Communication, openness and freedom

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As most of you all know by now, I am a great supporter of Open Access in all its variety. So you will have to excuse me if the first thing I mention this week is Open Access.

This blog post is from the blog of Curt Rice, Vice President for Research & Development at the University of Tromsø in Norway. From what he says it seems that Curt has had some quite strong reservations about Open Access for Research but he seems to be changing his mind. Read Curt’s argument in favour of Open Access, if you have any doubts about this new direction in academia I think this article could change your mind.

Another article this time from Pamorama, starts off talking about using social media in schools but the main part is about social media use in universities. I was in two minds as to whether to put this on the Calling All Lecturers site but I think everyone could be interested in this. Of course, this is about social media use in America but we are not far behind them. The article itself is fairly short but the comments and links that follow are very interesting. How would you like to see our University expanding its use of social media?

I’m going to try out AnyMeeting. It’s a programme for running your own webinars, it can be free (with advertisements of course) or you can pay about £15 per month to do it without advertisements. Skype is good but it only works well with fewer than five people, whereas AnyMeeting is supposed to work ok with up to 20 people. I’ll let you know how I get on.

I think I’ve said before that I use Penultimate as the writing tool for my iPad, however, I found this list for eight tools the other day. The site Educational Technology and Mobile Learning is admittedly aimed at schools rather than universities but it can be really useful for picking up learning and teaching tools.

Now then I really want to direct you to this next site ‘cos the way the blog is used and the particular discussion is very interesting. However there is a big “but”; the site is very, very coarse in the sense that there is a lot of swearing in the podcast – so be warned. Even if you do not listen to the podcast just look at the way the blog is used, very clever. The podcast is about the misunderstandings that can occur when social media is used if you do not know how to use it properly. The blog is called, The Overstand Podcast, and this is Episode 6 – Law of Attraction, the Podcast link is at the bottom of the first paragraph.

Things to do from your sick-bed :)

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Here I am, risen from my sick-bed – well not quite, I’m feeling a lot better now. It’s not only computers that can’t function normally when invaded by a virus, organic things are affected just the same unfortunately Despite an impaired functionality I will try to create some satisfactory input for you.

I have recently been introduced to the Podcast Gallery. I have found this an excellent resource; especially when you don’t have the energy to raise even an e-book in front of your face I did a search for BBC and came up with a very large collection of podcasts which I recommend whole heartedly.

Just for some fun I thought I’d include a link to the xkcd site. There are some great cartoons on xkcd though you might find some of the humour a bit strange if you are not into science and maths.

If you are a blogger and you want to learn more about how to personalise your WordPress blog you will find the Daily Post at WordPress.com very helpful. The one I have linked to is the Introduction from January but you might know enough about branding to start off at Let’s get visual 101.

I quite often find that I would like to be able to just copy and paste between my different machines, e.g. from my phone to my Mac. I found something today that can do just that clippick. You can copy and paste from any device, any platform or any app, try it out, I think you will be surprised just how often you will use it.

I just love TypeDrawing – I don’t think it is academically of much use to you but it looks like fun and you never know it might be useful for a presentation. You can download version 3 from the App store for either your iPhone or your iPad.

I never have really liked the term e-safety, it is far too simplistic, I much prefer the term used by Jisc, online responsibilities. If you want to check up on what your responsibilities might be in relation to e-safety go and have a look at the Jisc Infokit, What is e-safety and why should we do it.

Just as a final note, if you are looking for Royalty Free music or sound effects try the Partners in Rhyme site.

Publish and be damned?

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I try very hard to keep this blog fairly light but there are times when I just have to speak out and this is one of them.

There is so much going on about Open Access, publishing, copyright, etc that I felt I must write something about it all. Lots of us get very cross about everything involved with publishing – it’s not surprising. For some academics it is part of their livelihood, for others it is about getting their research recognised in the “correct” way, for most other people it is something really annoying that gets in the way of getting their job done and for some it is an ethical issue that strikes at the core of their beliefs. So not a small issue for any of us. As the title to the blog today implies, this post is all about getting published.

