App Swap Breakfast at TELFest

I co-delivered a one hour App Swap Breakfast as part of the University of Sheffield’s TELFest last week. TELFest is a three day long festival of learning technologies hosted by the Learning Technology team from our Corporate and Information Systems department.

The aim of the event is to encourage staff to find out more about the many technologies, in house and otherwise they can use as part of their teaching. It is a way of showcasing the expert knowledge of the department at a time when students are just returning from their Winter break. As you can imagine with an event called App Swap Breakfast TELFest had put on a nice breakfast of hot and cold drinks and a nice selection of pastries to help everyone get going.

I was invited to co-deliver a session by CiCS Learning Technologies Manager Farzana Latif in tandem with the University’s Senior Learning Technologist Graham McElearney based on the App Swap Breakfast model I’d started on campus last year. As previously blogged, the idea of the App Swap Breakfast came from Fiona MacNeill and colleagues from The University of Brighton. It’s an idea that has been adopted by other campuses including our own. The model is very informal and involves interaction from all participants discussing and sharing apps they have found useful in an educational setting. In addition discussions revolve around issues relating to mobile technologies such as platform choice, costs, privacy, connectivity and ethics to name but a few.

At the TELFest workshop we asked delegates to form into groups and asked them to design their own perfect mobile app homescreen for education. We gave them a blank A3 printed tablet screen and a bunch of blank app icons along with some coloured pens. Delegates were asked to argue the case for which apps should be included and how they would be used. As a clue we gave attendees a criteria list of the various applications they should be aiming for, such as apps for curation, productivity, communication etc.

Image © Farzana Latif

We also asked that the delegates avoided choosing obvious apps that colleagues would have heard of, such as Evernote, Facebook, Blackboard and Google Drive.

It was interesting hearing the many apps that were proposed by both groups, with the productivity app Trello being the only one to feature more than once. I got to find out about new apps which was useful but even more useful for finding out how people had used three apps I have on my iPad but have not as yet properly tried. After the session I will certainly explore these installed apps, those being Adobe Voice, YouTube Capture and Skitch. I was also impressed with the ‘to do list’ app Wunderlist which one participant had made great use of across various platforms. Some of the apps delegates curated for their home screens are listed at the bottom of this blog post.

We then got one member of each group to feedback to the room the apps they think should be included on a learning and teaching homepage. In total there were about 16 apps suggested, pretty much all of them useful. We had apps suggested for recording audio, such as AudioBoom and apps for keeping files accessible and secure on the Cloud with Google Keep, whilst the much underrated QR code reader got a mention.

I delivered a short presentation based on the one I’d given the previous week for the Faculty of Social Sciences Ignite sessions on 12 apps to use as a new year resolution, which can be viewed below.

The one thing for me that comes from this session and others like it is the sheer amount of tools and technologies out there and that they will continue to grow at a rapid pace. No longer is it possible for one person to stay in touch with new technologies as they happen, it is simply impossible. For Web based productivity, creation and social tools that pretty much ended about five years ago. For a while it was possible to discover alternatives to established technologies, i.e. Prezi over PowerPoint, Google Docs over Microsoft Word. Now there are dozens of tools for the simplest of tasks, reading journal papers, taking notes, creating to do lists or capturing video. Add to that the issues relating to digital literacy, privacy, who pays for the apps and devices, security and how do you connect these devices to projectors. Whilst the number of apps and platforms have increased, how do you find out what is the best app for the job you want to do. Everyone regards their time as previous and investigating new ways of doing things can be very rewarding yet incredibly time consuming. This is where something like App Swap Breakfast can help and just one hour first thing in a morning, an hour often lost of chatter, email and idle distraction it can be very rewarding to discover a new way of doing something which in turn speeds up processes. 

Below is a list of the apps curated by the two groups

Group 1

Idea Catalyst - productivity and management

Trello - project management

Wunderlist - to do list - collaborative

Popplet - collaborative mind map tool - easy to use, used in schools

Skitch - take photos, annotate

Adobe Voice - digital storytelling app - ipad only but free

Voice Recorder HD

AudioBoom - used to be Audio Boo -

Responseware - i.e responding in class

Group 2 -

Voicethread - visual presentation/digital storytelling

Storehouse - IOS only - storytelling tool - take pics, vids etc, build story - Journo students actually using this

Pixlr - very good image editing tool - better than all the others according to Angie

Capture - good video tool linked to YouTube

Notability - PDF annotation tool

QR code reader -

Quizlet - flashcards

Trello - again

Google Keep

One thing is for certain, no one has created the ideal home page of learning and teaching apps. They might think they have but right now someone has developed an app that you need but just don’t know about, the chances are one of your colleagues will have it already! That said it is not about the fear of missing out apps, which is a problem many suffer in relation to email and social media, in that people are scared of missing some important snippet of information. It is very much about finding a good way to navigate the mobile technology highway, a highway that is traversed by many other colleagues. By crowd sourcing new technologies and peer-reviewing them in a learning environment we have a much better chance of getting more from those little mobile devices than just email and Candy Crush.

The next App Swap Breakfast takes place on March 18th at 9am in the View Deli within the Student Union. At this session we will take a look at video and audio apps, especially those for creating, editing and sharing, we would love you to join us.

More blog posts from the TELFest can be found on the CiCS Learning Technologies Blog.

http://learningtechnologiesteam.blogspot.co.uk/

Work Those Apps - 18 New Year Resolutions for your Mobile Device

Last week I was invited by a colleague in the Faculty of Social Sciences at my University to deliver a Ignite presentation on learning technologies alongside some of their colleagues. I'd never delivered a Ignite presentation before and only ever gone as far as presenting two Pecha Kuchas previously, one in Sheffield and one in Barnsley. Pecha Kucha presentations are 20 slides of 20 seconds that auto-progress, Ignite presentations are slightly shorter where each slide gets 15 seconds each.

So thinking it was another good challenge I set about it and delivered the presentation where I suggested 18 new year resolutions in the guise of apps that colleagues could try on their mobile and tablet devices. The sides are below and even though some may not seem obvious as to their educational credentials, you wouldn't have to search far on the Web to find out how they are being employed in education. For example, Pinterest used to collect info graphics, Evernote as a lecture note taker complete with slide capture and audio recording.  

