From: Alistair McNaught <Alistair.McNaught@HEACADEMY.AC.UK>
Date: 13 March 2012 18:50:46 GMT
To: JISCTECHDIS-ATS@JISCMAIL.AC.UK
Subject: Five minutes to make a difference for disabled learners
Reply-To: Group for JISC TechDis Accredited Trainers              <JISCTECHDIS-ATS@JISCMAIL.AC.UK>

Please forward to library / learning resource / disability support people or even just disabled students you know!

 

Dear colleagues –

 

The Hargreaves Copyright consultation has implications for disabled learners. These could be positive or negative depending on how people respond. There are implications for such practical things as dyslexic people being entitled to alternative formats, learning providers being allowed to add subtitles to broadcasts, tutors creating easy read or symbol supported versions of key books and so on.

 

It is vitally important that the voices of disabled learners and those who support them are heard in this consultation. Few of you have the time to read the 171 page consultation document or the response form with 114 questions so JISC TechDis has worked with JISC Legal, CALL Scotland and Professor Charlotte Waelde from University of Exeter to provide a guide to help you respond to the consultation quickly, easily and meaningfully.

 

The guide points you to five key questions with the most significant implications for disabled people. In a sentence or two we explain (for each question) what the implications are in Plain English then we give you a suggested response that you can either copy and paste or enhance with your own experiences. You will find the guide on our website at the below link.

 

http://www.jisctechdis.ac.uk/assets/Documents/News/2012/copyright_law_changes.doc  

 

The closing date is March 21 so we encourage you to find some time this week to take five minutes to make a difference

 

Many thanks

 

Alistair

 

 

Alistair McNaught

Senior Advisor

JISC TechDis

C/O The Higher Education Academy Building

Innovation Way

York Science Park

YORK

YO10 5BR

 

07870567659

Skype: alistair_techdis

http://www.jisctechdis.ac.uk

http://www.scoop.it/t/inclusive-teaching-and-learning

 

Interested in pragmatic inclusion- focused staff development? 
See JISC TechDis ITQ for accessible IT practice information and taster resource.

 

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Those of us who use RSS feeds sometimes take it for granted that students or teachers know how to subscribe to feeds and read them. I recently had a request to create a handout on how to do this for the textwall but the instructions will work for any RSS feed so here is the handout.

Lilian

Click here to download:

rss_howto_studentsv2.docx (321 KB)

(download)

Click here to download:

rss_howto_studentsv2.docx (321 KB)

Click here to download:

Google_Presentation_handout.pdf (168 KB)

(download)

Click here to download:

Google_Presentation_handout.pdf (168 KB)

This is pretty straightforward to set up, like Google Forms. A Google Presentation (GooP) with the right settings allows learners to type into the slides at the same time as other learners.
One idea for this technique is to ask learners to type a question they may have on the topic. You can then run through the questions as a slideshow and answer each one in turn. I've used this with groups where each person has added a reflection to one slide. Although you can ask people to do this in various other ways, there is something about showing everyone their responses one at a time in large text that engages the audience.
For more ideas on how to use Google Presentation see my previous blog post on the subject: http://bit.ly/lsgooglepres

As always there will be a mixture of links to sample learning objects, discussion of pedagogical approaches and opportunities to see some of the templates in action.

To take part, grab a pair of headphones for your computer, load a browser and go to www.instantpresenter.com/techdisonline104 a few minutes before the starting time. You can test your system will work with our conferencing tool by clicking on the test link - http://www.instantpresenter.com/systemtest    (takes just a few 30 seconds).

More information and links to all the previous sessions can be found at http://www.jisctechdis.ac.uk/techdis/pages/detail/online_resources/Xerte_online_training_sessions_2011

Please forward this information to your language teacher colleagues to have a look at how the free Xerte Online Toolkits can reduce marking load and make online learning interactive and inclusive. Although the session will focus on modern languages the techniques are equally applicable to teaching English as a foreign language.

Alistair, TechDis

This month's free online training session on using Xerte in different subject areas will take place Friday 28 Oct from 1pm to 1.50pm

This month's session will be looking at using Xerte to teach a range of data handling skills like interpreting graphs, tables and images as well as creating interactive content and self assessment. The subject area is Geography and earth sciences but the techniques shown will be relevant for  a wide range of subject areas and levels.

Join us by logging onto http://www.instantpresenter.com/techdisonline104.

Sent from Echofon - http://www.echofon.com/

Hi all

Many people will be unfamiliar with latex expressions so I have put together a quick primer with links to much more detailed information. It's pretty straightforward but it has to be manually added to the text dialog box in Xerte.

The basic construction is as follows <tex src=”LATEX GOES HERE”> and the latex expression could be as simple as e=mc^2

hence <tex src=”e=mc^2”>

or it could be much more sophisticated – see the learning object I have just created at http://itq.jisctechdis.ac.uk/xerte/play_59

There's a very good reference at http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/Mathematics

Alistair

JISC TechDis