Autumn Volume 1 • Issue 4

the termly newsletter produced by RSC East Midlands

Welcomefrom the Editor

As the new academic year gets underway, I am pleased to announce that RSCEast Midlands has been granted JISC funding for another three years.

This will enable us to continue to work alongside you all, offering you guidance and support as the use

of ILT becomes more widespread in the teaching and learning process. On a personal note, I am

particularly happy to be given the opportunity to continue to build on the excellent working

relationships I have formed with so many of you and I hope to replicate this as our remit expands to

include support for specialist colleges and higher education, in particular small HEIs.

I’d like to take this opportunity to wish you all success in the coming year and if we can be of help in

any way please do get in touch. As always, if you have any comments about this newsletter, or you

would like to contribute an article, perhaps for the College Focus section of the next newsletter, email

us at support@rsc-east-midlands .ac.uk

Judi Millage, ILT Advisor

Newark and district boasts good relationships and

strong links between its schools and the college.

NELI (Newark Extended Learning Initiative) aims to

develop further cooperation and teamwork by

promoting and encouraging better use of ICT across

the full spectrum of education and training.

Based in Newark & Sherwood College, NELI is a

team of education and ICT specialists together with

extensive business experience promoting the

benefits of e-learning. Our primary aim is to

encourage resource sharing, developing skills and

training teachers, tutors and trainers in effective use

of the technologies. We are not limiting ourselves to

the schools and college: the private, public and

voluntary sectors are also key partners in this project.

NELI not only promotes resource sharing and

training but the project is providing the ICT

infrastructure to enjoy seamless communication.

Wireless networks have been designed to be “leaky”,

enabling both children and parents to benefit from

home education opportunities with school laptops. It

is possible for teachers to visit another school, to log-

on and be able to access resources or their pupil’s

records from their own school. This suggests the

possibility of “teacher sharing”: the costs of teachers

shared between schools, or being able to employ a

specialist teacher, the costs of whom could not

otherwise be justified. Equally a pupil in the

secondary school may attend college (or visa versa)

with a laptop and still be able to draw on personal

files or shared resources located on their school’s

own network.

Importantly NELI has a role in the proof of concept.

We have an enormous opportunity to evaluate

different ways of doing things. As the technologies

emerge, schools and businesses fitted out later in the

project may have significantly different

infrastructures and methods of working than those at

the beginning. The key is that all will have the same

connectivity to shared resources.

NELI relies on collaboration & cooperation between

many institutions with its foundations in a strong

partnership approach between North Nottinghamshire

Learning Partnership, Nottinghamshire County

Council and the Learning and Skills Council.

Sharing is crucial to the success of NELI; the team

welcomes contact from interested parties, whether it

is for more information, or sharing expertise and

experience or suggestions on how we may continue

to push the barriers of e-learning for the benefit of

the whole learning community.

Melvin Millard, NELI e-learning Team Leader

mmillard@newark.ac.uk 01636 680680 x 277

Newark andSherwood College

C O L L E G EFOCUS

I N S I D ET h i s i s s u e

Meet the new ManagerShe came up to me when I was having a coffee before the weekly expeditionaround Sainsbury’s. “You won’t remember me,” she said, “but you were myeconomics tutor twenty years ago. I’d decided to give up my A level courseand get a job, but you told me that if I wanted to go to university later, I could. That stuck in my mind, and now I’vedecided to go for it. I start next week. I just wanted to say thank you for what you said.” And she walked away.

Welcome

Meet the new Manager

The Technical Advisory Service forImages: An introduction

JISC Services: What’s on offer?

RDN Virtual Training Suite: Five newinternet tutorials for FE students

Specialist Colleges Connect to JANET

University for Industry

Forthcoming Events

College Focus: Newark and SherwoodCollege

Hints & Tips: Investigate your CollegeInternet Connectivity Problems

Forthcoming

EVENTS

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Netsight is a JANET monitoring service developed byUKERNA. It allows colleges to investigate their ownInternet connectivity problems.

