OU blog

Personal Blogs

Design Museum

Gallipoli: The First Day - learning in new ways about events nearly 100 years ago

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Thursday, 27 Feb 2014, 16:50

Fig.1. Screengrab from 'Gallipoli: The First Day' - an extraordinary multimedia, interactive 3D consideration of the events of this tragic conflict.

This ABC Australia, award winning 3d virtual tour of the first day of Gallipoli deserves attention.

http://www.abc.net.au/innovation/gallipoli/

This is the 'Avatar' of production values. Sympathetic. Balanced (I hope, it includes the Turkish perspective) and compellingly engaging. It sets the benchmark for delivering this kind of content. It says something too of the blood-letting, nation-creating, soul-searching in relation to loss in this way and on this kind of scale that many European countries will need to revisit over the next few years.

A teacher will never have the budget to create this kind of content, so how do they willingly use it in their teaching?

Does it motivate someone new to this story to find out more? How does it work as education or entertainment? Where does the funding come from? As mash-ups go this is very professional. The learning design and its gamified values are second to none.

(First posted in OpenStudio in my R&R 'concept board' as part of the MA ODE module H818: The Networked Practitioner).

Permalink Add your comment
Share post
Design Museum

Martin Weller: ten digital scholarship lessons in ten videos

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Tuesday, 25 Feb 2014, 10:30

Martin Weller: ten digital scholarship lessons in ten videos

The greatest quality of a Martin Weller lecture is that leaves so much unsaid and unexplained. This isn't a fault of the lecturer, rather it is either his personality to take an answer so far, to ask questions and then to leave question marks of various shapes and sizes hanging there. Your mission, if you care to take it, is to go and find answers. 

In this talk, or presentation ... or seminar (responding to questions afterwards lasts as long as the talk itself) Weller considers what it means to be a digital scholar, and in relation to H818 addresses the benefits and pitfalls of being open.

He begins with his book 'The Digital Scholar'. 

You can buy it - it's a book and an eBook. You can also download it for free. Its creative commons copyright also permits you to distribute it, attributed, even to mash it up i.e. to play around with it. I do - often. I Tweet it line by line, grab pages and annote with text and graphics. I try to bring the pages to life, to re-animate the dead. Which is the problem all books have - certainly compared to anyone used to the attraction of interactivity and mulitmedia and multi-sensory 'sit forward' content.

Privacy and online pressence

Do what works for you in different situations - there are many degrees of openness. The pay-off of pressence is enegagement, is to gravitate towards and to be a magnet for like-minds. Weller doesn't say it, but the best thing you can do online is to ask for advice and to know where to do this - in the right forum you will find an expert with the right voice, tone and techniques of explanation just for you. I have been taken by the openness of Amanda Palmer and her philosophy of knowing what she wants and asking for it.

Scholarly practice in the digital domain means:

  • Sharing

  • Engaging with networks online

  • Using resources

And it is, according to Weller, the intersect between openness, digital and networking were transformation occurs. I'd go further than this and put this Venn diagram in an unexpected context - not 'out there', not 'here' but rather between regions of your brain. It changes you. Those parts of your that you share, that you are open with, through the quasi-omnipresence of your digital being as it is networked, as connections form - as they do at home, around you with your friends and colleagues, so it creates new and otherwise unlikely tingles of response and activity in your brain. It is neurological.

Scholars have been there defining what scholarship is. However much I look at these guidelines and lists, as though they are prerequisites to get into grammar school and take a degree,  I think rather of 1901 and possibly still 1911 Census Returns where anyone attending school is defined as a 'scholar'. The act of being engaged in learning makes you more scholar than anyting else - the potential was there even if it was stymied when kids left school armed with the basics at age 14.

 

Wherein lies the problem. Weller says ten years, his peer group gives it longer, for the 'digital scholar' to emerge. I have argued that the digital scholar is imminent. I would now say that in time, retrospectively, we will identify people who already are the digital scholars - the 18 year old how schooled law graduated recently called to the bar, the 14 or 15 year old who has drilled through academic research to come up with his own viable solution to a medical issue ... the academic communtiy won't accept it for the very reason that they ONLY see scholarship as it is defined and won through traditional, conservative, tightly controlled levels. The digital scholar will transcend these ... people will simply appear, professor-like in all but name, as a result of the root they have taken into a subject that circumvents the 'required' pathway. 

 

Gobbledygook it may be ... but there are what we would understand to be quite normal conversations that plenty around us may have little understanding of. Those brought up in a digital world have always been familiar with its architecture - it just IS, like houses and trees. Whereas we - most of us anyhow, knew what the landscape looked like before. We have seen the bits and pieces, sometimes do disassembled as to make little sense and we have witness the folly and false starts too and the many white elephants. 

My niggle with any presentation that quotes somebody is not having the reference. Several hours of searching and I have found only some of the authors quoted and in the case of Waldrop above I can find him, but have no idea where he said it. This matters more to me than ever now, not simply because the level of engagement with the subject that I have reached, but because I expect there to be links and I expect the answer to be a click, and therefore a momentary glance away.

I cannot find Le Muir anywhere. This despite having read more than most on blogging over the last decade. To blog is interesting because the reality is that only a fraction of us take to it ... the teenager who kept a diary will make the best blogger, it's part of you. Now the academic community is beginning to expect the 21st century scholar to blog - to have a digital presence, to wear their research on their sleeve, to become like a special edition iPad or iMac, with a see-through skin. We don't care what you are like, but let us see all the same.

