Category: Educational Technology

Technology and tools used to support learning and teaching

Lecture capture study advice

While most use of lecture captures by students occurs during revision windows prior to summative assessment, institutions have an opportunity to encourage students to think about how lecture recordings can support learning during term time, as an integrated enhancement to their study practice. The study advice that follows aims to achieve that. Building into student … Continue reading Lecture capture study advice

Durbbu 2016 – Blackboard’s Journey

Comment on VLE provider Blackboard’s keynote at #durbbu 2016 presented by Alan Masson and ponderings over whether the ‘journey’ is about technology or about ourselves. Masson outlined Blackboard’s view of a journey shared by both institutions and the company to increase adoption and increase innovation. Whilst this is certainly a view that echoes with learning technologists, both objectives … Continue reading Durbbu 2016 – Blackboard’s Journey

Student Technology Survey Results – Desktops, laptops and tablets

This is the second of a series of posts which look at data collected from the surveys of Year 1 students who attend my induction sessions. In this post I look at the way students’ desktop, laptop and tablet ownership have changed over three years.

Student Technology Survey Results – Mobile Devices

This is the first of a series of posts which look at data collected from the surveys of Year 1 students who attend my induction sessions. In this post I look at the trends in mobile phone ownership and we discover which phones students actually use in 2013.

Creating rich resources with free tools: Customised Google Maps for Learning & Teaching

Workshop at the Durham Blackboard Users Conference, Durham University, 9 January 2013. See: Conference Website. Presentation This was my workshop at DurBbU with the general aim was to showcase the way that Google Maps has been used by academics in my Department and to invite workshop participants to try out the Google Maps interface on … Continue reading Creating rich resources with free tools: Customised Google Maps for Learning & Teaching

Reflections on panel session: Institutional minimum standards for VLE use (Durham Blackboard Conference 2012)

Part of a series of posts on the Durham Blackboard Users’ Conference 2012.

This post is a summary of the discussion that took place in the panel session on the topic ‘The Implications and Practicalities of Agreeing and Enforcing a Threshold Standard of use of a VLE in an Education Institution’ chaired by Mike Cameron of Newcastle University. The session took place at 4.30pm on 5 January 2012. Throughout I have added my own take on the issues raised.

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Moodle 2.0: File management and repository – file picker vs course files

I must admit, straight away, that writing this post has left me in tears. As I sob over my keyboard, my head is spinning in conflict about the way file management has been implemented in the brand new version of Moodle: Moodle 2.0. I’m hoping one day I’ll be able to write a post called ‘Dr. Strangemoodle. Or: How I learned to stop worrying and love the file picker.’ That day is not today.

Reflections: QR codes (Durham Blackboard Users Conference 2011)

As part of the 2011 Durham Blackboard Users Conference which focused on ‘location’ as a theme, mobile technologies were discussed a lot. QR codes cropped up regularly, and although I did not attend the sessions relating to this technology, I’d like to share some thoughts.

Reflections on parallel sessions: Dynamic tagging and wisdom of the crowd (Durham Blackboard Users Conference 2011)

This post is a summary of thoughts of one of the parallel sessions at the 2011 Durham Blackboard Users Conference. The session presented a way of sorting a list of resources based on location, using social tagging to rank and categorise various resources.