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The Digital Brain – envisaged at the Design Museum
Fig. 1. A mash-up in Picasa of a 3D laser generated image generated at the Design Museum during their ‘Digital Crystal’ exhibition.
The image exists and is transformed by the presence of the observer in front of a Kinex device making this a one-off and an expression or interpretation of that exact moment.
‘Working with dreams’ and ‘Keeping a dream journal’ are taught creative problem solving techniques at the Open University Business School. I did B822 ‘Creativity, Innovation and Change’ in 2012 (Henry et al 2010). I have the problem solving toolkit. I even got a hardback copy of VanGundy’s book on creative problem solving.
Using your unconscious isn’t difficult. Just go to bed early with a ‘work’ related book and be prepared to write it down when you stir.
I woke soon after 4.00am.
I’d nodded off between 9.30 and 11.30 so feel I’ve had my sleep.
Virtual bodies for first year medical students to work on, an automated mash-up of your ‘lifelog’ to stimulate new thinking and the traditional class, lecture and university as a hub for millions – for every student you have in a lecture hall you have 1000 online.
Making it happen is another matter.
I’m writing letters and with far greater consideration working on a topic or too for research.
“Nights through dreams tell the myths forgotten by the day.” — C.G. Jung (Memories, Dreams, Reflections)
How to work with a dream or metaphorical image:
- Enter the dream
- Study the dream
- Become the images
- Integrate the viewpoints
- Rework the dream
Appreciating, reflecting, looking forward and emerging
REFERENCE
Glouberman, D. (1989) Life Choices and Life Changes Through Imagework, London, Unwin, pp. 232-6
Henry, J., Mayle, D., Bell, R., Carlisle, Y. Managing Problems Creatively (3rd edn) 2010. The Open University.
Isaacson, W. (2011) Steve Jobs. Little Brown.
VanGundy, A.B. (1988) Techniques of structured problem solving (2nd edn), New York: Van Nostran Reinhold.
Blogging breached the guidelines a bunch of us followed in 2002 – now anything comes and goes on e-folded origami paper we call a blog
Fig. 1 Blogging brings like minds together – through their fingertips
I did a search in my own blog knowing that somewhere I cited an academic who described blogging as ‘whatever you can do on electronic paper’.
Chatting about this at dinner my 14 year old son trumped my conversation with his mother as I tried to define a blog and what can go into one with one word ‘anything’.
For me there has been a slow shift from text (the weblog-cum-dairy journal thingey), to adding pictures (which have become photo / image galleries, photostreams of Flickr and concept boards of Pinterest), to adding video … to adding ‘anything’ – apps, interactivity, grabs, mashups, music …
My starting place is here.
This ‘eportofolio, writers journal, aggregating, dumping ground, place for reflection and course work’.
You see, is it a blog at all? This platform, I’m glad, has its design roots in a Bulletin board.
The limitations of our OU Student Blog platform works in its favour.
I can only put in two search terms. In Google I might write a sentence and get a million links, in my wordpress blog it might offer have the contents.
Less is more.
Here I search ‘blog paper’ and get 112 posts that contain both words.
I’ll spin through these an add a unique tag. My starting place.
But to study blogging would be like researching the flotsam and jetsam that floats across our oceans – after a tsunami.
RESEARCH
Starting with a book published in 2006 ‘Use of Blogs’ I want to read a paper ‘Bloggers vs. Journalists’ published in 2005. A search finds richer, more up to date content. Do I even bother with this first paper? (ironic that we even call them papers).
I can’t read everything so how do I select?
- Toggle through the abstract, check out the authors, see where else such and such a paper has been cited.
- Prioritize.
- Use RefWorks rather than my habit to date of downloading papers that MIGHT be of interest.
Whilst storage space is so inexpensive it is virtually free there is no need to clutter my hard drive, Dropbox or Google Docs space.
Which makes me think of one of my other favourite metaphors – kicking autumn leaves into the breeze. That or drowning in info overload, or as the Robert de Nero character in Brazil, Archibald ‘Harry’ Tuttle, who vanishes in a pile of discarded paper … my mind wanders. We do. It does.
