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What have I learnt? What do I need to reminding of? The blog review

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Tuesday, 21 Oct 2014, 07:08

This is the value of a comprehensive blog such as this - for its author at least.

My thoughts went into these posts. By going back through the content I can be reminded of the lessons I was learning or struggling with at the time.

It would help were I more strategic in my approach to learning - but that's not me. I like to dwell and drift. I don't know what matters so like to have it all at my fingertips.

Going through the eight OU modules I have completed is taking between one and three hours clicking through posts here. I can tap into TMAs and EMAs and feedback, much of which I have here too (on the private setting). It is revealing in two respects: how much I have covered and can now say that I know - I can speak 'E-learning' fluently; and how many links and references that I jotted down and have never gone back to - great apps, insightful papers, and moments of clarity.

To cover myself for a decade hence by which time this blog will have been wiped, I am copying, selectively, about 40% of the content of this blog into my external blog My Mind Bursts.  (tagged MMB here)

Having the MAODE is one thing. Calling myself and being a 'Master' of the subject needs to be the next step. Martin Weller believes it will take a person ten years to become a 'digital scholar' - I've got another five years to go then. 

Onwards

 

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Using Kolb's experiential learning cycle to assess a creative workshop I gave in 2012 as part of the long gone, though brilliant module 'Creativity, Innovation and Change'

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Sunday, 4 May 2014, 09:17

 

Fig. 1. Kolb’s ‘Experiential Learning Cycle’ reversioned.

I did something …

This is my take on Kolb’s ‘Experiential Learning Cycle’ which I will use to explore what I ‘did’. I ran a creative problem solving workshop. The motivation for attendees was to pick up some creative problem solving techniques, to solve a problem we had with using social media and to do some team building. The objective for me was to crack this problem and to introduce a more creative and collaborative approach to problem solving.

Fig. 2. Coach to Olympians running a workshop - part class, part ‘pool side’

I couldn’t help but draw on experience as a Club Swimming Coach planning programmes of swimming for a squad swimmers and as the ‘workforce development’ running training programmes for our club’s teachers and coaches. Planning and preparation when you are putting athletes in the pool several times a week over months is vital. On a smaller scale this workshop required a schedule, to the minute, with some contingency, allowing you to build in flexibility for both content and timings.

 

Fig. 3. Planned to the minute - my creative problem solving workshop

The plan was for five to six creative problem solving techniques to be used, top and tailed by, using terms from swimming, a ‘warm up’ and a ‘warm down’. The modus operandi of the Residential School had been to introduce, experience and play with as many creative problem solving techniques as possible.

Fig. 4. As a prop, food and aid memoir a bunch of bananas has multiple uses

‘Bunch of Bananas’ is a creative problem solving technique that suggests that you include in the group a ‘plant’ - a person over whom other’s will slip, like the proverbial banana. My take on this was to introduce two outsiders - a Russian academic who would bring a different take on things and the a mathematician and senior programmer.

Fig. 5. ‘Mother-in-law, Samurai, Tiger’ is a great warm up.

We did a warm up called  ‘Mother-in-law, Samurai, Tiger’. This is the team equivalent of ‘Paper, Scissors, Stone’ where two teams face each other and on the count of three, having agreed what their response would as a team, they either 'Tut-tut’ and wag their finger like a mother-in-law, 'growl' and get their claws out like a Tiger, or shout 'ha!' while posing like a Samurai warrior brandishing his sword. This is the ‘warm down’ to stick with the swimming coaching metaphor was to have participants get into the ‘streamlined’ position that swimmers adopt - essentially a stretching exercise.

Fig. 6. Human Sculpture and Timeline are useful ways to have people look at and feel a problem in a different way and from a different angle.

In between we did a mixture of physical and mental activities, including Human Sculpture where one person becomes the sculptor and uses everyone else to form a tableau or sculpture that expresses their talk on the problem. Another was timeline where you imagine looking at the problem from the perspective of the past and future.

Now, stand back  …

Standing back I’d say that running a workshop for colleagues has advantages and disadvantages. How would a director or line manager feel about their views being exposed like this. On the other hand if well managed it becomes a team building exercise too.

The challenge is to know what risks to take and how to build in flexibility, not just in timing, but in the kind of activities. This requires that despite the plan you are alert to signals that suggest an activity should be developed or dropped. Workshops and seminars I take have a common element - there is ‘hands on’ activity.The goal is that at the end of the session people feel confident that they could do these things themselves. I’m less comfortable about teaching where the communication is one way - me talking and them taking notes. I value encouraging self-discover and people being on their feet, interacting and having fun.

The workshop was experiential

It was collaborative and iterative, it was problem-based learning that used communication skills.

How did you feel about that ?  

