Technology Engagement Group

TEG

Contact us

How better to build an appetite for new technology than to attend our lunchbytes, short, informal, lunchtime discussions of accessible new or lesser known technologies that might just change the way you work... or at least whet your appetite for more digital goodness?

No need to book! Join us online via Zoom anywhere there is a wifi connection.

Follow us: add our Google Calendar* and never miss a TEG session

*Please note: you need to be logged in with your Google@Brookes account to access the TEG calendar.


Get involved

Have an idea for a session? Email us at lr-innovation@brookes.ac.uk for more information on how to get involved with the planning team.

Semester 2: February 2023

TEG Special: Teaching with ChatGPT

The Technology Engagement Group (TEG) is back with a special session for the AI curious! We are going to 'play' with ChatGPT, a new AI language model that responds to your text prompts like a human would. We are going to look at what the tool can do and some examples of how it can used for teaching.

When: Thursday 16 February 2023, 11:00-12:00pm

Facilitators: Isabel Virgo, Dr Mary Davis, Martha O'Curry, Harry Kalantzis

Gmail Layouts

Get to know Gmail's new features that allow you to apply layouts/templates when composing an email which can be used to create newsletters, email campaigns etc.

When: Monday 14 November 2022, 12:00-1:00pm

Chef: Charlie Brampton

Meet our Cricut machine

Have you ever wanted to cut your custom designs in different shapes and materials? Join Gerard to show us the magic of a Cricut machine!

When: Wednesday 23 November 2022, 12:00-1:00pm

Chef: Gerard Helmich

Endnote for staff

Join Gerard to learn about the Library's referencing software and the support offered by the Directorate of Learning Resources.

When: Wednesday 30 November 2022, 12:00-1:00pm

Chef: Gerard Helmich

Previous TEG sessions and recordings

Citavi - note-taking and reference management all in one place

Citavi is an all-in-one referencing and note-taking solution available for Windows PCs or via a web browser on all platforms. It integrates with Microsoft Word for document creation. Discover the benefits of this interesting reference management and knowledge organization tool in our TEG session.

When:

  • Wednesday 16 March 2022, 12:00-1:00pm
  • Tuesday 22 March 2022, 12:00-1:00pm (repeat session)

Chef: Alex Friend

How to avoid Zoom bombers

If you wish to prevent Zoom bombers from joining your online lectures or professional meetings, this session will show all the ways that Zoom offers to help you avoid disruption.

When: 

  • Wednesday 23 March 2022, 12:00-1:00pm
  • Tuesday 29 March 2022, 12:00-1:00pm (repeat session)

Chef: Harry Kalantzis

GatherTown

Gather Town is a web-conferencing software like Zoom, but with the added component of seeing the virtual “room” you and others are occupying, and with the ability to move around and interact with other participants based on your locations in the room, just like real life.

When:

  • Wednesday 30 March 2022, 12:00-1:00pm
  • Wednesday 6 April 2022, 12:00-1:00pm (repeat session)

Chef: Paul Henshall

Artificial Intelligence Apps

How good is AI at answering moral questions? And can you get it to generate original art? We'll be looking at two AI tools - AskDelphi and Wombo - to round off the semester with a fun and interactive session.

When:

  • Thursday 28 April 2022, 12:00-1:00pm
  • Thursday 5 May 2022, 12:00-1:00pm (repeat session)

Chef: Isabel Virgo

Slack - an effective communication tool for teams

Slack is a communication tool offering chat rooms, private groups, video conferencing and direct messaging. Come and discover how Slack is already being used by some departments within Brookes and find out what impact it has had on their daily work.

When: 

  • Tuesday 5 October 2021, 12:00-1:00pm
  • Thursday 7 October 2021, 12:00-1:00pm

Chefs: Adam Ritchie (Tuesday) and Mina Samangooei (Thursday)

Publish or Perish - a free tool for retrieving and analysing citations

Publish or Perish is a tool designed to help individual academics to present their case for research impact to its best advantage by retrieving and analysing citations. It has many other uses, including identifying the best journals to submit a paper to, job interview preparation, completing literature reviews, bibliometric research and more. This free tool is available for Mac, Windows and Linux platforms.

When:

  • Thursday 4 November, 12:00-1:00pm

Chef: Isabel Virgo

Photography and AI for all

Artificial Intelligence can be used by all of us to improve our existing or new images. Do you have a priceless but blurry photo? Use AI to sharpen it and remove camera shake or motion blur. Need to print a large photo from a small image file? Use a tool to boost the apparent megapixel size. Need to colourise an old black and white image? Come and learn about these tools and more in our AI and photography session.

When: 

  • Tuesday 19 October, 12:00-1:00pm
  • Tuesday 26 October, 12:00-1:00pm

Chefs: Harry Kalantzis and Gerard Helmich

Build a better template - create your own templates for Google Docs and Word

Make Word and Google Docs your own. Why start from scratch every time you create a new document when your preferred layout can be there waiting for you?

When: Tuesday 16 November, 12:00-1:00pm

Chef: Melanie Bashor

Other sessions

AR, VR, and 3D
  • Zapworks - Augmented Reality for Brookes students and staff
  • 3D printing - print is the Future, just not that sort of print
  • Design objects in 3D with Tinkercad (and then 3D print them)
  • The Reading Machine, an augmented reality experience
  • VR tours - get the full 360 on how it's done
  • Reimaging your Research in Augmented Reality with the Merge Cube
  • That's aurasome!
  • Mobile Photogrammetry

Coding, web-development, HTML, Bootstrap and more

  • Building your Moodle course with Bootstrap
  • WordPress - Get your voice heard, publish your work online
  • Cool Tools: Google Chrome Extensions - Let your browser do the heavy lifting
  • Google Blocks

Conferences, new ideas, developing new spaces.

  • Academic Library Makerspaces: Learning from my US case studies
  • Lectures at Large: the return of the green screen
  • What happened in Vegas... a tech review of the E3 show
  • InStePP ePioneers - because innovation with technology is most effective when it's a partnership

Creating teaching and learning resources

  • Using lecture capture software to record library literature search sessions
  • Create engaging handwritten video content with Videoscribe
  • Byte-sized, Collaborative, or Adaptive Learning?
  • Screencastify
  • Sway - easy, fast content creation

Ways of working, wellbeing, and new tools

  • Notion - Your all-in-one digital workspace
  • Disentangling the Internet
  • Here's a ToDo
  • Organisational tools
  • Finding the mark (Google Bookmarks)
  • Smart inboxes