Programme: 2020

The boundaries between work and home have never been more blurred with many of us now working in makeshift home offices crammed into the corner of the living room, the dining room or an upstairs bedroom. Even before we moved to remote working many of us took our work home, with emails coming to mobile phones and Slack messages pinging as we went about our leisure activities. Digital technologies make it easy to connect with anyone from anywhere which can be both a blessing and a curse: it’s great being able to connect with friends, family and colleagues but it can feel like we are ‘always on’.

In this workshop we will explore the impact of digital technologies on wellbeing. We’ll reflect on some of the positive and negative impacts of technology. Explore strategies for balancing online and offline activities and for dealing with information overload. We’ll also look at some technologies that can help us be organised, manage our time and hopefully improve our digital wellbeing.

Learn how to personalise Google Chrome to support how you work:

• Logging in to Chrome to sync your settings

• Using Bookmarks

• Setting up Profiles for working with multiple IT accounts

• Work with tabs (groups, pin, reopen)

• Check Site settings for webcam/microphone issues

Video conferencing is now a pretty big part of working collaboratively and you've probably already entered the virtual world of Zoom in one capacity or another. In this session, we'll look at how to ensure your meetings are secure to prevent the risk of 'Zoom bombing'. We'll also look at the pros and cons of using breakout rooms, and have a good play with other useful tools such as 'polling'. There will be some time at the end to ask any questions.

This talk will provide an overview of how the Library & Archives both survived (and thrived) during the pandemic and how collaborative tools were at the heart of this. Although the physical Library & Archives building closed during lockdown our services continued throughout. We were also one of the first buildings to re-open at the University (after research labs). Collaborative tools were central to our continued service provision during lockdown, allowing us to introduce new services and to re-open our open physical building in July. Specifically it will focus on how we worked and how tools such as Slack, G Suite and Zoom were utilised to ensure success.

Online learning brings a lot of opportunities, but we need to make sure all students can access it and participate equally.

In this workshop, we’ll consider the diverse range of students’ needs when participating in online learning, such as those relating to specific learning difficulties, sensory impairments, limited available technology, or cultural and language background.

We’ll then identify strategies you can implement to avoid these barriers and create more inclusive online learning activities, whatever your platform or tools.

This session introduces how you can use Google Data Studio as an interface not only for reporting but also for interacting with your data. We will introduce a way to extend Google Data Studio with features to add to or edit your data using Google Sheets and Google Forms/Formstack/Qualtrics, making it a truly interactive app.

Google Sites is a website builder which comes as part of Google’s suite of apps. This workshop will look at how it can be used to develop blended learning materials which bring together a range of technologies in one unified space where students can work through activities, access digital media and carry out research. We will look at some examples of materials produced using Sites, cover some of the feedback received and review the lessons learned before having a go at creating our own sites. The session is aimed at teachers and course writers who have an interest in blended learning and are looking for new ideas to give their digital materials a fresh look and feel. The practical design element will be best experienced with a laptop or desktop, but no special technical knowledge is required.

A look at how to use EquatIO: software that aids with mathematical equations and more for accessibility needs. It can do even more than 'just' read out complex equations (even on a PDF!) and is useful in a wide range of subjects and fields.

Find out how collaborative tools can support data protection compliance, and learn pitfalls to avoid.

There are loads of collaborative tools and communications technologies available to you, and this can sometimes be the problem. Knowing which tools to use and where information is shared and stored, can turn into an added task, hindering rather than helping us to achieve our aims and work effectively as a team.

This brief presentation will cover some tips on adopting technologies as a team. Selecting the right tools for the task and embedding them meaningfully in working practices. It will look at how you address issues of information management and improve communication through the considered adoption and implementation of digital technologies, ensuring collaborative tools work for you and your team.

Christmas crackers were invented by Tom Smith in 1847 (see his exciting session on OUT THERE! With your head in the cloud.). In this workshop, Tom's colleague Steph will show you how to make her own take on the Christmas cracker: a Google Sheets Virtual Christmas Cracker you can pull with anyone else online while maintaining a healthy social distance (the ideal gift for Christmas 2020). And it's all done by spreadsheet, so you might even pick up some useful spreadsheet skills in the process!

Teaching digital skills remotely has brought a range of challenges, and one has been how to translate coding sessions into effective online delivery. These sessions usually involve hands-on activities and peer and teacher support, which can be difficult to recreate online.

In this paper, I'll discuss writing and adapting introductory coding and Python sessions into online formats using Google tools like Google Colaboratory (Colab) notebooks and Google Slides. I'll also consider more broadly useful tools and ways of facilitating active learning remotely over Zoom for sessions that are usually very hands-on.

Looking for an easy collaboration fix for online delivery? Considering how to make things look more appealing to yourself and your audiences? Thinking about crossing that bridge when you get there? Avoid last-minute frustration and panic attack by joining us for a short session on how to help your students and staff come together online and successfully cooperate on various projects. Explore the ingenious simplicity that Wakelet and Padlet have to offer. See for yourself how you may use them. Feel free to bring your laptop (or another electronic device) and discover how easy a beautification of your ideas may be and how to use this to promote successful cooperation among colleagues and students alike.

A look at one of the most universally helpful accessibility tools; Read&Write helps students and staff to read text when they need assistance or are experiencing screen fatigue. It's the kind of tool you'll use every day as soon as you realise just how useful it is!

Sometimes collaboration isn't with other people but with your tired, distracted or anxious self. We explore some tools available to you on your computer, your browser and on your mobile phone to help reduce the stress on your senses. The key concepts we will cover are reducing distractions on websites, changing text size and colour, listening to text on screen and using voice to text.

In this session I will talk about how Zoom and Google Forms can be used to create an online escape room that works well as a student induction activity. Students are split into groups and work through a series of puzzles and problems that can cover some foundational technical content from their chosen discipline, as well as introductory knowledge about life at university. We ran this event in October with our new Stage 1 students and it was well-received. The advantage of using these tools is that a relatively complex event can be created without technical or programming expertise, and once created it can be easily reused for subsequent cohorts.

A hot mess of stuff... Smorgasbord trip through a universe of weird and useful stuff...