Welcome to new students and 6 things.

Welcome to PRC 

Whether you are a new student or a returning student (or even a new or returning member of staff) - Welcome to the LRC and the College from all Learning Resource Centre (i.e. library) staff!

Do you know 6 things about the LRC?

The LRC is running a student induction quiz this year themed around "6 things that you need to know about the LRC".

It includes things such as how to set up a pin, how to register for an LRC loyalty card and finding the opening times of the LRC.

It will help you with using the Learning Resource Centre and should make it easier to use for your studies.

Every completed induction quiz gets entered into a prize draw so, by taking part, not only are you finding out how to use the LRC but you could also win a prize.

Chester the Puffin -our LRC mascot.
Photo: Peterborough Regional College

We look forward to receiving your entries and helping you familiarise yourself with the LRC.

Coming Soon - LRC Loyalty Card event

Loyalty Card Event

The Learning Resource Centre is holding a celebration event for those who have taken part in the loyalty card scheme.

The loyalty card scheme is a yearly initiative, run by the LRC, to encourage students and staff to read more fiction. The student or staff member obtains a loyalty card and gets their card stamped for every fiction book they have read. Once the student or staff member has read 6 books, they are then entered into a prize draw.

This year’s celebration event will be on the 18th April, between 3:30 and 4:30pm in the LRC. Students and staff can sign up and hand in completed cards until the 16th April.

The LRC now has a confirmed speaker for its loyalty card event.

Darren O’Sullivan is a local author and ex-PRC student. Darren has enjoyed success with his novel, ‘Our Little Secret’ and his second psychological thriller, ‘Close Your Eyes’ is out later this year. One lucky winner will receive a Waterstones voucher and three runners up will receive copies of Darren’s novel, ‘Our Little Secret’.

Darren O'Sullivan

Be Healthy Stay Safe Be Green

Be Healthy Stay Safe Be Green event

This week the LRC had a stand at the College's second Be Healthy Stay Safe Be Green this year. This time we went green with planters and piggy banks made out of old plastic bottles. Thank you to everyone who donated these and the seeds we planted.

LRC's Be Healthy Stay Safe Be Green stand
Photo: Peterborough Regional College

We also had a tree of encouragement. On the leaves were written some words of encouragement. Students were asked to take one from the tree and replace with a leaf of their own (with their encouraging words). This proved a popular idea with students.

Some of the words left on the tree at the end were:

• Spring is just around the corner.
• You need to be in the darkness to see the stars
• If everything goes not right, go left!
• Never give up!
• Get a goal in life and never let it go until you have achieved it.
• Today is a good day to smile.
• Keep trying your best.
• Always stay positive, fight the demons.

Trusting Health Information on the Internet

BBC's Trust Me I'm a Doctor recently did some features on using the internet to find health information and whether we should trust health apps. The links are here if you want to find out more.

Can you trust any of the health information found online?

Do the health apps on your phone really work?

Why are health headlines so confusing and how can you know which to trust?

Book Boxes

Book Boxes

Did you know that the LRC can put together a book box for tutors/lecturers to use in their lessons?

Ideally we like a week's notice of the topic (but we can do this quicker) and we do need to be sure that we have stock on the particular subject.

Please contact the LRC in person, by phone or email and let us know the topic, when you need it and how many students there are in the group. We will have the box ready for you to collect before your lesson and then you can return it at the end. We can also suggest other resources such as e-books. If you would like a librarian to come to your class and do an activity with your group using the box, then we can help with this also.

Pile of 5 books
https://www.pexels.com/photo/pile-of-five-books-51342/

5 things to do with a book box

1) Introduce books as a way to research

    a) Give each student a book and ask them to find a topic

    b) After 5 minutes ask students to then say how they found the information.

    c) Talk about the index and the contents pages. (Tip: go to the sections where there are the most 

        pages first before the individual pages e.g. 33-37).

    d) Discuss other ways students can know whether a book is useful for their research

        i.e. blurb on the back, author, how old it is, which country it's published in

2) Use a box of books to practice Harvard Referencing

    a) Ask students to use the plagiarism and referencing blended learning activity on the LRC 24/7             page to learn about how to reference.

    b) Then give out books and ask students to reference them either in teams or individually.

3) Use the box of books to help introduce a topic by asking the students to research it themselves

     a) Set some questions

     b) Ask students to research the answers using the books from the box (with or instead of   

         websites) either individually or as teams.

4) Use the books to inspire students when they are choosing what to do for an assignment. e.g. an art  

     assignment/ project or make up/ hair activity.

    (One of our most challenging book boxes was for an art assignment on "Containment". We had to

      find images which portrayed the idea of being contained, imprisoned, caged etc.).   

5) Use a box of fiction to encourage students to look at books to read for pleasure or to introduce 

     them to poetry. One lecturer who worked at the college in the past read with/to his students in
     their tutorials!

    

LRC Halloween book display
Photo: Peterborough Regional College

National Map Reading Week and Digimap

National Map Reading Week

This week is National Map Reading Week and organisations like the Ordnance Survey are using this to publicise and highlight the importance of having skills like being able to use a compass, plotting a map reference and using the right type of map for different activities.

• The latest research suggests the average British person ends up going the wrong way, or getting lost, 24 times a year.
• Mountain Rescue England and Wales call outs were up 170 in 2016 on the previous year and of the 1812 call outs, 360 were serious or fatal.

Given that we live in the age of the Sat Nav and smartphone, is it still necessary to know how to use a map? The statistics above suggest it is.

Being able to read a map and plan a route is still an invaluable life skill and maps can give us a lot of information. For example, a map will help you visually plan your route and see where you are in relation to other places. It can give you an idea of distance or how a hill is as well as what features are found in different areas.You do not need a battery, a mobile/ satellite signal or the ability to hear.

Sometimes a map or diagram is the best way to present information so directions can be understood easily.

Imagine explaining to someone new how to get from the Learning Resource Centre to Parcs Restaurant. Perhaps the best solution would be to take them there yourself. 

However, the alternative would be to explain to them that they need to turn left out of the LRC, past the Apprenticeship Centre, then turn left, follow the corridor round past the Enterprise lounge until they get to Alexandra Foyer when they need to go past the entrance gate and take the corridor to the left of the Pantry and follow this down to Parcs!

Or… you could draw a map!

Resources for learning map reading skills

For the beginner, Ordnance Survey provides a range of guides and videos to show you how to read maps. For example, understanding contours so you know whether you will be walking up a steep hill or not.

See below for Steve Backshall's short video guide to taking a 4 digit map reference.

Ordnance Survey have also devised a short quiz for you to test your map reading skills. Have a go!

Digimap

The Learning Resource Centre subscribes to Digimap which is an online service giving access to Ordnance Survey mapping of Great Britain. Students and staff can access it from the Electronic Resources Page under the Learning Resource Centre tab on Moodle. It is only accessible in College. Students and staff can save and/or print out their A4 maps.

The great thing about it is that you can search by postcode or place and then once you have centred your map, you can annotate it with shapes, labels, photos as well as measure distances. You might want to add starting points, places to camp, places to stop for lunch based on how long a walk is. Will you have to cross a river? Will you walk through woodland? Will there be steep hills? Will you pass through any villages? 

Public Services students have used this when planning for their week away walking the Pennine Way in the past.

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.