Holyrood Park Hub

Hi all. I am hoping for some insights into why people take photos and what they do with them. This is to inform some thinking and writing for my PhD. If you’re happy to help, please leave a comment below with

(a) Why you take photos? (b) What you do with photos you’ve taken?

Alternatively, tweet replies with #blendedmem. Any help greatly appreciated, all welcome to comment. Thanks!

Tim.

For those of you who don’t already know, the New Geographies of Learning project team within the MSc in E-Learning has set out to explore the nature of place and institution for distance learners. Essentially, we are considering what it means to be a student at Edinburgh who is not in Edinburgh, and what insight this gives us into learning design for high quality distance programmes.  This project has caught the imagination of others in higher education and we have been asked to share our work at a series of upcoming conferences.

We would like to invite you to be a part of this exciting project as it continues to evolve.

Following an earlier request, we have already received some fantastic ’postcards’ sent from the different spaces from where members of the MSc community engage with the E-Learning course. These first participants submitted an image and soundclip which we have then made into a short video and attached to our interactive class map.

For those of you who haven’t already participated, we would love you to send your own postcard by submitting a few bits of information into our dropbox on the project website. You don’t need to prepare a video – we will put that together using the image and sound you send us. If you have a difficulty submitting a postcard using the dropbox we’ll be happy to receive the same information by e-mail at edinspace@ed.ac.uk.  

Many thanks to all those that contributed so far and we look forward to seeing the class map evolve as we receive more postcards!

James Lamb and Michael Gallagher (on behalf of the Research Team)

#mscedinspace

The MSc in E-learning has a new promotional web site. Those already on the programme will know that our site is our key recruitment medium; the old one did us good service but had had its day! We’ve replaced it with this new one – it’s built in WordPress and gives a more contemporary picture of the content and culture of the programme.

Its design foregrounds the programme’s students much more than previously too, through the Twitter feed, the quotes and the galleries of student work.

Please take a look and let us have any feedback by commenting on this post or by emailing us – we’d really welcome your input.

http://online.education.ed.ac.uk/

The Virtual Worlds Research Network announces its inaugural conference to take place in Edinburgh, UK, May 16-18 2012

Abstract submission: 250 words, no later than 7 April 2012

Submit to:  vwresearchnetwork@gmail.com

Notification of Acceptance:   15 April 2012

Further details can be found: http://www.vwrn.org/

Running 2-22 July 2012

We are offering two exciting, intensive and free summer schools this year for students on the MSc in E-learning.

Urban Drift: m-learning with apps Tutor: Dennis Dollens
Explore pedagogical connectivity in urban or natural spaces around you.

Give your assignment a makeover Tutor: Christine Sinclair
Improve your academic writing and develop papers for publication.

Follow the links to find out more and sign up early as places are limited. Please note that these courses are a fantastic way to spend some time over the summer, but they aren’t credit-bearing!

Hi All.  Some information I received on a University summer school in the Social Sciences below, in case it’s of interest to any of you.  This is ‘save the

date’ info – the full programme hasn’t been released yet:

“Save the Date | Scottish Graduate School of Social Science 1st
Annual Summer School, June 2012

The Scottish Graduate School of Social Science (SGS) is delighted to
announce its first annual Summer School to be held at the University of
Edinburgh on 18-20 June 2012.

This exciting event is aimed at postgraduates in Scotland who are studying
any discipline within social science. Events will include
discipline-specific training, masterclasses and workshops, led by experts in
the field. This advanced training will appear alongside other practical
activities based around transferable skills, knowledge exchange and
specialised IT packages, specifically relevant to your needs. Each day will
culminate in a plenary session, bringing together social science experts
from within and out with Scotland.

On-course students pursuing doctoral study in social science programmes at
SGS member institutions are entitled to free attendance. Eligible students
may also receive help with travel costs and accommodation.

In order for us to gauge demand and allocate sufficient places, please
register early interest by emailing events@socsciscotland.ac.uk with your
name, university and programme of study.”

Fully funded three year PhD studentship on Work and learning at the boundaries of knowledge at Glasgow Caledonian University, Scotland.  Supervising team: Professor Allison Littlejohn, Dr Colin Milligan, Dr Anoush Margaryan.  Further details are available at http://www.academy.gcal.ac.uk/people/index.html

Here is a screencast archive of the special alumni seminar event that was held in Second Life on 21 February 2012. It was very well-attended, and the three talks – from Dennis Dollens, Mike Kelly, and Jeremy Knox – were absolutely excellent. Many thanks to them, and to Marshall Dozier for all her help, including recording this screencast.

The audio and visual quality of the screencast is not perfect – but you should be able to see the slides and hear the presentations, even if you can’t read the text chat. It should give you a good sense of what went on!

MSc_in_E_learning_ Alumni_Seminar_Event__21_February_2012-video.mp4

Just some advance notice (you will probably already have seen information about the WebCT outage in your courses, if affected) that there will be some outage of some University sites over the next couple of weeks.

On Tuesday 20 March, WebCT and MyEd will be unavailable between 4pm-midnight (UK time) with a possible further outage between midnight and 6am. The Holyrood Park blogs, the Hub, the wiki space and so on will not be affected.

On Monday 28 March, this site (the Hub) will be unavailable from 9am until at least 3pm, and possibly til 6pm (UK time). This will also affect some other university web sites, but all of our other environments should be fine (including WebCT).

In both cases, Information Services are undertaking essential work on the systems.

With the encouragement of the MSc course team, I would like to draw your attention to a Political Research Q&A I have arranged for next Thursday, 22 March at 8pm (UK time).

Mark Diffley is a Research Director for Ipsos MORI and specialises in political research. He has contributed interviews and articles for the BBC, The Guardian and most recently for The Times (his article from last week on Scottish attitudes towards independence is reproduced here). He delivers lectures and after dinner speeches about his work.

Mark has a keen interest in social media, has views on online research methods and is enthusiastic about discussing these topics with members of the MSc in E-Learning community.

I’m currently finalising arrangements for the session, however it’s most likely it will take place in Skype. If you’d like to participate in the session please e-mail me at james.lamb@ed.ac.uk.

Alternatively if you’re interested but unable to attend the session, please feel free to forward questions which I will put to Mark on your behalf. I’ll share the transcript from the session.

Thanks for reading. I hope this session is of interest.