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July Jamboree!

By Steve Rowett, on 23 June 2022

Colourful bunting adorns the UCL Quad advertising the July Jamboree

The July Jamboree celebrated some of the smaller, more discipline-specific education technology tools available at UCL, and gave you a chance to see them in action and ask questions of the vendors or developers.

The videos of these sessions are now listed below. Access to the videos requires a UCL login. All videos have human-corrected captions and a transcript available.

Monday 11 July: Learning design and content

Tuesday 12 July: Feedback and interaction

Wednesday 13 July: Mathematics and coding

Thursday 14 July: Simulations in STEMM subjects

  • Labster: Labster provides award-winning STEM curriculum-aligned virtual laboratory simulations within biology, biochemistry, genetics, biotechnology, chemistry, physics and more. Labster video (UCL login required). Find out more about Labster
  • Lt: Lt is an online learning platform with ready-to-use content for life sciences, nursing, and medicine. Lt video (UCL login required). Find out more about Lt
  • LearnSci: Transformative digital tools for science educators. Outstanding learning experiences for students. LearnSci video (UCL login required). Find out more about LearnSci

Friday 15 July: Reading, writing and annotating

 

DigitalWhiteboards: the good, the bad and the ugly

By Samantha Ahern, on 23 August 2021

Digital Whiteboards can be a very useful addition to your digital pedagogy toolkit. However, they come with a number of considerations. The most important of these is accessibility. For this reason UCL does not have any institution-wide licences for any digital whiteboards featured.. It was felt that there were too many accessibility concerns.

If you are going to use these types of tools you need to have a good understanding of your audience and know that it will not disadvantage any of the participants. If there is a risk of potential disadvantage an equitable alternative should be used instead. For more information about alternatives see the Digital Education blog post: Alternatives for Digital Walls like Padlet

The video below (run time: 32mins) provides an overview of 5 digital whiteboards, their key features and key considerations for use:

Apps

The above video explored the browser versions of the digital whiteboards. There are apps available for some of the digital whiteboards. However, these have yet to be explored.

  • Miro and Mural
    • Mobile and tablet (iOS and Android)
    • Desktop (Mac and Windows)
    • Interactive displays
  • Mural and ConceptBoard
    • MS Teams

Accessibility Considerations

Many of the digital whiteboards present a number of challenges for users. The key areas for consideration are outlined below.

See also the central UCL guidance on Creating Accessible Content.

Structure

Due to the vastness of the digital whiteboards, they can be difficult to navigate and it is very easy to become disorientated whilst using them. It is important to carefully structure the board whether you are using it to share information or for collaborative tasks.

  • Make use of templates where appropriate
  • Use section tools to segment the board for different activity or group zones
  • Reduce the busy-ness

Colour and backgrounds

In many of the boards it is possible to change background colours and images, and use a variety of different coloured notes.

  • Avoid using colour alone to depict meaning
  • Is there a strong contrast between text and it’s background colour?
  • If using a background image, can added items clearly be seen?

Text

Much the same as any document containing text, consider the size and style of the font being used. Avoid use of italics and block capitals. Where required use bold text for emphasis.

Presenting

Where available make use of presentation mode, this will enable both yourself and your participants to focus on the specific sections of interest throughout the presentation.

Writing when teaching remotely

By Steve Rowett, on 22 April 2020

Updated 21 October 2020 to include graphics tablets and webcam options
Updated 5 January 2022 with minor updates to links

We start this blog post with a short exercise for the reader: search Google Images or an image library for the word teacher.

I hope that you see a range of diverse people in the pictures. But I bet that most of them will have a pen or chalk in their hand, and a board or surface at their side. The act of writing and talking as a form of instruction is perhaps the most commonly perceived characteristic of who a teacher is and what they do.

The move to remote teaching has made writing as a form of teaching more difficult. A mouse may be great for controlling a computer, but it’s hard to use it to write smoothly on screen.

So in this post, we will look at how we might continue to use writing as a form of teaching, even from home.