Work Those Apps - 18 New Year Resolutions for your Mobile Device. from Andrew Tattersall

Apps to help you be a better mobile academic

A few months ago I recorded the first part of a collection of very short videos to help encourage the growing number of tablet owners to be more productive with their devices in an academic setting.
Since then I have recorded a few more videos that can help academics and students learn how to use these apps to do anything from reference to stay up to date with their favourite journals.
The collection of videos can be viewed on our ScHARRvids YouTube page, below is just a an example of what you can do with your tablet device in higher education.

RefMe App 



Papership App



AudioBoom App

Mobile Apps for Higher Education Videos

There has been a lot of discussion over the last year or so on the Web over the merits of using tablets and apps within education, more notably primary and secondary schools. In higher education there have been various initiatives to encourage staff and students to get more value from their smart devices going beyond the stock use of email, calendar and Social Media. Yet there is an increasingly growing conversation on the Web that the tablets have not changed learning and teaching in the way they were heralded a couple of years ago. Some academics are reaping the benefits of their mobile devices by using a multitude of apps, but from my own personal experience these are in the minority. Part reason for this is there are still only a small number of good quality academic apps out there, or ones that can be applied to higher education. 

Again for the most part staff are using their devices as bigger screen versions of their smartphones to access emails and calendars with some taking and reading notes. Tablets represent a great example of the Gartner Hype Cycle, although according to the technology forecasters we were on the slope of enlightenment a year ago and probably should be somewhere near the plateau of productivity any time soon. It may be the case for many uses for tablet devices, as I said school education, there are no shortage of useful apps for kids (when you remove the U.S biased ones), in addition to apps on cooking, consuming, playing and communicating. Whilst some of these can be applied to higher education, the list of really useful, mass-appealing academic apps remains just a handful and rarely used by most academics and students. The reasons for this lack of uptake is many, that some of the apps are no good, poorly designed or just do not do enough compared to their desktop/laptop counterparts; that it could be argued that the app was created for the sake of having an app. That staff and students do not invariably have the time to explore these apps beyond the ones key to their work, email, calendar, PDF reader and those they are instructed to use institutionally, Turnitin, Pebblepad etc. There are of course exceptions to these rules and communities, student doctors use tablets increasingly to diagnose patients and check medications, whilst for anyone working out in the field, archaeologists, engineers and suchlike there is greater uptake. For the majority of mostly office and lecture-theatre based academics and their students there is still so way to go before they truly do reach the heady heights on the plateau of productivity.

Whilst tablets will increasingly seep into our working environment there needs to be a better understanding of not only how they work, how to stay safe using them and maintaining them but what apps are out there and how can they be employed within a university environment; in a streamlined process rather than just for the sake of it. The reality is that most apps have very small learning curves and are often just lightweight versions of software packages, that an awful lot of them are free and some are hidden gems not always spotted by certain communities. Take Evernote for example, the tablet version allowing for note, image and audio capture are perfect for students in classrooms and academics at conferences, yet many do not apply an academic use for it beyond taking meeting notes. 

The Evernote issue is understandable as with many applications it often takes a colleague or friend to explain and show the benefits of using a certain technology. It very much feels like the period shortly after Web 2.0 had arrived in 2005, and a couple of years later when innovative platforms like Prezi, Mendeley, Dropbox and Twitter appeared and where starting to gain popularity, yet the academic uptake was still fairly low. The reason behind that takes us back to the Hype Cycle again and reasons behind many technology adoptions, that users are wary of new technologies, cannot afford them, do not have the time to explore them and can often feel overwhelmed by them, the same is happening again but on a bigger scale as we have more platforms than before.




With regards to apps there have been Initiatives at our own institution through workshops, short seminars and such as the App Swap Breakfast idea. Another option is by making short videos that not only explain an app's use but also that it exists in the first place, awareness at least opens the mind to the possibilities. At present I have created just seven short videos hosted on the Information Resources YouTube channel and later on the University's iTunes U, but the intention is to create more. The videos explain briefly Evernote, BibMe, Harvard Easy Referencing, Mendeley, Readability and Browzine - the series can be viewed here.

App Swap Breakfast - Changing Landscapes Webinar

I was lucky enough to be invited to contribute to a UCISA (Universities and Colleges Information Systems Association) webinar last week focusing on the growing interest in App Swap Breakfasts which we have started at The University of Sheffield. I'd come across the idea after presenting at the UCISA conference Changing Landscapes back in January at The Edge in Sheffield. I'd seen an inspiring presentation by Fiona MacNeill, Beth Hewitt and Joyce Webber from the University of Brighton talking about initiative. The event was run by UCISA and was a continuation of their Changing Landscapes, hosted by Jane Hetherington and featured reflections from myself, Fiona, Joe Telles from the University of Salford about our own App Swap Breakfasts.
The recording of the webinar can be viewed/listened to here:


Webinar recording - http://adm-leeds.adobeconnect.com/p4phqrf9r85/
Fiona MacNeill et al's presentation from the Changing Landscapes can be viewed here:

UCISA Case Study Slides: App Swap Breakfasts: Pedagogy, Mobile Devices and Learning Discourse over Breakfast from Fiona MacNeill

In addition I was invited to give a presentation to University of Sheffield staff as part of CiCS LeTS Snap, App & Tap lunchtime series to help colleagues get more from their mobile devices. I ran a session on tools to help staff and students carry out research on the go and looked at Mendeley, Evernote, Harvard Reference, CLA search amongst other useful tools. The slides are below, and I will be looking to turn this into a future ScHARR Bite Size event.

Future dates for the remaining Snap, App & Tap can be viewed below and signed up for via the University's Learning Managament System.

Weds 3rd September: The Collaborative Classroom: This session will give you a taste of how mobile devices can be used collaboratively and/or interactively in a classroom setting. You will get the chance to experience a lesson learning something which may be new to you and seeing how it feels to be a student using these technologies. The session will cover some / all of the following - synchronous use of Google docs, Nearpod, Feedback tools such as Poll anywhere, Socrative, Google moderator and Blackboard mobile.

