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Playtime in the fisherman’s boat
Now there are two, but there was only we could play in at our backdoor when we stayed here as children. A second was upturned and full of nettles. There is film of a five, six, seven, eight and nine year old sitting in this boat: cousins.
Searching for treasure on the rocks at Beadnell
Fig.1 The pebbles on the rock beach, Beadnell, Northumberland
Head down to watch you step on slippery rocks gives you the chance to hunt for treasure. As a boy I returned home with interesting stones and fossils. Forty years on I see what could be a piece of ripening fruit, an ammonite and a stone covered in tiny balls of frozen water which won’t last ten minutes in the late December son.
The perils of the Beadnell Rocks
Fig.1 The sea racing in along rock fissures on the easterly facing pebble and rock beaches of Beadnell
This fingers of seaweed covered rock are a short walk from the cottage where we stayed every Easter and Summer from as early as I can remember. Age seven or eight I was usually off on my own or with friends to hunt through the rock pools at low tide or to fish. I lost a rod around here and had to make a snap decision: enter the weed to try and retrieve it, or accept the lost. I accepted the loss. A boy growing up around here has considerable respect for the evil of the sea, its depth and desire to cling you in.
More to remember about Beadnell …
Fig.1 Dunstanburgh Castle from Beadnell Bay at dusk this morning
Fig.2 The tide coming in across The Point, Beadnell at sun up.
Fig.3 Something I never knew about The Point where I played as a child.
Fig.4 The sea pushing in through fissures between the rocks and pools
Fig.5. The low cliffs, fingers of rock and pools where I scrambled.
Fig.6 A drain that intrigued me age 5, or 6 or 7. In a storm the waves came up through it.
This was my playground until the age of 11 or 12. Easter, Summer and even half-term and weekends were spent here. Just two walks forty years later and the smell of wet sand in the dunes takes me back to being a boy – easy to scrambled around the dunes when you are seven. The rocks, the different textures under foot, the mesmerising waves that approached closer along the rocks as the tide came in, the birds and occasional seal, the Longstone Lighthouse always flashing its presence in the distance.
The foghorn lulled me to sleep. The noise of waves constantly crashing on the rocks changes from the loud chatting of people before the curtain goes up, to a jet coming into land … it rumbles gently, or angrily according to its mood (and yours).
Yesterday I had the briefest of conversations with someone who had a deep Northumbrian accent that sounds like Norweigian spoken with an English accent.
Somehow had left two unfinished cups of coffee and a big of a burger on the stonewall above the rocks. I carried it for 15 minutes until I found a bin. The flotsam is different to forty years ago: red bull and a body board.
French tongue twisters are doubly troubling for the English tongue
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| From E-Learning V |
Fig.1. Un chasseur sachant : a tongue-twister in French
I just stumbledupon this fun, fun, fun way to pick up some fresh French vocabulary AND with some exceedingly difficult tongue twisters to take your mouth to the gym – very necessary if you are to pronounce much correctly in French. After three minutes of these you’ll feel as if you’ve been chewing the entire packet of ten sticks of Wrigleys’ Spearmint Gum simultaneously.
How to take notes for effective studying and assessment
Fig.1. The muddy sides of the River Ouse, Piddinghoe. At low tide.
We are very good at forgetting: it’s vital.
We see, feel, sense far too much in our daily lives (which includes when asleep). Come to think of it what on earth was I doing on a student exchange to North America last night where I am twenty years older than my hosts … (probably sums up how I feel about the workplace).
See. Some memories are made for us, or by us whether or not we want them.
Learning though requires us to gather, create and retain stuff. Some of this stuff is forgettable; it doesn’t resonate, or is poorly taught or expressed. Or we simply don’t get it the way it is expressed, or the first time around.
Make it a memory
At an OU Residential School the session on revision was packed. The tips made us laugh: sucking a choice of Polo Fruit sweets by subject theme – when you come to the exam repeat and each sweet will link you to that period of revision. Odd. But it worked often enough for me to convince me of its value.
Fig.4. Ebbinghaus and his ‘Forgetting Curve’
The science from the likes of Hermann Ebbinghaus and his ‘Forgetting Curve’ simply indicates how something fades, unless you go back to it a few times over several days over which period you make it stick. It doesn’t say anything about the ‘stickiness’ of the memory in the first place. Sometimes this stickiness is made for you. There is drama, there is an explosion. Most likely, by chance, the learning is anchored by some unrelated event like the fire alarm going off – that won’t work for 50 different things though.
Fig. 5 Multiple ways of making ‘it’ stick: read (book and e-book), highlight, tag and take notes.
