Jorum

Jorum Learning and Teaching Competition Deadline Extended

noreply@blogger.com (Frank C. Manista) — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 11:35:00 +0000

The Jorum Learning and Teaching Competition deadline for entrants has been extended to 1 August 2011.

Each winner will receive a certificate, a free place in either the November 2011 or May 2012 SEDA conference, as well as for:

1st Place: £150 worth of Amazon Vouchers

2nd Place: £100 worth of Amazon Vouchers

3rd Place: £50 worth of Amazon Vouchers

When you upload your Open Educational Resource (OER) into Jorum, make sure you include the tag, "Jorumcomp11"

And remember, if you have already deposited an OER into Jorum in the past, you don't have to start from scratch; edit your resource and simply add "Jorumcomp11".

All other information remains the same, so to learn more, go to: http://jorumnews.blogspot.com/2011/06/jorum-teaching-and-learning-competition_22.html

Re-Licensing Jorum's Resources to be Fully Open

noreply@blogger.com (jorumteam) — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 07:47:00 +0000

Jorum is moving forward with a focus on Open Educational Resources (OERs). From the 1^st of August 2011, Jorum, JISC's national learning and teaching repository service, will be providing access to content available under Creative Commons (CC) licences only. We plan for content, which had either been made previously available under an Institutional licence (which expires 31 July 2011), or an Education UK licence, which restricts access only to those in the UK, to become available, in time, under CC licences following a process of re-licensing. Jorum has supported different licensing regimes over time, in response to different approaches to sharing, and as IPR awareness and the willingness to share have evolved, Jorum again has adapted . We have now chosen to simplify Jorum to help make its offering to the educational community clearer and to respond to the need to operate in a leaner financial climate. Focusing on open educational content indicates the start of Jorum's future vision. In the coming months, we will be building on this simplified approach to improve the user experience of Jorum, above all in continuing to build and develop the service as a trusted place where the UK OER community can share their resources, as well as find other openly-licensed content. If you do have requirements for us to host content under a more restrictive licence, we would be pleased to hear from you so that we can consider these possibilities as we take Jorum forward. Please contact support@jorum.ac.uk for more information.

Jorum's Helpdesk Reminder

noreply@blogger.com (Frank C. Manista) — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 08:54:00 +0000

Jorum's helpdesk has been re-located to Mimas. The email address will remain the same: "support@jorum.ac.uk", but the phone number has changed: 0161 275 6109.

All the best,

The Jorum Team

Jorum Teaching and Learning Competition at ALT-C 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Frank C. Manista) — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 08:32:00 +0000

The Jorum Learning & Teaching Competition will again run in conjunction with this year’s HUALT-C conferenceUH in Leeds, 6-8 September 2011. The panel of judges will be looking for exciting, innovative learning and teaching resources that have been created under a HUCreative CommonsUH licence to showcase at the conference. Overall winners will be presented with their prizes at the ALT-C 2011 Conference Dinner on 7 September 2011.

If you create learning and teaching resources, either individually or as a team, you are eligible to enter.

The criteria on which the resources will be judged, and details of how to enter, are listed below. Ideally, your OER should correspond in some way to the theme of this year’s conference, “Thriving in a Colder and More Challenging Climate”.

The closing date for entries is Friday 22 July 2011.

JUDGING CRITERIA

The criteria against which resources will be judged include:

Appropriateness: What is the teaching/learning problem that your resource has been designed to solve and how does it achieve its objectives?

Engagement/Innovation: What makes your resource something that other teachers/students want to use? Does it offer something that other media can’t?

Effectiveness: Is your resource an effective way for teachers/students to learn? Each submission should demonstrate how it could be embedded in teaching and learning, and how it could add value to any teaching environment.

Reusability and portability: Digital learning objects are particularly valuable when they are reusable and reconfigurable. Many different aspects may be reusable including, structure, content or pedagogical approach. In addition, how is the object described (metadata) and how is it put together (packaged)?

Note that the criteria are all about education and not about technology. Sometimes the most appropriate, engaging and effective learning and teaching resources are technologically simple; however, sometimes technology allows approaches to teaching and learning that were previously unimagined.

