Generic eMarketplace (GeM) for Work Based Learning

Are you an independent training provider that currently purchases products and services to support your e-learning? If yes, have you heard of Gem for WBL? If not you may wish to continue reading…

Gem for WBL is an initiative being led by Jisc and is essentially a website offering users savings on products and services via suppliers and negotiated contracts. The service is currently free for training providers to use. It is funded by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) and supported by the Association of Employment and Learning Providers. 
 
Gem for WBL was established last year but it is clearly gaining momentum as more and more suppliers join its growing database, each offering discounted rates to providers that purchase through the Gem site.

Currently the site has products and services available in the following areas:

• Mobile phones, business telephone systems and wireless networks
• Online assessment software for apprenticeships and e-portfolio solutions
• Voice and video feedback applications which have uses for training organisations
• Learner destination tracking services
• Management Information System for tracking SF funded delivery
• Plus more…

If you have not yet visited the Gem site, it’s worth a look and Steve Durham, the project lead is also currently holding a number of free online webinars to introduce the service. (I’ll let you know the date of the next one when I have it).

To register to use the service visit the website or contact steve.durham@jiscadvance.ac.uk for further information.
 
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Safer Internet Day 2014 - Are you ready?

The 11th Safer Internet Day (SID 2014) will be celebrated worldwide on 11th February 2014. The theme for the day is: 'Let's create a better internet together'.

In support of this significant event, last week several of my colleagues ran a very successful online all-day event entitled ‘Preparing for Safer Internet Day and beyond’. This was to help raise awareness for the national campaign and support learning providers to develop their approach for Safer Internet Day next year.

 

The event provided a wealth of useful Safer Internet Day information, and resources and links to help you to host the campaign in your organisation. Online attendees got to discover what’s available within Jisc regarding the legal implications related to e-safety and supporting vulnerable learners. They were also shown examples of e-safety best practice within education plus details of the amazing campaigns from last year.

The good news is for those who missed it, that ALL of the presentations, supporting resources and webinar recordings are now freely available online. These resources comprehensively cover the following key areas.

• Hot topics (Jisc Legal)
• Supporting vulnerable learners with e-safety (Jisc TechDis)
• eSafety infoKit (Jisc Infonet)
• Best practice examples of the impact of SID2013 from educational providers
• Bring your own device (BYOD) Security together (Janet)
• The latest information from CEOP, and ThinkUKnow for post-16 providers
• Best-practice examples of e-safety implementation (from educational providers) and the impact for learners and the organisation
• Moving forward with SID2014 campaign

At this point the recordings can be freely accessed and watched at your own leisure, no log in is required. 

Covering so many elements of using the internet safely, the site is certainly worth a look by anyone with an interest in e-safety or safer internet use. It’s great that it is now free to access and I hope these resources prove useful and assist you in supporting the theme of the 2014 Safer Internet Campaign, 'Let's create a better internet together!’

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Regional Work Based Learning Forum

Earlier this month we held another of our joint e-learning forums which bought together staff from adult and community and work based learning organisations from across the region to hear about the latest developments in e-learning. It also offered an opportunity for providers in the region to get together and discuss a range of issues relating to their own use of technology.

On the day several of our advisers outlined a range of our current initiatives that are currently available to you, including:

   

• Latest Jisc Innovation through Technology Funding Call
• Preparing for Safer Internet Day event
• RSC Assist: Bespoke Support for your E-Learning Projects
• Personalised Learning and Tablet Loan Scheme
• New home for the Excellence Gateway E-Learning Case Studies
• Assistive Technology Kit Loan Bags
• E-Learning Progress Reviews

Details of each of these initiatives can now also be found on a supporting wiki page that was made available to delegates.

If you missed this forum but would like more details on any of the above please do get in touch. Don’t forget, that if you are one of our supported providers you may also benefit from free consultations on any other areas of e-learning that fall within our full range of support.

We hope to see you at the next WBL forum in the New Year. Until then if you have any suggestions for topics that you would like to see covered in the next one let us know!

 
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Jisc Innovation Through Technology Funding call

These last few weeks several of us in the RSC team have been dealing with your enquiries about the latest round of Jisc FE and Skills funding. This one million pound funding programme aims to improve the learner experience and increase the capability and capacity of the workforce, and covers all of FE and Skills. If you haven’t already applied for this, there is still time but the deadline is 6^th December which is approaching very soon!

For those considering submitting bids the following links might be useful:

• Our colleagues at RSC Eastern ran a workshop recently that looked more closely at what this funding can be used for and ways to apply. All the resources from that event are available to view online, along with the presentations from the day.  What might be of particular interest is the two ‘Padlet’ pages where providers expressed some of their ideas for projects as that gives a rough idea of what people are typically considering doing with the funds.

•  As part of that same event there were also two bid writing workshops hosted by Angus Carpenter, and the recording of these workshops is also available. This first session looked at the project development process and considerations for collaborative bids. Available as a recording here. The second session examined the funding call documents, with Angus explaining how bidders can align the project documents with their ideas. Available here.

Should you need any more information about this current funding call please get in touch. Good luck to all that apply!

