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Why did the people on a course I ran learn what they learned?
Fig. 1. Kolb’s ‘Experiential Learning Cycle’ reversioned.
I did something …
This is my take on Kolb’s ‘Experiential Learning Cycle’ which I will use to explore what I ‘did’. I ran a creative problem solving workshop. The motivation for attendees was to pick up some creative problem solving techniques, to solve a problem we had with using social media and to do some team building. The objective for me was to crack this problem and to introduce a more creative and collaborative approach to problem solving.
Fig. 2. Coach to Olympians running a workshop – part class, part ‘pool side’
I couldn’t help but draw on experience as a Club Swimming Coach planning programmes of swimming for a squad swimmers and as the ‘workforce development’ running training programmes for our club’s teachers and coaches. Planning and preparation when you are putting athletes in the pool several times a week over months is vital. On a smaller scale this workshop required a schedule, to the minute, with some contingency, allowing you to build in flexibility for both content and timings.
Fig. 3. Planned to the minute – my creative problem solving workshop
The plan was for five to six creative problem solving techniques to be used, top and tailed by, using terms from swimming, a ‘warm up’ and a ‘warm down’. The modus operandi of the Residential School had been to introduce, experience and play with as many creative problem solving techniques as possible.
Fig. 4. As a prop, food and aid memoir a bunch of bananas has multiple uses
‘Bunch of Bananas’ is a creative problem solving technique that suggests that you include in the group a ‘plant’ – a person over whom other’s will slip, like the proverbial banana. My take on this was to introduce two outsiders – a Russian academic who would bring a different take on things and the a mathematician and senior programmer.
Fig. 5. ‘Mother-in-law, Samurai, Tiger’ is a great warm up, while stretching like an Olympic swimmer was an apt ‘warm down’ at the end of the session.
We did a warm up called ‘Mother-in-law, Samurai, Tiger’. This is the team equivalent of ‘Paper, Scissors, Stone’ where two teams face each other and on the count of three, having agreed what their response would as a team, they either ‘Tut-tut’ and wag their finger like a mother-in-law, ‘growl’ and get their claws out like a Tiger, or shout ‘ha!’ while posing like a Samurai warrior brandishing his sword. This is the ‘warm down’ to stick with the swimming coaching metaphor was to have participants get into the ‘streamlined’ position that swimmers adopt – essentially a stretching exercise.
Fig. 6. Human Sculpture and Timeline are useful ways to have people look at and feel a problem in a different way and from a different angle.
In between we did a mixture of physical and mental activities, including Human Sculpture where one person becomes the sculptor and uses everyone else to form a tableau or sculpture that expresses their talk on the problem. Another was timeline where you imagine looking at the problem from the perspective of the past and future.
Now, stand back …
Standing back I’d say that running a workshop for colleagues has advantages and disadvantages. How would a director or line manager feel about their views being exposed like this. On the other hand if well managed it becomes a team building exercise too.
The challenge is to know what risks to take and how to build in flexibility, not just in timing, but in the kind of activities. This requires that despite the plan you are alert to signals that suggest an activity should be developed or dropped.
Workshops and seminars I take have a common element – there is ‘hands on’ activity.
The goal is that at the end of the session people feel confident that they could do these things themselves. I’m less comfortable about teaching where the communication is one way – me talking and them taking notes. I value encouraging self-discover and people being on their feet, interacting and having fun.
The workshop was experiential
It was collaborative and iterative, it was problem-based learning that used communication skills.
How did you feel about that ?
Fig. 7. How we like to be ‘in the flow’ rather either bored or stressed from being too challenged. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1975) Mental state in terms of challenge level and skill level.
I felt ‘in the flow’ for most of the time, suitably challenged and never bored. Though anxious and surprised when a colleague gave me a drubbing the day after feeling that they had been tricked into attending. This came as a surprise, the other surprise was how away from their desk and computers the apparently introverted could become so animated and responsive.