HOW TO ENTER

All entries are to be submitted into Jorum by going to http://www.jorum.ac.uk; registration is required to submit materials to Jorum.
All entries to be created under a HUCreative Commons Licence.U
All entries must be tagged with the keyword: Jorumcomp11 and have appropriate metadata included.
If you currently have resources already deposited into Jorum that you would like to submit as an entry, you must add the competition tag: Jorumcomp11.
A Uuseful short videoU is available to show you how to edit the existing metadata.
If you require help depositing your resources into Jorum, we have a step-by-step HUvidcastUH available, which demonstrates all you need to know. Alternatively, contact support@jorum.ac.uk.
All entries should be submitted in a way that allows them to be portable and usable independently of their original development environment. N
No individual may be named as the creator on more than three submitted resources
Judges will rank their top ten resources, which will then feature on the Jorum Facebook page to allow for additional public voting via the “like” tag. A combination of the judges’ choices and votes from the public will determine the six final winners, based on a weighted scoring system. Further details on how to vote will be released later.
The final six winning resources will be asked to present their resources at a special Jorum session at ALT-C (date and time to be confirmed).

PRIZES

There will be three prizes and three commended awards available. Each winner will also receive a certificate.

The six winners will be notified by 29 August 2011. The top three prizes will be awarded at the ALT-C 2011 Conference Dinner on 7 September 2011. The three commended awards will receive their prizes at the Jorum session at the conference.

WHAT PAST PARTICIPANTS HAVE SAID:

Click on the links below to hear what previous participants and winners have said about their projects and the Jorum Teaching and Learning Competition

Katy Jordan, “Opening Up Photosynthesis via Jorum” (2010)

Peter Hartley, “Creating and Sharing Open Access Resources with Jorum” (2009)

JUDGING PANEL

Sarah Sherman:

An experienced adviser and qualified teacher, Sarah has been working in e-learning since 2001, providing strategic advice to senior managers and academics about its introduction and application. As the BLE Service Manager, Sarah is responsible for the implementation, maintenance and development of the Bloomsbury Learning Environment (BLE) – a shared e-learning service used by Birkbeck, Institute of Education, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, the Royal Veterinary College and SOAS. The BLE service comprises a learning platform (Blackboard) and a suite of e-learning tools including Echo360 (for automatic lecture capture), Elluminate (virtual classroom software) and Turnitin (online plagiarism detection software).

Lindsey Martin:

The e-Learning Strategy and Development Officer at Edge Hill University, Lindsey’s role aims to achieve an institution-wide diffusion of technology-enhanced learning and teaching. It also includes responsibility for managing the institution’s eLearning systems and the Learning Technology Development Team. Lindsey became involved with e-learning as academic librarian developing e-learning modules to support colleagues and students. Her role expanded to become a hybrid of librarian, technologist, manager, teacher and researcher. In 2008 Lindsey managed the JISCfunded ReFORM Project http://www.edgehill.ac.uk/reformproject/index.htm which focused on development, reuse and repurposing of digital teaching and learning content. Lindsey is a member of the editorial board for the SCONUL Focus journal and secretary of the Heads of eLearning Forum Steering group (HeLF).

Peter Hartley:

Peter Hartley is Professor of Education Development at University of Bradford, Visiting Professor at Edge Hill, and a National Teaching Fellow with a longstanding interest in the applications of computer technology to student learning. This interest is reflected in his leadership of recent JISC projects (ELP1/2, ASEL, and ITS4SEA), his involvement in the award-winning LearnHigher resource on groupwork www.learnhighergroupwork.com/ ) and the multimedia software he has developed to support students’ job-hunting through interactive virtual learning (www.interviewer.org.uk), and his work with the information search tool developed at Bradford: C-Link (www.conceptlinkage.org/). He initiated the national interest group reviewing the use of virtual learning environments in UK HE, supported by ALT (LERSIG at http://lersig.alt.ac.uk/ ) and was Critical Friend to a cluster of projects in the JISC Curriculum Delivery Programme. He was co-editor and contributor to ‘Learning Development in Higher Education’ and co-writer of ‘Success in Groupwork’ (both Palgrave Macmillan, 2010) and is leading the NTFS Group Project on Programme Assessment Strategies (http://www.pass.brad.ac.uk/).

