Staff members at Sheffield Hallam University are eligible to purchase heavily discounted Microsoft software for use on their own laptop or PC. This means that the latest Pro versions of Windows 7 and 8 are available for only £7.80 pounds each, as are the latest Pro versions of Office for Windows and Mac. You can purchase the software from…
Blackboard are seeking staff and student opinions about virtual collaboration tools. The information collected will help inform future developments made to Blackboard Collaborate. If you have used Blackboard Collaborate in your practice (or have experience of other real-time collaboration tools such as Adobe Connect or Skype) and wish to feed into this process, please complete…
At the end of last year, the White House ran a student film contest for videos on the theme of ‘Technology in Education’. The final selection has just been announced and they are available to watch on YouTube. The films mainly show how technology is already been used in some (school) classrooms, with some showing how…
This is part of a regular series of articles exploring some of the terms used in e-learning (view other articles in the series). We’ll do our best to break down the jargon and explain what things are from a basic perspective. Augmented Reality (AR) refers to technology which overlays additional information onto a person’s experience…
Uses for Images Images can be used in many different ways, ranging from documenting a process through to providing an interesting ‘resting point’ within a dense page of text. The most effective way to use images will depend on the intended effect, for example advertisers and magazine/newspaper editors use striking images to grab our attention…
This case study explores the use of screencasts and supplemental exercises to support students in developing their competence with a particular piece of software. The software requires a significant amount of time to master but the amount of other material that needed to be covered meant that the this was not possible during the timetabled sessions. Instead, the…
This is part of a regular series of articles exploring some of the terms used in e-learning (view other articles in the series). We’ll do our best to break down the jargon and explain what things are from a basic perspective. An ‘Electronic Voting System’ (EVS) is a system that allows presenters to ask multiple…
Quite often you have a YouTube video where only a small part of it is relevant to your students (such as a single 3 minute interview in a 30 minute clip), or you just want to draw particular attention to an excerpt (for example, a specific movement within a piece of music or the buildup to a…
Pecha Kucha (or, more formally, Pecha Kucha 20×20) is a style of presentation where each presentation lasts exactly 6 minutes and 40 seconds. The reason for this is that the presentation is made up of 20 slides, each of which is displayed for 20 seconds before automatically moving onto the next. The format originated in 2003 as…
This is part of a regular series of articles exploring some of the terms used in e-learning (view other articles in the series). We’ll do our best to break down the jargon and explain what things are from a basic perspective. IFTTT stands for “IF This Then That” and it is a free online service…