The service consists of a number of small monitoringstations deployed at set points around the edge of theJANET backbone, one for each of the JANET regionalnetworks. The East Midlands Metropolitan Area Networkruns the monitoring system in our region. The EMMANconstantly monitors JANET’s links to the Internet and tothe local regional network.

The Netsight website can be found athttp://nottingham.netsight.ja.net. The informationspecific to your college is protected by a uniqueusername and password. If you are unsure of yourusername details, please contact either JANET CustomerService (mailto:service@ukerna.ac.uk) or RSC EastMidlands (support@rsc-east-midlands.ac.uk).

Once logged in, the Netsight system greets the user withthree main choices:

1. Backbone: this monitors the performance of the wholeof JANET. This information is made available in bothtabular and graphical formats. If any of the nodes herewere displaying the ‘connection down’ symbol then thiswould explain any regional connection difficulties. Forexample you may be able to reach a college downsouth, but if any of the northern Metropolitan AreaNetworks were ‘down’ you would experience problemsconnecting to anything in the northern region.

2. External: this monitors the performance of JANET’s linksto the rest of the Internet, such as the circuits to the US andthe connection to the LINX (London Internet Exchange).Here would be the first place to check if you were havingproblems connecting to sites overseas. For example if youcouldn’t connect to Microsoft.com, but had no problems

with BBC.co.uk, then it would be quite likely that one ofthe transatlantic nodes were non-operational.

3. Regional: this monitors the performance and trafficlevels on all the JANET customer access links within thelocal regional network. The information collected,covering traffic levels, packet loss and latency, is tailoredand made available to each individual college. To accessthis information you have to be logged into Netsight.Once logged in an option to display ‘Your Sites’ appearsin the Regional section. This information is usefulbecause firstly it allows the user to see whether theircollege can actually see the ‘outside world’ at all.Secondly, by clicking on ‘Traffic’ it can notify a college ofany abnormal network activity. And thirdly by clicking on‘Reliability’, any downtime or dropouts in connectivitycan be inspected and subsequently investigated.

Chris Bell, e-Information Officer

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Smart use of Smart Technology:The NELI Project

October28th ILT Forum

November6th Technical Forum10th MIS Forum19th Project Management24th-25th Ferl Annual Conference26th LRC Forum27th Microsoft Technology Day

December2nd Freedom of Information &

Records Management9th Using ILT in Health &

Social Care11th Plagiarism & Electronic

Copyright Workshops

January13th Using the Internet for

Learning & Teaching in FE14th E-learning: Creating,

Converting & Re-usingcontent with VLEs

21st Using ILT in PE & SportScience

For further details see our websitewww.rsc-east-midlands.ac.uk

Investigate your College Internet Connectivity ProblemsH i n t s & T i p s

It’s because teaching touches lives that I work in education. I come to East

Midlands RSC from City of Bath College where I was ILT Development

Leader and subject leader for teacher training courses, responsible for the

development and implementation of ILT strategy. I have

also recently worked with City & Guilds as a verifier,

Edexcel, FENTO and the LSDA as E-Learning Support

Network Co-ordinator for the south west.

To me, ILT is not an end in itself but a tool in the

toolkit available to teachers, support staff and

managers. It is just another tool, to be

selected when appropriate, but with a

particular strength in giving learners

ownership of their learning, so that it really

is student centred. ILT makes learning

more accessible to more people and

enables it to be tailored to the needs of

each learner.