I felt like a party planner. I was hosting an event. The atmosphere of controlled enthusiasm would be down to me. I would be, to use a French expression, the ‘animateur’ or ‘realisateur’ – the one who would make this happen and bring it to life.
Fig. 8. For all the playful activities, we are still reliant on Post It Notes and flip charts
Now what ?
On this occasion we delivered a couple of distinct responses to the problem. People reflected on the experienced and felt it was both enjoyable and of practical value. The request was not that others would host such an exercise, but that I would do more. I was subsequently booked to run a few more workshops on specific topics with different groups in the faculty. The question that we couldn’t resolve was whether were a ‘creative organisation’ ? My own conclusion being that we quite palpably were not.
REFERENCE
Ackoff, R.L. (1979) The Art of Problem-Solving, New York: Wiley
Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly (1975). Beyond Boredom and Anxiety: Experiencing Flow in Work and Play, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. ISBN 0-87589-261-2
Experiential learning theory. (Available from http://www2.glos.ac.uk/gdn/gibbs/ch2.htm. Accessed 22FEB14)
Gundy, A.B. (1988) Techniques of Structured Problem Solving, 2nd ed, Van Norstrand Reinhold. Te hniques 4.01, 4.06, 4.57
Henry, J and the course team (2006, 2010) ‘Creativity, Cognition and Development” Book 1 B822 Creativity, Innovation and Change.
Henry, J (2010) ‘Set Breakers’ Henry (P. 96)
Kolb, D.A. 1984 Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and Development, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
McCaskey, M.B. (1988) ‘The challenge of managing ambiguity’, in Pondy, L.R, Boland, R.J and Thomas, H (eds) Managing Ambiguity and Change, new York, pp 2-11
Henry, J & Martin J (2010) Book 2 Managing Problems Creatively
Schon, A.A. (1983) The Reflective Practioner: How Professionals think in Action, London: Temple Smith
Tassoul, M, & Buijs, J ( 2007, )’Clustering: An Essential Step from Diverging to Converging’, Creativity & Innovation Management, 16, 1, pp. 16-26, Business Source Complete, EBSCOhost, viewed 22 February 2014.
Reflecting on a presentation on learning to students at Oxford Brookes University
Fig.1. Rescue having failed a 4 tonne whale is dragged from Stinson Beach.
As a student on Oxford Brookes University’s online course ‘First Steps into Teaching and Learning 2014’ here in week 4 we have been challenged to consider an experience from teaching or being taught and in a five minute presentation reflect on this.
My interest is teaching postgraduates and/or ‘in the workplace’.
I should be feeling I’ve stumbled into the right time and place with this one having just given a ten minute presentation online as part of the Open University Masters in Open and Distance Education module H818: The Networked Practitioner, however with that one, despite every expectation to exploit my love of and experience with linear and interactive media I resorted to a Powerpoint. I needed to improve the script up to the line and this offered the flexibility I could not have had with a Prezi or video. There were too many cumbersome technical barriers and trips that I wasn’t happy to pursue or risk.
What I’m doing here is thinking through a presentation I need to prepare. Sharing this, if and where feedback can be garnered, then informs the decisions I take.
My immediate idea, often my best, is to do a selfie-video talking to camera while hurtling around a roller-coaster at Thorp Park. It would sum up the terror, thrill, highs and lows of taking a day long workshop with a class of some 40 year 9s (12/13 year olds) in a secondary school that had/has a checkered history.
The second idea, to change the setting radically, would be a workshop with nine on creative problem solving – the objective was to come up with answers to a messy problem, though the motivation to be present for most was to experience a variety of creative problem solving activities that I had lined up. This nine in an organisation, included MBAs, prospective MBAs, a senior lecture, junior and senior managers and officers: colleagues and invited guests from different departments. This example is probably the most appropriate.