Weller compares before and after slides in relation to the blank with an OU logo and these colourful visualizations. He shows up a failing though. Someone who is good with words may not be able to visualise their thoughts - simply repeating a word in many fonts or creating a Wordle does not in any way complement or enhance the message. Advertisers discovered the answer in the 1960s - you put an art director and copywriter together. How can we get more of that in education? When I see and listen to academics I almost always see a group of strangers who happen to be in the same room. Even or especially in a jointly written paper I don't see how or where the collaboration has occured. It's not as if they are team behind a TV series, each person with a role so clearly defined that it has a title. That'll be the day. It would require the 'digital scholar' to become the equivalent of the producer or director with others taking part having clearly defined roles. As happens, for example, in a product trial.

 I would also question screen grabs as a way to illustrate anything. I'd far prefer that anyone picks up a pen and does a doodle that expresses what they see in their heads - this after all is closer to the meaning the author is trying to put over.

I will return to this moment repeatedly - I admire Weller and those academics who with determination stay on the platform and observe the world as it passes by rather than pandering to the futurologists and revolutionaries who think that we have to sweap away what went before rather than build on it and work alongside it. The first newspapers was printed on the 6th November 1605 - they've survived this far. Their savour might be augmented reality. 

I particularly like the above. I gave a few weeks of my life to writing a scaving book review of Nicholas Carr and 'The Shallows' and then supporting my perspective in a thread that emerged in the Amazon reviews. Perhaps I need to go a few rounds with Lanier and Turkle too then accept that a Master's education means that I will never stand, virgin-like, infront of authors such as these and offer them my body and soul. They are journalists, popularist, scaremongering, plausible and always wrong. 

 

This grab from an animation by David Shriver might be a life-changer - taking me back to a way I did things a couple of decades ago. I just got on with it. Something that is going to work big one day, has to work small first then multiply. I keep itching to start a lecture tour - I have the projector and lecturn. I know what I want to talk about. I need to book a venue and get on with it. 

 I agree with the above with an important caveat:

What has become self-apparent to me during the course of the last few years studying online education, and 'education' is that human beings are extraordinarly diverse. However much we see ourselves as part of a race or community or cohort or class, we are ultimately very alone in our uniqueness. What ever impression you get, say of tens of thousands in North Korea doing drills together in a stadium, they are, each of them, their own person. One of the most wonderous human traits is the contrarian - even against inclination they will do the opposite so as not to be the same. I particularly like the idea that 'not learning' should be see as an educational theory. It's true - keeping your sheet blank while everyone around you takes notes is an approach. Not learning means that you stand still, or go somewhere else while the conveyor belt of the class moves everyone else forward (though in different steps).

 

See the 20th March 2012 Lectures at LSE here.

Notes attached as a PDF.

I'm keen to expand on these notes. To fill in the gaps. To find the precise place where Weller refers to what someone has written.

Next step is cutting and pasting this into my external blog. Then spitting it out in bits as and when required. And nailing the references. A couple of clicks and I not only found the reference to John Naughton, but I'd bought his book. 90p on Kindle. 

Permalink Add your comment
Share post
Design Museum

Augmented

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Thursday, 27 Feb 2014, 17:15

Imagine a room in which students pick an item from a museum then do this with it on their screens. You have their attention. How do they then take it and create a string of memories that take them through assignments and beyond?

 Imagine downloading ahead of a visit the audio tour for a special show? My visit to the Royal Academy to see the Van Gogh letters had my mother as the audio tour - I wish I'd recorded it. Where we now have ONE voice and script very soon there will be many - then you can choose who you want as your guide.

 

And then imagine an audiotour pinned to locations as you walk around a town, showing you before and after vistas, telling you stories or offering an alternative soundscape. Not if your in a hurry. And if on your daily commute you'll turn yourself into an expert and need to upload your own research and insights. Here the 'Blood, guts and babies' medical tour from the Wellcome Foundation. 

 

And at the risk of getting hit by the next best, take your eyes of the footpath and take a augmented view not just of a shop or cafe, but illustrated history ... London Blitz would be scary, to see a motorbike currier heading towards a bomb crater.

 

Permalink Add your comment
Share post
Design Museum

Near Field Communication

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Thursday, 27 Feb 2014, 17:14

Where have I been the last coupld of years to miss Near Field Communication ?

Certainly over the last six months I've been reflecting on the desire for some kind of situation-based, intuative, just-in time information-tailored system for applied learning ... and more recently for use in museums anf galleries. I have kids. I go to museums and galleries. The last time I looked we were still being invited to buy audio-guides.

Maybe that explains it. Does a museum or gallery want to diminish the value of its own paid-for services, even to reduce the likelihood of the purchase of a guide or any other sundry books or postcards if you're getting a suitably rich record of your visit for free?

NFC, QR codes and the ubiquitous Smart Phone must in time give way to wearable technology, the wrist band with a chip in it that I got at the 'In Flanders Fields' museum Ypres is the first step towards something bigger and brainier. The wrist band with a memory stick embedded in it from the University of Birmingham was a lost opportunity too - it should have been loaded with a 'good bag' some software, a piece to camera from the head of department and maybe an eBook to get us going. 

In the past, and still, pen on paper, sometimes with coloured felttips, is the main form of 'user generated content' for students - apt as they will be assessed by writing and colouring in. This needs to be replaced by UGC that uses the devices they have in their hands - their images, typed in text (or voiced) with annotations and mash-ups. 

Permalink Add your comment
Share post
Design Museum

Print versus the eBook

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Thursday, 27 Feb 2014, 17:10

Fig.1. The Pity of War (1999) Niall Ferguson. Same page/location.

