February 2013




























You may recall me noting that the Chromebook has been Amazon's top selling laptop for the whole of Q4 2012.  There are now a lot of Chromebooks out there - so what can we do with them?  Let's see...


As part of our series of posts on the MEGS-KT project, today we'll look at Learning Analytics with Moodle. Specifically, how might we go about figuring out which resources ("learning objects") from the Moodle VLE are of particular interest to a wider audience? Let's see...





















My colleagues at the Centre for Engineering and Design Education are recruiting a web developer.  Here is some more information and a pointer to our vacancies site...

Job titleWeb Developer / Programmer
Job referenceREQ13031
Date posted28/01/2013
Application closing date07/03/2013
LocationLoughborough, UK
Salary£27,854 to £36,298 per annum
PackageManagement and Specialist Grade 6, £27,854 to £36,298 per annum. Fixed-term from April 2013 to March 2016.
Job category/typeManagement and Specialist
Job description
Centre for Engineering and Design Education
Fixed-Term for 3 Years 
Required to work as part of a multi-disciplinary team on a wide range of award winning web development and learning technology projects.
You will have excellent attention to detail, considerable experience of web development in a professional environment, the confidence and positive attitude that comes with proven experience and a willingness to learn and engage with new web technologies.
You will also have extensive experience in the following:
  • Using PHP and MySQL to create dynamic web applications.
  • HTML, XHTML and creating CSS-driven layouts.
  • JavaScript and jQuery (including AJAX and JSON)

Please see our vacancies site for further details on the CEDE web developer post.





















State-of-the-art e-infrastructure, accelerating innovation in industry and research

HPC Midlands – a new supercomputing initiative – builds upon the high performance computing expertise at Loughborough University and the University of Leicester.

Capable of processing vast quantities of data, high performance computing acts as a catalyst for breakthroughs across a range of sectors including bio-informatics, engineering, finance, manufacturing, molecular modelling, science, and weather forecasting.

On Wednesday 20 March 2013, you are invited to learn more about HPC Midlands and how you can access its capabilities.

Join senior representatives from industry and research to:
  • Learn how HPC Midlands could provide real benefits and save you money 
  • Find out what access to a supercomputer could do for your organisation 
  • Meet the team behind HPC Midlands 
  • Explore opportunities for new collaboration 
  • View case studies and demonstrations that show how successful businesses already benefit from working in close collaboration around HPC, including E.ON, Rolls-Royce and Tata Steel 
This event is highly relevant to representatives from companies interested in using high performance computing directly in their business or in working in partnership with university researchers in applying high performance computing to the challenges that face them. Academics with a record of using high performance computing to solve industrially relevant problems are also welcome to attend.

Find out more and sign up at our HPC Midlands launch event microsite.


Learning Analytics is one of the buzz phrases du jour, but what does it mean in practice? Here is the first in a series of posts on the lessons that we have learned through our Jisc Business and Community Engagement project, MEGS-KT.

















I was invited to speak at this year's BETT as part of the new Higher Education strand of the event.  My talk was all about the "perfect storm" of changes that are happening in the sector right now, and how we can respond to them.  Why the sleepy cat?  Well, when things get stressful, sometimes you just need to take a Kitten Break to calm yourself down...  [Thanks to Ray Kent from De Montfort University for introducing me to the kitten break]