A third might be something I attended as a student – apt because doing this in 2009/2010 in part stimulated me to take an interest in learning: I wanted to know what was going wrong. Here we had prospective club swimming coaches doing everything that was unnatural to them – working from a hefty tome of paper, sitting through a lecture/seminar and expecting assessment to be achieved by filling in the blanks on course sheet handouts. This from people with few exceptions who left school with few or no qualifications – often troubled by Dyslexia. They were swimming coaches to dodge this very kind of experience. It was, you could tell, hell for some. The misalignment could not have been greater. Here the immediate visual image, apt given the subject matter, would be to watch a fish out of water drown – or nearly drown and be rescued. What really grated for me in this course was the rubbish that was taught – too many gross simplifications and spurious science.
Based on the above I should challenge myself to do the video as I need to crack loading and editing. The fish out of water, whale actually, I can illustrate from photographs and the experience this summer of being present as a 4 tonne whale beached and drowned on Stinson Beach, California (See Fig.1. above).
Where do I stand academically? Where and what next? And the madness of being.
Master of Arts in Open and Distance Education (MA ODE) with the Open University, UK (OU)
H800: Technology-enhanced learning: practices and debates
H807: Innovations in eLearning – Learning outcomes
H810: Accessible online learning: supporting disabled students
B822: Creativity, Innovation and Change
H808: The e-learning professional
This completes the Masters Degree. I graduate on Saturday 27th April 2013
Currently (March 2013) I am taking H809 as a bridge towards doctoral research or professional consultancy. Complete in June 2013.
H809 Practice-based research in educational technology
I joined the #H817open MOOC for one part of this module. I will register for 2014
H817: Openness and innovation in e-learning.
Where do I stand academically? Where and what next? And the madness of being.
Masters in Open and Distance Education (MAODE) with the Open University, UK (OU)
H800: Technology-enhanced learning: practices and debates
H807: Innovations in eLearning – Learning outcomes
H810: Accessible online learning: supporting disabled students
B822: Creativity, Innovation and Change
H808: The e-learning professional
This completes the Masters Degree. I graduate on Saturday 27th April 2013
Currently (March 2013) I am taking H809 as a bridge towards doctoral research or professional consultancy. Complete in June 2013.
H809 Practice-based research in educational technology
I joined the #H817open MOOC for one component of this module. I will register for 2014
H817: Openness and innovation in e-learning.
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Why skiing is my metphor for life and learning
Fig.1. Mont Turia from the summit of Aiguille Rouge, Les Arcs at 3250m
On the last day, on the last run of my first week’s skiing I broke my leg rather badly. I was 13. I was in hospital for a week. In a wheelchair for two months and had the leg re-broken as it wasn’t setting properly. I spent six months at home. Idiot. But most 13 year old boys are.
I missed the next season.
For the following 20 years skiing mattered – a gap year working in the Alps (Val D’Isere in the Sofitel Hotel working 13 hours a day 7 days a week), a decade later researching a TV documentary and book (Oxford Scientific Films, Skieasy Ski Guides), falling in love with a fellow skiing enthusiast (we’ve been married 20 years), a honeymoon on the slopes and ten years later, on the slopes with a 4 and 6 year old, then again when they were 10 and 12.
I miss it.
(See above – the last week of the season, Tignes. The only people on the slopes are the ‘seasoniers’ who have worked since December. It is like being on the beach. A stream that flows above Val Claret melts and various ponds form. We ski it.)
Early in the afternoon I’d asked my girlfriend if she’d marry me. I was feeling cock-a-hoop.
We’ve been back twice in the last decade. There have been other priorities. I’ll be taking my 14 year old son out later this month or in April. Is that wise? At this age teenagers really are prone to take risks and can lack the physique.
Reasons to celebrate and look forwards
37 months to the day after starting the Masters in Open & Distance Education (MAODE) I got the final result, for H810: Accessibility in Open Learning – supporting students with disabilities, today. 84.
It has been so worth it and such a better, engaging, effective, experience than my undergraduate degree in a traditional university some decades ago. I feel as if I have earned it for a start. I have survived disasters rather than succumbed to them.
I am a reading, thinking, writing machine.