Unless someone can offer me away around this I have found myself, after reading, highlighting and adding notes to an eBook that the only way I could properly cite it would be to purchase a print copy. This I did for £1.86 exclusing p&p. Cheapest of all would have been the library, but getting it sent from an outlying library then not being able to locate my library card ... 

Even for £1.86 I will not annotate the printed page. I'm loathe even to break its back ... some 500 pages takes some negotiation. 

I have long taken the view that the amount of effort required to pull together your thoughts does more good than harm in the long run - I've engaged with and 'constructed' my personal understanding of what is being said here rather than on a whim highlighing pages in the eBook and never giving them a second thought. Matching up the Kindle Location to a page number has had me jumping back and forth.

Is there an easy way to do this? I find I look for tables and charts, or references (that are standard in both formats) near to the 'search' I\ve done in the Kindle book. Indexing is crude, the difference between throwing a dart or a kitchen knife at a target across the room.

In one made moment of 'blending' the approaches I thought I could buy two paperbacks, tear out the pages and wallpaper them to the garage wall, then use coloured string and such like to seek out all the links like some murder mystery investigation.

OTT (Over the top).

Will printed books soon seem as archaic as a codex or papyrus?

The highlights and notes in the eBook have been less useful than I had hoped. They were just jottings, moments that hinted at a need to give something further thought - more detailed notes would need to come on a third read through. I've managed two.

The book is chunky, a thicks as a telephone directory. You get NO impression of size with an eBook, not the weight, presence of page numbers.

I need to play around with it further still. I do wonder if after all there is real educational value, savings and practicality to loading an eReader with standard texts. A student has no excuse if that term's books are on a device in their bag. What is best practice with use of eBooks in post compulsory education?

 

Permalink 2 comments (latest comment by Jonathan Vernon, Saturday, 9 Nov 2013, 07:08)
Share post
Design Museum

Three reasons to revitalise, reinvent and revolutionise education

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Thursday, 27 Feb 2014, 16:43

Fig. 1, Ken Robinson: On education ... and a fix for the huge drop-out rate in American Schools.

An excellent TED lecture. Worth taking notes. These are mine.

Offered by fellow student Marshall Anderson on the H818: The networked practitioner journey.

Worth listening to a couple of times (as I have just done).

Music to my ears, though I am not a teacher and have given too much of my career to the mechanised teaching he knocks ... digital and interactive learning is and has been, surely, a product of the mechanised approach? But you don't question the legitimacy of e-learning in an e-learning agency and suggest that a blended approach would be better.

They have one product on the shelf.

Which puts me at odds with the hand that has fed me for the last couple of decades. Next stop Finland? There is of course an answer here and that is recognising, please, that children, whilst deserving a better education system and approach, are NOT always at school ... this curiosity and motivation can be developed at home if and where a family have parents with the time and inclination and where, ideally, they also have contact with grandparents and even cousins, and especially friends.

FIG.2. TED Lecture with Ken Robinson

Ken Robinson is right to celebrate the human side of the child, that:

  1. human beings are naturally different and diverse
  2. that 'lighting the light of curiosity' is key and that
  3. human life is inherently creative.

For the moment my interest is with my 17 year old daughter and 15 year old son ... hoping and helping them to find and know what motivates them. It is this that will get them through school, a worthwhile goal beyond the barriers that exist in formal education - you still have to satisfy the standardised tests in order to get a place at university. Which is another schooling environment Ken Robinson doesn't touch upon - you can give us human beings too much freedom. Parameters are stimulating, both the negative and positive ones.

A struggle makes something worthwhile.

It helps to create a common memory too. Fundamentally this reminds me that any learning and especially e-learning needs to be seen in context - an e-learning platform or project is never exclusive, it is always part of what else is going on in the participant's life.

Blended, rather than pure e-learning is surely therefore the way forward?

Wise words put succinctly and with wit. Common sentiments that we struggle to realise. Privately educate? Home educate? Or move to Finland, Canada or Singapore?

Permalink Add your comment
Share post
Design Museum

Why learning with the OU, indeed distance and e-learning, will always be constrained by the lack of 'bonding' between pupil and tutor.

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Tuesday, 25 Feb 2014, 12:33

I am asthmatic. I recently attended an 'asthma clinic' - a one to one with a specialist nurse. We are able to get on the same wavelength because she recently completed her training on asthma and I have been preparing a PhD proposal that uses an e-learning platform to support people with a chronic illness - indeed a massive randomized controlled trial has just begun in the States. Its limitations are simple - in many instances we do a thing well in order to please another person. In tertiary education this means your tutor - in the MAODE we never meet, there are no tutorials. One tutorial a month in other courses, undergraduate and graduate at a residential, isn't enough, IMHO, to establish adequate rapport. Where universities have a tutor system a life long friendship forms, especially where hard work is rewarded with a smile. I comply to my asthma and rhinitis drugs to please another human being - it happens to keep me healthy too. Personally, and of course it differs between people, I would do better in my studies for a smile. This makes learning French using Rosetta Stone, very limiting. As a teenager I did one of those exchanges - people smiled because I was an idiot who tried hard, my reward was lifelong friendship.

Permalink Add your comment
Share post
Design Museum

H818: A History of Openness

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Tuesday, 21 Oct 2014, 09:21

We're considering the nature of 'openness' in education as part of this new Master of Arts in Open and Distance Education (MAODE) module.

This is increasingly about ease of access to information, all of it, uncensored.

