JISC Conference 2010 blog competition launches

JISC is putting the spotlight on the education community in a blog competition, with the chance to win a flip camera and inclusion in a JISC publication.

As part of the JISC Conference 2010, JISC is asking teachers, learners and researchers to share their experiences of technology around the event theme:
‘technology – at the heart of education and research’.

The competition will be judged by Michelle Pauli, deputy editor of Guardian.co.uk books section and editor of the conference blog; conference keynote speaker Bill St Arnaud, chief research officer at Canada’s Advanced Internet Development Organization; and John Traxler, professor of mobile learning and director of the Learning Lab at the University of Wolverhampton.

Entrants should write a blog post or produce a short video explaining how important technology is to their work in education and research.

For example, have you been using web 2.0 tools to get in touch with or engage students or colleagues? Perhaps technology is helping to make your research quicker and easier, or maybe you’ve found a whole new angle of inquiry because of it? Whether it’s about getting in touch with far-flung colleagues, presenting your work in a new way, or working in an innovative area, JISC wants to hear from you.

Michelle Pauli explained what the judges are looking for: “We’re really looking forward to finding out what technology the education community couldn’t live without, whether it’s a cutting edge software application or a standard piece of kit used in an innovative way. Blog posts don’t need to be long to tell a good story and a short, sweet and to-the-point specific example can be just as compelling and effective.”

She added: “I’m particularly intrigued to see if anyone takes up the challenge of ’showing rather than telling’ by using video to share their story.”

All entrants will receive reciprocal links to their blogs from the JISC website, with the chance to be part of the selected entries in a publication on the topic.

The overall winner of the competition will receive a flip camera, presented to them at the JISC Conference 2010, taking place from 12-13 April 2010 at the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre, London.

Anyone employed by a further education college or university in the UK or abroad is eligible to enter the competition, although members of the JISC executive are not eligible to be shortlisted or win the prize.

Submit your entry via the online form before the entry deadline of 1700 GMT on Friday 19 February 2010 at http://www.jisc.ac.uk/events/2010/04/jisc10/blogcomp

eResearch - What is it and how can it help me?

Date: Tuesday 17 November
Venue: Priorslee Hall, Telford Campus, University of Wolverhampton, Shifnal Road, Priorslee, Telford, Shropshire, TF2 9NT
Website

This JISC-sponsored roadshow, for researchers and those providing IT support services, will introduce the concept of e-research and some of the tools, along with case studies from practitioners in various disciplines.

Many academics engage in a combination of teaching, administration and research. All will be familiar with the use of networked technologies help them work together, teaching and administering large numbers of students, often at a distance, perhaps through managed learning environments or video-conferencing

The term e-Research describes the use of networked technologies to support research activities, by enabling the capture, storage, analysis, publishing or sharing of large amounts of complex data often by remote or distributed teams. Technologies and services specifically for e-research already exist and are increasingly used, with many freely available. Additionally, other tools already familiar to academics in other contexts can be adopted and adapted for e-research.

Guest speakers

Book Online

JISC Conference 2010 Sponsorship and Exhibition Bookings Open

We are delighted to announce that sponsorship and exhibition bookings are now open for the JISC Conference 2010. The conference will be held at the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre London on 12-13 April 2010.

For the past 7 years the JISC annual conference has been bringing expertise and knowledge to over 750 academics, IT experts, library professionals, policy makers, research staff, senior managers, students and teachers from across education in the UK and internationally. The one and a half day conference provides an unrivalled opportunity to communicate and network directly with this audience.

Download the Sponsorship and Exhibition Packages Information document which lists all the available opportunities, what is included in each package, the prices and how to book. Please refer to the booking form for full details.

NB: Early Bird package rates end 1 December 2009 - so get booking now to secure your discount!

For further information about the JISC Conference please visit the conference website.


