Educating Walthamstow

Like everyone who seemed to pass through the library gates or take the uni bus, I was glued to the Educating Yorkshire series so I was delighted to see that Channel 4 is not just running a new series but that it will have two extra episodes.

It sounds like they have picked a good school as well to centre the series over. Frederick Bremer School only opened in 2008. So, the design of the learning spaces to fit the modern curriculum could be interesting. Just having a lighting/windows system that doesn't fight interactive whiteboard displays is a fairly basic!

It will not have the pupil-to-parent history we saw in the Essex and Yorkshire series; they'll have barely seen their first batch of eleven year olds through to GCSE, let alone them pitching up at parent evenings, 10/20/30 years later! And what about the internal community of the staffroom. I knew a lot of teachers who joined the new schools created during Milton Keynes' growth spurts in the 70s-80s. It could be an equally odd experience for people who'd taught for years, elsewhere, or NQTs.

But what has really made me grin, is that this time we'll see a female head this time. The senior management team at both Essex and Yorkshire were wonderful and I really respect them; I just think it will be fantastic to see a women in a city-based Engineering Specialist School. Jenny Smith has only been in post since 2012, herself so it's a bit like the risk our Vice-Chancellor took with the Freshers series here.

Musharaf Asghar (and Mr Burton) will be a tough act to follow. Think I'd better buy some tissues just in case.

Job satisfaction for Friday

I'm happy to see that teachers in primary/early years (13) and secondary (34th) settings come out really well in the Cabinet Office's report on life satisfaction associated with different jobs. Librarians don't do too badly (43) although library clerks and assistants are down at 196. And educators working in higher (61) or further (79) education institutions are a pretty chipper lot as well.

So, I guess that means we love Monday mornings too. (And I won't be dreaming of a little spot in Derbyshire.) Or don't statistics work that way?

The actual report was undertaken by the Legatum Institute as part of a long-term  project looking at wellbeing analysis. The Beeb has put together a quick list, if you want to check out the paths-not-taken.

Five reasons to use RefWorks

I have been experimenting with an online animation tool, called PowToon. There are lots of preset templates aimed at schools and education contexts. These can be easily edited and the whole system is web-based so you don't need to install software or anything. It is very simple; this one took me 55 minutes originally and another 5 to tweak after feedback from colleagues.

The only downsides are the logo (but I gather, like Prezi, if you upgrade you can remove the branding) and that as a Flash-file it doesn't play on iPads. There are some lovely, imaginative examples on the site. Great for introducing topics in a Primary classroom or getting kids to put together their own presentations.

Identity Management

(c) Hiro Sheridan

A plea from the a project group at JISC (the national consortium of experts on digital technologies for education and research) for help. The topic may sound a little like the first line of a William Gibson review, but they basically want your thoughts on 'how can universities help staff and students get more out of digital information sources'.

"As part of the Usability project, we’re investigating the way in which research staff and students in UK Higher Education access online academic resources such as research papers, articles and e-books.

We’ve put together a short online survey to find out more about the problems students and staff may encounter when trying to access these resources and to see what they do if they can’t access the paper they need. The survey is straightforward and shouldn’t take longer than 5 minutes to complete. The URL for the survey is https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/YJ9G2QR If you have any questions about the survey or would like to be involved in further user testing please contact Stuart Church."

Celebrating National Library Day at Bedford

Sharing 'my favourite book'

The library on the Bedford campus celebrated National Library Day. This annual event is celebrated in libraries all over the country, but none of us can remember ever doing anything to mark it at the University so Rachel Bickley, the Sport & Physical Activity librarian, took action to correct that this year.

As well as inviting people to share what they read for pleasure (instead of the torture of assignments) there were freebies and book-themed cupcakes from talented bakers in the Reader Services and Academic Liaison Librarian teams.

NLD 2014

If you'll forgive me geeking-out over library science - briefly, I promise! - we were quite tickled that the cupcakes which were decorated with Dewey Decimal classmarks disappeared the fastest. Bedford must be a hotspot for classification afficiandos.

Hacks to make your reading life easier

Do you have a Kindle? Thorin Klosowski has written a helpful post on the Lifehacker blog called A Student's Guide to Using the Kindle for Research.  It's got some really good tips, like getting the most out of the annotation features which let flag useful sections. That can really save time when you're working on an assignment and moving from doing the reading round to actually writing it up.

Thorin mentions reading journal articles on your Kindle. DISCOVER has a nifty feature where you can send journal articles across to the ereader (through the Bookmark icon).

He also gives some good advice about finding free books. I've always been disappointed by the typography of the 'free' books I've 'purchased' from Amazon - so many layout problems and mis-transcribed characters; the idea of borrowing higher quality texts is therefore very appealing. He mentions OverDrive which is a service Luton Libraries offer. You can manage your account over the web from their ebooks page. Bedfordshire's library service has a different ebooks service, from Bloomsbury, which I've not tried. It probably offers the same options. If you belong to another public library service, look at their website to see what they offer; most counties or unitary authorities have ebook services.

The university's electronic textbooks are generally not compatible with e-readers like Kindles, Nooks and Kobos. But they can be read on devices with a web-browser (like a Kindle Fire) or an app like Adobe Reader (for iPads or Android tablets).

Gizmos like Calibre, which convert ebook formats (from Mobi or PDF to ePub3 etc) should only be used on files where the rights owner has given permission for this to happen or on works where copyright has expired. Or, like I did the last week, I took a long document I'd created as a PDF (so I was the rights holder) and changed the format so it would be readable on my Nook. You could do this with your essays or reports. You stay classy, San Diego.

Lifehacker is a great blog to pick-up tips and tricks for making the most out of pooters, smartphones and other tech. When I switched from PC to Mac at home a few years ago, I found a wealth of guidance on there. I don't read every post, but it's definitely worth checking in once or week or so. Or, if - like my colleague on the desk next to me - you need to find out how to extend the battery life of your iPhone (or whatever), it's a good place to check out (if a link comes up on your Google results).

Half-term help is here

Half-term for Bedfordshire schools falls during the week beginning 17th February this year. Like last term, the Academic Liaison Librarians supporting Education, Sport and PE will be running optional workshops in Bedford. We've had a lot of referencing queries this term so far, so we've added a new session this time around.

• Using DISCOVER
• Going beyond DISCOVER
• Referencing clinic
• Getting started with RefWorks

Computers will be available at all the sessions but you are welcome to bring your own device as well. This is particularly recommended if you would like help installing RefWork's Write-N-Cite tool to MS Word on your laptop, or if you've any problems accessing the Digital Library resources on your laptop/tablet.

Details about where and when are on the What's On calendar on lrweb.beds.ac.uk.