Often for ease of access and to gain a qualification with a marketable value, information that is packaged in books, journals and lectures, though increasingly in 'sexier' interactive and multimedia forms with the related 'scaffolding' that comes with learning design and planning. The natural tendency is to consider the hectic last decade of the Internet at the expense of the history of openness in access to information and an education over the last century.

A hundred years ago all but the most privileged were in the dark: leaving school after an elementary education, with reliance on biased newspapers, magazines and part works. Libraries, BBC radio and affordable paperbacks, secondary then tertiary education, cinema and TV have each had a role to play, as has the Open University.

Does enlightenment come with access?

What does it say of power of information and ideas where access is controlled, as in China? Does connectedness within openness lead to even greater coalescing of likeminds in cliques, reinforcing stereotypical biases rather than exposing them to valid alternative views?

Nothing is straightforward when it comes to people - heterogenous by design, homogenous by inclination.

Permalink Add your comment
Share post
Design Museum

How can the gallery or museum visit be personalised and augmented to make first impressions last?

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Friday, 2 May 2014, 14:25

Fig.1. Miro - Barcelona

A lifelong love in art galleries yet I still feel unmoved (most of the time) by galleries and museums, possibly because I expect the gentle, guiding voice of my late mother at my shoulder (artist, art historian, Mum).

What could be a more personalised visit than to have someone who knows you so well point things out, guide you to things that will interest or irritate, then offer an insight - invariably linked to 'what do you do next?' i.e. look, learn then apply.

I take heart from the exceptions, only two visits I can think of though:

'In Flanders Fields' - you need a day to yourself to take this in. The most shocking moment entering a funnel like fixture, looking around then twisting your head up to see sets of photographs of mutilated combatants. It put your physically in a demanding postion to view them. Then the multi-media displays, not just actors giving accounts, but the ultimate before and after shots of places using satelitte images and old aerial photos.

'Alcatraz' - on many levels the visit irritated me, partly the Disneyfication and advance booking, then the many layers of the islands as bird sanctuary, prison and Native American conquest. What impressed though was the brilliant audio guide - BBC at its very best might be the way to describe it. Very carefully and sensitively juxtapositioning of interviews with former inmates, guards, and family members of guards/governor which between them created a sense or atmosphere of the place like some kind of hideous monastic retreat.

So how do we 'recreate' battlefields" We have the 750th of the Battle of Lewes here in East Sussex next year, as well as us all having five or more years of the run up to, the war and aftermath of 1914-1918.

The opportunity exists to use smart devices to give visitors and pilgrims an enhanced, personalised and lasting memory of these places - but how?

Permalink Add your comment
Share post
Design Museum

Learning Theories meet Activity Theory in a series of doodles

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Saturday, 3 May 2014, 06:57

 

Fig. 1 When Learning Theory met Engestrom

(Clicking on this might take you to the original, as well as each doodle as a separate image)

I am forever 'mashing things up' with whatever tools I stumble across - recently adding images and text with an App called 'Studio' - essentially loads of layers, typically text and graphics over a photograph. In an attempt to assemble paper scribles and add annotations I've produced the attached. I'm trying to visualise 'opennness' with this, and by doing so implying that what goes on between groups of people is perhaps similar to what goes on with different parts of your brain - it is contrasts and differences that assemble to create something new. It also relates to learning theories and practices - so didactic behaviorist, for constructed to cognitive. I suppose what I might be proposing is looking at how a person, a couple of people or a group of people interact and how openness in such situations is more conducive to problem solving and creativity.

Permalink Add your comment
Share post
Design Museum

What would Steve Jobs have done with e-learning? Other than calling it iLearning?

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Wednesday, 15 Oct 2014, 13:21

Martin Bean, OU Vice Chancellor: We are at the Napster moment in Higher Education

Martin Bean Key Note - notes from the 2012 HEA conference.

If there is a transcript please let me know!

I took a couple of hours as part of H818:The networked practitioner to follow this presentation closely. It makes you proud to be an OU student, or in my case now, an OU Graduate. Our Vice Chancellor, better perhaps than any other, has an inspired and informed, and often witty outlook on the future of education.

He makes the point that technology in education has everything to do with brain-ware, not software,. that 'we thought our job was done when we got people plugged in'.

He calls for educators in tertiary education to 'do the right thing by our student'

Technology is the enabler - it still requires great teaching.

He is at pains to point out that our approach to education is stuck in the past, that it is NOT about rote learning to regurgitate in an exam, but helping students make sense of the information available to them.

He is HIGHLY critical of research students who rely on the top 15 hits in Google Search and Wikipedia.

His handle on the current student is insightful. He makes the point that 'they want to blend their digital lifestyles with their learning - rather they would say it is 'just the way they live'.

We need to create a trusting environment where the student can challenge the information. 

There needs to be deconstruction and reconstruction of the pedagogy to make it more relevant

He calls for the 'sage on the stage to coach on the side'.

Our National Surveys say that our students want to spend time with us.

This human component is crucial for success and retention.

Martin Bean asks, 'what would Steve Jobs do?'

  • People and process remain more important than the technology
  • What the OU does: relevant, personalised, engaging learning.

How do we inspire people in those informal moments?

The OU are lucky and unique to be able to work with the BBC on productions like the Frozen Planet ...

  • YouTube as an open education repository
  • iTunes - 1:33 come in to find out more
  • Apple authoring tools

The value and opportunity of mobile

  • Akash - a tablet in India running on Android for under £50, so cheaper to give students one of these and access to the Internet than buy academic books.
  • 400 eBooks. e.g. Schubert's poems, listening to music, seeing the manuscript, reading annotations then looking at the original handwritten manuscript ...