If the module, or your tutor isn’t doing it for you then the next step is to dig around for a book, video or image that does it for you.
Most likely, and of far greater value, is for you to turn that lesson into a memory of your own creation. There is always value in taking notes, so never listen to the presenter who says ‘no need to take notes I’ll give you the slides afterwards’. Never trust the quality of the slides. What the person said will be of more value then the slides. You, and your handwriting, and your doodles are how it starts to become a memory. Then when you write up or rewrite those notes you do it again. You make it into something.
Fig.6 The River Ouse at low tide.
I’m fixating on the horror of drowning in a shell-hole in the First World War.
Ever since I was a boy those images of cowboys and Arabian princes sinking into quicksand has horrified me. What must it have been like? Walking the dog by the River Ouse at low tide just as it turned the gurgling of water backing up and filtering into the muddy bank gave me the shivers. That sound was ominous. It made a memory of the walk and the thought. It’s also what is sustaining me as I work at a short story.
Fig. 7 A family memory of a wedding in California. Will it stick?
We’ve talked about ‘memory making’ in the family.
It is the event, and the sharing of the event. My late mother-in-law was horrified that her daughter couldn’t remember a road-trip they did across the US when she was 13. I concluded that she hadn’t remembered much, or couldn’t remember much when it was mentioned out of the blue, as the trip was never shared. Conversations are and were always about current and future events. This is why it helps to get the old photo albums out from time to time. But there’s a loss. Do we make them anymore? Visiting a mislabelled album online is never the same.
Fig. 8. My late grandfather John Arthur Wilson MM with the author Lyn Macdonald at the spot north of Poelcappelle, Belgium where he buried two of his mates – 75 years after the event. He recalled it ‘like yesterday’.
Recalling the First World War
Some veterans would talk, others remained silent. Those who did not want to remember could and did forget. My late grandfather was a talker; it drove my mother mad. I came to love his recollections. Clearly, there were events that would have burned themselves into the memories of these men, but unless they talked about it, in a veteran’s association or with family and friends it was not going to stick. No wonder veterans would seek each other out over the decades. Nudged by histories and movies their memories could be changed though; sometimes they came to say what was expected of them ‘the rats were huge, the generals useless, the German bunkers impenetrable, the mud up to your waist, the sound of the individual shells … ‘
In conclusion
Whatever activities and devices are built into your module, you are responsible and can only be responsible for making something of it. Take the hint. Engagement takes time so make the time for it. These days it is made easier through the Internet. You can keep a blog to share or as a learning journal; you can talk it over with fellow students either asynchronously in a forum (or blog), or synchronously in a webinar. You can ‘mash it up’ with images, grabs, doodles and annotations. You can make it your own. It’ll stick if you want it to but superglue requires effort. Someone else ‘sticks it’ for you and it won’t happen.
We are what the chemical processes in our brains say we are
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| From E-Learning V |
Increasingly, and coming from different angles, the science is showing by how much who we are is dictated by the chemistry going on in our heads. Actually, we are our chemistry; that’s how the brain works, but what I mean is that perhaps far more of this is determined by a combination of genetics – or chemical responsiveness, and what we eat – the chemicals we put into the system (just think what coffee, alcohol and drugs do to the brain, what we think, remember and how we behave), our behaviour (the chemical released say at moments of stress or excitement) and illness – so another environment factor.
I’d looked up dopamine. The wikipedia entry is so detailed it reads like an academic paper written by a committee of post-doctorate students. Fascinating.
All kinds of drugs mess or play or ‘fix’ such chemical reactions alter behaviour; as these become increasingly ore sophisticated the opportunity to intervene becomes greater. Then what?
I’ve just woken from two movie like dreams: stories with a beginning, a middle and an end. There was no message and I’ve already forgotten every detail. I could have made an effort to hook back into the last dream but chose not to. I have yet another mission: 2500 words, a synopsis and a scene breakdown for a novel. At the end of September I’m away for a week on a Writer’s Retreat. I’d love to be on the OU Creative Writing Course but that’ll have to wait another year, by which time I may have saved up the course fees, or had a hint of getting published (doubtful), or of course, neither. On this front I’m doing the OU Creative Writing Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) with Future Learn that starts in October. See you there?
Facebook Positivity Challenge
Fig.1. United Kingdom and Ireland
Prompted by nieces and my sister I have now joined the Facebook ‘Positivity’ challenge.
