Like every organisation that runs a web site, we’ve been considering how to comply with the new Cookie Law that came into effect at the end of May. And like many others we’ve developed a Privacy Policy and a Cookie Policy to clarify how we use personal data and cookies on JISC CETIS sites.

The privacy policy sets out the ways in which we collect personal data and what our intention is in collecting that data. Actually, since we don’t maintain a user database, the only times we collect personal data, are when users log into our wiki, or register for an event. However, we are increasingly using external services like Eventbrite to manage event registration, which means asking people to submit their name and email address to Eventbrite.

Our Cookie policy is based on the ICC guidance and essentially asks users for their implied consent to our use of cookies. The policy outlines the four categories of cookies and gives details of those we use on the JISC CETIS site. Like many other JISC services we now use Google Analytics to monitor how users are using our site. This helps us justify our work, but also understand what readers find useful and would like to see more of. The anonymous data we’ve collected through Google Analytics has enabled us to analyse the impact of some of our communications tools. For example, by using Google Analytics we now know that our newsletter is still widely read, and brings over 80 visitors to the site within two days of circulation.

Our current Learning Analytics project Analytics Reconnoitre is exploring many of the issues around collecting and analysing user data.

There is quite a lot of information available on complying with the new legislation. We found the following particularly useful:

JISC podcast:Cookie Law next steps

JISC’s Privacy and Cookie policies

ICC UK Cookie Guide

JISC Legal

We’d appreciate any feedback on our new policies and how you feel about cookies and using your data for web analytics. (And thanks to colleagues David Sherlock and Sharon Perry for writing the policies!).

There are only 36 days left until our biggest event of the year, our annual conference. This year’s event, titled The Future Just Happened? Technology Innovation in Universities and Colleges, will be held again at the National College for School Leadership in Nottingham and promises to be a fascinating couple of days.

The conference title is inspired by Michael Lewis’s 2001 book, Next: The Future Just Happened, which predicted the massive impact that technology and the internet would have on every aspect of our lives. Ten years on many of his predictions have become a reality. Meanwhile 2012 will be a year of unprecedented change in the way that higher education in the UK is funded. For the first time students (especially in England) will be funding their own way through university taking out loans of up to £27,000 for a three year degree. This marketization of higher education will certainly have a profound effect on the HE landscape over the next few years; an interesting backdrop then for this year’s conference.

The keynotes for the conference will reflect on these themes of technology innovation and institutional change. Ian Hughes Metaverse Evangelist, TV presenter and Director of Feeding Edge Ltd opens the conference by looking towards the technologies emerging in the next few years. This year’s conference is immediately preceded by the IMS quarterly meeting and Rob Abel, IMS Chief Executive Officer will consider the role that interoperability standards play in technology development. In closing the conference Mark Stubbs Head of Learning and Research Technologies Manchester Metropolitan University, will respond to a challenge from the 2007 CETIS conference to deliver better information systems to support learning and teaching in 2012 by describing the new MMU core+ virtual learning environment which has been rolled out to 35,000 users.

As well as the keynotes a CETIS staff are running ten parallel sessions over the two days. Two sessions (a codebash on day 1 and demonstration session on day2) will focus on the Question and Test Interoperability 2.1 specification which is nearing final release. Student retention is becoming increasingly important for institutions and a session on using data to improve student retention will be a popular choice. The Thwarted or Embedded session will attempt to determine the key factors which determine whether technology is adopted by organisations. JISC has is now working in partnership with the ROLE project to develop an educational app store, and there is a session on day 1 to help define requirements, use cases and contribution to this work. The Learning Registry session will report on another new initiative from the US which will investigate how social activity around online educational content can be captured and fed back to users, creators and publishers.

Looking to the future the Emerging Reality session on day two will imagine what new learning organisations might emerge as funding conditions change. The idea of open badges emerged as a hot topic in 2011, and there will be a parallel session to discuss whether it is an approach that could work in education. Analytics is also becoming more important as we struggle to get a grip on how learners behave online, the Social Network Analysis will look at some of the latest tools and techniques. And if none of the above appeals there is (back by popular demand) an open mic session where delegates have 10 minutes to hold forth on a subject close to their hearts.

A packed programme then, and if this hasn’t yet whetted your appetite maybe a browse through reports from our previous conferences will.

It was a rare treat to spend last Thursday at the Guardian offices on an “Insight to journalism” course run by the Guardian Education Centre, and hear firsthand how they are using social and multimedia.

During a busy day we heard from a range of journalists, reporters, correspondents, producers and editors about the internal workings of the Guardian and how it is increasingly using social and multimedia. Margaret Holborn, Head of Guardian News and Media Education Centre, introduced the day with an overview of the paper’s history and constitution. Since moving to the new offices at King’s Place the Guardian now takes an integrated approach to its journalism with joint teams producing the printed paper and the web site, she said.

