What I’ve starred this month: November 28, 2010

Here’s some posts which have caught my attention this month:

• How I Planned a Successful Unconference in 6 hours – and You Can Too – November 27, 2010 – Some great tips on how to agilely setup a conference. In particular I liked the use of the free-for-free events service Eventbrite to handle payment by sponsors
• Bristol University ChemLabS celebrated by JISC Times Higher Education Award – November 26, 2010
• The Scottish Government – Technologies for Learning Strategy – November 27, 2010 – this is for Schools but there will no doubt be information/ resources/ ideas for the HE sector. This post includes link to the www.technologiesforlearningstrategy.org.uk blog which is documenting the process
• Google Scholars School Report: Dramatic Improvement in Performance – November 26, 2010 – Short note by AJCann highlighting highlighting research into the increased coverage of Google Schoolar: “as of 2010, Google Scholar covers 98 to 100 percent of scholarly journals from both publicly accessible Web contents and from subscription-based databases that Google Scholar partners with. In 2005 the coverage of the same databases ranged from 30 to 88 percent”
• UCISA 2010 Survey of Technology Enhanced Learning – November 25, 2010 – “10. Outsourced provision and support for TEL services is very limited across the sector. It has only really been considered for the provision of student email services and, to a lesser degree, support for VLEs.
  11. Web 2.0, mobile computing, e-assessment and support for multimedia and lecture capture are identified as the leading new demands on institutional support.”
• Google Apps Now Has 10 Times More Features! – November 19, 2010 – Some staff in institutions who have outsourced student email to Google Apps for Education must be rubbing their hands together as Google makes more of their services available as part of the Apps bundle, but I’m sure many will be disappointed when they find out their admin has switched them on. There was a separate announcement from Google this month on Google Cloud Connect which allows users to sync Office documents with Google Docs 
• Research on Mobile Learning – November 18, 2010 – It always seems like the Horizons Reports bill mobile as happening now or within the next year. More now than never this prediction seems to be true with the rise of cloud storage and cloud processing. Graham Attwell summarises recent research in mobile learning
• Using QR Codes in Libraries – November 18, 2010 – From my colleague Carol Walker some great ideas on using QR codes in Libraries 
• Tuition fees: widening the gap between England and Scotland – November 15, 2010 – Article on the Guardian site highlighting what might happen if there was a big tuition fee divide between Scotland and England. The danger being Scottish students may find it harder to find places at home as English students find a cheaper place to study
• More on Disqus and accessibility – November 13, 2010 – Disqus is an increasing popular web service which glues related comments from across different web services/social networks. This post highlights a recently commissioned BIS report  looking at the accessibility issues of the Disqus service
• Open Study Becomes More Open – November 12, 2010 – Haven’t had much time to look at this one yet but thought worth sharing: “Open Study is a free service that allows students to create online study groups. Students can create groups to share notes and ask each other questions.”
• Social media helps universities attract the right students – November 11, 2010 – Post highlighting the findings of the JISC funded ‘student expectations of university’ project
• Queen Margaret University pioneers healthy iPhone application » The Journal – November 10, 2010
• DevCSI ePub/eBook Hackday – November 10, 2010 – Free event to be held on 13-14 December in Bristol. BTW Registration for dev8D 2011 is now open: http://dev8d.org/
• The Lamb Formula = Good enough? – November 10, 2010 – “The good enough approach suggests that using fast, cheap and out of control technologies in education is at least good enough, and may be superior in that offers new ways of working.”
• Universities lead the way to the ‘big society’ – November 9, 2010 linking volunteer work, work experience and ‘big society’
• Responding to “Student perspectives on technology – demand, perceptions and training needs” : Lawrie’s Work Blog – November 9, 2010 – Lawrie Phipps take on the NUS report commissioned by HEFCE arguing that “as the recommendations stand they are pushing us back to when technology was, in places, driving learning and teaching”
• Scotland Trailblazes the Use of HTML5 in Museums – November 8, 2010
• Commoditising location – UK tourist agency’s Facebook Places app shows the way – November 8, 2010 – ideas here applicable (and I’m sure they already are) for education, particularly pre entry.