Discovering and Sharing Freely Available Educational Resources

At the RSC we are increasingly being asked where training providers can obtain good quality electronic resources they can use for their delivery. Many also stipulate that resources must be no cost or low cost, not surprising in today’s economic climate.

Partly in response to this, and in conjunction with staff from RSC East Midlands, our Learning Resources Advisor will be facilitating a training day which focuses entirely on discovering and sharing freely available resources.

Delegates will be introduced to a range of useful tools for sharing, including Delicious and Slideshare as well as a review of the new functionality of the UK's Jorum repository. There are also sessions on Creative Commons licensing and Open Educational Resources and where to find them.

The full days training costs just £55 and bookings are limited to two per provider in the first instance.

To book your place or for more information see the event page on the RSC website.

Other Support...

For other general information on Learning Resources, our Learning Resources Adviser (Matt Gallon) is available to help with your queries on a one to one basis. Contact him if you'd like support in any of these areas:

· guidance on finding and using free and subscription e-resources
· advice on copyright and intellectual property matters
· help with designing and planning learning spaces
· guidance on the range of JISC services and help with accessing them.

Matt also maintains a useful blog which is worth subscribing to, or keeping an eye on for updates.

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Related wobble links:

Copyright Free Images for Resources
Intute - web resources for education
NLN learning resources, whats on the horizon?

To read more of Wobble click here.

Date for your Diary to get Online

Just six weeks to go for Get Online Week...!

Get online week is an annual campaign from UK online centres. Its runs from the 18th to 24th October 2010, the campaign aims to get tens of thousands of people that have never used computers and the internet before online.

This year UK online centres is teaming up with a range of external partners who will be generating huge amounts of publicity for Get online week. They include the BBC, BT, Three, Post Office and MLA amongst many others. Partners will be holding their own events or directing people to one of the 3,500 UK online centres which are situated around England.

To register your own event for Get online week 2010, simply complete the registration form on the website. As a learning provider you could be helping one of the 10 million+ people in the UK who still don’t use computers and the internet. Get online week is the biggest digital inclusion event to date and being a part of it is a great way to help more people in your community to get online and get to know you too.



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Examples of how to use….

…SMS text messaging to capture learner voice:

Using a variety of methods, including text messaging, Northampton College successfully engaged with its learners to build a better relationship with them so that their views are heard and built into their learning experience. This recent case study looks at how a variety of technologies contributed to this:

Northampton College: Learner voice and technology


… hand held games consoles to improve health and wellbeing

ETEC Development Trust purchased various computer games consoles for learners at its drop-in centre in Sunderland. ETEC hopes the games will help to improve their learners' literacy and numeracy skills as well as their general health and wellbeing. One learner has already improved his vocabulary skills through the use of a Nintendo DS.
ETEC Development Trust: Game-based learning brings skills to life

…a virtual world for creating alternative learning environments

e-Learning staff at Barnfield College have created a revolutionary learning environment in Second Life. Barnfield College has been involved in a collaborative project with Museums Luton to create a virtual museum. This has helped drive a culture of innovative and engaging learning in the College and has helped to raise the profile of local museums in Luton.
Barnfield College: Informal learning through collaborative Second Life project

...screen-capture to create animated how to guides
North West Kent College is not alone in trying to solve the various challenges associated with IT-based staff development. Using Adobe Captivate to quickly and efficiently create a series of animated ‘How To' guides, this College has found a highly effective way of providing anytime, anywhere and on-demand IT support for both staff and students alike.
North West Kent College: ‘How to' raise IT skills



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Getting WebWise and Staying Safe Online

BBC Learning has just announced the re-launch of WebWise, the BBC's free online guide to the internet for beginners. As well as two new courses - Internet Basics and Computer Basics - the new WebWise also has over 130 new articles from leading technology writers.

This relaunched version also has a really comprehensive section on Safety and Privacy which offers lots of hints and tips on how you and your learners can stay safe online. For learning providers thats certainly worth linking to or making learners aware of as part of the Safeguarding agenda.

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Related Wobble links:

Free Online Tutorials for Using Video and Audio
OpenOffice Online Tutorials


To read more of Wobble click here.

Flexibility and Innovation Fund, Fourth funding round: October 2010

Last week LSIS announced the opening of its fourth round of funding for Flexibility and Innovation Fund projects. This current round of funding closes on Friday 29 October 2010.

