Digilab is now offering staff development activities for Open University staff as part of the service. These activies are intended to encourage hands-on exploration of educational technologies for staff who haven't used them before, or who have only used them to a limited extent. We aim to help attendees come away feeling more confident about their understanding of the technologies and their ability to use them.
We offer two types of activities:
- Digiquests, which are intensive sessions lasting half a day or a full day,
- Digibytes, which are light touch introductory sessions lasting half an hour to an hour
Aims of a Digiquest
To
- increase awareness and confidence in using the technologies in the Digilab
- consider their potential for use in delivering learning activities
- foster teambuilding across development areas
by
- “hands on” discovery of Digilab based technologies
- Investigating navigational issues related to an assigned technology related topic
- Creating “byte sized” multimedia presentations incorporating user generated content
Resources available to attendees
- a Facilitator
- Geocache Treasure hunt (1GPS enabled device per team)
- Digilab PC & Apple iMac based applications
- Experts and Information Packs
- Technologies attendees can use to record interviews and experiences related to the issues under investigation
- Sweeties for necessary fortification and brain fuels
- Each other!
Theme for the day
The theme for the day can be negotiated. Themes need to be common to all types of technology being investigated, such as navigation. The chosen theme will run through both the Geocache treasure hunt exercise and the afternoon activity.
What do attendees have to do?
1. Attendees will be required to solve some clues and locate hidden caches on campus containing special tokens assigned to their team. The first cache is their ‘treasure hunt’ expert. At each cache attendees must collect each token as attendees need to surrender these in the Digilab when their team has completed the hunt. Tokens will be traded for information to help the teams complete the afternoon’s activity. Last team to empty a cache must bring the cache stash box back with them. Attendees will need to capture through stills, video and/or audio content:
a. the short interview attendees have with the team’s ‘expert’
b. attendees and their team mates discovering each cache and its token
2. After lunch attendees will spend time investigating navigational issues around the specific theme and
a. technologies that have been assigned to the team.
3. Attendees will need to
a. do some research using the information pack and case studies attendees traded their tokens for
b. assess and record what attendees think are the key navigational challenges for users in using their assigned technology
c. create a 5 minute multimedia presentation of your findings using Apple iMac based Keynote presentation software in the Digilab.
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