I feel like someone who has come to skiing late in life and has caught the bug. My mother started skinning in her mid 40s … and in her 50th year (unencumbered by her husband who was with wife three by then) sold the house and did a belated ‘gap year’ working a season in the Alps. The equivalent for me has to be the intellectual challenge of doctoral research.
More reading, thinking and writing – with research and teaching too I hope.
Onwards.
Tutor Marked Assignment One (TMA01) for H809 (Practice-based research in educational technology) is due on Monday.
Why more?
‘Practice-based research in educational technology’, to use skiing as a metaphor, is like learning to ski ‘off-piste’. Apt, as the tracks I make are ones I have planned, rather than keeping to the groomed, signed and patrolled ‘safety’ of the regular runs.
And my reward?
Fig. 2. Mont Blanc – From the Ski Resort of La Plagne, Above Montchavin. Les Arc on the right . The road to Val d’Isere clinging to the mountain in the middle distance Bourg St. Maurice in the bottom of the Valley
Skiing en famille.
We’ve not been out for five years so it should be a treat. It has to be on a shoestring, so short of hitching to Bulgaria can anyone recommend ways to keep the cost down?!!
Related articles
- An Insider’s Guide to Skiing Europe: Where (outsideonline.com)
- Ski Report (kotokydo.wordpress.com)
- Best of Val d’isere (besttripever.wordpress.com)
- Ski centers think spring and hope skiers do too (poststar.com)
How do you split your time online? Visual expression of my ‘personal learning environment’ PLE
Fig. 1. The latest expression of how I learn on line. February 2013
This has gone through various forms and ought to included learning across all platforms – I get books from Amazon where the eBook doesn’t exist, I use sheets of A1 paper on a drawing board to sketch out ideas and plans, I use the iPad as a digital camera and use a digital SLR too.
Fig. 2. How it was
The difference? Even more reading and writing.
Fig. 3. Earlier still. A year ago?
A more realistic expression of my learning environment or context i.e. taking on board multiple influences
Fig. 4. A difference expression of the same thing – centred on e-learning
Learning Design in three stages – the good, the bad and the ugly
I love the beauty of Jenga.
Simplicity has a purity about it. Don’t knock it. Behind its functionality and its look and feel there will be some hard thinking. Keep it simple, stupid (K.I.S.S) may be a training cliche but there is considerable truth in it.
I’ve now had three years here at the OU and here on this Student Blog platform (short of five days). I’ve been working on my ideas regarding learning and e-learning design in particular.
Courtesy of THE OU hosted OLDs MOOC 2013 (Online Learning Design – Massive Open Online Course)
I’m experiencing what feels like undertaking an 8 week written examination – the contents of my brain are being pushed through the cookie cutter.
And out comes this:
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
(Of course I had shut down for the gadgets for the day and was brushing my teeth when this came to me).
The Good
Learning events or activities, moments that make the participant smile, think, reflect, nod in agreement, understand, be informed and generally feel good about the world and this particular learning experience. Hit them with some of this, as the say so succinctly across the Atlantic – at the ‘get go’.
The Bad
The effort required and built into the learning. OK, we want them to love this too, and you can if you’re ‘in the flow’, have done your work, have wrestled with what you didn’t understand, asked for help, listen to fellow students, gone out of your way to do extra reading and research until you have it, one way or another.
There needs to be assessment.
An assignment is a soft assessment to me – though like everyone I have terrible days when the thing just slips through my fingers like a snowball on the beach. A dissertation or end of module assignment is tougher, but tough and ‘bad’ in a certain way – like commitment to a triathlon. And a good analogy as working on and developing three issues at 2,000 words a pop is about right. And you won’t get far if you leave training to the week before. It’s a slow burn.
The ‘bad’ has to be the written examination.
They have to be hated and feared, and like learning lines for that school play, you have to get it right on the night (or day). And what do you do if you act? You have good lines to learn, you learn and rehearse your lines and you practice, and do a test run or two. The curtains going up is the equivalent of your turning the examination paper over. I feel the fear from a year ago – April 2012. I hadn’t sat a written exam in 30 years. All my undergraduate and school-boy fears came back. I used rusty techniques that had last seen service during my first degree.
