A new tutorial on being a critical student

Steve and I have just produced a simple tutorial to try and explain/demystify what it means to be a critical student.

The tutorial is created using a simple PowerPoint slide show which is then recorded and audio added using screenr.com. Screenr is exceptionally easy to use - especially when you discover the pause button. The 5 minute limit is a useful discipline. Files can then be uploaded to screenr or YouTube or downloaded as MP4. It's brilliant.

I had some really useful comments back via Twitter (most of them within 30 minutes)  - which are listed below. If you have any comments then please let me know. This is our first experiment of doing tutorials using PowerPoint plus screenr and I think given our first experience, we'll be doing more soon.

1. AlexM11Nice subject-indepentent overview of critical thinking for students RT @stujohnson http://screenr.com/WX7about 3 hours ago from Screenr
   
2. MoMAlearningRT @AJCannRT @stujohnson: Tutorial on what it means to be a critical student http://screenr.com/WX7about 3 hours ago from web
   
3. nosnilwar@stujohnson I'm still baffled by the Heller quotation, but I think the academic/estate agent analogy is brilliant http://screenr.com/WX7about 3 hours ago from Screenr
   
4. jon_scott@stujohnson Like the idea but it needs to move faster and could have a shorter introabout 4 hours ago from web in reply to stujohnson
   
5. dhtpTutorial on what it means to be a critical student. http://screenr.com/WX7 (via @stujohnson)about 4 hours ago from Tweetie
   
6. virtualleaderRT @adamread: @stujohnson Love the screenr presentation about being a critical student http://screenr.com/WX7 Me too:0)about 4 hours ago from TweetDeck
   
7. goze01@stujohnson screenr looks like fun! I feel a new project coming on...about 5 hours ago from TwitterFon in reply to stujohnson
   
8. adamread@stujohnson Love the screenr presentation about being a critical student http://screenr.com/WX7 , will show to our study skills dept :)about 5 hours ago from TweetDeck
   
9. alan_hookRT @stujohnson Tutorial on what it means to be a critical student from University of Leicester http://screenr.com/WX7about 5 hours ago from Screenr
   
10. jobadge@stujohnson critical tut looks good stu. Any plans to customise it for Science subjects?about 5 hours ago from TweetDeck
    
11. scottuhi@stujohnson great, I'm blogging the link so maybe your followers will increase :-)about 5 hours ago from web in reply to stujohnson
    
12. scottuhi@stujohnson Like the video on critical thinking, do you plan to change the URL or can I send it to a few people?about 5 hours ago from web in reply to stujohnson
    
13. intuteRT: @universityboy: Tutorial on what it means to be a critical student. http://screenr.com/WX7 (via @stujohnson)about 6 hours ago from TwitterFox
    
14. JottersLtdTutorial on what it means to be a critical student. http://screenr.com/WX7 (via @stujohnson)about 6 hours ago from web
    
15. universityboyTutorial on what it means to be a critical student. http://screenr.com/WX7 (via @stujohnson)about 6 hours ago from TweetDeck
    
16. universityboy@stujohnson Good to see a quick and easy to follow tutorial on being a critical student. Two thumbs fresh!about 6 hours ago from TweetDeck
    
17. sboneham@stujohnson Pop filter=http://bit.ly/46uk9d. Move the mic a bit further away/to one side. Both should reduce plosive 'pops'.about 6 hours ago from TweetDeck in reply to stujohnson
    
18. muir31@stujohnson useful tutorial on 'critical thinking', i will use this for my students http://screenr.com/WX7 #mscelabout 6 hours ago from web in reply to stujohnson
    
19. pigironjoe@stujohnson This establishes the principle, but it is short on practical advice and subject specific examples - room for follow up?about 6 hours ago from twhirl in reply to stujohnson
    
20. pigironjoe@stujohnson Yes, pretty good. Rooney's dulcet tones make it for me.about 6 hours ago from twhirl in reply to stujohnson
    
21. msars@stujohnson Nice. Suggest 1. Gap in narration to allow reading of Catch 22 quote 2. Add e.g. for scientists to show it applies to them tooabout 6 hours ago from TweetDeck in reply to stujohnson
    
22. pigironjoeRT @stujohnson: Tutorial on what it means to be a critical student http://screenr.com/WX7 Feedback gratefully received!about 7 hours ago from twhirl
    
