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

Evaluating the quality of web resources

TurnItIn have released two new tools to support the evaluation of web-based resources; a review of the sources actually used and an interactive tool for the evaluation of resources.  These should be useful as tutorial-level discussion pieces and lend some objectivity to assessing the worth of the Web. “Open access to this new interactive rubricRead more

Raspberry Pi – the new BBC Micro?

If, like me, you were a teenager in the 1980s, chances are you’ll remember the BBC Micro and the Sinclair Spectrum. These were ‘home computers’ that encouraged a generation of pallid adolescents to try their hand at programming, leading pretty much directly to the British games industry becoming one of the country’s biggest export earnersRead more

JISC News Release: Developing digital literacy – trial and error?

A JISC study has found that learners develop a variety of digital literacies often through a social trial-and-error process, without the direct support or advice of their educational institutions. Ben Showers, JISC programme manager, said, “By understanding and recognising students’ hidden behaviours and motivations, JISC is in a position to help universities and colleges developRead more

Plagiarism goes Social

A recent study by TurnItIn looked at the sources of 110 million content matches over 40 million submissions, and found: 33% of matching text came from Social Networking sites, content sharing sites or question-and-answer sites 25% of matching text came from educational sites 15% of matching text came from cheat sites, and 7% of matchingRead more

Web 2.0 and your students

The Library, E-learning Team and Students’ Union have just completed a study to find out more about how students are using Web 2.0 sites such as Facebook and YouTube for both their social lives and their studies. An on-line survey was completed by 178 students. The results show that most students use Web 2.0 sites for bothRead more