You post three positive things a day for five days then nominate three others to do the same. I have written 15 ‘Positivities’ already and will adjust and prioritize each day. My wife, Great Britain and learning something everyday (with a plug for the Open University) got a mention today. When I was eleven or twelve I pencilled in all the counties of England, Scotland and Wales where I had visited – parents divorced and living in Cumbria and Northumberland got that one started, with cousins in County Durham and North Yorkshire, and then trips to Scotland and Lincolnshire, London and Oxfordshire. The rule was I had to spend a night in the county. Before I’d taken a look at the above map (and not taking into consideration boundary changes) I guessed that bar a few counties I had stayed in all: largely as work producing training and information videos has had me on overnights all over the shop (nuclear power industry, manufactures, retailers, Post Office, pharmaceuticals …), and Northern Ireland courtesy of a girlfriend of 18 months. Looking again I think I could add that I’ve never stayed in Essex, nor many of the Welsh Counties (or valleys), a couple still in Northern Ireland and probably a couple in North Eastern Scotland even if I have driven through. I started the same kind of thing on the 98 departements of France and guess that I’ve ‘done’ a good fifty, once again, thanks as much to TV work repeatedly travelling to far-flung, non-touristy destinations for a TV news agency I worked for. I miss travelling.
A few years ago I took up the challenge of posting a photo a day in Blipfoto; I took this one step further and determined, with the need for some criteria for editing a day’s pictures, to posting something ‘to feel good about’ – this task is similar, though potentially more abstract if the idea, rather than the image comes first.
How to use Quick Response Codes in teaching about the First World War
Leveraging mobile technologies and Web 2.0 tools to engage those with an interest in the centenary of the First World War in the stories of the people of the era using strategically placed Quick Response codes.
Open Education in an Open Landscape
Inclusion: Innovation: Implementation
An OULive presentation by Jonathan Vernon 17th February 2014 @20:45
I’d like people to add a Quick Response code to their Commemoration Poppy
Fig. 1. Mashup of a Royal British Legion Poppy with a Quick Response code that links to the story of a veteran of the First World War.
Who are them men and women whose lives are remembered on British War Memorials?
Fig. 2 First World War War Memorials in Lewes and Brigthon
The problem with war memorials is that those named on them risk becoming forgotten words on a list. By using the Web we can find out who these people were and where they lived: we can try to put a face to the name and a story to the name – and then we can share what we find online.
There are more than 54,000 war memorials in Great Britain, most of these put up after the First World War; there is barely a community without one. There are some 900,000 names. Significant interest already exists, especially as we approach the centenary of the First World War making this initiative a potentially easy one to add, to what is already taking place.
“Fast, cheap and out of control”
Brian Lamb (2010) described those technologies that ‘lend themselves to … the networked and open approach’ (Weller, 2012 KL 244) as ‘fast, cheap and out of control’. It was with this in mind, taking an interest in the centenary of the First World, that I started to think about using Quick Response codes as a personalized entry point to the Web that anyone could generate in order to share a story about someone who served in the conflict, and to do so both online and on the street.
Fig. 3 How a Quick Response code might be used on a Royal British Legion Poppy in order to personalise your commemoration.
Quick Response (QR) codes are fast – they are easy to use, they are free; however to be effective in learning there has to be a ‘ modicum of control’ – the initiative has to come from somewhere. Worn in this way, I’d like to think that you can share directly with others the person whose name you have researched and whose life you wish to remember, as well as directing people to the content online and inviting them to ‘adopt’ a name from a war memorial themselves. This is designed as a ‘blended experience’, that uses ‘face-to-face’, ‘community’ and ‘classroom’ experiences, trips to monuments … and qualities of being and going online.
Fig. 4 QR codes are a product of the car manufacturing industry
Faced with increasingly complex components, Denso, a supplier to Toyota, came up with what is a 2d barcode in the 1990s. (Denso, 2014) Made free of patent, and using free software anyone can now generate their own unique QR code; you can even print them out on standardized sticky label stationery. There are a myriad of uses for QR codes, from embedding information that is read and stored by the device to a quick link to rich content online. The interest here is to use QR codes to link to learning resources, in mobile, or ‘m-learning’ contexts in particular, and for users to both ‘read and write’ such content. I liken QR codes to using your phone as a remote control to click to a TV channel. You point a smartphone, or tablet at the QR code to read it and go instantly, pretty much, to a web page. Unlike a TV remote though, you can just as easily create and share your own content too.