Weds 10th Sep: Reading on your mobile device - a good idea? There are differences in the way that we read electronic texts and paper-based texts. There are also differences between reading on a computer screen and on a mobile device. How do these differences affect our experience, our work and our students? What are the advantages and disadvantages? The session will look at which options are available for reading on a mobile device, what advantages there are, what the options are for annotating and sharing reading, how the screen size affects our ability to read, accessibility / disability and reading on screen. 

Weds 17th September: Keeping a diary, journal or reflective log on a mobile device. A mobile device can be the perfect tool for a journal, diary or reflective log as it is often with you wherever you go. This session looks at the tools available for keeping your notes and how they can be exploited for academic purposes. It covers the apps available for diaries, journals and reflective logs, how notes can be moved from one place to another and tools available to transform your notes into valuable data.

Weds 24th September: See Hear! You or your students can create audio-visual resources on your mobile devices. This session will cover the reasons why we may use audio-visual resources and look a various tools that are available such as iMovie, Explain Everything, voice recorder.

App Swap Breakfast #2 - Curation Tools

The second App Swap Breakfast (ASB) took place with CiCS and looked at curation tools. As with the first ASB there was a good turn out with lively discussion that looked a few more issues relating to the use of apps and smart devices in the University. One issue that had arisen before the second ASB was that of presenting apps on a big screen. Many staff had experience of presenting slides and Web tours using their tablets and smartphones remotely using such as Haikudeck and Nearpod amongst others. Actually projecting apps onto a screen is not so straightforward but luckily a kind soul in our Corporate Information and Computing Services sourced us a cable in time for our iPads. It raised another of many questions, what cables, projectors and other infracture does an organisation need to do this fluently? Does it need cables given we are increasingly able to present wirelessly? For our session to get the apps on screen we did need a cable, but another question had arisen in my mind. How can we screencast and capture apps, especially when trying to demo them. Recently Apple announced that this will be possible on their new Yosemite OS, although early tests showed it was still not perfect for capturing apps. Even sites like Techcrunch and their tech reviews still often have a person holding the phone or tablet whilst showing the app to camera, but hopefully that will all change. That said, this approach is not all bad.

At the ASB Daniel Villalba Algas from the Department of Politics explained how he used Evernote to capture everything from meeting notes to useful Web links. Evernote is a simple note taking application that is available in a range of different devices, it is even available on the University's managed desktop.

Daniel explained to the group and writes below that he uses Evernote to take quick and simple notes that he later uses to produce more complex documents. Daniel listed some of the key benefits of the app:

• It allows you to record one hour of sound for note so if you are going to a meeting or conference you can record the sound while you are taking your notes. Daniel said that he was aware of his department’s students using it to record lectures while they are taking notes.
• You can also attach images to a note if it is easier than typing.
• With all these systems it is useful if you can sort and manage your notes and in Evernote you can create notebooks, tags or event link a note to a specific location so it makes very easy to find the notes that you are looking for even by geographical information.
• Comments are stored in the cloud so you can always have access to them regardless the device that you are using.

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/evernote/id281796108?mt=8

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.evernote

I looked at two tools I have championed for the last few years that help teach students and staff organise and manage their research papers.

Mendeley

Mendeley is a social reference management tool that has its own alternative metric for measuring scholarly papers. The application is available across most platforms as official and unofficial versions, with a desktop and Web version being the mainstay of the software. The mobile version sits in between both versions in terms of functionality and usage.  For any student or researcher working on the go and in possession of a tablet the app allows them to save new references and attached PDFs with the option to read these PDFs. Unlike the desktop version there is no option to annotate or highlight the PDFs, but nevertheless it is a useful reader. Users can tag references and access their references and papers within their groups.

The app is free and has an official IOS version, whilst there are unofficial Android versions, Mendeley say they are working on an official version. There is also a version for the Amazon Kindle which allows you to read papers in your Mendeley database.

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/mendeley/id380669300?mt=8

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kmk.Referey

http://www.kinsync.com/

http://dev.mendeley.com/

The next tool I looked at was Readability which is more of a PDF reader than anything. The real value from Readability is by using it on your Web browser as it allows users to turn webpage articles into clean looking PDF type articles that you can read offline on your tablet device. Readability is able to turn a website from the one below into the pdf below that. It is a great way to stockpile interesting articles you may discover browsing the Web or Twitter and turn them into a reading list.

https://www.readability.com/apps

Before Readability

Afterwards

Claire Beecroft talked about two apps she uses to create and discover materials as part of her teaching. Claire captures below what it is she likes about these two apps; firstly the micro-podcasting tool AudioBoo and the journal browsing app Browzine.

Audioboo:

Audioboo appswap - Created with Haiku Deck, presentation software that inspires

Audioboo is an app for Android and iOS and can also be used via  browser. Its free. You can record up to 10 mins of audio and embed the results in a neat little player in MOLE. Great for distance/blended learning, i.e: introducing a module, LO’s or a discussion topic, or for setting assignments or doing topical things related to current affairs.

audioboo.fm

Browzine:

Browzine is an app that allows you to ‘browze’ the e-journals at your institution. It links to the Uni’s e-journal subscriptions and allows you to browse broad subject categories for journal titles, then more specific sub-categories. Nice for current awareness and a more serendipitous approach to search. Reminds me of the old days of directories like Yahoo. http://thirdiron.com/browzine/

The third App Swap Breakfast will focus on sound and vision an will hopefully take place in July

App Swap Breakfasts

Back in January I was lucky to speak at the UICSA Event 'Changing Landscapes' at The Edge in Sheffield about ScHARR Bite Size. At the time I was in the process of handing ScHARR Bite Size - which I'd run for over three years to the ScHARR Staff Development Group' and was wondering about a follow on series I could investigate. At the conference I saw a brilliant presentation by Fiona MacNeill, Joyce Webber and Betheny Hewitt University of Brighton on App Swap Breakfasts.

App Swap Breakfasts are as you imagine a gathering based around breakfast time to talk and swap useful Apps. I thought this was a great idea and one we could replicate at The University of Sheffield. My thoughts were, although the Brighton model is based around teaching and learning, but it could be extended to every facet of the academic community to include research, communication and collaboration, why not, as there are so many useful apps out there and so little time to properly investigate them.

