From cringing to ridiculous :)

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Here I am back again after my break, keen to bring you all sorts of exciting things – well interesting things at least

You might laugh or cringe over these videos from the EU about a family called the Clikkers. These videos are part of the EU programme to inform people about digital literacies, they are quite good really but probably aimed at a slightly younger age group than the one here at the University.

We all need to learn more about our digital footprints.This slide show and it’s accompanying Word document provide some useful advice and handy urls to help us find out more about these footprints. We all have them and, as this other video points out, we have them from before we are born. This next video demonstrates how it can all go horribly wrong!

Usually when things go horribly wrong it’s because people have not had a chance to develop good digital literacy skills; this article from the BBC is a good case in point. Everyone in our society needs to develop these new skills, if you do not have them you lose out. The digital revolution has left some people stranded with old skills, those of us who do have digital literacy skills need to help those who don’t. Right, that’s enough preaching now for something completely different

People often wonder not just what avatars are and why we use them. This e-book, “The use of avatars” has loads of information about avatars and how they are used. Do you have any avatars? What do you use them for?

Have a look at the Oxford University, Internet Institute. There are loads of podcasts and videos here about modern technologies related to the Internet. Subjects include things like, “Facebook: The Strength of Weak Ties”, “The Changing Business of Software” and “The Life Story of a Pioneer: From Hi-tech to Philanthropy” and lots, lots more.

Now some things for a little bit of fun First Padlet, you might remember this as Wallwisher. It is a great way of sharing and planning with friends online. Go and have a look and try it out. Next is something called Blubox, if you take loads of pictures and want to scrunch them up so they fit in a smaller space Blubox is for you. Blubox is a photo compressor which claims to compress your photos by 90% whilst maintaining the resolution. Have a go and let me know if it works as well as it claims – I have loads of photos I need to compress! Finally, I bring you bomomo – I don’t think it does anything useful, it just makes pretty pictures but it is good fun

For new and old alike

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I realised that I had not provided anything for some of our newer students on the last few posts. So today here is something for the newbies

I was wandering around the web as I often do and came across these really useful short animations from Jisc Netskills web2practice. If you are not quite sure what Twitter, RSS, etc are or why you should use them these videos explain it all for you.

Many of you already know how to find Creative Commons resources on the web. For you this Creative Commons New Zealand page is just one more useful link for you, for the newbies this is something you should add to your RSS feed Here are 7 Ways to Find Creative Commons Images.

I’m sure some of you are already using WordPress for writing your free blog. These two videos I found on YouTube explain how to set up a web site using WordPress and how to make it a commercial site. Pretty obviously this is not free but if you are thinking of setting up your own business online this is a cheap (about £25 per year), but good way, of doing it.

Mozilla, the web browser people, are developing a web literacy standard, i.e. the basics of what you should know and be able to do on and with the web. The competencies come under the headings of Exploring, Building and Connecting. If you are not sure of what this involves, take a look at this page and see if you are able to do all this stuff.

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

The complex and the simple

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What do I have for you all today? To start with here is an article from the University of East Anglia (UEA) INTO Partnership. Tim Powell-Jones has introduced the use of iPads to the International Business Diploma programme, he is really pleased with the results. Have a read and see if you think iPads would be useful as part of your course.

Paul Williams suggested this next piece from the Guardian to me. I must admit that, like Paul, I get very frustrated by the whole ebook/ejournal divide and Digital Rights Management (DRM), there really should be a better way of dealing with ebooks by now. I’m not too sure that I agree with Jefferson Pooley that we should make everything into Portable Document Format (pdf) it’s really difficult to read. On a semi-serious note I don’t even agree with his statement that, “[M]odern academics don’t read supine, snacking on grapes”. I thought modern academics read anywhere. I suppose part of the problem with pdf is that publishers insist on using stupidly old-fashioned layouts and font-faces. With all the clever digital stuff we do now we really should have a better option. Wolfram brought out Computable Document Format (CDF) ages ago, why do we not see more of that for ebooks.

Now for something completely different This is a site from the Government of South Australia, it has loads of really useful stuff for those people who would like some basic questions answered. This link is to their information about Skype. Do take a look and encourage other people to make use of it too

Who, What, umm identity?