Fig. 7. How we like to be ‘in the flow’ rather either bored or stressed from being too challenged. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1975) Mental state in terms of challenge level and skill level.

I felt ‘in the flow’ for most of the time, suitably challenged and never bored. Though anxious and surprised when a colleague gave me a drubbing the day after feeling that they had been tricked into attending. This came as a surprise, the other surprise was how away from their desk and computers the apparently introverted could become so animated and responsive.

I felt like a party planner. I was hosting an event. The atmosphere of controlled enthusiasm would be down to me. I would be, to use a French expression, the ‘animateur’ or ‘realisateur’ - the one who would make this happen and bring it to life.

Fig. 8. For all the playful activities, we are still reliant on Post It Notes and flip charts

Now what ?

On this occasion we delivered a couple of distinct responses to the problem. People reflected on the experienced and felt it was both enjoyable and of practical value. The request was not that others would host such an exercise, but that I would do more. I was subsequently booked to run a few more workshops on specific topics with different groups in the faculty. The question that we couldn’t resolve was whether were  a ‘creative organisation’ ? My own conclusion being that we quite palpably were not.

REFERENCE

Ackoff, R.L. (1979) The Art of Problem-Solving, New York: Wiley

Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly (1975). Beyond Boredom and Anxiety: Experiencing Flow in Work and Play, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. ISBN 0-87589-261-2

Experiential learning theory. (Available from http://www2.glos.ac.uk/gdn/gibbs/ch2.htm. Accessed 22FEB14)

Gundy, A.B. (1988) Techniques of Structured Problem Solving, 2nd ed, Van Norstrand Reinhold. Te hniques 4.01, 4.06, 4.57

Henry, J and the course team (2006, 2010) 'Creativity, Cognition and Development" Book 1 B822 Creativity, Innovation and Change.

Henry, J (2010) ‘Set Breakers’ Henry (P. 96)

Kolb, D.A. 1984 Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and Development, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

McCaskey, M.B. (1988) ‘The challenge of managing ambiguity’, in Pondy, L.R, Boland, R.J and Thomas, H (eds) Managing Ambiguity and Change, new York, pp 2-11

Henry, J & Martin J (2010) Book 2 Managing Problems Creatively

Schon, A.A. (1983) The Reflective Practioner: How Professionals think in Action, London: Temple Smith

Tassoul, M, & Buijs, J ( 2007, )'Clustering: An Essential Step from Diverging to Converging', Creativity & Innovation Management, 16, 1, pp. 16-26, Business Source Complete, EBSCOhost, viewed 22 February 2014.

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Teenagers and technology

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Tuesday, 11 Jun 2013, 11:11

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Fig.1. Letters from Iwa Jima. Clint Eastwood directed Movie.

In one of those bizarre, magic ways the brain works, last nigmt I watched the Clint Eastwood film 'Letters from Iwo Jima' then stayed up reading in bed (quest for a very specific paper/set of papers on teenagers/young adults, health, presription medication) while waiting for my own teenagers to come in from a concert in Brighton.

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Fig.2. Last minute reading for H809 TMA01

I stumbled upon 'Teenagers and Technology' by Chris Davies and Rebecca Eynon.

After a chapter of this I did a One Click on Amazon and kept on reading through the next couple of chapters.

I kept reading once they got home.

My mind constructed a dream in which instead of bagging letters home from soldiers, I found myself, Japanese of course, constructing, editing and reassembling some kind of scroll or poster. I could 're-enter' this dream but frankly don't see the point - it seems self-evident. I'll be cutting and pasting my final thoughts, possibly literally on a 6ft length of backing wall paper (I like to get away from a keyboard and screen from time to time). Reinforced by a Business School module, B822 Creativity Innovation and Change I found that 'working with dreams' and 'keeping a dream diary' are some of the tools that can be used.

If I wish to I could re-enter this dream over the next few months as a short cut to my subconscious.

We'll see.

I'm not sure how you'd come up with a Harvard Reference for a dream.

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Fig.3. fMRI scan - not mine, though they did me a few years ago

Perhaps in 20 years time when we can where an fMRI scanner like a pair of headphones a set of colourised images of the activity across different parts of the brain could be offered.

Dream on smile

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Moving on ...

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Tuesday, 11 Jun 2013, 11:18

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Here in Lewes we shut the town centre down for a march as often as we can.

It all stems from 5th November. We had only been here a couple of months and we were enrolled in a Bonfire Society. That was 13 years ago.

The town also has a Moving on parade for all primary schools in the district, not just the town, but from outlying villages. The town centre is closed to traffic and kids, dressed up, carrying banners and whatnot on a theme, march through town and end it with a party in the Paddock - a large field, formerly part of the earthworks around the 11th century Lewes Castle.

