Monthly Archives: May 2012

Google Refine

Google Refine is a powerful tool for dealing with messy data. It seems to have more power than a spreadsheet and lots of potential. Have a look at the videos on the Google Refine site to get a feel. Unlike … Continue reading

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Google Scholar for searching

There are many databases available for academic searching, and there is a list of those available to University of Reading users. Google Scholar is a good overarching tool for searching through a number of these, via the preferences you can … Continue reading

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Digital dissent

I follow several electronic newsgroups to ensure I stay at the front of my research interests. The ever challenging issue of science on Wikipedia cropped up today with an unusually heated debate on the accuracy of information on a page … Continue reading

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A library in my pocket

One of the problems of being a plant taxonomist is that my research relies heavily on books, and some of those can be a few hundred years old.  My modest working book collection covers an entire wall of my office … Continue reading

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Online professionalism and Facebook – Falling through the generation gap

Via a tweet I found this recently published article: Osman, A., Wardle, A. & Caesar, R. (2012) Online professionalism and Facebook – Falling through the generation gap. Medical teacher. Available online at: http://informahealthcare.com/doi/full/10.3109/0142159X.2012.668624 Although the survey reported is about medical professionals … Continue reading

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Behaving Online

There is lots of advice available on how to behave online, some of it very sensible and some of it belonging to the 19th century. The University has produced two guides on Being Online one for students and one for … Continue reading

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Peer learning – Google Scholar Citations

This afternoon one of those serendipitous conversations happened that allowed me to add another online profile to my digital presence; Google Scholar now offer individual academic profiles that update automatically, can be edited and keep track of an individual’s publications, … Continue reading

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The Digital Human

The advantage of bank holidays is the chance to hear weekday Radio4 from time to time.  This afternoon at 4.30pm I happened to hear The Digital Human. This is week two of a series of six programmes investigating the impact … Continue reading

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Facebook: Social integration and informal learning experiences

Continuing the theme of using social media, I thought I would give a plug to a project on ‘Enhancing Student Engagement in Curriculum Development’ here at the University of Reading. Amongst other things, the project explores the use of Facebook … Continue reading

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Saint or sinner?

We’
ve been hearing a lot recently about the need for a code of practice to guide our students in their use of web 2.0 and social media when part of their learning programme. This was a recurrent theme at last … Continue reading

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