General

iSpot, the website where people can upload pictures of creatures, plants, fungi or insects they have seen and ask others to identify them, has passed its first quarter of a million of observations. The milestone was reached simultaneously by a pair of malachite beetles seen near Farnborough in Surrey (UK) and a crab spider spotted waiting for insect prey to visit a wild gladiolus flower in the Western Cape of South Africa.

Previous significant identifications on iSpot include a six year-old girl who discovered the Euonymus leaf notcher moth, which was quickly identified by iSpot experts as the first of its kind ever seen in Europe. The story made the news at the time.
iSpot is a project of the Open Science Laboratory at The Open University. It is supported by the Garfield Weston Foundation and the Wolfson Foundation.

Last year iSpot launched its version in South Africa, one of the richest places for wildlife in the world. Dozens of new localities for rare plants, many not even formally described, have been discovered there, aiding local nature conservation projects.

Seeds that had poisoned some children in KwaZuluNatal in June this year were identified on iSpot within 35 seconds of having been posted. The children all recovered fully and the doctor is now able to identify the poisonous seeds.

Jonathan Silvertown, Professor of Ecology at The Open University, who devised iSpot said: "iSpot has been a huge success since it launched four years ago. It astonishes me how iSpotters manage to identify 96% of the observations we get. And over half our observations are identified within an hour of posting! You can stroll to the pub, stop along the way to use the iSpot Android app to snap a picture of an odd fungus, and before you get to the bar you can have identification for it!".

iSpot not only helps people learn to identify wildlife, but also gathers valuable biodiversity data. More than 150 natural history organisations worldwide now work with iSpot.

Jim Munford, Chief Executive of the National Biodiversity Network in the UK said: "Biological recording remains one of the few areas of science where any member of the public with proper mentoring and support can aspire to become a national, or even international, expert for their chosen taxa ... iSpot is unique in providing an accessible resource that can be used by beginners and experts alike."

Posted on 1 July 2013.

 

An award winning article by two OU academics presents a method which encourages foreign language students to engage in a constructive dialogue with their tutors. The method looks at students’ responses to different types of comments, which may lead either to a successful, or an unsuccessful dialogue.

The method can be used both for face-to-face and for distance learning. It was designed by María Fernández-Toro and Concha Furnborough, both lecturers in Spanish in the Faculty of Education and Language Studies at the OU, and key researchers behind the e-Feedback Evaluation Project (eFEP). The eFEP examines and evaluates the use of spoken and written e-feedback.

In the new study ten students were asked to make audio recordings of their reflections as they went through the comments and markings given by their teachers.  The students’ responses were then analysed and categorised. Interestingly, while all students were pleased to receive praise from their teachers, high achievers were reluctant to accept it at face value and wanted to know how their performance could be further improved.

Similarly they did not mind unexplained comments on their errors in simple matters, such as spelling. However they did tend to adopt a less effective approach when their tutors pointed to their mistakes in more complex areas without explaining them adequately. Sometimes this even led to students rejecting comments altogether as ‘patronising’.

The article, Eliciting students’ voices through screencast assisted ‘feedback on feedback’, was given the title of  ‘Best Research Paper Award’ at an annual conference of the European Distance and E-learning Network (EDEN), a gathering of 400 participants from 45 countries in Oslo, 12-15 June 2013.

Picture L to R: Albert Sangrà, Maria Fernández-Toro, Concha Furnborough, and António Teixeira, Professor of Distance Education, Universidade Aberta, Portugal, the new EDEN President.

Posted on 1 July 2013.

 Hi all

The company I work for has been very kind to me throughout my studies and have been kind enough to offer other OU stu's and alumni a 10% discount code for use on the site.

www.Vitoroad.com mainly specialises in scarves, many of them fairtrade but also sells fascinators, bags and for the men watches.

Discount Code is OPEN10 and can be used until the end of July.

 

Kindest Regards

Neil