Book your spot on the staff development webinar

This webinar will identify good practice from across the region and outline how two FE colleges from the West Midlands effectively deliver Staff Development. Sue McGregor, the Director of Curriculum from Solihull College, will outline the rationale and the methods that the HE department has developed for its HE staff. Stephen Wileman, E-Learning Manager at South Staffordshire College, will discuss a recently-introduced model where staff development sessions are streamed live across the campuses.

Both presenters will :

• Showcase two different methods of staff development
• Identify the rationale for developing the staff development model
• Outline what worked well and what didn’t work
• Discuss the assessment process (if assessment is applicable)
• Demonstrate what impact the staff development has had on teaching and learning

To book your place visit the RSC website. Related link below    

 

 http://www.jiscrsc.ac.uk/westmidlands/keeping-you-informed.aspx

iPad Project

Earlier this year the JISC Regional Support Centre invited Specialist Colleges to take part in a iPad project. Colleges were asked to express their interest in the project outlining how they would use the iPad with learners with disabilities. New College Worcester and Regents College were successful in their application.

New College Worcester is a national residential school and college for young people aged 11 to 19 ho are blind or partially sighted. In addition to visual impairment, some students have additional needs such as hearing impairment,complex medical conditions and Asperger’s Syndrome. Students can access the full range of National Curriculum subjects, plus a variety of leisure activities.

Regents College Regent College is a small non-residential college providing a safe and supportive environment for people who have complex learning difficulties with associated challenging behaviour. It is situated within easy reach of the Stoke-on-Trent’s City Centre, close to local amenities and convenient for local public transport. The college has 30 places for learners aged from 16. Both colleges completed a case study.

New College Worcester used the iPad to help a learner develop their artistic skills. Regents College used the iPad to help to develop learner’s personal communication skills.

Related Links New College Worcester Case Study  

Regents College Case Study

e-Safety Project Website

A really interesting website that I have being informing colleges about is the East Midlands e-Ssafety Project website. This project has been funded by the LSIS Improvements Service. The project aims to improve e-Safety for all learners with learning difficulties and disabilities. The main purpose of the project is to:- involve learners in the production of support and guidance materials that they feel comfortable using; produce training materials for staff; produce guidance for parents and carers. There are a range of resources such as short video clips,podcasts,templates Word documents and PDF files. All well worth a look at Related Links E-Safety Project

Voices

Another new initative from JISC TechDis, has been the launch of the voices Jack and Jess. These are high quality modern voices that that can be used with text to speech tools.

You will need to register with JISC TechDis, once you have registered you will able to download the voices ready for you use. These can be used with programs like DSpeech. The voices can be installed on your pc or laptop, ready to use to listen to emails, word documents or simply click on the play button to listen to the document.

Text-to-speech can also be very helpful to learners working in a second language who may be more confident with spoken rather than written English.

Related Links
Voices
Register

Tool Box

 The JISC TechDis Toolbox is a collection of resources which give useful hints and tips on technologies that can help individuals work smarter. Having used this a couple of times I would like stress how good this is and could be really useful for the learners and staff who may wish to brush up their  technology skills. It has been developed to help learners with learning difficulties the tool box is divided into five areas these include:

 Using Technology

Planning and Organisation

Communicating

Team Working

Different Needs

 Each section has short video clips, guides and audio files all of these are short bite sized to allow for quick and rapid learning. Having used the Planning and Organisation section for Managing your email I watched the video on  How to Set Up a Rule in Outlook email. I can say that this was quick and straight to the point and I was able to set up a rule in minutes

So this is a really useful toolbox full of tips hints and ways to make using technology easy. With plenty of different learning styles to choose from including video and written word it’s well worth a look at.

Related links
Toolbox

Tablet Projects

RSC West Midlands has initiated Mobile Projects over the past two years. The aim was to explore and potentially increase the use of mobile technologies in the work based learning sector and Independent Specialist Colleges.

Interested learning providers were invited to complete an application form outlining what mobile devices they felt might best support the learning journey and help their organisation to take the use of mobile learning forward.

Some of the equipment included iPads, Kindles ,iPod touch, Samsung Galaxy touch, Samsung  Mimio Interactive Whiteboard. As a condition of the project, each Learning Provider agreed to feedback on their anticipated and actual use of the technology. In addition, successful completion of individual final project reports would then result in each learning provider being able to keep the equipment they had evaluated. The reports can be found at the following web address

Related Links
Tablet Project

Todays Meet.Com

At a Staff Development session this week, a colleague used an interesting tool called Todays Meet. This is used as a way of capturing the audience’s feedback or questions or just general understanding of the subject matter.

How does it work? Today’s Meet gives you an online isolated room that your audience can use to start communicating with you the presenter and other delegates. You are able to choose how long the room is open for .You will need to save the transcript before the meeting room is closed.

This has many uses especially for teachers / Lecturers. This is a really simple and easy way to keep the momentum going after a lesson. It could be used to generate ideas before or after a lesson or a meeting. It could be used to get the students to explain in their own words a difficult concept or to check their understanding of a lesson keep in mind that you are only able to use up to 140 characters.

This could be a really simple but effective tool that could add an extra dimension to your lesson. To setup  your meeting go to Todays Meet.com. To create a room add a name for your room and select how long you would like the room open for and then make a note of the room URL in the web browser so you can access this again

Related Links
Todays Meet

E-Safety Resources

E-Safety seems to be a hot topic with learning providers. If you are thinking about writing a strategy or just looking for resources for a staff development session then take a look at the RSC -E-Safety resources. They include resources for self-assessing personal and organisational risk,raising awareness and skills with learners and staff as well as advice on meeting legal and inspection requirements. Many of the resources have originated in the schools sector and some have been specifically adapted for use in FE.

If your using technology in your organisation then you will want to encourage good practice and e -responsibility. This can be achieved by putting simple strategy's in place The Getting started pages will help you identify your risks and cost effective solutions

Related Links
E-Safety 

FE and Skills Funding

It's not to late to apply for the FE and Skills funding. If you have an idea this may be the opportunity your looking for. The focus for the programme is to improve the learner experience and increase efficiency and effectiveness of providers in line with the policies for the sector being led by each of the UK governments.

This opportunity is two-fold and offers sector providers and agencies the chance to:apply existing resources (from JISC or elsewhere) to their work and adapt them for their needs identify gaps in these resources and/or current uses made of technology in the sector and create new resources for use by other providers An initial £450,000 will be available to adapt existing resources with a further £900,000 available for development projects to address any gaps.The project will be supported by the Regional Support Centres (RSCs) who will provide advice and support for providers in developing and implementing their projects.

If you would like to apply then take a look ata the JISC Advance website where you will find the application forms and further information.

Funding bids closed in May 2012

New look Excellence Gateway

A long waited new look Excellence Gateway was launched yesterday. The Excellence Gateway has improved the look and navigation streamlining its resources. Searching is now easier. Resources for teaching can be found at Find Teaching and Learning resources. Resources for classroom use, case studies, advice and guidance on improving teaching practice – a huge range of materials created for practitioners are available here.LSIS will continue to increase the number of resources available and make them even easier to find.