Personal Blogs

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Five Reasons from the wonderful Xina Gooding Broderick 

1. You didn’t set aside sufficient time to complete your course so create a timetable. Build in compassion. Build in flexibility and re-schedule. Adjust for it. And move in. We’re going for progress, not perfection. 

2. You didn’t realise it would be as challenging as it is. See Barbara Oakley on ‘Learning How To Learn’. The physiology of procrastination and defeat. Do study skills. Know your learning style. Get plenty of rest. Find a way to embed that learning. Podcasts. Take them on a walk. 

3. You didn’t ask for help when you needed it. Speak to your tutor or teacher. Keep asking until you understand. You need to understand this. 

4. No accountability. When left to your own devices. 

5. You downgraded your requirement for completing it. What are your pros and cons. Every component to decide if this is correct for you in the first place. 

From E-Learning IV

Fig. 1 Wind and weather chart courtesy of WindGuru for Seaford Bay, August 25th

• Day
• Date
• Time
• Wind Speed (Beaufort Scale)
• Wind Gust Speed
• Wind Direction
•  Temperature
• Wind Direction
• Cloud cover and forecast density at various descending levels (High to low)
• Forecast precipitation in millimeters

Stars - the degree to which those who love strong winds will love it. Three stars is an unmissable opportunity for windsurfers and kite-boards.

Too wet, too windy - but perfect for the diehard windsurfer or kiteboarder: I'm neither. I'll be standing on the shore looking at the waves breaking on the beach in an hour or so. The sailing club's Race Officer will decide if sailing is on or not. The serious issue is if we start a race heavy weather could make bringing dinghies in treacherous. If it goes ahead, as Saturday, I will be drenched to the skin helming the safety boat - a RIB we bring out of Newhaven Harbour.

Lessons learnt lately?

The opportunity to improve sailing skills is made all the more swift courtesy of downloadable eBooks and YouTube. After earlier trials inland on a lake yesterday became my first outing helming a dinghy on the sea, and my first race - we had three. Before I took to the water I checked a few items off from a guide to dinghy sailing and at lunch I followed up further tips on YouTube. Is there a limit to what the Internet can tell or show you? The list of tips and insights given by fellow sailors would be long: fixing bits of the boat, getting it off the trolley and into the ocean ... getting it back.

Late onto the water I was a good 30 seconds off the start of the race and never made it up in the Club Laser. The second race I was in the thick of it as 22 dinghies josled for position - two years of crewing a Fireball payed off and sneakily I managed to be one of the first Lasers into this race and for the first lap of three led the fleet - it felt like by some fluke I'd got around the first lap of a F1 Grand Prix in a Citreon 2CV. Staying upright is about as far as my skills go for now. The third race was scuppered from the start as the tiller handle came off; this might be like a fisherman dropping his rod in the water and having to resort to a hand-line ... or a jokey losing his stirrups at the start of a race ... or doing a cycle race without any handlebars: sort of.

However, it is remarkable what you learn and how much more you learn in adverse conditions. My 'skills' have been plagued for weeks by my a clumsy swapping of hands when you tack between the mainsheet and the tiller, every time you tack your hands have to swap duties, the lead hand taking the rope on the mainsail (main sheet), the rear hand taking the tiller ... well, my tiller-handle was gone, which turned every tack into a drill. It worked. I'd liken it to any sports coach giving competitors a challenge in order to fix a problem, or to speed up 'adaptation'.

Trial and error, mistakes, dealing with the unexpected and a challenge ... being pushed. Learning works best when it is anything but 'plain sailing' - we learn so much from mistakes, from figuring things out, by asking for help ... and giving help in turn. How do we keep the human context alive in e-learning? Are we not like astronauts on a lone mission a million miles from earth?

Fig.1. United Kingdom and Ireland

Prompted by nieces and my sister I have now joined the Facebook 'Positivity' challenge.

You post three positive things a day for five days then nominate three others to do the same. I have written 15 'Positivities' already and will adjust and prioritise each day. My wife, Great Britain and learning something everyday (with a plug for the Open University) got a mention today. When I was eleven or twelve I pencilled in all the counties of England, Scotland and Wales where I had visited - parents divorced and living in Cumbria and Northumberland got that one started, with cousins in County Durham and North Yorkshire, and then trips to Scotland and Lincolnshire, London and Oxfordshire. The rule was I had to spend a night in the county. Before I'd taken a look at the above map (and not taking into consideration boundary changes) I guessed that bar a few counties I had stayed in all: largely as work producing training and information videos has had me on overnights all over the shop (nuclear power industry, manufactures, retailers, Post Office, pharmaceuticals ...), and Northern Ireland courtesy of a girlfriend of 18 months. Looking again I think I could add that I've never stayed in Essex, nor many of the Welsh Counties (or valleys), a couple still in Northern Ireland and probably a couple in North Eastern Scotland even if I have driven through. I started the same kind of thing on the 98 departements of France and guess that I've 'done' a good fifty, once again, thanks as much to TV work repeatedly travelling to far flung, non-touristy destinations for a TV news agency I worked for. I miss travelling. 

A few years ago I took up the challenge of posting a photo a day in Blipfoto; I took this one step further and determined, with the need for some criteria for editing a day's pictures, to posting something 'to feel good about' - this task is similar, though potentially more abstract if the idea, rather than the image comes first.