Rendez vous with my digital skills

Posted on June 29, 2013 by katerinalazidou

When I started on the small project funded by the DR team, little did I know what I would learn in the process. From a digital angle, the aim was to highlight digital skills and needs in an internationalisation/employability related project. The focus was on interviewing home students who had undertaken placement or work experience abroad. Under Tee’s guidance, I was able to conduct the interview with Sam Leonard who had a 6-weeks placement at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Tee taught me how to record and edit the video. Despite the steep learning curve, it was a fun process.

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Digital Literacy: Engaging the Public with Science

Posted on June 26, 2013 by Top Cat

My third year research project involved the utilisation of blogs as a platform for science communication. I studied ground spider assemblages on campus with the aim to engage the public with a sometimes misunderstood or mistreated group of organisms. After research into the species found on campus I produced blogs on the more common species with others on evolution and folklore. The blogs I produced on these topics can be found here: http://blogs.reading.ac.uk/whiteknightsbiodiversity/author/torinclarke/. I thoroughly enjoyed making them and have developed the valuable skill of being able to transform scientific ideas and data into that which people want to read about, in other words, popular science. Continue reading →

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Digital Literacy: A Tool For Professional Development

Posted on June 25, 2013 by Thomas Whitlock

During the course of my undergraduate research project, I undertook in the writing and development of many online blog entries, which were aimed at engaging readers with bird species and other scientific information (Blog entries found here:http://blogs.reading.ac.uk/whiteknightsbiodiversity/author/thomaswhitlock/). Over the course of my third year, the development of these blogs were fantastic in developing my online communication skills and the knowledge of how best to transfer information to readers of blogs and the general public, regardless of educational background. Continue reading →

Posted in Assessment & Feedback, Digital community, Employability, Staff-student partnerships | 1 Comment

Blogging assignments – comments and experiences part 1: MSc formative and summative assignments

Posted on June 24, 2013 by Alastair Culham

Blogging has become one of the major means of communicating just about anything.  It allows more development of thought than a tweet or Facebook post and is a logical development of the traditional form of published essays.  I’ve been experimenting with blogs in teaching and learning for nearly five years now but the approach has really become a focus in the last two years.  My first  experiment on student blogging – using Whiteknights Biodiversity – was reported in November 2011.

I really like the blog form.  It can be chatty or formal, public or private, with or without pictures, a simple timeline or complex of interlinked pages.  All have their place.

This post is about the use of blog posts as formative and summative student assignments and reports specifically on student activity in the 2012/2013 academic year for a group of undergraduate finalists and MSc students.

A tropical waterlily in flower in the Tropical biodiversity glasshouse

A tropical waterlily in flower in the Tropical biodiversity glasshouse

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Posted in Assessment & Feedback, Digital community, Employability, Internationalisation, Social media, Training & resources | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Digital Literacy: What I’ve Learned

Posted on June 24, 2013 by Conor Haugh

Over the 2012/13 academic year I undertook a dissertation project titled “Biodiversity on the Web: Developing tools and data delivery for campus biodiversity knowledge”. As a part of the project I worked closely with Alastair Culham and several other students working on similar projects.

Conor Haugh - a man confident in his web 2.0 knowledge.

Conor Haugh – a man confident in his web 2.0 knowledge.

Over the course of the project I gained a good deal of knowledge about digital literacy. I created an account on the university blog and posted several entries to the site (that can be found here: http://blogs.reading.ac.uk/whiteknightsbiodiversity/author/zh012054/). For this I had to focus on my communication skills, considering my audience and appropriate tone, content, and layout. I also created a Facebook page for the blog site (https://www.facebook.com/WhiteknightsBiodiversityBlog), and managed to link the two so that new posts to the blog automatically appear on the Facebook page. Continue reading →

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Student placement abroad – A case study in Hong Kong

Posted on June 19, 2013 by katerinalazidou

Thanks to the small project funded by the Digitally Ready project, I have been able to conduct my first interview with a student earlier this year. And Tee has very kindly taught me how to use Adobe Premiere Elements and write down my case study.

Let me now set some context for the case study. I interviewed Sam Leonard who is a finalist undergraduate in the School of Biological Sciences. In the summer of 2012, (when Sam was in his Year 2) he undertook a 6-weeks placement at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Continue reading →

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Digital recording of lectures in a first year Classics course

Posted on June 11, 2013 by Matthew Nicholls

I was recently awarded a Digitally Ready grant to experiment with digital audio recording of lectures in Classics. This is a topic of some interest within the University as a whole, with thought being given to audio and video capture, the use of media files on Blackboard, the ‘flipped classroom’ and so on. A small project experimenting with a relatively cheap and simple (and low-data) implementation seemed like a good idea, so I requested funds to buy three digital audio recorders, and to put them to use recording and posting on Blackboard the audio for our spring term CL1CB Augustan Rome ancient history module. These lectures form an important part of the course, but are only one element alongside seminar work and, of course, students’ own private study. I hoped to gauge student and lecturer opinions on the use of this technology and gather some practical experience of using the technology to add to what we can offer our students.

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Student Researchers from the department of Art to present at RAISE 2013 (by Christine Ellison)

Posted on June 7, 2013 by Julian Park

OSCAR profile Paige ClaytonAs we continue to develop OSCAR the online student community in Art our students are becoming more involved and more integral to the development of the project. Together we are researching innovative ways to integrate the social network, designed to support our studio modules, across all of our programmes in Art. We have been invited to present at the RAISE conference in Nottingham this September which we are delighted to be able to attend with support from Digitally Ready. The theme this year is The Future of Student Engagement: Partnerships, Practices, Policies and Philosophies. I am working with two BA students (from our OSCAR student research group) on a joint presentation about the collaborative process of developing OSCAR. We will address student engagement particularly in relation to partnerships and practices highlighting our current focus on developing students’ professional online profiles.

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Posted in Dissemination, Placement student showcase, Small project funding scheme, Staff-student partnerships, Work/Academic placements | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Digital Hero, Dr Matthew Nichols, on BBC 4

Posted on May 29, 2013 by Julian Park

One of our Digital Heros, Dr Matthew Nichols, is contributing to a BBC 4 series that looks at the colourful careers of the women behind the throne in ancient Rome, and its subtitle, ‘Mothers, Murderers and Mistresses’, hints at some of the stories it will tell. Digitally Ready are very proud! For more details on his success visit the University website.

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The Digital Department (Digital literacy project at UCL)

Posted on May 13, 2013 by Alastair Culham

At lunchtime today the SELC group and other interested staff met to hear a presentation on The Digital Department (Digital literacy project at UCL), a sister project to Digitally Ready.  It aims to develop the professional profile of teaching administrators.  The project is funded by JISC and has delivered a training programme and explored external accreditation.  The project is aimed at all staff who support T&L activities working alongside academics and students.

The Digital Department talk from UCL staff

The Digital Department talk from UCL staff

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