Using mobile devices to enhance fieldwork

Prof. Derek France from the University of Chester will be visiting the Geography Department on Wednesday 21st January to share his considerable experience of using technology to enhance student learning. Derek will be leading a hands-on seminar: ‘Enhancing fieldwork learning with Mobile devices’. This will take place from 14:00-16:00 on Wednesday 21st Jan, location TBC.Read more

iPads in teaching

Over the last year we’ve been looking at different ways in which tablets can be used in learning and teaching. Last autumn we held a tablets workshop at which Ola Aiyegbayo from the University of Huddersfield gave a presentation based on his research project in this area. He’s just released an infographic animation setting outRead more

Changes to TurnItIn for next year

The Learn interface to TurnItIn is changing next year.  When the new edition of Learn is released on July 22nd, all TurnItIn assignments will need to be re-created for the new session.  This is no different from previous years, although the software will look slightly different (see: Changes to Turnitin ). A six-slide PowerPoint presentation is availableRead more

TurnItIn for any assignment

TurnItIn have recently announced their Grade Anything initiative, which allows the system to accept files of any type for evaluation.  Obviously the text-matching will only work with files containing text.  However the GradeMark online marking tool is now applicable for a much wider variety of student coursework, as is demonstrated on their video clips . Don’tRead more

Potential problem using TurnItIn's iPad App

Rob Howe from Northampton University reports a problem with the TurnItIn iPad app which results in loss of data.  The full description is in this blog posting Essentially, if the iPad user changes their iPad profile during a marking session, they will lose the data already marked, because the iPad thinks it belongs to somebodyRead more

Free Apps for New iDevices

Did you know that if you activated your iDevice on or after 1 September 2013 then you can download six key Apple applications (Pages, Numbers, Keynote, iMovie, iPhoto and GarageBand) for free? These apps would normally set you back just over £25. All you need to do is register the serial number of your deviceRead more

Bringing Poetry to Life

Before the holidays, I attended part of a lecture by Clare Hutton from the English and Drama department who showcased The Waste Land app to her students. Clare is one of the recipients of a loan iPad and has been trialling it in a Teaching and Learning environment. For students studying TS Elliott’s notable poem,Read more

XLR Audio into iPad

For those of you who are more adventurous and have wondered if it were possible to have an XLR audio input to an iPad then the answer is yes. As you probably know there appears to be only a headphone out on an iPad but no mic input. However the headphone out can be usedRead more

TurnItIn shifts focus

The September TurnItIn UK User Group meeting was hosted by Leeds Uni this year. It followed the usual format of a position statement by the host, an overview of the development roadmap and case studies from users. There are big changes under way at TurnItIn, in response to a massive increase in the demand forRead more

8 Ways Screens Are Ruining Your Family's Life

I read an article titled “8 Ways Screens Are Ruining Your Family’s Life” based on an interview of more than a thousand children in America, in the Huffington Post. Conducted by a clinical instructor at Harvard, the study was to find out how technology was impacting the lives and relationships of children aged between 4Read more

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