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Fancy windsurfing? Check Windguru.
I’m always amazed at how much information can be put onto a screen; here, Windguru gives you in a glance the weather and especially the wind forecast in relation to windsurfing and kite boarding – strong winds are vital. It is just an aid to forecasting, though I have found it remarkably accurate, that wind strengths and directions do in reality shift pretty much according to the forecast. This greatly assists with planning a sailing trip – too strong or too weak and I keep away.
Peace in pieces
Fig. 1. Poster commemorating the bombing of Hiroshima for Japan, 1985. Ivan Chermayeff, de la warr pavilion, Bexhill.
Trip FIVE to this exhibition, this time with my brother-in-law, is imminent. What I adore about exhibitions here is that they are ‘bitesize’ and smart; they are a perfect ‘mind burst’. They are the ideal repeat show too as with each visit you see more, and see differently … and are influenced of course by the person you are with.
The right image says what each viewer sees in it.
This idea naturally translates into any and every conflict we see today: MH17, fractured and not yet stuck together, the Middle East utterly smashed into dust – I have this visual in my head of Hanukkah Lamp, the smoke from which forms a fractured map of Israel and Palestine.
From E-Learning IV |
From a learning point of view to start with a poster such as this is to follow Robert Gagne theory of learning design; also the natural skill of storytellers and good communications: get their attention.
Pen and ink drawing class at the Jerwood Gallery, Hastings
Fig.1 Chair and shade
It was like being back at school: though the ratio of 15 women to 3 men felt like I’d gate-crashed the girl school’s class down the road; I was educated in all male schools from 4 to 19. Of the 15 two were under 20, two were under 30 and the others above 60 and 70. No difference. Just like school. I recognised this swimming with Masters that given any opportunity to be the child that we were we are.
My relationship with art is an odd one: a mother who taught art, had an MA from Durham University in Fine Art, but who discounted at as a career for any of her children. I took it as far as A’levels (under her tutelage).
In 90 minutes we has some history, so thoughts on kit, then we got on with it. I found a secluded spot in the central courtyard (Jerwood Gallery, Hastings). And picked first on the climbing plants on a wall, and then the chair I’d taken out of the class. My challenge was to look at different ways of adding shade. Eventually I found that changing from pen to cotton balls and ink would differentiate between the object and the shadow. This’ll take further work.
Other learning opportunities over the last few days have included:
Power Boat II (Refresher)
It is eight or more years since I did the course and seven years since I’ve been in a power boat. A bit of it came back. And new stuff was added. I need this so that I can operate a ‘rib’ during ‘racing week’ at the local sailing club: laying the course, keeping an eye on the fleet to rescue and assist. The sea can be choppy, the winds strong. Dinghies go over and their mast can pin them to the shallow sand and grit of Seaford Bay.
How to train a pigeon
In her wisdom my daughter has rescued a pigeon with a broken wing. The RSPB and animal sanctuaries aren’t interest. ‘Ralph’ is now accommodated in a garden shed; shits everywhere but is eating from my daughter’s hand. Muggins will be looking after it shortly of course. The volume of pebble-dash shit is impressive as every shit is onto a fresh patch of shed floor – it will be one shit deep, like a carpet by the weekend.
Graphic Design
The exhibition on the designer Ivan Chermeyeff at the De La Warr is so good I’ve been back three times. There is no book on this exhibition, though many of his books are nailed to a table to admire (the page it has been opened at), with a few books you can browse. There is an insightful video too – an interview with the designer talking about how he got into fine art and graphic design from an inspiration father. One of the things he talks about is ‘learning to see’. Had photography not been banned I would not have got out a pad of paper and looked more closely at his collages. Had I not taken such a close look I wouldn’t have seen, with magical surprise, that one was made from ephemera collected at the inauguration of JFKennedy as US President on January 20 1961.
How I assembled a presentation as an exercise for the Open University Master of Arts in Open and Distance Education module H818: The Networked Practitioner
From the start of the Open University postgraduate master’s module H818: The Networked Practitioner I’ve aggregated screen grabs and photos into a dedicated album in Google+ ‘Picasa Web Gallery’. This, as a resource and aid memoir, also received copies of images from other albums, including the another two albums on elearning that contain some 3000 images from the six MAODE modules that I have done over the last four years and from other albums on the First World War and specific museum visits, including: the Museum of London, the Great North Museum, the Design Museum, the ‘In Flanders Fields’ and ‘Talbot House’ in Belgium, as well as inspiration and insights from the Picaso and Miro Museums in Barcelona and Alcatraz in the Bay of St.Francisco.
