SDDU | Learning technology tools

Learning technology tools available at Leeds

Accessible Multimedia Player (AMP)
Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro
Articulate Presenter
Blogs (Elgg)
BoB
Doodle
Dragster
Drawtivity
E-voting in lectures
Grademark
Jorum
Lecture theatre tools
Leeds Wiki
Podcasting
Questionmark Perception
RSS feeds
Social bookmarking
The Portal
Turnitin Plagiarism detection
Twitter
Wimba Create (former Coursegenie)

Screen shot of an example AMP presentation Accessible Multimedia Player (AMP) - An interactive multimedia player that synchronises video with images (e.g. presentation slides) and transcript text while also offering an alternative printable HTML version of the presentation which is accessible to the visually disabled and those with low bandwidth Internet connections. The player allows the slide images and the video to be zoomed by the user and different segments of the presentation to be viewed. Presentation authoring is carried out with an online interface and the presentation is published as a set of Internet files that can be uploaded onto a web server. The presentation is delivered using Flash and so is compatible with most operating systems (e.g. Windows, Linux and Mac) and browsers (e.g. Internet Explorer, Firefox and Opera).
Use of the AMP system is available free to University of Leeds staff (set up a free trial account on the Webducate website using your official leeds email).

Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro - An online communication and collaboration tool which can be used virtually anywhere, is compatible with any Flash-enabled web browser, and runs on any operating system. Moreover, Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro can capture audio and/or video, PowerPoint and annotations, and applications on your computer screen. It also provides a whiteboard functionality and the opportunity for students to be active participants in your lectures through the use of mobile technologies.

The University of Leeds is running a pilot project during the 2010-2011 academic year to evaluate the application of this tool to communication, collaboration and lecture capture tasks.

Example Articulate presentation

Articulate Presenter - Easily convert your MS Powerpoint presentations into interactive multimedia resources for delivery on the Internet. A simple wizard within PowerPoint allows you to add audio, video and engaging effects to your slides, and synchronise these with slide animations. The presentation is then published in a Flash format which can be embedded into web pages, uploaded into a VLE or provided on a CD to students. Associated Quizmaker software allows interactive questions (e.g. multiple choice) to be embedded into the presentation, while Articulate Engage enables you to present content in a more creative and engaging manner.

Screen shot of the Leeds Elgg home page

Blogs (Elgg) - Blogs are web based reflective journals that due to their ease of use are a great way to start authoring for the Internet. Staff can use blogs to record and reflect on their research activities, and issue teaching related notices. Students can use blogs to record and reflect on their studies, and project and placement activities. Blogging systems allow for comments to be added to posts which encourages discussion and allows peer feedback between staff and students.
The Leeds Elgg system provides a free blog for all staff and students at the University and also offers a variety of other features such as group authored blogs, news feed subscriptions, the sharing of files, podcasting and social networking features (e.g. links between friends on the system).

The Leeds Elgg login page

Box of Broadcasts (BoB) National is a collaboration between Cambridge Imaging Systems and the BUFVC (British Universities Film and Video Council is a simple to use, off-air recording system that maximises the potential offered by the ERA (Educational Recordings Act) Plus license recently purchased by the University.

BoB allows any authorised user to schedule a digital recording of any programme appearing on Freeview or free-to-air satellite services and add it to personalised playlist. Recordings are selected from a key-word searchable, web-based programme guide, which displays 7 days of digital TV and radio broadcast information. All requested digital recordings are stored in a database that can be searched, accessed and tagged by any authorised BoB user.

Doodle - "Doodle helps you to schedule meetings and other appointments. Doodle is simple, quick, free and requires no registration. Simply set up a poll, send a link to all participants, watch progress online, and finally choose the most suitable date." (http://www.doodle.com/)

Related links:
The Doodle Website

Screen shot of an example Dragster activity Drag'n'drop actvitiy creator (Dragster) - An easy to use tool that creates interactive drag and drop labelling activities. Sophisticated feedback functionality allows each labelling attempt to be graded as correct, close or incorrect with answers displayed on mouse rollovers of labels. Correct and close target areas for labels can be defined of any shape and in any number. Users can be allowed to create draggable labels during the activity and then finally print out their labelled diagram. Dragster activities are published as a set of Internet files that can be uploaded onto a web server or VLE for deliverly to students.
Use of the Dragster system is available free to University of Leeds staff (set up a free trial account on the Webducate website using your official leeds email).

