educational Technology at the UK’s Open University, he believes the publication is coming out in an “incredibly timely” moment, at a point when “we are getting over the initial excitement about MOOCs [Massive Open Online Courses] and people are trying to get a more critical view” about them.
Issue number 33 of eLearning Papers focuses on the challenges and future of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), a trend in education that has skyrocketed since 2008.
The International Council for Open Research and Education (ICORE) is a new association bringing together interested experts and stakeholders from the fields of open education and open research. The association will be officially launched on May 16 in Rome (Italy) during the Learning Innovations and Technology (LINQ 2013) conference.
This is one of the main questions that the VI International GUIDE Conference 2013, to be held in Athens (Greece) on October 3-4, 2013, will tackle, while providing a comparative analysis of the effects of governmental policies on new training and research strategies.
Major changes will take place by 2030 if school education is based on the active participation of the students themselves; the enthusiasm and engagement of digital natives constitute the new milestone for our educative systems.
“MOOCs and Beyond” is the title of issue number 33 of eLearning Papers, a quarterly online magazine published by the European Commission. Guest edited by Dr Yishay Mor, Senior Lecturer in Educational Technology at the UK’s Open University, he believes the publication is coming out in an “incredibly timely” moment, at a point when “we are getting over the initial excitement about MOOCs [Massive Open Online Courses] and people are trying to get a more critical view” about them.
Issue number 33 of eLearning Papers focuses on the challenges and future of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), a trend in education that has skyrocketed since 2008.
The International Council for Open Research and Education (ICORE) is a new association bringing together interested experts and stakeholders from the fields of open education and open research. The association will be officially launched on May 16 in Rome (Italy) during the Learning Innovations and Technology (LINQ 2013) conference.
Looking at the new xBox release (I saw an ad for it on the morning news) Dean Groom writes, "while games are scapegoated as causing all manner of social ills, they are the media-platform which is most able and likely to significantly change who own’ s the content gateway. It will be game-networks which decide which social-network, which movie, which news-channel and music will be presented to the family." The new xBox is Microsoft's play to become the network that leverages access to that attention, and hence, can derive revenue from the advertising and promotion thereby enabled. "What is important is that as a game-media-network they want a direct line to consumers in the attention economy – and that is what it will deliver. It will leverage its games capital to achieve it."
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This is brilliantly done, painting a dystopian picture of the teaching profession in the not-too-distant future. A lot of detail, a lot of understatement, this article strikes a perfect balance of realism and chilling.
“ Taxes?”
“ Who pays those things any more?”
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As one of the prominent keynote speakers of The Joy of Learning - 2013 EDEN Annual Conference, Anna Kirah opens up to Helen Keegan in an exclusive virtual conversation on why educators need to change their approach to their students, what the people-centered approach means and what the Cookie Soup has to do with creativity.
Dr. Bernard Luskin is considered as one of the pioneers of open, distance and e-learning in the academic world of USA. He revealed earlier, that he will explore psychology of learning & social media in his EDEN Annual Conference keynote speech sharing new knowledge in media psychology that improves learner motivation, provides inspiration and enhances learner satisfaction leading to increased student success. We sat down with him for a pre-conference interview.
Sir Ken Robinson claims the education system today kills creativity, Sugata Mitra is building a school in the cloud. Meet two of the greatest thinkers in the field of education at the EDEN 2013 Annual Conference in Oslo in June!
2013 sees the launch of the Summer of Student Innovation pilot, to put the power to enhance the learner experience directly into the hands of teams of students, academics and experts across the UK.
Students who join the Summer of Innovation will get the chance to create real technology solutions and have the technology they create adopted by universities, colleges and learning providers. They will also have the option to join events where they can meet the other student teams as well as technical experts.
The Futures Forum, a group of five UK education and research organisations are joining forces to encourage teams of developers and innovators to use their skills to enhance the UK’s higher education experience.
Andrew McGregor, Jisc programme manager and Futures Forum member explains, “We are offering £5,000 per student team, to develop new technology that could improve education, research and their studying life. The teams will be selected through an open call for ideas. Successful teams will also be given opportunities to join workshops to allow them to network with fellow students and experts to further their ideas.
“After the projects have run, the technology developed by the teams will be embedded for a trial period in volunteer education organisations. Products that are successful in the trials will be provided to other interested parties through sustainable routes.”
The Summer of Student Innovation has emerged from the pilot Jisc co-design programme. This programme has enabled Jisc, RLUK, RUGIT, SCONUL, and UCISA to work together to identify a selection of strategic innovations that could benefit the HE sector. The Summer of Student Innovation has been designed as an experiment to see if students can develop technology that can improve the student experience.
To enter your ideas and encourage your fellow students to vote for your suggestions visit the Summer of Student Innovation website or follow #studentideas on Twitter.
More than 18 million students, staff and researchers at institutions across the UK could start to benefit from a faster and more secure connection when using their institution’s cloud-based IT services, thanks to a new peering arrangement being signed today between Microsoft and Janet, the UK’s research and education network.
This new agreement enables improved access to infrastructure and application services such as websites, virtual learning environments and research projects.