As most of you know I’m a follower of The Thesis Whisperer, otherwise known as Dr Inger Mewburn. Inger has guests on the blog who write some very interesting posts, I have found this current post (To Posh to Promote) and the comments that follow fascinating. Evelyn Tsitas, the author, is known for being outspoken – which isn’t a bad thing. I would love to read her PhD thesis as it’s on werewolves, vampires and the nature of being human (wow I would like to have written on that). Inger’s own post on the PhD2Published blog is also critical of those who will not/cannot engage with modern technologies to promote themselves and their ideas. I agree a lot with most of what Evelyn and Inger say but I think we should give far stronger support to a call for universities to help, people to develop modern communication skills. People should have the opportunity to experience all sorts of communication in university whether it is blogging, micro-blogging, streaming video or 3D communication environments.

Another of my favourite blogs is from the LSE (London School of Economics). I nearly always find their posts to be extremely good reads, as I have this time. This post, The politics of the public eye, by Melonie Fullick, a PhD student at York University, Canada, is excellent. One of the reasons that people do not blog or use other modern communication media is because they are frightened that “bad things” will happen. Melonie’s post acknowledges this fear, discusses it and argues for the support that a good online, social network give. Melonie also identifies the elephant in the room – the question of what universities and academics are here for – aren’t we the ones who are supposed to, ask the difficult questions, be controversial, open up issues for discussion?

Now, to get away from being quite so serious here are a few things I think you will like to look at. First a video from the Open Access publishers BioMed Central. If you are not sure what all this Open Access and research stuff is about this video will help you understand it – a very good summary of OA from the RCUK supported by Springer. Next on my list of interesting things is a little promotion for Snagit. I find this little programme really useful, I use it all the time for all sorts of stuff – have a go. After you have tried out Snagit you can read these two articles from JISC Inform – great stuff, easy to read, very interesting. There is this piece on Learning in Adverse Weather (I just love that title lol), then some future gazing with, Coming soon… Can you see yourself using any of the things they mention? If you haven’t heard of the Khan Academy you should have done. This is their YouTube channel – see if you can find a session here that is useful to you, I bet you will. Finally a slide show for you about Maximising the potential of your network. Most of the slides are self-explanatory so, even though it does not have a voice over, this is one slide show I don’t mind promoting.

Have a lovely Easter

Media and pretty robots :)

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I am meeting with some research students later on today and that rather has me thinking about research type things. So first I’m going to write about some social media and research, some of it might be more interesting to researchers but there’s lots here for everyone else too

I started thinking about social media first of all and that brought me to this site where there is an infographic about how people in HE use social media as part of learning. Have a look, do you use social media like this or do you do something more? Here are two pieces from the BishopBlog, the first is how not to get a research proposal accepted and the second is on how to bury your research. Really good stuff and well written too. The final article is a discussion on the LSE blog about why blogging is important for academics. Sit down with a cup of coffee for this one it’s a bit long but very worth reading.

No for the fun stuff. The first thing I looked at was an article on Google Glasses. There is a great video at the beginning of this article which you must watch. My first reaction was, “why is it just the women doing the shopping”? Just look at the comments following the article – very good As most of you who are regular readers of this blog will know I love robots Asimo, dear pretty little Nao and now this very life-like one from Kokoro – fantastic! Are any of you robot makers? If you are send me a picture of your robot and I’ll put it on the site

I’ve decided that I’m going to try out Issuu, I’ll let you know how I get on

Ahh – what it is to be a scholar :)

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I’m busy creating another blog (it will be called, “On being scholarly”) – I’ll be using it to demonstrate how to work with WordPress – I’ll be putting the videos on Quiler, our searchable database of help. If you want a video on how to use an aspect of a program or app let me know and I’ll see if a video can be created for you

I have four items for you today. I think all of you working in any type of science subject will find Utopia Docs really useful. Utopia is a way of making pdf documents much more helpful. There is a video to show you how it works but be warned … before you can use Utopia you have to Register with their site. Registering doesn’t cost anything but it is really confusing, tortuous and badly explained. I’ll try explaining just in case it helps. When you have installed Utopia you will find the shortcut in the Start menu (don’t ask me why it is not put on your desk top). Open the program and go to the Edit menu – click on Preferences. In the Preferences pane click on Register, you will then receive an email that you have to acknowledge. After all that, try this journal article for a demonstration. Save the document to your computer, open Utopia and open the pdf from the Files menu. Why anything to do with science has to be so difficult I really don’t know !