Related links:
More info on Dragster

Drawtivity - "Drawtivity is a e-learning tool for creating on-line activities that involve drawing and feedback. As an Open Education Resource authoring tool, Drawtivity facilitates the sharing, reuse and adaptation of these activities." (http://www.drawtivity.org/)

You can apply for a free account, create interactive resources, download them to your computer and reuse them in your work, as well as make them available online for others to use and build on.

Related links:
The Drawtivity project website

Screen shot of the evoting support website Electronic voting in lectures - As demonstrated by the popular television quiz show "Who wants to be a millionaire", allowing a large audience to vote on a multiple choice question and then viewing a histogram of their responses, is very effective in generating audience interest and involvement. The electronic voting systems operated at Leeds allow this approach to be utilised in conventional lectures in order to encourage audience engagement with the subject matter, feedback the level of real understanding to both the lecturer and the students and also to generate focused discussion between audience members through asking them to collaborate in their voting. An e-voting system consists of a large number of radio-frequency or infra-red handheld voting devices (similar to TV remote controls), a (set of) receiver(s) connected to the presenter PC and software that collates the votes and displays the graphs of responses. There are now several such systems available for use on campus.

Screen shot of Grademark details Grademark - A feature of the Turnitin plagiarism detection system, Grademark facilitates the process of providing feedback on and marking student assignments. Once a digital assignment is uploaded onto the Turnitin system, Grademark allows the tutor to add pop-up comments and feedback directly onto the assignment which the student can then view when logged into the system. To ease the writing of feedback, common comments can be built into a reusable rubric. This rubric is then accessed via menus to allow these comments to be quickly and easily applied to appropriate sections of the assignment (e.g. common corrections to referencing techniques, or common misunderstandings of subject matter).

Related links:
More info on Grademark
Turnitin login page

Screen shot of the Jorum login page

Jorum on-line repository service - A UK wide storage facility for storing, finding and sharing digital teaching related resources and materials(e.g. images,video, animations, websites, lesson plans etc). Each resource is uploaded onto the Jorum system with comprehensive metadata to facilitate future searching. Materials on Jorum can be downloaded and used for free and in many cases can also be edited by the user to suit their requirements. Users are encouraged to re-upload re-purposed materials for future use and also to share their existing materials. Access to the Jorum system is on-line using your Athens username and password.

Related links:
Jorum home page

Lecture Theatre Tools - there are several tools at your disposal in most lecture theatres across our campus which can enhance your delivery and the interaction with your audience.

Visualisers: why still use an OHP projector and be constrained by the availability of transparencies and specialised pens when you could use visualisers to project to your audience a 2D image of any 2D or 3D object you wish? Visualisers are basically a camera with zoom functionality connected to the lecture theatre projector or to an adjacent computer. Now you can display post-it notes, flyers, artifacts, etc., to the whole room, as well as write/draw on any surface you need.

PowerPoint annotation: whenever you are in slideshow mode, you can use the powerPoint Pen tool to annotate your slides (perhaps expand on a formula or highlight certain areas of the slide). Using the mouse to do this is possible, but it takes a bit of training. It is much more natural to use a pen and simply write on the lecture theatre presenter screen. Contact Teaching Technology Support or your local IT department about such screens (interactive pen displays / Sympodiums).

Screen shot of the Leeds Wiki homepage Leeds Wiki - An on-line system which facilitates the authoring of web sites and web pages by groups of collaborating individuals (e.g. staff developing teaching resources, students participating in a group assignment). As a wiki, the editing interface is easy to use and all edits are recorded in a page version history. Page editing is controlled by a login and so all page changes can be traced to the individual editor and can also be undone. In addition automatic email alerts can be used to notify interested parties when pages are edited.
The Leeds Wiki uses the MediaWiki system which was developed to support the Wikipedia project.

Screen shot of the podcasting support web site Podcasting - Ever dreamt of using your students' iPods as a tool to help you teach? Podcasting makes this possible! Podcasting is a web based approach for regularly delivering digital audio to an audience via the Internet. Freely available podcast aggregating (receiving) software allows your audience to receive your new epiosdes automatically and will even automatically transfer these episodes onto a portable digital media player (such as an iPod). So your students can then use these materials anywhere and anytime.
Podcasts are relatively easy to create using a PC, a cheap microphone and free recording software. The Elgg system at Leeds will then allow you to easily publish your podcast with minimal technical expertise. There are numerous possibilities for using podcasts in your teaching (e.g. recording lectures, interviews with experts, providing feedback, student presentations etc) and the relative ease of production means that getting students to create podcasts for assignments or feedback is a realistic possibility.