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Today I have brought together seven items that are all, in one way or another, connected to identity. Do have a go at some of them they really are quite good fun

First up is Spezify, a visual search engine that will search for any picture with your name on it. Do you know what pictures there are of you online? Go and search for yourself and find out just how visual you are!

Next comes Pipl another search engine, this one searches for anything about you online, or for anyone else you want to search for.

By now you should have started to realise how this all connects to questions of identity. So first I looked at how our persona appears online. Now I’m looking at Second Life which provides the opportunity to create a different persona. For those of you who don’t know Second Life is a 3D communication device/social media tool where you can have meetings, or get together with friends to create a special online environment. For those of you new to Second Life (SL) here is the most recent video on how to shop for things in SL. One of the things that people have often complained about with SL is that you can’t access it on a mobile device – well you can now! Lumiya can be run on any Android device, tablet or mobile phone. You can’t do any building in SL with Lumiya but you can do everything else.

Just what else will researchers come up with? Well one of the things they came up with was touch sensitive devices (haptics or haptic technology). Moving on from there they are now working on how to add touch sensitive technology to telemedicine. So you will not just see and talk to your doctor, nurse or specialist online but you will also be able to feel them! eeek! Read about what the researchers at University of Texas are getting up to.

I could not resist bringing you this video spoof of how your grandparents use the Internet. At first the video seems dreadful but real but as soon as the presenter says his name is Bob you know it’s a spoof. A really great laugh but it does get you thinking It’s on the Digital Tattoo site from the University of British Columbia, excellent site, you might like to take a look round that too.

Last an old but interesting article from Heloukee on the Paradox of Openness. Yet another view of identity or identities online that should give you some food for thought.

Why technology?

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Why technology – why want it, why use it, why create it? Technology basically means just anything man-made, now-a-days it tends to mean the most modern man-made things. I’ve found a few things to share with you that, for me, answer the questions I just posed at the beginning of this paragraph.

This article in the Wall Street Journal by Katherine Rosman is a good example. Katherine writes about an online company called Craftsy, this company sells education in all sorts of crafts. You can learn about “Advanced Fondant Techniques,” “Explorations in Brioche Knitting,” “Mastering Lace Shawls”, “Handcrafted Sugar Flowers” and “Stupendous Stitching” and all for only $20-50. People like to learn, they like to learn how to do things, even very much more expensive courses are successful online. Do read the article it’s fascinating – may be you’ll sign up for one of the classes All joking aside though, this article answers so many questions that we might ask about modern technologies – people are using technology to save money, to make money, to have fun, to replace classes that cancelled due to the current financial climate, to help them deal with loneliness and frustration, in fact for all sorts of reasons.

This next example is particularly interesting for me as it is about how to get helpful information to people quickly – rather like the University’s QuileR site (see the link in our blog roll). The post in the Fast Company blog is actually about how to help the “average” computer user to know how to use their computers more efficiently and, at the end of the post, there are links to some great videos from Google about how to do things. Technology provides not only the means to help people but to do it 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Great reasons for using modern technologies.

I really like the Retronaut site, they have a wonderful collection of images and do some very clever things with them – things that we just would not be able to do without these modern technologies. The Retronaut site provides us with insights that would not normally be available to us. The images of the WWI soldiers on the particular page I’ve linked to are also an example of things we would not normally have seen.

This page from Edinburgh University of Undergraduate students’ advice to first year students is another example of something we would never have seen before. The ordinary person just did not get an opportunity to make their voices heard. In the past we would never have heard from individual Undergraduates like this, in fact you probably wouldn’t have heard from Undergraduates at all I rather thought that some students here would like to have a go at this sort of thing. If you do, just get in touch with me and I’ll arrange it all.

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

Modern technologies and creativity

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How did it come to be Monday again? I didn’t notice the weekend go – where did it go? To ensure we don’t all fall asleep from Mondayitis I’ll give you a few things to play with and think about – I’m sure you’re going to enjoy that, ummm well …

Have a look at these cartoons – they are really cute. Larry Cuban creates these cartoon collections on a regular basis and, apart from his blog being interesting, some of these cartoons about children using modern technologies just ring so true – the comments are often good too.