How do we as educators do what we do so well?

  • MOOCs - engagement of hundreds of thousands, if not millions in meaningful ways.
  • More than anything esle technology creates access

We are at the Napster moment in Higher Education

See the Hewlett Foundation website for the scale of OERs. 12,000 hours of OU Open Learn for example.
Nurturing powerful communities of learning

  • Break the content down into shorter milestones
  • Qualifications with market currency
Permalink Add your comment
Share post
Design Museum

H818 Activity 2.1 Openness in a connected world of education

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Tuesday, 21 Oct 2014, 08:14

Fig.1 Posing for a scamp at the School of Communication Arts, 1987

H818 Activity 2.1

I will only publish in open access journals.

I'm not a professional academic. Should I publish then I imagine the calibre of the journal will count for something. As a professional writer (copy, scripts, speaches), with exception of blogging I am used to being paid for my words.

I will share all learning material that I create and own openly online.

From the moment I started to blog I have been part of self-help groups 'publishing' openly on everything from blogging to creative writing, swimming teaching and coaching, social media, the First Worldd War and e-learning. My goal over the next year or so is to produce under a Creative Commons module a series of 30 to 1500+ micro- OERs, one minute pieces with Q&A attached, as what Chris Pegler terms 'Lego Techno Bricks'.

I maintain an online social media identity as a core part of my professional identity.

It lacks professionalism as I don't edit it or write to a definable audience but I have a substantial e-learning blog that largelly, though not exclusively, draws on my MA ODE experiences (in fact I started on the MA ODL in 2001 and blogged on that too). I use Google+, Linkedin and Twitter haphazardly by pushing blog content to actual and potential commentators, participants and followers.

I take a pragmatic approach and release some resources openly if it’s not too much extra work.

I come from corporate communications where created content is closed to employees.

I have concerns about intellectual property and releasing my content openly.

Actual words of fiction I write is my copyright, Factual I care less about. Whilst a blog is largelly like a recorded conversation, a formal paper would need to be recognied in the appropriate way.

I will share all material that I create and own openly online, as soon as I create it.

No. I cannot hope to earn a living or sustain my interests if I cannot both charge for my time and my ouput.

 

 

Permalink Add your comment
Share post
Design Museum

Reflecting on H818: The Open Studio

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Tuesday, 21 Oct 2014, 08:06

I'm getting a sense of deja vu as the rhythm of this module reveals itself.

Openness comes with some caveats. It is not everyone's cup of tea.

As people we may change or behaviour in different environments.

I am not saying that we as individuals necessarily behave in the same way in an Open Studio online (a virtual studio no less) than we do or would in an open studio, as in a collective in a workshop or 'atelier' that is 'exposed' to fellow artists -  but is nonetheless human interaction with all the usual undercurrents.

What I believe will not work is to put a gaggle of creators in the same room and expect them to collaborate.

The studios of the 'open' type that I am aware of are either the classic Renaissance workshop with a master artist and apprentices at various stages of their own development, or,  with a similar dynamic in operation, the 'occupants' of the studio are exposed LESS to each other and more to external commentators and contributors and this requires some formality to it .i.e. not simply 'the person off the street' but an educator/moderator in their own right.

Is H818:The Networked Practitioner too dependent on chance?

The foibles of a small cohort and the complex, messy, moments 'we' are in. Three years of this and, by chance only, surely, six of  us in a subgroup jelled. More often the silence and inactivity of the majority makes 'group work' a myth - partnerships of two or three were more likely. The only exception I have come across in the 'real world' have been actors working together on an improvisation - they have been trained however to disassociate their natural behaviours.

Some of us study with the OU as we cringe at the 'exposure' of a course that requires us to meet in the flesh - distance learning suits, to some degree, the lone worker who prefers isolation.

By way of revealing contrast I am a mentor at the School of Communication Arts

Modest though pivotal role given their format and philosophy - exposure to many hundreds of kindred spirits who have been there ...  a sounding board and catalyst. NOT a contributor, but more an enabler. 

We'll see. My thinking is that to be effective, collaboration or exposure needs to have structure and formality in order to work.

At the Brighton Arts Festival the other evening I wonder how the 80 odd exhibitors would cope if the Corn Exchange was also their workshop?

In certain, vulnerable environments, the only comment should be praise. Feedback is invited from those who are trusted.

A school setting is different again, as is college ... people share the same space because they have to.

Open Studio apears to try to coral the feedback that comes anyway from a connected, popular and massive sites such as WordPress, Linkedin Groups, Facebook and even Amazon. Though the exposure, if you permit it, is tempered and negotiated - Facebook is gentle amongst family and friends, Linkedin is meterd and professional in a corporate way, Wordpress is homespun while Amazon, probably due to the smell of money can be catty - and in any case, the artefact is a doneddeal, it's not as if, to take a current example, Max Hastings is going to rewrite his book on the First World War because some in the academic community say that it is weak historicaly and strong on journalistic anecdote.

We'll see.

Permalink Add your comment
Share post
Design Museum

Design Science Research

Visible to anyone in the world

Fig.1 Hevner (2009) on the whiteboard. From Laurilard (2012)

From time to time an idea stops me in my tracks - taking notes won't do, I have to get it out of my head in bigger ways. I'll mull over this for days as it succinctly states where or how any e-learning intervention might occur and in what ways research can then be undertaken. I guess this is of relevance to most of the MA ODE modules, though H809 Researched-based practices in e-learning appears particularly appropriate. 