I stumble in the OU Library as I find I am offered everything under the sun. I am used to being offered academic papers only. So far all I’m getting are scanned images of articles in newspapers on blogging. All feels very inside out.
Where’s the ‘turn off the printed stuff’ button?
I fear that just as I have never desired to be a journalist, preferring the free form of your own diary, letters, and of course blogging and forums online, I will struggle to write within the parameters of an academic paper. I’m managing assignment here, so I guess I’m learning to split the two. A useful lesson to have learnt.
Serendipity
Is this a research methodology?
I am looking at a book on blogging, ‘Use of Blogs’ (Bruns & Jacobs, 2006). I have it open on p.31 Notes (i.e. references) for the chapter Journalists and News Bloggers.
As I pick through these articles, papers and reviews written between 2002 and 2005 I find several of the authors, a decade on, are big names in the Journalism/Blogger debate. It’s as if I am looking at a tray of seedlings.
It strikes me as easier to start in 2006 with 27 starting points when the field of debate was narrow, rather than coming in from 2013 and finding myself parachuting into a mature Amazonian jungle of mixed up printed and digital, journalism and blog content.
Courtesy of the OU Library and RefWorks I have nailed this article after a decade of searching:
Druckerman, P (1999) Ellen Levy Has Got The Write Project For the Internet Age — It’s a Year of Scribbling Down Almost Everything; Ah, Yes, It Was a Raisin Bagel, New York, N.Y., United States, New York, N.Y.
Reading this around 23rd /24th September 1999 prompted me to start blogging
Then I’d been reading blogs for a few months but had a mental block with uploading HTML files and then along came the first ‘ready made’ DIY blogging platforms.
The last 12 years makes amusing reading – particularly the battle between journalists and bloggers. And who has won? Is there a difference anymore? Journalists blog and bloggers are journalists and entire newspapers are more blog-like from The Huffington Post to the FT … which within three years will close all its print operations.
To be used in learning and to be a genre to study blogging needs to be part of formative assessment
A blog therefore becomes ‘an active demonstration of learning’ with cumulative feedback. I’ve only received ONE Tutor comment in my OU blog and that was to say why was I blogging and not getting on with my TMA. This person had their head so stuffed inside primary school education of the 1960s it made me feel like tossing my cap in the air.
Why MAODE students blog (Kerawella et al, 2009) depends on their perceptions of, and for:
- an audience
- community
- the utility of and need for comments
- presentational style of the blog content
- overarching factors related to the technological context
- the pedagogical context of the course
Cited x30
REFERENCES
‘Bloggers vs. journalist: The next 100 year War?’ 2011, Public Relations Tactics, 18, 4, p. 17, Business Source Complete, EBSCOhost, viewed 18 February 2013.
Bruns, A. Jacobs, J. (2006) Use of Blogs.
Kerawalla, L, Minocha, S, Kirkup, G, & Conole, G (2009) ‘An empirically grounded framework to guide blogging in higher education’, Journal Of Computer Assisted Learning, 25, 1, pp. 31-42, Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost, viewed 18 February 2013.
Rosen, J. (2007) ‘Web Users Open the Gates’, Washington Post, The, n.d., UK & Ireland Reference Centre, EBSCOhost, viewed 18 February 2013.
Related articles
- Driving learning through blogging: Students’ perceptions of a reading journal blog assessment task. (mymindbursts.com)
- The Ultimate Guide to Advanced Guest Blogging (seomoz.org)
- NaBloPoMo Soup: Add Your January Posts (blogher.com)
- The Neverending Debate: Who is a Blogger? (zemanta.com)
- blogging, or look out February, DaBloPoMo is coming! (espressococo.wordpress.com)
The Gutenberg Galaxy – first thoughts, from the first pages
Fig. 1. The Gutenberg Galaxy – Marshall McLuhan (courtesy of Amazon and a US bookseller)
Like visiting a library, having a book as an object in my hand, a singular artifact rather than its substance digitised, feels like a visit to a National Trust property. There’s meaning in it, but that way it’s packaged is all a bit ‘historic’.
Mosaic – kaleidoscope – environment – constellation
These are some of the ways Marshall McLuhan may have written about the changing society he was commenting on in the early 1960s with reference to previous shifts from an oral to a written tradition, with a phonetic alphabetic to the printing press.
