Tel Tales

Adventures in Technology Enhanced Learning @ UoP

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A lady sitting on her bed with a laptop on her knees, whilst her golden Labrador lays next to her

Guest Blogger: Adrian Sharkey – Making the best of a bad situation – digital capabilities

April 23, 2020 / / 0 Comments

One really positive thing to come out of the current situation is how creative and adaptable students and staff have been in using digital tools to keep the University running virtually. They’ve been backed up by the awesome support from IS and other digital support teams like Technology Enhanced Learning and faculty Online Course Developers. Lecturers and students have quickly adapted to teaching and learning online, using tools like Webex and Google Meet. Support staff have transitioned to online working using video conferencing along with messaging tools like Google Chat and Slack. It’s also been impressive to see how social media has been used to keep staff and students connected, the UoP Sport Facebook group being a great example. Although setup to share fitness tips, it does much more than that in keeping people connected.

It would be great to keep this momentum going once things get back to normal. If this has shown anything it’s that the workplace is quickly changing and along with changes brought by Industry/Education 4.0 everyone is going to need the skills to be creative and adaptable as technology changes quicker than ever.

One of the tools we have available to help with this is the Digital Capability Discovery Tool. Also, one of the really hard things to get across is that digital capabilities are not basic literacy skills. All of us will have areas of digital expertise, but there will be gaps in our capability, whether in information, data or media literacy, digital creation or presentation, or even digital well-being. The framework the tool is based on is designed to help students and staff develop their digital capabilities to cope with how things are changing.

Give it a go, you might be quite surprised about the results. Available for both students and staff, when you sign up you’ll be asked if you are a new or continuing student or if you are academic or professional services staff and then taken through a questionnaire. It’s not a test of your knowledge, it’s a self assessment of your confidence in the different areas of digital capability. It will take a bit of thought for you to decide on honest answers and be around 45 minutes to complete. It is personal to you, the University doesn’t see individual results, only aggregated ones so we can compare ourselves in the sector and possibly see where resources can be emphasised.

As a result of this effort you’ll get a tailored comprehensive report on your capabilities with links to great resources. Check out the LinkedIn Learning landing page linkedinlearning.port.ac.uk  where there are learning paths with resources mapped to the different areas of the framework.

Lastly, if you have any groups of students or staff that you support and who might be interested, we have a presentation that can be dusted off to explain all of this, which we’d be happy to deliver. If you find it useful, please recommend it to colleagues, or you may use it to inform your PDR process, teaching staff could use it with students perhaps to help with a ‘baseline’ of digital capability.. However you feel it might be useful please feel free to get in touch with me or ittraining@port.ac.uk

@adrianjsharkey

Image Credit: Photo by BRUNO CERVERA on Unsplash

A kangaroo with a joey in her pouch

Working Down Under

April 9, 2020 / / 2 Comments

On the second week of our holiday Down Under visiting family in Australia, it became apparent that getting home was going to be a problem! No matter how long we stayed on the phone or how many people we contacted online, the reality of getting back to the UK, to be back for work for Monday 30th March, was getting further and further away – what was I going to do?

Having worked from home in the past, I knew what I was going to need a laptop and wifi – easier said than done from Australia!  By then the country had started to lock down, shops were shutting, those people that could were asked to work from home and social distance was the name of the game. The news reports on the TV were saying prices of laptops were increasing, and a shortage may occur whilst shops restock. Two shops later we found a laptop in our price bracket, then the hunt for a dongle or wifi, one way or another, commenced. Five shops later with a dongle securely in our pockets we went ‘home’ to see if I could access all the relevant areas I needed to be able to start work on the Monday.

The first thing I did was add the Virtual Private Network (VPN) onto the laptop. Connecting to the VPN allowed me to access University services as if I were on campus. After adding this and connecting to GlobalProtect, I went to AppsAnywhere.  Here I could start checking to see if I could access the applications required to do my work. The only site I seemed to have problems with was getting onto the Employee Self Service, as I wanted to check to see what annual leave I had left, as when (and if) we were able to get flights home, I knew I’d need time off.  However, I’d been in contact with my manager since 23rd March giving him updates on our predicament and letting him know of the procedures I had put into place to start work on Monday 30th March.Blue sky, a golden sandy beach and the sea rolling in at a distance

Logging in on Monday 30th March was a little surreal, knowing that my colleagues were either in bed or just going to bed!  As you can imagine there were loads of emails to start working through and information about COVID-19 – the main topic. My plan was to work for so many hours, take a break, have lunch, get some exercise, then log back on to work the last few hours at the same time as my colleagues so I could touch base with everyone. This system worked very well for me, I’ve been able to access all areas and I’ve messaged my colleagues using ‘Slack’ and even had a few GMail Hangouts video calls which were great, but made me homesick.

