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Quick commentary piece on working-class students being disadvantaged at universities that made me think of the Transitions project. Also of interest to the Graduate Attributes project: Goldsmiths' mission statement. It offers "a transformative experience, generating knowledge and stimulating self-discovery through creative, radical and intellectually rigorous thinking and practice."

Immediately made me think about someone in a College department, which will remain nameless, who proudly proclaims that they fail a large number of students...like it's some kind of badge of honour! This article would appear to hit the nail on the head but unfortunately it's a problem that's doesn't have a "simple" solution like lowering entrance standards or handing out more Oxbridge scholarships.

This looks really useful, given the popularity of the summer school - might think about which courses would be good to convert to accelerated summer courses for future years.

More ProfHacker on plug-ins for WordPress in academic settings

I like danah boyd's work on social media - her writing is very easy to read and always resists & deconstructs the simplifications that the mainstream media come up with in relation to technology and society. This talk is not as research-y as her other papers, but I like it because to a tech-novice such as myself it explains some of the principles behind social networking in easily comprehensible ways. The five properties of social media and three dynamics towards the end of the paper have been helpful for me in thinking about how to understand, and manage, the online mentoring for our social networking project.

E-book - I have not read it but it looks comprehensive

I have read it (so has Sam I think). It is well worth reading through (at least quickly) to see the range of ideas. There are some good, fairly fundamental, things to think about e.g. encouraging social spaces, flexible spaces, group learning spaces etc. There are also some videos of some british learning spaces somewhere - I'll see if I can find the link.

Useful tool for thinking about evaluation

This is a long presentation - but the middle bit is an exercise which can be skipped - about the problems of sharing good practice in education - well worth watching given that a lot of what we do is that.

At last...I found the link I was looking for. I started to watch this and got drawn into the fact that it was done with the Echo360 system that we use. It looks like a different version of the system though. I've always wondered how worthwhile video is in these cases but I found myself quite liking the video. Maybe that's because I'm a "distance learner". Perhaps video isn't as necessary for people who were at the presentation and are using this for review?

I've watched most of it so far. I also really appreciate the video - I think the inclusion of it does help you feel more like you are part of a human group. Now, I'd also appreciate the other delivery methods echo does (e.g. ipod) for reviewing something, but it is good to have options to tailor to the individual. I also like the (new?) possibility of switching the layout so that the video is the 'larger' screen some (but not all) of the time. Mostly comments on the software, but the talk was interesting too!

This is hilarious! I think anyone who has spent (too much?) time on forums can appreciate where the sentiment comes from! Maybe you should tag it with 'encouraging independent learning'... :P

This is a really good example of a pretty light touch ePortfolio 'system'. It's actually not an ePortfolio system at all!

I think this is a good example of not only a light-touch approach to ePortfolios but also a more enlightened approach to web publishing in general.

Yes - and nice to see their blogs being used - was looking at some PhD students portfolio's. (Warwick gave all students blogs a couple of years ago risky but looks as if it is paying off, nice blot software used). Raises the issue about public access - but I guess we are getting more relaxed about that?

Article about teaching in seminars - with useful student quote

Prices etc. are still a problem though... (oh, and you can't get kindles over here - brit firm plastic logic bringing one out soon though. IMHO I think that in a couple year's time, when they hit ipod-like mass market (and are a lot cheaper) these could potentially bring a lot of change/possibilities in HE. Unless something else takes over by then of course...

E-paper readers get that little bit closer to mass market. Amazon launches larger version of kindle - business and academia prime markets for larger (and annotating) readers given reports/papers/textbooks.

Very good advice - I did a photoreading course some time ago and the activation stage was crucial - ie when you put the book away and revise what you have learnt from it. The other thing that was not mentioned here which I think is interesting is to do a mindmap or list of what you already know before you read something - I don't know how students here would find it - at Londonmet they found it very difficult - and we really surprised at how much they did know - and how it made reading easier.

I found this a while ago. It's interesting but I don't actually think it's that good a report, it doesn't compare things consistently. It does have a nice section on guidelines for running a session in a virtual classroom. We should probably write our own ESD 'virtual classroom' review and this report would provide a good starting point for putting together some criteria to review against.

A review of 'virtual classroom' software done by a company called Kineo.

Oh, just thought, we could probably use Jane Hart's tool list to put together the list of tools to review.

Netvibes enables you to pull together various RSS feeds and other sources of information - you can now create multiple homepages - could be very useful, might use it for PGCAP

As at www.netvibes.com/academic-practice -what do you think?