From my own personal experience I know many colleagues had tablet and smartphones and were only using a small number of apps beyond the core ones of email, Web browser, calendar and document viewer. I myself only use a small number of the few dozen productivity and professional apps on my iPad. The idea is also re-enforced by personal experience in that I was encouraged by my colleague Claire Beecroft to use the Turnitin App to undertake some essay marking rather than on my PC. Claire spent five minutes showing me the various tools within Turnitin, the marking rubric, the audio feedback and just how easy it was to navigate and leave comments and notes. So instead of sitting at my desk amongst the usual distractions of people coming into my office, checking emails and the Web, I was able to settle down in a chair and mark my essays in comfort. So all it took was for a colleague to sit down with me for five minutes, something I'm all too aware of in my role as trying to get others to adapt to new technologies and ways of working. So hopefully we can achieve what Brighton have done with this brilliant idea and share those apps we find useful that others aren't aware of, or have installed but not tried over an early morning coffee and croissant. What's not to like?

My Health Apps

We wrote about the European Directory of Health Apps on this blog back in October 2012 as we noticed what an excellent resource of health apps it was and that there was a real gap in knowledge in this area. Since then the NHS have pooled together their own, smaller collection of recommended Apps. Working at ScHARR we're very interested in the use of technologies for health care as part of our research programmes, we've even got a section who focus specifically on the topic of research into rehabilitation and assistive technologies

Web and mobile health technologies are heavily focused in the teaching carried out by members of Information Resources, especially myself, Claire Beecroft, Angie Rees and Louise Preston. So I was especially pleased to find out via a comment on our blog by Alex W that the site and Apps had been updated. I'm taking a guess that Alex W is in fact Alexandra Wyke from Patient View who oversee My Health Apps. The PDF document is now a website in its own right and can easily be browsed by one of 11 categories. Each app is recommended to the site by consumers, patients, carers, patient groups and charities. They are rated on the site with the highest rating being five hearts and the ratings explained below.

Helps you control your condition /keep you healthy 
Is trustworthy 
Is easy for you to use 
Allows you to network with people like you / who understand you 
Can be used regularly

Alex explained in her comments how the site had evolved:

1. All of the initial 307 apps appearing on the myhealthapps.net site have been selected by 456 distinct patient groups, disability groups or empowered consumers as their favourite apps. The reviews from these groups are supplied for each app, as well as weblinks to the groups themselves.

2. myhealthapps.net unique ‘heart’-rating system. The health apps on the site have been allocated ‘heart’ ratings, according to the extent that each app exhibits 5 consumer/patient needs (weighted according to level of importance). These 5 qualities are attributes that patients and the public look for from their health apps, as determined by a 2013 PatientView study of 250 patient, disability and consumer groups from 16 countries around the world. People’s requirements from health are:• Give people more control over their condition (or keep them healthy)• Easy to use• Can be used regularly• Allow networking with other people like them (or with people who understand them)• Trustworthy.

27 of the 307 health apps included in the initial version of the website gain a top ‘heart’ rating of 5 out of 5.
myhealthapps.net is opening with 307 featured apps. This number will be increased every month to include other favourite apps from patient groups, disability groups or empowered consumers

ScHARR Bite Size at UCISA Conference - Changing Landscapes

This week I was lucky to attend and present at the UCISA one day conference hosted by the University of Sheffield at the excellent Edge conference centre. I didn’t know much about UCISA when I was asked to submit an abstract based on their theme Changing Landscapes back last year, and was pleasantly surprised by what an innovative and interesting conference it was and how much of it mattered to my own work.

UCISA’s aim is: “to promote excellence in the application of information systems in support of teaching, learning, research and administration in higher education.” The presentations came from a mixture of learning technologists, educationalists and IT experts and myself an information specialist.

The morning plenary was delivered by our own Dr. Christine Sexton the Director of the Corporate and Information Services based at the University. Christine’s talk looked back over the last couple of years where her team has seen rapid changes mostly thanks to Google Apps, rise of Social Media, customer demands for immediate and flexible services, security and growing appetites for wireless connectivity across a large university campus. We heard about the two little robot cleaners in the computing centre (one of them allegedly called Christine) and how even when a student cannot get an online computer game working in student halls it it treated no different from if their laptop was faulty. The ethos that the students are in our care and are our customers and therefore we have to support them quite rightly and very much heralded.  Christine touched on the Internet of Things from her use of the Nike Fuel band that talks to her scales which in time will talk to her fridge. It all makes for an exciting if not cumbersome future where we spend half of our time setting this tech up and then updating malware, but that’s a different story. Christine as ever was good value and reinforced the idea that Cloud Services are not about saving money but improving services and systems - it is a no brainer for the modern organisation.

Christine has blogged about her talk and you can read about it here.

Next up was the winning case study for the conference, Anna Armstrong from Nottingham Trent University who talked about their initiative to develop digital skills through flexible practice. The focus of talk was their work at Nottingham Trent to encourage a large group of staff to develop the digital skills and knowledge to deal with a huge number of phone calls using software to help students gain places via clearing, no small feat.

I then attended a superb presentation by Fiona MacNeill, Joyce Webber and Bethany Hewitt on their App Swap Breakfasts. This is a great idea, and felt like it had the same ethos as ScHARR Bite Size in that it is about making new technologies and ideas available that don’t eat into people’s time with a real informal fun feel about it. Their presentation was delivered on the superb nearpod app which I hadn’t seen before but will make a point of using in the future. The app allowed for voting and audience interaction via being able to draw remotely on the slides on your own tablet device whilst the presentation was happening live - I was sold on the idea and plan to try and start our own App Swap Breakfast on campus very soon.

After a lovely lunch which featured some nice cake I went to see The University of York’s presentation on their migration to Google Apps in 2012 delivered by Mike Dunn. The presentation resonated with many of the audience who too had come from organisations who had moved over to the technology giants productivity and communication suite. The University of York had first moved their students over to Google Apps before finally moving their staff over. Mike explained the many considerations the university had taken in their decision to move over, very much like Sheffield and like my own institution have not looked back since.

