Author: mhighton

thinking outside the box

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Picture taken of me in the street . No rights reserved.

After so many years working on a film set in Oxford, I now seem to work in a fringe venue. There are box offices, bars and beer gardens being built right outside my office and groups rehearsing in every building. There can only be a few cities in the world where you can be within shouting distance of four different outdoor Shakespeare productions on any given evening.   Oxford and Edinburgh are two of them.

In preparation for  a feature about me in an upcoming issue of BITS magazine, I have been out and about on a photo-shoot with   Rachel, one of our photographers. Rachel is clearly very talented as there are more than several usable pictures from the shoot.

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University of Edinburgh Digital Image Collections CC BY-NC-ND 3.0

During my first week in my new post I gathered together all of the staff on the new LTW division.  They look much nicer in person than in the card-database-rogues-gallery I have on my wall.   For my presentation I used images from the splendid SCRAN collection to  which Edinburgh University has a subscription.  The collection includes some cracking images of computers and computer users in the university dating back to the 60’s and 70’s. With all the fashions of geek-style throughout the decades. I’d show you some, but for some reason the license under which SCRAN grants use are a bit confusing as regards internet, blogging, sharing, publishing and educational use. Nevermind, here is a picture of some more recent computer users in one of our learning spaces.

Q: How many men did it take to deliver a computer in Edinburgh in 1964? 

better together

DHT
Picture taken by me in the street . No rights reserved.

Our new Learning, Teaching and Web Division was formally created on August 1 2014, which seems like a good date to begin a new blog.

Edinburgh has a great reputation for digital innovation, it’s an exciting place to be at an exciting time. There’s a lot of talent here, and an appetite to take risks and innovate with bold moves.

It is important that the institution gets good support from central services. Learning, Teaching and Web Services (LTW) is bringing together the services in Information Services that directly support learning and teaching. This gives us the opportunity to innovate, enhance or expand services to support an improved digital student experience and public engagement. The academic technologies such as Learn and MyEd are absolutely key to the experience of our students, as are digital education,  distance learning courses, online media, the university website and the technology which enhances our teaching spaces. We work closely with colleagues in the IS Skills teams and support for research data management to ensure that academic colleagues and students have the skills they need to make the most of the technologies on offer.