Personal Blogs

The world is changing fast, and this is why. I’ve been using AI across various creative, analytical, and practical aspects of my work and life. 

This is a summary of what I’ve learned and achieved:

1. Writing & Story Development

• Use AI to refine and tweak your novel Wishful Thinking, mainly by listening to ElevenLab’s voice reading. This process has helped me identify nuances, stumbles, and areas for refinement.

• Recognised how AI can assist in adapting Wishful Thinking into a screenplay with ease.

• I began revisiting and cataloguing older stories (Sardines, CC & Susie, The Girl in the Garden), considering their potential for development. My next novel project should be Angel of the North, setting a structured two-hour daily writing slot to work on.

2. Audio Performance & AI Voices

• Amelia’s voice from ElevenLab provides an authentic, brilliantly performed reading of Wishful Thinking.

• Used the AI reading to catch errors and fine-tune dialogue and pacing.

• Reading a piece aloud reveals a new layer of clarity in storytelling.

3. Productivity & Time Management

• Realised that structured creative work, with set hours and pacing, prevents burnout.

• Experimented with using AI for planning and project organisation, recognising the benefits of AI-driven analysis without over-reliance.

4. AI in Memory & Reflection

• Continued deep exploration of past diary entries, using AI to stimulate reflection and extract stories.

• Discovered how AI challenges and enhances your recollections, appreciating different perspectives on past events.

• AI helps clarify and structure your thoughts on past relationships, experiences, and creative choices.

5. Artistic & Creative Exploration

• Used AI to assist in organising Open Houses Art Week preparations.

• I began considering AI’s role in producing creative work beyond writing, potentially in visual art, historical research, and film adaptation.

6. Historical & Documentary Research

• Applied AI to WWI project research, expanding your understanding and planning for a larger project.

• Use AI to fact-check and recall details from past experiences, reinforcing your work as a historian of memory.

7. Future Considerations

• Considering AI’s potential in film production, especially for adapting Wishful Thinking as a youth theatre screenplay or live-action short.

• Noted that AI could assist with editing and improving past short stories to bring them up to publishable quality.

• I am interested in AI’s ability to enhance storytelling across different media, from voice performance to screenplay formatting.

Key Takeaways

AI has helped me refine my writing, making it sharper, more immersive, and more effective.
AI-assisted voice performance has revealed story weaknesses and allowed me to refine my writing precisely. AI also helps challenge and expand my memory, making my reflections richer and more layered.
AI-powered tools offer a structure for writing and creative projects, helping with pacing and avoiding burnout.
I’m thinking critically about AI’s role in film, theatre, and historical research, exploring its potential without overreliance on it.

Teacher's matter.

Silvia Macrae Brown runs the life drawing class at Charleston on the first Tuesday of each month. I go along when I can, Covid permitting. I've taken the day off from work in the past to go along. It is just one day. 

It matters to have someone with a plan, especially if it is designed to stretch us. This isn't one of those classes where anatomical exactness created over a single pose over many hours is wanted, rather we have multiple poses, movement, drawing with our non-dominant hand, or with our eyes closed.

Today was different. There is an exhibition of Duncan Grant's work 'Duncan Grant: 1920' showing at the moment.

So the plan was to work the way artists at Charleston worked 100 years ago - a life model was a rare treat so what doodles and sketches they made were reimagined into later works, painted onto tiles, cupboards and wall panels.

Now it was my turn. 

I've always embraced instructions whether from a coach or teacher - however awkward I may feel the challenge of the new can create insight. Today was such a day.

An idea that had been fermenting in the first idea for something to contemplate in the afternoon was brought forward. The model would hold a pose and rotate 45% every minute - that of put her on a rotating plinth. I prefer the short pose. I find 30 seconds is enough. The race is to 'grab' the essence of the pose for future reference. Silvia is a sculptor who often references her own approach to seeking to find the essence of a pose.

