Friday Book Review: Scottish gardens. Being a representative selection of different types, old and new

Scottish gardens. Being a representative selection of different types, old and new by Sir. Herbert Maxwell. London, 1908

Beautifully illustrated by Mary Wilson, this has fascinating descriptions of many of the best Scottish gardens of that era, interspersed with historical anecdote. The author concentrates mainly on the planting rather than design and layout, with the emphasis on West Coast gardens. Given the publication date of 1908, it is especially fascinating to modern readers as few of these gardens remain in original ownership, or even exist in their original state.

JISC/CNI 08: Student Experience Sir David Melville, Chair of the UK Committee of Inquiry into the Student Experience

This is the final round up session

ISC survey in ICT expectations (Sept 07)
Expectations generally based on school experience

Other reading – google generation is wider than we think – adults catch up rapidly once exposed

Follow up questionnaire Supervisors noticed that they were multitasking while filling it in.

“Owned spaces” are very important – can this concept be transferred into innovative physical space design?

Committee looking at FE and schools as well as evidence from futurologists

Age at which w2 becomes ubiquitous getting younger
Needs of future workplace demand these skills

Committee has a website/wiki/discussion forum
www.clex.org.uk

Issues of parental consent with younger children and use of social networks for teaching.

Future problem of assessment of mashedup material



Conclusions
Malcolm Read, Executive Secretary, JISC

Institutional silos are a frustration – libraries not part of the problem.
Information not managed in a strategic way.

Cliff Lynch, Executive Director, CNI

Conversation moved onto a higher level, from mechanics and technical plumbing to contributing to teaching & learning Libraries need to be assertive in carrying out a deeper mission in institutional & research data management
Speed of maturation of repositories & sophistication of digitisation.
Simple finding – overelaborated complexity needs to be tackled as aprt of improving the user experience


What is UG education for? Affects whole principle of teaching; when does technology help in learning how to think? (What always wories me is that information literacy/library skills have been taught here for decades, with it appears no effect - what are we doing wrong?)

JISC/CNI 08: Learning Objects and Instructional Materials

JORUM New Directions: Peter Burnhill/Jackie Carter, JORUMUK

Reason to have content outside the VLE because of the proprietary nature and variety of platforms

Originally designed to be used within an institutional setting as part of a course, now we have more open learning, how might that affect usage?

2 services: Keep-safe mandate & JORUM R&D

23% HEI, project12% FEI contributors 2200 resources
80% HEI, 60% HEU users, 5000+ users, 9600+ downloads

Showcase

JORUM predates emergence of open access; now being repurposed for ‘open sharing’ and showcase for UK commitment to Open Education Resources.

Future plans to shift out of the realm of education technologists, to make more accessible. Question as to whether we should focus on academics or students?

Developing new licensing regimes

JorumOpen
Jorum EducationUK
JorumPlus


Merlot – project which rather than collect objects, collects pointers to objects (US)

FF - To realise potential must go direct to learner – can they also be contributors?

Measurement of re-use & repurposing of resources.
Looking at getting more community engagement; currently reliant on feedback