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It helps to make an occasion of something when we move on. We're rather good at it:

  • Christenings
  • Marriage
  • Death
  • Birthdays
  • Anniversaries
  • Graduation

I'm down for Brighton or will try to enroll in Versailles for my graduation. I skipped my first nearly three decades ago. I just didn't feel like moving on. I hadn't felt I'd had an education to justify the fuss. My fault, not theirs. I put in the hours and came out with an OK degree but that isn't why I'll remember my undergraduate years.

I should mark moving on, and away from this blog. It logs, day by day, and in the background countless pages of hidden notes. It has carried me through the Masters in Open & Distance Education.

H809, my bonus track, will mark the end.

For this reason I am migrating most of the content and the journey it records to an external blog.

My Mind Bursts

From time to time I'll post a note at the bottom of the page to say this is where it'll be from June.

My moving on.

By May, I'll also know if the next few years have been set up. We'll see. I may even be back at the OU in some capacity. I rather

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Things I wished I'd known when I started the MAODE three years ago (I've finished, I'm doing H809 as CPD - already!)

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Tuesday, 11 Jun 2013, 11:56

A thorough introduction to the platform and tools as a common 16 hours to all modules.

An afternoon, face-to-face tutorial? Through OU Students regionally if not with your tutor. Perhaps through Alumni support groups in Google Hang outs or some such?

This may sound like anathema to the online, distance learning purists, but I wonder if the OU will have to 'turn itself inside out' and have undergrads on campus - not just postgrad doctoral students. As 'traditional' universities offer everything the OU and a handful of other distance learning specialists around the world used to have as 'unique selling points' they will be able to offer it all: e-learning support for resident students, e-learning for distance learners and blended learning for everyone in between.

Turn the Michael Young building into the OU's first Hall of residence.

If I go into academia I will want to teach even if my 'job' is research. I can think of no better way, intellectually, to master (literally) my art and subject than by supporting others. Knowing some star 'educators' in other institutions I wonder if tutors would gain also from greater contact. The weekly tutorial (at a price) is feasible through Google Hangouts.

I digress:

H809, understandably is a module to take once you have several modules under your belt, however, H809 light, say these first couple of weeks, might be an invaluable, even open and free 'stand alone'. I would have scrutinised more closely, fewer papers had I known what I know now.

These first few weeks has been applied learning - using the OU Library not simply as an exercise. Invaluable.

(p.s. cats were fighting in the street. I got up to survey the aftermath and couldn't get back to sleep. Why not catch up on H809 as a few postings from fellow students suggests I am getting a tad behind this week).

Don't get behind. The 'tick boxes' on the VLE 'ladder' are a blunt instrument. Every exercise deserves a 'tick box' too, though I understand why the OU wouldn't do this - it starts to smack of primary school. It really is the case (like exercise), that a a couple of hours every day is better than trying to do it all at the weekend, or worse, abandoning it for a week/10 days because catching up is a monster. If this happens seriously think about abandoning that week - keep up with everyone else first as learning with them is better than learning alone.

Isolation is a state of mind, or a behavioral issue. The sooner you learn to tip the contents of your mind out on your lap the better. Learning together is a joy.

Make time to get your head into gear in the first few weeks. If you have to give it more time than the course notes suggest put in the extra hours so that you 'get it' otherwise you will struggle all the way through. You can't do much about is as an EMA approaches if you're still asking 'but ?' about weeks 1-3.

There is no need to print anything off! Get an iPad and a Kindle. Get your digital literacy skills up to speed ASAP.

Write it all down. The default button in this OU Blog is private. Use it as a learning journal, portfolio, digital notebook, aide memoire.

Take the initiative. Meet online in week one. Buddy up, agree a time. Nothing beats meeting your fellow travellers. Google Hangouts work. The nuttiest one I remember was a 'Pyjamma party' - all above board and 'propper' but given the time differences some were in bed and woke up for it. I guess it requires the 'hyper gregarious' character in the group to do this.

Don't get distracted:

Most don't blog at all ... it should fit in to the regular programme.

Contribute to student forums always, even use RSS feeds but get used to putting the next activity first otherwise you can expend too much of the week's allocated hours discussing the first couple of activities. Enough is enough. Get the other activities out of the way then come back.

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Time to celebrate

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Two celebrate completing H810 I have bought myself this. Christopher Alexander is often quotes during the Masters in Open and Distance Education - to design e-learning is like constructing a building.

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And then because it's Amazon I find there is another treat, going back a year, from B822 Creativity, Innovation and Change.

Techniques%2520of%2520Structured%2520Problem%2520Solving.JPG

The only problem is - we have no shelves. None. Our last house I had a 'study' with floor to ceiling shelves and as many books. Five years after moving the books are still in storage ...