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From E-Learning III |
My interest in museums is lifelong and something emanating from them or to support them had been an intended topic for my last MAODE module H809. My interest in the First World War is also lifelong, fed by my late grandfather, a veteran of that conflict who lived into his 97th year – long enough to attend various events to mark the 75th anniversaries of the Battle of Passchendaele where he served as a machine gun corporal and the formation of the Royal Air Force as he had transferred to the Royal Flying Corps at the very end of 1917. Given the approaching centenary of the 1914-18 War I took the decision to enhance and formalise my understanding of the conflict with an MA in British First World War studies at the University of Birmingham. I further justify this by valuing the insight of doing a ‘traditional’ though part-time MA that requires attendance at lectures, and a substantial amount of reading – even from books, some of these a century old and getting a taste for another institution’s online offering. Here are my mashed up notes from a lecture on reviewing a text.
First ideas were around the use of QStream, a platform with its origins in supporting junior doctors in North America to pass tough written tests of their knowledge. Simply shoehorning in an idea rather than seeing what needs exist, or problems there are, say with museum or battlefield visits isn’t to be recommended. It was necessary therefore to try out for myself some of the mobile guides, for example City Walks.
I knew from experience the year before that QR codes had been used in the Digital Crystal exhibition at the Design Museum – efforts failed here as the promised free wi-fi didn’t work. A visit to the Museum of London was more satisfactory though throughout my visit I never saw anyone use them – spoilt for a wealth of activities and options, including touch screen interactive and computer consoles alongside many tactile and engaging ways to enjoy the exhibits perhaps rendered them redundant.
Most treasured visits to museums include the Royal Academy of Arts where my mother took my daughter, then 12/13 under her wing. I was also impressed by the quality of the audio guide at Alcatraz that featured the voices of inmates and prison officers.
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Reading I do always includes some kind of note taking; how I achieve this using digital tools varies. A significant, if not most of my learning is done via an iPad. Experimentation and habit has me use Kindle tools to highlight, tab and add notes that I later review and grab, while with papers I typically do a number of things: cut and paste a Harvard reference into my OU Student Blog which I use as an ePortfolio, as well as saving into RefWorks, while downloading the paper to a dedicated module folder. Rather than take notes, which I may do in front of a computer or very rarely these days onto paper, I will, as here, highlight and grab then later annotate and potentially post with notes and tags into a blog.
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My established habit is to deconstruct a task into its component parts – in this case an early step towards a ‘multi-media artefact’ using SimpleMinds, a favourite App that I have on the iPad and Mac-Mini.
This detailed mindmap was an early step in assembling a ten minute presentation I gave on OULive on Monday on the potential and pitfalls of using Quick Response codes in education. Its next iteration was as a Prezi. It was ultimately delivered as a PowerPoint consisting of eight or nine slides.
Here I took some of my grandfather’s photographs and mashed them up using the apps ‘Studio’ – a graphics/sharing app and ‘Brushes’ – the iPad ‘painting’ app favoured by David Hockney. Together these allowed me to assemble layers of photographs, text and graphics so that I could express an idea visually.
At some stage I had the idea of putting a Quick Response in a Royal British Legion Poppy – as much for the promotional grab of the image as the practicalities of doing so.
In a module titled ‘The Networked Practitioner’ that is part of the Open University’s ‘Masters of Arts in Open and Distance Education’ the prompt to use, indeed the necessity to at least try a variety of sharing platforms is inevitable. Within the ‘walled garden’ there were module, student and tutor forums, OpenStudio, and wikis, while managed exposure beyond these walls included use of Cloudworks and the Open University student blogging platform. My own extensive use of external platforms includes blogging since 1999, and has developed to include: Linkedin, Facebook, Google+, Twitter, WordPress, Flickr, YouTube, Stumbleupon, Pinterest and others. Flickr and blogging has brought me to the attention of the BBC and National Trust, as well as individuals able to support my specific interest here on the First World War: a blogger in Belgium, the grandson of a veteran, a local historian in Hastings, a post doctoral researcher at King’s College, London, an author writing on the First World War for the National Trust, the Western Front Association who have published my grandfather’s story and a researcher and subsequently the BBC to feature in a story in their ‘People and Places’ series.