On Friday 27th March we were lucky enough to purchase tickets for Saturday 4th April, so fingers crossed by the time this blog is published I’ll be home.

Credit Image: Photo by Ondrej Machart on Unsplash

First Image: Casarina Beach where I took my daily exercise

Second Image: On Google Hangouts chatting with Marie Kendall-Waters

 

working from home

Are you ready to work from home? – Tips from TEL

March 23, 2020 / / 1 Comment

As the UK prepares to work from home this week, many people might be feeling a little anxious and overwhelmed by the sudden thought of working remotely. Although working from home is a common practice for most of us within the TEL team, we are aware that this isn’t the case for everyone. Working remotely can provide benefits but it can also pose challenges. The TEL team have been working hard to develop an eLearning Tools Site which features useful resources and information on working from home, particularly teaching remotely for staff at the University of Portsmouth. Throughout the weeks we will be reflecting on the benefits and challenges that we experience through working from home, the tools we have used, and how those tools may have helped or hindered us!

Here are some tips for the week ahead. I hope you find them useful for working from home.

Create a dedicated work space

Some of us are fortunate enough to have a spare room that we can easily transform into quiet office space. For those of us who don’t (myself included!) it’s important to find an area that can be used for working. For me, it’s the dining room table, where I have my desktop set up and space for books, notepads etc.

Use to-do lists

It’s useful to have to-do lists – things you want to get done every day. This keeps you focused and on track. However, don’t beat yourself up if you don’t get everything completed: tomorrow is another day and some days can be more productive than others. I always have a list of to-dos on the go, whether it’s on my phone, on a note pad or on post-it notes. This way I feel a sense of achievement when I can tick off the items.

Learn to deal with distractions

It’s easy to get distracted at home and, for some of us during the covid-19 outbreak, it will be even harder while our families are at home too. Allow yourself to surf the internet for 5 minutes – it might provide some inspiration and fuel you to return to your work – but don’t binge-watch box sets on Netflix!

Take regular breaks!

Make sure to take regular breaks from the screen: sit in the garden for 5 minutes and get some fresh air, or go and make a cup of tea. If you can, go for a little walk: it’s so important to move and exercise – you’ll feel so much better for doing so!

Don’t lose touch with your work colleagues

As a ‘veteran’ of working from home, Slack has been brilliant in connecting me with my work colleagues. You can set up channels for different discussion topics and receive notifications as a when people post. There are other apps you can use, such as Zoom and House Party (which is great to use with friends and family whilst social distancing). Working from home can often feel isolating so staying in touch is essential for your wellbeing.

Make sure to drink and eat

It’s so important to look after yourself and ensure you make time to stop for lunch and drink enough water. This is something that I need to personally work on in the coming weeks, as I often skip lunch, snack and don’t drink enough water!  It can be difficult to consciously stop when you are engrossed with work.

Make working comfortable

Do what you can to make your workspace at home as comfortable and functional as possible. Working an eight-hour day in a bad chair is uncomfortable for your body and your mind!

Deal with being disconnected

All technologies can be glitchy at times. Remember: if you do lose your connections, maybe in a video conference, don’t worry – everyone is in the same boat and we’ll muddle through together!

Don’t be too hard on yourself

We’ve all found ourselves in a new situation, even for those that regularly work from home. It’s going to be challenging for all of us in lots of different ways, so it’s important to not be too hard on ourselves. We may find some days are more productive than others. We all need to adapt to a new routine, a new way of working and living.

and finally . . .

Good luck to everyone – remember there is support within your faculties and departments so make sure to use them.

Please continue to follow us on Tel Tales, YouTube,  Twitter and Instagram where we will be sharing more tips and information. If you would like to share your experiences of working remotely on Tel Tales then please get in touch with me at marie.kendall-waters@port.ac.uk

 

Credit image: Photo by Agnieszka Boeske on Unsplash

 

Happy 2 years to us!

April 18, 2019 / / 0 Comments

It’s Tel Tales birthday today and we’re celebrating 2 years of blogging. 2 years – that’s a big achievement for us, in the past blogging was never our forte as a team – but this time, with Tel Tales, we’ve stuck to it – so what have we learnt in the last 2 years as a group of novice bloggers and how has this time been different from our previous attempt?