Connecting the networks privately eliminates the need to traverse data over the public internet. This enables a high bandwidth connection for students and staff to use Windows Azure. Bandwidth is managed, ensuring high-speed delivery with no delay or latency.
The move to peer the Microsoft Windows Azure data centre to the Janet network comes as part of a new strategic alliance between the two organisations, being signed at Goldsmiths, University of London today.
Professor of Computing Science at Newcastle University Paul Watson comments: “Cloud computing has the potential to revolutionise research by offering vast compute resources on-demand. At Newcastle University, we already have over £20M of research projects that are supported by the cloud. However, one of the major barriers holding back further cloud adoption is the time it takes to transfer large datasets from the lab to the cloud for analysis. This new link between Janet and the Azure Cloud removes this barrier, and will allow a far greater range of research projects to fully exploit the benefits of cloud computing.”
The alliance agreement also means any UK education institution can benefit from standard terms and conditions on Microsoft’s cloud-based productivity software suite Office 365, negotiated by Janet.
An early beneficiary of this arrangement is Goldsmiths, which is also one of a select group of institutions responsible for initiating work on the alliance. Basem El-Haddadeh, Director of IT Services at Goldsmiths said: “The work on Office 365 will save the sector considerable time and money in legal due diligence and speed up adoption of Office 365. We’re really pleased with the roll-out at Goldsmiths and our staff and students are already enjoying using the new system. I’m looking forward to the benefits the strategic alliance can bring.”
“Through the peering and strategic alliance, we are demonstrating our commitment to UK research and education institutes’ increasing desire to access cloud technologies and we are complementing our world class fibre network with Microsoft’s leading technologies to support the sector,” said Dan Perry, Director of Product and Marketing at Janet.
Steve Beswick, Director of Education, Microsoft Ltd said: “We are delighted to be working with Janet to provide additional value-added products and services to the research and education community. We have a long-standing relationship with this sector and are looking forward to more collaborative working with Janet to grow our offering.”
Joanna Lumley helped the University for the Creative Arts (UCA) launch a Jisc-funded digital archive of work by world-renowned fashion designer Zandra Rhodes.
Famous designs worn by global icons, such as Princess Diana, Jackie Onassis and Elizabeth Taylor, during Zandra’s half a century in fashion are just some of the 500 dresses and garments that have been painstakingly prepared, catalogued and photographed over the past 18 months.
The Zandra Rhodes Digital Study Collection has been created for the education community through a collaborative project between UCA and the Zandra Rhodes Studio with funding from Jisc.
Zandra said: "I am tremendously proud to announce that the Zandra Rhodes Digital Study Collection is now available to the world.
“I am absolutely thrilled to unveil this high quality digital archive of 500 of my most famous designs, as well as drawings and behind-the-scenes footage in my studio, for access by today's fashion and textile students, designers, and researchers, and I hope that it will be an inspiration worldwide.
“I would like to thank the University for the Creative Arts, Jisc, the team at my studio and VADS for believing in the project and making this happen – it’s not easy to locate, prep, photograph, research, and catalogue 50 years of fashion collections but they have done a fantastic job."
Famous for her bright pink hair and cutting-edge designs, Zandra Rhodes has remained one of the most recognisable names in fashion over the last five decades and remains relevant with the likes of Kylie Minogue, Sarah Jessica Parker and Paris Hilton wearing her dresses today.
She was appointed UCA’s first Chancellor in 2010 and studied at Medway College of Art - one of the Kent and Surrey colleges that formed UCA.
Researchers and students at UCA have worked with Zandra Rhodes and her studio to not only catalogue her designs for future generations but also create contextual learning materials which explore her creative processes and production techniques, through video interviews, tutorials, and exquisite original drawings.
Professor Kerstin Mey, Director of Research and Enterprise at UCA, said: "We are proud and excited to launch the Zandra Rhodes Digital Study Collection.
“Zandra gave our researchers and students unprecedented access to her studio which has enabled them to catalogue 500 famous items from her personal archive that we will make available to a global audience.
“I am certain that this accessible, open education resource featuring one of the most influential British fashion designers over the past 50 years will stimulate and inform future generations.”
The project has been funded by a £110,000 grant from the charity, Jisc. Their aim is to make the UK the most digitally advanced education and research nation in the world.
Paola Marchionni, Jisc’s programme manager for digitisation, explained: “This project represents another excellent partnership that Jisc is proud to have supported.
“Zandra Rhodes’ generosity in opening up her studio and archives to the UCA team has made possible the creation of a beautiful and high quality digital resource to support students and teachers, and which is also available to the public at large.
“This project, however, has not just been about digitisation: students have played an active role, gaining ‘real world’ work experience and skills which will be an invaluable asset to them in the future.”
In the era of YouTube, podcasts and vidcasts new pioneering guidelines, launched today, will be crucial for students, researchers and academics when they cite moving image and sound sources, or provide advice on referencing them.