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Picking a Creative Commons copyright attribution only came after slides had been submitted to the presentation coordinator. Even once having reduced the number of slides proposed and having greatly simplified the images to be shown the need would then ideally to have added the CC as yet another layer onto these images – all the more reason to leave this task to the end once I had reduced some 32 images down to 8. Further simplification would be to restrict my use of images to my own photographs, charts and drawings. An attribution I may have circumvented is to acknowledge or link to Apps such as ‘Studio’ and ‘Brushes’ while I find it all too easy to lose track of where an image was sourced given how many screen grabs I do and photographs I take every day.
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Future plans would be to expand the thinking expressed in the OULive presentation to include a platform such as QStream that feeds by email spaced repetitions on a subject. I imagine a teacher, rather than the secondary school student, assembling a ‘cheat sheet’ of key facts as a revision sheet that is then offered back to them on their phone until, literally, they ‘have it in their heads’. This I base not only on the idea that managing our inclination to forget is a necessary part of formal learning but that only once you have aggregated enough ‘stuff’ on a topic in the brain can it be expected to make its contribution by enabling you to answer exam questions, but also by offering and allowing you to formulate your own ideas.
Towards an assessment of my teaching
I often share a post I am writing as I do so. In this case having identified the story to tell : running a workshop to solve a ‘messy’ business problem I am pulling together or creating supporting images, in the above case a grab and mashup from Martin Weller’s book ‘The Digital Scholar’ – my goal is to be recognised as one. In a forum post as an Open University ‘Master of arts in Open and Distance Education’ (I graduated in early 2013) I suggested this could be achieved in four years – John Seely Brown thinks that eLearning speeds things up, while Weller reckons on ten years.
Positive and negative feedback, especially if constructive, sends a shiver through my bones.
Just ten minutes. A live online presentation. Why for me should it be such a big deal?
I said to my wife that I have not problems delivering other people’s words (acting) and I have no trouble writing words for others to speak (speech writer, script writer), but what I loathe and struggle with is delivering my own words on any kind of platform.
Big fails on this count, emotionally at least would include:
- My grandfather’s funeral
- My groom’s wedding speech (I was pants at proposing too)
- My father’s funeral
- My mother’s funeral
…
Because it matters to me far too much when, and only when, the words that I give seem to emanate from my soul.
Let me blog, let me write letters, let me smoulder from my ears into the atmosphere with no expectation of feedback.
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Both positive and negative feedback, especially if constructive, sends a shiver through my bones. Why is it that I crave confrontation, that I want to be mentally smacked around the head, then kicked up the arse and sent back into the fray to deliver some amazing show of ability?
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We are all so, so, so very different, yet how we are taught, or expected to learn seems so very contrived, so set by context and numerous parameters.
I would prefer to be stuck in a cabin for a couple of weeks with an educator who hasn’t a clue about the subject, but is a natural educator, than someone who has ticked a collection of boxes in order to obtain their position. The natural educator can teach anything. The subject matter expert thinks they know everything.
eLearning can be the subject matter expect – ‘IT’ (literally) thinks it knows it all.
So, connect me, and for me connect students and educators – worry only about the desire and ability to teach or transmit and mange those hungry to gain knowledge, and for students concentrate almost entirely on motivation. If they want to learn pores will open up in their skull so that you can pour in the information and they’ll never be satiated.
Web Sciences Visualizing Web usage
Fig. 1 My Google search History – last 24 hours.
Responding to an activity in the Future Learn open, MOOC from Web Sciences and the University of Southampton.
I use an iPhone, iPad, iMac and mini Mac. Nuts I know, but rotate or mix between them all across 24 hours depending where I am.
