Unpacking the JISC Techdis Toolbox

JISC TechDis Toolbox

www.jisctechdis.ac.uk/tbx

JISC TechDis Toolbox

• TechDis Toolbox is a collection of resources which give useful hints and tips on technologies that can help individuals work smarter.

• It is aimed directly at the end users – learners.

• Bite-sized videos and animations, short guides, audio files and ‘how to’ word documents

• Small bits of just-in-time information that can be easily absorbed.

Managing Information

You are a staff developer and you have been asked to provide some hints and tips on how to manage the overwhelming amount of email traffic staff receive.

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Managing Messages

http://www.jisctechdis.ac.uk/tbx/messages

Scenario

You are a community based lecturer teaching a basic IT skills class.

You want to prepare a session on web search strategies, and because it is familiar to most people you want to plan a session about making the most of the Google search engine.

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Strategies for Searching

http://www.jisctechdis.ac.uk/tbx/searching

ScenarioAs a study skills tutor you are working with a group of first year students who are adjusting to university life, and in particular some of them are having difficulties managing their time.

You are preparing a session on time management and you want to find useful information that you can share with learners.

In particular you want to provide them with insights into how they can exploit everyday tools to assist them in being more productive.

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Managing Time

http://www.jisctechdis.ac.uk/tbx/time

ScenarioAs Equality Manager you want to raise awareness about ways that departments across the institution could provide information about their services in different formats – not just text.

You know there are relatively easy ways to provide information in audio format and want to share information about free tools to do so.

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Using Audio

http://www.jisctechdis.ac.uk/tbx/free-stuff

http://www.jisctechdis.ac.uk/tbx/audio

ScenarioYou know that many students that use your library struggle when reading text, even though they are not dyslexic. Some have difficulty concentrating, others have literacy issues and some learners find reading information difficult because they have English as a second language.

You wanted to find some strategies to help them access web based information with greater ease.

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Web Based Reading toolsChrome Reader

Chrome Readerhttp://tinyurl.com/8wopfne

Web Based Reading toolsFirefox Reader

Firefox Readerhttp://tinyurl.com/9kpccn8

Safari Readerhttp://tinyurl.com/8bwees2

ScenarioYou know that your Equality Manager has been promoting Audacity to encourage staff to create audio based information.

As the Support for Learning tutor you are delighted that this is happening but you also know that there are some other excellent free and open source software that staff could use to create their information in alternative formats.

In addition they could be telling students how to use these free tools for themselves.

You also know that the library staff might also be interested in this.

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http://www.jisctechdis.ac.uk/tbx/audio

Balabolka

http://tinyurl.com/8qm3d5x

Scottish Voices

http://www.thescottishvoice.org.uk/Home/

Students using free TTS audio tools to learn lines for performances

Dspeech will Dspeech will hook into the speech hook into the speech

engine on any engine on any windows PC you windows PC you

use and will either use and will either read out text or read out text or convert to MP3convert to MP3

http://tinyurl.com/br8fsqq

ScenarioYou are a product design lecturer and you have dyslexia.

You know that there are students in your class who are visual thinkers, and you want to introduce some strategies that work for you with your class to outline the next project that the class will be involved in and to encourage them to start thinking about mind mapping themselves.

You want to find some resources that you can share with your learners to help them understand how to use mind maps.

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Xmind

http://tinyurl.com/97rzzak

Scenario

You are a departmental manager and you are keen to encourage your staff to communicate more efficiently as a team.

You want to provide them with some ideas about how to work together and to share information with each other about timetables, project ideas etc.

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Sharing Calendars

http://tinyurl.com/99hce3d

Explaining Wikis

http://tinyurl.com/8w9x2z8

And there is more….• Use autotext to help with word prediction.• Use autocorrect to help with spelling errors.• Change colour of background in Word to help

readers with visual discomfort..• Add audio and video into Word documents.• Make the most of iPhone and iPad accessibility.• Take advantage of accessibility options in PCs and

Macs.• Connect a switch to a computer to help students

who have difficulty using a mouse.

http://www.jisctechdis.ac.uk/tbx/home