I then delivered my own session on ScHARR Bite Size - something visitors to this blog will be all too aware of. It was well received and and I got a few interesting questions about location, timing and how I generate new sessions. This is probably the last time I will deliver a talk about Bite Size as I hand it over to someone else after four years at the helm, it was the fourth time Bite Size had featured at a conference and was a nice way to sign the 20 minute method off. My slides from the presentation are below.

UCISA - Changing Landscapes - ScHARR Bite Size Presentation from Andrew Tattersall

After another break where I was able to catch up with the University of Sheffield’s ex learning and teaching manager for CICS Sarah Horrigan (now at Derby University) for a chat and share some ideas about pedagogy, digital literacy and technology. After that it was back into the main conference hall to hear the final plenary from Doug Belshaw from the Mozilla Foundation talking about digital literacies delivered on the big screen via a Google Hangout. It was a great presentation, very interactive and thought provoking - Doug discussed the ideas about digital literacy spanning back to his time as a teacher, employee of JISC and through his own PhD. studies. Doug listed the eight key elements of digital literacy, that being; cultural, cognitive, constructive, communicative, confident, creative, critical and civic.

His presentation on the big screen reminded me of a scene from Big Brother, or the old Apple advert from the 1990s where a big face on the screen dictates to the nation. Except on this occasion it a good man trying to help us all understand how we can actually navigate around this massive technology and information maze better.

@dajbelshaw speaking at Changing Landscapes

I have to say my expectations were more than met by attending Changing Landscapes, I didn’t really know what to expect. What I got was a collection of brilliant presentations, lively debate and great people. I always recall speaking to Christine Sexton at the Online Information Conference in 2012 as I was about to talk about Google Apps at our University. Sadly the conference is no longer with us, and it was one of those conferences that someone in my profession gained a lot from. Christine commented that it wasn’t really her crowd (professional peer group) so to speak but that she got a lot of knowledge from being there. I think I can say the same about Changing Landscapes, despite it not being a collection of individuals I’d really come across on my various travels and networks, I did actually come away with a lot of ideas, thoughts, questions and a few connections. What more can you ask of a one day conference?

Working Smarter - 7 New ways to work in 2013

Working Smarter - 7 New ways to work in 2013

Andy Tattersall

The new year might be several weeks behind us but it is never too late to try something new in the workplace. Here are seven different things and tools you could try to change how you communicate, teach and research. Not every tool or way of working is for everyone, some are quick wins and simple to set up others require more time and effort. Some require additional guidance and support, there are a few resources listed at the bottom of the article.

Productivity	*
Communication	*
Teaching	*
Research	*

Working with 2 screens

I’ve worked with two screens for a few years now and it has changed how I work that much that I could never ever imagine going back to one - apart from a really big, long one. Now the first thought that will pop into some peoples’ heads will be that it might not be the most environmental of options, but neither are some of our other working practices as many of us now have laptops, tablets and smartphones in addition to our desktop machines. For anyone who has switched to or added an Apple computer to their arsenal, they recently pulled their computers from being certified green by EPEAT. So before I undo my argument totally, the reality is that you do not need to have both monitors on all of the time, only for certain tasks, like you don’t always need that laptop or tablet turned on perpetually. Also, there is a tendency for people to print documents and emails off to read whilst using their computer screen to interact or share some thing relating to that same document. Keeping it on screen moves back towards the kinder environmental case.
What kind of tasks would this improve I hear you ask. Firstly anything that involves collating data, such as a spreadsheet or a database - exporting data from one source such as a collection of documents into a database or spreadsheet. Having lots of numbers sitting in front of you can be snow-blinding and switching between tabs often means forgetting the last digit or two. Having two screens allows simple copy and paste or better still drag and drop from one application to another as it becomes one long desktop. A second screen could totally improve the lives of anyone working in finance or using spreadsheets and databases as a whole.
As I say it’s basically just one big desktop, so with that in mind it allows you to have multiple documents in front of you. Such as writing a systematic review, the process of digesting large numbers of documents and taking the key data from it can be done more easily on the fly as the master document remains open whilst working through those in the review. This also benefits managing references as abstracts and papers are scanned whilst keeping the reference management software open in the second screen. For modellers this allows them to watch the model running whilst a second screen can deal with the day to day business of email and other tasks.
As for email, the master screen of the two is used for this purpose, whilst attachments or supplementary reading can be dealt with whilst leaving the communication window within the eyeline. Another big plus for the second screen is that it allows greater flexibility in visual communication in the guise of Web conferencing and distance learning. Google Hangouts allows the embedding of documents, presentations and screen shots effectively. In addition, other Web conferencing and VLE tools also do similar things, but there is still the occasional need to see content on a second screen. Secondly with such as peer support, being able to see the person’s face and expressions on screen whilst viewing a resource or document on a second screen is naturally beneficial over flipping between the two. The basic ability to digest one piece of content on one screen whilst producing new content on the other just cannot be understated here.

Pros
Productivity increased for certain tasks involving document writing, data collation, textual and visual communication.

Cons
Not environmentally friendly as one screen. Cost increase. Potentially creates more issues for IT support staff, although FST computer screens are incredibly more reliable than their CRT counterparts.




Informal Abstract for Research - The Press Release


As the movement for Open Access to research and Altmetrics gains pace it is increasingly pushing what we do further into the public domain. Much of the work we do is of interest to a wider audience that goes beyond the academic firewall, various organisations, bodies, charities and the general population. Yet it can be written in a way that does not translate so easily, as with council speak that again applies to so much of the population, academic research invariably talks a different language to the masses. Very often there is a simple story within that impacts so many, and quite often the only form of translation is via the national press or in house media channels. Efforts are made to get our research out there via the various channels but only so much gets beyond the traditional mediums of journals, organisational sites and newsletters. A possible alternative is to produce press releases and laymen abstracts of the work we do to the various interested parties, ranging from charities, news agencies, patient-led and public sites to improve the profile of the department. It does not have to stop there as there is a growing movement for academics to write expert and opinion pieces which range from the national press to private blogs. Education and research is going through massive change and as a result becoming more open. Such as the LSE Social Impact Blog gains wide ranging coverage via social media channels with its short, punchy and informative articles. The collective expertise of an organisation makes for massive publicity potential by getting its content out there via the various channels. Another reason for writing releases and opinion pieces is that they are ‘quick wins’. Researchers work hard all year on publications and reports often going long periods between seeing finished products. Short informal pieces can be of interest to a wide range of academics, by their nature are short and can be written in hours not days, weeks or months. The informal style of writing can be a refreshing change from the day to day formal writing style of academic output. They can be reactive to current topics and can be self published via personal sites, blogs and social media channels. Once an article gets out into channels that are ‘social media friendly’ there is greater chance it will be shared by others further and beyond initial postings. By suggesting opinion pieces I am by no means suggesting be controversial, you can have lively debate without getting into trouble. They can still be peer-reviewed if needed, as with all forms of high quality of journalism a piece of writing can go through one or two tiers of editorial.