I see the RSC as the one-stop-shop for ILT support. As well as providing support

ourselves, it is our job to make sure colleges can take full advantage of the

widespread services, materials and resources that are available. This year, in

addition to maintaining and refining the full range of curriculum, managerial

and technical services we currently offer – helpdesk, web site, mailing lists,

forums, site visits, training, events, newsletter and more – we will focus on:

• the newly launched FERL Practitioner’s Programme

• the needs of HE students both in FE and HE colleges

• more subject specific events

• access to the full range of National Learning Network services

• the connection of specialist colleges to the internet through JANET

Outside of work, I choose to spend time exploring landscapes and making

music. I play keyboards, including the pipe organ, and do a bit of choral

conducting. I look forward to working with you to ensure that our students

can make the choices they want.

Chris Hill, RSC Manager

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The UFI Pilot Project to provide technical

advice and guidance to learndirect

centres has now come to an end. As a

consequence the RSC no longer directly

supports UFI.

If you require any advice to assist in the

provision of learndirect materials please

contact your local Ufi Hub.

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JISC Services:What’s on offer

UNIVERSITY for industry

A n I n t r o d u c t i o nThe Technical Advisory Servicefor Images has been funded bythe JISC to help the FE and HEcommunity on all aspects ofdigital imaging and is hosted atthe institute for Learning andResearch Technology at theUniversity of Bristol.

For those of you who are in the FE sector,TASI provides a number of useful facilitiesthat include:

• The TASI Web site - this providesresources for those who are creating andusing digital images for learning andteaching (see www.tasi.ac.uk)

• An Enquiries Helpdesk - if you have aburning question about digital images orhow to convert your analogue teachingmaterials e.g. photographs and slides intodigital format, then we can answer thosequestions and help guide you through theprocesses. We can also provide help andadvice about using digital images withinteaching materials. Contact the Helpdeskat info@tasi.ac.uk

• Online technical documentation - anextensive range of reports and FAQs thatcover all areas of digitisation and providesspecific guides on creating and using imagesare made available from the TASI Web site(see www.tasi.ac.uk/advice/advice.html)

• Training workshops - specific and practicalhands-on training is provided toencourage people within the educationcommunity to engage with creating,delivering and using digital images.

If you would like any further informationabout how TASi can help you within theFE sector then please contact the TASIHelpdesk (info@tasi.ac.uk).

Alternatively, if you have particular ideasabout how TASI could support youfurther, then the TASI Director would bevery pleased to hear from you - pleaseemail karla.youngs@bristol.ac.uk

The JISC Regional Support Centres have had their remit extended to

include providing support for specialist colleges. Across the UK,

approximately sixty specialist colleges are in the process of being

connected to the JANET network.

The JISC Regional Support Centres have had their remit extended to

include providing support for specialist colleges. Across the UK,

approximately sixty specialist colleges are in the process of being

connected to the JANET network. In the East Midlands region, one

specialist college was connected as part of a pilot project and a further

six connections are currently being installed in the first phase of

connections, with a final one scheduled to be installed in phase two of

the project.

The specialist colleges will be able to call upon the full range of services

and support available from the Regional Support Centre, in order to help

them make the best use of their new JANET connections. This support

and assistance won’t just involve technical support for the JANET

connection itself, but will also include advice and guidance on a wide

range of technical issues and very importantly, encourage the sharing of

best practice among institutions across the region.

As well as working with college technical staff, the Regional Support

Centre also offers advice and support in the development and use of ILT

within teaching and learning to college LRC/library staff, ILT

practitioners, curriculum staff, developers of web resources, and college

senior management.

Information on the range of services available from the Regional Support

Centre, for both specialist colleges and mainstream further education

colleges in the East Midlands, can be obtained from the Regional

Support Centre. You can use our website: www.rsc-east-midlands.ac.uk

to find details of forthcoming events, both regional and national and you

can contact us by telephone: 01509-618110, or email: support @rsc-

east-midlands.ac.uk.

James Higham, Network Specialist.

Specialist Colleges Connect to JANET

SS WatchOpen Source Advisory Service

Did you know that the JISC haslaunched a new advisory servicecalled OSS Watch: Open SourceSoftware Advisory Service, for UKfurther and higher education. This isprimarily an online service, aimedat institutional managers, softwaredevelopers and IT users.