Joy E. Palmer:

The Senior Manager, Library and Archive Services at Mimas, Joy is responsible for the strategic direction of the Archives Hub and negotiating the funding and stakeholder environment. Part of her work involves developing proposals, initiating new projects, and collaborating with stakeholders across the sector – from local cultural heritage institutions to national bodies such as The National Archives, the British Library, and JISC. Joy has a diverse range of experience, with fifteen years experience teaching and research at the University level. She lived in the USA for this time, and it was at Michigan State University that she got involved in Digital Humanities project development and management. She is committed to the development of technology to help such users carry out their work in as effective and rewarding a manner as possible.

Mark Roche:

Mark has worked with WebCT and other learning technologies for many years. Prior to joining MMU as a Senior Lecturer in Learning Technologies, he was Learning Technology Development Manager at Edge Hill University. He has presented at national and international conferences on the use of technology in teaching and learning. His interests include using technologies such as audio, video and Web 2.0 tools to provide interactive learning experiences for staff and students, and he is currently involved in a university-wide project to explore the ways in which learning and the broader student experience are supported through online interaction and other technologies.

ELIGIBILITY

1. This competition is open to everyone within the UK. While it is expected that most entries will be from the UK Higher and Further education communities, entries from other education sectors are welcomed.

2. Learning and teaching resources may be submitted by individuals or teams (in which each member should be named). No individual may be named as the creator on more than three submitted resources.

3. All learning and teaching resources submitted to the competition should be deposited in Jorum, have a Creative Commons licence attached, and appropriate metadata included, aiding the judging process. We will accept links deposited into Jorum to an externally hosted resource, on the condition that they are truly reusable objects (i.e. they can be moved from its existing location) and have appropriate metadata attached when linking to the location of the resource.

4. Those who wish to enter should go to the Jorum website: http://www.jorum.ac.uk (registration is required for depositing of materials). If you have any trouble, you should contact support@jorum.ac.uk for details on how to enter.

5. Entries are nominally limited in size to no more than 50Mbytes. This limit may be adjusted upwards at the discretion of the judges.

6. All entries should be in English.

7. It is expected that for the six final shortlisted entries, a member of the creating team will attend the ALT-C conference in Leeds to demonstrate the learning and teaching resource during a showcase event. The top three winners will be asked to attend the conference dinner on the 7^thof September, where prizes will be awarded.

8. The six finalists will be notified by 29 August 2010.

9. No correspondence will be entered into, other than queries relating to submission of entries. These should be directed in the first instance to HUFrank.Manista@manchester.ac.ukUH with Jorum Learning & Teaching Competition as the subject line.

TIMETABLE

Closing date for entries: 22 July 2011

Closing date for public vote: 25 August 2011

Six finalists to be notified by: 29 August 2011

Winner and runners up announced at ALT-C: 6-8 Sept 2011

Changes to Jorum's HelpDesk

noreply@blogger.com (jorumteam) — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 09:16:00 +0000

On 27 June 2011, Jorum's helpdesk will change slightly. The email will remain the same, "support@jorum.ac.uk"; however, the phone contact will be: 0161 275 6109. Please make a note of it.

DSpace Release -- Reposting

noreply@blogger.com (Frank C. Manista) — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 10:16:00 +0000

DSpace: Jorum update makes finding relevant content easier

Originally Posted: 19 May 2011

The latest update to Jorum, the UK’s national repository for free teaching resources, helps users to more easily find content relevant to them through clearer labelling and an improved ‘advanced search’ function. Those users who share their resources through Jorum will also benefit from improved data-entry facilities.

Clearer Labelling:

‘Green tick’ symbols show users which resources they can access as soon as they start to browse or search. Where these symbols appear, a message at the top of the page explains their meaning. This message also tells users how they can access those resources without the ‘green tick’: resources which have been designed exclusively for the education community in the UK.

The Jorum team has reviewed the navigational text for several areas of the service, to clarify terms such as “HE” (Higher Education) for users in the UK and overseas. The layout of some pages has also been updated, to help users better understand which resources are stored in Jorum and which are stored elsewhere.

Improved Advanced Search:

A re-designed ‘advanced search’ function enables users to more easily search for resources which have been shared with a particular licence, such as Creative Commons (for Open Educational Resources) or Jorum EducationUK (for resources designed exclusively for the education community in the UK).