We like to visualise the complex – to simplify it.
No less so than in what we perceive as a new era – that of the Internet and ever deeper, faster, more complex and fluid, even intelligent ways to communicate, share and think.
In the prologue p.1 we are told that papyrus created the social environment – how?
Immediately we know that Marshall McLuhan will be talking about an elite as if they represent everyone. authors are constantly guilty of this today, discounting those who lack digital literacies as if all that matters in the world is what these people are doing – as if it is above, beyond and distinct from everyone else. Or should we just tackle this interconnected community and ignore those who are not and may never be part of it – those thousands of millions who do not have Internet access 24/7, just as when dealing with previous eras the illiterate are ignored because they voice could not be captured and disseminated?
Society existed before script – so few could write and read would make the impact of papyri irrelevant to all but the smallest of minorities, the elite who could write and read, own and store such things.
The stirrup and the wheel – is offered as a period of transition.
We are to think of this transition as a revolution, just as the development of print from the time of Gutenberg is described as a revolution – not matter how many centuries it took to evolve, and the development of TV from Marshall McLuhan’s particular is another, as the innovation shines such a bright light that it becomes impossible to see anything else. Far from television replacing the written word it has expanded at a time of vastly increased literacy rates and has been complemented to a burgeoning publishing of cheap paperbacks, journals and magazines.
‘Technological environments are not merely passive containers of people but are active processes that reshape people and other technologies like’. (McLuhan, 1962. p.0).
As an aphorism this may apply – by ‘environment’ Marshall McLuhan is once again searching for words, in conversation in the 1960s I would imagine him saying ‘technological mosaic’ and then correcting himself and saying ‘technological constellation’. Several decades on and we may be better able to comprehend ‘technological system’ in the context of Cultural Historical Activity Theory (Engestrorm, 2006) or ‘technological ecosystem or ecology’ (Bateson, 1972., Lukin, 2008)
Applications of metaphorical notions of ecology, culture and politics can help us better understand and deal with these complexities. (Conole. 2011. p. 410)
Then McLuhan tells us that print created the public – by inference did those who made up the majority in society not exist as a ‘public’ until then?
There is a sense as he later draws on the work of anthropologist X to infer that those with only an oral form of communication are part of an amorphous mass, that literacy empowered a new, though initially quite small group, to gain some kind of status through print.
‘Electric circuitry does not support the extension of the visual modalities in any degree approaching the visual power of the printed word’. Says McLuhan who sees television in the 1950s and the 1960s as something as ephemeral and passing as radio.
Without the research then available that tells us that watching TV is a passive activity that has little impact on the short term memory and next to none on the long-term, McLuhan is saying that electrical forms of the visual have less substance than the printed form of the visual. It isn’t however the means of distribution that is the cause of this, the thesis of all the Marshall McLuhan is remembered for, but the way we behave in front of these technologies – simply put, we sit forward and make an effort to read from a book, even to interpret pictures, but with TV we sit back and let it wash over us. ( Myrtek at al, 1996) Umberto Eco (1989) explains how the read gives meaning to the ‘open’ book, a far more rewarding experienced that the reading of a ‘closed’ text – the same applies to all media -we the viewer, reader, player or participant provide the meaning; the interpretation is our own.
With content from the Internet we can do either or both, or one or the other and the kinds of interaction and engagement that are far more complex and today far more like direct, face to face interaction as we do deals, discuss and debate in live groups and play massive online games.
REFERENCE
Bateston (1972) Steps to an ecology of mind: collected essays in anthropology, psychiatry, evolution and epistomelogy. New York. Ballantine Books.
Conole, G (2011) Designing for learning in a digital world. Last accessed 18 Dec 2012 http://www.slideshare.net/grainne/conole-keynote-icdesept28
ECO, U., The Open Work, trans. Anna Cangogni, Cambridg, MA : Harvard University Press, 1989 [1962].
Engestrom Y, (2006) Learning by expanding. An activity theoretical approach to developmental research. Helsinki. Orienta–Konsultit.
