I have been very busy since I started with RSC Wales, and have decided to create a blog to record my travels. My travels may prove to be a challenge, since I intend to make them all by public transport. My blog can record the experience of doing this!

Other reasons for this blog include the need to be familiar with the whole range of Web 2.0 tools and services that may be useful to education and libraries; also to give a flavour of some of the work that RSC Wales does. As my profile shows, I am an e-Learning Advisor with RSC Wales, and perhaps this blog will help me to understand what the job involves.

My first month has been exciting and informative, and involved more travelling around Wales than I had probably done in the last ten years! There was lots of settling in to begin with, and a few days spent in Swansea getting to know the RSC Wales team. The RSC Wales annual conference was held at Gregynog, Newtown, in my first week (Wed 16 – Thu 17 May), which was a trial by fire I suppose, since there were so many people to meet. Gregynog is a lovely place to visit – the image below shows the main house.

[Gregynog Hall]

On Tuesday 22nd May I went to a demo of some voting systems. The Promethean system also included a demonstration of their interactive whiteboard, and looked like it could have many uses for presentations, teaching, voting, groupworking and so on. The other system was Interwrite PRS, which is mostly aimed at the HE market, and includes offline modes and a display screen (on some handsets), and has its own possible uses.

Tue 29-Wed 30 May – more travelling, this time to Birmingham for the JISC Federated Access Management Event. Federated Access (whether through Shibboleth or some other system) could open up a lot of doors in the near future – not just in terms of access to e-resources, but also in terms of interoperability between institutions, and within institutions. It is an area I will discuss in more detail in later posts, no doubt – and I will be happy to discuss the options and ‘federated access roadmap’ with FE LRC staff (just give me a few more weeks to understand how it all works!). Three things that I got out of the event:

1: One session I found particularly useful was the one exploring the impact of the move towards federated access management on libraries, including a discussion of the Athens administrator role, changes to library processes and the impact on the end-user. The slideshow from the presentation is available online.
2: For those wanting to set up a system themselves, but lacking the internal skills, Netskills are piloting a 3 day Federated Access Management (FAM) workshop for technical staff, aimed at teaching how to set up Shibboleth at their institution – from nothing up to a fully working server in three days. Taking part in the pilot could be a good way of getting the training for free (as long as the attendees agree to provide feedback on the course). As far as I know the intended dates for the pilot of this event are 18th – 20th July (Newcastle University). Further information will become available via the Netskills website.
3: For those who would rather just pay someone else to do the dirty work (!) it was announced that Salford Software have come up with a charged service whereby they come into an FE college and set up a federated management system. Apparently costs vary, but for a college with a good technical infrastructure it would be a fixed fee of £5,000, with support costs on top of that if required. It would cost more for a college that needs a full audit and some changes to systems. However it is another alternative if short on IT expertise.

June arrived, and I needed a break! So I had a night away with my family near Harlech. On the way there I realised I was passing Coleg Harlech – one of the colleges I am meant to liaise with.

“Stop the car!” I yelled.

“Why?” asked my Mother, in a panic that something had gone wrong.

“I need to visit a library!”

I got out and visited the college library (which is apparently modelled on the National Library of Wales – and I could see a resemblance in the way the balcony overlooks the central area). I chatted to Delyth Heath about college library services for a while before continuing with my holiday.

Which seems a good point to finish my first blog. Here are a few holiday photos.

[Me and my nephew on top of Harlech Castle]

[Resting in the garden at Tremeifion]

[View from the Tremeifion conservatory]

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 13th, 2007 at 6:46 pm and is filed under Coleg Harlech, Gregynog, Interwrite, Netskills, Promethean, RSC Wales, Shibboleth, access management, voting systems, whiteboards. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.