Technology: at the heart of education and research is the title and theme of this year’s JISC conference to be held in London on 12-13 April 2010.
Bill St. Arnaud, P. Eng. President, St. Arnaud-Walker and Associates Inc, and Martin Bean, Vice Chancellor of The Open University, will be giving the keynote speeches, both bringing different perspectives on putting ‘technology at the heart of education and research’.
The conference will see experts from across education and research answer questions, solve delegates’ problems and showcase the latest examples of how using a simple solution can save time, money and resources as well as in many cases, create inter-department working.
Among the topics are:
See the Conference Website for further information.
JISC TechDis is pleased to announce the new TechDis Toolbar. This free application can be installed on a website or downloaded onto an individual PC, working seamlessly across all operating systems to provide significant benefits for everyone using the internet, especially those involved in education or with a disability.
The new JISC TechDis Toolbar provides a range of productivity and accessibility tools and aids to help users customise the way they view and interact with web pages. Features include a text to speech function, spell checking and dictionary facilities, and a feature for gathering referencing information within a web page. It also provides simple ways to adjust the magnification or font used on web pages.
See the JISC Techdis website for the full story.
JISC’s annual review has been published online and shows 12 months of achievement across innovation, education and research. Among the highlights of the year are:
Read the JISC Annual Review online.
JISC is publishing advice to help IT managers and information officers cut carbon emissions as UK universities and colleges come under mounting pressure from government, regulatory sources and the public, to cut their carbon emissions. Its ‘Top Tips for a sustainable IT department’, identifies 10 simple steps for saving energy and money, whilst still responding to users’ needs:
1) Enable PC Powerdown for devices not in use.
2) Investigate moving to thin-client devices or more efficient thick-client devices.
3) Extend life of equipment.
4) Consolidate and virtualise servers. Get servers out of departments and offices into properly designed data centres.
5) Implement Hot/Cold aisle separation and containment. Look at the possibility of direct cooling of racks.
6) Install more efficient power supply units (PSU) and uninterruptible power supply systems (UPS).
7) Consolidate printers and enable duplex and monochrome printing by default.
8) Reduce travel by maximising the opportunities for remote conferencing and flexible and home working.
9) De-duplicate and rationalise data storage.
10) Rationalise and simplify IT systems and architectures
See the JISC website for further information and download the report.
JISC Techdis has mapped their highly respected resources to ITQ units, bringing them together to form ITQ for Accessible IT Practice. Find out more details on the JISC Techdis Moodle (http://tinyurl.com/techdisitq - log in using the "guest" button).
Children will be encouraged to follow an online "Green Cross Code" and block and report inappropriate content. The "Zip it, Block it, Flag it" campaign is intended for use by schools, retailers and social networks, although it will be up to individual sites to choose how they use it. A large scale public information campaign based around the slogan will be mounted from February 2010.
Read more about the Safeguarding topic
For those new to writing and developing strategy, a new JISC briefcase of resources has been launched to support people through the increasing scale of challenges facing universities and colleges.
The 'strategy infokit' produced by the JISC-funded advisory service JISC InfoNet covers all aspects of the strategy process: from articulating your institution's vision and the characteristics of a good mission statement, to advice on effective use of key performance indicators and a checklist for what to monitor.The advice is based on the premise that planning and implementing strategic activity is something which affects everyone who works within an institution.
While members of the senior management team are an obvious and important audience for this resource, those responsible for strategic operations within faculties, departments and teams will welcome the practical, hands-on approach taken in the guide and the 'pick and mix' style of tools and techniques.
Read the latest issue of the RSC's access and inclusion newsletter for information on current assistive technology and learning support issues and find out about the latest services on offer from the RSC.
In the Autumn 09 Issue you will find articles including:
- Enabling technology features
- Guidelines for creating accessible content
- Our round up of Inclusion Blogs
- Resources to support interactivity
- TechDis Update
- AccessApps update
and much more.....
Download the pdf (print version)
Download the DAISY version
Read the latest issue of the RSC Scotland South and West's newsletter to find out what is happening at the RSC, including all the training and services currently on offer.
In the Winter 09 Issue you will find articles including:
- A few of our Favourite things - our top IT products of 2009.
- JISC Advance bringing together JISC services.
- Working in Partnership - the latest JISC publication.
- e-books for FE project
Download the pdf (print version).
Download the Word version.
Download the DAISY version.
Throughout the year just gone the two Scottish RSCs have sifted through the virtual highways and byeways to bring you the best and most interesting new technologies to add sparkle and value to teaching and learning, publishing them in our fortnightly RSC NewsFeed.
We thought we’d prepare this small but action-packed publication, which brings together some of the best and most interesting items which appeared in NewsFeed in 2009.
Get the Best of NewsFeed 2009 here.
The RSC NewsFeed service is packed full of information and news on ICT and its uses in education and beyond. It is blog based which means you have the chance to comment on any item that takes your interest. In addition all items are archived and the archive is searchable. So you want to find out everything we've mentioned this year on e-assessment? It's only a search away. Take me there.!
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