I do books. E-Books. Shelves are redundant. Even a small room can look big if it doesn't feature a stack of books.

I recommend both.

I always ask this, and often respond by going out to get the book in question, but do you have a book you'd recommend?

P.S. I have signed up for H809: Practise Based Educational Technology ... so you got me for a few more months. (If I get onto a PhD programme I might be here for another three years ... )

 

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Who are the leading learning theorists and schools of thought?

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Wednesday, 28 Nov 2012, 05:15

LEADERS  IN LEARNING:

Donald Clark offers a list of 50 learning theorists

I've been +adding to it. Who are we missing?

GREEKS
Socrates
Plato
Aristotle
RELIGIOUS LEADERS
Jesus
Mohammed
+ Confucius
ENLIGHTENMENT
Locke
+Hobbes
Rousseau
Wollstonecraft
+ Hagel
+ Machiavelli
PRAGMATISTS
James
Dewey
MARXISTS
Marx
Gramsci
Althusser
BEHAVIOURISTS
Pavlov
Skinner
Bandura
CONSTRUCTIVISTS
Piaget
Bruner
Vygotsky
+Engestrom
HUMANISTS
Maslow
Rogers
Illich
Gardener
SCHOOLS
Montessori
Friere
Steiner
John Seely Brown
+ Christopher Alexander
+ Donald Schon
+ Rogers
INSTRUCTIONALISTS
Ebbinghaus
Harris
Mazur
Black & William
E-LEARNING
Jay Cross
Martin Weller
Grainne Conole
Agnes Kukulska-Hulme
Jilly Salmon
Helen Beetham
Rhona Sharpe
Chris Pegler
Jane Seale

TECHNOLOGY ANALYSTS
McLuhan
Postman
Schank
Kelly
Shirky
GAMES
Prensky (NO!)
Gee
USABILITY &EVALUATION
Norman
Nielsen
Krug
MEDIA & DESIGN
Mayer & Clark
Reeves & Nass
INFORMAL LEARNING
Csikszentmihalyi
Cross
Zuckerburg ?!
INTERNET LEARNING
Page & Brin
Bezos ?!
Hurley & Chen
INTERNET CONTENT
Sperling
Wales
Khan
OPEN SOURCE
Torvalds
Moodle guy
+ Wiki
+ MOOC
+ WordPress
TRAINING
Bloom
Biggs
Bateson
Belbin
Mager
Gagne
Kolb
Kirkpatrick

Please offer suggestions to add or delete ...

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Reflection on keeping an OU Blog

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Thursday, 7 Feb 2013, 07:04

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Fig. 1. The Open University's Masters in Open and Distance Education (MAODE).

Expressed as a Wordle. A personal collection of key influencers based on those tagged in this blog. Includes my own reading and indulgences.

On Friday, at midday, this blog reached a significant milestone.

I've been at it for 33 months. I've blogged the best part of FIVE modules now - most of which required or invited some use of the blog platform (or another). I required little encouragement - I used to keep a diary and have found since 1999 that in their digital form they are an extraordinarily versatile way to gather, consider, share and develop ideas.

The investment in time, on average, an hour a day in addition to - though sometimes instead of coursework over 1000+ days.

(This excludes 8 months I spent on the Masters in Open and Distance Learning in 2001)

To mark this event, and as I need to go through this online diary, this e-journal, this 'web-log' (as they were also once momentarily called) ahead of some exciting meetings coming up next week I thought a simple task might be to click through the tags to identify who have been the key influencers in my reading and thinking over the last two and a half years.

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Fig.2. Another way of looking at it. Betham, Conole and Weller are key MOADE authors from the Open University. John Seely Brown is a vital undercurrent, Engestrom one of several enthusiasms like Vygostky. While Gagne, second hand hardback, needs to be on your desk for frequent reference.

What I thought would take an hour has taken nearly 40 hours.

Clicking on a tag opens a corner of my head, the notes take me back to that day, that week, that assignment or task. It also takes me back to the discussions, resources and papers. And when I find an error the proof-reader in me has to fix. Aptly, as we approach November 5th, and living in Lewes where there are marches and fireworks from late October for a couple of weeks peaking of course all evening on the 5th, my head feels as if someone has accidentally set light to a box of assorted fireworks.

Just as well. Meetings these days are like a viva voce with eager ears and probing questions - they want the content of my mind and whatever else I bring to the subject after thirty years in corporate training and communications.

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Fig. 3. Wordle allows you to say how many words you want to include in the mix. To create weight I had to repeat the names I consider most important twice, three or four times in the list. I also removed first names as Wordle would have scattered these into the mix independently like peppercorns in a pan of vegetable stock.