Before we start, a note on accessibility. Whilst we teach remotely, so of the facilities that our students might have relied upon (like captions, transcripts, note-takers or signers) might not be available, so we may need to make alternative accommodations. Please do think about this before you plan your teaching and contact Digital Education if you would like advice.

Using a visualiser at home

In the classroom or lecture hall, many rooms will have a visualiser (also called a document camera) for showing writing and objects. These are typically hooked up to a projection screen through the AV system and are also captured by lecture capture. UCL uses a mix of table-top visualiser and ceiling mounted visualisers from a company called Wolfvision.

You can also buy more consumer-level products in this category. At home I use an IPEZO VZ-R camera, which costs about £200.

The IPEVO VZ-R visualiser - a sturdy base with a webcam mounted on a flexible hinge.

IPEVO VZ-R Visualiser (source: ipevo.com)

The camera connects via USB and can be used in two ways:

  • Directly as a webcam, either replacing your main video feed or in Zoom you can share a second camera in the same way you might share your screen
  • Using the IPEVO Visualizer software which is available as a free download for multiple platforms, and then sharing this application

Either method works well, but I’d recommend the latter as webcam video is often heavily compressed. This method works well with all our supported platforms, including Lecturecast (Echo 360) Universal Capture Personal, Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Blackboard Collaborate.

The camera is compact but sturdy. It has an in-built light, and facilities such as zoom and autofocus, and can capture a surface slightly less than A3. It also has an inbuilt microphone which is likely to be closer to you when you are speaking than one in a laptop.

Control buttons on the IPEVO VZ-R including power, zoom and focus

Control buttons on the IPEVO VZ-R (source: ipevo.com)

The software can control the features of the camera, and can make recordings that you could upload to Lecturecast, for example. The controls neatly get out of the way when they aren’t being used, so that you can focus on the content. The image below shows the auto-focus in operation, clearly capturing a book cover.

IPEVO Visualizer software showing controls and a picture of a book under the camera

IPEVO Visualizer software showing controls

The Visualizer application can easily be shared in a Blackboard Collaborate room, and you can then move the window out of the way and focus on the participants. The image below shows me writing some simple maths on a notepad, captured by the camera, using the screen sharing feature of Collaborate to show this to other participants.

Writing equations which are shared within a Blackboard Collaborate room

Writing equations which are shared within a Blackboard Collaborate room.

IPEVO offer another model, the V4K, for £100, which has a lower resolution sensor (but still good) and no light. Of course other companies are available, and I’ve heard recommendations of Genee and Aver models. These types of visualisers are often used in secondary schools, so any teachers you know may be able to give suitable advice.

One thing I particularly like about the IPEVO models is the design. The one I have folds fairly flat, so is easy to store away, so my living room doesn’t have to look like a lecture theatre. Here’s a comparison of its size when folded compared to a bottle of wine. And yes, it does fit in a wine rack.

An IPEVO VZ-R is about the size of a bottle of wine when folded

The IPEVO VZ-R folds down to the size of a bottle of wine.


Writing on an iPad or other tablet

Using an Apple Pencil on an iPad or a stylus for other devices, you can use a notes or sketch app to write on an iPad. This works fine as a standalone process, but you can also use software such as Reflector to mirror your device to your PC or Mac and screen share it as part of a call using Blackboard Collaborate, Zoom etc., or to record it from your screen using Lecturecast Personal Capture. If you have a Mac, you can also plug in your USB to Lightning cable and use Quicktime to mirror your screen by selecting your iPad as the camera source (thanks to Dr Steven Schofield from UCL Physics and Astronomy for that tip).

The short clip below shows Steven leading a revision lecture with his students. He reports that “I gave a two hour live revision lecture today; I was able to use the screen mirroring software to share my iPad Mini screen with the class via Blackboard Collaborate. It went really well and I had good feedback from the students. I think the overall experience is so much better than just talking to prepared slides. ”


Using a webcam

If you have a webcam that isn’t built in to your computer, you can use this too. We’ve tried a couple of webcams and it can work well, but may not have the full controls or handy features like the light that the VZ-R has.

