The World Cup of Everything Else

(c) Nicolas Raymond (http://freestock.ca/flags_maps_g80-cote_d_ivoire_grunge_flag_p1133.html ) This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

 

 

 

The Wall Street Journal has put together a fun stats-based infographic for the 32 countries competing in the World Cup. Sadly, Cote d'Ivoire England for public spending on education. On the upside, our rainfall isn't as copious as it might sometimes appear.

One-day site closure this weekend

Please remember that Polhill Avenue (the road) and the Bedford Campus will be closed all day on Sunday 8th June. This includes the library. This is because of resurfacing work on Polhill Avenue and relocating the electricty substation (which is in the old garages between the Campus Centre and the three-storey building under construction).

Luton's Park Square Learning Resources Centre will be open all day if you desperately need to use university computers.

Looking at referencing afresh

I recently attended an interesting study day on looking at new trends in citations and referencing. There were some really interesting papers from everybody from software providers (http://www.mendeley.com looks particularly strong as a 'free' gizmo), PhD students and librarians working in colleges and universities. Basic citation skills are covered in KS1 but there's a big gap between then and starting uni. And 'attribution' is a form of politeness that hasn't really been adopted by web-users, even though it was such a massive part of print-culture (really since the Enlightenment and beyond).

Storify is one way of amalgamating digital objects on a particular theme. You can pull in elements from blogs, pin-boards, YouTube etc). This event had a hashtage so I just wanted to collect the tweets (you can discard ones you don't need) and left it in a linear template. With something more visual, I'd probably opt for the slideshow view so I could flick through the object-record without scrolling.

Help through the information labyrinth

The Academic Liaison Librarians for Education, Sport & PE are running new workshops four times a week in the summer term in Bedford Library. Get all your queries answered on literature searching, referencing and tools like DISCOVER and RefWorks.  Computers will be provided or why not bring your own device for tailored help? 

For times and dates see LRWeb's What's On calendar: http://lrweb.beds.ac.uk/help/whatson.

These are just some of the regular training workshops and drop in sessions on finding and using information in your subject area, developing your study skills and using Microsoft Office applications. All sessions are run by our ALL, PAD and CST colleagues and are free.  

The building work on campus is juggling along nicely and the old entrance for cars has now reopened. This week's new development is in the quad between P and R blocks, where they're installing a walking labyrinth. The one at Park Square is a beautiful feature but I think our dance students are going to need to find a new grassy patch to rehearse their routines and lifts in the summer. 

Improving student experience: how do reading lists fit?

I spent two days this week attending a conference looking at how different universities are trying to improve the  accuracy, currency and availability of reading lists for their units. There were lots of common themes but also some really idiosyncratic and intriguing nuggets. To help me keep track of what I learnt, I created a Storify; there are lots more excellent tweets on #mtrlc but these were the ones I need to reflect on.

It's probably a bit full of library-geekery to be of interest to you from an education-perspective. However, I'm including it here, in case I'm misjuding you and also because the activity of tweeting a CPD event has some lessons from a learning-perspective.

This was the first event where I totally abandoned note-taking and stuck to tweeting (with a scribble pad to capture actions). The discipline of brevity and the public nature of the form, makes you think much harder about what you want to record. It was enriched by the RT and direct tweet dialogues that evolved during and after papers.

And, after the two days, I felt I had synthesised more information than usual. But, I am more at sea, about connecting which learning point with which paper because you tweet in a stream; if I was typing or writing with a pen, I'd have left gaps/underlined things etc.

It wasn't until I came to do this Storify that I realised you can add in text and headings. Perfect!

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.