This time, bids for up to a maximum of £50,000 are invited from consortia of provider organisations for projects which have the potential to significantly enhance the practice and performance of the learning and skills sector. Bids from individual provider organisations cannot be accepted in this funding round.

For this funding round LSIS will particularly welcome consortia bids that address specific issues and problems in defined locations - based on the principles of Total Place. (Total Place is a government initiative that looks at how a ‘whole area’ approach to public services can lead to better services at less cost. It seeks to identify and avoid overlap and duplication between organisations – delivering a step change in both service improvement and efficiency at the local level.)

The following supporting documents for this funding round are available on the website:

· Guidance for submitting applications for the fourth round of funding
· The application form for the submission of bids
· Further information on the marking scheme for assessing bids
· Guidance on the qualities of successful bids in the first three rounds of funding

Further information about this fund is also available on the Excellence Gateway. This includes ‘Frequently Asked Questions’, ‘Qualities of Successful Bids’, further information about the judges’ marking scheme, and summary information about successful bids from the first three funding rounds.

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Related Wobble links:

Bid Writing Resources - resources which may help with the bid writing process.
Supporting resources page from a previous bid writing workshop.


To read more of Wobble click here.

How good are you at E-Learning?

As an organisation it can be hard to know how well you are performing with e-learning. How do you compare to other training providers? What 'could' you be doing with e-learning?

This is the reason the RSC's developed the free 'ILT Healthcheck' many years ago, a free service which involved us visiting learning providers, speaking to samples of their staff and learners and producing a free report which helped them to identify their e-learning strengths and weaknesses. This service also helped providers with action planning which could be mapped to any support, funding and initiatives that were available for e-learning.

We now have a very large number of training providers in this region and so we are unable to offer the same level of in-depth review, however we are able to help providers to assess their e-learning progress through a number of other e-progress review options. There are several options available for this and to make the current offering clearer we have produced a two page summary sheet with outlines the wealth of free services available to regional providers. Click image to download in pdf format.

We are happy to work with you using these review tools and to offer you free impartial advice and guidance throughout the process. This will not only help you to determine your current e-learning position but will also outline next steps that will help you to reach your desired goal.

To arrange your own free e-progress review or to discuss your needs in more detail, please contact us.

Hopefully when we next ask, how good you are at e-learning, you'll be able to say "much better!"

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Related Wobble links:

Safeguarding Learners – Tips for E-Safety
Leadership in Technology Grants


To read more of Wobble click here.

Moodle Use in Work Based Learning

As the number of case studies in the Excellence Gateway continue to grow, it’s great to see examples of providers using Moodle on the increase too. In this region we have quite a large number of Moodle users and these case studies offer a really effective way for learning about what possible with this particular Virtual Learning Environment, as well as showing who’s doing what elsewhere.

Below, I’ve listed a handful of these Moodle examples with links to the case studies that have been shared through the Excellence Gateway (and Delicious) with you.

To make it easier for you to also keep up with who’s doing what with e-learning in Work Based Learning generally, I’ve now also included a link to the latest Work based Learning case studies in the margin of this blog. This will be updated automatically so you can keep up with developments directly.

ATG Training with its Future Zone VLE
Maurice Keeley, e-Learning Co-ordinator at AGT Training notes that “...Most if not all colleges and universities now have a VLE. Yet one could argue that the VLE has even more value within a work-based learning organisation. Twenty-four-hour remote online access to learning resources and course materials combined with the communications and collaboration tools built into systems like Moodle dovetail perfectly with the teaching and learning models we use with our apprentices...”

Maurice set up ATG's Moodle-based Future Zone in August 207 which now has learning materials available ‘24/7', so that students can always catch up in their own time if they miss any lessons, as well as access videos for practical demonstrations.

Devon and Cornwall Training Provider Network: Communal Moodle
Here a group of 20 work-based learning providers got together to develop a shared training resource for the Devon and Cornwall Training Provider Network. Along with Mahara - a generic e-portfolio system, this provided a method for all training materials and communications being available online.

S & B Automotive Academy: Partnership VLE to support vocational training and learning
S & B Automotive Academy specialises in training apprentices for the motor industry. Thanks to funding from a Learning Innovation Grant (LIG), S & B Automotive Academy enabled the development of a network-wide virtual learning environment (VLE) – known as the Hive, to be implemented across eight learning providers.