The Task

  • List all authors who have been part of my learning and thinking over the last couple of years.
  • Include authors that my antennae have picked up that are relevant to my interest in learning, design, the moving image and the english language.
  • Visualise this and draw some conclusions

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Fig.4. This even makes three of the key protagonists look like an advertising agency Gagne, Beetham and Conole.

The Outcome

I can never finish. Take this morning. I stumble upon my notes on three case studies on the use of e-portfolios from H807 which I covered from February 2010-September 2010. To begin with I feel compelled to correct the referencing in order to understand the value, pertinence and good manners (let alone the legal duty) to cite things correctly. (Even though this post was locked - a 'private' dump of grabs and my thoughts).

Then I add an image or two.

These days I feel a post requires a visual experssion of its contents to open and benefits from whatever other diagrams, charts or images you can conjure from your mind or a Google Search - 'the word' + images creative commons - is how I play it.

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Fig. 5. From David Oglivy's book 'Ogilvy on advertising' - a simple suggestion - a striking image, a pertinent headline and always caption the picture. Then write your body copy.

A background in advertising has something to do with this and the influence of David Ogilvy.

 

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

I spend over two hours on the first of three case studies in just one single post. At the time I rubbished e-portfolios. The notes and references are there. Tapped back in I can now make something of it. A second time round the terms, the ideas - even some of the authors are familiar. It makes for an easier and relevant read. What is more, it is current and pertinent. A blog can be a portfolio - indeed this is what I'd recommend.

From time to time I will have to emerge from this tramp through the jungle of my MAODE mind.

Not least to work, to sleep, to cook and play.

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Fig. 6. In a word

USEFUL LINKS

Wordle

Date duration calculator

REFERENCE

Gagne, R.N. (1965) Conditions of Learning Holt, Rinehart and Winston

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Beware the 'unhappy valley' of storytelling

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Saturday, 20 Oct 2012, 20:44

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Fig.1 Beware the 'unhappy valley' of storytelling

I was introduced to this concept at the Open University Business School Residential for 'Creativity, Innovation & Change'. The thought is that in business - and I believe this applies to politics too - you can apply narrative but only take it so far. Case studies work, anecdotes snd short stories too but take care about how far you apply it before you. call on professional input.

Producing narrative drama for training I will plan a treatment then take this to a professional writer - people with credits for drama series or serials. Anything less can sink you into this 'unhappy valley'. This also applies to casting actors and using a director with a track record in drama. What you want is something creditable.

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

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Wednesday, 22 Jan 2014, 09:44

 

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

 

CURRENT (September 2012 – January 2013):

H810: Accessible online learning: supporting disabled students

COMPLETED:

H800: Technology-enhanced learning: practices and debates

H807: Innovations in eLearning – Learning outcomes

B822: Creativity, Innovation and Change

H808: The e-learning professional

This completes the Masters in Open and Distance Education (MAODE)

NEXT (from February 2013):

Either

H817: Openness and innovation in e-learning. (which replaces

H807)

OR

H809 Practice-based research in educational technology

 THEN (from October 2013):

H818: The Networked Practitioner

 

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Creative Technique: Working with Dreams and/or Keeping a Dream Diary

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Tuesday, 17 Jul 2012, 07:56

This from B822 Creativity, Innovation and Change which ended in April.

Several reasons why as a technique it is out of the reach if most of us and impractical as a management tool.

a) What good is it 'dreaming up' something at random.

b) That has nothing to do with the course.

I found myself giving a presentation to an eager group in a crowded boardroom. I don't know why.

'and Jonathan is going to give you the criteria'.

And up I step, in a two piece suit with the manner of Montgomery addressing the troops - effusive, informed, consided and persuasive.

It went something like this:

"We human are blessed with an innate ability to float in water, though not necessarily fully clothed, or carrying a backpack and rifle."

Laughter.

"We should encourage swimming for a number of reasons: for the love of it, as a life skill, as a competitive sport and for fitness'.

At which point I am full conscious, which from a dream state meant 'I lost it'.

Why this dream?

I am reading a good deal on the First World War and I am swimming four or more times a week again after a long, slow easing back into the sport over the lt five months. I even got papers through yesterday which I only opened late in the evening before going to bed to say that I had passed the ASA Level 3 module on Sports Psychology (which makes 10// modules down on that 'Front'.

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exM sults!

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Thursday, 27 Feb 2014, 07:03

butof course i can't spell.


60%


Which is very interesting indeed, as my previous three modules all had an end of module assignment in which I scored something like 57, 59 and 43.

Giving an overal score of 66% How on earth did the Open Univerity Business School MBA Award Winnder get a distinction on every paper??? She didn't do B822!