This one is much easier to use! It is called, “thou shalt not commit logical fallacies”. If you have ever had trouble trying to work out if someone’s argument is valid or not have a look at this site. All types of fallacious arguments are explained with really good examples. All you have to do is to click on the icons to see the explanation – super!

The next two items are from blogs, the very much respected Thesis Whisperer and Networked Researcher. The post in Thesis Whisperer is entitled, Dear Thesis Whisperer, I have Stockholm Syndrome”. This is a very insightful and amusing article about what it is like when you finish your PhD. In fact, whilst not belittling the awfully hard work that goes into gaining a PhD, I think anyone who has worked hard for any type of academic degree will recognise the feelings described to some extent. A great article and a very enjoyable read. The post in the Networked Researcher is very different. This article is one of a series of peer interviews “with fellow researchers embracing social media and online publishing”. This first interview is with Lee Skallerup Bessette. I think you will find this interview very interesting for a number of reasons. If you are interested in social media in academia or if you are interested in how to write your own blog or start your own business. Lee just talks about it all so honestly, it really raised my spirits – hope you all enjoy it too

Lots to read and cogitate on :)

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Urrrgh, what another horrible day! May be next week will be better – let’s hope so

I have a few things for you to think about today. The first article is about a new function available on some ebooks. At present this questionable function is only available on some school text books but who knows where it might lead. Do students want their lecturers to be able to see how long they have read a chapter or the notes they have kept? Do lecturers want to have yet one more thing they have to wade through? Let me know what you think – just add a comment.

Here are another 25 Things to Do for Researchers but as before, they are useful skills for all students and lecturers to learn. This time they are from University of Huddersfield – just follow through the exercises and instructions week by week. There’s nothing too arduous and it can be fun

This is an article for all of you who have anything to do with health sciences. “Towards Health Sciences 2.0” brings up some really interesting questions about science publications and research. It also has lots of links to even more articles related to the subject. So grab a cuppa and get reading you will know an awful lot more about open access journals by the time you finish.

This last article is called “6 Things to Teach Students About Social Media” but it’s really useful for everyone. There are lots of tips and links to technologies that will help you have a happier and safer time when you are socialising on the web. Have fun everyone and I’ll catch you again next week

Joining in … what?

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Here I am, back from sunny Italy and missing the warmth like crazy Just been looking around to see what has been going on whilst I was away. I have a few things to bring to your attention that you will find worthwhile following up. Some really good stuff from University of Oxford, one of which I first mentioned in the September 24th post.

Oxford University provide some online activities called, “23 things for Research“. These activities can definitely be used by researchers but are also really useful to students, lecturers and support staff too. If you just want to read what goes on this site that’s fine but you will get a lot more from it if you register and join in. Have some fun with setting up a blog and writing your first post,considering your “personal brand”, using Twitter, RSS feeds and Storify – and that’s just to start with! One of the blogs created by a student is Amy’s Inkwell – I like it, it’s a good start to blog writing.

Other things you might like to engage with from Oxford University are their videos and podcasts. Many of their podcasts are discipline specific and are really interesting but they do others too. The easiest way to pick these podcasts up is to go to the oxengage Facebook page and look for the links. A video I particularly enjoyed was a talk by Professor Marcus Du Sautoy on how he uses social media – you can see it now on Oxford Podcasts: http://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/what-does-marcus-du-sautoy-do-social-media-video A podcast which was rather good was, “Would you blog the truth?” by Peter Gill.

I think you might like this too. It’s about identity in our digital engagements. The item is from a course at Galway and the article is written by Tony Fish.

ok that’s it for now, see you tomorrow

such goings on!

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Oh boy, I just have to bring you this one! From the University of Bristol here is the virtual reality cow It sounds, and looks, funny but it has a serious side to it – think of all those lovely vets it’s going to help train

I have had the most super meeting this afternoon with “a very nice lady” by the name of Laura Jones. Laura is one of the “Institute of Humanities First Year Tutors”, a group who are doing marvellous things with the first year students. These Tutors are previous students of the University and, with the help of the Learning and Teaching Fund, are bridging the gap between college/school and University by using social media and modern technologies. If you want to try setting up something like this in your discipline why not contact Laura to talk about it.