Luckin, R. (2008), ‘The learner centric ecology of resources: A framework for using technology to scaffold learning’, Computers & Education 50 (2) , 449-462 http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/2167/1/Luckin2008The449.pdf
Myrtek, M, Scharff, C, Brügner, G, & Müller, W 1996, ‘Physiological, behavioral, and psychological effects associated with television viewing in schoolboys: An exploratory study’, The Journal Of Early Adolescence, 16, 3, pp. 301-323, PsycINFO, EBSCOhost, viewed 9 February 2013.
Related articles
- Revisiting Marshall McLuhan (billives.typepad.com)
- Marshall McLuhan Was At Least Half Right (mayo615.com)
- Musings on Digital McLuhan (smkelly8.com)
- Understanding Online Social Media – 50 years later (lindentweaks.com)
Automatically assisting human memory:
English: Microsoft SenseCam (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
A SenseCam browser (Microsoft). A wearable device that takes a picture every 22 seconds. Hodges et al (2006)
- Tools for lifelogging
- Hundreds of thousands of images grabbed and presented to aid memory … and memory rehabilitation.
- Automatic content analysis techniques
(There is a reason why we forget. The quote from James on the need to spend as much time recalling the record if everything is remembered is like that of Lewis Carroll and a map the size of the real world – neither had the advantage of limitless digital storage capacity and the ability to zoom in and out or back and forth – to expand time, not simply record it.).
- A visual record of your day. Berry et al (2007)
- 2000 to 5000 images a day
Best practice
- Only activate the device for significant events
Methods of review
- Clustered time view
- Geographical map (required GPS)
- Interactive story authoring
- Motion sensors identify events – typically 20-30 in a day.
PROBLEMS
- Cognitive overload
- Keyframe image selection a human endeavour
- An entusiastic lifelogger might expect to gather 100,000 images a month.
OF NOTE
- Key frame selection only of note if it picked a poor image.
REFERENCE
Berry, E., Kapur, N., Williams, L., Hodges, S., Watson, P., Smyth, G., et al. (2007). The use of a wearable camera, SenseCam, as a pictorial diary to improve autobiographical memory in a patient with limbic encephalitis. Neuropsychological Rehabilitation, 17(4), 582601.
Hodges, S., Williams, L., Berry, E., Izadi, S., Srinivasan, J., Butler, A. et al. (2006). SenseCam: A retrospective memory aid. In UbiComp: 8th International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing, Vol. 4602 LNCS (pp. 177193). New York, NY: Springer.
Related articles
- Adafruit Gemma stuffs a wearable Arduino platform into a one-inch disc (engadget.com)
- The human face of big data – mindblowing images from the planet’s “digital nervous system” (venturevillage.eu)
- Devising Solutions for Traumatic Brain Injury: Interview with Dr. Michael Whalen, MD PhD (medgadget.com)
Access to e-learning and the Olympic Orbit for students with disabilities
‘Social psychology – responsibility for accessible e-learning is mentally disseminated in a crowd and individuals don’t feel responsible’ (Fellow H810 Student)
When it comes to improving accessibility to e-learning for students with disabilities I wonder if it is the same problem of failure to take responsibility even when one person is given a task that ought to be something that everyone considers important.
Let’s say it is declared that everyone should take responsibility for writing clear messages to each other and students – and to do this correct use of upper and lower case is vital. One person cannot ‘police this’ … now say, as you may see with OU content, a low contrast colour background is used in all copy, great for some with dyslexia, makes no difference to the rest of us … again, it has to be everyone’s responsibility to do this. The better solution to have a tab to alter not only text size, but contrast choices too.
In relation to designers – the programming, coding, web design type, it is the case that many want to be ‘at the cutting edge’ doing stuff no one else has done before in relation to interactivity, sliding fluid frames, and use of video frames and so on. They need to listen to the designer who has had a background in problem solving, thinking of it more as an visualizing, even and engineering problem, rather than a coding, decoding one.
Rather than hiring prima donnas, the creators of e-learning need to understand that much of e-learning is like civil engineering – we’re not building an iconic swimming venue for the Olympics, or a visitor ‘attraction’ such as the Arcelor-Mittal Orbit either. The reality is more mundane – basic compliance with regards to e-learning is more akin to a box of well-considered leaflets or a 16 page magazine. So don’t hire people with expectations of winning a BAFTA.