What do I take from this that I hadn't already understood?


Prepare for an assignment as if it were an exam ... except you can cheat by refering to notes and resources and even rewrite from the top. But you MUST go through the agony of getting your head around the subject first.


Not that it mattered here but to get an A or distinction would have required proximity to a peer group wanting and capable of such grades and a tutor competing with colleagues to be the very best. We just hoped to pass.


Delighted also as an MBA module is well outside my comfort zone and sphere of professional interest.


It would be niave of me to say 'one to go' and think my postgraduate student days are over. My inclination is to pick up my final MAODE module in the next 9 months then take ... another MA in history specialising in the First World War. I may decamp to the University of Birmingham for this, though the OU are running lectures at the Imperial War Museum on WW1 this July 8th where I will be tomorrow as the IWM mark the hundreth anniversary of the establishment of the Royal Flying Corps.


My grandfather was a flight cadet in 1918 after 2 years as a machine gunner on the Western Front while my great uncle had got into the RFC age 16 and was a Flight Lieutenant piloting bombers ... age 18. If you are at all interested in all thing WW1 and the impending centenary come and join me in www.machineguncorps.com.


Do you have a relation who served? Most of us did.

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E-learning design and development process @ Brightwave

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Thursday, 24 May 2012, 12:49

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Brightwave's e-learning production process

 

Great to have a few months between modules as it gives me the opportunity to look beyond the MAODE modules at what interests me most: learnign and development in a corporate setting, the practicalities of enhancing the skills and building on the motivations and interests of people in their daily working lives.

The above chart adds detail to a familiar productoin process.

The benefit of turning to an outside supplier for such services (and for the the supplier to call upon the specialist skills of freelancers), is the accountability, the clarity of the stages, the parameters set by budgets and schedules and the lack of politics, as well as the engagement with a diversity of cultures, experiences and background which you simply do no get when everything is carried out in-house, the biggest bugbear of most providers in the the tertiary sector who insist on doing it all themselves.

Watch some of their videos

Particularly impressed with Laura Overton who I have heard speak at Learning Technologies in the past.

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Laura Overton

Brightwave, quite rightly, include a transcript with these face paced, tightly edited, packed interviews.

This doesn't preclude the benefit of taking notes. I also cut and paste the transcript then go through highlighting, re-arranging the text and doing what Jakob Neilsen would call making it 'web friendly'.

Even if I don't share this online, the act of doing this is a vital way to engage and memorise the information.

I've come to understand in the last few days (B822 End of Module Exam) that a 'mnemonic' is any devise or technique that aids memory, so reading this start the mylenations process, comment and those tracks become established. Cut and paste, doing something of your own with the content, go follow the links, add links of your own, cut and paste into a blog (here or externally), then share it into Facebook or Twitter and pick up others who know more or less and can contribute.

All of this is a very human way og aggregating and securing knowledge.

Ideally everyone would be milling around my garden right now, we'd pick up the conversation, then drift away to other things.

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Steve Jobs in a word

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I'm just about through the Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson and I'm inclined to give it one more pass so that I can blog-along and make some of the insights stick. This second reading has got me quite tearful; i want to say was it worth it? Could he have been a little less intense and so not theinsensitive sh1t that so often manufested itself. 'Intense' is Steve Jobs in one word and largely how the biographer wraps it up. Go read then come join the 'Steve Jobs Walter Isaacson discussion group on Linkedin.
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B882 meets H807

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Monday, 18 Jun 2012, 13:27

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The module ended 10 days ago so what am I doing having a dream about the thing? And given the course, 'Creativity, Innovation & Change' then once again, despite my best efforts, I can share with you that 'Working with Dreams' is a tricky one for the office.

The dream was about collaboration, not in teams, but in partnership. I'm re-reading the Walter Isaacson biography and tossing notes onto Twitter and Facebook.

My thoughts dwelt on the nature of close collaboration, how likeminds may be LESS useful than minds where there is conflict. The key is to have a common goal, indeed, very different 'personalities' by type, experience, background, response are beneficial so long as the 'GOAL' is a significant motivation that overrides everything else.

For anyone caring to join in I've set up a Steve Jobs: Walter Isaacson discussion group on Linkedin.

Currently I am talking to myself (was it not ever thus).

P.S. My bloods have come but negative, so I feel like taking a cold shower and changing scenes.

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Put Bill Gates and Steve Jobs through the Kirton Adaptor Innovator personality inventory and what do you get?

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Sunday, 4 May 2014, 09:41

Re-reading the Steve Jobs biography with four months in hand before another MAODE module I am struck by what it tells you about Gates and Jobs and how self-evidently one is an adaptor 'doing things better' while the other is an innovator 'doing things differently'.