If you have a laptop webcam above the screen, there’s  further option using a mirror to give you a whiteboard surface. Again IPEVO has an option for this, or you can look at making your own using a 3D printer or just cardboard cutouts. John Umekubo has blogged about this, and John Mitchell from UCL has put it into practice. The much lower cost means it could be a great option for students to show their workings.


Using a graphics tablet

Graphics tablets are often associated with drawing and more artistic work, but can also be used for writing. It can be less natural as your writing is preserved only on screen rather than on the tablet itself, a difference between writing on paper. Wacom are the brand leader with many higher end products for artists, but for simple writing tasks more modest brands are also suitable. We’ve had good reports of the XP-Pen and Viekk brands. Feedback suggests that the size of the graphics tablet is more important than features like number of levels of pressure sensitivity if you are using it predominantly for writing rather than art.


Using a mobile phone or tablet

You may have seen tweets where inventive teachers have rigged up their phones to use as cameras. But how do you do this?

Well, IPEVO provide an app for that too. To make this work, you need three things:

  • An Apple or Android phone on the same network as your computer (PC, Mac, Chromebook and Linux supported)
  • An installation of IPEVO iDocCam on your phone
  • An installation of IPEVO Visualizer on your computer

Launch the app on your phone, and then the Visualizer software on your computer, and your phone will appear in the list of available cameras.

The phone can be selected from the list of cameras available in the IPEVO Visualizer software

Your phone shows as a camera in the IPEVO Visualizer software

And here is an example of it in use, with my old IPhone SE acting as the camera:

The final bit is to rig the phone up in a secure way, about 40cm above your desk. You might use a desk mount, or a pile of books, or some blu tack and string. How  you do this is up to you, but this tweet from UCL’s Matt Whyndham might give you some inspiration. Happy writing!

Introducing StepShot Manuals

By Jim R Tyson, on 8 February 2018

For a while now, I have been quietly promoting StepShot Manuals (StepShot for short) to my colleagues in ISD. StepShot is a rapid documentation development tool. Which is not nearly as bad as it sounds. StepShot allows you to record an on-screen process – for example, formatting a table in Word or filling out an expenses form – taking screenshots, adding callouts and annotations and writing explanations as you go.

Some key uses for StepShot include

  • rapid development of training materials and technical documentation
  • developing test scripts for UAT
  • recording test results or bugs
  • creating knowledgebase articles
  • recording process for business analysis and process review

If you have ever done these jobs, then you might have combined several tools, for example

a screenshot tool (Windows has one built in), Word, an image editor (Paint or Photoshop), with a workflow like this: take all your screenshots, insert them into word editing, cropping etc as you go, adding explanatory text.

Stepshot brings all this together in one tool. You set it up to record the activity and select to create a screenshot for mouse clicks or keyboard actions or to use a specific hot key combination for screenshots. As you go through the activity recording images you can also give each a descriptive title and a comment. When you stop recording StepShot opens its editing tool. This latter looks a bit like PowerPoint: your images are listed vertically down the left while the main window allows you to edit an image and add text.

Click to see the animation!

This is already a vast improvement on hacking documents together with separate applications, none of them specifically designed for the job, but wait there’s more! StepShot can export your document when you have finished, as Word, PDF, HTML, XML or DITA and can publish directly to Confluence, SharePoint or WordPress. (If they add a PowerPoint option I’ll throw a party). There are simple built in templates for output and with a little effort you can create a customised or branded template.

So, currently about a dozen people at UCL have taken up a license (UCL staff members can contact ISD Training Administration for licensing information. To use StepShot you do need admin rights on your Windows or Mac PC.). It has been used to create training materials for lecturecast (published on Confluence), it has been used in UAT creating test scripts, it has been used by software testers to record bugs and communicate them to developers. No one currently using it has had more than a two minute informal introduction to the product but people seem to pick up its basic use very quickly. Users report that they enjoy using it as well. The most commone response using it for the first time has been about the immense time savings you can achieve and next about the simplicity of use. One or two people have commented that they don’t really like the look of the output, but this is largely because they haven’t learned how to customise output. I have offered a short workshop on customisation and hope to run it again.

I have created a Microsoft Team site and I will be keeping in touch with people using it since I have been asked to feedback our experience to the developers.