The temptation is to BluTack sheets of backing wall-paper to the wall and continue my doodles there. 

One to develop. I'll go and get the Hevner paper from the OU Online library.

REFERENCE

Hevner A. R. (2009) Interview with Alan R. Hevner on 'Design Science' Business & Information Systems Engineering, 1, 126-129.

Laurilard, D (2012) Teaching as design science. Building pedagogical patterns of learning and technology.

 

Permalink
Share post
Design Museum

It's over ...

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Thursday, 27 June 2013, 09:12

And a tear comes to my eyes ... what a hell of a journey! 1239 days. 1 point decides whether I finally get a distinction 84 vs. 85. But do I care? Staying with this learning for the next decade counts for more. Bon voyaye. I'm out of here!!

504,950 views too. Feck! I guess it'll take an OU PhD to push this to 1,000,000 ...

Permalink 4 comments (latest comment by Christopher Douce, Monday, 1 July 2013, 13:49)
Share post
Design Museum

Preparation, preparation, preparation ...

Visible to anyone in the world

And breathing space.

How I prepare a TMA or EMA is completely unlike anything I did in the early days, even in the first couple of years or more of the Masters in Open and Distance Education (MA ODE). It is far more like designing an Airfix model, making the parts, then constructing the thing. At this stage, having thought about and written up all the component parts I did a rough assembly and came up with 3437 words for a 4000 word assignment.

Actually this is too many words - not a problem as I know where the fat lies, ideas expressed in too large a chunk. After that it's a case of getting the prose to flow.

Prioritise and give it time to breathe. I've pretty much given up on social media too - this is study journal and a moment to reflect. 'Blogging' and writing an academic paper are very different things - even journalism doesn't get close. Blogging is playing in the sand, journalism is a papier-mache self-indulgent sculpture, whereas academic writing is gathering together a complete set of artefacts, carefully arranging them in a cabinet and including all the labels.

 

Permalink
Share post
Design Museum

Who are the digital scholars ... and what does it take?

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Monday, 17 June 2013, 05:36

 

The development of digital resources has changed scholarly practice by fundamentally changing the process of scholarly research and communication (Lynch, 2006).

REFERENCE

Lynch, C. (2006), Research Libraries Engage the Digital World: a US-UK Comparative Examination of recent History and Future Prospects’, Arriande Issue 46, http://www.ariande.ac.uk/issue46/lynch/intro.html

Permalink
Share post
Design Museum

The importance of stories ...

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Sunday, 16 June 2013, 11:34

Telling stories to others is the means by which unconscious stories become conscious, with language reflecting the person’s mental state (Bucholtz and Hall, 2005).

One way identities are given form is through (auto-)biographical narrative where speakers identify with characters and plots, ethical and moral stances, and the discourses of multiple activity systems (Roth, 2007, Ivanič, 2006).

McConnell (2002), discussing e-learning communities in higher education, argues that students’ identities are negotiated along four dimensions: their purpose as learners, their relationship with tutors, their place in the academic world, and the boundaries between their professional practice and their group work.

REFERENCE

Bucholtz, M. and Hall, K. (2005) 'Identity and interaction: a sociocultural linguistic approach', Discourse Studies, vol., 7, no. 4-5, pp. 585-614.

Ivanic, R. (2006) Language, learning and identification . In R. Kiely, P. Rea-Dickens, H. Woodfield and G. Clibbon (eds.) Language, Culture and Identity in Applied Linguistics . Equinox pp. 7-29 Available from http://www.lancs.ac.uk/lflfe/publications/pubsdocs/Language,%20learning%20and%20identific ation.doc (accessed 2 June 2008)

 

McConnell, D. (2002) 'Negotiation, identity and knowledge in e-learning communities', In Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Networked Learning, Sheffield, U.K., pp. 248-257.

Roth, W-M. (2007) 'The ethico-moral nature of identity: Prolegomena to the development of third-generation Cultural-Historical Activity Theory', International Journal of Educational Research, vol. 46, no. 1-2, pp. 83-93

Permalink
Share post
Design Museum

The Final Countdown

Visible to anyone in the world

The EMA is 12 days away. I ought to get a draft written in the next few days. Meanwhile I am taking a break from the literature review to go through this blog.

I have 165 entries tagged h809. I need to skim through these and add a further tag H809ema. From these I ought to feel reasonably sure that I've not missed anything out from the last 15 weeks. A couple of things I skipped over but I know what these are should I feel the need to look at them.

During this review I will create a mindmap on a whiteboard. At some stage this may be worked up in SimpleMinds and used as the essay plan, or as a table. It'll certainly be crossmatched with the word count for specific parts of the assignment.

At some stage I will edit with an examiner's hat on - does it show that I have been attentive to the 'lessons' of the module? It is showing off, it is a tick box exercise. This is not the place to go off on a tangent or to argue that a different approach is required.

When and if I have time I will migrate some of these entries over to my external blog so that I have them in future years. I think I have a couple of years to do this, but I don't imagine coming back here often once I have completed my studies.

Permalink
Share post
Design Museum

Information Overload or Cognitive Overload which is the problem?

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Thursday, 27 Feb 2014, 07:59

Fig.1 Exhibit A. Vital to any museum. A place to crash, reflect, nod off ... then pick yourself up to do some more.

This is going to read like an excuse to visit yet more museums.

