Personal Blogs

Historically, as anyone might recall from the MAODE days, I was always the student how tried to handin a piece of work 5 minutes before the due date - at midnight of course. And then things would go wrong. Or I'd be the student asking for an extension days before. 

I am a changed man! I am three days ahead here and feel confident I've not missed anything that matters to the module assignment. It could always be better, but I'm not going to fret about that. I've given it my best shot under the circumstances and in the time  could give it.

I have to say, that this blog has been an indispensbile resource. I can search a word or academic and up comes what I know about that thing or person from notes I have taken over the last ten years; it is surprising how much comes back to me and even more of a delight the way this knowledge has embedded itself in my thinking. I feel moire fluid and confident about it then I ever did ten years ago.

I also matters hugel that for the last two and a half years I have been in a teaching environment where the theory of education is tested daily - and in an FE college, that means being 'tested to destruction'.

From E-Learning IV

 Fig. 1 You have sixty minutes. 

I also have one, three and thirty minute timers. I use sixty when I simple MUST get a few hundred words down on the page. I use one minute as a kickstart that can see me happily working away two or three hours later.

This is for some fiction writing. I know that the most crucial thing is to sit down and get on with it. Without distractions. I don't allow myself distractions during this hour. My usual way of doing things is summed up in two words 'anything but ...' Typically I will prepare, research, think about it, jot down some notes ... even sleep on it, even, in fact, especially in the middle of the day.

I've got four or five hours in the bag. I need to lay down a couple more today.

Nearly three hours after sitting down to work on the ECA I have blogged ONE only of the two ideas in my mind (expressing them takes considerably longer than simply having them). The good news is that this effort has developed my ability to use Artpad and a tablet to do a sketch and share it, to link articles from New Scientist and my entries to various versions of me. I have contributed to the Tutor Group and H808 Course forums, and so no doubt confirmed my approach to the ECA, which is still 9 days away ... and grabbed, cut or loaded five or six items into my OU eportfolio, which I still trust will be successfully transmogrified into something better during the course of 2011 without content being lost. I really do not want to give a week to transferring over 1000 pages ... one at a time. Currently nothing will export by the routes supplied.

I'm not ADHD but I am easily distracted, drawn into a web of my own making as I click here, there and everywhere to achieve some simple goal.

However, I am grinning from ear to ear because my brain is buzzing with ideas; I like it this way. I'll keep the blog on quantum evolution 'til tomorrow. Meanwhile I have to have a haircut, and decorate a wall in my wife's study so that when I am on Skype to New York this evening I don't look as if I've just got out of bed ... which is of course how anyone looks if they work from home and call this work.

The thing is there are relevant voices speaking to me from all kinds of directions.

I relish the LinkedIn E-learning 2.0 forum threads that pop up all day; they are read, some deserve a response, or at least being snatched for future reference. And when I want to achieve something with an image, audio or video, I will stick with the software, or ditch it for something else, until I get the outcome I desire.

So am I learning, even if the contents of my head must wait while my fingers play.