The use of QR codes in education in the last decade has been limited
Refereed papers are few, but between these and other published reports, suggestions can be made regarding their strengths and weaknesses. If QR codes are to be used successfully then champions need to be identified to take up the cause. Whilst QR codes use the power of the Web to connect people to rich content, that they may create themselves, a good deal of thoughtful planning will be necessary, not just explaining how to make use of QR codes, but also working them in, where appropriate to current learning schedules where QR codes can contribute to meeting clear learning objectives.
The 2009 Horizon report identified six technologies that were expected to be significant in the following few years, of these, five relate to this proposed innovative approach to learning by wearing a personalised QR code:
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mobile devices,
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cloud computing,
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geo-positioning
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the personal web and
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smart objects.
Use of QR codes in learning has had mixed results
Simply putting a QR code in front of a museum artifact, as they’ve done at the Museum of London and did at the Design Museum does not work (Vernon, 2013) – there isn’t enough to attract or necessitate their use, not everyone has a smartphone or tablet, and the technology is often not robust. While outdoors QR codes added to signs in the South Downs National Park, (Kerry-Bedel 2011) for example, barely received a view a day during a three month trial and in some instances there was no signal anyway.
Where QR codes have been successful is in targeted learning experiences in schools (Gradel & Edson, 2012), where the affordances of the QR code have been exploited to form part of an engaging, constructive and collective learning experience.
To be effective this initiative with war memorials requires galvanizing people to take part in a joint exercise – easier with a class in school or college, less easy with the general public.
Examples where QR codes work include:
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where participants are ‘equipped’,
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where they can take an active role, such as with ‘on the spot’ surveys or quizzes,
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where they are prompted into cooperative learning
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and where timely ‘Frequently Asked Questions’ are given.
(Awano, 2007: Information Standards Committee 2008; So 2008; Robinson, 2010; Hicks & Sinkinson, 2011; Ryerson Library & Archives, 2012.)
Fig 5. A Simple Guide to Four Complex Learning Theories. Lepi (2012)
The theory behind the idea of using QR codes in a mobile and open way, is that in the digital age ‘connectivism’ is the modus operandi. In Fig. 3, an infographic produced by Edudemic (Edudemic 2012) traditional and digital theories are shown. All are relevant, each has its place, with the digital environment offering new approaches to learning.
Learning ‘in the digital age’ enables and benefits from a level and quality of interaction and connectedness that is easier to achieve on the Web. It is particularly effective where the body of learners is large, where ‘birds of a feather, flock together’ (Li & Chignells, 2010) at a hub (Efimova, 2009) and their behaviour is open and shared so that knowledge acquisition comes through the challenges and rewards of sustained interaction. (ibid)
Only a fraction of an online population are naturally inclined to generate content. Nielsen (1999) suggested that only 1% create content, 9% might comment, while the remainder are readers or viewers. Nielsen cites the Amazon book reviewer who wrote 1,275 reviews in one year. I liken these people to what advertisers call ‘champions.’ The key influencers of a cohort or group, early adopters, who innovate first and do so with conviction and passion. (Vernon, 2012).
Fig. 6. Creators, commentators and readers – how use of the Web stacks up. Vernon (2010) after Nielsen (1999)
So if we are to rely on participants to generate content the total numbers taking an interest as viewers and commentators needs to be large. Building on Nielsen, and authors who have called groups who identify with each other through connected blogs as ‘like minds’ and my own experience in advertising I devised Fig. 4 to suggest degrees of participation.
How I would see it work with War Memorials is that as well as the key creators, there would also need to be, say branch members of an organisation such as the Western Front Association, they have over 3,000 members with branches across the UK, as a body of ‘like minds’ supported to work on the content, a figure increased further by engaging local schools or colleges – especially where the work is made part of formal assessment.
A balance has to be found, I believe, between the qualities of a tool that is ‘fast’ and ‘cheap’, and where, if it is ‘out of control’ – but you want to use it, to do so by creating parameters or ‘scaffolding’.
Fig. 7. Following ‘City Walks’ near Bloomsbury Square, London.
The potential weaknesses of using QR codes include the requirement for participants to have a suitable device, say a smartphone or tablet and communication fees. QR codes may not be so easy to stick to, then read from, a standard Poppy either. Reading from and using a smartphone or tablet presents accessibility issues. Though these devices are also being used in resourceful ways to support people with disabilities, and an audio guide, say a minute per name, for a war memorial, has its appeal.
