Filed Under (General) by elearning4bradford on 26-03-2010
Is the Internet overloading our brain?
I have very much enjoyed the BBC World Service’s – Virtual Revolution series which was run throughout March, the blurb for the first episode outlines it well “Since its birth almost twenty years ago, the World Wide Web has transformed our world : A quarter of the planet is now online and able as never before to communicate, publish, and garner information seemingly without limits. But will the Web’s empowerment of ordinary people endure? As part of the BBC’s internet season, the computer expert Doctor Aleks Krotoski starts her four part series by documenting the Web’s remarkable growth and asking if the old hierarchies it challenges are managing to stage a counter revolution.”
In this first episode one of the interesting ironies of the piece about Napster was the rock band Metallica’s vociferous insistence that the copyright of musicians should be upheld. This irony was not lost on Sean Cannon, singer with the 40 year old Irish folk group the Dubliners who I saw playing at the Lowry in Salford last Sunday. Sean introduced one of their signature tunes in a typical way: “Here’s a song we found on YouTube – by a band called Metallica – its called “Whiskey In The Jar”. This got a huge laugh from the audience – the irony of course was that it was the Dubliners who 30 years ago recorded the original version of “Whiskey in the Jar” which they gave to a band called Thin Lizzy from whom Metallica had ‘borrowed’ the tune – copyright eh, it such a personal thing !
Filed Under (General, Research) by elearning4bradford on 26-03-2010
On Thursday I travelled to the Engineering Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (engCETL) at Loughborough University to speak at the Higher Education Academy’s Scholarly Activity Workshop. This was the second of three events, the first was in Stockport and the third will be in Bristol, run by Angus Carpenter, Research Centre Manager at City College Norwich and Becky Turner, Educational Researcher at the University of Plymouth.
The aim of the series of workshops is to ‘develop and enhance the practice and management of scholarly activity and research within Further Education Colleges’. Barbara Edwards from the QAA opened the proceedings looking at the challenges of building a research ethos.
My presentation looked at the development of the research agenda across Bradford college giving examples from our TQEF cohort of projects, explaining our use of our home-grown virtual research environment, outlining our use of research support staff such as academic liaison librarians, and of course talking about the BAR conference. It was well received with a lot of people asking questions both in the session but also later on throughout the day.
My presentation was followed by a very well constructed assessment of scholarly activity and its benefits by Jim Logan from Blackpool and the Fylde College. After lunch Angus was joined by Neil Witt, Head of Technology Enhanced Learning again at University of Plymouth, and they looked at aspects of project management and most interestingly how to attract funding from a range of different agencies. Next up was Becky, helped by Phil Lester of the Higher Education Academy, who looked at the support that is provided by Regional Support Centres, and also Phil outlined the HEA’s professional recognition scheme of associates, fellows and senior fellows. The issue of linking with the Institute for Learning, raised by an audience question, was discussed. The day concluded with a short plenary session that rounded off the event on a positive note.
