Second Life from the tablets

We've now pretty well completed loading the Second Life viewer onto all the tablets, and we're really pleased with how well they cope with it. The quality of the picture is generally good, although it doesn't have the richness of the picture on machines with more poweful graphics cards (e.g. no sparkly water!). But, we're still really impressed with how well they do handle it, and we'll be using them in class in semester 2 so that students can access a learning simulation area we're building on our SL island. For more info on this, go to our Research Observatory/SL blog at http://researchobs2.edublogs.org/ . The picture on the left shows the hub area of the island, with the offices on the right and the exhibition hall on the left.

New uses for the tablets

We're beginning to look at ways in which the tablet computers can be used to support other elements of the MScs in IT and Statistics, so that students can become more familiar with them when we begin the research methods curriculum work again in semester 2 (Feb 2009), and also to try them out for different aspects of the wider curriculum. For example, students can work together on creating work in the IT lessons, and then upload this to Sharepoint and continue collaboration both inside and outside the classroom. They will be using the tablets this semester for both IT and statistics curriculum work, so we'll keep this blog posted with comments, discussions and descriptions of the work.

Sharing practice and experiences

There was a meeting of e-learning teams from the SW of England at the University of Bath yesterday. The meeting focussed on the use of Tablet PCs for teaching and learning. It was an informal event to share experiences and good practice from across the region. Our project was very well recieved and there was a lot of interest in our approach and our plans for the future. More details about the event can be seen at http://weethe.wordpress.com/

Trying out new uses with the tablet computers

A few members of faculty have been trying out the tablet computers to experiment with their functionality and to produce ideas for supporting teaching and learning. The general feedback we are getting so far is that they are great to use, and particularly that the handwriting recognition is astounding! We'll keep this blog posted with feedback from these occasional uses, so we can build up an archive of ideas and reflections.

Conferences!

The HP Higher Education Technology for Teaching conferences are really valuable networking opportunities, where educators from all over the world who have received HP HE grants get the opportunity to meet up and exchange experiences and ideas. Liz went to the EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) conference in London in October 2007, and Liz and Deborah went to the Worldwide conference in San Diego in February 2008. No prizes for guessing at which conference these pictures were taken! We really enjoyed meeting colleagues from such a wide range of universitites and picked up some very valuable hints and tips.

The presentations from users of tools such as Camtasia and One Note were also really thought-provoking, and we have now become real fans of the potential of One Note used on the tablets (the picture above shows how "snipped" pictures of web pages can be annotated using the pen on the tablet, as an example). The combination of the organisation features of One Note and the inking interface of the tablets works really well. If anyone in UWE is interested in these products, get in touch with us in e-learning, as UWE already has licences for One Note as part of Office 2007, and we have details of the education discounts for Camtasia.

The story so far

We received the equipment from HP towards the end of 2007 and our colleagues in ITS set about installing the UWE builds on them. We began using them in the classrooom in earnest at the beginning of semester 2 in 2008. To be honest, I think we were all rather nervous about it - so much could go wrong. The network might not work, the computers might not be reliable, the students might not like them, the RO might not be relevant in the classroom etc etc! But, all of these fears truned out to be unfounded. The computers have been fantastically reliable, the local wireless network has worked fine, the students have generally taken to the tablets very well and the RO has worked very well as an aid to learning in the classroom. Sure, we've had a few glitches and problems, but nothing major and, most importantly, nothing that has disrupted the classes.

Welcome to the blog for the UWE HP Technology for Teaching project

Hello, and welcome to our blog. Here we will be updating on progress with our project, which is evaluating the use of tablet computers in the classroom. You'll find a growing archive of pictures, reflections, reports and student comments as we build the blog. You will find the more detailed descriptions of the project aims and outcomes on our website. As a starter, the picture here shows the students in the MSc IT Research Methods class using the tablet computers.