Fig. 8. A mash-up of old photographs overlaying a Google Map
In relation to creating and sharing content in an open culture, Robert Capps (2009) coined the expression ‘the good enough revolution’. This precludes being prescriptive or from expecting perfection. Whilst output on the First World War from the BBC and the Open University should understandably attain a certain professional standard, the kind of creation required of those researching names on war memorials themselves should take inspiration from this ‘good enough revolution’. Examples include ‘pinning’ names from a war memorial to a home address, sharing photographs in a Flickr gallery, ‘pinning’ World War One photographs to battlefield maps, sharing photographs on Pinterest, numerous inventive YouTube videos, shared documentaries and memoirs presented as blogs.
Fig. 9. A mash-up of War Memorial which featured a Poppy, adding a QR code and links to an interactive online activity and a blog.
What has been shown, in museums and ‘out in the field’, is that simply ‘put out there’ QR codes are ignored. This makes the idea of ‘wearing your Poppy featuring your QR code’ appealing, as each person becomes an ambassador on the ground, in the street, on site, for that nugget of information, especially so if they are also responsible for – and proud of creating the content you then link to. The opportunity exists to engage people in bringing the stories of those named on our war memorials alive and sharing this knowledge in an invigorating, dynamic and Web 2.0 way. As a result, a deeper and more meaningful connection is made with the past and our relationship to it.
REFERENCE
Awano, Y (2007). Brief pictorial description of new mobile technologies used in cultural institutions in Japan. The Journal of Museum Education, 32(1), 17-25
Capps, R (2009) ‘The GOod Enough Revolution: When Cheap and Simple is Just Fine’, Wired Magazine: 17.09. Avaialble at http://www.wired.com/gadgets/miscellaneous/magazine/17-09/ff_goodenough?currentPage=1 [accessed 18th February 2014]
Denso (2014). QR Code Standardization. Available at http://denso.com/ [accessed 18th February, 2014] also at http://www.denso.com.au/Products/Non-Automotive/Data-Capture/QR-Code
Edudemic. Traditional Learning Theories. Available at http://edudemic.com/2012/12/a-simple-guide-to-4-complex-learning-theories/ [Accessed 19th April 2014]
Efimova, L. (2009) Passion at work: blogging practices of knowledge workers. Novay PhD
Research Series 2009. Available at www.novay.nl.dissertations [Accessed 19th April 2014]
Gradel, K., & Edson, A. J. (2012). Higher ed QR code resource guide.
Hicks, A., & Sinkinson, C. (2011). Situated questions and answers: Responding to library users with QR codes. Reference & User Services Quarterly, 51(1), 60–69.
Information Standards Committee (2008) Section 3: QR code, Synthesis Journal. (From http://www.itsc.org.sg/pdf/synthesis08/Three_QR_Code.pdf )
Kerry-Bedel, A (2011) Smartphone technology – the future of heritage interpretation: Its in conservation. Avialable at http://www.kbstconsulting.co.uk/QR/images/ITIC.pdf [Accessed 14th February 2014]
Lamb, B (2010) ‘Open Contempt’. Available at http://wiki.ubc.ca/Open_Contempt [accessed 18th February 2014]
Li, J., & Chignell, M. (2010) Birds of a Feather: How personality influences blog writing and reading. Science Direct. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies 68 (2010) 589-602
Nielsen, J (1999) Web Usability
Robinson, K. (2010). Mobile phones and libraries: Experimenting with the technology. ALISS Quarterly, 5(3), 21–22
Ryerson University Library & Archives (2012). QR codes. Retrieved 6th Feb 2014, from http://www.ryerson.ca/library/qr/.
So, S. (2008). A Study on the Acceptance of Mobile Phones for Teaching and Learning with a group of Pre-service teachers in Hong Kong. Journal of Educational Technology Development and Exchange, 1(1), 81-92.
Vernon, J.F. (2012) How Blogging is going all TV. (Blog post) Available at http://mymindbursts.com/2012/01/06/how-blogging-is-going-all-tv/ [Accessed 18th February 2014]
Vernon, J.F. (2013) Mobile learning at the Museum of London: QR codes and NFCs. (Blog post) Available at http://mymindbursts.com/2013/11/10/molqr1/ [Accessed 14th February 2014]
Weller, M (2011) The Digital Scholar: How Technology is Transforming Scholarly Practice. 5% Loc 239 of 4873
We remember thanks to repetition
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| From E-Learning III |
Repetition or re-visiting is vital. We cannot help but change our perspective as we gain more experience, insights and knowledge. We need repetition in order to get ‘stuff’ into the deeper recesses of our brains where wonders are worked. Therefore, far better to exposure to brilliance often, rather than giving them something less than brilliant simply because it is new, or an alternative. If nothing else Web 2.0 ought to be giving students the chance to find and limit themselves to the best.
Mind Bursts 