Easier Data Entry:

Jorum will now automatically separate author and keyword metadata where there is a comma; a feature which enables users to enter metadata more quickly.

Jorum seeks to continually improve its service and welcomes any feedback:

Email:	support@jorum.ac.uk
Facebook:	facebook.com/jorumteam
Twitter:	@JorumTeam

Splashes and Ripples: Synthesizing the Evidence on the Impacts of Digital Resources, Oxford University, 20 May 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Frank C. Manista) — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 08:43:00 +0000

I recently attended the conference focusing on Digital Impacts and how to measure and understand the usage of digital resources. As is always the case, we hear things we’ve heard before about the difficulties of measuring something which is relatively new and open. The report was issued on the same day as the conference, and I don’t intend to go through that with any detail, but rather focus on some key points highlighted in the talks:

It was no surprise that there have been some big splashes and there are some ripples; the task now is to understand both, and not denigrate one over the other; next task: try to make the ripples bigger. That said, it is integral to emphasise that these projects are undertaken by people passionate about digital resources, and there is an importance in embracing the small and the large and seeing the value in both in the development and dissemination of these kinds of learning materials.

As a community, regardless of the project being discussed, there is always the need to help people collaborate.This echoes what many are saying with regard to creating OERs and getting people to deposit them in repositories like Jorum; however, it is always important to be seen to be facilitating good practice, but not leading it and taking over.

Significantly, the projects developed for the report and the study had multi-tiered end-goals. For example, the first project featured, “Siobhan Davies Re-Play” created a digital database for dance with moving and still images, as well as text. It was originally for researchers in dance; however, it also became a means whereby professionals could model good practice to students with the project’s reflexive emphases, allowing the students and the professionals alike to reflect on what they were doing, all of which fed directly into some form of PDP.

Although most projects do not focus on generating any kind of money, it was shown that even some small income generation can be important and directly, as well as indirectly contributes to the overall success and impact of the project. “British History Online” allows for adverts, which brings in about £1200 per month – it isn’t a lot of money, but even that amount could keep the project going over time. In addition, keeping track of revenue over time is another way of measuring how effectively the site is used and ostensibly what its impact has been.

Project manager Eric Meyer, research fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute, said: “The question of impact is on everyone’s minds ... we argue that 'impact' is more than crude measures of number of visitors, or numbers of links … We recommend using a variety of qualitative and quantitative measures to understand the types of impacts resources have on research, teaching, learning, and for the wider public ... high-traffic sites and more specialized collections can demonstrate and enhance their impacts.”

In addition, and something very integral to Jorum’s evolution, was the ensuring that searches could be conducted even more straightforwardly and clearly; it is clear that impact is linked to understanding how people do research and what they will want to look for -- tasks important to every developer of any project, as well as any service developed to store and enhance discoverability.

“Complexity Theory, Wicked Problems, COPs and Jorum, or How I Am Trying to Over-intellectualise Everything”

noreply@blogger.com (Frank C. Manista) — Fri, 27 May 2011 14:43:00 +0000

Just by way of a brief introduction, my name is Frank Manista and I am the new community engagement officer for Jorum. I’ve worked as an academic, teaching English literature as a visiting professor in the U.S. and now here with the Open University. I’ve also worked for the Centre of Excellence in Enquiry-Based Learning (CEEBL) prior to its close last June, at the University of Manchester. I like to kick around ideas and make connections, no matter how strained sometimes, in order to see what happens. I enjoy lively discussions, and this blog is meant to be taken in that way.

Coming to the issue of OERs and national repositories relatively late in my own academic career as a university lecturer, the issues surrounding support for teaching through the use of material deposited, stored, and disseminated in an online repository, such as Jorum, seemed both alien and familiar. At the end of the day, we can only anticipate so much about what a potential user would want; on the other hand, as an academic, I am often struck by the sheer overwhelming amount of material available to me, to the point that I need to walk away. In trying to figure out the direction for Jorum as it moves and evolves, it is clear that we can only determine so much before we allow the eco-system to interact with one another, potentially creating a service we could hardly have anticipated. Who could have predicted how and why a military tool called the Arpanet would breach cultural and national barriers once it became the Internet? Who could have prefigured a non-linear, complex, multi-faceted technological system in place already by the early 90s would morph into Clouds, Web-2, APIs, and Widgets?

