January, 2007 | LSE Eden Centre Learning Technology Team

Launch of the Journal of Information Literacy

The Journal of Information Literacy was launched today and is edited by Sheila Webber from the University of Sheffield. Jane Secker from the LSE is the Deputy Editor.

Volume 1, Issue 1 is now available from the Information Literacy website:

http://www.informationliteracy.org.uk/JIL.aspx

JIL is an international, peer-reviewed, academic journal that aims to investigate Information Literacy (IL) within a wide range of settings. Papers on any topic related to the practical, technological or philosophical issues raised by the attempt to increase information literacy throughout society are encouraged. JIL is published in electronic format only and is an open-access title.

The aim of JIL is to investigate and to make generalised observations on how Information Literacy impacts on organisations, systems and the individual. While recognising the firm foothold already established by IL in the Higher Education sector, the editorial board, seeks to consolidate and extend this to a wider educational audience. Furthermore the board welcomes ever-wider interpretations of IL that extend its theoretical interpretation and practical use beyond the educational arena and across national frontiers.

January 31st, 2007|Uncategorized|Comments Off|

On the Horizon?

What are the emerging technologies likely to impact on learning & teaching in the next 5 years? According to the 2007 Horizon Report (PDF) we might expect the wide adoption in education of:

User-created Content
Social Networking

in the next year or less… and

Mobile Phone
Virtual Worlds

in two to three years… and

New scholarship and Emerging Forms of Publication
Massively Multiplayer Educational Gaming

in four to five years.

The report is worth a look, each section contains links to existing examples and further reading plus the del.icio.us bookmarks used by the writers. It’s quite US-focussed so perhaps add a few years on?

It’s a collaboartion between EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative and the New Media Consortium and earlier predictions are available.

I spotted it on SocialTech written by Josie Fraser who seems to be the only UK-based member of the 27-strong Horizon Advisory Board (the authors).

January 24th, 2007|Reports & Papers|3 Comments|

Integrating Drupal, Moodle and Elgg

Stumbled across this interesting, but old, article that focuses on an example integration of Drupal, Moodle and Elgg, relating to Matt’s earlier post about collaboration with Columbia and Brown. Some interesting ideas here – enabling connections between VLE, portfolio and content management systems, including public facing web sites. I would expect some political implications regarding who runs (owns) what though! If you have time it’s worth reading the discussion/comments too.

Kris.

January 18th, 2007|Tools & Technologies|Comments Off|

Easier access to full text articles via Google Scholar

LSE staff and students can now save time by getting direct access to the full text articles subscribed to by the Library when they search Google Scholar. Over Christmas a system was set in place which enables Google to recognise most of our subscriptions and give you a link through to a page where you access them using using your LSE passwords,.

To try out this new service.

Simply go to Google Scholar http://scholar.google.com and run your search!

Note if you are off campus you must log on using the LSE remote desk top http://www.lse.ac.uk/itservices/remote/termsvc/termsvc.htm so that Google recognises you as an LSE member.

January 18th, 2007|Research Skills, Tools & Technologies|Comments Off|

Languages Collaboration

Last week the Language Centre‘s Herve Didiot-Cook (Language Co-ordinator, French) hosted visitors from Columbia & Brown Universities. The main purpose of the visit was to look at ways of sharing online teaching material across institutions. Staff from CLT were heavily involved in the meetings and the presentations which included:

Use of Drupal for organsing / storing teaching material (Columbia University)
The i-Tunes U pilot (Brown University)
Use of LAMS for creating sequences of online activities (LSE)
Overview of the UK’s JORUM repository (LSE)
Overview of Fedora software and the MIDESS Project (LSE)

Staff from all the institutions are keen to work together and pilot projects will follow soon to take this forward. More later…

January 16th, 2007|Events & Workshops (LTI), Teaching & Learning|1 Comment|

Learning Futures

The Learning Futures Conference was organised by Leicester University’s Beyond Distance Research Alliance headed by Gilly Salmon. I attended the first day which included 5 keynotes and 3 discussion sessions (in reality further presentations). Overall I was a little disappointed and didn’t get the New Year inspiration I was hoping for. In a nutshell… plan for the future… look for robustness – solutions that will work in a variety of scenarios… academics haven’t embraced e-learning yet and it’s time for tansformation, risk and making a difference.

It was great to see a student presentation as one of the keynotes though. It was given by Martin Cullen and Chloe Foster from Leicester Students Union and was based on interviews they had carried out with current students.

January 16th, 2007|Conferences|Comments Off|