FMS TEL have been checking out an exciting new PowerPoint feature from Microsoft. It allows you to put your live video feed on a PowerPoint slide. You can add transitions and other effects to it, just as you can to other objects.
Check out this video for more information:
More details can be found on the Microsoft 365 Insider Blog website.
FMS TEL recently attended a presentation on a mixed reality platform called GigXR, a clinical simulation platform with a number of apps, including HoloScenarios and HoloHuman.
The target audience is mainly medical education courses at the moment.
This technology aims to:
A headset is connected wirelessly to a computer which generates a hologram of a patient into the room through the headset. There is equipment nearby, such as oxygen masks and blood pressure cuffs. You can interact with items and use them on the patient.
You are able to insert your own 3D digital objects into the software. For example, if you have created a 3D image of a heart from CT scans. GigXR can create a holographic version which you can view through the headset.
Conversational AI is being integrated, so you can talk to the patient and ask questions. Currently this is in text format using ChatGPT, but developments are being made and hopefully soon you will be able to actually speak to the patient.
For more information, see the Gig XR website
During the recent Teaching and Learning Conference, prompted by Michelle Miller’s poster on Adobe Acrobat, we were asked if it was possible to add audio to a pdf document. Here’s how to do it:
Note: this only supports uncompressed WAV and AIFF files.
Following their successful presentation at our FMS TEL Conference, Rebecca Handcock and Bas Olthof presented at the regional Three Rivers Conference on 27 June 2023, discussing their escape room style seminars in Neurological Clinical Reasoning.
Students are organised into groups of 6-8 in learning labs. They work through eight clinical cases to identify the neurological diagnosis through peer-led clinical reasoning. Each case has hidden puzzles which students complete to get more information for their diagnosis.
Students are provided with a link to access the first puzzle. They must put in the most likely diagnosis before they can proceed to access the scan images. They receive automated feedback from the system, as well as feedback from tutors who facilitate the seminars.
The exercises help with critical thinking and problem solving skills, diagnosis skills, communication, teamworking, and create a little bit of competition between groups.
The escape rooms are created using H5P, which can consist of drag and drop exercises, branching scenarios, images with information hotspots detailing medical history and symptoms etc.
The FMS TEL team have been discussing using special characters in documents. What symbols do we use most? What’s the quickest way of creating them? Do they create any issues?
Using ALT codes can speed up this process. On a Windows PC you can hold down the ALT key whilst keying the corresponding number. When you release the ALT key, the special character will appear.
| Symbol | ALT Code # | Description |
| @ | 64 | at |
| & | 38 | ampersand |
| © | 0169 | copyright |
| ® | 0174 | registered |
| ™ | 0153 | trademark |
| € | 0128 | Euro |
| £ | 0163 | Pound |
| ✓ | 10003 | tick |
| ✔ | 10004 | bold tick |
| ✅ | 9989 | tick in box |
| → | 26 | right arrow |
| ← | 27 | left arrow |
| ↑ | 24 | up arrow |
| ↓ | 25 | down arrow |
| ↕ | 18 | up down arrow |
| ☺ | 1 | white smiley face |
| ☻ | 2 | black smiley face |
| 😀 | 128512 | yellow smiley face |
| ♥ | 3 | heart |
| ÷ | 0247 | division |
| × | 0215 | multiply |
| ° | 176 | degree |
| • | 7 | bullet |
| ★ | 9733 | black star |
| ☆ | 9734 | white star |
| ♪ | 13 | quaver musical note |
| ♫ | 14 | beamed quaver musical note |
Find more ALT codes here https://altcodesguru.com/ and here https://www.alt-codes.net/ or google for other sites.
Some of these characters may look more like colour emojis to you – this is because different browsers and devices sometimes read and display the characters slightly differently.
Alternatively you can quickly select emojis in Windows using the following key combination:
Windows Key + . (windows dot)
You will see a popup box with lots of different symbols. Just select the symbol you require. You can also type to filter or search for the one you want. Try Americanisms (such as ‘check’ for ‘tick’) if you can’t find something.
This works in Microsoft apps and some other text input areas, such as the Canvas Rich Text Editor. Screenreaders will read out the emoji’s name, so don’t put them at the start of sentences or titles. Adding emojis like this can help add a splash of colour, or you can use them to visually distinguish types of task or information.
Key codes on a Mac are a little more complex, but this guide can take you through it.