At the recent Open Nottingham conference in April 2011, I was struck by Greg DeKoenigsberg’s statement in his presentation that “there is no community of practice for OERs”. He made the comment as much for shock value as for a precise and telling epiphany: we cannot predict with any kind of certainty what will be needed in a service or data centre because there are simply too many variables. While it is true that there is not one, single community of practice for open educational resources, therefore certainly and necessarily means that there are, in fact, a diverse and richly varied series of open-ended, organic and complex communities of practices for any particular set of OERS in a variety of combinations and styles. There can never be one single source, answer, system for all, because the use, dissemination, integration, and interpretation of any source material is necessarily part of a complexity, whose depth and movement can only be asymptotically appreciated. Education is, indeed, a messy business, and there is some value in acknowledging and retaining that messiness.

In short, the use, dissemination, integration, and interpretation of any information must be appreciated in light of something like complexity or chaos theory, defined by Stephen Kellert in In the Wake of Chaos: Unpredictable Order in Dynamical Systems as “the qualitative study of unstable aperiodic behaviour in deterministic nonlinear dynamical systems”: “unstable” and “aperiodic” because the behaviour of the system does not repeat itself; “deterministic” meaning that the behaviour is not random, even though it may appear as such; “non-linear” suggesting that the output of the system is not directly proportional to the input; and “dynamical” positing that it changes over time. However, within this definition, Vincent Valle, Jr. also points out in “Chaos, Complexity and Deterence” that although complex, the behavioural system can stem from simple causes; its predictability may be impossible, even though it is determined; and quite significantly, although not included in the above definition, is that “iteration or feedback, in which the output of the system is used as the input in the next calculation.” It would seem that this definition is both the blessing and the bane of those who attempt to sow the wind of information and educational resources.

In the case of an online repository, although seemingly straightforward (you deposit stuff or your take stuff; what can be simpler?) the number of potential variables remains vast, whether they are involved with depositing, sharing, and re-purposing; we simply cannot connect all the potential causal variants. The idea posits a Wicked Problem, meaning that there is no, one, single “neat and tidy” answer to the issues of information and knowledge creation and use in such a complex, seemingly living system. This idea was recently echoed by Vice Chancellor of Salford University, Martin Hall, in his presentation, “Toward the Triumph of the Commons” at OER11 on the 13^th of May 2011. Although it might appear, when we think of “the commons” that individuals are inherently self-interested and will most likely destroy, in the name of self- interest, the thing which is valued by the entire community, the issue of open educational resources and knowledge production and sharing simply do not fit into that reductionist paradigm. For one, knowledge “is non-exlcudable”, meaning we cannot use it up. Citing Manuel Castellis, with the rise of the Digital Revolution, of which repositories like Jorum are a direct result, “knowledge is available everywhere, anytime, in any quantity and at a diminishing price,” and OERs always already successful despite the seeming tragedy of a loss of the communal space. The new public university will need an open access repository at its core, with research, resources and data freely and openly available. There is even the possibility of revenue generation, according to Hall, but from the value-added rather than rents and tolls, and it remains the task of those who work in these fields to ensure that opportunities are widened and deepened rather than creating greater restrictions. As I was listening to the inspiring talk, I realised that, in much the way I’d been planning this blog, it was yet another example of a complex, non-linear, indeed potentially living system which offered the greatest good and could potentially reinvigorate the idea of the university as a place of public scholarship and knowledge production.

So how Jorum seeks to (re)present itself in light of this concept involves some exciting steps: we are set out to be both national, meaning big, and agile, two relative states which do not always sit comfortably with one another – both responsive to the needs and suggestions of the communities who come to us, yet anticipative and lithe enough to create innovations for the possibilities which have yet to arise. All in all, what I am repeatedly hearing from the discussions covering OERs, COPS, and repositories is that we need a both/and approach always; we cannot simply say “we are going to be X” and leave it at that. It isn’t so much that we need to “change for change’s sake” as overly simplistic leadership models often suggest, but that we know definitely that change is coming and we can try to figure out what that might mean, accepting that we can only get so close; like the people in the back of Plato’s cave, we see the shadows. However, put another way, although we may see through a glass darkly, that doesn’t mean we are blind and deaf: we are watching, we are listening, we are responding, and we are changing and will continue to do so and serve both the current and future communities of teachers and practitioners.

