Things to do with your first personal tutorial

This is an idea list of things you might wish to talk about with your personal tutees in the first few tutorials. It originates from ECS (Dave de Roure and Hugh Davis in particular) so some of the ideas might be particular to that School. If you have suggestions you would wish to have added please email them to hcd@ecs.soton.ac.uk, or please feel free to copy any parts of the document and make a list specific to your school. Please enter the new list in EdShare!

Black Boxes and Abstraction or A quick run through how computers work

How we get from transistors through to logic gates to ALUs and memory to the stored program and the fetch execute cycle through to machine code and high level languages. Inspired by Tanenbaum's approach in "Structured Computer Organozation"

Personal Learning Environments? or Society’s Learning Environment?

Keynote Presentation at PLE2011. What kind of Web have we got? What kind of Web does a Learning Individual need? What kind of Web does a Learning Society need?

Abstraction: From Transistors to Computers and from Bits to Programs

Takes the Tanenbaum (Structured Computer Organisation) approach to show how application of successive levels of abstraction allow us to understand how computers are made from transitors and how they are programmed.

Personal Learning Environments and Digital Literacies

This is a version of a seminar/keynote talk I have given a few times. It argues that VLEs are no longer fit for purpose and that students should learn to take responsibility for their own toolsets.

Institutional Personal Learning Environments – Paradise or Paradox? A Digital Literacies Perspective

This was my keynote presentation at Computer Supported Education (CSEDU) 2012, in Porto. It looks at the importance of digital literacies and how VLEs do not support their developmeng and looks at iPLEs as an alternative.

Tools to use when writing a thesis using Word 2011 (for Apple computers)

A collection of videos on time saving features when using MS Word 2011 to write a thesis. Learn how to use styles, make table of contents, make table of figures, use the document map, use the browse object tool and keep a count of the words in your file and many more useful features of Word 2011. Word 2011 is for Apple computers, there is a collection of similar video for use with the PC version Word 2010.

Creating a Table of Contents to cover only part of a file's content using MS Word 2011 for Apple computers

A Table of Contents can be tweaked so that it picks up the content from only part of a file (such as an Appendix). This video shows you how to make such a change to a Table of Contents that is based upon Heading Styles. For best viewing Download the video.

An introduction to applying styles in the University's thesis template using MS Word 2011 for Apple computers

Keeping formatting consistent is made easy by using Styles and they allow you to change the look of the text formatting throughout your file with a few clicks. This video shows how to apply styles in a MS Word 2011 file. Using Heading styles also allow you to make the most out of Word’s Navigation Pane and Table of Contents features – watch our videos on those too! For best viewing Download the video.

Using the Normal and Quotation styles in the University's thesis template in MS Word 2011 (for Apple computers)

The Normal style is used for all your standard paragraphs of text in the thesis and also provides the underlying formatting attributes for other styles. Learn how to use this style. The Quotation style is used to indicate text that it being quoted in your thesis, see how to use this style. For best viewing Download the video.

Modifying styles in MS Word 2011 for Apple computers

Applying Styles gives your document formatting consistency, but if you don't like how a Style looks then Modify the style to suit your need. Learn how to change font and paragraph attributes of Styles. For best viewing Download the video.

Using Heading styles in the University of Southampton's thesis template for MS Word 2011 for Apple computers

This will probably be the most useful and time-saving thing you can do when writing a thesis. Using Heading styles in your thesis will not only create a series of sequentially numbered, consistently formatted headings and subheadings, it will also allow you to make a refreshable Table of Contents and make the most out of Word’s Document Map. For best viewing Download the video.