Pros
Gets your message and research further beyond the academic wall - and into social media. It is a quick win, a way of relating a variety of topics relating to your field of work in a very simple way. It is a promotional tool for yourself, your area of work and your department.

Cons
Not everyone can write informally naturally. You may be carrying out work that you cannot publicise or may be sensitive in nature. Not everything can be shared this way.

Delivering an Online Lecture Standing up

I think this idea is very much inspired the old school delivery of the Open University on BBC2 whereas the presenter would be seen in full standing by their whiteboard and later taken to another level by the likes of the TED and Howie Do lectures, in fact traditional stand up lectures but on screen. Nevertheless standing up for theatrical effect is not the main benefit of delivering a presentation but an improvement in delivery. I’ve noticed that a lot of distance learning courses, sessions are delivered by the presenter sitting at their desk. Now, there’s no problem with this as it fits in with the modern workflow and space issues. The question is; ‘does it feel right?’ I would argue in some cases no, certainly for anyone who has ever delivered a session face to face in a lecture theatre. Such as a Webinar the need to stand isn’t so essential as there is a discussion going on which makes them feel more like a meeting. Whilst the flipside of standing up gesticulating to no one in particular can be quite a self conscious thing, but once you get past that it’s fairly easy. Of course I’ve attended sessions and workshops whereas the presenter has sat down, and sometimes there’s little alternative, but it does not look right. The delivery can be dumbed down, subdued and not feel quite as dynamic as the stand up lecture. Imagine comedians sitting down to deliver their material, it works for a few, I’m thinking of Dave Allen, but not for the majority. Sitting down to deliver content works better with something like a podcast that invariably has more than one person driving and delivering the output. For people delivering screencasts and distance learning presentations sat at your desk whilst a colleague sits opposite can have the effect of taking a call in a public place or having a conversation in a library, you just feel stifled, projecting your voice is not an option. Again some would argue you do not need to project your voice like you would in a lecture theatre, which is true but sitting at a desk has an almost opposite effect for some as they talk in a less than natural monotone manner. The only real downside of presenting standing up in front of a Webcam or camera and to a screen is that you need space, which can mean tracking down a room at short notice to present in, as taking up valuable teaching space for just yourself is just not viable. So when I’ve done this, I have literally booked a room an hour before my session knowing I’m not depriving colleagues of it. As we do more and more teaching online there is a real need to make it stand out more and give it an edge, sitting at your desk can only be more edgy if you did it resting on the back two legs of your chair and balancing surely?

Pros
Makes for a better more dynamic lecture for the person delivering it and those receiving it. Makes your distance learning delivery more in line with your face to face teaching.

Cons
You might feel a tad silly doing it. Requires more space and technology - such as a teaching room with mic and Webcam

Make a Video

It is without doubt that video will become the dominant format on the Web in the next few years with Cisco predicting that video would make up over 50% of all consumer Internet traffic by 2012. As for mobile content this has already exceeded 50%, whilst YouTube now has 72 hours of content uploaded every single minute. You cannot ignore video as an important format in education and research. The application of video in academia is endless as it is such a subjective format that you could make a video for almost anything. Most notable options include making a staff profile video, making a conference promotional video, interviewing researchers about their work, interviewing students for course feedback, informal welcome and instructional videos by teaching staff, explaining the purpose of a clinical trial, explaining a concept, a problem, an idea, a review. Delivering a lecture, a MOOC, seminar, course promo, creating a tutorial, shall I go on?
Videos translate so much more than swathes of text, you can say so much in a few minutes and it captures personality. It can be watched on the go, be embedded, shared, downloaded, enhanced with text, logos and images. With a video it can bring out the personality of a person and make the formal informal, make dull content interesting. In terms of teaching it can have the potential to bring informality to the proceedings, a student gets to know the teacher a little better than if they were just getting voiced over slides, they find out who is at the other end of the Internet Connection.
Obviously as with standing up to deliver distance learning sessions, this very much depends on the person delivering and making a video can feel daunting. There are worries about how you may appear, come across and what you say. Nevertheless these are no less than delivering a session in person in a classroom, conference or to colleagues. There is a safety net with video provided you are not delivering something live on the Web. That you can retake and retake till you are happy, after a while you may be able to deliver a short video in one take - there are colleagues who can do this. The reality is that you just do not know until you try. There are the other issues, such as time, but a video does not have to be long - it can be very effective in just 60 seconds. Depending on the content it can last for years, although many videos have short life spans. There are time issues such as getting it uploaded to the likes of YouTube and Vimeo or institutional sites. Also, who records it, if you are not familiar with the technology you will need help. This is where learning technologists, technicians, librarians and information professionals can help, not to mention peers who have already gone down this route.

Pros
Can say so much more than text at times. Is becoming an increasingly important form of delivery in academic output. Content can be embedded, shared and hosted easily and cheaply these days.

Cons
Depending on what you want to do, can have a steep learning curve but help is on hand. Can attract negative comments if someone doesn’t agree with you should you allow open comments.

Get mobile

After news that smartphones had reached 50% market penetration in the US last month, and Pew Research Center’s latest research which indicated that 25% of American consumers now own a tablet, it’s increasingly difficult to argue that the future of computing is not mobile. The trend is even more stark for desktops looking to emerging economies. In India, for example, the mobile web has already surpassed use of desktop internet.