The Jorum of the future will enable users to search, store, find, and discuss important ideas surrounding OERs and pedagogy more easily and allow for improved navigation and discovery; we are looking to deepen our relationships across HE and FE institutions and create a strong foundation of robust, sound, challenging, and collegial collaboration with practitioners across the UK and throughout the world.

Updates to the Jorum API and the API in action

noreply@blogger.com (Frank C. Manista) — Fri, 27 May 2011 10:09:00 +0000

An API or Application-Programming Interface is a set of programming instructions and standards for accessing a Web-based software application or Web tool. A software company releases its API to the public so that other software developers can design products that are powered by its service.

An API is a software-to-software interface, not a user interface. With APIs, applications talk to each other without any user knowledge or intervention. When you buy movie tickets online and enter your credit card information, the movie ticket Web site uses an API to send your credit card information to a remote application that verifies whether your information is correct. Once payment is confirmed, the remote application sends a response back to the movie ticket Web site saying it's OK to issue the tickets.

Some examples of APIs in action and user benefits:

Amazon releases its API to web developers so that they can directly and more easily access Amazon’s product information. Shoppers don’t have to go into Amazon to see what they can purchase there; developers can either embed the code for that widget or they can make sue of the API to get data from Amazon which they can then present to users in another website

The Jorum widget is another example a tool which makes use of an API. The widget, like the example from Amazon above, is a piece of embeddable code, which any users can put on their websites or in their VLEs, like Blackboard: http://www.jorum.ac.uk/widget. The widget then links right to the available resources stored in Jorum, or even more specifically, to the resources of that particular developer, academic or practitioner.

In terms of the technical changes, Version 0.3 of the API allows developers to access the following data feeds:

A Collections list (as XML, JSON, and JSONP)
Resources (as XML, XML with DC metadata, JSON, JSONP, and RSS
By submitter (all resources with no pagination)
By author (with pagination)
By keyword (with pagination)
By title (with pagination)
By simple search (no pagination but the user can specify a maximum number of resources returned)
There is an option of no pagination for any given feed
The results default is set at 50
The results limit is 250

Further information on the Jorum API can be found at http://www.jorum.ac.uk/help/guides/jorum-api.

New Jorum Story - Skills in all the right places

noreply@blogger.com (Frank C. Manista) — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 14:56:00 +0000

In this story we speak to Vivien Sieber, Head of Learning and Research Support and Development, based in the Library at the University of Surrey, who discusses just how she has benefited from shared resources. Her remit was to find and repurpose e-learning materials for the “Skills Portal” - a growing collection of web materials for open-study; at your own pace, in your own time, from anywhere.

We discover the processes taken place in finding and reusing resources, and the added value of repurposing materials already available.

http://tinyurl.com/Jorumstories (See Story 4)

New book featuring Jorum: Teaching Quantitative Methods: Getting the Basics Right

noreply@blogger.com (Frank C. Manista) — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 14:09:00 +0000

Teaching Quantitative Methods: Getting the Basics Right: Geoff Payne, Malcolm Williams: SAGE the natural home for authors, editors and societies.

This book includes a chapter on Jorum - Jorum - a National Service for Learning and Teaching, written by Dr Jackie Carter, Jorum Co-Director.

Looking for a seaside location for the bank holiday weekend?

noreply@blogger.com (Frank C. Manista) — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 13:30:00 +0000

Q Projects
Tyne Metropolitan College

Take this quick Powerpoint quiz, to see if you know where all the UK beach locations are - all in time for the bank holiday weekend!

http://resources.jorum.ac.uk/xmlui/handle/123456789/14801

Making the Creative Process Visible

noreply@blogger.com (Frank C. Manista) — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 13:17:00 +0000

Making the Creative Process Visible
Natasha Mayo, University Wales Institute (UWIC)

Making the Creative Process Visible, brings together a set of five short films documenting the development of ideas in the work of a cross-section of students from the BA and MA ceramic programs in UWIC. The films show the students negotiation of thought, and seeks to illustrate tendencies and patterns in the ways ideas are developed. Within an educational context, the identification of these forms of development can provide a toolbox of possibilities to be altered or rejected at any stage in the development to generate and keep ideas mobile.