Sometimes special characters can cause issues if the document you are creating is being used as a source of data for another platform. Not everything will correctly translate the character outside MS Word. This is to do with how some datasets store the character information, older standards like ASCII do not have a wide selection of special characters available.
A real world example of this would be the uploading of core skill to the MLE (Medical Learning Environment) website. The MLE itself may choose to ignore any characters it cannot translate, which although not ideal, is not a major issue. Unfortunately those core skills are also used in a mobile app that students can record against. The app will simply refuse to display the information. Currently there are processes in place to identify and replace these characters, ideally we would update all our platforms to use Unicodes instead of the older ASCII standard.
Emojis, symbols and special characters might be needed in your content, or you might choose to use them to add extra meaning to your course pages or documents. Sometimes they will display slightly differently on different devices or in different apps. If your content is to be used as a source of data for another program, or copied to other platforms, please try to avoid using them, as sometimes they can cause issues. 🙂
You’d like to quickly open an incognito browser window in Google Chrome. Usually you would click on the three dots on the top right and click New incognito window.
Windows: CTRL + Shift + N
Mac: Command+Shift+N
Windows: Ctrl-Shift-P
Mac: Command-Shift-P
Mac: Command+Shift+N
A new incognito window opens instantly. You can browse the web without Chrome recording every page and activity in its history.
You’ve closed some tabs in your browser, but you want them back. How can you do this quickly?
The following works for Chrome, Safari, and Firefox.
Windows: Ctrl+Shift+T
Mac: Command+Shift+T
If you key that shortcut once, it’ll bring up the last tab you closed. Hit it again, and it’ll bring up the one before that. And so on.
So, you like our FMS TEL blog and you’d like to have something similar. How do you do it?
Go to blogs.ncl.ac.uk. You will see the following page with a choice to create a personal blog or a team blog. FMS TEL use the Team Blog as everyone in our team contributes to it.
Click on the button for your choice of blog. You will then be asked to sign in.
For a Team Blog, if you are not already logged in, you will have to login using your University email (username@newcastle.ac.uk) and password. You will then be presented with a form to request your Team Blog.
You can also use the form here to request a team blog: Team Blog Request Form
For a Personal Blog, if you are not already logged in, you will just enter your username and password . You will then be presented with a form to register your personal blog site.
Please make sure you read the university Rules and Policies regarding publishing content on university servers and applications.
More information can be found at the IT Services Blogs page.
Download the Blog Service User Guide
Maybe you have deleted a lot of text and changed your mind, or decided you wanted it after all. Maybe you undid some of your work but changed your mind. How can you get it back without starting from scratch? You can use Undo to reverse your last action, or Redo to put it back. You can undo and redo up to 20 of your last actions in Microsoft applications. All actions must be undone or redone in the order they were done.
Windows: Ctrl + Z
Mac: Command + Z
Windows
Microsoft and other software: Ctrl + Y
Adobe Software: Ctrl + Shift + Z
Mac
All software: Command + Shift + Z
Your text is restored without you having to type it all in again. Whatever action you previously undid you can redo (there are exceptions though, and the Undo and Redo commands will be unavailable if the previous actions cannot be undone or repeated, e.g. clicking a command on the File tab in Microsoft applications.)
Dr Aleksey Kozikov, School of Mathematics, Statistics and Physics presented on 3D holograms and showed examples of using them in lecture theatres.
Dr Aleksey Kozikov discussed the uses of 3D holograms and showed examples, including the projection of lab equipment, objects, and presenters into lecture theatres.
In traditional teaching approaches, students are taught in a sitting and listening manner. To provide a more participatory learning experience, help students to visualise, clarify the taught concepts and enhance the way students learn, we are planning to introduce 3D “holograms” into the real space learning environment. We will discuss ideas to use holograms of research facilities and extend to any practical activities that are otherwise not possible to do in a lecture theatre
This can enhance in-person teaching and could be a resource used in FMS.
There could be live projections of speakers or leading experts in the field, who could not be there in person. They could join the conversation from abroad but look like they are physically in the room with other speakers.
Lecturers could explain a piece of equipment which was previously too cumbersome to transport to lectures. Students could see a visible representation of equipment beside them as they discuss it.
We could show experiments without the person and equipment physically being in the room. This could be done in multiple rooms simultaneously, relieving the need for large lectures halls or repeated sessions.
