Poetry and Puffins - LRC celebrates National Poetry Day

National Poetry Day

The Learning Resource Centre is celebrating National Poetry Day by holding a poetry competition. We have been encouraging students and staff to try writing Twitter poems – i.e. a poem that is no longer than the length of a text or tweet. Ironically, Twitter announced this week that they are piloting increasing their character limit to 280. A poem which is exactly 140 characters is known as a “twoosh”.

You can search for these mini poems by using a range of different keywords such as Twihaiku or micropoetry or the phrase "twitter poe*". (Putting "" marks round the two words keeps the words together as a phrase and the * allows for poet, poetry, poem and poems in your search).

 You can also search for these mini poems on Twitter using the keywords above as a hashtag (i.e. #micropoetry).

Poems

It has been said that Brian Bilston is the Banksy of the poetry world. Have a look here at some of his Twittle poems (as he calls them).

https://brianbilston.com/category/twittle-poems/

A couple of other short poems of his you may want to read in an odd spare moment are

You took the last bus home
No you cannot borrow my mobile phone charger 

Chester exploring the National Poetry Day display in the LRC
Photograph: Peterborough Regional College

Puffin news 

Finally, for those of you wondering what name has been given to the LRC mascot – it is Chester. There was a lot of discussion about whether the name should begin with P but in the end Chester had the most votes.

As it is National Poetry Day we close with an attempt at our own Twitter poem as we felt we shouldn't expect of others what we wouldn't try ourselves. We are sure your poems will be much better.

 There’s a puffin

Doing nothing

In the LRC

At PRC

There is nothing

Like that puffin

In the LRC

At PRC

Ok……..we won’t give up the day job!

Learning Resource Centre welcomes students at Freshers' Fair

LRC stand at Freshers' Fair

This week the Learning Resource Centre staff were at the College Freshers Fair with their stand welcoming new students with information, quizzes and freebies. It was great to meet everyone and to welcome them to the College.

Student at LRC stand at Freshers' Fair
Photograph: Peterborough Regional College

2 students at LRC stand at Freshers' Fair
Photograph: Peterborough Regional College

Thanks to the generosity of some of our electronic resources suppliers, we were able to give out some headphones, notebooks, pencils and some students were also able to choose their own Quick Read book. (These are also available to loan from the LRC).

We produced a Fictional World Quiz matching fictional worlds with book covers and particularly popular was our Name the Puffin competition. The puffin is our new LRC mascot (as chosen by an Inclusive Learning student last year) and below we've managed to photograph him/her taking a book out at the counter (usually puffins are very shy birds!). We'll let everyone know the chosen name on Twitter as soon as we've checked the entries.

LRC's puffin mascot taking a book out in the LRC!

We have UCP Freshers next week and again we look forward to meeting many of the new degree students then. We are already booked in for quite a lot of inductions over at UCP with LRC tours too so we will be kept busy over the next few weeks, but if you have any questions about how things work in the LRC, see our Moodle pages or come in and talk to us.

Welcome (back) to College and the newly refurbished Learning Resource Centre

New Learning Resource Centre

Welcome (back) to College and to the new Learning Resource Centre (LRC). We have a new name (Learning Resource Centre) and therefore we have changed the URL for this blog too so if anyone bookmarked this last year, you will need to change it.

Having spent the last 3 months operating from 2 classrooms, we have now moved back into the newly refurbished space and groups of students have been visiting us for tours and to carry out tasks set by their tutors. We have also created a Kahoot quiz activity for students to do in class (all details for tutors are on the tutorial pages) which will introduce the basics of using the LRC and the resources we offer. If you want details or have any problems accessing this, please ask someone in the LRC.

 Before /during the refurbishment
Photo: Peterborough Regional College

After the refurbishment
Photo: Peterborough Regional College

Below is a walk-through video from the College's YouTube channel so you can get an idea of what the new LRC looks like.

The LRC team looks forward to welcoming students and staff to the new space. If you have any queries about using it, then please ask one of us for help.