This resource achieved third place in the Jorum Learning and Teaching Competition 2010.

http://resources.jorum.ac.uk/xmlui/handle/123456789/2028

Light up your life. How light can create theatrical effects.

noreply@blogger.com (Frank C. Manista) — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 13:12:00 +0000

Coloured Lighting Effects
M. Murray, L. Jones

Light up your life with this great interactive learning object. The resource is aimed at students wishing to study the dynamics of how lighting effects can transform the way we look at a scene. Particular attention is paid to exploring how light can create theatrical effects, or to depict the time of day or year. The use of lighting gels is the main focus, and students can use the resource to experiment with the effects of different combinations of gels. Health and safety issues are also considered. An accompanying assessment test consolidates what students have learned, and a number of additional tools are available to enhance their experience of the resource. These include a magnifying glass, notepad, calculator and colour changer.

http://resources.jorum.ac.uk/xmlui/handle/123456789/14177

JISC CETIS OER Technical Mini Projects call

noreply@blogger.com (Frank C. Manista) — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 13:39:00 +0000

Call for applications for three OER Technical Mini Projects, detailed by Phil Barker:

http://blogs.cetis.ac.uk/philb/2011/03/02/jisc-cetis-oer-technical-mini-projects-call/

Jorum e-review (March 11) - Let's get creative with Jorum

noreply@blogger.com (Frank C. Manista) — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 09:27:00 +0000

The March edition of the Jorum e-review is out now, bringing all the latest news from last month. Check out the featured resources, providing inspiration to getting creative in the classroom. We also discuss the Jorum widgets; feature an extremely helpful video with Jason Miles-Campbell (JISC legal), who shares his views on the various types of licensing, and much more.

Click the image below to view the newsletter.

Jorum widgets march 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Frank C. Manista) — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 11:15:00 +0000

Check out this SlideShare Presentation, on the new Jorum embeddable widgets, presented at JISC11, Monday 14th March:

Jorum widgets march 2011

View more presentations from Jorum Resources.

Your guide to embedding a CC licence to your resources

noreply@blogger.com (Frank C. Manista) — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 15:56:00 +0000

Naomi Korn (Strategic Content Alliance IPR Consultant) has created a very useful briefing paper on how to embed a Creative Commons (CC) licence to your resources.

Examples are provided for various types of materials, such as:

Website and web pages
MS Office Documents (Excel, Word, Powerpoint)
Podcasts and other audio/visual resources
SS Feeds and ATOM

The paper also comments on the benefits of using a Creative Commons licence, and things to consider before embedding.

Filtering resources made easy

noreply@blogger.com (Frank C. Manista) — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 16:26:00 +0000

We heard that you wanted to search for resources shared only under a Creative Commons (CC) licence - well now you can do just that.

Select the Open Resources radio button above the search box (found at the top of the Jorum webpages) to filter resources shared as open educational resources. This means you now have the choice to view all resources available in Jorum, or just by those shared openly.

Jorum e- review (Feb 11) - your ticket to the latest resources

noreply@blogger.com (Frank C. Manista) — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 11:38:00 +0000

The February issue of Jorum e-review is out now.

This month we take a look at just a few resources based on travel and engineering, and bring you the latest news from the Jorum team.

Useful wiki

noreply@blogger.com (Frank C. Manista) — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 15:16:00 +0000

We thought this wiki might be a useful source of information to our users: (produced by Wawasan Open University Malaysia) http://oerworkshop.pbworks.com.

About:

This web site has been designed to support a self-directed, activity-based approach to understanding how open educational resources (OER) can be used to support teaching and learning in open and distance learning contexts.

Each module contains both information and activities. The idea is for you to learn about OER concepts by exploring the information, web links and media resources within the modules, and then for you to collect and manage OER resources that make the most sense for you in your personal or institutional context.

Share openly, or just with UK education

noreply@blogger.com (Frank C. Manista) — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 17:05:00 +0000

Noticed something different about Jorum today? We have made some changes to the way you use Jorum.