I have seen too often amazing ‘stuff’ win a contract, everyone is happy and then someone puts up their hand as launch becomes imminent and asks ‘what about access for students with disabilities?’
‘We haven’t thought about that yet’ comes the sometimes honest, though sheepish reply.
Is this like designing the Concord to get people to New York in 3 hours 30 minutes only to find that a) they won’t let you land and b) 10% of passengers are scared of flying and would prefer to go by ocean liner. Using an analogy we are familiar with, what if the Arcelor-Mital Orbit at the London Olympics – without thinking about access had stairs then after construction they were asked about wheelchair access? Do designers perform the equivalent of trying to put in a lift after the event? If a skin or dashboard will do the job that is fine, and in some cases I think this is where assistive software and technology can work … but only if you’ve thought about it from the outset.
The argument and appeal to designers is to aim for ‘universal design’ that goal of combining function and form to produce something so clear and simple that works for everyone … or at least broadens what some author calls ‘reachability’.
‘Social psychology – responsibility for accessible e-learning is mentally disseminated in a crowd and individuals don’t feel responsible’ (Fellow H810 Student)
When it comes to improving accessibility to e-learning for students with disabilities I wonder if it is the same problem of failure to take responsibility even when one person is given a task that ought to be something that everyone considers important.
Let’s say it is declared that everyone should take responsibility for writing clear messages to each other and students – and to do this correct use of upper and lower case is vital. One person cannot ‘police this’ … now say, as you may see with OU content, a low contrast colour background is used in all copy, great for some with dyslexia, makes no difference to the rest of us … again, it has to be everyone’s responsibility to do this. The better solution to have a tab to alter not only text size, but contrast choices too.
In relation to designers – the programming, coding, web design type, it is the case that many want to be ‘at the cutting edge’ doing stuff no one else has done before in relation to interactivity, sliding fluid frames, and use of video frames and so on. They need to listen to the designer who has had a background in problem solving, thinking of it more as an visualizing, even and engineering problem, rather than a coding, decoding one.
Rather than hiring primadonnas, the creators of e-learning need to understand that much of e-learning is like civil engineering – we’re not building an iconic swimming venue for the Olympics, or a visitor ‘attraction’ such as the Arcelor-Mittal Orbit either. The reality is more mundane – basic compliance with regards to e-learning is more akin to a box of well-considered leaflets or a 16 page magazine. So don’t hire people with expectations of winning a BAFTA.
I have seen too often amazing ‘stuff’ win a contract, everyone is happy and then someone puts up their hand as launch becomes imminent and asks ‘what about access for students with disabilities?’
‘We haven’t thought about that yet’ comes the sometimes honest, though sheepish reply.
Is this like designing the Concord to get people to New York in 3 hours 30 minutes only to find that a) they won’t let you land and b) 10% of passengers are scared of flying and would prefer to go by ocean liner. Using an analogy we are familiar with, what if the Arcelor-Mital Orbit at the London Olympics – without thinking about access had stairs then after construction they were asked about wheelchair access? Do designers perform the equivalent of trying to put in a lift after the event? If a skin or dashboard will do the job that is fine, and in some cases I think this is where assistive software and technology can work … but only if you’ve thought about it from the outset.
The argument and appeal to designers is to aim for ‘universal design’ that goal of combining function and form to produce something so clear and simple that works for everyone … or at least broadens what some author calls ‘reachability’.
Who are you talking to ? Currently in conversation around the globe
Fig. 1. My iPad world clock – all I need now is a Pin and a clickable face of the people in a threaded conversation
As I blog I have always been a sucker for analytics – they impact, for better or for worse. Currently I am intrigued by the coverage of the blog, read in 50 different countries spanning four continents every day. What about conversations though? Synchronous and asynchronous group talk, webinars and hangouts have me starting or contributing to discussions from New Zealand and Australia, west to Singapore and Hong Kong then on to United Arab Emirates and South Africa, picking up Turkey, Germany, France and the UK before crossing the pond to New York, Boston and on the west coast San Diago and San Francisco.
