Tag: UTFS

Book #29 The Digital Scholar

Martin Weller’s “The Digital Scholar” presents an interesting perspective on how academic scholarship is changing and of more futures for the future with the affordances that technology offers. I agree with a lot of what is said in the book and may have said some of it myself. As part of my sabbatical leave I am trying to be a digital scholar: building a digital collection, using appropriate tools for accessing managing this information; however I am failing in making good on sharing a lot of what I am doing, and I could perhaps do more to cultivate my network of peers.

One of Weller’s strands is the need to move away from the traditional model of publishing academic journals and towards an open access model, he is particularly troubled by the large sums publishers make for publishing papers that are written as a result of publically funded research, and peer reviewed for free by the academic community. However he is aware that some academics are skeptical about open access. Which is borne out by a senior colleague of mine recently said: “..open access pubs are often desperate for papers…”

All in all a great book, I’ve recommended it to a number of people.

 

Me and Cakes

I quite like cakes both from the point of eating and baking.

I have quite a few pictures of cakes on Flickr and the reasons I do that are several-fold:
1.       If I have baked something I am proud of I want to preserve the picture.
2.       It is easy to share the Flickr URL of the cake.
3.       I can also embed Flickr pictures into my blog.
4.       I use cake examples a lot in my teaching (there is a lot of similarities between cooking and programming).
5.       They add (I think) a human side to me for my students and colleagues without unduly exposing my family.
6.       Occasionally the cakes are as a result of online conversations, for example I made a chocolate beer cake, because I saw a tweet from someone else who had made one.

Chocolate beer cake

So cakes are part of my real life identity but because of decisions I have taken I think they actually represent a larger portion of my digital identity.

Ubuntu

Last week I decided to breathe some life in to an oldish XP-running desktop computer by installing Linux.
I decided to use Ubuntu because my netbook runs Easy Peasy – which is based on Ubuntu.
I started by downloading Ubuntu on to a flash drive, and using this (without installing) to boot my computer, that worked fantastically well.
There was just one problem my wireless dongle didn’t work. A Google search revealed others had the same problem but didn’t offer a solution that worked for me. Eventually I found that there was a wrapper that meant the Windows Driver could be used, however the dongle provider hadn’t supplied that on the CD – they used some package which auto-installed with Windows – but a root round in the Windows file store found that. So the wireless worked, I tried a couple of times re-booting from the flash drive to be sure everything did work. I then installed Ubuntu and went on to get the wireless working but now the system said it couldn’t find the wrapper and it needed internet access to get it, which seemed a bit cyclic. I started looking at trying to download it on another machine, but then hit on the idea of moving our router and getting a long wire and actually connecting in a wired fashion, that worked a treat and soon the wireless was also working
My next challenge was to get our school’s ITNG web-based vpn working, I use this quite a lot because it allows me to access my university filestore and to run different machines. This required that I had Flash and Java installed, I spent quite a lot of time trying to get this to work, but it would not fully work like it does on my other computers.
I had followed the instructions from the ITNG Help pages which recommended using Icedtea for Java, and this ultimately turned out to be the problem. I sat the netbook next to the desktop and the only difference in the installation seemed to be Java. So I uninstalled Icedtea, then had a dig round in the Ubuntu web pages and found out the best way to install Java, by doing this the vpn worked. I’ve edited the ITNG help page to suggest that using Sun Java is an alternative, and added a bit of discussion with the actual versions I used.
I’ve left the machine as dual boot so I can run the old XP if I want, but for now I’m happy with the Ubuntu Linux.

Free iPad or iPhone

The Science Faculty at The University of Adelaide are offering free iPads to new first year students, doing away with text books and printed notes.

While the Medical School at the University of Leeds are giving 4th and 5th year medical students free iPhones which can be used to access online text books . The idea is that these students who spend a lot of time out and about in hospitals and working with GPs will have access to an entire library of “key medical text books”.

These are two very interesting experiments, it will be interesting to see what happens next year, will the institutions be able to provide free hardware or will they expect students to buy it?

Learning Literacies in a Digital Age and This is Me

Learning Literacies for the Digital Age was a JISC funded project  that is described as:  “a research study aiming to find out what literacies learners require and what UK HE and FE institutions are doing to support them. The study informs JISC and the wider UK FE and HE communities by providing a better understanding of learning literacies, how they are evolving, how requirements are changing, and how they may be supported in different contexts.”

 

As part of their work they have collected examples of best practice. One of the examples they include is related to the This is Me project and our work on Digital Identity, the description is here. It is really great to see our work presented in this context.

Student Stories and This is Me

The Student Stories site features: “students talking honestly about their own uni experiences” it is largely student focused but there also some staff resources suggesting ways that the materials can be used in teaching and learning situations.

A few weeks ago we were offered the opportunity to work with the people behind the Student Stories site and we ran a focus group and collected over an hour of a group of students talking about issues related to Digital Identity. They edited the material and we linked it to a resource for staff to help them better understand the issues of Digital Identity.

The audio clips can be found at http://www.studentstories.co.uk/audio/  under By Theme – Online Identity.

While the staff resources are at http://www.studentstories.co.uk/staff/ under Teaching Materials – Identity.

Digital Identity

Yesterday I was talking to someone about the this is Me project and our aims to help people understand and control the persona they present across the internet. She assured me that I wouldn’t find anything about her.
So I saw this as a challenge and last night I Googled her, the first thing that came up was the university web page about her, in this she gave a potted history, and revealed her husband’s job and the careers and studies of her children. I felt in this one page she revealed more than some people with a greater digital presence do.

Evernote

I’ve noticed Evernote among popular downloads from the Android market, so I decided to investigate.
Their strap line is: “Remember everything”.
With the added message that you can: “Use Evernote to save your ideas, things you see, and things you like. Then find them all on any computer, phone or device you use. For free.”

I’ve downloaded the Windows version on my desktop and the Android version on the phone and they work exactly as promised, I’ve also experimented with their Web Clipper which can be used without a download, and so will work with other operating systems than the ones they support (Windows and Mac). There are versions for lots of mobile devices, including Blackberry, Windows Mobile, the iPhone etc. I’ll experiment for a while – doubt it will make me tidier – but you never know.

 

Evernote