So how can the common garden smartphone be used beyond email and Angry Birds in the workplace? There are plenty of apps out there on the various platforms to help you communicate, share, store and even teach. Trying to list them here wouldn’t be possible as there are simply thousands upon thousands of them, so I have picked out a few key applications to help you get started.
Mendeley: The social reference management tool is available on the Apple and Android platforms, with the main unofficial Android versions called Droideley, Scholarley and Referey. With these apps you can read papers in your collection, share citations and sync with your Mendeley account.
Your camera. OK, not an app as such but something that comes by default with your smartphone. As more academics get social and more presentations go online it means that there is the problem of finding copyright or royalty-free images to enhance your work. There are of course the various Creative Commons sites and licences, CC Search is a good place to start when sourcing material. Sometimes that is not possible, you just cannot find the right image, but you do have a camera on your own phone, so why not use it? There are no issues regarding copyright, although you cannot simply take a photo of anything. Such as people, do you have their consent? is the image of sensitive nature? does the content breach the copyright of a company or person? Nevertheless, there are countless images you can produce for your own work if you actively use your own phone to take pictures.
You can now access your work email and calendar easily, so being on the go and staying organised is not a problem any more with these devices. There are ways of being social using Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+, whilst other tools like SocialBro allow you to find like-minded people at live events who also use Twitter.
Great tools like Audioboo and Socialcam allow you to make audio and video recordings and share them socially - such as this video promo we made for our presentation at Internet Librarian International 2012. It was recorded on my phone in one take and we were able to share it on the various social networks ahead of our presentation, the effects were deliberate by the way.
There are excellent note taking and curating tools available, including Evernote, Zite and Google Reader.
The two real issues as we use our own devices for work are simply security and intrusion into your personal life. The first issue can be resolved by making your phone or tablet device as secure as you can, certainly try not to use it. Ensure that you have password and auto lock turned on and use any inbuilt tracking software although there is also good free tracking software such as Prey worth installing.
An issue that some people don’t realise is that if they lost their phone and they had no security measures then it could be as bad as losing your wallet. It is important to make sure you back up content regularly and utilise the security measures that come with your device.
As for the work life balance issue, this is a tough one. Before the advent of mobile and smart phones, people did check emails and carried out work at all hours; the tablet and smartphone made that easier. The positive is that you can stay on top of emails so when arriving at work you have less to contend with, the downside is that it becomes harder to switch off from the workplace. The trick is to turn your phone off when you are not at work and not expecting phone calls. Some people manage this issue better than others whilst more and more people find themselves at the behest of their inbox - constantly checking for new messages, the only safe option is not to have email on your phone, but for those with smartphones it is probably already too late.
The issue is that smartphones will become commonplace in the next few years and in most cases people use them professionally as part of their job. The bigger issue is ensuring you use them productively and securely and that you stay in charge of the relationship, not the other way round.

Pros
Can improve communication and workflow on the go. Allows access to your diary and email when out of the office. Great functionality for social networking, content curation and digest. Some mobile devices allow the ability to present information to a larger screen, saves taking a laptop with you. Gives the ability to capture audio and video feedback. Also allows the audio dictation of documents and emails.

Cons
Makes it harder to switch off from the workplace as emails and social networks are easier to access at any time. Using own device for work means more wear at tear of your device at your own cost. Security of content such as email and documents can be compromised if not password protected or encrypted.


Upload a presentation to Slideshare

For anyone who has ever given a presentation at a conference or a seminar the chances are that after you have used the slides they will be put away into a folder someone tucked deep within your file store only to be retrieved to form the part of a new presentation. Some will get hosted on organisational or conference websites, but invariably the sharing and viewing potential is quite often capped or hidden from wider audiences. Hosted presentation slides on Slideshare is a very quick way to get them out into the wonderful world of the Web. Setting up an account takes minutes, uploading a presentation the same. The benefits are easy to see, firstly this is a social site, so people can Tweet, Google+, Facebook Like your work. There is the ability to embed the presentation into other web sites, blogs and even deliver the presentation from the site, no more worrying about whether you have saved it onto your USB stick. The cons are quite simply this, can you actually share the presentation? Do you have the rights to share content within, where are the images sourced from? With search engines getting better at helping copyright owners find misused examples of their work, putting your work into the public domain increases the chances of being caught. The trick is not to get caught by using Creative Commons images via the correct licences - a good place to start is: http://search.creativecommons.org/ Even if your presentation is plain old text and graphs, make sure you atribute everything correctly. Even though this sounds a bit onerous and off-putting, it needn’t be. Once you understand their are legal alternatives to enhancing your presentations you could begin to realise the potential of uploading to Slideshare. A presentation of mine: ‘Welcome to the University of Google’’ has had over 3000 views on the site. Not a big figure in the scheme of Slideshare, but 3000 more views than if I had just placed it on to a static website potentially. Also it meant my other presentations got more views, I picked up followers to my account and it was shared on the Social Web - so what’s not to like?

Pros
Free and simple way to upload your presentation to the Web. Visually nice looking site. Has the main social networking tools embedded within each upload. Each presentation can be embedded into other websites and blogs.

Cons
Content could breach copyright if not used correctly, make sure you attribute images and content and that this content can actually be shared on the Web - do not just take any old image from the Web. Slides do not always translate on their own - where possible it is better to make a screencast or at least add an audio soundtrack.

