Archive | November, 2008

Education update

28 Nov

This week the Teaching and Learning Research Programme (TLRP) held a major conference to present their major conclusions from the past nine years of research. Day 1 focussed on Schools, 14-19 and Further Education, while the second day looked at Higher and adult education, workplace and lifelong learning. The TLRP publications page contains links to a full set of research briefings, commentaries and other resources.

You may well have noticed that there have been some changes over at the British Education Index – if you haven’t been over there for a while, it’s worth taking another look. There’s more integration of the various services that the BEI offers and a new search interface that gives up-to-date access to records that the BEI elects to make freely available.

While over at ERIC nearly 60,000 additional full-text electronic documents have been added to the service as part of the continuing effort underway within the ERIC Microfiche Digitization Project. To date, more than 170,000 documents scanned from microfiche are now available in full text. The majority of the documents in the current release were published prior to 1978.

ESCalate, the HEA Subject Centre for Education, have just published their latest newsletter which includes articles on inquiry based learning, student experiences of learning in a culturally diverse Higher Education environment and education and training for the integrated children’s workforce – the subject of a major collaboration on Integrated Children’s Services in Higher Education by a number of subject centres.

… and finally over here at Intute: Social Sciences you may have noticed that there’s been a bit of blitz of new resources in the Education section recently. If you have any suggestions for sites (as opposed to individual papers) that would be worth adding to the Intute: Education section then do get in touch.

The 1000th blog post

25 Nov

Welcome to this short celebration of 1000 blog posts here on the Intute: Social Sciences blog. It is amazing to think that about two and half years ago we started off by welcoming everyone to the new Intute service and since then have churned out another 999 nuggets of Social Science information related wisdom.

Our blog is put together by a about a half a dozen regular contributors and a similar number of occasional writers. It is the most popular of our Additional Services, has been a showcase for other Social Science blogs, as well as our podcasting activities and even a quote in the Times Higher.

This is a good opportunity to look back on what has changed since 2006 and how that has been reflected by our blogging activity. So I asked our blog contributors for their thoughts on what they have got out of the blogging experience, here’s what they came up with:

I like dipping in and reading some of the more light hearted posts as they supplement Intute materials really well, plus it has taken me to blogs I haven’t heard of before. I would like to see more cross collaboration with other people.

I really like writing for the blog and think it is a good way to publicize our work, in short readable chunks. It’s made me more aware of good quality blogs out there, for my subjects. I think we should have guest contributors now and then.

It’s been great to look more closely at psychology in the news. It seems to crop up a great deal! At the beginning, there were few psychology blogs and podcasts. We’ve seen an explosion in their number over the life of the Intute blog … that represents a real change in the landscape for psychology. People are finding it easier to record audio, video, and post articles

I’m in touch with some interesting sociologists / sociology blogs that otherwise I wouldn’t have come across. Also found it very interesting to be writing for the ESRC Favourite blogs event just as sociology itself was beginning to see the usefulness of blogs and when the American Sociological Association sponsored blogs were setting up what you could call ‘model’ academic blogs i.e. those that were less personal diaries and aimed at disseminating news and tapping into debate and it’s just fun to do!

I am impressed with the scope of the postings and the way they present a topical story in an easily digestible form as well as pointing you to more information on the subject. I have to say my favourites are the ones that put a humourous slant on the news!

So it seems as though it is important to have a sense of humour, which is reflected by our reading public who seem to agree by picking Running for President is a serious business as their most read blog post – which looks at the intersection of satire and comedy in the recent US election.

Blogging has certainly helped us connect with a broader community of bloggers, information professionals and academics, which you can measure on sites like Technorati or see in more qualitative ways such as being asked to produce a Guide to Blogging for the Economics community.

In that context, a couple of contributors mentioned getting guest writers for the blog – it is something we have experimented with before with Francois Briatte writing on health policy and Romesh Vaitilingam contributing to Our Favourite Blogs event – but there’s more of that on the way – watch this space!

To end on a personal note, I’ve enjoyed having the freedom to think out loud in this very public space and I am constantly amazed at what I learn from my fellow contributors, as well as our readers who leave comments or send emails – it’s a privilege to be surrounded by such smart people.

Intute: Social Sciences features more blogs of interest to the Social Science community.

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The reverse Obama effect

21 Nov

What is the reverse Obama effect? Well take a quick peek at the SlideShare presentation below or follow the link to sample it from the site itself and you may find out.

My podcasting life

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own.

… actually, I volunteered to put together a few slides for my colleagues at the University of Bristol on my various podcasting experiments and got a little carried away.

