In This Month’s Edition
- The National Grid for Learning (NGfL) Abandoned
- Fine for Person Found Guilty of On-line File Sharing
- Data Protection Act Amended to Stop Child Porn
- Briefings on Accessibility and Inclusion for College Staff
- Online Journals in Higher Education: ‘Success Story’ Continues
- Digimap Historic Map Collection – Change of Name
- Athens Gets Tooled Up for Internet Explorer
- Breaking the Sound Barrier…
- BBC Northern Ireland Launches ‘Breathing Places’ Initiative
- Computing Tips
- The National Grid for Learning (NGfL) Abandoned
The National Grid for Learning portal to schools educational resources closed on 13 April 2006, but many educational sites are still trying to point to the materials. Becta has announced it will integrate some of the more valuable sources into a new part of its website (http://www.becta.org.uk/schools/contentsearch). The NGfL Cymru website is continuing to serve schools in Wales. The focus of the Department for Education and Skills will now be to concentrate on supporting initiatives which embed the use of ICT to improve learning and teaching. If your college VLE or intranet is still pointing to the NGfL, you might want to speak to your network support staff about it.
Details of this story are available on the BBC website at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/5145882.stm
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- Fine for Person Found Guilty of On-line File Sharing
In its first file-sharing conviction, a Swedish court has fined a man $2000 for enabling the sharing of a copyright movie on-line. This decision sends a very strong signal to file-sharers to refrain from making available copyright material on the Internet. Readers at institutions in the UK are reminded that making illegal material available for sharing even on university intranets could be caught by the long arm of the law. More on this news story can be accessed at http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7004559683
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- Data Protection Act Amended to Stop Child Porn
A recent amendment to the Data Protection Act (DPA) will permit police in Britain to reveal to the U.K banks and credit card issuers’, information on people suspected or convicted of Internet child pornography offences. Readers at educational institutions in the UK may note that prior to this amendment the data-sharing restrictions prohibited the police from notifying the card issuers if their customers were using the credit cards to access illegal material online such as child porn.
More on this news can be accessed at: http://news.com.com/2100-7348_3-6096409.html
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- Briefings on Accessibility and Inclusion for College Staff
TechDis – JISC’s support service for accessibility and inclusion issues – has produced a suite of briefing papers for use by Senior Managers; Network Systems Managers; and Technical Support Staff, respectively. The focus is on roles and responsibilities with a special emphasis on the role of technical support teams in facilitating good practice in the ICT aspects of college life.
LR Managers may be interested in this briefing – TechDis - SMT Briefing 2 - Roles and Responsibilities as well as the more specific briefing for LR Staff – a TechDis - Library and Learning Resources Staff
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- Online Journals in Higher Education: ‘Success Story’ Continues
Following national agreements for the provision of online journals to the higher education community which have brought savings of some £6m in the last three years, JISC has renewed Content Complete Ltd’s contract to act as negotiation agent for NESLi2, the online journals initiative.
June 2003 marked the beginning of a new phase in the licensing of scholarly journals for UK higher education when NESLi2 was established by JISC and a new, independent company, Content Complete Ltd (CCL), was appointed as negotiation agent following a competitive tendering exercise. Since thennearly 5000 journals have been made available to universities in the UK from 20 major publishers.
For full article, see: Online journals in higher education: 'success story' continues...
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- Digimap Historic Map Collection – Change of Name
Please note that the title of the 'Digimap Historic Map Collection' service has changed to 'Historic Digimap'. This change can now be seen in the Athens resource list in the secure administration area. Please update any local information you maintain for your staff and student users.
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- Athens Gets Tooled Up for Internet Explorer
After a beta testing period of three months, Eduserv has now launched the full version of the Athens toolbar for Internet Explorer. Feedback so far includes:
· ‘Athens toolbar – what a genius bit of customisation.’
· ‘An excellent extension for any researcher.’
· ‘Saves loads of time.’
· ‘As an Athens administrator, this is a wonderful add-in.’
You can download the latest version at www.athensams.net/toolbars/. With more than 13,000 downloads of the Athens Toolbar, UK universities are indicating that they will be including it as a standard component in the browser on their network. If you, too, are considering this, please let Athens know at:
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- Breaking the Sound Barrier…
A digitisation programme by JISC and the British Library has made 3,900 hours of historic sound recordings available to students, researchers and academics with effect from 26 September 2006. This major new online resource available free to everyone in further and higher education will provide easy access to thousands of hours of rare and historic sound recordings.
Archival Sound Recordings (ASR), launched today by the British Library in partnership with JISC, will make available to students, researchers, teachers and academics some 12,000 unique materials from the dawn of recording history to the present day.
For more details see: www.bl.uk/sounds
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- BBC Northern Ireland Launches ‘Breathing Places’ Initiative
‘Breathing Places’ is all about transforming areas - big and small - which will result in lots of new areas in which wildlife will flourish while people will enjoy the surroundings. These 'breathing places' will be nurtured and managed by the people who create them.
It was launched in Northern Ireland with a two-day event in June at Oxford Island on the shores of Lough Neagh , where over 3000 visitors had the opportunity to learn more about the natural world around them, and how they can play a part by creating and maintaining a ‘breathing place’ in their own community.
Over the next three years the BBC, in partnership with Northern Ireland’s leading environmental and wildlife organisations, aims to transform areas such as neglected community gardens, river banks, even areas already managed by schools or businesses.
Visit bbc.co.uk/breathingplaces to find out more.
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- Computing Tips
Numbering Paragraphs Automatically
To make things a little easier for those long reports you may have to produce, always number the paragraphs in all such documents. It is simple to do so automatically in Word. Just select the paragraphs you want to number and choose Format > Bullets And Numbering. Click the Numbered tab, select an appropriate numbering format, and click OK. Word then numbers your paragraphs for you.
Then, should you ever need to sub-divide the paragraphs in your document with letters, highlight the relevant paragraph and click the Increase Indent button on the Formatting toolbar. Word assigns the paragraph a subheading letter automatically.
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Contact Details
Mike Moran
eLearning Adviser
Web www.rsc-ni.ac.uk
Supporting Colleges in Development and Use of E-Learning Technologies and Resources