Bad is good. You want to do everything not to feel like you are naked on stage – a dream we all have when faced with such an ‘exposing’ test?
The Ugly
Shock ’em. Not scare the witless. Have up your sleeve some smart stuff. Whether an idea or the technology offer a creepy and certainly memorable surprise.
Boring a student into making a fact or issue stick is like throwing mud at a brick wall – it’ll stick, it’ll coagulate and build up, but is easily washed away in a shower and destroyed in a storm.
Use storytelling techniques perhaps, better still, follow the pattern of a ghost story.
Scare them? I’m back on fear I guess.
We humans are fearful of many things and will go out of our way to avoid, run away or confront our fears. As I said, the idea here isn’t to lose your students, but to empathise with them, understand the ugly side of their learning experience then help them confront their worst fears. It is ugly having to tackle the parts of a subject that stink, but inevitably these are the blocks at the base of JENGA.
So can I apply it? And can I go back to bed now?
Which leads me to another theme – we no longer simply bring work home with us, we take it to bed and sleep with it. If this pisses you off then let me introduce you to ‘working with dreams’. If you are prepared to get up for an hour in the dead of night, or can flick on a light without invoking divorce then scribble stuff down to catalyse the thought in the morning. Can work wonders, can produce nonsense, can just be some things you need to put on the supermarket shopping list … or another dream of being naked on the stage, not knowing your lines and needing the lo but all the exits are locked and the orchestra has stopped and you have to say something.
Which, courtesy of the wonders of the mind, has me in the front row of a performance of The Tempest at the University Theatre, Newcastle when I was 13 or 14. Caliban was naked, covered in mud and wearing a prosthetic erect penis.
HORROR!
P.S. And give me 20 minutes searching the Internet and I will be able to name the actor, date the show and possibly even find a picture. Perhaps you’d like to have a go. But before you do so, be very fearful of what the search terms you use might throw up.
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- Tumbling Tower Sight Word Jenga Game (momto2poshlildivas.com)
- MOOC Platforms and the A/B Testing of Course Materials (ouseful.info)
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Do I join I club when it is clear I’ve become one of those students the OU will never get rid of?
English: Christopher Alexander leading the workshop on creating the generative code for a new neighbourhood of houses at Strood Sept 2005 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I signed off H810 at noon – and in so doing complete the ‘set’ for the Masters in Open and Distance Education.
H810 – Accessible online learning: supporting disabled students
H807 – Innovations in E-learning (replaced by H817: Openness in innovation in e-learning – registration closes on the 18th January, the module starts in early February )
H808 – The E-Learning Professional
H800 – Technology-enhanced learning: practices and debates
B822 – Creativity, Innovation and Change (An MBA module, extraordinary and insightful but now rolled into several modules rather than stand alone. A shame, as I came across other non-MBA people doing it as an elective)
I signed on to H809 – Practice-based research in educational technology for good measure which gives me exactly 7 days to twiddle my thumbs. Actually, I am reading, without pressure, a few books that I stumbled upon over the last 3 years:
Learning and Expanding with Activity Theory. (2009) Ed. Annalisa Sannino, Harry Daniels and Kris Gutierrez. Kindle Version.
(Unfortunately for me this unpicks a piece of the assignment I’ve just sent off. Activity Systems can’t really apply to a digitised world apparently)
Groundswell: winning in a world transformed by social technologies. (2006) Charlene Li, Josh Bernoff. Kindle Version
The Timeless Way of Building. Christopher Alexander (when it arrives from the US)
Often referred to during the MAODE.
Techniques of Structured Problem Solving. VanGundy (when it arrives from the US)
At the core of ‘Creativity, Innovation and Change’. We recieved a handbook of problem solving techniques that contained many of these.
