Making Library Information More Accessible

I’m a subject librarian and I want to make it easier for our students to identify which of the many databases which are available to them to use in order to search for information. I’m trying to get away from lists of databases, and I’ve got this idea of a ‘decision support tool’ (not even sure if that’s the right term) which can go on our VLE. It would be a bit like a simple flowchart, through which a student could quickly navigate to identify which database to use in any given situation. I was wondering if you knew of any simple software package that would help me to create this, preferably something free?

Some Possible Solutions

Thanks for your query. I took the opportunity to speak to some of our colleagues from RSCs across the UK and together we have come up with a range of options which might be of interest to you. Where appropriate we have tried to offer some examples or case studies too.

1. Delicious

As your query is subject oriented then couldn’t delicious be used with subject tags linking to relevant databases, journals etc? One our sister RSCs in England referred to an example where a sixth forms has a subject delicious which is displayed via RSS feed (and possibly cloud tag script) on their VLE. Have a look at the following examples which are being used as a bookmarking service.

http://delicious.com/colchviformlibrary

http://delicious.com/RSCni_eResources/

2. Mind Maps

What about using a series of mind maps? The main mind map would contain links to the initial set of databases i.e. links to other mind maps or files which would contain more detailed links to other databases. Navigation would be visually appealing and easy to use. XMind a free (and portable) mind mapping tool would do this. I’ve attached a link to a video which demonstrates some features of xMind

There's a case study of a similar project at Jewel & Esk College the e-Quality Newsletter:

http://www.rsc-ne-scotland.ac.uk/publications.php#e_quality_newsletter_summer_2009

3. Xerte

Another one of our sister RSCs mentioned that they have a college who has recently produced some student induction materials using the free Xerte toolkit. Xerte is an online content creation tool which has very accessible (and easily personalised) outputs and provides a quick way for tutors to create learning objects with built in colour preferences, font size preferences, keyboard navigation and text to speech (when viewed via Internet Explorer only).

More information on Xerte

Brief video outlining Xerte’s features

TechDis will be offering a new series of online sessions to allow you to further explore the online Xerte toolkits. These sessions will cover a number of themes which will build on the past workshops and will provide ideas, guidance and training on using Xerte to produce effective, engaging and accessible resources and learning objects.The ‘flow chart’ aspect could be designed into the Xerte object with some interactivity and made available via VLE!

4. Intute

The other thing to mention is that Intute provide RSS feeds by subject. An example feed

http://www.intute.ac.uk/rss/latest-creativearts.xml

5. Visual Understanding Environment

The Visual Understanding Environment (VUE) is an Open Source project based at Tufts University. The VUE project is focused on creating flexible tools for managing and integrating digital resources in support of teaching, learning and research. VUE provides a flexible visual environment for structuring, presenting, and sharing digital information.

http://vue.tufts.edu/

Where can I find out more about the new technologies that are coming into the mainstream.

The seventh edition of this annual report has just been published and describes emerging technologies likely to have an impact on teaching & learning in Colleges and Universities in the next five years.

The report describes in relatively plain English technologies which you may have heard of but not experienced and outlines with examples how they are already being used in academic institutions. Interestingly once they are broken down a bit you might be surprised just how many of them you use routinely already.

One year or less	Two to Three Years	Four to Five years
Mobile Computing	Electronic Books	Gesture Based Computing
Open Content	Simple Augmented Reality	Visual Data Analysis

Yes - I know what you're thinking but the report provides just a couple of pages on each - enough to whet the appetite e.g. Do you use Sat Nav? Have you needed to find out where the nearest petrol station is? Using a device that combines information based on GPS, a camera or compass could be considered as Simple Augmented Computing. Anyone get a Wii for Christmas? It's hard to think of anything that's more gesture based. And take a look at my favourite websites in the tag cloud down the right hand side of this website - the larger the text the more links in that category - an example of a new form of Visual Data Analysis.

So the report's not just for "Geeks" - and the technologies are actually here already, but the report does give some interesting insight into how they might be employed in the education business.

http://www.nmc.org/pdf/2010-Horizon-Report.pdf

Protecting Vulnerable Students

We have a highly vulnerable student who has a learning disability and started with us this term. She has become very sophisticated in the use of chat rooms to make contact with strangers and has actually met up with one or two people in the past. We feel we have a duty of care to reduce the chances of her contacting people in this way, whilst we try to build up her awareness and skills in developing relationships. We have the JANET web-filter but it does not intervene in these circumstances. Do you know of any tool that might reduce the need for constant checking and intervention by staff while we work on raising her awareness?

Personal internet safety is a real issue and especially with young and vulnerable learners. Whilst the benefits of the Internet are indisputable, the culture of non-censorship and the ‘primacy of privacy’ protects exploiters at the expense of the vulnerable. One resource that might be of interest is a website specifically designed for people who have learning disabilities. It’s called Common Knowledge www.ckfriends.org.uk/index.html. Offering alternative sites may not help in that it won’t stop her using sites she already uses and you may wish to consider a more traditional filtering programme. There are many filtering programme available. Here is one that is free for personal use: http://www1.k9webprotection.com/

Does anyone know how to configure a PC so that it shows the mouse pointer in screen shots when using the Print Screen function?

There are a number of screen grab tools on the market that are ideal for writing guides. Screenshot Captor is a freeware (donation requested) product which is great for simplifying and speeding up lots of screen capture processes: http://www.donationcoder.com/Software/Mouser/screenshotcaptor/index.html

Another option is SNAGIT (from TechSmith). The version I’ve got has CamStudio bundled in, which is a user friendly way of recording screen movement into little video clips that records series of movements on screen and you can add a highlight halo to your mouse cursor to make it even more visible. You may find CamStudio useful for either creating short training videos for your website or perhaps creating screen grabs from your videos. A free download of CamStudio can be found (along with a vast array of other free tools for learning and teaching) through the RSCs AccessApps and scrolling down to presentation tools:
http://www.rsc-ne-scotland.ac.uk/accessapps/compare.php

Do any of the JISC team know about the varied interactive e-voting systems that can be used in lessons to engage with learners?

I have had experience of using these and feel that they have great potential in learning & teaching and also as a means of engaging learners in cross-college evaluation; to say nothing of raising their awareness of "political" processes.

With the new HMIe focus on learner engagement in college quality processes/evaluation and the various equalities legislation duties to engage service users, now seems to be a good time to make use of all technologies available to us!

Watch a 20 minute recording of our RSCtv session on using voting systems for learning & teaching.

A lecturer has interviewed a number of students and recorded her questions and their responses which she now has to note/document in a word document. Would Dragon Naturally Speaking voice recognition software allow her to process these audio files through the software to translate this audio into text?

We have spoken to Dragon Naturally Speaking suppliers who say that unfortunately Dragon would not be able to transcribe these recordings as it is unable to transcribe for more than one user profile at any one time. Also I think it would struggle with the conversational style of the recording. Dragon works well when the speaker is dictating but struggles with natural conversation that is not in structured sentences. There are some researchers who have used Audio Notetaker as an interface for reviewing audio recordings and making notes from them.

http://www.dyslexic.com/notetaker_demo/Audio-Notetaker-demo.htm

The new version of Audio Notetaker has a specific playback mode for when users are transcribing from the recording. This may help when reviewing audio recordings but it won’t transcribe speech into text.