Director's Cut

New features arrive for our Mobile Oxford service – http://m.ox.ac.uk/desktop_about/

We’re looking seriously at offering a proper video-conferencing managed service for departments and colleges to help them reduce their travel costs. For now, take a look at the trial we are running with Cisco of the WebEx service and get involved: http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/webex/

In 2009 OUCS ran a small competition to see if people at Oxford (staff or students) could come up with ideas for iPhone apps that would help University teaching, admin, or take a research project forward. The winners are at: http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/mobile/iPhone/competition/index.xml

Yes we do listen to users’ requests! As well as being directed by the divisions through our management committee, we also regularly look for suggestions from users as to how they would like us to develop the services. For a listing of recent suggestions and our thoughts see: http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/suggest/proposals.xml

JISC, the main national funder for IT projects and services in UK HE, made this sobering announcement just after Christmas:

“The recent grant letter from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) to HEFCE means that HEFCE are having to give careful consideration as to how funding reductions arising from the grant letter will be passed on to institutions.

In the light of the grant letter, HEFCE have asked that JISC make no further commitments of capital funds ahead of the HEFCE Board meeting on 28 January at which decisions on funding allocations will be made. With this in mind, JISC is ‘freezing’ all current capitally-funded calls and ITTs, and will regrettably not be issuing any new calls or ITTs, until the funding situation is clearer.

Malcolm Read”

There is no doubt that there is considerable pressure to really consider Green issues – not only from the need to address our carbon impact, but also (hand-in-hand) our energy efficiency. OUCS is doing it’s bit as can be seen at: http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/greenit/oucs.xml. We also have put up some guidelines for others to follow: http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/greenit/

In particular – colleges and departments should look at our Wake-on-LAN service. Simple now to set up (a single £400 device) that can save you thousands a year – http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/greenit/wol.xml

From the LTG announcements:

“As one of the WebLearn early adopters, the MSc in Evidence-Based Health
Care (EBHC) course has had a very successful year – winning two teaching
awards: the OxTALENT Award and the Oxford University Teaching Award.
Amanda Bulrs, the course director said: “we believe the active
engagement in the course is due to three factors: deep interest in the
subject, engaging teaching methods, and WebLearn – the Oxford Virtual
Learning Environment”. More information about the MSc in EBHC course and
the other WebLearn case studies can be found online at
https://weblearn.ox.ac.uk/portal/hierarchy/info/showcase“

Following the redesign of one of our lecture rooms to become a Mac training suite (with generous support from Apple) we have now taken this to a second stage and become an Apple Accredited Training Centre. See our new web page for more details.

OUCS has launched a new service aimed at mobile users (m.ox.ac.uk). At launch this includes mobile-formatted access to the Contact list search; a maps facility linked to the GPS facility showing you nearest colleges, libraries, pubs (!), etc; a feed from the University’s podcast service; and a library search that will show you on a map where the nearest copy of the book you are after is.

If you are interested in inclusion and accessibility, take a look at JISC’s new TechDis site: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/help/using/jisctechdis.htm