Due to current family hiatus something is always on so that whether it is a text message, Facebook message or email I can respond. Births, marriages and death are real and current reasons to feel that the private tendrils of connectivity are vital and vibrant, indeed with immediate family ages 6 to 87 all but a couple probably have a smart device in their pocket or at their fingertips as I type. Locations: all four corners of the UK, Cape Town, California and New Zealand. Sharing this and other FutureLearn programmes with some of them (10 nephews and nieces, three siblings, in-laws, step-parents and cousins).
What kind of sites do you visit most?
In the last 24 hours I have found, researched, priced and purchased a car. Vital as for family reasons we are going to be spending a good deal of time split between more than one household – not far in global terms or even for many living say in North America, but 137 miles with the M25 in between is a distance that can either take 2 ½ hours to cover of 4 or 5 hours.
Two days ago I posted a ‘Tutor Marked Assignment’ to the Open University module I am doing, aptly called The networked practitioner.
With that deadline met I have space to do other things. This includes, and it is not recognised here, is a regular two to three hours reading and note taking for a Masters degree in History. This traditional distance course is all books, reading and a monthly face-to-face day of lectures, seminars and tutorial – not having any, or much, online existence it is in e-learning and in 21st century terms ‘dead in the digital ocean of Web 2.0 learning’.
I have blogged since 1999 and in WordPress since 2007. The blog is many things: an e-portfolio, a niche social network, a platform for my current and sometimes considered thinking on a range of topics which currently include, in a blog each: e-learning, and the First World War – with previous content on creative writing, parenting, swim coaching – even books of condolences when a colleague has passed away, and ditto for my own parents.
What kinds of service do they provide you?
This snapshot shows how I use Which? online to make a purchase decision, then use online banking to manage funds, and to check and purchase, in this case, car insurance. I blog niche topics, no longer a journal as such though I kept a diary for a couple of decades. If I took that up again it would be forever ink on paper to avoid the risk of content being stored and thus made available to anyone forever. I live online, learning online but also active in social network, more professionally in LinkedIn groups, less so in Google hangouts and strictly for immediate family and friends on Facebook.
Recently, having been an e-learning evangelist and purist I am happily returning to reading books and taking notes – though my preference is to have the eBook for all the tricks and habits I have developed highlighting, grabbing, bookmarking, sharing and noting stuff as I read. I will photo printed pages to mash-up and annotate rather than mark the printed page.
What interests of yours and what areas of your life is the Web involved in, or not involved in?
Over a decade ago a small band of us debated privacy and presence online and opted for considerable exposure – in those innocent days testing the water of spilling the contents of our brains to each other, to strangers, felt revolutionary and ahead of the curve. Though this ‘behaviour’ has changed I continue to blog continuously, and to join in multiple forums as my approach to learning, like language learning, is to immerse yourself in it. Given a background in TV and video production my ‘moving image’ pressence has been limited to excerpts from professional work. I feel I will be embracing DIY production once more iminently – a tough adjustment as I came through the production ranks nearly three decades ago learning the practicalities of video shooting and editing and coming to rely on others to do this rather than as I did in the earliest part of my career doing it all myself. We live in a DIY ‘user generated’ culture were authenticity means you shot and edited the content yourself. All that I need to refresh or learn can be found online, much of it for free.
Academically I am venturing towards academia as an observer of how others behave because of what the Web affords, though my inclination as a ‘doer’ and participant might simply see my blogging turning into a broadcast – I have a drama-reconstruction project related to the First World War ‘in development’.
Web Networks – from the micro to the macro
We are each unique – our brains make us so. At the microlevel the network in our heads is then tickled out into the the Web in, at first. the simplest of ways. Our first post, our first comment is that first baby-step. Unlike our firsf steps though, online everything we do is saved, is monitored, is shared. It takes on a life of its own. Multiplied billions of times now many millions of us have learnt to crawl, then walk, then run online. As we are virtual we can split into many versions or parts of ourselves too – the professional and private the immediate split, but then into hobby groups and as here, a study group. The network of networks is a living thing that mathematics can help to weight and categorize, even to visualise, but crucially – the point made here, humanising the maths requires the insight of someone asking questions, seeking to interpret what it taking place. I see currents in a digital ocean that transpires into a cloud that then precipitates digital artefacts in a myriad of other places. Others, like Yrjo Engegstrom, see the growing tendrils of a funghi. Either way it is fascinating to condense, simplify and sharing the thinking.