As I reach the end of my Open University learning journey my final task is to write an EMA in which I propose a piece of research on e-learning. My inclination, with 12 days to go, is to look at the use of mobile devices in museums and how the visit experience can be enhanced by personalising the physical journey. It appears the the two problems to deal with are information overload and cognitive overload. There is too much of everything. Whilst I will always applaud serendipity there needs to be a balance between the stuff that you want to stick and the stuff that can be ignored or discarded.

Too many museum visits earlier this week has me wishing I had electric wheels and a pair of Google Glass that could take it in and edit.

  • Museum of Contemporary Art - Barcelona
  • Picasso Museum - Barcelona
  • National Museum of Catalonia - Barcelona
  • Joan Miro Foundation - Barcelona

As I prepare this assignment I plant to queue to get into the Bowie at V&A and try Google WebLab at the Science Museum and possibly the RA and Design Museums too. At least I'm within an hour of London.

My interest is, as I take teenagers to these things, to wish I could get them to that artefact or story about the artifacts creations, or the artist/creative that it will so intrigue them that they are inspired to put some heart into their art or DT.

Two years ago my late mother took her granddaughters around the RA when the Van Gogh exhibition was on. My daughter was treated to my mother, gentle and informed, guiding her then 14 year old granddaughter from quite specific letters, paintings and sketches - pointing things out, talking about technique and the thinking behind it. This was as personalised and as intimate as it gets.

I can understand how Picasso, showing interest and talent, must have been guided by his father who taught art at undergraduate level.

Permalink Add your comment
Share post
Design Museum

H809 TMA03 Away

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Thursday, 5 June 2014, 05:29

How often have I written that?

This is almost certainly the last. At least for the time-being. The MA ODE is in the bag and this module, the bonus track of my investigation into e-learning. Just the EMA to go - not just a research proposal, but a PhD research proposal which will be the basis of my seeking to undertake doctoral research in 2014.

If I care to I have some 25 entries for this blog too - rather than using the blog as an e-portfolio though I am finding I am loading everything into and working from Google Docs while drawing from a gallery of albums containing thousands of e-learning related images and screen grabs ... around 1600 in fact.

Permalink
Share post
Design Museum

Current reading ... recently read, on the go ... just about to start.

Visible to anyone in the world

Screen%2520Shot%25202013-05-25%2520at%252009.04.18.jpg

Internet Studies is the 'just about to get stuck in' read. The War of the World from Naill Ferguson is a lyrical and intelligent romp through decades of global conflict ... that only recently ended? Tales of the Field is a wonderful introduction to ethnogrpahy and offers a dozen further reads. Then some 'studies' related stuff. Capital ain't mine ... I got it so my 85 year old father-in-law could read it on my iPad when I was visiting. Teeangers and Technology is a must read from Rebecca Eynon.

Permalink
Share post
Design Museum

The House and Garden have done for my OU Student Blog ...

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Wednesday, 22 May 2013, 06:42

Pulling the house and garden apart has produce a victim ... OU work has to be carried out in a more strategic fashion, typically very early in the morning before the mayhem around me begins.

The EMA could be an interesting challenge - I'm having a cataract operation. Apparently a combination of skiing and sailing has damaged my eyes  (UV damage) ... I'm yet to be convinced of the need for an operation for 'lens replacement' for another decade or two though ... (I have twice worked a season in the French Alps ... 31 and 29 years ago though!) That an having a 'sun lamp' at home when we were growing up ... and my father even got a sunbed. We always wore dark google wit the sunlamp but would lie on the sunbed without any protection reading a book sad

Despite the above I have devoured two additional books for H809 not on the 'reading list' and ordered a third.

  1. David Garson (2011) Validity and Reliability.
  2. John Van Maanen (2011) 2nd Ed. Tales of the Field. On writing ethnography.
  3. James Clifford and George Marcus (1986) Writing culture. The poetics and politics of ethnography.

This is something I miss, that 'standard text', H810 being the exception. Getting to know one or two authors well has a lot to be said for it, rather than constantly dipping between the multiple voices of the Course Team and papers.

Cataract Surgery

(The above is also an excellent example of a succinct, professional explanatory animation).

How to be put off a cataract operation!

Perhaps this is better

Tips (what I'll be telling my teenagers):

  • Seek the shade, especially between 10 AM and 4 PM.
  • Do not burn.
  • Avoid tanning and UV tanning booths.
  • Cover up with clothing, including a broad-brimmed hat and UV-blocking sunglasses.
  • Usa a broad spectrum (UVA/UVB) sunscreen with an SPF of 15 or higher every day. For extended outdoor activity, use a water-resistant, broad spectrum (UVA/UVB) sunscreen with an SPF of 30 or higher.
  • Apply 1 ounce (2 tablespoons) of sunscreen to your entire body 30 minutes before going outside. Reapply every two hours, or immediately after swimming or excessive sweating.
  • Keep newborns out of the sun. Sunscreens should be used on babies over the age of six months.
  • Examine your skin head-to-toe every month.
  • See your physician every year for a professional skin exam.

Wear Sunglasses

Sunglasses have been popular with people for years, both for comfort and as a fashion accessory. However as studies and research continue to demonstrate a relationship between UV-A/UV-B exposure and ocular disease, the protection of the long-term health of your eyes is yet another reason to wear sunglasses. In order for sunglasses to provide adequate protection for your eyes, they should:

  • Block out 99 to 100 percent of both UV-A and UV-B radiation;
  • Screen out 75 to 90 percent of visible light;
  • Have lenses perfectly matched in color and free of distortion and imperfection;
  • Have lenses that are gray, green or brown.

What to look for in sunglasses.

(I wonder if I ever wore sunglasses when windsurfing in the 1980s?)