This drawn from doing a KAI personality inventory and all the reading around these tests for B822.

I came out at 144 on a scale of 160; I'd envisage Jobs as somewhere on the outer edges of 150 while Gates gets a 20 or 30, neither would be in the 60-130 zone for two thirds of respondents.

If they ever did one of these are the results known?

As most managers do observation and experience of a person's behaviour and responses must suffice.

I feel a desire to revisit H807 'Innovations in E-learning' while mixing it up with B822 'Creativity, Innovation and Change'.

I can do this through the 1000+ entries I have here and by refreshing my mind from the current and archived blogs of others blogging here currently (though few if any blog there way through the MBA programme and I am yet to find anyone blogging about B822).

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Mind-map, Mind-dump and the written examination

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Friday, 27 Apr 2012, 08:55

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Faced with an exam this is what I do. Here is Block 1, ostensibly Part 1 of a three part examination.

I've grouped sets of ideas and reduced them to a mnemonic or phrase.

These become the 'peg' from which I recreate something not dissimilar to the above on a sheet of Rough Paper.

In practice, never having done an OU exam before, I used an ENTIRE question book, filling it with part 1, part 2, and part 3 doodles and lists such as these.

When I saw the questions I took out a coloured pen, they happened to be red, orange and yellow.

I then circled those chunks of ideas that I planned to use for that question

a) seeing that per question I was essentially sticking to the appropriate block and

b) ensuring that there was no (or mininmal) over lap.

In fact 'SPICES' and 'CHALKPR' (as I rephrased it) cover some of the same ground in defining a creative organisation so I used the first in one question and the latter in another.

Did it work? We'll see.

As for the learning experience?

However much I dislike exams I am reminded of the extraordinary value of having to refresh, consolidate and build your knowledge. It had to stick for a few hours for an exam, but I feel that without the exam I would never have compressed my thinking or seen how many of the ideas are remarkably straightforward.

Were I designing learning I would certainly want an examination during and at the end.

Not just the written paper, but multichoice, open debate, a testing tutorial designed to get the synapses working ... many ways to get students to engage with the cotent and make it their own so that it can be applied and remembered.

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Is the written exam an expensive and archaic indulgence that fails e student and the institution?

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Saturday, 5 May 2012, 06:46

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Sitting an exam for the first time in 28 years got me thinking how so much is assessed by assignments and 'doing'.

Just clinging to a pen for more than 5 minutes is a novelty to me.

Surely the technology we now have is capable of 'getting into my head' to show that I do or do not know my stuff. But here's the difference, have I been taught to pass an exam which could only prepare me to become an academic, or have I been applied to apply what I have learned which is very different.

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My first ever OU exam in 2 hours

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Saturday, 5 May 2012, 06:50

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My first and only ever exam too as 'normal' MAODE modules don't require them relying instead on asignments.

I wish I was this keyed up before tackling an assignment, that feeling that I can now sit down and write actively, with a smile on my face, for three hours.

A lesson I may take forward, putting far more into the preparation of an essay so that I write fluidly rather than assembling stuff.

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Carnivore to Vegan

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Saturday, 5 May 2012, 06:54

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I forgot to mention this one but two months ago I was given nasty cholesterol score and a dear friend and neutrionist rather than see me on satins gave me a comprehensive health review, some don'ts and does (recipes) and some supplements.

Six weeks on and my pot belly has gone, my poo still floats and I fart a lot and my cooking range has been extended.

I was also supposed to give up alcohol and coffee; whilst the former is down to close to zero I drink even more coffee, though it is black. My vegetarian daughter is delighted and our shopping bill is down 30%.

Porridge with soya milk every breakfast, fresh pesto and pasta at lunch, home made soup in the evening sometimes turned into a casserole or with brown rice.

And as well as coaching the local swim club I now swim with it too; the extraordinary insight at being the swimmer being coached for the first time in 32 years a bonus. So a healthy mind and a healthy body, both thanks to The OU as it was while living and working up at Milton Keynes that all of this happened.

And I have an exam tomorrow. Just surving this far through the module has been an achievement as life around it has been somewhat difficult.

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B822 exam: 52 hours to go!

