Year: 2012

Punk rock lecture

Bring Your Own Device (BYOD): How Staff are Responding to the Mobile Technologies Their Students Bring With Them to Class

Punk rock lecture

The end of the year yields an opportune time to reflect upon various teaching innovations that have been discussed, written about, and presented earlier in the year, but which have not yet been included on the Educational Vignettes website. In this, the first of a series of end-of-year posts, I offer some thumbnail sketches of…Continue Reading Bring Your Own Device (BYOD): How Staff are Responding to the Mobile Technologies Their Students Bring With Them to Class

Moodle 2: The look and feel of it

As the case with all SLE Working groups, the Moodle look and feel working group have also been busy paving the way to a new look and feel of Moodle with the emphasis on making it a good ‘user‘ experience. All of this work is being done taking into account schools and their requirements as…Continue Reading Moodle 2: The look and feel of it

New Learning Spaces: Method of Evaluation

This is a continuation of ideas being developed around the evaluation of learning spaces at City University London. At City University London there is a need to better understand the effectiveness of new learning spaces that are being created. City University London is currently engaged in the redevelopment of its estate. A major part of this is the re-conceptualization…Continue Reading New Learning Spaces: Method of Evaluation

Talking Multimedia in Education

As posted in Educational Vignettes  one of the investments in our Strategic Learning Environment(SLE) is about using multimedia to support and better our teaching and learning practices at City University London. This post looks at how multimedia has evolved in Education. This is combined with a quick look at some of the external and internal…Continue Reading Talking Multimedia in Education

Moodle 2: How file management will work

As posted in Educational Vignettes  Moodle 2 is coming to City University London for academic year 2013-14 and one of the changes it brings is in file management. This post looks at the improvements in file management with Moodle 2 and is the first in a series of posts on how the investment in educational technologies will provide you…Continue Reading Moodle 2: How file management will work

Moodle 2: Coming to City University in Spring 2013

As has already been mentioned in Educational Vignettes, City University London’s educational technologies are receiving an investment boost. Moodle, being the chief technology we use, is getting the greatest investment, with it undergoing an upgrade (to move to version 2, rather than the 1.9 we are currently on) and a a re-design with the help…Continue Reading Moodle 2: Coming to City University in Spring 2013

OPEN HOUSE: AG24 Evaluation was successful

AG24 Open House image of props

This post is written by Ajmal Sultany and Anise Bullimore. AG24 (rooms A and B) are new learning spaces created at City University London as part of the Learning Spaces project. The two rooms have been designed as flexible learning spaces that enable education with computers or laptops or students’ own devices. As part of our ‘post-occupancy’ evaluation…Continue Reading OPEN HOUSE: AG24 Evaluation was successful

Talking MOOCs

Recently interest in MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) has moved from the learning technology community into the popular press. Some of the coverage has been almost apocalyptic in tone. http://cogdogblog.com/2012/07/17/mooc-hysertia/ This post, the first of a series of three on this topic, aims to provide an introduction to MOOCs. The next two posts will cover…Continue Reading Talking MOOCs

Chromakey

a dog against bluescreen

Chromakeying is a technique where a particular colour in video footage is removed and replaced with another video or image. Examples include weather broadcasts where a plain background behind the presenter is replaced with a weather map. The colour being removed can be any hue, but typically it is blue (blue screen) or more commonly green…Continue Reading Chromakey

Bradford, Animation & City University London

Wallace & Gromit plastercine models

Video, when made well, can be very good at engaging students in a subject and explaining concepts quickly and informatively. However, the realism of standard video can be a little dry and unsuitable for demonstrating how processes work. This is where animation can be invaluable: due to it’s artistic style and character it can be…Continue Reading Bradford, Animation & City University London