A session that I’m running this afternoon:

Workshop that’s running at 10am:

Workshop I’m just about to run, with the following outline:

Why put your presentations online?

Placing your precious academic work online has always been seen as a danger to Intellectual Property, but with the option to apply ‘Creative Commons’ to your work, you can upload presentations in the public space, encourage interest in your academic work, and engage with the wider intellectual dialogue surrounding it. Putting such work online makes your ‘findability’ by Google much easier, and your academic reputation grows as a result.

Prezi: is a flash-based presentation tool, hosted online, which allows multiple authors to contribute (no large email files). Considered by many as the next step on from PowerPoint (but is in fact just another tool), Prezi ‘allows the speaker to encourage a dialogue, and visualise ideas as if you were drawing a mind map for your audience’.

Slideshare: is an online document hosting service where documents (in this case PowerPoint) can be uploaded, viewed, inspire others, and commented upon. Conversation is encouraged between interest groups, and slideshares can be embedded into blogs.

What will I learn in this session?

This session offers a brief overview to the two types of software, allowing you to make an informed choice as to which fits your needs most appropriately. The practical training will focus upon Prezi.

By the end of the session participants will have had:

• An opportunity to investigate/sign up on both accounts
• An opportunity to develop your first Prezi presentation
• A brief look at Creative Commons licensing

“No one would want to be a shambling, rotting corpse,” said Marcus Leaning, senior lecturer in media studies at the University of Winchester. “Yet since the early 2000s, there has been a proliferation of zombies expanding out of traditional media. I am interested in the meaning of zombies to producers and fans.”  (Times Higher Education)

‘You should study popular culture if you want to understand society. Zombies reflect the anxieties and concerns people have. One idea is that it’s due to austerity, another that it stems from the ‘‘climate of fear’’ after al-Qaeda. No-one really believes in zombies but it’s a way of thinking about big scary things such as a terrorist attack. It’s cathartic.’  (Metro)

“We’re living through the hardest economic times in most young people’s memories,” Dr Leaning said. ”Maybe zombies speak to austerity Britain in a way other monsters don’t.” (BBC)

• Times Higher Education story
• Telepolis (German)
• BBC coverage of the conference (1)
• BBC coverage of the conference (2)
• BBC Radio 4 interview (no longer available)
• Metro coverage of the conference
• Piled Higher and Deeper Comic
• Times Higher Education: Teaching Intelligence: Monster Mash proves highly infectious
• University of Winchester information
• Z-Rated: Protect your home from Zombies

Where have you seen Zombies in popular culture? I’m thinking of the Mini Cooper advert…

This paper, written by Dr David Rush and Dr Bex Lewis, was accepted (see abstract), and will shortly be presented on this panel.

Along with Dr Andy Wilson and Marina Janetsky, we submitted an abstract for a workshop for ALTC11, which we were asked to resubmit as a panel paper. The paper is about to be given as part of this Panel (with Dr Bex Lewis representing the group’s findings). The initial report was confidential, but the findings appear relevant across many institutions:

This afternoon, I am running the following workshop at the University of Winchester:

A talk given earlier today at Winchester’s L&T Day.

PELC11: Digital Futures: Learning in a Connected World
Dr Marcus Leaning and Dr Bex Lewis, University of Winchester
Strand: Higher Education // Web 2.0

“Sit still and listen!”

 Traditional learning approaches stress that the teacher is the source of all knowledge, that there is a fixed path to learning.

“Stand up and join in!”

Lifelong learning emphasises that educators are guides to sources of knowledge, which people learn by doing, in groups and from each other.

Manipulating media is a new course taken by all first year media studies students at the University of Winchester. Students taking the course work upon a number of live team briefs that present problems that require the use of academic literacy to be solved. The projects make extensive use of collaborative online learning. Students produce and deliver work using a number of web 2.0 applications and platforms, including reflective blogging. The course has proven very popular with students and there are clear indications of the development of academic literacy in students.

Previously, academic literacy, which comprises the core skills of critical thinking, evaluation of sources, referencing, analytic and critical writing and self directed learning has proven a difficult and often unpopular aspect of introductory years for students in higher education. At PELC10, there was much discussion of the contested notion of the ‘digital native’ , particularly as to the use of social technologies for learning. This paper explores one successful way in which a combination of social media and project based learning have been used to teach academic literacy to media studies undergraduate students at the University of Winchester, overcoming the sense of ‘disconnect’ between the substantive elements of a media studies degree and the ‘drier’ academic style and skills required.