Digital images – 7 common questions

Posted on June 18, 2011 by David Baker

Our Digital Media User Group (DMUG) is a forum for anyone in the University with an interest in multimedia. This term’s session covered two topics: the Bodleian Shelley’s Ghost exhibition and my own short talk on digital images.

My background is not in graphic design or illustration – I’m a physicist, and latterly a teacher. However, nearly every topic I teach involves using digital images, and I have picked up (I think) a good working knowledge of how best to create, adapt, use and manage them. But I know there is a lot to learn from the professionals, and luckily there are some in DMUG.

I thought it would be interesting to share with DMUG the most common questions my students ask me about digital images. I share them with you too:

  • Am I allowed to… ?
  • How do I keep my images safe?
  • How do I share my images?
  • How do I find images for/of my research?
  • How do I digitise my 35mm slides?
  • How do I get advice about the right equipment?
  • Why don’t you teach a course on…?

I won’t go into my answers here (actually I don’t have them all) – I’m just hoping that they will generate some discussion on the DMUG website.

Posted in Commentary | Tagged | Leave a comment

make: Google Earth

Posted on June 10, 2011 by David Baker

Flybys and time travel are both virtually possible using Google Earth. Prof. Donna Kurtz, Beazley Archivist here at Oxford, showed us how she has started to use the tool to teach post graduates classical art. Greg Parker, her IT Director, described how easy it is to place markers in Google Earth, associate links with each marker, and then produce flybys that enable anyone to explore classical art in the context of the geography and history of the Middle East.

In turn these tours have been embedded in the new CLAROS web site and database that was launched recently. By default, CLAROS shows the distribution of ancient art finds using Google Maps, but if you have Google Earth installed, you can switch to the 3D world view.

Even if you have no immediate interest in classical art, you should visit the CLAROS site, if only to see an exemplar in the way multiple on-line technologies are being used to support each other.

Posted in Commentary | Tagged , | Leave a comment

make: print

Posted on June 3, 2011 by David Baker

My colleagues will know that I am a little ambivalent about social media. I blog – a little. I Flickr – but only to friends and family. I’m passively LinkedIn and facebooked. But I’ve never Twittered or Skyped. I’ve always thought them – while not exactly a waste of time – just another distraction.

So, I found it refreshing to hear how all these platforms were used by University College’s Access Officer, Anne-Marie Canning, when she co-ordinated the creation of the college’s alternative prospectus in a newspaper format. Not in any ground-breaking, leading-edge, techy way, just pragmatically because the tools were a good fit with what she, her colleagues and Univ’s students needed to achieve.

The prospectus is well worth a look, and has been very well received.

Posted in Commentary | Tagged | Leave a comment

make: content with GLO Maker

Posted on May 30, 2011 by David Baker

Many teachers would like to make interesting, interactive, on-line learning resources. It isn’t straightforward; those of us who have tried, know so, and those of us that haven’t, suspect so. Even taking someone else’s resource usually doesn’t help – teachers like to be able to adapt a resource to match their own teaching needs and style – and adaptation is usually just as difficult as starting anew.

Tom Boyle, of GLO Maker, showed us that the latest version of the GLO Maker tool goes a long way to changing this. It has an easy to learn interface that will soon have you creating resources with zoomable high definition images, multiple interpretations of material, simple quizzes and more.

Perhaps the most useful aspect of the tool is that each resource is a Generative Learning Object (hence GLO), which can be adapted. Any GLO can be tweaked and changed to fit your own teaching needs – just as we’ve been doing to our other teaching resources.

Take a look at some examples.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

make: books – creating books for your iPad

Posted on May 22, 2011 by David Baker

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 overview of the structure of eBooks, and some of the software that can be used to produce them. Full details can be seen on Sebastian’s slides.

Sebastian demonstrated a number of the eBooks on an iPad2 and a Kindle. One of the features of the new iPad2 is that it can be connected to a data projector, which – as far as I know – a Kindle can’t be. So to demonstrate eBooks on a Kindle to the audience, Sebastian used the iPad2′s camera!

Posted in Commentary | Tagged , | Leave a comment

make:online exhibitions Shelley’s Ghost

Posted on May 14, 2011 by David Baker

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 before.

The first session was from Alison Prince, Web Manager of the Bodleian Library Services. Alison and her team created an on-line exhibition to complement their physical exhibition – Shelley’s Ghost. Rather than simply mimic the real world exhibition, Alison described how they used web technologies to extend it: high resolution, zoomable images; page turning facsimilies of documents; videos; audio; twitter and facebook links.

Although the physical exhibition is now closed, you can still visit the web site, and the aim is to keep it live indefinitely. It received a lot of media attention, and is well worth taking a look at.

The site was developed in conjunction with the New York Public Library, where the physical exhibition is due to appear in the near future.

Posted in Commentary | Tagged | Leave a comment

Many hats make light work

Posted on February 22, 2011 by David Baker

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 with common sense. The modern trainer is multi-skilled, effectively harnessing a multitude of materials and information. The skills list includes: Researcher, learning designer, e-learning developer, moderator, storyteller, graphic designer, movie and video director editor, photographer, musical arranger, audio recorder and editor, entertainer, collaborator, performance specialist, innovator, linker, fixer, health and safety expert, diversity and inclusion expert, accessibility champion, facilitator, presenter, synchronous presenter, metrics collector, list maker (tagging), actor, voice over artist to name but a few.”
Julie Wedgewood in Anatomy of a 21st Century Trainer

Posted in Commentary | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Who hates filing?

Posted on February 16, 2011 by Pamela Stanworth

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 that anything up to 20% of their writing-up time is actually spent looking for notes/files/data that they know they already have somewhere.

The team that brought the successful “Organising Humanities Material” course in January now offer guidance for researchers online, in a new section of the Research Skills Toolkit (www.skillstoolkit.ox.ac.uk).

If you browse the toolkit by research activities, the “Managing Information” link brings you to the new section. Here you can find suggestions about organising your sources and notes, and learn about software tools and services to help you keep on top of your research information. There are tips on managing references, linking notes with data, backing up and versioning your files, and drafting data management plans.

I tried out their questionnaire “Are you a vertical or a horizontal organiser?”, and it turns out that OH and I have completely conflicting styles of organising – no wonder we have trouble finding last year’s tax returns.

Posted in Case Study, Commentary, Courses, Software | Leave a comment

Three types of course participants

Posted on February 13, 2011 by David Baker

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
The tourist
A day training is better than a day working
The explorer
Wants to actually learn something new to help them in the workplace.

It reminded me how lucky we are in a University environment; of the 12,000 bookings onto our courses a year I think the majority are Explorers!

Posted in Commentary | Leave a comment

Mayer Rules

Posted on February 7, 2011 by David Baker

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 relevant to how we use PowerPoint in presentations that I repeat them here:

1. Students learn better from words and pictures than from words alone (Multimedia principle).

2. Students learn better when corresponding words and pictures are presented simultaneously rather than successively (Temporal contiguity principle).

3. Students learn better when corresponding words and pictures are presented near to each other rather than far from each other on the screen (Spatial contiguity principle).

4. Students learn better when extraneous material is excluded (Coherence principle).

5. Students learn better from animation and narration than from animation and on-screen text (Modality principle).

So, think back to your last presentation. How many principles did you violate?

Posted in Commentary | Tagged , | Leave a comment