Open source software allows users to adaptand modify software and use it for anypurpose. They are then free to redistributecopies of the original or modified software.

OSS Watch can provide you with adviceand guidance on a range of issues related toopen source software, including :

• Offering a web-based clearing house forup-to-date information

• Information on free and open sourcesoftware

• Development of best-practice guidelines

• Out-reach activities aimed atinstitutional managers, softwaredevelopers and IT users

• Focused assistance for institutions,software projects and investigativereports

• Re-usable objects for educationsimulation

• Ubiquitous computing

• Widening Access with WirelessTechnologies.

OSS Watch is part of the ResearchTechnologies Service based at OxfordUniversity Computing Services. If youwould like to find out more about the initialonline service go to: www.oss-watch.ac.ukwhere you will be able to find out moreabout what is provided and how you canget involved.

If you would like to keep in touch withdevelopments at OSS, you can join theJISCmail list OSSWATCH-ANNOUNCE athttp://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/osswatch-announce.html. Alternatively, you canregister to be added to the list on the OSSWatch website

You can contact OSS Watch by email atinfo@osswatch.ac.uk or by telephone on01865 283416 with comments andsuggestions.

Gwen Callaghan, Events & Admin Co-ordinator

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RDN Vir tua l Tra in ing Su i teF i v e n e w I n t e r n e t t u t o r i a l s f o r F E s t u d e n t sFive more tutorials have now been added to theRDN Virtual Training Suite www.vts.rdn.ac.uk:

Building on the success of 56 tutorials alreadyavailable in other subject areas, the five new“teach yourself” Web tutorials will enablestudents in Further Education to find high qualityinformation on the Internet to support theircourse work.

The RDN Virtual Training Suite is a highlypopular service, built collaboratively by membersof the teaching and lecturing community incolleges and universities across the UK. The newtutorials are:

Internet for English Studies

Written by: Mark Williams, Lecturer in English,Kingston College

Aimed primarily at students of:

- A level English Literature

- A Level English Language

- A Level English Literature and Language

Includes examples of how to find full text of plays,poetry and prose on the Internet, and how to find onlinedictionaries and grammar guides and much more!

Internet for Science

Written by Dr Stuart Barker, Chemistry CourseLeader, Park College

Aimed primarily at students of:

- A level Biology

- A Level Chemistry

- A Level Physics

Helps students find science museums online,revision Web sites, electronic science textbooksand much more!

Internet for Maths & Adult Numeracy

Written by Deborah Prence, MathematicsLecturer, The Sheffield College

Aimed primarily at students of:

- A level Maths

- Adult Numeracy

Includes great examples of eLearning Web sitesfor Maths from around the World eg. “M.C.Escher: Artist or Mathematician” and “FibonacciNumbers and the Golden Section” andmuch more!

Internet for Health and Safety at Work

Written by Tony Weston, Construction & Healthand Safety Lecturer and ILT Development atGrimsby College, North East Lincolnshire.

Aimed primarily at students of:

- Health and Safety (particularly on vocationalcourses)

Enables students to find key H&S organisationson the Web, Trades Union sites on H&S,eLearning materials about first aid, environmentalhealth and much more!

Internet for Learning Languages

Written by Yvan Tardy, Senior Lecturer in French,De Montfort University

Aimed primarily at students of:

- French, German, Spanish, Italian

- English as a Foreign Language (EFL)

Helps students locate Web sites that supportlanguage learning online and Web sites for:language schools, foreign embassies, tourist officesand newspapers worldwide and much more!

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Don’t forget the free posters to download and print available from: http://www.vts.rdn.ac.uk/posters/HE and FE staff may order a bundle of leaflets for free; please email: rdn-vts@bristol.ac.ukAnd of course, feedback is always welcome via the online feedback forms on each tutorial, or to: rdn-vts@bristol.ac.uk

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