 
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Bringing e-learning to the workplace

One week to go…don’t miss out on this webinar to discover how to bring e-learning to the workplace

‘Education.Net: Bringing e-learning to the workplace presented by Teresa Mullin and Jenny Donald from KM Training Ltd’ on Friday 30 November 12.30-13.15

Find out how you can:

• Access a suite of peer reviewed and quality-assured resources for free.
• Develop your own resource hubs - tried and tested by curriculum experts.
• Forge links with other learning providers to populate your hub and ensure compliance with good practice.

To book your free place email stacey.bennett@jiscadvance.ac.uk.

See you there!

* KM Training Ltd is a Skills Funding Agency sub-contracted learning provider working predominantly in the hairdressing sector. KM Training provides employer-valued work placements for learners and believes that education and training alongside real salon experience is the key to developing a career in the service industries.KM Training Ltd is one of the projects gaining funding from the JISC Advance Further Education and Skills (FES) Development and Resources Programme.

This is the first of a series of webinars running over the next 12 months. Next webinar: 19 December 2012: Using Augmented Reality to improve teaching and learning.

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Learning Made Mobile at South Staffordshire College

Following a successful bid for RSC funding in a recent mobile project, South Staffordshire College made learning more mobile when the eLearning team incorporated the use of mobile technology across the department.

In this new video from the Excellence Gateway you can find out more about the technology they purchased and hear their story.



You can learn more about the other eleven projects that were similary successful in making their Learning more Mobile in the full published report on our wiki. (pdf)


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More Free Online Storage - Introducing Google Drive

We spent some time in the office yesterday discussing the launch of Google Drive, Googles own online storage service. This service offers 5 gigabytes of free storage to users and looks set to challenge services such as Dropbox and Microsoft's SkyDrive.

This post in the Telegraph shows how Google Drive compares to Dropbox, iCloud and others and shows what amounts of storage you can expect to have from each. Another Telegraph post here, also notes an important consideration – the cost of any additional storage, particularly as Google has already set its prices at a quarter of those of Dropbox.

The video below will show you how Google Drive works. This previous wobble post shows what features have allowed existing services like Dropbox to gain such popularity.




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Practical Guide to Web Conferencing

Our colleagues in RSC South West have produced and now published a very practical guide to web conferencing. This guide covers the benefits, tips on delivery, and the key features of some of the major web conferencing tools available.

Matt Ewens, Information Officer for RSC South West notes:

“...Web conferencing is a potential growth area in the future. The guide is aimed at practitioners and anyone really that works in the post 16 FE and Skills sector that is either interested in finding out a bit more about the benefits of web conferencing, or those that are already using systems to help them plan more effectively..."

The guide includes information on Blackboard Collaborate (formerly known as Elluminate) - the tool which is widely used by the RSCs for its online events and webinars. The guide is available to download as a pdf document here.

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E-books for Adult Community Learners and Work-based Learners

To date, JISC Collection’s E-books for FE project has already helped many Further Education students across the UK by providing free access to e-resources for students studying a wide range of vocational and academic course in colleges. This works because by coordinating centrally, JISC Collections has been able to negotiate favourable pricing, terms, and conditions with content vendors.

The E-books for FE project so far reaches only full-time students attending college. However, there are many other types of learners, including those developing their skills through part-time study, apprenticeships, and informal learning in the community. The E-books for Skills project now aims to extend access to e-books licensed for FE colleges to these learners, and to identify and provide other relevant resources. The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) is sponsoring the new project as part of its aim to make learning as accessible as possible to all.

The project launched early this year and will run for one year. As the project progresses, its Manager Hugh Look, will be investigating how to make the service work for these additional types of learning providers, and working with them to identify resources such as e-books that will help adult community learners and work-based learners.

Should you wish to get involved in this or find out more you can contact: Hugh Look, Project Manager, E-books for Skills. Tel: (0)20 3006 6007


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Voting to Interact with your Audience For Free

I spotted a very useful tool on a colleague’s website last week which allows you to use simple voting with your learners in class, for free. This web based system allows you to very quickly and easily create a question for them to anonymously respond to by visiting a url on their phone (or other mobile device) and selecting an answer. This can be very useful for getting instant feedback or for checking understanding.

So what is it? It’s called Mentimeter and works as follows:

1. You create a multiple choice question
How? Just go to the Mentimeter.com start page, type your question and with the click of a button your question is created. Add the possible answers; pick a theme and voilá, youre ready to go.

2. Tell your group/class/audience to vote using their smartphone
How? Youre given a voting ID when you set up your question. When the user goes to that address using their phone or PC, the question will be displayed together with the choices at hand, letting them vote without effort.

3. Show the result on screen
How? The presentation is automatically updated when new votes are received. If you want to hide the results when the audience is voting that option is included. You can also turn the question off if you want to control the time when the vote is open.

So, that simple, is there a catch? And why is it free? Will it stay free in the future?

The developers note that they think this kind of service should be as simple as possible, and that it also should be free. There are working on a premium version, but assure us that all the features that are free right now will continue being free.

To show how it works, why not have a go at the question below by entering the following url into the web browser on your mobile phone: http://vot.rs/11490. You can also answer it on the web here (which is the same web address). I've included the live snapshot below to show how the results can also be embedded in other sites. Once you've answered the question, you can view the results here or in the live image below. Please note, the embedded image might take a few seconds to referesh.

I hope you find it useful.

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