What amazes me here, as I have found in tutor groups with the Open University postgraduate course I am completing, is that when a topic goes hot it comes alive and is kept alive over 24 hours as it is picked up by others getting up or coming in from work. We live in extraordinary times.
The current hot topics in relation to e-learning are:
- Curation
- Augmented Learning
- Virtual Worlds
- Video Tagging
- Accessibility
- Open and Free Learning
Join me on Linkedin (various e-learning groups) for more.
How people learn and the implications for design
Had this been the title of a post-graduate diploma in e–learning it would have been precisely what I was looking for a decade ago – the application of theory, based on research and case studies, to the design and production of interactive learning – whether DVD or online.
A few excellent, practical guides did this, but as a statement of fact, like a recipe in a cook book: do this and it’ll work, rather than suggesting actions based on research, evidence-based understanding and case studies.
Mayes and de Frietas (2004) are featured in detail in Appendix 1 of Rethinking Pedagogy for a Digital Age (2007) Beetham and Sharpe.
Four types of learning are featured:
- 1. associative
- 2. constructive (individual)
- 3. constructive (social)
- 4. and situative.
Of these I see associative used in corporate training online – with some constructive (individual), while constructive (social) is surely the OU’s approach?
Situative learning may be the most powerful – through application in a collaborative, working environment I can see that this is perhaps describes what goes on in any case, with the wiser and experienced passing on knowledge and know how to juniors, formally as trainees or apprentices, or informally by ‘being there’ and taking part.
Each if these approaches have their champions:
Associative – Skinner, Gagné (1985).
Constructive (individual) – Piaget (1970), Papert (1993), Kolb (1984), Biggs (1999).
Constructive (social) – Vygotsky (1978).
Situative – Wenger (1998), Cole (1993), Wertsch. (Also Cox, Seely Brown). Wertsch (1981), Engestrom (), Cole and Engeström (1993)
Beetham and Sharpe (2007:L5987) – the ‘L’ refers to the location in a Kindle Edition. I can’t figure out how to translate this into a page reference.
How people learn and the implications for design
Associative – Skinner, Gagné (1985) (in Mayes and de Frietas, 2004)
Building concepts or competences step by step.
The Theory
People learn by association through:
- basic stimulus–response conditioning,
- later association concepts in a chain of reasoning,
- or associating steps in a chain of activity to build a composite skill.
Associativity leads to accuracy of reproduction. (Mnemonics are associative devices).
- Routines of organized activity.
- Progression through component concepts or skills.
- Clear goals and feedback.
- Individualized pathways matched to performance.
- Analysis into component units.
- Progressive sequences of component–to–composite skills or concepts.
- Clear instructional approach for each unit.
- Highly focused objectives.
For Assessment
- Accurate reproduction of knowledge.
- Component performance.
- Clear criteria: rapid, reliable feedback.
- Guided instruction.
- Drill and practice.
- Instructional design.
- Socratic dialogue.
FURTHER READING (and viewing)
Brown, J.S. (2002) The Social Life of Information
Brown, J.S. (2007) October 2007 webcast: http://stadium.open.ac.uk/stadia/preview.php?whichevent=1063&s=31
+My notes on this:
http://learn.open.ac.uk/mod/oublog/viewpost.php?post=60469
+The transcript of that session:
http://learn.open.ac.uk/file.php/7325/block1/H800_B1_Week2a_JSBrown_Transcript.rtf
REFERENCE
Biggs, J (1999) Teaching for Quality Learning at University, Buckingham: The Society for Research in Higher Education and Open University Press. (Constructive alignment)
Cole, M. and Engestrom, Y. (1993) ‘A cultural-historical approach to distributed cognition’, in G. Salomon (ed.) Distributed Cognitions: Psychological and Educational Considerations, New Work: Cambridge University Press.
Conole, G. (2004) Report on the Effectiveness of Tools for e-Learning, Bristol: JISC (Research Study on the Effectiveness of Resources, Tools and Support Services used by Practitioners in Designing and Delivering E-Learning Activities)
Cox, R. (2006) Vicarious Learning and Case-based Teaching of Clinical Reasoning Skills (2004–2006) [online], http://www.esrcsocietytoday.ac.uk/ esrcinfocentre/ viewawardpage.aspx?awardnumber=RES-139-25-0127 [(last accessed 10 March 2011).