Some research suggests that using modern technologies can make people more creative but why might we want people to be more creative? I don’t usually recommend viewing a PowerPoint presentation but this one really helps with understanding why people need to learn how to be more creative. The findings are from research done in America so the figures might be slightly different if it was repeated here in the UK. Why don’t you be creative and comment on the findings

I was really surprised to find another good PowerPoint explaining what web 2.0 is. If you have ever wondered what the phrase web 2.0 actually means you can find out here. How do you use modern technologies? Are you constantly texting, tweeting, posting to Facebook or your blog, putting your pictures on Pinterest? Is it your way of being creative? Do you link all your social media together? Is it the only way you can achieve a balance between your social and your work life or does it all just get in the way? Would you like to stop doing it all but can’t? Tell me – go on you know you want to really

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

A little behind is better than more :)

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Arrrgh – look at the time! I’m all behind today (don’t you dare say anything about the size of my behind)!

I have quite a lot I could give you today but I only have a little time so let me see what I think is best.

For those researchers out there who read the blog, if you haven’t heard about ResearchGate before, you should have done Pop off to the site and go and collaborate with all the other lovely researchers. You might also like to look at this article from Nature about social media for researchers (and PhD students). Whilst I have your attention you ought to look at DEVONthink too. Devon think can also be very useful to all you other students so go and get stuck in to something that will really help you cleverly manage all your documents.

For some of you who are more interested in technology and writing your own web site go and download Google Goggles – it’s great fun.

What a start to the week – enjoy yourselves

So much to do …

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A competition, an online conference and even more interesting stuff today ok let’s look at the competition first.

On Monday I was in Birmingham at Daden Ltd, they create all sorts of virtual, immersive reality sort of stuff. One of the programmes they have created is an “immersive data visualisation application” called Datascape. Some of the data they showed me was really rather cute – it was so much easier to understand than seen as a flat or simple, non-immersive 3D diagram. Any way, they have a competition for people to produce the, “best immersive 3D visualisation” of their own data. You can download the Community Edition of Datascape for free so of you go all you researchers, mathematicians and psychologists get going with your data!

For those of you interested in dyslexia I found a really good site about it called dislexiawayofthinking. There is loads of information and support on this site – there are videos, an ebook, webinars, tests, information about helpful apps, you can follow them on Twitter and join the group. Have a look it’s a really, really useful site.

There’s a fantastic conference on 8th to 9th of November. It’s at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark but don’t worry you can follow it and join in, all online! The conference is about New Media and the Public Sphere – how are all these new communication technologies affecting our lives, is it changing our basic understanding and conception of “the public”, is there a still a definite divide between the public and the private? Go and add your four penny-worth to the conference – the Twitter hashtag is #NMPS2012. Go on – have a bit of fun

Try Ginger it is fantastic for proof reading! It is soooo very difficult to check text when you are tired and you have been reading each version over and over again. Even if you use the Microsoft spell checker you can’t be sure if it’s right. Coming to the rescue is Ginger – tra daa! A great tool for doing your proof reading – but do try to learn from it as it corrects your dreadful grammar

Here is a little bit of fun to end with. I haven’t tried it yet but it looks smashing. Xtranormal is a programme that will create a video from your words. Have a go and see if you can make something really funny

Just a bit of fun :)

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Enough seriousness, is that a word or have I just made it up? Here are a few links to things both funny and helpful.

I think I’ve mentioned this before but nevermind, Hastac is a way of getting together with other people to think about things. Hastac can be just fun but it can also be very useful fun. Hastac is rather like an undergrad version of Unexus, these people are getting not just thinkers together but also all the people who can make things actually work – great stuff!

Some of you might be interested in getting your own stuff out there so you might be could want to learn a bit about coding. Codeacademy provides some really helpful information in a pretty simple way so that you can use it on your own web pages.

Things like szoter can be very useful when you are studying. You’ll see a picture on a web site and it looks really useful as a way of reminding you about the information on the site. Just grab an image of the site and then annotate it, all with szoter. Another study aid is ProfessorWord – it can be awfully annoying and confusing when you don’t know the meaning to a word, just use Professor Word and you can obtain an immediate definition. Not bad eh?

ok – that’s yer lot for now I’ll find some more stuff soon.