Screen shot of questionmark assessment Questionmark Perception - A comprehensive online assessment delivery and reporting tool available free to staff (and students) at Leeds University. The system is used to author individual questions which can be one of over 20 different types (e.g. multiple choice, ranking etc). The ability to incorporate interactive digital media (e.g. images, animations, video etc) into questions allows a richer assessment experience to be developed than is possible with traditional paper based methods. These questions are then brought together to form an assessment which can be used to encourage formative learning through feedback or even summatively assess students' understanding. Access to the assessments is controlled via a login and the assessments can be taken from any Internet enabled PC. Finally the system can generate detailed reports of student achievement.

Related links:
More Questionmark Perception info

RSS Feeds - Are you tired of spending time checking websites for news and updates? Would you like the latest information to come to you? Then look out for this icon (or variations of it) on the next interesting website that you find. The icon indicates that the website has an RSS feed which you can subscribe to and thus make news come to you rather than you having to chase it all over the web. You can subscribe to such feeds in your favourite web browsers, in Outlook or in your preferred RSS reader.

Did you know you can subscribe to the RSS feeds of interesting blogs written at our University (on ELGG), as well as of topics of interest from our Casebook.

What's more, you can also embed RSS feeds into our VLE, so that the same news reaches your students, too. The same tool for your own research, as well as for teaching, you may ask? Indeed!

Social Bookmarking - This is an effective way of saving your favourite web pages to an online area, as well as of collaborating with other researchers / lecturers / individuals interested in the field. You can also tag these pages with keywords so that they are easer to find and organise. The immediate result is that you are no longer dependent on using the same computer in order to access your Favourites - they will be online now.

Moreover, you can also see what other people around the world have spotted and tagged with the same keywords as you, so you can benefit from the work of the world-wide community.

Finally, you can generate RSS feeds from individual keywords and embed the RSS feeds into the VLE. This way you can follow the RSS feed to see how your students who are researching a topic and adding to a growing body of relevant resources tagged, are progressing.

The Portal login page The Portal - The single entry point used by students to access all their online University of Leeds related information and services, such as their email, calendar, library account, module reading lists, the Blackboard VLE and other module-related information. You can utilise the Portal to aid your teaching by using it to publish announcements and news, to easily email all your module students as a group and to share uploaded files (e.g. course documents, photographs etc). NB - The facilities provided by the Portal complement those in the VLE and these two systems should be used together to provide on-line support for teaching.

Screen shot of the Turnitin log in page Turnitin Plagiarism Detection - A powerful pattern recognition system which can expose common forms of plagiarism in written assignments such as cut and paste from the Internet or peers' assignments, or even the copying of assignments submited at other institutions. Access to the system is on-line via a login. Student assignments (e.g. MS word files or other digital formats) can be uploaded individually or in bulk. After a processing period an originality report is produced which highlights in colour all suspicious text in the assignment and provides links to similar text found on the Internet or identifies previous assignment submissions that are similar. The system does not state whether an assignment exhibits plagiarism, instead it automates the process of gathering and presenting evidence upon which that decision can then be based. Turnitin can also be used directly by the students to submit their individual assignments and also in reviewing their own originality reports and so can be used as a component of teaching about this important issue. Grademark described above is a feature of the Turnitin system.

Twitter is a free-to-use micro-blogging application that enables you to share your comments with the world in 140 characters. When you post a comment on Twitter, you 'tweet'. Through tweeting you can share comments, links, photos, videos, drive traffic (visitors) to your website or blog, find out the latest news, find people around the world to network with, and have a conversation.

Related links:
University of Leeds Twitter guide

Screen shot of an example Coursegenie sample course Wimba Create - Quickly convert existing MS Word documents into accessible web pages with added e-learning related functionality (e.g. links to pop-up windows, multiple choice questions, Flash animations, video etc.) Once installed, Wimba Create is accessed through menus integrated within Word and involves the use of standard formating styles to apply navigation structures and add activities to the document. The web pages are then created using a simple publishing wizard. These pages can then be hosted on a web server or uploaded into a VLE.

Related links:
More Wimba Create info

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Staff and Departmental Development Unit

Learning technology tools available at Leeds