1. RSC Newsletter
Issue 25 – August 2010
Stimulating and supporting innovation in learning
BMC Success in Funding Contents
1 BMC Success in Funding
2 New facility at
Belfast Office of RSCni
2 Beyond Current Horizons –
Learning in the Future
2 NI Colleges Lead the Way to
e-Books
3 Good-bye and good luck
The Belfast Metropolitan College 3 Help - I am teaching ICT
Essential Skills!
has secured funding for five
projects across the Leonardo, 3 New Tools for Supporting
Grundtvig, Comenius and Inclusion
Transversal opportunities in the 4 RSCni Customer Satisfaction
European Lifelong Learning Funded Survey 2010
Programme. 4 Ethical Hacking in Colleges
The College’s Employee 4 How e-Safe
Development Service will manage Are You?
a Leonardo VETPRO project
for 20 tutors to visit one of five
partner colleges in Ireland,
Holland and Finland to review
innovative practices in employer
engagement, project based learning
and sustainability to enhance the
delivery of Priority Skills. As part
of their preparation, tutors will use
Skype and video-conferencing
to plan their trips with their host
college. A support area will be set
up on Blackboard with language
podcasts, phrasebooks and
host college information packs.
Tutors will also maintain reflective email and Skype in recent months
blogs during their visit in order in order to get to know each other.
to disseminate their findings to These tools allowed students to
colleagues. discuss their respective courses and
The A-Level team will participate in general interests before the first
a Comenius Bi-lateral Partnership exchange visit planned for, later in
project. The funding will be used for 2010.
a two-year partnership between the The College’s Director, Marie-
College and a Business College in Thérèse McGivern, congratulated
Germany to develop employability staff for securing these projects
resources on European citizenship, as they will assist the College to
teamwork, leadership and cultural develop new innovative curriculum
diversity. The two-year project also approaches, use e-technologies
includes staff and student exchange and enhance the student learning
visits. Students have been using experience. Northern Ireland

2. New facility at
Belfast Office of RSCni
NI Colleges
Lead the Way
to e-Books
Figures released by the JISC
e-Books for FE project showing the
number of engagements with the
ebrary e-books collection during
the first 6 months of 2010 have
placed Northern Ireland colleges
consistently in the Top 20 across
the UK. In recent months various
NI colleges have been in the top
three.
These high placings in the league
have come about by active
engagement between the library
and network staff in all of the area-
RSCni are pleased to announce The facility contains 8 laptops with
based colleges in bringing the
the opening of their training/ access to the web, a promethean
Shibboleth access management
meeting room facility within their whiteboard, data projector, flip
installations into operation and
Belfast Office at 14 Lennoxvale. chart and a meeting table which can
connecting them up to the e-books
This facility will allow the RSCni to accommodate up to 12 people. The
platform. As a result, teachers
deliver their portfolio of workshops tables can also be arranged to allow
can gain access to a collection of
to small groups of staff as well as 2 tables of 8 people. Refreshments
over 3,000 titles – many of them
providing a meeting room to host will also be available.
core texts for BTEC courses. An
all of the RSCni support Forums and For further details please contact:
unlimited number of students can
Management Briefings.
get access to each title at the same Barbara Stewart
time – opening the way to more For a nominal fee this facility b.stewart@rsc-ni.ac.uk
active learning. can also be used by college Telephone: 028 90976511
For further information the titles management for away-day meetings
available and advice on using or by course teams for planning
e-books in your college, contact days.
your college library team.
Beyond Current Horizons –
Learning in the Future
Can anyone tell what the future current research across a number
will be like? How should educators of dimensions – economic, societal,
prepare for future learning? technological and educational.
The Beyond Current Horizons If you would like a taster of this
programme, conducted with the future state, then you can watch a
Department for Children, Schools short video at http://www.futurelab.
and Families (DCSF), explores the org.uk/resources/multimedia/video/
future for education, beyond 2025. Video1589 and you can see and
The aim is to help the education examine 6 possible scenarios at
system prepare for and develop an http://www.beyondcurrenthorizons.
ongoing and sustainable response org.uk/. Will this be a future that
to the challenges it faces as society you will prepare for – or will you wait
and technology rapidly evolve. for it to overwhelm you?
The ideas are not pure guesswork
or fantasy. They are based on

