JISC E-Learning Fair
My iPhone was still awaiting repair/replacement, and as there was a £15 fee to use the wireless, I decided I’d stick with pen and paper, but when it then took quite some time to sort through the information and reproduce a blog, I’m thinking a Netbook may be the way forward other events. As I only have 7.5 hours a week to work on Blended Learning (although I invariably do more), got to conserve the time for working on new ideas, although clearly the dissemination of such information is important!

Why I Study History
PowerPoint was banned at this session, which was intended to be as responsive as possible, but I did write a few notes, and not too long after the event adapted those notes to integrate some of the discussion we’d had afterwards, and posted onto my WW2 Poster blog..

Men at War/Framing Film
Again, at these conferences I was armed only with a notebook. Neither conference was set up for Twitter, so it wasn’t a question there. In giving my paper, I had access to a presentation remote control, and this makes such a difference to presentation – allowing more flexibility, and more engagement with the audience. As to blogging however, I’d blogged BEFORE each conference, which generated a lot of interest (judging by my hit counter), bit I still haven’t got round to putting elements of my paper online, even though I could easily upload  the PowerPoints to Slideshare, and maybe even just cut and paste my notes (yes, I did use PPT, but I didn’t have a fixed script).

Greenbelt
Attended Greenbelt after the previous couple of events. I’d maintained contact with a number of people from those events via Twitter, Facebook, blog comments, etc., and it was a great chance to meet up with a number of people face-to-face again, and to have a clearer idea of which elements of the event to attend. Greenbelt experimented with an iPhone app for the first time, with around 300-400 users paying around £4 each (rather than £8 for a paper programme), in which you could favourite particular sessions. Only drawback with this was that the battery kept running out, and keeping it charged was either expensive (there was a place to recharge phones) or time-consuming in trying to find a plug socket not in use by someone else/combined with a session you’re interested in! So all my notes, again, were on paper, although I did send out a number of Twitpics from the event (don’t do this overseas, I tried a few from Twitterfon/Echofon, and it downloaded all my tweets as well – my bill for a couple of weeks abroad was about £200!)

Christianity in the Digital Space
At “Christianity in the Digital Space“, I came armed with… a notebook and my iPhone for the first session! Everyone else was hunkered down behind their laptops, and my phone, under the strain of so much Twittering, ran out of battery before the morning was up! After lunch, therefore, I returned with my laptop/partially charged iPhone, and joined the general melee for a power socket! We talked about the experience of constantly Tweeting (and other online interactions) whilst someone was giving a paper. Most presenters were quite happy with this, as they were the ones Tweeting when not presenting (even I didn’t manage both!), and the exceptionally brave ones kept an eye on the Twitterfall, and interacted with it.

Churches Media Council Conference
Once I overcame logging into the wireless network (there was no phone signal really to speak of), I had a great time Twittering about the event, along with a number of others, and having mini-tweet-ups, including meeting those I’d met before the event in person (always great – see, that’s why I talk BLENDED, not E-LEARNING). The event is quite rammed, and unlike many, I didn’t have a netbook, so tried to blog in the evening, but only managed a short entry on the first evening (trying to get agreement on a hashtag, and promoting the use of a Twitterfall – not quite this year, but it’ll be there next year), whilst it took a bit longer for the second entry, which was more of an overview of an event, and links across to others who had participated at the event.

Following any necessary extra research, I wrote the following content for the site:

• About 95% of the captions, and the group descriptions, for the illustrations and propaganda sections
• The information on INF 3 and the Ministry of Information
• Much of the information on artists was taken from my website, plus I did further research, and wrote some of the entries.

The images and original records are free to view and are available on www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/artwar. As well as downloading the artwork and the history behind it, online visitors could send selected images to their mobile phone or as e-cards. Visitors can also arrange to visit The National Archives to see the originals, others in the collection, and the finished posters.

This screendump illustrates the initial page for the www.ww2poster.co.ukwebsite, which uses a poster image that rotates daily over the week.

• The site started from humble beginnings in 1997, with a single page, detailing the aims of my PhD, on Tripod.
• The site continued to grow and grow organically, until I decided that it had spiralled out of control, and set to develop a well planned and aesthetically pleasing site, but was limited to using Word 97.
• I soon realised that Word produced ‘mucky code’, and started to learn basic HTML, and in 2001 attended one-to-one training to learn Macromedia Dreamweaver 4.0 and Adobe PhotoShop 5.5, and redesigned and restructured the site using the techniques learnt.
• The design is formed on tables, which means that the design works with whatever size screen the user uses (I try to do this wherever possible), and is heavily information focused.
• Usability and accessibility are key to the design of the site, although more recent developments need to be studied, as my site is not entirely ‘Bobby Approved‘, to comply with disability legislation. Some examples of accessible features include the use of Alt Tags and Meta Tags, breadcrumbs and search fucntions.
• The search function is essential to the site, as approximately 50% of people are ‘searchers’, but a clear structure to the site is also important, as the other 50% are ‘browsers’.
• Hosted by 1and1.co.uk.

With the PhD is now finished, and in response to the various questions that I get asked, the site underwent redevelopment.

• I wanted to use XML, but poor teaching techniques mean that this was not learnt, and I have decided to use a simple contemporary (HTML) design which facilitates easy use of the information on site.
• The new site still used information from the old site, but gives more options for development, and uses transferable skills from research PhD in extracting relevant information and structuring it in a useful way to those who use the site.
• Re-thinking the site has meant thinking about those areas that are most heavily used and make my site unique, for instance, the information on artists has been given its own section, rather than hidden.
• Usability and accessibility, through the use of careful structuring, thoughtful information and images, colours and layout, is expected to be key.

The site uses a dual structure for webpages:

• The site is built on a table structure (planning to change this for accessibility reasons).
• The key content navigation is available at the top of the screen, but extra navigation is available at the base of the page (as convention allows for this), with links to information about the author (me), a site map, ‘FAQ’, and copyright information, as I look to comply with legal and ethical considerations. These all need to be developed further.
• A discrete visitor count is available at the base of the front page (which assumes that all visitors come through this page, although this is not always the case), and more information on this can be obtained from my site host. Around 500 unique visitors are on the site every day.

http://www.ww2poster.co.uk, now accompanied by a blog http://ww2poster.wordpress.com/

Previous Designs