Welcome to the WJETT blog
What is WJETT?
The WJETT blog or Warwick Journal of Education - Transforming Teaching blog is designed to encourage staff and students to disseminate good practice and to engage with their peers on academic cultural critique or areas of research that they find interesting. With the increased focus on ‘teachers as researchers’ in the sector, many qualified teachers are expected to publish the outcomes of any action research projects they undertake. The WJETT blog can be the first step on your journey towards publishing and enables you to experience publishing and reviewing in a friendly and supportive environment.
You will need to scroll down the page below the tags to see the posts.
Digifest 2020 part three
Where they have been made available, the slides for the various sessions are on the link below:
https://www.jisc.ac.uk/events/digifest-10-mar-2020/programmeLink opens in a new window
Exploring digital wellbeing
Alicja Shah and Heather Price from JISC ran a workshop introducing JISC’s new definition of digital wellbeing. They got workshop participants to create digital wellbeing trees looking at the challenges organisations face in this area and what the possible solutions to those challenges might be.
Practical approaches to building the digital capability of staff and students
Lisa Gray (JISC), Elizabeth Newell (University of Nottingham) and James Kieft (Activate Learning) discussed their practical experiences of building the digital capability of their students and staff. They outlined the approaches they’ve taken and identified benefits, lessons learnt and next steps. All of these presentations centred around using the JISC Discovery Tool.
Supporting student wellbeing through our virtual learning platform
Kim Blanchard and Faz Masters both from Activate Learning introduced how they have used their VLE to support their learners on their journey at the college. They explained how they have developed key dimensions of core wellness for their students:
- Occupational
- Physical
- Intellectual
- Emotional
- Social
- Spiritual
- Environmental
- Financial
And how students can gain badges for the different topics.
Making a learning environment accessible to everyone
In this session Alan Crawford a Microsoft Learning consultant, discussed how to make content accessible in Windows 10. Points discussed included:
- The mobile accessibility deadline on 23rd June 2021
- Using building blocks for coding
- Using the translator functionality – which literally translates word for word (not into meaningful phrases)
- Eye control/narrator
- Dictate
- PowerPoint Designer
- Accessibility checker
- Office accessible templates on the web
- Accessibility Insights on Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge
- Automated transcripts from videos (not as accurate as you would hope)
- Immersive reading in Office 365
- Wellbeing in My Analytics
- PowerPoint Coach
- Accessibility Insights 10
- The importance of using meaningful display names in hyperlinks
The closing keynote was cancelled.
*These notes are my own personal reflections and have not been endorsed by JISC or the individuals who presented the sessions.
Writing guidance
Can I write about anything in my blog post?
Yes pretty much. Academic cultural critique (Thomson and Mewburn, 2013) is always a good source of content for academic blogs. This can include (but is not limited to) comments and reflections on funding; higher education policy or academic life. You might also want to consider blogging about:
- Academic practice (Saper, 2006)
- Information and/or self-help advice
- Technical, teaching and careers advice
- Your research or practice
- How you’ve undertaken research
- The impact of research on your practice
- An area of research/practice that interests you
- Your teaching experiences/reflections
How long can my blog post be?
Each individual blog post should be no longer than 500 words. Long blocks of text are sometimes hard for readers to digest. Break up your content into shorter paragraphs, bullet points and lists whenever possible. Also include a list of keywords or tags as this makes it easier for Google to find your work.
Do I need to use citations?
No, this is a reflective piece so it does not need to include citations (but you obviously can include them if they are relevant).
Can I include links or images?
We would encourage you to include links to any articles that you have considered whilst writing your blog post. We also welcome the use of images (as long as you have permission to use them) as they can often help to illustrate a point and obviously will not be included in the word limit. Please remember this is a public site so if you want to include images of your students in your classes then you will need permission to do this.
What is the process for submitting a piece of work?
Your blog post should be emailed to A.Ball.1@warwick.ac.uk. Once the submission has been reviewed it will either be uploaded at the beginning of the next available week or sent back to you for editing if it requires amendments. You should then send the amended work to me once again and I will then upload it.