by digilearn | Sep 20, 2013 | General
Finally, after all the consultation, the new Learning Space has gone live…
You must have been getting pretty tired of seeing the following every time you visited:
The old Learning Space has now been renamed and moved to Learning Archive – should you need it. We highly recommend this link is only used for reference and not shared with students.
This is the first of a string of posts about change. There will be more to come, so watch this space.
by digilearn | Sep 19, 2013 | General
In response to Staff and Student requests, Learning Space has been upgraded bringing plenty of changes. These will be rolled out over the next few weeks. Most noticeably:
- A consistent approach to the online learning experience
- An improved experience through more streamlined interface
- Better support for mobile devices
- Easier resource management
Thanks to all the staff input over the summer – We still really need your input and feedback, so please stay in contact. If you are a member of staff that has missed the changes so far, please get in contact and we can get you up to date.
Book training session
You can still watch the introductory info session video here.
If you have any further questions, Damien at etsupport@falmouth.ac.uk is always available.
by digilearn | Sep 6, 2013 | General
The time approaches! The team have been beavering away implementing the new Learning Space and helping you to bring across content from the old to the new. Thank you for your co-operation and support over the summer months.
We can now announce some key dates for your diaries, so you’re aware what’s happening with the new site and the old and what to communicate to your students.
This week, those of you working on learn.falmouth.ac.uk will see some design changes which will go some way towards the look and feel of the final site.
Courses that begin on the 9th September will be automatically redirected to the new site.
On the 18th September the new site will go live and the old learning space will move to learningarchive.falmouth.ac.uk . You will still be able to access legacy course material, but this site should no longer be updated.
The week of 23rd September is launch week. The team will be visiting departments to chat to staff and students and answer any questions they may have on using the new site.
Once again, thank you for your co-operation and your enthusiasm about the ongoing development of our online learning environment, and please do contact us if you have any questions or comments.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sP3eOHbNvn8]
by digilearn | Aug 22, 2013 | General
For those of you keen to get in and explore the new Learning Space we’re offering training sessions from the 3rd of September.
To view available times and book your place you’ll need to sign up.
In return we’ll give you exclusive access to the new system and you’ll be ready to start using the Learning Space in preparation for next term.
Simple as that!
by digilearn | Aug 7, 2013 | General
You’re lying on a beach, eyes wide shut, coloured flashes fizz & ping across your eyelids. Turquoise wavelets lap over a crescent of baking, white sand. Your frosted glass, chinking with ice, is raised unsteadily and docked to your parched lips. You gulp back half a tumbler, greedily. Life is good, and you deserve this… Too good, perhaps. Somewhere deep in the foggy nethers of your soft-boiled brain, is a concern that will not be silenced.
“Did I leave the iron on, face down over fireworks? Or the dog in the back of the car at Gatwick multi-storey? Is one of the kids missing? Have you counted them since you arrived? Seen them? Do you even have any kids??” But no… It’s nothing – you reassure yourself, settling back down.
Several sunbathers look on, bemused, when you leap onto the hot sand like a scalded cat. The truth has arrived – a diamond bullet through your cortex!
“I forgot to move my Learning Space!!!”
* * *
Relax. Keep working on the mahogany tan. We’re here throughout the summer, and never more than a phone call away. So don’t be a stranger, speed-dial ET (not the lovable, fugly movie star) and ask us to help. Even if you don’t know who or what ET is (again, not the stumpy guy with lights for fingers). Educational Technology – we’re here all summer.
Book a training place, if you want to discover more about the new Learning Space.
by digilearn | Aug 2, 2013 | General
Those of you that are accessing the new Learning Space will be noticing that we’ve applied our first round of functionality improvements. Our Learning Information Designer has been working feverishly behind the scenes making the overall experience much clearer and more intuitive.
In our example module (shown after the jump), you’ll notice a few of the changes we’ve applied
In the the left side menu we’ve introduced a new menu to allow users to navigate the module by week or topic. This will come into its own at a later date when we switch to sideways navigation as opposed to the old ‘scroll of death’ top down navigation.
The right side tab in blue opens up our knowledge base. From now you won’t have to go anywhere else to ask a question or browse to see if your query has been answered by someone else. Awesome-o!
Next up you’ll see what we’ve done with editing.
Click on “Turn Editing On” and you’ll be presented with some chunky new buttons that make it easy to see what it is that you are making a change to. “Edit this section” takes you into the week/topic editor and “Add an Activity or Resource” still does what it says on the tin. Simples!
by digilearn | Jul 22, 2013 | General
Wayne Leavey, the principal at the Toronto District School Board, labels his adult generation as “digital immigrants,” describing today’s students as “digital natives” – a clan of young learners who have grown up on Facebook; smartphones all but physically adhered to their hands.
“It’s a true partnership between teachers and students. Our kids know an awful lot about technology and I think we need to embrace that in teaching, by learning from them,” says Leavey.
Thank you Wayne. Interesting viewpoint you have there… Woefully misguided, but interesting.
Consider this alternative perspective. Less populist, but closer I suspect – to the truth.
The Raspberry Pi [credit-card sized computer] may not be slick, but it has managed to stir something not seen in British computing for a generation: it’s inspired a culture of making things with computers, not just experiencing things.
“…The number of people who want to read computer science at Cambridge University has dropped by 50 percent within the last ten years. And the quality of people we’re getting is not as good as it used to be.” Says Jack Lang: Raspberry Pi Foundation chair, developer of the BBC Micro in the 1980s and Entrepreneur in Residence at Cambridge University Computer Science Laboratory.
“Kids these days download, they don’t program,” Lang says. “They need a toolkit and a curious grandmother – someone to say, ‘That’s nice dear, show me more.’”
“People are just using their computers [and phones] as devices to consume stuff that a small and shrinking pool of other people have developed. The Raspberry Pi was hatched to create a BBC Micro for this new era.”
So next time you regard youngsters as Potteresque wizards, because they can flutter their fingers across touchscreen devices. Remember the all-important distinction between consuming and creating.
Those doing the teaching these days are better at this ’technology business’ than they’re giving themselves credit for. They do after all, create for a living – as opposed to consume.
Man, those ETSupport USB micro storage devices are da bomb! *
Read more
by digilearn | Jul 19, 2013 | General
As Falmouth basks in the continuing sunshine, so Team ET have been turning it up a notch with The Move.
235 modules are now bathing in the welcoming rays of the new Learning Space, that’s well
over 1/3 of the way through and we’d like to express our thanks to all of the staff that we’ve spoken to so far.
Over the last seven days we’ve had consultation and training sessions with Foundation Art, Journalism and Marine and Natural History Photography.
Dance and Choreography is the latest course to move into the new Learning Space.
So we don’t know whether the momentum of the project is perpetuating the clement weather, but we do know that our summer move is Hot! Hot! Hot!