Cox, R. (2006) Vicarious Learning and Case-based Teaching of Clinical Reasoning Skills (2004–2006) [online], http://www.esrcsocietytoday.ac.uk/ esrcinfocentre/ viewawardpage.aspx?awardnumber=RES-139-25-0127 [(last accessed 10 March 2011).
Engeström, Y (1999) ‘Activity theory and individual and social transformation’, in Y. Engeström, R, Miettinen and R.-L. Punamaki (eds) Perspectives on Activity Theory, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Eraut, M (2000) ‘Non-formal learning and tacit knowledge in professional work’, British Journal of Educational Psychology, 70:113-36
Gagné, R. (1985) The Conditions of Learning, New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
Gagné, R.M., Briggs, L.J. and Wagner, W.W. (1992) Principles of Instructional Design, New Work: Hoplt, Reihhart & Winston Inc.
Kolb, D.A. (1984) Experiential Learning: Experience as a Source of Learning and Development, (Kolb’s Learning Cycle) Englewoods Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall
Kolb, D.A. (1984) Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and Development, Englewood Cliffs, N.J: Prentice Hall.
Littlejohn, A. and McGill, L. (2004) Effective Resources for E-learning, Bristol: JISC (Research Study on the Effectiveness of Resources, Tools and Support Services used by Practitioners in Designing and Delivering E-learning Activities).
Mayes, T. and de Frietas, S. (2004) ‘Review of e–learning theories, frameworks and models. Stage 2 of the e–learning models disk study’, Bristol. JISC. Online.
Piaget, J. (1970) Science of Education and the Psychology of the Child (Constructivist Theory of Knowledge), New Work: Orion Press.
Papert, S. (1993) Mindstorms: Children, Computers and Powerful Ideas, New Work: Perseus.
Piaget, J. (2001) The Language and Thought of the Child, London: Routledge Modern Classics.
Seely-Brown, J.S and Duguid, P. (1991) ‘Organizational learning and communities-of-practice: toward a unified view of working, learning and innovation’, Organizational Science, 2 (1): 40-57
Schon, D (1983) The Reflective Practioner: How Professional Think in Action, New York: Basic Books.
Sharpe, R (2004) ‘How do professionals learn and develop? In D.Baume and P.Kahn (eds) Enhancing Staff and Educational Development, London: Routledge-Flamer, pp. 132-53.
Vygotsky, L.S. (1978) Mind in Society, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Vygotsky, L.S. (1986) Thought and Languages, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Wenger, E. (1998) Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wertsch, J.V. (1981) (ed.) The Concept of Activity in Soviet Psychology, Armonk, N
Appendix and references largely from Beetham, H, and Sharpe, R (2007) Rethinking Pedagogy in a digital age.
See also Appendix 4: Learning activity design: a checklist
‘Creativity, Innovation and Change’ : Residential School : day two : 14 hours 25 minutes !
In the right context with the right people role play can be used to help see or experience a problem from a different perspective. Here however, Virginia Woolf and friends pull off a hoax and a treated as royal guests on one of His Majesty’s battleships.
So many people describe this OU Business School module (B822 : Creativity, Management & Change) and the residential school I am currently attending as something that changed their lives; I’ve been waiting for that moment, or for a series of insights to congregate and like a celestial choir sing something special.
I was up at 5.00 am and writing (of course), taking a swim at 6.45 am in the pool here at the Heathrow Marriott, into an Elective at 8.00 am and the first Tutor Workshop at 9.00 am.
The second workshop kicked in after lunch at 1.30 pm then from 7.00 pm three more hour long electives in a row.
At no stage was I ever tried or bored, indeed I feel embarrassed even writing this, the very thought!?
Too much new, too important, too interesting, too interested. Like my second week at nursery school: amongst friends, secure, allowed and expected to have fun. Alert.
It was in the very last cessation today, during an hour of guided relaxation, shoes off lying on the conference room floor, lights out, soft music playing that my unconscious gave me a two word tip and did its best to visualise the love my children have for me and I have for them. I’m still trying to see what love looks like: white, a slightly crumpled unopened rosebud the size and shape of chicory but made of paper, or tissue. I tried (in the semi-conscious dream-like state that I was in) to cup ‘love’ in my hands as if I was scooping up water but it proved illusive, like a cloud.