From today you can:

Share resources within UK Education only

We recognise that the Creative Commons licences aren't suitable for all our users; many want to only share within the UK, hence why we have released our very own licence - Jorum EducationUK. This Licence allows users to access and use a resource in UK Education for any non-commercial purposes that are conducive to education, teaching, learning, private study and/or research.

Search for resources shared under all licences simultaneously
All Jorum resources are now available to view on one single platform. This means that when you search for resources (via our new search box), you will be presented with one single list of resources, shared under our different licence options – Creative Commons and Jorum EducationUK

See a simpler main navigation
We've simplified our main navigation to emphasise how simple Jorum is. Through Jorum you can Find, Share and Discuss learning and teaching resources.

Our navigation now reflects that. We've also consolidated our help and support materials into a new updated Help section. The help section is split into frequently asked questions, and further expanded guides, just in case you need to know more.

We hope that these new updates reflect our dedication to evolving the Jorum service, as we continue to focus on our user experience and surfacing the superb content within.

To find out more about our recent updates, take a look at: Changes:February 2011.

We'd love to hear your thoughts; please do tell us:

Email: support@jorum.ac.uk

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/JorumTeam

Twitter: http://twitter.com/JorumTeam

Resource discovery - direct from your website

noreply@blogger.com (Frank C. Manista) — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 15:22:00 +0000

The Jorum team has been developing a set of embeddable widgets which will allow you to view and find relevant learning and teaching resources, and receive updates when new resources are added. The widgets will also enable you to share and promote your own institution’s resources – all directly from your own website, and with minimal technical effort. The widgets are supported by the Jorum team, and will be updated automatically, without the need for any upgrades as new features are developed.

A widget builder will give users the option to select the type of widget they would like. The widgets will include:

Search (listing resources from a particular search criteria)
User (listing resources uploaded by a particular user)
Collection (listing resources for a particular collection)
Dynamic collection (a drop down list of all collections. Choosing a collection will list the resources available).

This is currently being tested by a number of test groups to obtain feedback. If you are interested in participating in these tests, please contact support@jorum.ac.uk.

The Jorum team will also be demonstrating the widget at the JISC Conference in March:
http://tinyurl.com/jorum-jisc11

Further updates and release dates will be available shortly.

Jorum e-review (Jan 11) - a healthy dose of resources and news from Jorum

noreply@blogger.com (Frank C. Manista) — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 14:51:00 +0000

The January issue of Jorum e-review is now available to view. This edition brings some of the new and exciting developments due for release over the coming months. We also highlight a few learning and teaching resources found within Jorum, based around this months theme - health, medicine and nutrition.

JorumOpen celebrates 1st Birthday today!

noreply@blogger.com (Frank C. Manista) — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 16:14:00 +0000

It has been 12 months to the day since the release of JorumOpen, which has grown to become the vast collection of Open Educational Resources (OER) you see today.

JorumOpen now hosts or points to over 11,300 freely available learning and teaching resources. Through JorumOpen anyone, anywhere can find, use and repurpose learning and teaching resources - all from one convenient place.

"Being in Jorum means that your resources are more visible in Google searches. And who can tell what the educational impact of that might be? By publishing your materials as open educational resources, their educational benefits have the potential to be felt by learners far beyond their original learning contexts. It’s impossible to predict how big an impact a resource can have, but it’s almost unethical not to share it and deprive other learners of its potential"

Katy Jordan, The University of Cambridge

Feedback throughout the year has been extremely encouraging. We have learnt a lot along the way, and by listening to ours users and gathering feedback, we will keep developing and evolving the service. We know there is still work to do, and would like to express our thanks to all our ‘finders’ and ‘sharers’ of resources, for your continued backing, help and advice shared.

Jorum continues to work closely with the JISC Open Educational Resources programme, and hosts or points to all outputs from this programme. Thanks to this programme, Jorum users will see many more of the most exciting and innovative resources from across the country being shared openly.

“JorumOpen’s growing collection of resources shows the enthusiasm for sharing openly licensed teaching materials”

Amber Thomas, Programme Manager, JISC Innovation Group

The Jorum team will continue to actively promote resources shared from all our depositors, to help further raise awareness of their excellent work.

Development work continues; with many more changes being unveiled soon…watch this space!