Permalink
Share post
Design Museum

New blog post

Visible to anyone in the world

It took me a year ... no longer, 18 months. Even longer than that, two years, to recognise what it took to get consistently high marks.

I couldn't fathom what people were doing.

Is it a formula? Or just application? Is there a method? Whatever it takes until you feel confident you know what is going on ... so read, read again, ask questions. Then going and read something else. Disagree, agree ... sleep on it. Then, ever so slowly it starts to dawn on you. This is what they are on about. I am prone to read well beyond the listed resources though, picking through papers until I find the one that speaks to me - the voice that expresses it in a way that has ressonance. And I am prone, within reason, to get the book that is cited in a paper I like ... so a collection of second handbooks under the table and a larger collection of eBooks. eBooks I read faster, highlight and take notes as I go along, then migrate notes and quotes into a Google Doc. I kid myself when I have a lot to read that it is different on the Kindle, the iPad or on the TV size screen that is ... well the TV (but my computer too).

A couple of weeks ago I took the TV and put it in the shed. One of those things the size of a pedal car.

No one misses it.

Everyone is on a screen elsewhere in the house. We stream movies. We use BBC iPlayer.

I don't miss clicking between channels looking for something to watch, finding nothing much but glued to the thing for a few things all the same.

Movies?

Ironclad

That's the way to do Medieval!

A week away in April and I still haven't recovered my old rhythmn. Nor will I. Instead of bloggin I have every conceivable thing to sort out with the house and garden. Somehow both were abandoned for three years - I wonder why that was?

The lawn was so bad I needed an industrial strimmer. The lawnmower I bought in 2007 is still in its original packaging in the shed.

Permalink
Share post
Design Museum

H809: Activity 13.2 - Reflections and notes

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Friday, 24 May 2013, 11:03

Participation in ...

Observation of ...

What is the Chicago School?

In sociology and later criminology, the Chicago School (sometimes described as the Ecological School) was the first major body of works emerging during the 1920s and 1930s specialising in urban sociology, and the research into the urban environment by combining theory and ethnographic fieldwork in Chicago, now applied elsewhere. While involving scholars at several Chicago area universities, the term is often used interchangeably to refer to the University of Chicago's sociology department—one of the oldest and one of the most prestigious. (Wikipedia)

Requires a chapter, even a book on it. Possibly a block, even a module in its own right.

Does the ethnography depend upon the physical presence of the enthnographer in the midst of the people being studied? (Hammersley, 2006 :08)

Not any more. An ethnographer in a virtual world amongst virtual people is present. Is, however, an ethnographer present where they to observe footage from Big Brother, either in real time, or post-production (literally). Are we ‘kitchen ethnogrpahers’ when we watch a TV series about a group ‘under observation’?

‘With the availability of mobile phones and portable computers, electronic virtuality is now embedded within actuality in a more dispersed and active way than ever before’. (Hammersley, 2006:08)

Is interviewing ethnographic? (Hammersley, 2006:09) How else do you ‘give voice’ to the participants and capture their perspectives?

Witness accounts are flawed.

A witness might lie, but will certainly have a stance, however nuanced, they may even have a false memory. Indeed, over time, the nature of this memory will change other ideas, true or false recollections aggregate to it. And is impacted by the context. (Hammersley, 2006:09)

Rather to record conversations … but who is to set the guidelines? (Hammersley, 2006:10)It can be argued that everything we do or perceive is real. Whether in a virtual world, or dreaming ... or 'the real thing'.

The experience has a form in that an electro-biological process has taken place in all these cases - it's in your head! Science Fiction writers and filmmakers play around with this all the time. My understanding from neuroscience is that typically any memory, or rethinking of a memory or experience, connects with some 15 areas around the brain ... which change (enhance, diminish). The scale and scope amongst our 98 billion neurons is ... well, vast. So much of what we do or experience can and will have only a tiny impact on who we are (genetically decided construction of the brain during foetal development) and what we experience (whether this experience is internal or external). Does the brain even differentiate between conscious and unconsciousness, beyond tagging them one or the other so that, however vivid it was, you know that was a dream where you turned into a flying fish ... or that running around like Conan the Barbarian with the head of a wolf in World of War Craft is not the same as sitting in a Geography class. Neuroscience is trying to see and map fractions of activity in the brain, but this is a long way from offering such human-coloured maps as evidence, say of specific learning having occurred, so short of an objective result we can only rely on the subjective i.e. to ask a lot of probing questions and draw conclusions.

In relation to a face-to-face as virtual, surely there is more in common with a Skype interview 'face to face' and a similar interview over a table ... but there are degrees of virtual and 'real' as an interview when in role play or improvising say as a character in World of Warcraft would surely be more akin to the an exercise that actors do. Or what about role playing real people in order to prepare for a debriefing, or tough interview ... as in media training for managers?

Fascinating ... my curiosity has been re-engaged even if professionally strictly quantitative plays so well into funding mechanisms. You design learning that can be quantified, using  appropriately accommodating learning theories, so that investors can monitor their return.

People in virtual worlds are themselves - but more so.

i.e. in various forms people might either be themselves big time, almost hyping up who they are while others would take a part of themselves and enhance that ... so they roleplay the minor god (in the Greek sense), or swap gender, or role play being a teenager again ... or for that matter being older than they are. i.e. the original person is still at the core of it all.

 

Permalink
Share post

This blog might contain posts that are only visible to logged-in users, or where only logged-in users can comment. If you have an account on the system, please log in for full access.

Total visits to this blog: 12725021