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Sunday, 17 Jun 2012, 09:13
Exam preparation. I am spending more time writing out by hand to get my head/body used to this ancient practice of scribling rather than tapping or increasingly speaking what I want to express. Using 12 mnemonics to cover a substantial chunk of the course, each a catalyst into deeper, easily expanded threads on personality types, creative organisations, frameworks, cps techniques, barriers, specific examples and so on. This process must be drawing to a close as I now have a master key mnemonic that ensures a cue into them all. 'My PHD VOICE PR' is of course as meaningless to anyone else as sharing a dream. These 12 letters are the first for all the B822 mnemonics that I have devised, learnt and repeatedly tested myself on; they vary in length from 4 to 15 letters, thus giving me a matrix of some 100 facts/events/issues. These, a 'mind dump' in the first 10-15 minutes form my very own 'smorgasbord' from which I will draw my responses when I finally turn the page and look at the questions. 5 minutes to make my three choices, then 5-10 minutes on an essay plan for each. I give myself then 45 minutes to write each answer and only once all three are 'in the bag' in some form will I allot my remaining time, potentially 5 minutes on each. Can my wrist sustain writing for such a marathon. I doubt it. Is it too late to scribble out longhand for three hours on the trot? I'll do a mock exam this afternoon and tomorrow afternoon and hope my hand doesn't get unduly blistered.
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B822 'Creativity, Innovation & Change' Hear what John Cleese has to say on creativity

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Tuesday, 17 Apr 2012, 21:11

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This works for me and plays directly into B822 'Creativity, Innovation & Change'.

Listen then act.

John Cleese on Creativity

I'm going create the space and make the time! And play.

  1. Space
  2. Time
  3. Time
  4. Humour

FURTHER READING

Amabile, T. M. & Sensabaugh, S. J. (1985).  Some factors affecting organizational creativity:  A brief report.  A paper presented at the Creativity Innovation & Entrepreneurship Symposium at the George Washington University, Washington, D. C.

Ekvall, G. & Arvonen, J. (1983). Creative organizational climate:  Construction and validation of a measuring instrument.  Stockholm, Sweden:  The Swedish Council for Management and Organizational Behavior.

Gryskiewicz, S. S. (1982).  Creative leadership development and the Kirton adaption-innovation inventory.  An invited paper delivered at the 1982 Occupational Psychology Conference of the British Psychological Society meeting on "Breaking Set:  New Directions in Occupational Psychology" at Sussex University, Brighton, England.

 

MacKinnon, D. W. (1961). Creativity in architects. In D. W.

MacKinnon (Ed.), The creative person (pp. 237–251). Berkeley: University of California, Institute of Personality Assessment Research.

MacKinnon, D. W. (1978). In search of human effectiveness: Identifying and develop

 

MacKinnon, D. W.  (1978). In search of human effectiveness:  Identifying and developing creativity.  Buffalo, New York:  Bearly Limited.

 

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Hostede and nationall differences when it comes to corporate enterprise

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Sunday, 17 Jun 2012, 09:10

P

U

G

I

Gives me:


Power Distance

Uncertainty avoidance

Gender (masculinity/feminity to describe the culture not the mix of people)

Individualism/collectivism

 

I need to remember this as:


Pd

Ua

G

Ua

and the author Hofestede and a date.

On reflection, none of the above work. So I go for:

Power Dual Gender INC

which gives me:

  • Power Distance
  • Uncertainty Avoidance
  • Masculine/Femine
  • Individualism/Collectivisim

 

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How to define a 'wicked' problem?

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Monday, 24 Feb 2014, 15:12

'I could use a colourful swimming costume'.

This pegs the following ideas:

Interconnectness
Complicatedness
Uncertainty
Ambiguity
Conflict
Societal Constraints

And recalling the authors Mason & Mitroff (1981)

However, I need to visualise this. Perhaps the actor James Mason (in his Nabakov role of Herbert Herbert from 'Lolita') with a Russian girl called 'Olga Mitroff'. Everyone around them are wearing colourful Versace swimming costumes whereas their's are plain black. She is black and young, suggesting the 'complexity' required here and they are standing on the end of a springboard, like walking the plank, and holding hands to give me 'conflict' and 'connectedness' even disaproval from those around them and so 'societal constraints'. All I need to do now is peg this further with an orange flavoured fruit Polo. And then be able to add a couple of relevant sentences to each. Assuming there is a question from which this 'mind dump' can provide some detail.

Why does this all matter?

I've been learning in B822 how to apply a variety of creative problem solving techniques to business problems; both the theory and practice says the the problem you are dealing with has to indicate all the above to warrant a creative problem solving approach.


Beyond the exam I can and will apply this to what I do which has in the past been solving communications problems using creativity in the execution of ideas.

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Creative Problem Solving B822

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Friday, 21 Feb 2014, 17:46

I stumbled upon this. It is timely for anyone faced with an exam on 24th April for B822 'Creativity, Innovation and Change', so much so I am going to transcribe this, analyse and learn its lessons as going through old exam papers this short video, in a fun and engaging way, answers to questions precisely.

This is why I chose to study B822 as an elective within the Masters in Open & Distance Education.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFYLeT9q8tk

 

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