Author: Graeme Redshaw-Boxwell

Posted on

4Ps: The Awards, 4th March

NUTELA 4PNUTELA is delighted to announce that we will be celebrating the winners and nominees of our inaugral Peer Recognition Awards, with a feast of pizza, plonk, pop and practice!

To be held at the University’s swanky new Marjorie Robinson Rooms on Sandyford Road, the event will take place on Friday 4th March at 3.30pm.

It will showcase best practice as well as rewarding the hard work of staff who go above and beyond to help colleagues to employ technology in their teaching.

Pro-Vice Chancellor for Learning and Teaching Suzanne Cholerton will present awards to our 2015 award winners, Graeme Patterson (CEGS) and Gigi Herbert (Careers).

The winners will talk about their award-winning practice and there will be posters to celebrate the work of runners-up.

Details of this year’s competition will also be available at the event.

We hope that you will join us!

To do so please fill out the online form.

Posted on

Pizza, Pop and Practice: Sound and Vision 27th November 2015

Participants at 3Ps Workshop 27th November 2015
Participants at 3Ps Workshop 27th November 2015

The recent Pizza, Pop and Practice workshop on Sound and Vision, looking at making recordings and short video clips for use in teaching, was a tremendous success.
Participants enjoyed their pizza and pop, whilst learning about Audacity (which enables you to make short sound recordings and clips), Animoto (which allows you to make short video clips to advertise events or explain simple concepts – see Jo’s video about the workshop below), as well as looking at ways to use Microsoft Office Mix to create videos and recordings for use in powerpoints or online.


Thanks to everyone who came along and thanks in particular to Lucy Keating, Marc Bennett, Jo Robinson-Lamb and Nuala Davis for delivering such interesting workshops!
All of the materials from the workshops are now available on this blog.
Interested in using these materials in your teaching? Contact LTDS for more information and support.

Posted on

Learning and Teaching Development Service Website Launch

On the 17th of December, the Learning and Teaching Development Service will be launching their new website, alongside the new Case Studies database.

The new LTDS website  replace the old QuILT website, and will provide University staff will a clear route to find the things you need related to learning and teaching development and teaching quality assurance at Newcastle University.

We have many workshops and webinars running, and we will be developing a new booking system in the New Year.

The new Case Studies database has over 100 examples of good teaching practice across the University. Use it to inspire and support you in your teaching.

Alongside the revision of the website, we have launched this Learning and Teaching Development blog covering:

  • news in learning and teaching from around the University, including teaching quality assurance
  • theme based collections of case studies of good practice from academic and support staff
  • reports from learning and teaching related projects including Innovation Award holders
  • changes and rapid updates to learning and teaching services supported by LTDS (Blackboard, ReCap, ePortfolio, etc)
  • hints and tips, tricks and tools covering all aspects of LTDS areas of responsibility

 

 

 

 

Posted on

Office Mix: Making PowerPoints Interactive

Office Mix is a PowerPoint plugin that enables you to take new and existing presentations and transform them into interactive online learning resources that you can easily publish to your website and/or Blackboard. You can use the tool to add:

Voice and Audio narration to your slides

Annotate you slides in real-time

Record your screen to demonstrate a program or process

Quizzes, polls and other interactive content

Videos and live web pages

An excellent range of resources, including some more advanced features, like embedding mixes in webpages, can be found at mixforteachers.com

When you come to publish your mixes you can either publish to a personal account or use your University account which Microsoft refers to as ‘Work or School Account’. Simply sign in with your username@newcastle.ac.uk (e.g. nmb84@newcastle.ac.uk) and your university password.

If you want to track your students’ progress and engagement with your mixes via your Blackboard Module you can use the integrated Office Mix tool in the VLE. This will give you stats on a range of things that you can link to individual students including how many attempts they took to answer questions and time spent on specific slides.

Using the Office Mix Blackboard tool

Please note: Office Mix is currently in Beta which means that it could change or be removed completely in the future. We believe this is very unlikely given the growing popularity of the product and as your mix PowerPoints will remain functional as presentations it is very low risk experiment should you wish to try it.

You can install Office Mix on your personal machine by clicking here

If you wish to install Office Mix on a University machine simply request that your computing officer apply the following policy: ‘4 NUIT Office Mix Beta’

 

Posted on

Vision – Animoto

Animoto - choose a style
Animoto – choose a style

At our last 3P’s session we also ran two sessions on vision.

These looked at using Microsoft software for developing videos and image galleries, as well as Animoto, a software available free online.

Animoto can be used for free, by registering for an Educator’s account….

It’s very simple to use.

Here are some of the materials from the session to jog your memory or get you started:

1. Step-by Step guide to Animoto (docx)

2. Video guide

3. Guide to getting an Educator’s Account

Then it’s just practice really!

 

 

Posted on

Sound

In session 3 of our 3P event on Friday 27th we had a look at sound recording and sound file use.  audacityHere are a few resources we used for this part of the session:

Posted on

PIZZA POP AND PRACTICE: SOUND AND VISION IN TEACHING

NUTELA 3PS 111115NUTELA will hold it’s first Pizza, Pop and Practice workshop of this academic year in the Tees Cluster at the Robinson Library on Friday 27th November 2015.

The workshop, entitled Sound and Vision in Teaching, will showcase techniques to use video and sound editing software to create short film sequences and audio recordings for teaching.

As well as vast quantities of FREE PIZZA and POP over lunchtime, the event will offer a series of short workshops to show participants how to use Microsoft Mix to put together or mix up words and images, Vine and Animoto to make short animations and Audacity to record short sound clips.

See Animoto in action and learn more about the event:

https://animoto.com/play/YcUFoKFhQkZG2Z8817siog

Participants must register for catering purposes.

We look forward to seeing you there!

 

Posted on

Inserting an Office Mix into a Blackboard Module

Follow these steps to use an Office Mix Placement inside a module in Blackboard:

  1. Go to the module you’d like to use.
  2. In the Tools menu, select Office Mix.
  3. In the Link Name box, type a name.
  4. Configure any additional settings you’d like.
  5. Click Submit.
  6. When you return to the Module, click the item that you just added.
  7. When the item appears, use one of these methods to select a mix:
    • By URL: A simple way to select a mix is to visit the Office Mix website, watch a mix, and copy/paste the URL in the dialog. This method makes it easy to include mixes that have been created by other people.
    • My Mixes: Select a mix from your My Mixes page. In order to prevent students from having to sign in to view a mix, only those mixes with permissions set to Unlisted or Public are shown. You can find our how to set these preferences here
  8. After you have selected a mix, click Yes to confirm that this is the mix you’d like to use.
Posted on

ePortfolio Personal Tutoring Rollout for Academic Year 2015/16

The University ePortfolio system was rolled out for Stage 1 Personal Tutoring during the last academic year. It has been mandatory to record meetings that you are having with your tutees in line with the Personal Tutoring Framework. For Stage 1 students, this is two meetings in the first Semester, one of which should be within the first 4 weeks of the student’s arrival at University.

Please see this video to find out how to meet this University requirement.

The rollout moves on to Stage 2 and PGT students. Again, the use of ePortfolio should be in line with the Personal Tutoring Framework, and it says that the offer of tutorial contact should be made at least once a semester.

Currently, offers of meetings can be made through meeting slots and the record meeting functionality. The development will be working on improving the “offer” functionality and we hope this to be in place before the start of the academic year.