New Year: New Idea
The start of a new year is always a great time to consider problems you would like to solve and changes you would like to make.
On 23 January 2017, Newcastle University opens The Enterprise Shed: Making Ideas Happen, our free online course, to a new group of learners. The four week course recreates the creative atmosphere of a shed – or any other place where you do your best thinking and doing. It promises to be a great place for you to work on those new year challenges and ideas.
Here, Katie Wray, Lead ‘Sheducator’, explains why you should all be joining her in The Enterprise Shed.
Enterprise and entrepreneurship at a grassroots level
Firstly, let me unpack ‘enterprise’. For me, enterprise is about making creativity, problem solving and ideas practical. This makes it relevant across all areas of education, not just business. Where enterprise is applied to creating a new venture, it is commonly known as ‘entrepreneurship’.
The Enterprise Shed challenges a variety of definitions of the entrepreneur, and looks at enterprise and entrepreneurship at a grassroots level. On the course, you will be introduced to a whole bunch of entrepreneurial individuals and teams, not all of whom refer to themselves as ‘an entrepreneur’.
How to make change in your own context
We are committed to exploring this question with you throughout the course, supporting you to draw your own conclusions about how you can make change in your own context.
Our other commitment is to exploring your ideas – collecting insights into what a solution looks like and helping you to turn that idea into something tangible. Finally, we are committing to developing your network, through which you can share your ideas, and put them into action once the course has finished.
That’s where you come in. This course is about you; it is about your role, through your ideas, in creating change. There are three main reasons why you should join us in The Enterprise Shed:
- Develop confidence in yourself as a “doer”
You will do this by analysing the behaviours of other entrepreneurial people who you will be introduced to on the course. You will draw conclusions about the way that they “do” and what you might “do” when approaching your own challenges, problems and projects.
- Address problems you want to change
You will do this through identifying problems, sharing them with others, creating and collaborating on ideas generation, and developing solutions together with peers on the course.
- Meet people and build networks
We will do this by forming virtual networks around the globe, which can outlive the end of the course. You will meet people that share your passions and drivers to make change in your world, find out where you can go for help, and collaborate to achieve impact.
The Enterprise Shed is not just a course, but a place where you can go to think, and critically, to do.
If you’d like to make your ideas happens, join The Enterprise Shed now or join the conversation using #FLentshed.
Learning & Teaching Lunchtime workshops – Tuesday 10 January 2017
Dr Jane Stewart will be hosting a lunchtime workshop on Tuesday 10 January 2017 on the subject of ‘Developing Lesson Plans’. This workshop will cover the principles of lesson planning and discuss some basic strategies for developing your approach. The workshop will be useful to those who have had no formal training in teaching or wish to refresh their knowledge around lesson planning. For the workshop it is helpful to have a particular lesson in mind. To facilitate this, please bring along your PowerPoint presentation or any resource that helps guide your delivery.
The workshop will be held in room RIDB2.1.53, 13.00 – 14.00.
Due to room capacity it is important that you register your attendance with Sharon.griffin@ncl.ac.uk.
There are a range of other learning and teaching lunchtime sessions throughout the term. See schedule.
Peer Mentoring Thank You Event
Peer mentors from across the University gathered at the Great North Museum: Hancock last Monday to celebrate another successful year of the scheme.
Mentors and staff coordinators enjoyed drinks, food and an array of Christmas tunes as awards were given out for the best mentor from each Faculty and for the best Co-ordinator across the University.
Student mentors were nominated by the students they were mentoring and comments made were displayed on tables around to room:
‘My mentor was always positive and put 100% effort into helping every individual in our group.’
‘It is often more helpful to have a student’s perspective on an issue rather than just a staff perspective.’
The winners were Sachin Anand from Dental Sciences, Anjuli Chatterjee from Newcastle Law School and James Fortune from School of Biology.
The Coordinator of the Year was Alison Graham from the School of Biology.
The festive celebrations aimed to thank all students and staff for the time and effort they put into making the scheme such a success.
Well done everyone!
If you would like to get involved in Peer Mentoring at Newcastle, or you would like to find out more email us.
NUTELA 3Ps – Dialogues
At NUTELA (Newcastle University Technology Enhanced Learning Advocates) 3Ps workshop this week, we were learning about how to make really excellent resources for all of our students.
As both teachers and as researchers, we spend lots of time creating digital resources, how can we build in accessibility so that they can be used by the widest group of people?
For this session we explored a number of ideas:
- Documents are best when they have text (not pictures of text), structure, and a sensible reading order.
