SHARE… now on iTunes October 14, 2009
Posted by sarahhorrigan in : Comms, Podcast , add a comment
Podcast Wallpaper, OllyHart, Flickr,
Since putting our first podcast onto the site last week, we have also taken the step of submitting our Podcast feed to iTunes. We were notified last week that our Podcasts have been accepted and as we add to our site, you will be able to search iTunes for NTUSHARE and you’ll find us! If you want to go direct to our Podcasts on iTunes, then you can do that as well.
What’s the benefit of getting our Podcasts on iTunes? Well, without any additional work on our part, we now have a wider means for disseminate our project Podcasts. They’re searchable, they’re easily available for download, they can be subscribed to for free via the iTunes store and they become a rich, mobile resource for us all.
Should you want to bypass iTunes and subscribe to our Podcasts using another RSS aggregator such as Google Reader… then feel free to use http://www.ntushare.org/feed/podcast/ . Should you want to know more about feeds, subscribing, aggregation and all that sort of thing… if you’re able to make the next D&I meeting on October 22nd between 9 and 10 am… then I’ll be giving a short, plain English overview of it all.
Now we just need to get producing those Podcasts! 
Interview with Sue McKnight, Project Owner October 5, 2009
Posted by sarahhorrigan in : Comms, Podcast , 1 comment so far
Professor Sue McKnight, Director of Libraries and Knowledge Resources
Early on in the SHARE project, the Communications Work Package group decided that we would interview some of the key people in the SHARE project. We felt it would help set the scene, be a great record of the project and be a useful way to communicate the different views of the project from various members of the Project Team.
One of the first people I spoke to was Professor Sue McKnight, who is the Project Owner for the SHARE project. The following is the recording of the interview I had with Sue back in July. In it, Sue discusses the background to the project, some of her hopes for the outcomes of SHARE and some of the issues surrounding the cultural change which is needed for the successful use of the learning object repository.
This is the first in our series of SHARE podcasts and we hope that you enjoy it! Click on the play arrow to start listening…
Download the mp3 file of this Podcast
.Podcast length: 15 minutes, 24 seconds.
To skip around within the audio track click on the grey/ white progress bar between the pause and volume button.
We’ve also provided a transcript of the interview for you to download in Microsoft Word format.
SHARE acronym announced July 3, 2009
Posted by sarahhorrigan in : News , add a commentOn 17th June we held our first project team meeting and, amongst other things, we made the decision that we will be using the acronym “SHARE” for our JISC and Desire2Learn supported Repository Enhancement project. The acronym aims to capture the spirit of the project and stands for:
Supporting
Harnessing and
Advancing
Repository
Enhancement
It will be used to identify the project both internally and externally and can also be extended to become the project’s unique social media ‘tag’: NTUSHARE.
Social Media Aggregation of services using the NTUSHARE acronym
Why the need for a unique tag? Well, it allows us to easily find and pull together all comments, postings, resources, videos etc connected with the project which is excellent for the purposes of collation and sharing. The NTUSHARE tag works regardless of the online service the resource originally came from. Every time you find something project-related which you want to share or if you want to make a comment on / about the project, just tag it with “NTUSHARE” and we can pull all of the project-related communications into one place for everyone to access. On Twitter, just use NTUSHARE as a ‘hashtag‘ in the form of #NTUSHARE and again, we can bring that together with everything else project-related using services such as Friendfeed, Cover It Live or NetVibes.
For more about tagging, you might like to read this article about hashtags on the Twitter fan wiki or this article on Tags & Folksonomies: What are they and Why Should you Care?
JISC Project success June 4, 2009
Posted by eLearning @ NTU in : News , add a comment“Integrating process and technology development for effective repository management”
Nottingham Trent University has attracted more than a quarter of a million pounds that will enable us to integrate processes and technology to develop effective management of the Learning Object Repository (LOR) in their virtual learning environment, the Nottingham Trent University Online Workspace (NOW).
JISC will support the project for the next two years with £210,000. A further £50,000 in kind has been committed by Desire2Learn who are investing in technical development.
This partnership draws on the work of the University’s LOR Working Group: Helen Adey, Trevor Pull, Jon Tepper, Helen Boulton, Vicki McGarvey, Barry Gregory, Lisa Warburton and Angela Trikic, who have carried out a range of tasks to prepare for the release of the LOR tool in NOW for the 2009-10 academic year.
Dr Trikic, Head of Educational Development, described how, building on the success of the Institutional Repository (IRep), the University is extending repository services to include a wider range of objects associated with learning and teaching. “For example, colleagues from the School of Animal, Rural & Environmental Sciences can look forward to using the LOR for resources being developed to improve science laboratory practical sessions,” Angela explained, adding, “There is a wide number of research methods modules that are delivered by most schools and there is likely to be a common pool of resources that each of these courses use..” Angela described how the LOR can be set up to support sharing across the University to maximise the use of research methods resources and to help reduce duplication of effort.
Programme Handbooks offer another example. Angela: “These are used by a suite of modules. By storing it in the LOR, the learning room for each module can link to the handbook, which will reduce the need for printed copy as well as economising on electronic storage.”
Here are some key highlights of the repository enhancement project:
• further develop the Institutional Repository and embed its use and content population into the life and work of academics at NTU
• collaborate with Desire2Learn to work on the integration of the Learning Object Repository with IRep and external repositories such as Jorum
• tackle metadata mapping and metadata application profiles for the description of different types of content
• develop policies for the sharing and licensing of content within the LOR, the IRep and National Repositories such as JORUM.
Fostering change in academic learning and teaching practice
The project has a significant cultural change goal and aims to promote and enhance content creation, facilitate learning and teaching resource sharing and management. By developing the interface between IRep, the VLE, LOR and external repositories such as JORUM we extend the range of learning and teaching resources that NTU can draw on, improve our capability to re-use and re-purpose these resources and contribute to a global bank of knowledge.
Angela explained that there are many learning and teaching resources currently locked up in personal storage devices, module locations on the VLE, and other less reliable media. “Within NTU there is a wealth of tried and tested resources and our academics are continuously building on this solid base and enhancing their teaching practice. Sharing these resources helps everyone, our academics boost their reputation, our students reap the benefits of a diverse learning experience and the institution is enriched as a whole,” she concluded.