JISC sponsored UCISA event: Liaising with researchers

Title:                      SSG Liaising with researchers
Date:                     Wednesday 20 January 2010
Venue:                   Chancellors Hotel and Conference Centre, Manchester
Booking deadline:     Friday 8 January 2010
Cost:                      UCISA Members - £105       Non-Members - £165

Book Online

Many institutions are already developing, or are looking to develop, a liaison or relationship management strategy to improve the links between central information services and the departments and divisions of the wider institution. Given limited resources, such liaison work often involves engaging only with a few individuals, who are expected to represent the needs and views of their whole department. Researchers, however, have IT needs that are somewhat different to those of other IT users within their institution. The challenges of liaising with researchers include:

A variety of models for liaising with researchers exists within the HE community and an understanding of what constitutes good practise is still developing. Through a combination of presentations and discussion workshops, this event will aim to improve on that understanding and enable delegates to discuss and share good practise where it exists.

If you or others within your institution need to improve your liaison or communication with researchers, then this event should be of interest to you. The event is being run in collaboration with JISC, who hope to commission a study of the various models in use across HE for engagement with researchers. The presentations and workshop discussions would therefore feed into that study and inform future developments in this area.

Sponsored by JISC.

JISC Conference 2010 - save the date!

londonbus.jpgThe JISC Conference 2010 is taking place on 12-13 April 2010, at the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre. Make sure you have the date saved in your diary!

The main conference will open with a drinks reception on the evening of the 12 April, with a full programme on the 13 April. Pre-conference activities on the afternoon of the 12 April are planned and these will be announced along with the parallel session details later in the year.

We are delighted to welcome the following keynote speakers to the conference:

Sponsorship and Exhibition bookings are now open and full details of the packages and how to book can be found at: www.jisc.ac.uk/jisc10

CBI Higher Education Summit

Building partnerships for success - the CBI Higher Education Summit

The launch of the CBI Higher Education Task Force report ‘Stronger Together – Businesses and Universities in Turbulent Times  made a big impact in the media, and raised awareness of the importance of strong links between business and universities.

The CBI HE Summit on 20 October builds on the report to further explore the funding challenges facing the sector, in the light of expected reductions in government funding. In particular, discussing what action is needed to ensure the continued strength of the UK HE sector.

Universities can provide business with ideas and new technologies, so how best can business work with universities to turn academic research into the innovative product of the future? What are the opportunities and challenges presented by a greater focus on economic impact by research funders?

With speakers including members of the HE Task Force and shadow secretary of state for universities and skills David Willetts, the summit brings together business leaders, policymakers, higher education stakeholders and university vice-chancellors.

This is a great opportunity to help influence the policies shaping the future of higher education in the UK. See the full programme here.

Book your place here

Event details:

20 October 2009
BMA House, Tavistock Square, London, WC1H 9JO

For further information please contact:

Sue Thornton
T: 020 7395 8013
E: sue.thornton@cbi/org.uk

You can read Stronger Together – Businesses and Universities in Turbulent Times here

Delicious feeds

Delicious feeds of tagged blog posts, website news feeds etc, all relating to events organisation on subjects such as

and  much much more, can now be viewed here on the JISC events blog.

The tags being used are:

JISC Access & Identity Management Programme Call

The new JISC Access and Identity Management Programme call has been released: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/fundingopportunities/funding_calls/2009/08/0809aim.aspx.

The deadline for receipt of proposals in response to this call is 12 noon GMT on Monday 19th October 2009.

The JISC is holding a community briefing event where potential bidders will be given information about the background to the call, its objectives and the bidding process. Attendees will also have an opportunity to ask questions of JISC Executive staff. This meeting will take place Thursday 17th September 2009 at the ICC in Birmingham. Registration for this event closes 13:00 Friday 11th September 2009. More information is available from http://www.jisc.ac.uk/events/2009/09/aimcallbriefing.aspx.

Further details about the call can be found at the AIM blog at http://aimprog.jiscinvolve.org/. Queries about the call can also be posted on Twitter using the tag #AIMCall09.

If you have any queries or require further information please do not hesitate to contact the AIM Programme Manager Christopher Brown at c.brown@jisc.ac.uk or on 020 3006 6072 and 07891 501177.

Achievements and Challenges of Digitisation and e-Content

JISC has funded 14 Workshops and Seminars exploring some of the achievements and challenges in Digitisation and e-Content.  Covering a wide range of challenging and cutting-edge developments within digitisation these workshops address questions as diverse as visualising climate change data to digital performance, and issues around robot digitisation technology to Geographical Information Systems in history and heritage.