Next, Nell Boase Managing Editor with responsibility for the web site outlined some of the daily challenges of running the web presence and discussed some of the ways in which reader generated content was used on the site. The issue of payment for reader submitted photos came up in discussion, and Nell said that if the photo made front page news the reader would be paid at normal space rates.

Laurence Topham, Video Producer, introduced the art of making videos for the site and showed a film he’d made of a Tea Party meeting in Nevada. Interestingly, the Guardian is training journalists to be able to produce their own videos while on location. We picked up some interesting tips, like always use an external microphone. Later in the day we also got to do some of our own video editing (with iMovie) using footage from a project the paper is running in Katine Uganda.

Guardian.co.uk is an increasingly complex set of web sites, and Celine Bijleveld, Network Production Editor described how the sites cater for three types of users, those looking for a single story, those looking for the general news that day, and those that want both specialist news and breadth. With over 200 requests from editors each day for front page space, the web team need to balance the content of the front page, updating it continually. A number of different layouts are available including “special” and “nuclear” when a story, like the 2010 general election, is the most important news of the day.

Community Co-ordinators Laura Oliver (News) and Hannah Freeman (Culture) described how the Guardian is working with the community using social media tools like twitter and facebook. These tools offer speed and reach particularly during breaking news events, like the unrest in Egypt, but are also challenging in terms of verifying the facts. The team are using tools like AudioBoo to capture sound recordings of events as they happen. Hannah described how culture – film, books and arts – has a slightly different and dedicated audience who follow the interviews and features on the site. A new children’s books section of the site, where books are reviewed by children, represents a new venture in terms of reader generated content. This mutualism, building up the relationship the Guardian has with its readers in a number of ways, is a key strategy for the paper.

Podcasts have been produced at the Guardian since 2006, and Science Correspondent Alok Jha described how they were using podcasting in increasingly creative ways. Through the Science Weekly podcast Alok and his team aim to explain science in an understandable way, often interviewing famous scientists when they are in town. Not being a radio show meant that the Guardian podcasts could be less strict about content and style, he said.

A highlight for me was Guardian news reporter Adam Gabbatt describing live blogging from the recent student protests over tuition fee rises. He told how he creates minute by minute commentary by getting information from a number of sources including reporters on the scene, tweets from people in the crowd, and some audio and video. A video uploaded by reader had become a front page news story when the Metropolitan Police denied that mounted officers had charged the crowd, and the video showed otherwise, he said. The Guardian will run 2-3 live blogs per day.

John Stuttle, Systems editor gave a 10 minute tutorial on setting up a blog site on WordPress, and how to include images and embed video. John gave us lots of tips and advice on getting a blog started.

Looking to the future Tom Happold, Head of Multimedia said that multimedia at the Guardian would continue to be driven by what new technologies become available in the next 10 years. But with falling sales in newspapers the need to make money would become increasingly important he said. The Guardian would continue to focus on what it does well, journalism, and there was a training programme in place for staff to improve their video and audio production skills, he said.

At the end of the day David Marsh Production Editor judged the headline competition. We’d been asked to write two headlines on the death of Elizabeth Taylor, one for the paper and one for the web. Going through the entries, David shared some wisdom on what makes a good headline for each medium, where space was limited for print, but could be more creative especially if linked to a photo, compared with the web where the subject is vital to pull in readers via search engines, but there is often more space for longer headline. (I was ridiculously pleased to come third).

Finally Laurence returned to show us his brilliant Katine video, produced with some of the footage we had played with. Even the professionals need to get feedback on what they produce, and he had reordered the clips in response to feedback from his colleagues, he said.

A fascinating and thought provoking day I would definitely recommend, thanks to Margaret and the team.

Last week Counterpoint, the British Council think tank, published the “Cloud Culture, the future of global cultural relations” pamphlet by Charles Leadbeater. In it Charles charts the cultural impact that the web has had in the last 15 years and looks ahead to how cloud computing will influence cultural developments over the coming decades.

“We have the potential to make available more culture and ideas in more forms to more people than ever: a digitally enabled, cultural cornucopia…..

…Yet this possibility, a vastly enhanced global space for cultural expression, is threatened by intransigent vested interests, hungry new monopolists and governments intent on reasserting control over the unruly web.”

Charles outlines the following threats to a truly open cloud:

* Censorship and the Power of Government
* Copyright:Old Media Seeks Protection from the Storm
* Cloud Capitalists
* Unequal Access to the Cloud

A thought provoking report and well worth reading.

This week Bobbie Johnson at the Guardian is blogging about the technology developments in each of the last ten years of the noughties. Today he’s up to 2002, with the rise and rise of Google and the rise and fall of Napster.

Similarly the BBC are looking back over the noughties and this morning I caught on radio 4 Defining the decade which today focussed on Google and the impact of the internet (the other two themes being climate change and terrorism).

Anyone fancy doing a post on the last ten years of technology in education?