Having too much time to think while the model was delayed I put down some ideas for a story set in a life drawing class (model dies during a long pose), and also tried downloading a drawing App to my iPad (too old, not the write operating system), then my phone. A few experiments with a stylus and I gave this up as a lost cause (for today). My son uses swears by an iPad Pro - but I don't have that luxury.

Pen and ink will have to suffice. I use a regular Lamy fountain pen and black ink. I used to swear by an artist's felt-tip but have come to prefer ink on paper for its smudge-ability and inconsistency; I enjoy the fight. Just as I enjoy keeping one step ahead of the blunt pencil by having at least 20 sharpened (with a Stanley Knife, never a pencil sharpener).

I keep all drawings. 

This is a dictate handed down by my later mother who did her MA in Fine Art at Durham University in the 1950s; she studied under Quentin Bell. I will just show a few here to illustrate the progress. Plenty of my efforts fail - I correct minor errors and leave them on a page, with a disaster I abandon the sheet and quickly get back to doing another, and another, and another until it starts to look and feel right. I doubt I discard two sheets of paper in any day long session - usually I draw over, or mark out something that doesn't work. I rarely if ever use a rubber, unless it is being used as a tool in the creation of a particular 'look'. 

This is what is meant about getting your hand in ... like a gymnast or dancer practising moves before a session.

After another go like this and taking note of the instruction to be capturing the essence of the pose I went for something smaller. (Imagine trying to draw a horse, bird or cat that will not be so accommodating! I have tried drawing people in real life, but gave up, unless they were static: on the beach, or watching TV).

From these the idea was to take a pose and work it up as a single art piece, as bathroom tiles, wall paper or some such as the Charleston artists did (not the reproduction tea towels and place mats you might buy in the shop).

From here, whether or not the model was posing (which felt impolite and potentially a waste of a rare resource) we were invited to take a pose and work it up as a pattern, shape or draft for an artwork. I had a few goes with a single, double and various other repetitions and combinations.

And a single pose with colour - something I've rarely ventured into using!

This was a breakthrough moment for me. I've only ever thought of a life class to be a period of work that delivers its only outputs at that moment, on the day. That any reworking of something would be a lesser thing - akin to copying from a photograph. How wrong I am. Of course artists are forever gathering up ideas on pads of paper or working with models and items in the studio to work up into a distinct and separate work. 

For lack of ink and seeing a set of blue sheets of paper to use up I went for white charcoal and produced a series of five multiple sketches on single sheets, followed by a few single images. I was beginning to feel confident with what I was able to express with a few simple lines. The skill is to let the hand/arm draw what the eyes are seeing and the brain is feeling. Experience, practice and growing knowledge of where the bones and muscles are helps. 

We were then invited to return to a favourite pose and work on this. The model kindly took a number of poses as requested including the 'crossed arms above the head' which I favoured.

We ended the session with a seated pose. Enjoying using the white charcoal pencil I had only grey or green darker papers to choose from. A single pose for 35 minutes I did four sketches in each trying to do little more than get the entire figure on the page without making it too small. I then added the colour based on the model sitting under a bright orange/red heater in the barn where we are working.

Fig.1 me, bis sis, and big brother.

I remember the shorts and the wellingtons. I loved it when I stepped in a puddle so deep and the water came over the top. I had a habit of not wearing underpants which meant that dangling from a tree or turning backward somersaults gave a view of my 'bean sprout.' It also resulted in my getting my willy caught in the zip on my trousers more than once. I guess I am four and a half. There's a very similar picture of me dressed in school uniform a few weeks before my fifth birthday: shorts again, tie, blazer and cap with one sock up, and the other one down. I remember that first day at Ascham House as I waited forever to have a go on a huge rocking horse but couldn't because Nick Craigie was having a turn, also the mashed potato in the school lunch made me sick because this sloppy gunk still had the eyes in it.  The response from the teachers: all spinsters of at least 90 years of age was the same 'eat it up or you won't get any pudding!' The gooseberries and custard made me sick too.

I'm recalling all of this as I try to get my head into that of a child for the FutureLearn course 'Medicine and the arts' in which we are recalling stories of children in hospital. I had a hospital visit to have stitches put in my willy. It was a short, traumatic visit where I recall at least three people having to hold me down.