23. sboneham@stujohnson Excellent - like the iconography! Critical friend bit...maybe cut bit of narration, up the tempo & get a pop filter/move mic?about 7 hours ago from TweetDeck in reply to stujohnson
    
24. AJCann@stujohnson Nice. Cut some words at the start - they can read. Please blog about the process of how to make these.about 7 hours ago from twhirl in reply to stujohnson
    
25. AJCannRT @stujohnson: Tutorial on what it means to be a critical student http://screenr.com/WX7 Feedback gratefully received!about 7 hours ago from twhirl

How to tag anna

I wrote a few weeks ago about our tagginganna project. Well, it's moving along nicely (slowly but nicely). I mentioned that we were either going to use Diigo or digress.it. If you're interested you can join our Diigo tagginganna group and then comment on our copy of Anton Chekhov.s Ward No. 6. We'd also like you to comment using digress.it which you can do at http://stujohnson.digress.it/

And if you need a bit of guidance...

Diigo

This is how you comment to our tagginganna group in Diigo

digress.it

This is how you comment via digress.it

Over to you!

Student Development on Twitter

Here's an interesting article about universities on Twitter in the Times today.

You (Student Development staff) probably know that Student Development has a Twitter presence (http://twitter.com/uolsd) which we're only experimenting with but already have 129 followers. We plan to get helpdesk staff to be active on the account on our behalf using either Hootsuite or CoTweet. We'll also be sending out news tweets on a regular basis in an automated fashion using FutureTweet (or maybe we should just link the RSS news items to TwitterFeed?). Let me know what you think.

Tagginganna

A  few weeks ago Mark Rawlinson (@nosnilwar) in the School of English put a project idea to me. Months ago he got me reading Anna Karenina (because I'd never heard of it!) and since then he's been thinking about a project related to it. As most other people in the world seem to know (I didn't), Anna Karenina is quite a long book, more than 900 pages, the problem that Mark commonly experiences in tutorials is where students can't quite remember where they read something. They have experienced reading a book (often a very long book) but they can't pinpoint in the text where a particular theme, or idea, or event can be found. It therefore usually relies on the expertise and knowledge of the tutor to remember key sections for them. Mark's suggestion was to task students with reading a paper copy of a book in the conventional way but then ask them to tag or comment on an online version of the book. The tagging and commenting would need to be visible to a defined group and, importantly, searchable.

Rather than test the project out on 900 pages of Tolstoy, Mark suggested that we start with a short story, so we're using Ward no. 6 by Anton Chekhov (both this and Anna Karenina, and many others are available via Project Gutenberg).

Alan blogged about the project after an early meeting a few weeks ago, since then I've been thinking more about what tools to use for the tagging and commenting bit. Two tools seem like they might work:

1. http://www.diigo.com
2. http://digress.it

Diigo

Diigo's strap line is 'Highlight and Share the Web!' and describes itself as 'a powerful research tool and a knowledge-sharing community'. Alan didn't like diigo but it's growing on me (not least since I connected it up to my delicious account, but that's another post). The groups feature is the bit that looks like it's going to be the most useful for this project, and I've created a tagginganna group (which you can request to join if I haven't invited you already) and put the text of Ward no. 6 on a Wordpress site (am I allowed to do that?). I haven't tested it yet because no one has yet joined the Diigo group - so come and join in the fun!

Digress.it

Digress.it 'is a plugin for WordPress that lets you comment paragraph by paragraph in the margins of a text'. The blurb looks great (although I've had some issues with dodgy script):


I don't have WordPress downloaded and hosted so I'm using Digress.it to host the project instead. You can find it here and, once you have a digress.it account (which looks confusingly similar to a WordPress account but is actually different), you can start commenting.

So, please help!

Group tweeting from @uolsd

This is going to be a v brief and rough and ready post (nothing new there then). This week I've been thinking a lot about the Student Development Twitter account. I posted a few weeks back about using Twittbott to allow multiple people to tweet to one account, but it doesn't work (or at least I can't get it to work). Then a student on twitter suggested this:

Which seems to work a treat. Multiple users can tweet to the uolsd Twitter account without having the password - I just log into the Netvibes Twitter widget for them.

The next problem was that within the Netvibes Twitter widget you only see @replies of people the account is following - which wasn't much good. So JayJay suggested this:

So now what we have is a Netvibes page that can be tweeted from and can see @replies from tweeters the account isn't following. It looks like this:

I think we might be getting somewhere. Any suggestions?