Why not try joining in the Oxford University “23 Things for Research“. You can join even if you do not work or study at Oxford but you will need to contact the ALT Librarians and me (Tim Johnson) for support instead of the people at Oxford.

That’s all for now – see you all tomorrow

Whoops! No title

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I’ve found a lot of interesting things out on the metasphere today – I’ll just pass on a few of them here.

For all the new people who joined us on Monday I thought I’d provide a link to something helpful – well I think it’s helpful. This comes from the site of the Information Commissioners Office (huh bet you didn’t know we had one of those did you). The site has some interesting stuff on it so bookmark/favourite it when you get there. This little nugget is about personal safety online, not too long, not preachy and gives basic, sensible advice.

I like this piece of news from ISPR, “uGenius replaces bank tellers with ‘PAT’ (personal assisted teller) technology” but just how long will it be until we don’t have bank tellers at our local bank at all? Most of my banking is done online, in fact I can’t remember the last time I used a bank teller. How about you?

I’d really like to recommend Doug Belshaw’s blog. Doug is a very sensible person when it comes to digital technologies, he’s not over the top but he doesn’t put them down when it’s not necessary. Go and have a look I’m sure you’ll like some of the stuff he talks about.

I just could not resist giving you a link to this video. What a great way of meeting people – someone should really start it off here. It is obviously what QR codes were made for

The things people do

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Is the weather going to improve at last! All this wet is so boring – spring showers I can put up with but the last week has just been ridiculous! Never mind, today the sun keeps popping out and things look a little more promising

I’ve been analysing the results from the Digital Literacy Survey and I find it quite strange how few people blog. Students, lecturers and other staff it’s all the same, regardless of gender, very few people blog. I quite enjoy blogging, it’s fairly creative and sometimes it even helps to wake me up a bit Martin Weller also likes blogging, he has written a post on the Virtues of Blogging as a Scholarly Activity – he’s been blogging for six years now and reckons it’s the best academic decision he’s ever made. I don’t know if I would go that far but blogging has certainly widened my academic network. It’s a good thing to practice getting out there and putting some thoughts on your subject, your studies or your hobby out into the big wide world. It helps you to become more confident in about presenting your own ideas, it develops your writing skills and helps you to find your “voice”, the identity you want to portray online. Blogging isn’t just for lecturers, it’s for everyone – a uniquely simple way of engaging with the rest of the world.

I found this post from Rose Wintergreen really interesting and moving. We all get miserable and doubt ourselves and our abilities at times and Rose has caught this perfectly in this post on Creativity and Misery. Do read it and the following comments, if you are feeling a bit low it will make you feel better

So you see you can write about anything. Remember to link your blog to Twitter, Facebook and any other social media you use – you will attract more viewers and followers that way.

I wrote a little about bullying and bad behaviour online a few posts ago. I thing the work that journalism students at Michigan State University are doing on their anti-bullying site is great. The New Bullying is about cyberbullying and is produced as both a web site and a book which you can download. Although the videos are about school children, bullying occurs everywhere and to anyone – even people who think they are quite strong. May be the information these journalism students provide might be able to help you or a friend.

I have written before about networks for academics and researchers but I thought you might all be interested in this post about just how popular these all are. Read the post, Social Networks for Academics and go and join some of the networks it links to.

For those of you in history or archaeology, you might find this new, free, online book interesting. Archaeology 2.0: New Tools For Communication and Collaboration, is all about using new technologies in archaeology.

Keep your fingers crossed that it stays dry tomorrow – some sun would be nice too

The joys of writing?

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Like anyone who maintains a regular blog input I must (somewhere in my psyche) enjoy writing. There are times when writing is very easy, sometimes the muse completely eludes me and sometimes it’s a really up-hill, frustrating task. In my wanders round the metaverse I have found a few items on writing that I’d like to share with you. One ‘cos it gives me something to write about and two ‘cos I think you’ll find it interesting and useful

This article from Socialmedia.biz is about how to get over social media writers’ block. It’s a bit different from what you and I might do as it’s coming from a business background rather than an academic one. There’s no reason why we can’t learn from these folks though. Chris Abraham the writer of the post knows what he’s talking about – at least, what I mean is, his experiences coincide with mine.