Tweet

Perhaps out of the whole list this is the one that is most likely to polarise and scare those working in academia. There are a few reasons for this, firstly despite the simplicity of Twitter, that you communicate in 140 characters, it can still feel like an alien concept to many people. There is also mis-understandings towards its use and who is using it. Much of the recent publicity around Twitter has focused on footballers Tweeting abuse, unprofessional comments about their team or peers. Then there has been the recent Tweets by an HMV employee regarding alleged sackings as the company went into administration. This was more about a large company not having the access to what was regarded as the official account as it had been set up by intern; a lesson for any organisation.
As with data loss, copyright breaches and other embarrassing technological own-goals an organisation can befall, the issue quite often comes down to the actions of an individual. They may be accidental, caused by a lack of literacy or knowledge or just plain malicious.
A recent article in the Guardian Higher Education Network wrote about the reasons academics are afraid to engage with Social Media.
Twitter is no more than a communicator in the public domain, and allows a simple way to connect with people with similar interests. Beyond the likes of Stephen Fry, Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber the tool is being embraced by more and more academics and the organisations which they operate in. The University of Sheffield has dozens of Twitter accounts for departments, projects and key academics here: https://twitter.com/sheffielduni/university-of-sheffield/members
This is not to mention the growing large list of individual users who use the tool to share resources, practice and communicate. Yet the issue remains that people are worried about this tool, and that is understandable to a point. It is a third-party piece of software, so you can never be 100% certain that it is secure, but that can be said of so many other tools academics are using these days, Academia.Edu, Facebook, LinkedIn, the list goes on. The key with everything is to pick a strong password and again think about what you are going to Tweet carefully. What you say on the Web, stays on the Web. This is very much true now as recent cases have shown, by simply deleting your Tweet or account does not ensure what you just said hasn’t been retweeted or captured in another way. There have been several high profile cases of politicians and celebrities Tweeting things they wish they hadn’t only to find out it had got out into the Web even after they had deleted the incriminating evidence. The rules here are simple, don’t Tweet anything you will regret, don’t get into, or pick a fight on a Social Media platform (certainly one that ends up as a brawl, or that you are going to lose), and don’t Tweet under the influence, remember that if you are Tweeting in a professional capacity to treat it no different from any other aspect of your professional life. That is not to say you cannot Tweet about what you had for breakfast or that you don’t like who won X-Factor, Twitter brings the informal to the formal.
As for the use of Twitter in academia, certainly there is growing evidence of widespread use in certain fields including library, information and computer science, the humanities. Whilst some MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) have really embraced Twitter as a way to get students to communicate and share ideas. Whilst Tweeting has started to creep into the traditional classroom with some classes encouraging students to Tweet in real time. I have also used hashtags to participate in an open library discussion with dozens of other professionals about the topic of open access. This open form of communication is not new as many academic conferences now have live Tweeting via the aid of a hashtag to encourage pre, post and actual conference Tweeting. I ran a small conference last year for about 60 delegates, over the course of the day there was over 500 Tweets which were shown on the screens in the foyer of the venue using the excellent http://visibletweets.com/ tool.
With Twitter you don’t have to feel obliged to Tweet constantly, not every day at least and if you don’t have anything to say then just share something interesting you have discovered with your followers. If at first you just want to follow people in your area of interests then just do that; not Tweeting is better than just once announcing to the world you’re about to start and then fall slilent. There are plenty of curation tools out there to find content automatically to your research fields, Netvibes, Google Reader, Zite, News.Me, Scoop.It! In amongst the various sites and other social media platforms you may visit over the course of a working week. If this feels like a lot of work, trust me, it isn’t - Tweeting takes seconds not minutes and at first it can feel like you are throwing your message into an abyss. Yet the reality is that Tweeting as with other Web 2.0 and social tools is no different from some medications, you need to give it a while before you see the benefits. It may take months if not years to build your connections, again this is not an onerous task and with mobile apps you can do it on the go. One issue I come across is that people do not want to engage with a tool because a better one might come along, which even with something like Twitter is true. Yet the size of Twitter with 500 million users and that it shows no sign of slowing down means it is here for a few years at least. A better tool for the job of micro-blogging could come along, but it will take a long time before it gained that number of users. Perhaps one area that could change this from our perspective would be the introduction of an academically focused microblogging service, such as Academia.edu is to Facebook. If you do decide to take a look at Twitter there are countless guides, tips and tools online. Whilst for curating your content easier you can employ the likes of Tweetdeck, Hootsuite or Silverbird to enhance your Twitter experience.
Finally, Twitter really is a great way to stay in touch with what interests you, professionally or otherwise. Much of what I learn and find useful to mine and my colleagues’ roles comes from that source, it is often the first place to look to find something out. This is becoming very much an important tool in spotting trends or news. Just look at how the media use Twitter to find out what is going on around the world, or to gather views. Like Google searches it can crowdsource information on such as flu outbreaks or even earthquakes, Tweets coming from one location has proved to be one of the fastest and effective ways of conveying information about a situation elsewhere. As Twitter grows globally and no doubt more and more students engage with social media, you have to ask yourself one question, do you really want to get left behind by not engaging with one of these tools?


Follow your interests
With half a billion users on Twitter now there are no shortage of people within academia to follow and by doing so you get to see what they are finding interesting as well as what they are working on. As who you should follow, here’s a few suggestions:
Health research
@trishgreenhalgh - 5,251 followers
@bengoldacre - 256,260 followers
@bmj_latest - 59,083 followers

Edcuation
@sirkenrobinson - 151,331 followers
@timeshighered - 62,088 followers
@tedtalks - 1,424,400 followers

Statistics and data
@guardiandata - 30,818 followers
@royalstatsoc - 1,776 followers
@visually - 102,750 followers

Altmetrics
@figshare - 4,666 followers
@mendeley_com - 6,262 followers
@lseimpactblog - 7,987 followers

Technology and the Web
@jiscdigital - 4,920 followers
@rww - 1,259,213 followers
@thenextweb - 841,007 followers

Pros
A quick and simple way to communicate with your peers on-line. Is not labour intensive.  A great way to stay abreast of your interests and topic areas. Simple to learn once you understand the @ and # concepts of communication.

Cons
If used incorrectly can lead to bad publicity for you and your organisation. People can struggle to know what to Tweet. The conversation is public, so does not work with all communications.

Further resources and information

Advantages and Disadvantages of Working with Multiple Screens - http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2009/05/advantages-and-disadvantages-of-working-with-multiple-screens/
Ted Talks
http://www.ted.com/talks
Do Lectures
http://dolectures.com/
Comprehensive list of Twitter tools http://www.twittereye.com/
Twitter for Researchers http://www.scribd.com/doc/124317896/Twitter-for-research
Live Tweeting at Conferences: 10 Rules of Thumb http://www.guardian.co.uk/higher-education-network/blog/2012/oct/03/ethics-live-tweeting-academic-conferences
The 25 Most Used Mobile Apps In Education http://edudemic.com/2012/10/most-used-mobile-apps-education/