– We explored this with a hands-on exercise looking at pdf accessibility. - Videos are much more accessible and useful when they have a transcript and subtitles.
– We had a look at how easy it is to add transcripts to YouTube. - Images can convey information powerfully, but how can we make these useful to people with little or no sight?
– We explored the use of images in a Sway.
You can read more about the sessions and learn how to make resources for all at the NUTELA blog.
For more information about NUTELA or to join our mailing list email us.
PREVIOUS ULTSEC INNOVATION FUND WINNERS 2015-16
In 2015-16 the following awards were made:
- 8 Responsive Projects, each for up to £2,500
- 1 Strategic Project, for up to £10,000
Details of all the projects can be found in the 2015/16 list of funded projects.
Dialogues: Digital Storytelling with Microsoft Sway
In this session we demonstrated the functionality of Microsoft’s digital storytelling app.
- Quickly create interactive and accessible web content without needing to be a web developer.
- Create and/or share Sways with the rest of the web, just the University or select users.
- Sway Overview
We then presented a case study on how the software has been used to create Research Digistories as online educational resources for research students. In the case study, Sways have been created using past student work and focus not on the product of the research but on the externalisation of the hidden and personal knowledge involved in the research process itself.
- The Research Journey: Using digistories to unveil the hidden process (Dr Laura Delgaty, School of Medical Education)– Student example
Sway is available to all staff and students by logging into sway.com with their Office 365 credentials. (campusID@newcastle.ac.uk and your university password)
Additional resources
Dialogues: Creating resources that are useful and useable
We spend lots of time creating digital resources, how can we build in accessibility so that they can be used by the widest group of people?
In our 3P session we explored a few ideas
- documents are best when they have text (not pictures of text), structure, and a sensible reading order.
– We explored this with a hands-on exercise looking at pdf accessibility. - videos are much more accessible and useful when they have a transcript and subtitles.
– We had a look at how easy it is to add transcripts to YouTube. - Images can convey information powerfully, but how can we make these useful to people with little or no sight?
– We explored the use of images in a Sway
Video Transcripts
As well as helping learners who are hard of hearing. Captions and transcripts also help:
- non-native speakers
- people accessing resources on limited bandwidth
- those without soundcards or headphones
- people who prefer to read and annotate text
In this activity we’d like to show you how to add subtitles to a video on YouTube. You’ll need a video, a script and a google account.
Feel free to use the following example files that we used in the Nutela session.
- Video: transcripts and subtitles (right click and selectvideoscript save as)
- the videoscript (right click and select save as)
Sign into YouTube with your own google account
- Upload the video to YouTube (look for the upload button in the top right), and click Publish when it is done
- Click on the Video manager button
- Click the drop down next to the video and select “Subtitles & CC”
- Next click “Add new subtitles or CC”
- The method we will use here is “Transcribe and auto-sync” as this will automatically set the timings of the text:
- Paste your text into the text box and then click “Set timings”
You will now see an option under “My Drafts”.
- Wait 30 seconds or so and then click the refresh button:
Now you can check that it has aligned it correctly by listening to the video and make any changes.
- To adjust the timings click on the phrase you wish to change and then drag the blue tabs:
- Once you are happy with the words, punctuation and timings click “Publish edits”
You should see the following video, click on the CC button to view the captions.
(Our demo video is about how we generate subtitles when we don’t have a script.)
YouTube also has a function which automatically generates subtitles
If you don’t have a script for your video you may be able to make use of the automatic subtitles which YouTube adds to all videos.
- In Subtitles & CC, instead of adding new subtitles you need to select “English (Automatic)”
- Listen to the full video to check if the text is correct and make any changes.
- Once you are happy with the words, punctuation and timings click “Publish edits”
[Huge thanks to Eleanor Lockhart for preparing these instructions and screenshots for the hands-on session.]
ULTSEC Innovation Fund Workshop Reminder
LTDS are running an ULTSEC Innovation Fund workshop on December 12th 2-3pm in KGVI 1.36C. You will be given an overview of the fund as well as guidance from the Careers Service about how to employ students for your project. There will also be presentations from successful project teams from previous years who will share details of their project and the application process.
To sign up to this workshop please do so via the following link: http://www.ncl.ac.uk/ltds/about/training/ultsecinnovation/workshops/. We would love to see you there.
Further information including key dates and application forms and guidance can be found on the Innovation Fund section of the LTDS website: http://www.ncl.ac.uk/ltds/funding/teaching/