If you are interested in exploring some of our past podcast experiments – why not try:

Intute: Social Sciences features more Internet resources on the topic of podcasts.

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Follow Intute Economics on Twitter

18 Nov

Would you like to keep up-to-date with our blog posts about economics and the latest economics Internet resources added to Intute – then why not follow Intute Economics on Twitter.

What is Twitter?

Twitter is a social networking site that is lightweight, easy-to-update and easy to follow. Twitter asks one question, “What are you doing?” Answers must be under 140 characters in length and can be sent via mobile texting, instant message, or the web. Think of it as the status update part of Facebook – and that is all.

How to Twitter?

Sign up for an account at Twitter – which just needs an email address – you can then search for some of your existing contacts to see if they are already twittering and choose to follow them – ie subscribe to their updates in your timeline – then register your mobile phone if you want to be able to use that to update your Twitter status.

Why Twitter?

I have been using Twitter in a personal capacity for nearly six months and it has helped me get to know people I already knew a lot better, make new contacts, helped me discover new Internet sites and helped to spread the word about all things Intute – plus it’s easy to get on your phone and a lot of fun too! For me it works because it is quick, simple and informal – it does one thing, but does it well – let’s you know what people (or organisations) are up to.

So what about Intute Economics on Twitter?

This is very much an experiment – a bit like the recent announcement about the Intute Facebook group and fan pages – but it will be an alternative way of keeping up to speed with Intute Economics and I will try to keep track of all those interested in economics and the Internet on Twitter – let us know what you think.

Getting more from Twitter

You can use Twitter to update your status in Facebook using the Twitter application, search Twitter to find out what people are saying about topics that interest you or monitor what they are saying about you or your brand, plus there is a huge range of other web apps that are Twitter related – about pictures, music, video etc.

Intute: Social Sciences features more Internet resources about Economics.

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More on The Future of Higher Education

14 Nov

The Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills (DIUS) in the process of reviewing how Higher Education works and what government needs to do to ensure that universities stay competitive, and meet the needs of students and employers over the next 10-15 years.

To that end, commissioned contributions from a number of key figures in the sector have been published on The Future of Higher Education blog and they are open to comment from community.

Some of the papers also include recommendations and cover a variety of subjects including:

Perhaps of particular relevance is the paper about On-line Innovation in Higher Education by Professor Sir Ron Cooke of JISC, which is analysed in some detail by Tony Hirst of the OU.

Intute: Social Sciences features more Internet resources on the issues of Higher Education, Educational Policy Educational Technology and the Public Administration of Education.

More on The Future of Higher Education

14 Nov

The Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills (DIUS) in the process of reviewing how Higher Education works and what government needs to do to ensure that universities stay competitive, and meet the needs of students and employers over the next 10-15 years.

To that end, commissioned contributions from a number of key figures in the sector have been published on The Future of Higher Education blog and they are open to comment from community.

Some of the papers also include recommendations and cover a variety of subjects including:

Perhaps of particular relevance is the paper about On-line Innovation in Higher Education by Professor Sir Ron Cooke of JISC, which is analysed in some detail by Tony Hirst of the OU.

Intute: Social Sciences features more Internet resources on the issues of Higher Education, Educational Policy Educational Technology and the Public Administration of Education.

My favourite economist

12 Nov

I have to say that I don’t have a particularly long list of favourite economists …

… but the one that is invading my consciousness more than most at the moment is Berkeley Professor of Public Policy and former US Secretary of Labor Robert Reich.

I’ve just bought his latest book Supercapitalism which looks at the conflict between capitalism and democracy, arguing that companies have  taken over the political arena and citizens are increasingly excluded from the lawmaking process.

A more erudite review of the book is available from Stanford Law Professor Lawrence Lessig or you can hear directly from the author, when he was on National Public Radio as part of their Book Tour series.

He writes regularly at Robert Reich’s Blog and also appears as a commentator on TV and radio. Explore the Google Video archive of Robert Reich appearances and you’ll see that while he does the circuit of news organisations, he does have a sense of humour – regularly popping up on the late night talk show circuit with the likes of Jon Stewart and Conan O’Brien.

But in more serious arenas, he recently delivered a keynote address on The Art of Leadership and the Practice of Teaching at Berkeley and spoke at length about The New Shape of Capitalism to Come.

Reich has that gift of being able to explain economic concepts in terms that the non-specialist can understand, but without dunbing down his arguments.

Intute: Social Sciences features more Internet resources on the topics of Labour Economics, Political Economy and Economics.

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