After we were brought out of our semi-unconscious state (I fell asleep momentarily three times) we were all asked to share what we experienced; I eventually chirped up with the word ‘profound’.
The detail of the day is here too, all typed up with pictures (courtesy of iPad and iPhone) of flip-charts, post-it notes, finger-paintings and slides. This will take a week to prepare as posts.
Role-play and learning in virtual and made-up worlds
We role-play as children to make sense of the world, we take on multiple personas to some degree in real-life as well.
I am particularly taken by the way people with a disability can walk in a virtual world (Peachey 2010) or indeed how any of us can fly and do much more in these environments (die and repeatedly come back to life of course.)
At no cost my dentist, or rather our family dentist, made a set of dentures for me out of dentine that fitted over my teeth. This allowed me to sing. I foolishly sharpened the fangs and promptly punctured my lower lip. I learnt by the way that unless I could have dislocated my jaw biting someone’s neck is impossible. Vampires should bite the wrist or leg, but then all, or at least the obvious sexual innuendos are lost.
Was I living out a fantasy when I played Dracula in my teens?
I kept acting into my twenties until I decided that my mental state couldn’t handle the selection process (rejection) and my experience in front of camera and on stage left me bored senseless (I had minor roles).
Do actors, as in role-play, have to overcome or compensate for who they are?
Peachy raises all the points in a commonsense and everyday way. I can imagine or should research where stepping into the role of an avatar has life-saving qualities, for example is not learning to fly a commercial jet-airliner in a simulator not a form of virtual role-play? I believe firemen are trained in virtual set-ups too and believe the nuclear power industry do so too.
The trouble with doing this in a learning context is the huge development costs. i.e. It has to be better to use a ready made platform. I then ask though, what is wrong with using our imaginations, that improvising and role-play doesn’t require the disguises?
REFERENCE
Peachey, A. (2010) ‘Living in immaterial worlds: who are we when we learn and teach in virtual worlds?’ in Sheehy, K., Ferguson, R. and Clough, G. (eds) Virtual Worlds: Controversies at the Frontier of Education (Education in a Competitive and Globalizing World), New York, NY, Nova Science.
Related articles
- The Various Applications of Virtual Worlds (2ndselves.wordpress.com)
- The Complete World (2ndselves.wordpress.com)
- How can Second Life build your writing skills? (dsworld215.wordpress.com)
- CFP: Narrative Minds and Virtual Worlds conference, 21-22 May, 2013 (fransmayra.fi)
- Virtual Worlds: Portals to Our Self-Discovery? (njsmyth.wordpress.com)
Rogers’ Criteria of assessment – diffusion of innovations
Diffusion of Innovation model (Photo credit: mrwilleeumm)
Rogers Criteria of assessment:
- Relative advantage
- Compatibility
- Complexity
- Trialability
- Observability
DOKI & iTV (WAYL) were chased intuitively – if a client would back it, then it was ok. This chase continued with projects developed to support equally speculative broadcast / internet linked projects. From a business perspective this was encouraging clients to chase chimera.
We should have know better and offered value in money made or saving made … networking for the NHS was developed within their far more cautious framework. The advantages had to be apparent and the transition compatible. Though apparently complex the technology & the players were in place to take the next step. It could be trialled at a limited number of outlets and observations shared with the team.
The relationship with Ragdoll was different again; all they wanted was a website. We tried to steer them towards something that would be a credible tool for selling product (their programmes & merchandise). We all got tantalised by the creative opportunities.
With FTKnowlege it was another leap in the dark, feeling their brand name could be instantly attached to a distance learning MBA programme and feeling their was a need to get in their first. The view being that not to do otherwise would see other Amazons and the like taking a huge market share.
REFERENCES
Kaye, R. and Hawkridge, D. (eds) (2003) Learning and Teaching for Business: Case Studies of Successful Innovation, London and Sterling, Kogan Page.
Rogers, E.M. (2003) Diffusion of Innovations (5th edn), New York, Simon and Schuster.
Mind Bursts 