Gradhacker often has useful posts on writing (as well as loads of other types of help). I particularly like this one, Your Academic Twidentity, you do need to know how to write for Twitter. It is a different skill from writing your blog or your thesis. Do read Andrea’s post and the one she directs you to at the end, How to Hack it on Twitter, it’s all really good advice – especially the one about following #phdchat.

Of course, as always, I direct you to Thesis Whisperer. A great blog, run by people with lots of experience in academic writing. Provides a platform for posts and good discussions with other PhD students, PhDs and people with experience in publishing. I like this post on different approaches to writing from February by “Ben” from the Literature Review HQ.

Literature Review HQ has a forum for your questions and lots of tips, like this one on finding your literature review theme.

Finally, don’t for get PhD2Published. The site is a bit bright but I find that helps on a dull day or when I’m feeling fed-up with writing Lots and lots of interesting stuff to look through and prevent your from facing that writing task

To be or not to be …

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I am often torn about how serious, or not, I should be on this blog. I mostly try to keep things fairly light, interesting and even, dare I say it, fun. However, there are times when I feel there is little out there in the metaverse but serious stuff (times when I often choose not to blog). I tend to err on the side of, “if you can’t say anything real nice, it’s better not to talk at all …”. Today though I think I will say a few serious things just to try to press home what this “Digital Literacy” stuff is all about.

I’d just finished the Research Seminar for February in Second Life at lunchtime and I thought I’d have a look at what was going on in the rest of the world (I mean the corporeal one not the virtual). I opened Twitter and was immediately bombarded by loads of Tweets on copyright issues (these are always very busy streams within Twitter). One Tweet on Digital Literacy though caught my eye from Catherine Cronin from the National University of Ireland. Catherine was Tweeting about a post on the ICTology blog about finding out what Digital Literacy means by analyzing one Tweet. Do read the blog – Ismael Peña-López takes apart one Tweet from Brian Lamb at the University of British Columbia to show just what skills are needed to be a member of the digital world we all, increasingly live in these days.

Moving on from that rather pleasant idea I then came across two items. The first was about Pinterest and the copyright infringement problems it is currently wrestling with. This problem is analyzed by Martin Sloane on the Brodies Law Firm blog (they’re in Scotland), TechBlog. Trying to follow the ins and outs of this problem is also a Digital Literacy issue, any of us could find ourselves caught up in this weird world of digital copyright law – apps like Pinterest are very popular and can be very effective for promoting organisations. What the outcome will be of this tussle is going to be interesting – for all of us. The second was another copyright issue, this time about photography. “Do you need permission to take a photo with a chair in it“. The world is a smaller place these days and we have to be conscious of how laws in other countries affect us. The copyright law and the design rights law in France are clashing over this problem of a photograph of a “designer” chair (designed by someone who worked with Le Corbusier). This is not an unknown issue of copyright law – photographing “famous things” for profit requires the permission of the designer of the “famous thing”. What everyone is complaining about is that the effect of this is to restrict/reduce creativity, the very thing that copyright is supposed to protect and encourage. Read the article you can tell why the photographers are upset.

What does all this mean for the average man in the street? It means that these days he has to be Digitally Literate just as in the past he had to be able to read and write.

Sleep well everyone

Getting organised?

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Well I hope I’m getting organised – does anyone else think I’m getting more organised – on second thoughts don’t answer that The other day I started collecting feedback from students in preparation for some new ideas about supporting student’s IT needs. I’ll let you know more about that in a few weeks. It all made me feel as if things are starting to move in the right direction.

I’m currently preparing for my session with the new research students so I thought I’d write here about some of the stuff we will be talking about. I’ll be drawing on some of my older posts which might seem like cheating but there’s no point in re-writing the information I want to direct the research students to such as the information from the RIN booklet which I wrote about in this post and a few others following. I’m sure some of you other students will find the stuff on those older pages useful too. The first on I’m going to direct you to is Writing, writing writing; contains some useful tips and resources on writing and a post from Networked Researcher blog.

