Pulling together what might be a 60 to 100 page document evidencing my learning to teach experiences of the last year this blog, has, as alwys, been invaluable. I want something on 'engagement' I find it here via the tags or search. I have multiple notes from a variety of sources: books, papers and video. I can then reflect on what is said and quote it.
11 years in the making. I ought to duplicate it offsite but don't - not much. Why repeat myself unless there is a risk of losing this.
This 6,000 word assignment is in its final draft.
My current estimation is that it will take another 16 hours to complete; it is due 12 noon on Monday.
Why so long?
The content and narrative is in place, and running at 8,000 words it should be just a case of judicious editing and referencing. The challenge is how to create the required, or my desired, weave of references, quotations and illustrations while not 'losing the plot' or making something straight-forward confusing.
Whilst two years to get to publication for an academic seems extreme, I do nontheless now appreciate how and why these things can take so long. However, I question why the marking system and the objective appears to be to turn us students into the writers of academic papers, when for most of us the desire, certainly in the Masters in Open and Distance Education is far more practical, indeed the Sussex University e-learning diploma is assessed through the completion of a series of workable e-learning modules or activities that can lead to students applying this content directly in their workplace or joining any of the many e-learning and web business along the Sussex Coast.
Courtesy of Google and on the hunt for a quote that goes something along the lines of 'analogies taught the world to think,' I stumbled across the Quote Garden.
What strikes me is my feeling that the time engaged with the medium of the Internet is not a boast that it is wise to make, that it is counter-intuitive, that the best ideas are more likely to come from someone who got access to a computer with a broadband connection for the first time a few months ago and is bouncing out ideas like a sparkling Catherine-wheel that's come un-nailed.
Wherein lies the dilemma for every creative working in this field - or pond, or my favourite analogy ... in this 'digital ocean.'
If the likes of Google and Facebook have gone from minows to sharks, to leviathons worthy of the era of the dinosaurs, when does something new come along like a water-born virus and kill them off?
Or are Google, Facebook, Amazon an EBay vast shoals, even a branded variety of species now that are less vulnerable to such attack?
Distracted
Faced with three deadlines over the next ten days what do I do? Something else.
I like something else, these sparks.
Where was I?
Working on a piece about wikis. I wish this were a wiki. I like them. They suit me. I will be an engaged participant, a catylst, a stirrer-upper ... though not necessarily an initiator or completer, because serendipty engages me and distraction takes me off again.
What does that make me in this digital ocean?
One of these?
Who are you?
Go fishing and post your fishy-self image in the comment box!
I consider it to be an expression of the progress that I am making that the first part of the TMA I have just written I completed in a straight three hour run with nothing more than a treatment in the form of a Venn Diagram doodled on a sheet of A3 to draw upon and the assignment title and defining outline pasted onto the top of the page on which I have been typing.
There are notes and figures and grabs all over the place.
I immersed myself in the topic last night when I keyed in 'learning' to MyStuff and found I had 463 assets to ponder. Though nearly discombobulated by the sluggishness of MyStuff I just about had enough in the titles and tags of the saved pieces to know if something was or was not worth reviewing. It was an interesting journey, not least that for me H808 is very much the second module, with H807 feeling like a foundation course before the real thing. And yet for some people I appreciate H808 is their first or even their last module towards the MA.
Talking of which, I registered for H800 in February 2011.
I feel I'm on a roll and don't want to take a break.
Between getting the kids into school and making a fresh pot of coffee the thought I had wanted to share here was the problem I potentially face with the essay I've just written. Previously I have used a list of referenced ideas and strung them together like fairy-lights to produce an essay that may not flow, or wrap well around itself well, but does the business. I fear if I now try to retrofit references and quotes that I may spoil it. On the other hand, this is the difference between writing a letter home and an academic paper.
My belief is that I know to whom I am referring when I use their ideas and dropping in their names and correcting any misquotes and incorrect expressions of their ideas will do the job.
On verra.
Another figure that I spied ... I've hit 10000 hits in my OU blog, which translates as 1000 per month. As we have no way to read the stats that underly these figures I can only make a conservative guess that 50-75% of all of this action is me. On the other hand, I do notice that I've been getting 25, then 50 and possibly 100 'hits' a day even when I've not blogged at all. Vanity or curiosity, or both.
Do emerge from the electronic woodwork please.
A comment is part of the collaborative process that is the essence of the full e-learning experience.
I was judgmental on Martin Weller quoting himself in H807 ... but I have just bought the book and buy into.
So why do I feel so uncomfortable about Weller or any other 'academic' quoting themselves.
Surely there are standards and expectations?
Who are we to quote ourselves, just because we got into print or had our words used in a piece of academic study to then cite ourselves and in so doing award ourselves additional recognition?
Imagine Simon Cowell deciding to get up and sing ... and then judging his own performance and deciding to award himself credibility?
Is there some etiquette regarding this kind of thing?
(Must be, academia has rules for everything, no wonder it's so dull)
Academically stimulating, but hardly a Caravagio.
At what point do you become 'self-quotable?
Did Churchill quote himself?
As Churchill said ... (he says) ...
(Or by writing your own speeches you are quoting yourself? Ditto lectures)
Can I quote myself as if this has some value ... things I posted online in 1999? Or put in a dairy in 1985? Or even wrote in a History essay on the Reformation in 1977? (Files saved, in a trunk, in an attic, in a room, in a building ... and could just as well be scanned and banged up online
Or is this lacks credibility then short films broadcast on mainstream TV?
Or things I said to important people ?
Look up the correct use of disinterested Mr Weller – (do you have an editor or proof reader?) It does NOT mean ‘no interested it means ‘not committed to one or other point of view, rather as a judge should be in a trial i.e. interested, but not taking sides.’
Odd how the pinnacle of my irritation is indicative of my reaching a tipping point
This is a watershed, where my opinions are expressed in increasingly frustrated ways until I find myself screwing up my face, then edging down the other side, won over to the opposing view, having convinced myself that black is now white. That ‘they’ are right and I am wrong ... I become evangelical on their behalf, whether they want it or not, before coming to some grey compromise.
I’ve just about read enough on learning theory to be able to categorise my approach to learning.
It is ?
This comes from reading ‘Contemporary Perspectives in E-Learning Research. 2007. Edited by Grainne Conole and Martin Oliver.
The turning point, the ‘flip’ came with looking up a reference for Martin Oliver ... and deciding that I needed to see fourteen points of reference. His book, his privilege. He’d wrong-foot himself did he not refer back to previously published papers.
I've got Martin Weller in box too, bought the book.
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