Also
Books offering useful advice about how to develop a research degree proposal
Dunleavey, P. (2003) Authoring a PhD Thesis: How to Plan, Draft, Write and Finish a Doctoral Dissertation (Palgrave Study Guides), Palgrave Macmillian ISBN 1403905843
Walliman, N. (2005) Your Research Project: A Step-by-Step Guide for the First-Time Researcher, Sage Publications ISBN 1412901324
Related articles
- Pause (mymindbursts.com)
- Clive Shepherd – the book, in person, ideas on learning and development in the World Wide Web 2.0 (mymindbursts.com)
- OU Launches FutureLearn Ltd (ouseful.info)
- Access to e-learning and the Olympic Orbit for students with disabilities (mymindbursts.com)
- Are you the learning architect or the learning builder? (mymindbursts.com)
- My personal learning environment (PLE) (mymindbursts.com)
#50Auction D&AD 50th
Fig. 1 The D & AD Auction
50 creatives – designers, art directors, illustrators, photographers, film makers and typographers offered 50 pieces of art for a special edition D&AD book.
(What is D&AD?)
An auction started online on Sunday went live today at The Hospital Club in Endell Street at 7.00pm.
A Paula Scher went for ever £2k. I needed to leave before the Terry Gilliam or Quentin Blake came under the hammer.
See them all here
If you had £10,000 to go on a good cause, which would you have bought? Would it have been selfish to bid for several?
Great work inspires. Great work for a good cause inspires even more. With the money raised D&AD will start a fund to support emerging creative talent in the early months of their career hoping to keep some of them in the business.
Fig. 2. Quentin Blake for D&AD 50 2012
There was additional inspiring work from:
David Adjaye – Architect
Miles Aldridge – Photographer
David Bailey @Kiosk – Designer and Art Director
Daniel Barber – Commercials Director (Film, TV idents … )
Paul Belford – An Art Director and Creative Head … with a PhD in Biochemistry
Quentin Blake – Illustrator
Derek Birdsall – Graphic Designer
Neville Brody – Graphic Designer and Font Designer
Wim Crouwel – Graphic Designer and Typographer
Neil Dawson – Urban Artist
Tony Davidson – Head of Big Ideas, WiedenKennedy London
Mark Denton – Designer, Director, Photographer … and he blogs
David Droga – Art Director
Dave Dye – Thinking up ideas. Problem solving. Making things look nice.
Daniel Eatock – Designer
Eine – Urban Artist
Fabrica – Sam Baron & Co ?
Bob Gill – Bob Gill
Stephen Gill – Photographer
Terry Gilliam – IMDB
John Hegarty – himself
Wayne Hemmingway – fashion designer
Nadav Kander – photographer
Peter Kennard – artist
Rich Kennedy – Senior Designer at BBH
Nick Knight – Fashion Photographer
Michael Johnson – Johnson Banks
Danny Kleinman – Director
Mary Lewis – Designer (Brand Packaging)
John Lloyd – Graphic Designer
Ed Morris – Creative Director
Nick Park – Well Aardman
Grant Parker – Head of Art DDB UK
Parra – Artist
Harry Pearce – Designer
Rob Reilly – Chief Creative Officer
Rankin – Photography
Mark Reddy – Head of Art BBH
Paula Scher – Graphic Designer
Richard Seymour – The Violence of the New
Paul Smith – Fashion Designer
Philippe Starck – S+ark
Daljit Singh – Digital Design
Alexandra Taylor – Art Director
Storm Thorgerson – ‘Legendary’ Graphic Designer
Justin Tindall – Executive Creative Director – Leo Burnett
Mark Tutssel – Global Creative Officer – Leo Burnett
Simon Waterfall – Creative Director – Industrial Design and the language of all things.
Graham Watson – Art Director
Michael Wolff – Design
Fig.3. D&AD Heads (backs of) … or so I thought.
Who were the couple, say age 27 and 26 who hung and clung onto each other for the duration as if we were on a raft going through the Skull Rapids of the Westwater Canyon, Utah?
Related articles
- D&AD 50th Annual: original cover artwork by 50 design legends up for sale (oddstuffmagazine.com)
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The Open University’s Masters in Open and Distance Education (MAODE).
