After a bit of a break, we held a meeting of the Scottish Learning Technology Network on the 10th of March. We were delighted to welcome Paula Philpott who was visiting from South Eastern Regional College (SERC) and had agreed to stop by and deliver a presentation to the group.
It was a good turnout given the very short notice and we appreciated members stepping up to present (even with the odd *cough* technical hitch). We’re looking forward to holding more regular meetings (perhaps 3 or so a year) interspersed with workshops on a range of topics. One thing that we did discuss briefly was a possible change to the name of the group; although Scottish Learning Technology Network does accurately describe us, the name (or the acronym SLTN) doesn’t really roll off the tongue. So, we have received a few alternative suggestions:
We might put this to a vote at the next meeting … I do love a nice acronym; we’re looking to set up a Sharepoint/Office 365 group, which is probably going to be called the Scottish sHarepoint User Group (SHUG) – how good is that? 😉
Pressed for time as she had a plane to catch, Paula gave us an overview of the work she had carried out at the college to engage staff with a technology-enhanced approach to teaching and learning via a ‘whole college’, bottom up/top down approach. Although she didn’t have time to go into much detail, there’s a range of really interesting initiatives covered in the slides – and Paula was happy to take any follow-up questions, her contact details are on the last slide.
Oh, and congratulations from all of us on being awarded an MBE for services to Further Education! [Note: Paula didn’t bring this up, we only found out about it from another source – when we mentioned it, she seemed quite embarrassed and stressed that it recognised the wider contribution that staff had made to the process than any one person.]
This presentation from Keith Smyth covered his work on the 3E Framework, where it started, how’s it’s developed, and who’s adopted the model. You can view the full set of Keith’s slides here.
You might notice that this presentation comes as a video (taken on a ‘Swivl’, kindly loaned to us by FVC); we do have a few more recordings from the day, but I’m not sure if we’re going to be able to share those; there’s a few issues we have to overcome. Something to work on for the next meeting!
John Casey delivered an interesting update on his Clipper project, which is under development at the moment, but soon to release a new version with improved interface. The project definitely holds a lot of promise and we’ll be interested to hear how things develop.
Eileen Imlah came along to share how she’s been using technology to support students (and staff). We had a little difficultly getting to grips with the ClickShare platform – my fault as I didn’t immediately grasp how the system connected to the screen. However, we were very grateful for Eileen putting up with my technical failings (sigh). The slides give you an overview of the technology being used at the college in a support context.