I suppose that one of the biggest hurdles new researchers have to get over is just getting out there, into public view, in the first place. It’s nerve wracking – hoping you’re presenting yourself in the right way, talking about your research but not giving the punch line away, worrying about copyright (doesn’t everyone), trying to find out which social media are the ones that other researchers use – the questions just go on and on. Let me see if I can tackle some of those questions from a Digital Literacy point of view.

Presenting yourself in the right way isn’t too difficult. There are some simple things to remember:

• Be positive – people like it if you either make them feel good or give them something interesting to think about
• Be generous – give people things, like links to blog or other resources, be generous with your time and friendliness and be generous with your open mindedness
• Be sincere – if something annoys you there is nothing wrong in saying so (but don’t be miserable about it), be happy but don’t go over the top (definitely don’t blog/Tweet/etc if you have had an alcoholic drink)
• Be honest – talk about what you are an expert in, if you are just giving your opinion say so, don’t even hint at confidential things you should not be talking about (people won’t trust you in the future)
• Be yourself – don’t try to be someone you are not, we all have lots of different personas, pick one of those and stick to it online

Writing online and presenting yourself all takes a little while to get used to so expect to lurk for a while. Follow some really good bloggers such as the Thesis Whisperer. For example look at the this post from that blog – it is all about the transition from being an undergraduate to a postgraduate student. It’s about the Australian education system but a large element of it still applies to us here in the UK – the post doesn’t give you answers but it does help to identify some of the problems you might experience when you first become a postgraduate student. You might even eventually decide to use social media as your research environment like the Networked Researcher did.

Talking of blogs don’t forget your own Graduate Research blog, it contains lots of useful information that is not normally available to you.

Don’t forget most blogs provide the opportunity to comment – make use of this, it is a marvellous way to get started and to practise the “voice” you want to use when you write your own blog. Another way of practising your “voice” is to use Twitter, you will learn how to say something relevent in 140 words You also get a chance to meet other research students and some smashing researchers and, of course, there is your own Twitter stream (John-Paul can give you the #tag).

I think that’s enough for now and I really ought to get on with some other work

Developing Digital Literacies

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I was going to write about something completely different but then I saw the Tweet in the #jiscdiglit Twitter stream from CosmoCat. I’m not sure if many/any of you are aware that JISC is currently running a Programme called Developing Digital Literacies (unfortunately we were a little too young to join in). The Programme comes under JISC Cetis and on the Programme homepage it says,

“We’re working with colleges and universities to embed core digital skills into the curriculum. By digital literacy we mean those capabilities which fit an individual for living, learning and working in a digital society: for example, the skills to use digital tools to undertake academic research, writing and critical thinking; as part of personal development planning; and as a way of showcasing achievements.”

Which is, more or less, what we are trying to do here at Worcester. (I must say I really dislike the JISC homepages their new sites are much nicer. Have a look at the range of projects in the programme) What CosmoCat drew my attention to was Sheila’s work blog, which provides an excellent round-up of how the programme is progressing so far and what is happening with each of the projects. You can get a good idea of what it is like to work on one of these projects by looking at the blogs from them.

Do go and look at all the information in the links above as it will give you a better idea of what this blog and the Digital Literacy Services in general are all about:)

Blogs and Blogging

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As you can see from the end of my last post I’ve been looking at how different people and universities are using blogs. I really did like the way Imperial had a group of their students blogging. It would be great if we could get our students blogging like this too – any of you game?

There’s also the way that the University of the Arts in London have created blogs for different parts of their University. The Campus is very widespread, all over London, having these blogs helps to bring them together and let them know about stuff going on everywhere. I don’t think our locations around Worcester are quite so wide spread but you can see how they could get out of touch with one another without the blogs.

The University of Nottingham also has a similar thing where they have a page that brings together all their blogs. There they even get their Vice Chancellor blogging They seem to blog about anything and anything from, “A world in crisis” to a “Geog Blog”.

This last one I really like. Can’t remember which of my contacts tipped me off to this one but it’s a smashing idea. It’s called Project 365 and people commit to blogging about one thing for a whole year. Go along and have a look at some of the things people have blogged about. If any of you decide to have a go yourselves let me know and we’ll follow your blog from here. Good luck!