make: books – creating books for your iPad

With the news this week that in the US, Amazon now sells more eBooks than paperbacks, it was appropriate that this session showcased some of the work being done in OUCS to create our own eBooks. Sebastian Rahtz gave an … Continue reading

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make:online exhibitions Shelley’s Ghost

make: is a series of lunchtime talks here at ITLP which aim to showcase the creative use of technology in and around the University. This year we have fifteen or so sessions covering a wider range of topics than ever … Continue reading

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Many hats make light work

There is a lot of overlap between teaching and training. We do mostly teaching here on the IT Learning Programme, but some training, and I came across the following paragraph which struck a cord with me: “Contemporary trainers combine creativity … Continue reading

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Who hates filing?

I don’t suppose any of us really enjoy filing, but we know (or fear)  that we should have some way of finding things when we need them again. Following a recent course on “Research Information Management”, Oxford researchers told us … Continue reading

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Three types of course participants

A colleague of mine passed on an extract from a training leaflet: There are often three types of people on training courses: The political prisoner Has to be there, doesn’t want to be there and doesn’t know why they’re there … Continue reading

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Mayer Rules

I’m reading John Medina’s ‘Brain Rules’. He relates current research into the chemistry and structure of the brain to the classroom and the office. I’ve just read his summary of five of Mayer’s rules for presentations, and they are so … Continue reading

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Christmas Post

There have been two highlights for me this year: The first was the Insomnia competition that we hosted for the Apple campus reps – 24 hours in which some undergraduates had to create a short digital video from scratch, this … Continue reading

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Post Doctoral Researchers’ IT Needs

What IT support do post doctoral researchers need? We could make some intelligent guesses – we have a lot of experience here at OUCS in helping researchers through our courses, our Help Desk and our Research Technologies Service – but … Continue reading

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No more bullet points?

Oxford University has been around for over 800 years – and it has many traditions. PowerPoint has only been around for 23 years but it too has its own traditions. The ‘traditional’ PowerPoint presentation is one bulleted slide after another, … Continue reading

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FileMaker Pro

Course of the week Those of us on a Windows platform have access (sorry!) to a powerful, flexible database design application – MS Access. However, although several of the Microsoft Office tools are available on Mac OSX, Access is not … Continue reading

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