Tablets in Learning and Teaching: VideoScribe

As part of the TiLT project, we’ve been looking at different tools for presenting in the teaching room which work well with (or depend on) the use of tablets. VideoScribe is a desktop application (and iPad app) that allows you to create what are variously referred to as ‘whiteboard animations’ or ‘fast drawing’. The visualRead more

New web conferencing software

From August 1st, we will be using Adobe Connect Pro v9 as our standard web conferencing / online classroom software. An outline of the program is available in this leaflet and in this Getting Started Guide. Initial tests indicate that the web meetings have better audio and video quality than previously, and the system works in a very similarRead more

Tablets in Learning and Teaching: Electric Slide

Yesterday I was one of the presenters at our lecture capture conference (about which more in my next post). I’d decided that hosting the event, giving the welcome address, presenting a workshop session, and chairing the closing plenary wasn’t stressful enough (!) so I decided to try ouy our new iPad Mini as a presentationRead more

Experimenting with Facebook in the Classroom

My Teaching Centre colleague Maurice Fitzgerald has featured Faculty Focus several times in posts over on the Teaching and Learning Blog. Based in the United States, Faculty Focus provides various free, as well as paid for, resources in the form of newsletters, downloadable reports, etc., regarding learning and teaching issues. In the latest Faculty FocusRead more

Free tools for teaching – Doodle scheduling

(This post follows on from the Free tools for Teaching – name randomiser post.) Here Radmehr Monfared talks about how he uses the free Doodle scheduling tool to organise lab sessions: Have you ever set up lab sessions for students when there are many sessions but each student has to attend only one? You usuallyRead more

Free tools for teaching – name randomiser

Dr Radmehr Monfared is a Lecturer in Intelligent Automation within the Wolfson School. In conversation with a Teaching Centre colleague Radmehr mentioned a couple of free online tools he has been using to support his teaching. Here is Radmehr describing the first scenario: It is always a dilemma how to choose a student to answerRead more

'Other' Web tools

Every so often, my colleague Martin Hamilton (Head of Internet Services) and I are asked by a University group to look again at the University’s policy on the use of Web 2.0 services to support Teaching and Learning. “Web 2.0” is an unsatisfactory term that covers a wide variety of tools out there on theRead more

Twitter-based voting in Powerpoint: update

If you’ve been using the SAP Twitter tools for Powerpoint, about which I blogged back in the autumn, you’ll be disappointed to here that because of a change to the Twitter service itself, they will soon stop working correctly, according to a newsflash on Timo Elliott’s website. There are some alternatives you might like toRead more

Use of Social Software: Request

Having recently conducted an audit of all modules on Learn, we are aware that some modules really do push the boat out and try out new things. If you are one of those who specifically make use of social software for instance wikis or Facebook within your module then a new JISC-funded project is lookingRead more

WordPress, a simple blogging tool which does so much more…

WordPress is a freely available blogging tool with some additional versatile tools to help you do so much more. Loughborough University uses WordPress to run both the e-learning and Teaching Centre blog, and can do much more that simply displaying blog posts. The following article describes how some in academia are using WordPress. http://www.dontwasteyourtime.co.uk/blackboard/wordpress-as-a-vle-or-cms/Read more

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