Fig. 1. The Open University’s Masters in Open and Distance Education (MAODE).
Expressed as a Wordle. A personal collection of key influencers based on those tagged in this blog. Includes my own reading and indulgences.
On Friday, at midday, My OU student blog reached a significant milestone.
I’ve been at it for 33 months. I’ve blogged the best part of FIVE modules now – most of which required or invited some use of the blog platform (or another). I required little encouragement – I used to keep a diary and have found since 1999 that in their digital form they are an extraordinarily versatile way to gather, consider, share and develop ideas.
The investment in time, on average, an hour a day in addition to – though sometimes instead of coursework over 1000+ days.
(This excludes 8 months I spent on the Masters in Open and Distance Learning in 2001)
To mark this event, and as I need to go through this online diary, this e-journal, this ‘web-log’ (as they were also once momentarily called) ahead of some exciting meetings coming up next week I thought a simple task might be to click through the tags to identify who have been the key influencers in my reading and thinking over the last two and a half years.
Fig.2. Another way of looking at it.
Beetham, Conole and Weller are key MAODE authors from the Open University. John Seely Brown is a vital undercurrent, Engestrom one of several enthusiasms like Vygostky. While Gagne, second hand hardback, needs to be on your desk for frequent reference.
What I thought would take an hour has taken nearly 40 hours.
Clicking on a tag opens a corner of my head, the notes take me back to that day, that week, that assignment or task. It also takes me back to the discussions, resources and papers. And when I find an error the proof-reader in me has to fix. Aptly, as we approach November 5th, and living in Lewes where there are marches and fireworks from late October for a couple of weeks peaking of course all evening on the 5th, my head feels as if someone has accidentally set light to a box of assorted fireworks.
Just as well. Meetings these days are like a viva voce with eager ears and probing questions – they want the content of my mind and whatever else I bring to the subject after thirty years in corporate training and communications.
Fig. 3. Wordle allows you to say how many words you want to include in the mix.
To create weight I had to repeat the names I consider most important twice, three or four times in the list. I also removed first names as Wordle would have scattered these into the mix independently like peppercorns in a pan of vegetable stock.
The Task
- List all authors who have been part of my learning and thinking over the last couple of years.
- Include authors that my antennae have picked up that are relevant to my interest in learning, design, the moving image and the english language.
- Visualise this and draw some conclusions
Fig.4. This even makes three of the key protagonists look like an advertising agency Gagne, Beetham and Conole.
The Outcome
I can never finish. Take this morning. I stumble upon my notes on three case studies on the use of e-portfolios from H807 which I covered from February 2010-September 2010. To begin with I feel compelled to correct the referencing in order to understand the value, pertinence and good manners (let alone the legal duty) to cite things correctly. (Even though this post was locked – a ‘private’ dump of grabs and my thoughts).
Then I add an image or two.
These days I feel a post requires a visual experssion of its contents to open and benefits from whatever other diagrams, charts or images you can conjure from your mind or a Google Search – ‘the word’ + images creative commons – is how I play it.
Fig. 5. From David Oglivy’s book ‘Ogilvy on advertising‘ – a simple suggestion – a striking image, a pertinent headline and always caption the picture. Then write your body copy.
A background in advertising has something to do with this and the influence of David Ogilvy.
I spend over two hours on the first of three case studies in just one single post. At the time I rubbished e-portfolios. The notes and references are there. Tapped back in I can now make something of it. A second time round the terms, the ideas – even some of the authors are familiar. It makes for an easier and relevant read. What is more, it is current and pertinent. A blog can be a portfolio – indeed this is what I’d recommend.
From time to time I will have to emerge from this tramp through the jungle of my MAODE mind.
Not least to work, to sleep, to cook and play.
Fig. 6. In a word
USEFUL LINKS
REFERENCE
Gagne, R.N. (1965) Conditions of Learning Holt, Rinehart and Winston
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Mind Bursts 