Children begin to release what matters to them with paintings and figurines, in song and play. It matters that it takes a little thought and care to figure out what a drawing, poem, song or dance means to a child. My late mother, who taught art, said that on looking at a piece of work created by a child you should only ever say, 'tell me about it.' i.e. never presume that what you are looking at is a 'house,' or a 'dog' as you may discover that this is a 'castle and a dragon,' or a 'hutch and a mouse,' or a 'prison and someone escaping.' Let them talk it through and elaborate.

Masters in Open and Distance Education (MAODE) with the Open University, UK (OU)

H800: Technology-enhanced learning: practices and debates

H807: Innovations in eLearning – Learning outcomes

H810: Accessible online learning: supporting disabled students

B822: Creativity, Innovation and Change

H808: The e-learning professional

This completes the Masters Degree. I graduate on Saturday 27th April 2013

Currently (March 2013) I am taking H809 as a bridge towards doctoral research or professional consultancy. Complete in June 2013.

H809 Practice-based research in educational technology

I joined the #H817open MOOC for one component of this module. I will register for 2014

H817: Openness and innovation in e-learning.

P.S. ADHD

I played this with my Mum in the 1970s and eventually knew every painting in the set. No formal lessons, some visits to galleries but these were initially confined to the North East of England.

What lessons do we learn from such games when it comes to teaching? That it can be fun? Exploratory? By default?

How or where else could this be applied, whether as a commercial game 'for all the family' or to use in the classroom, meeting room, board room, lecture hall?

• Cloud Formation
• Breeds of Cattle
• Car Makes
• Body Parts (Human, as in First Year Medical Students)

Please do add your suggestions ...

I have in front of me a script for a video production dated 1986. I could have typed it in by now. However, I have twenty of these to do and if I want to digitise 2.5m words from old journals and letters I may need something faster than typing it up or scanning it in.

Voice recognition seems to be the answer and this seems to be the product.

I've been familiar with the oddly named, though brand creating 'Dragon Speaking Naturally' since it came out. Now I feel a need. I doubt it'll solve an OU H800 essay crisis, though often reading something out loud is the best test of its sense.

Any recommendations or warnings?

I could also skip the writing/typing process entirely and turn into text what I record verbatim, for example, poolside coaching or teaching to inform fellow coaches. They can have it as a podcast and/or as text.

My aim is to find ways to get the contenst of my mind

On verra.

With all the production materials, scripts, schedules, budgets and other plans it feels retrograde to be taking a linear video production and turning it into a Power Point style presentation, but this is the plan. And to treat this as the penultimate draft before segments are replaced with video and interactive and assessment components are added.

The topic is The Great Picture which illustrates the struggle Lady Anne Clifford had to keep an inheritance her father bequeathed to his brother Henry during his lifetime for a cash sum, so denying his then 15 year old daughter what she considered to be her rights. The painting is dated 1646.

I have the permissions to use pictures of miniatures and other portraits dated from 1986 which I'll have to renew, including the lute music copyright. I own photographs of the picture I took between 1974 and 1990 and have broadcast quality video footage of the picture too. I also have and this replica which I've just photographed on the top of the piano where the figures are the size of Ken and Barbie rather than life-size.

The Voice Artist who 'played' Lady Anne will be replaced simply because I want to re-conceive it so that 'Harry Potter style' all the figures in the painting (and the painitings of paintings) tell their own story.

We'll see.

And this is simply an exercise to see if I can make the Adobe eLearning Suite 2 software I picked up at Learning Technologies sing.

Happier with a stack of books to get through than anything else, so chasing texts I didn't get through for H807 'Innovations in E-Learning' that I will need for H808 'The E-learning Professional.'

Some ideas, themes and authors are starting to leave impressions across the shifting sands that I wash every week with novels, biographies, books on history, art and learning.

August will be the month of Camus, Andrew Marr, Simon Schama, Conole and Oliver, alongside historical novels and applied psychology. To what end?