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Windows 7 Colour and Font Modifications Missing from Windows 10

By Michele Farmer, on 7 January 2019

The issue is that in previous versions of Windows, you were able to get into the settings to change the colour of the window background, so that when you opened a Microsoft Word or Excel file, the background colour on your screen was your chosen shade.

The window option allowed a colour chart to open up, where you could move the cursor around to find the exact shade you were looking for (alla Win 98, 2000, XP, 2007, etc.). In Microsoft 10, there is no simple option.

The current accessibility options provided by MS for Win 10 are pretty awful.

I have been in touch with Microsoft and they say that due to complaints that they will be bringing this facility back, but we do not know when.

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Screenshot of Windows 7 colour and appearance options

In the meantime UCL users can access a ‘Screenmasking’ option from a networked piece of software called TextHelp Read and Write. This software is either found on the Desktop@UCL, or from the Software Centre or Database.

Screen-masking Option Menu in TextHelp Read and Write

Research and Education Space (RES)

By Jessica Gramp, on 28 May 2015

RESMark Macey (mark.macey@bbc.co.uk) works on a project named the Research and Education Space (RES) as the Education Engagement Manager, which is being developed through a partnership between the BBC, Jisc and the British Universities Film and Video Council (BUFVC), who share the goal of  building a platform that indexes and aggregates materials available for education and research use.

The RES project aims to help teachers and learners find online teaching resources in all subject areas and at all levels which can be relied on. RES is building an open, accessible catalogue of online educational resources that can be used in both Primary, Secondary, HE and FE teaching, either directly within classroom materials and on electronic whiteboards or in materials developed by educational publishers and software providers. The aim is for RES to make student’s learning more interesting, varied, colourful and informative and to allow teaching to become more enriched across different levels and subjects.

The RES project is in a developmental phase and research is needed to make the offer as rich and as useful as possible to those in education.

Mark is planning to hold research groups (made up of teachers from different subjects and across the HE/FE sector) in late June/ early to mid July in White City, west London (dates and times TBC depending on availability of attendees). It would be great to know if this is something that might be of interest and if you might be available and interested to attend to offer your knowledge and experience. If you are interested then please let Mark know (at the above address) what dates you can and can’t do in that period. The meeting is likely to be 4-5 hours. Travel expenses will be paid and there is a fee paid for a replacement teacher or direct to you – as well as tea, coffee, sandwiches and copious biscuits 😉

There are more details about RES below and on the attached Word doc and Mark would be interested in talking with you once you have read about the project. He is available to answer any more questions you might have.

Read more about the project here (PDF 368KB)…

GigaPan

By Domi C Sinclair, on 26 February 2015

About a year ago, a colleague in E-Learning Environment showed me this online image tool, GigaPan. I enjoyed looking at this tool, and scrolling deeper and deeper into some stunning, extremely high quality panoramic shots. Recently I noticed that same colleague showing the tool to someone else and decided it was time I shared it with the wider community.

At its basic level it is a great tool for displaying large images and will embed nicely into MyPortfolio, UCL’s e-portfolio system.

GigaPan has a tagging feature, that allows you to tag details in the image that might be hidden when viewing the full image, and only become apparent when you zoom into the right location. This might be people going about their business somewhere on a busy city shot, or flora and fauna in a wild landscape. I started thinking about how this might be used in an educational context. It could be used to scan for details in a subject related shot, or perhaps as an induction activity. It could be used to find certain items in a picture,  that has been taken by the person setting the task, like a digital scavenger hunt. The aim in this would be to tag specific items, and each of these could be connected to a goal. Perhaps the person who finds the most items gets a Mozilla Open Badge or an invite to an exclusive event. It might be you are only allowed to tag one item, and once you have you are required to produce a report or presentation about it’s relevance to your subject.

There are many possibilities and I think GigaPan presents an opportunity to get creative in how you might set tasks for students, and have some fun.

You can explore the site yourself and generate your own ideas by visiting http://www.gigapan.com/

BoB (Box of Broadcasts) National

By Natasa Perovic, on 1 November 2014

How are you getting on with BoB?

BoB is Learning on Screen’s on demand TV and radio service for education. This academically-focused system allows staff and students to record programmes from over 65 free-to-air channels, and search BoB’s extensive archive.

 

Logging in

 

Searching for content

Requesting programmes

Using embed codes

Using with PowerPoint

Importing your clips and playlists

Accessing BoB reports

Setting user preferences

Issue reports and laternative bradcasts

To access BoB, log in with your UCL user details http://bobnational.net/

BoB user guide http://bobnational.net/faq

Etienne Wenger-Trayner @ UCL Storified!

By Clive Young, on 7 April 2014

Etienne Wenger-Trayner, the keynote speaker at UCL Teaching & Learning Conference last week inspired a very active on-line Twitter discussion that had #uclteach trending for a while. Here is some of the flavour of that discussion in about 75 tweets. I used the well-known social network service Storify to create the story and timeline below from the #uclteach hashtag on Twitter.

If you are interested in using Storify in education to collate and curate feeds from social media such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, try the following links.

 

 

2014 Horizon Report finds six key trends in E-Learning

By Clive Young, on 7 February 2014

Every year the NMC Horizon Report examines emerging technologies for their potential impact on and use in teaching, learning, and ‘creative inquiry’ within the environment of higher education. The report, downloadable in PDF, is compiled by an international body of experts and provides a useful checklist trends, challenges and technologies in the field.

The key trends identified in the in the short term are

  • Growing ubiquity of social media
  • Integration of online, hybrid, and collaborative learning

Longer term trends are: data-driven learning and assessment, shift from students as consumers to students as creators , agile approaches to change and the evolution of online learning

Key short-term challenges are

  • Low digital fluency of faculty
  • Relative lack of rewards for teaching

More difficult challenges are; competition from new models of education, scaling teaching innovations, expanding access and keeping education relevant.

The important developments in educational technology they identify are in the short term are

  • Flipped classroom
  • Learning analytics

Longer-term innovations are; 3D printing, games and gamification, ‘quantified self’ and virtual assistants.

There are useful commenatries and links thoughout. Encouraging that many of these ideas are already being implemented, trialed and discussed here at UCL.