Raising our profile

In early 2016, we were thinking of ways to raise our profile within the University. We are a long standing central service, but we offer much more than Moodle support, as a bunch of talented individuals with an array of experience and expertise, we felt this was often unknown and we also weren’t too good at voicing our achievements.

Building a blog site seemed like the perfect platform where as a team, we could all contribute and write posts journalling our adventures in technology and education.

Reservations

As a team we had reservations, we had quite a few failed blog attempts in the past and this had knocked our confidence, which I talked about in my first blog post Why Blog? For some members of the team, blogging came naturally and were able to write posts with ease. For others writing a post for all to read was quite a scary concept and putting pen to paper was difficult. As this was a team blog and we wanted everyone to feel comfortable and happy to post, we knew that the project would need planning, organisation, ongoing management and time to be a success.

Tips for setting up a team blog

Here are some of our tips for starting a team blog:

  • Communicate the goals and focus of the team blog – from the offset, as a team, we discussed what we would like to include in our blog site, things such as events we’d attended, projects that we were working on, useful information about the technologies people in the University were using, and topical news that had interested us.
  • Develop a team blog style guide and author guidelines – we put together some guidelines as to the style of the posts i.e. sizing of headers, images, copyright, referencing etc so that the posts were consistent although written by multiple people.
  • Choose an appropriate team blog tool – we choose WordPress as our blogging tool and created each member of the team their own user account so they had ownership of their own posts.
  • Have team editors/proofreaders – we delegated the proofreading and editing of the posts to 3 members of the team – so all posts after written in draft were checked by them before going live.
  • Create an editorial/blog post calendar – we created a calendar so that we could organise and schedule when posts were going live and keep an ongoing spreadsheet of all posts to keep track of what stage they were at.
  • Offer collaboration and communication tools to contributors – all members of the team have access to Slack where we can discuss the blog posts and Google Drive where we structure and manage all the posts. Everything is clearly structured in folders and everyone has access to everything.
  • Provide feedback to contributors – feedback regarding the blog site as a whole and feedback regarding posts are either discussed on Slack or directly to the contributor.
  • Recruit guest bloggers – we have had several members of staff from other departments contribute to the site which has been great in networking with other departments.
  • Repurpose content without losing quality – when times have been a little quiet we have been able to repurpose content that is topical – so we are never short of finding content for our site.
  • Remain flexible – I think flexibility is key to running a team blog site, nothing is set in stone, so we are able to accommodate for any obstacles that we’ve come up against over the last 2 years.

Build it and they will come

We did build it and they did come, but slowly. It’s easy to assume with blogging that once you’ve built the site then that’s it, ta-dah job done. We’ve learnt however that this isn’t the case and we’ve had to be patient and continue to be, building an audience doesn’t happen overnight.

What’s in store for the next 2 years

It’s uncertain where Tel Tales will reside in the future, we may become part of the University of Portsmouth website, however we still hope to have a presence in one shape or form. We continue to raise our profile in other forms of media, Tom L has created some Podcasts on Tel Tales, so if you haven’t listened to those yet then check them out. Tom is also looking at our YouTube channel and will be providing some new videos on there. Shaun is working on our Instagram account, so make sure to follow us if you’re a keen Instagrammer.

I’m immensely proud of the team and everyone that has contributed to the site, especially those that have found it difficult to write for an online environment but have still given it a go! Big thanks to Mandy who’s our team organiser and keeps us informed of who’s doing what and to Stephen, Alana and Tom C for being our team proofreaders, Tom L and Shaun our social media bods and for Will and Mike for all their help behind the scenes with the ‘techy stuff’ and thank you to everyone in the team that has contributed to Tel Tales. Thanks to all our followers too – we hope you enjoy reading our posts!! Cheers everyone!

Wishing you all a very ‘Happy Easter’ from the TEL team.

Happy Easter

If you would like to feature as a guest blogger on Tel Tales then please get in touch and we can discuss ideas with you 🙂

Image credits:
https://pixabay.com/images/id-72160/
http://www.quotesvalley.com/quotes/failure/page/443/
https://pixabay.com/images/id-2406452/

About This Site

We are a talented bunch of individuals that specialise in providing support, development and design to staff around the University. We help to support staff in using technology to enhance their students' learning. Follow our blog to see what the TEL team are doing!

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