  1. Optical Character Recognition (OCR) for the mass digitisation of textual materials: Improving Access to Text, 24 Sept 09, Contact: Michael Day, UKOLN, University of Bath, http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/events/ocr-2009
  2. Digital imagery: creation and importance in the visual arts, Contact: Leigh Garrett,  University for the creative Arts, 22 Sep 09, http://www.vads.ac.uk/digitalimagery
  3. Digitising Correspondence (Digitising Early Modern Letters), Contact: Dr Jan Broadway, Queen Mary, University of London, 17 Sep 09 http://www.livesandletters.ac.uk/events/2009/09/17/digitizing-correspondence-workshop
  4. Creating digital performance documentation
  5. Managing digital performance documentation
  6. Delivering digital performance documentation,  Contact: Stephen Gray                   JISC Digital Media, 23-25 Sep 09, http://www.jiscdigitalmedia.ac.uk/blog/entry/free-to-attend-digitisation-seminars
  7. Climate Data Digitisation and Visualisation, Contact: Dr Rob Allen, Met Office Hadley Centre, 15-17 Sep 09, http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/digitisation/reports/workshops.aspx(Word Document on JISC workshops webpage)
  8. Collaborative scholarly editing over the Web, Contact: Dr Peter Robinson                University of Birmingham, 24-25 Sep 09, http://www.itsee.bham.ac.uk/vmr/toolscfp.htm
  9. Geographical Information Systems in history and heritage, Contact: Sarah Rees Jones, University of York, 17-18 Sep 09, http://www.york.ac.uk/res/isthmus/ISTHMUS_Site/Public_Participatory_GIS.html
  10. Mathematical content–tools and standards, practice and strategy, Contact: Dr Jonathon Fine, The Open University, 9 Sep 09, http://groups.google.com/group/uk-math-content-2009?hl=en&pli=1
  11. Successfully building and managing a digital media collection
  12. The digital media collection +100 years, Contact: Dave Kilbey, JISC Digital Media 15-16 Sep 09, http://www.jiscdigitalmedia.ac.uk/blog/entry/free-to-attend-digitisation-seminars
  13. Building Usage of Cartoon Archives, Contact: Dr Nicholas Hiley, University of Kent (Awaiting Website/Programme details)
  14. Digital History Workshop: Connecting researchers to digital collections, Contact: Dr Kathryn Eccles, Oxford Internet Institute, 3rd Sep 09, http://people.oii.ox.ac.uk/research/2009/07/23/digital-history-digital-resources-for-history-and-historians/
  15. High Volume Digitisation: Issues, Trends & Innovative Robot Tech, Contact: Beverley Dodd, Birmingham City University, 23 Sep 09, http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/digitisation/reports/workshops.aspx (pdf Document on JISC workshops webpage)

Advanced Distributed Services Summer School 2009

7th - 11th September 2009
Cosener’s House
Oxfordshire

Working with a number of UK and international partners the Training, Outreach and Education Group at the  National e-Science Centre in Edinburgh has delivered a number of Summer School programmes globally in the past 5 years. In conjunction with the National Grid Service (NGS) this expertise will underpin the delivery of Advanced Distributed Services School (ADSSS) in the UK.

The aim of the ADSSS is to help develop the skills of those involved in providing computational support for research in a wide range of disciplines.

In particular the school will focus on the use of, provision of interfaces to and the development of services based on employing the composition or aggregation of computational or data services.

For instance the school will show how to compose a variety of services into bioinformatics work flows which can be used to support biomedical research processes, how to use and develop lab or department scale clusters of computers to run simulations, how to work with the National Grid Service to compose protein simulation models for running on UK or international super computers, developing a portal to support legacy appications.

The school aims to provide the students with a familiarity with and the tools to use the facilities available in the UK and internationally to transform current research practices in the light of the developing services being made available in a highly networked
world.

Registration is now open. Costs £276 per student including accommodation and meals.

Further information available on the ADSSS website, NGS website and in the NGS newsletter.

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