The British Universities Film & Video Council’s (BUFVC) guidelines respond to the 2011 Jisc report, Film and Sound in Higher and Further Education: A Progress Report with Ten Strategic Recommendations. The report found that despite the exponential increase in the use of audiovisual material in teaching, learning and research in higher and further education, existing guidelines for the referencing of moving image and sound are often insufficient as they are based on standards developed for the written word. This has the effect of discouraging the citing of moving image and sound, as well as creating barriers in its discovery, use and re-use.
Professor John Ellis, professor of media arts, University of London, says: “Citation exists so that you can find the source of any quotation. The rules have long since been worked out for print sources. However, for moving image and sound, no-one quite knows what to do, so references are usually imprecise and sometimes left out completely. This guide now makes it possible for any writer (even a student) to lead their readers to the exact audiovisual source they are discussing. It might seem a simple problem to solve, until you realise that there are a multitude of different types of audiovisual source!”
The guidelines are practical, accessible and applicable to a wide range of different users across all disciplines. They encourage best practice in citing any kind of audiovisual item. They cover film; television programmes; radio programmes; audio recordings; DVD extras; clips; trailers; adverts; idents; non-broadcast, amateur and archive material; podcasts; vodcasts and games.
Professor Miles Taylor, director, Institute of Historical Research, University of London, says: “The difficulty of referencing such important sources has only been compounded by the increasing availability of much of this material online. The wonderful new guide produced by the BUFVC cuts through the uncertainty and complexity and will undoubtedly encourage historians and researchers in other disciplines to make greater use of audiovisual source materials – whether a computer game, a television channel ident, a previously unaired radio programme or a Hollywood film. I strongly encourage journal editors in particular to add it to the guidance that they provide for authors.”
To produce these guidelines, BUFVC established a working group of academics, researchers, journal editors and archivists, formed as part of the HEFCE-funded Shared Services project.
Richard Ranft, head of sound and vision, The British Library, says: "From the beginning of the 20th century, sound and moving image media in all their various formats have captured the most significant moments in human creativity and endeavour. Yet even in the present century, there remains doubt over the validity of referencing sound and moving images, whether in academic publishing or the popular media, due in part to the absence of accepted citation guidelines. By establishing clear instructions that are on a par with traditional bibliographic citation styles, this new publication will help unlock the vast resource that is preserved in sound and moving image archives."
This is the first edition of the guidelines and it will be reviewed periodically to respond to advances in technology, the development of new media platforms and the needs of the user. The BUFVC welcomes comments and feedback via avcitation@bufvc.ac.uk, or join the discussion by tweeting @bufvc #AVcitation.
An interactive version of the guidelines is available to download from the BUFVC website.
Seven European countries are launching 4C (the Collaboration to Clarify the Costs of Curation) to help public and private European organisations invest more effectively in digital curation and preservation, sustaining the long-term value of all types of digital information.
Curation ensures digital objects remain understandable, accessible, useable and safe over time. 4C will provide practical guidance to help organisations estimate the cost of digital curation work and demonstrate the long and short term benefits.
Alex Thirifays, National Archives of Denmark, explains: “As well as bringing together a fragmented research landscape, the project will create an online ‘curation costs exchange’ which will help users to model their costs and in this way predict more accurately the sorts of costs and benefits that are likely to result from the positive decision to preserve. This will be useful for managers in major archives and data centres and we hope it will support preservation planning functions. These tools will be particularly useful for policy-makers concerned about long-term access to data. In addition we will publish a roadmap for future work in modelling costs which will help to clarify the areas which need more support.”
Neil Grindley, project co-ordinator from Jisc in the UK, explains: “It can be difficult to make a convincing case for investment in digital curation for two reasons. Firstly the costs of curation are currently hard to predict and secondly the short term benefits are hard to define because curation implicitly addresses long-term challenges.” 4C will address both concerns and provide practical guidance that will help practitioners persuade executives to invest in new services.
4C is described as ‘open and social’ and rather than waiting for perfect and polished results, they will be blogging and sharing findings as they go. 4C hope that this will encourage debate and increase the likelihood that their findings and guidance are useful.
Sabine Schrimpf of the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek, Germany, says: “We are looking to engage with many different kinds of organisations and to set up partnerships and have discussions with everyone who would like to get involved in the development of these tools. We’ll be inviting people to workshops and focus groups during the next two years, and we’ll be organising a conference to share our results at the end of the process.”
The partners involved are: Danish National Archives (Denmark), DANS - Data Archiving and Network Service (Netherlands), Deutsche Nationalbibliothek (Germany), Digital Curation Centre (UK), Digital Preservation Coalition (UK), Humanities Advanced Technology and Information Institute (UK), Institute for Information Systems and Computing Research (Portugal), Jisc (UK), Keep Solutions (Portugal), National Library of (Estonia), Royal Library of Denmark (Denmark), Secure Business (Austria), UK Data Archive (UK).
Joanna Lumley helped the University for the Creative Arts (UCA) launch a Jisc-funded digital archive of work by world-renowned fashion designer Zandra Rhodes.
Paola Marchionni, Jisc’s programme manager for digitisation, explained: “This project represents another excellent partnership that Jisc is proud to have supported. 
In the era of YouTube, podcasts and vidcasts new pioneering