League Football Education: Tackling the Football Apprenticeship Programme online through Moodle
Faced with the challenging task of organising education for football apprentices across 74 English Football League clubs, League Football Education (LFE) implemented Moodle as a key part of its strategy to meet the requirements for this geographically dispersed set of learners and educators.Their developments currently focus on administrative processes, including the creation of learner accounts at pre-programme enrolment, initial literacy and numeracy assessments, undertaking reviews and tracking progress.

14-19 Diploma learners in Torbay benefit from shared Moodle site
Students and staff from Torbay schools and colleges now have access to the Torbay Learning Partnership Moodle site as part of the 14-19 Diploma programme. The Torbay Learning Partnership is one of the first consortiums in the country to have been approved to run the Creative and Media Diploma and the virtual learning environment (VLE) provides students with easy access to learning material wherever they were studying.


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Related Wobble links:

Examples of E-Learning in Work Based Learning
More E-Learning Case Studies
E-Learning Case Studies by Sector and Region


To read more of Wobble click here.

Free Web Based E-Portfolios for You

The Development Manager are now offering free, open source e-portfolio solutions that are available for both learners and staff to use online. Their new e-portfolio project, Portfoliofor.me is built on the award-winning Mahara software, which provides learners with their own free e-portfolios, hosted on the web.

With portfoliofor.me, learners have the freedom to create their own e-portfolios away from the restrictions usually imposed by institutional e-portfolio systems. They also take ownership of that e-portfolio, much like they do now with email and many other web services. As part of this project, educational institutions can also have a dedicated branded e-portfolio area hosted on the web that their learners can also access when they leave their course of study. In this way the institution no longer maintains responsibility for the learners' work once the course has finished. (Please note - that particular service does have a nominal charge).

Portfoliofor.me now also makes use of a Mobile Upload application which allows people to make recordings, take photos and upload files from their smartphone straight into their e-portfolio. This makes maintaining their e-portfolio extremely easy to do on the go, as well as capturing useful evidence of the learner voice along the way.

The four minute video below offers a quick demo of some of the capabilities of the Mahara e-portfolio platform on which this project is based. Certainly worth a look at what this e-portfolio option offers, for free.



For more information on how you or learners can benefit, please contact the TDM team.

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Related wobble links:

E-Portfolios for Starters
E-Assessment Online Toolkit
Use Of E-Portfolios In Assessment
Midlands E-Portfolio Group



To read more of Wobble click here.

Watching Social Media Grow

Interested to see how rapidly Social Media and technology is being adopted at the moment? Then the 'social media counter' developed by Gary Hayes (shown below), is worth a look.

This tool shows social media activity around the world as you watch. Its a great visualization tool which makes us aware of the impact of technology and shows how mobile devices and forms of social media tools are being adopted worldwide. As Gary Woodhall pointed out, "...the phenomenon is huge. Watch for a minute, and see how many people tweet or upload images to Facebook....

...As a learning tool, this kind of embedded dashboard could be used to teach about the impact of any dynamic activity that is rapidly changing – for example, pollution being discharged, or jobs being gained or lost."

via Gary Woodhall, Workplace Learning Today.

To read more of Wobble click here.

Free Online Tutorials for Using Video and Audio

JISC Digital Media in conjunction with the Virtual Training Suite (VTS) have launched two new online tutorials, Internet for Audio Resources and Internet for Video and Moving Images. These free web based tutorials have been designed to assist staff and learners to locate audio and video for use in both teaching and learning.

Internet for Video and Moving Image Resources can help you learn how to use the web to find free video resources quickly and efficiently, whereas Internet for audio does the same but helps you to locate good quality audio files. Both were created as part of the Virtual Training Suite, some of which I’ve mentioned on wobble previously.

Dave Kilbey, Training Coordinator at JISC Digital Media said “..the emphasis of the tutorials is on finding copyright cleared resources, which are available free of charge; facilitating users with quick, hassle-free access to a vast range of online audio and video resources.”

These two new tutorials follow the launch of the very successful Internet for Image Searching tutorial.

I have previously co-written one of these Virtual Training Suite tutorials myself and know firsthand how much work goes into ensuring they offer you a good range of links and resources. Naturally I’m slightly biased but I do think they are great free tools to have access to for teaching and learning. I look forward to seeing the range of available titles continue to grow. Watch this space for more.

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Related Wobble links:

Intute - web resources for education

To read more of Wobble click here.