3. Good-bye and good luck
RSCni would like to take this
opportunity to wish Mike Moran
good luck and all the best for the
future. Mike had worked with the
RSCni for 5 years in the role of
e-Learning Adviser for Learning
Resources and retired from the RSC
New Tools for
on the 31st July 2010. Supporting
The whole RSCni team wish him well
in his retirement:
Inclusion
“Retired from work, but not from MyStudyBar
life.” (M. K. Soni) MyStudyBar, produced by RSC
Scotland North and East, is a
new Windows-based tool to help
overcome common problems that
students experience when reading
and writing. Comprising a suite of
portable open-source and freeware
applications originally designed
for learners with literacy-related
difficulties, it offers potential
Help benefits to all learners.
You can use MyStudyBar straight
I am teaching ICT Essential Skills! from a USB stick or install it on the
desktop: technical staff have the
option of installing the software on
The Essential Skills ICT qualification • Support for the qualification
the network.
Level 1 and Level 2 replaced Key through a discussion/news/
Skills ICT Level 1 and 2 in FE announcements/forum on Moodle The tool can be downloaded
Colleges and Training Organisations from the RSC Scotland North
• Use of the VLE as a central and East website: http://www.
in Northern Ireland from August repository for useful curriculum
2009. rsc-ne-scotland.ac.uk/eduapps/
resources, e-resources and mystudybar.php
The RSCni has provided a key role assessment material
throughout the development of • Training the tutors in developing JISC TechDis Toolbar
the qualification in supporting the appropriate e-resources and The JISC TechDis Toolbar is an
professional development needs of technical skills as required for open-source, cross-browser toolbar
tutors in FE Colleges and in training teaching ICT to help students customise how
organisations. Its role in upskilling All tutors teaching the Essential they view and interact with web
tutors and particularly in introducing Skills ICT qualification have pages and assist with their study
them to new technologies enabled undertaken training in using photos/ skills. The toolbar provides the
the tutors to then incorporate these images in teaching (using Photo functionality common in many
new technologies effectively in their Story 3), using moving images different products, and will run in
teaching, as appropriate. (Movie Maker and Flip video) any desktop web browser.
One of the main vehicles for and using online surveys (Survey There are two versions of JISC
delivering this staff development Monkey). TechDis Toolbar available:
has been the provision of the Many practitioners have also • User: Lite bookmarklet version
Moodle VLE ICT Essential Skills attended workshops where that can be accessed with
website. they were introduced to Web one click in your browser, or
The website (hosted by RSCni) 2.0 technologies. Tools such as a full install which will load
provided support to tutors and blogs, wikis and the use of social automatically for every page
e-learning support. networking and online file sharing • Web manager: you can embed
were demonstrated to tutors and JISC TechDis Toolbar Lite on
It included: your website which allows
examples were given of where
• Training and continuous support they could be incorporated in the visitors to utilise the Toolbar
in the use of the Moodle (Virtual learning. without installation
Learning Environment) Essential More information and opportunity
Skills ICT site For more information contact
to download the Toolbar can be
Catherine Gormley, c.gormley@
found at: http://access.ecs.soton.
rsc-ni.ac.uk
ac.uk/ToolBar/

4. RSCni Customer Satisfaction
Survey 2010
The RSCni thank all of you who The RSCni team are extremely
responded to our annual customer happy with the high levels of
satisfaction survey: your feedback is satisfaction with our performance
How e-Safe essential to help us gauge how we and services and we will continue
Are You? have performed during the last year
and how to shape our forthcoming
to ensure that we provide a strong
and relevant service to our colleges
The popularity of the Internet services. going into the academic year
and Web 2.0 applications, 2010-11.
The following were the key
eg, facebook, provide their
highlights of the survey: Finally we would like to congratulate
own inherent personal risks of
• All colleges responded and the the winners of our survey prize draw,
overexposure of your personal
spread of roles surveyed was Maureen Pigott (BMC) and Sharon
data which can be useful to those
diverse. The largest role group McCone (SRC).
intent on crime.
Within the college network response was from Lecturing staff,
environment it is essential that followed by ILT managers and IT
there are the appropriate systems, managers/staff
controls and filtering to ensure • Almost all respondents stated that
that colleges fulfil their duty- they regularly engaged with and
of-care obligations. In the past, used RSCni services
controls have been implemented • A very high percentage indicated
in absence of many policies, that the RSCni had a very positive
procedures, management input impact of their job/role and also
and user education. Properly within their organisation as a
controlled, colleges can benefit whole
from safe and secure network
• Almost all respondents indicated
systems that allow secure access to
that the RSCni provided oppor-
internet applications and guidance
tunities to develop their skills and
on online conduct. The benefits
knowledge in their relevant roles
are:
• Improved knowledge of internet • The vast majority of respondents
safety and how to identify and indicated that the RSCni provided
deal with incidents timely, relevant, value for money
• Reduced need to implement events/training and expressed an
security and filtering controls on interest in future support
social networking sites • Some lecturing staff indicated
• Staff will be able to quickly that, although the desire to attend
identify potential breeches / is still strong, due to new teaching
issues and know how to deal contracts, it was becoming more
with them difficult to attend events
• College managers will have
assurance that they have
effective and confident staff that Ethical Hacking in Colleges
can implement an e-safe policy
These days ‘hackers’ and, more which has provided great security
The RSCni are currently working on commonly, automated hacking benefits in recent years. However,
developing an e-safety workshop software, illegally attempt to exploit confidence in the security systems’
for staff to explore the issues, vulnerabilities within the software effectiveness remains low.
encourage discussion and help of network systems to gain access
them take forward college policy. In order to combat this threat,
to information or to take control it is essential that our college IT
We can also help with: of systems to destroy or disrupt
• Raising awareness of staff and departments learn the skills and
business or function. tools to test and audit their own
students
• Advice on safe and secure The safety and integrity of our systems. To meet this need the
networks and systems student/staff data is crucial to our RSCni have brokered an ethical
• Help with developing e-safety- colleges and, to protect or mitigate hacking course which will allow
aware policies and incident the possibility of these types of colleges to use the same tools and
responses attack, a great deal of investment procedures as ‘hackers’ to ensure
• Signposting to relevant has been made in security that their systems are safe and
resources and authorities protection software and hardware secure.