{"id":1192,"date":"2014-11-07T09:54:39","date_gmt":"2014-11-07T09:54:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.reading.ac.uk\/engage-in-teaching-and-learning\/?p=1192"},"modified":"2019-10-04T15:36:54","modified_gmt":"2019-10-04T15:36:54","slug":"goodbye-word-hello-floating-islands-dolphins-and-rainbows-by-dr-emma-mayhew","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.reading.ac.uk\/t-and-l-exchange\/2014\/11\/07\/goodbye-word-hello-floating-islands-dolphins-and-rainbows-by-dr-emma-mayhew\/","title":{"rendered":"Goodbye Word; hello floating islands, dolphins and rainbows by Dr Emma Mayhew"},"content":{"rendered":"

So you\u2019re a lecturer at Reading and you find yourself going over and over information in handbooks, course outlines, books and journals with students-anything from tricky academic concepts to essay writing and ECFs. Of course it\u2019s difficult in an age of information overload. Really important stuff gets lost and sometimes it\u2019s hard to make our voice heard amongst all of the noise surrounding students. What\u2019s the solution? Maybe written information isn\u2019t the only vehicle of choice. We know that students respond brilliantly to visual information. A few of us at Reading have been focusing on exactly that. We\u2019ve started using incredibly simple and entirely free \u2018screencapture\u2019 software, like Jing, to record what we\u2019re doing on our screens. We\u2019ve added audio to these short videos and occasionally even webcam footage of our \"Emma<\/a>faces. Some of us have even moved beyond PowerPoint and had a huge amount of fun (yes\u2026.fun!) with new, massively eye-catching and versatile presentation tools like Prezi (and this is where the floating islands, dolphins and rainbows come in) or Powtoon-and the makers really aren\u2019t overselling their product when they describe it as \u201cawesome\u201d.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

But will students engage with information delivered in this way? Yes they will and I know this because last Autumn I made a suite of ten 3-5 minute screencasts using Prezi on a whole range of topics-writing a great essay, marking criteria, academic and pastoral help, pre-arrival information and more. They have been viewed over 2,300 times by our students and I\u2019m not even counting my staff training screencasts, one minute module summaries, animated quizzes, video essay feedback and conference paper summaries which bring my views to nearly 4,000 in the last 12 months\u2026and it\u2019s not just me! Cindy Becker and David Nutt have also seen a great response.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re so passionate about screencapture that the three of us have just launched the TLDF funded \u2018GRASS\u2019 project to support colleagues who would like to try this out for themselves. If you\u2019d like to know more please click on the floating island below to watch our 90 second clip, visit or subscribe to our new website which is full of examples and \u2018how to\u2019 videos http:\/\/blogs.reading.ac.uk\/grass\/ , come along and see us all speaking at the CQSD showcase on 19th<\/sup> November at 13:00 but most importantly, book on our first \u2018Lunch and Learn\u2019 session via Employee Self Service on Friday 28th<\/sup> November at 13:00 in Palmer 103. We\u2019ll be outlining our experiences and offering training at this event which includes a free buffet lunch and range of our own HOMEMADE CAKES! Goodbye Word and hello exciting, creative possibilities.<\/p>\n

\"Emma<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So you\u2019re a lecturer at Reading and you find yourself going over and over information in handbooks, course outlines, books and journals with students-anything from tricky academic concepts to essay writing and ECFs. Of course it\u2019s difficult in an age of information overload. Really important stuff gets lost and sometimes it\u2019s hard to make our […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":124,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[204],"tags":[561,449,221,551,262],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.reading.ac.uk\/t-and-l-exchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1192"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.reading.ac.uk\/t-and-l-exchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.reading.ac.uk\/t-and-l-exchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.reading.ac.uk\/t-and-l-exchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/124"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.reading.ac.uk\/t-and-l-exchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1192"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sites.reading.ac.uk\/t-and-l-exchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1192\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.reading.ac.uk\/t-and-l-exchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.reading.ac.uk\/t-and-l-exchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.reading.ac.uk\/t-and-l-exchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}