Tag Archives: lilac

The digital camera is back – Weeknote #206 – 10th February 2023

A busy and unbusy week, in the sense, fewer events and meetings in my diary, but lots of things to get done.

According to a BBC report, digital cameras back in fashion after online revival.

Digital cameras from the early 2000s are becoming must-have gadgets for many young people because of a burgeoning trend online. And in the past 12 months, videos with the hashtag #digitalcamera have amassed more than 220 million views on TikTok.

…and to think I still consider this *new* technology!

One of my favourite photographs. Taken with a Sony Cybershot Digital Camera in 2004.

BR Class 4MT - 80136 at Minehead Railway Station

On Tuesday I headed off to the Bristol office by train. My usual train use to be a GWR Castle class HST train, but today it had been replaced by one of the newer GWR Intercity Express Trains (IET). I believe that the HSTs on GWR are being slowly withdrawn from the services they currently do as they are expensive to run, and also produce more emissions than the IETs.

Attended an Intelligent Campus guide launch and engagement planning meeting. We reviewed the complementary materials to go alongside the launch of the second edition of the Guide to the Intelligent Campus. We clarified that this was not a big launch. Also discussed potential sessions for Networkshop on the foundations required for the Intelligent Campus. I am doing a fireside chat at Digifest in March, and we will launch the guide there. I spent some time reviewing and proofing the  Guide to the Intelligent Campus.

Had an interesting conversation in our office on issues around the concept of the Intelligent Campus including security of IoT devices and smart devices. There are lots of smart devices out there, and across many institutions, people are plugging them into the network, without necessarily thinking about the security implications. I am reminded of the chaos caused when a series of soda vending machines and lamp posts hijacked the network of an American university. In my own home I have a smart washing machine, have I attached it to my network, no I have not.

Google’s AI search bot Bard made a $120bn error on day one. This does demonstrate that we are at early days with AI supported search. Also, this week Microsoft added AI search to Bing. This will make it easier and simpler for students to utilise AI when making (internet) searches for content related to their studies. I do think we need to start thinking about both academics and students understanding these tools, and the potential of these tools and what it means for teaching and learning. The essence of assessment is something else that will need to be rethought.

blocks
Image by mohamed ramzee from Pixabay

Read this article Block teaching advocates team up after ‘explosion’ of interest.

Advocates of “block teaching” are teaming up in an attempt to hasten its adoption by universities worldwide.

This isn’t new, as the article says, it has been around for fifty years.

Read this tweet responding to the article

I have to agree that this isn’t a one or the other situation, it’s about doing both, a spectrum of teaching. Back in the day when I was teaching at City of Bristol College (in the 1990s) we designed a GNVQ programme that was a combination of block and linear, for those very reasons. Some areas benefited from a deep dive and others were about building knowledge and skills over time. We had to design the whole programme to then fit the timetable. The main challenge was that we couldn’t devote one person to deliver each subject block, so we shared the teaching. The students had block learning, we had linear timetabled teaching.

Image by Photo Mix from Pixabay
Image by Photo Mix from Pixabay

Booking events and conferences for April. I am attending the UCISA Spotlight 2023 and LILAC 2023. Various issues with the LILAC booking, so had to redo the whole purchase order process for this conference.  Spotlight 2023 is in Leeds, so will be nice to be back there. The last time I was in Leeds, was in January 2020 just before the first Covid-19 lockdown.

Also booked into an online event, UCISA Starting the year on the right foot happening next week.

Sent out information on next Senior Education and Student Experience to members of the group, and inviting new members to the group. The group in the main consists of PVCs in the Education and Student Experience space, but also has some DVCs and VCs (or equivalent) on the group as well.

On Thursday I attended a technology for teaching discussion meeting with the Department for Education. It reminded me that a research informed evidence base is critical for many conversations in this space.

IFTTT let me know that changes to the Twitter API means that some of my IFTTT applets will probably stop working.

Starting Monday, February 13th, 2023, Twitter will no longer support free access to their API. As a result, we expect that any Applet that connects with Twitter will stop working.

I am mainly using IFTTT at the moment to post native images from Instagram to Twitter. However in the past I have used IFTTT to collate tweets to specific hashtags.

We’ve not seen the complete collapse of Twitter as many were predicting a few weeks back, but we have seen problems this week and many other issues as well. I am still using Twitter, but also drop in on Mastodon as well.

Most Kipling cakes come in sixes. Why do the Battenberg cakes only have five in the box? Is someone at the Kipling factory eating that extra Battenberg cake?

My top tweet this week was this one.

Building digital capability in the library

LILAC 2016
LILAC 16 Keynote by James F Clay CC BY-NC 2.0

Last week I was in Dublin for the LILAC 2016 Conference. This international conference, is the Librarians’ Information Literacy Annual Conference. LILAC is organised by CILIP’s Information Literacy Group. The LILAC committee is made up of a team of information professionals from all aspects of library and information work who are dedicated to improving information literacy.

I was invited to deliver a keynote on digital capability and decided that I would talk about what we understand by digital capability and how we could build digital capability in the library and the role of library staff in doing that, as well as looking at what digital capabilities library staff should have.

An online version of my presentation is now in Slideshare.

The presentation reflected on the need for all staff across an institution to be digitally capable.

Effective use of digital technology by university and college staff is vital in providing a compelling student experience and in realising a good return on investment in digital technology.

I went through how Jisc has created a digital capability framework that has six core elements, building on existing work in this area. The framework allows staff and institutions to map the skills required by different roles. I discussed how Jisc working with stakeholders and sector bodies, aim to provide clear guidance over what digital skills are required, and equip leaders and staff with the tools and resources they need to improve digital capability at a local and institutional level.

During my keynote I explored the history and background to the building digital capability project and the importance of staff within libraries understanding their own digital capability and, as well as supporting and building the digital capabilities of others. We explored how we could provide a library lens on the digital capability framework and possible next steps for staff wanting to build their digital capability.

LILAC Conference for librarians and information professionals who teach information literacy skills, hosted by UCD Library in O’Brien Science Centre - Keynote: James Clay
LILAC 16 Keynote © All Rights Reserved, image by Vincent Hoban, UCD Media Services, https://flic.kr/p/FKBQXq Used with permission.

I was pleased with the presentation and got some very positive feedback, both in person and across the Twitter.

After the conference people have been writing blog posts and these

Jess Haigh in her blog post remarked:

The thing I’m going to do more of, assess my digital capabilities and actually use tools such as our VLE to their full extent-which I am very guilty of not doing.

David Bedford in his blog post said:

It is important to consider the role of the library in supporting the development of non-academic members of the university community? Digital skills, including the ability to find, evaluate and use information online, are important across the university and the library may be able to help.

Nice final comment from Andrew Walsh, who enjoyed my keynote and in his blog wrote:

Finally was James Clay. His subject matter was a bit more run of the mill, talking about digital capability rather than being as free as the other two with topic (he is currently working for JISC on a project around this, hence the focus of his talk). Even so, James is an old hand at this sort of things and put on a really engaging, amusing and lively performance… just what was needed on the final day after the conference dinner!

Overall it was a great opportunity, thank you LILAC, to talk about Digital Capabilities and the work I have been doing on the project and the role and importance of Information Literacy professionals in helping to build digital capability across an organisation, as well as themselves gaining an understanding of their own digital capability.