OU blog

Personal Blogs

Design Museum

Life Goes On ... what about you?

Visible to anyone in the world

Did Covid take the wind out of your sails? Physiological or psychologically? Just a matter of timing, circumstances or health? Have you reassessed? Personally, I could never go back to full-time work, even before the pandemic a 4 day week job and some additional freelance work was enough - variety matters. These days a 3 day week, or 2 job shares and some freelance bits and pieces suits me. Lockdown has shown me categorically that I am ill-suited to an office job, that I am content in my own company for much of the time - getting on with a thing, with moments of intense activity during the week and month. Project work.

What about you?

Has reading, thinking and writing up ideas got you?

Have other matters taken priority?

I lost a sister in April. More so than my parents dying (it happens to all of us eventually, it has to) I felt gutted, turned inside out and determined to live in a different way and at a different pace. I am doing what I dearly wish all my siblings had found a way to keep doing: art. I would have been my sister's salvation; it is what our late mother gave us - teaching us to draw and paint long before we could read or write, establishing our skills and interests many years ahead of our peers.

The dry weather has helped create a semi-permanent studio/workshop. Attending life drawing classes since November 2016 I have finally thought about working some of these in paint; watercolour for now, though there are pastels, acrylics and oils waiting to be deployed once I have a more permanent set up. 

And if someone is going to pay me to do a thing, then I volunteer. I teach and coach swimming anyway but will be working with primary school kids outdoors on a nature reserve and have taken on some social media tasks for the Green Party.

Busy in a way I like.

I'd study for a Masters in Fine Art if I had the money. Had I taken my late mother's advice I would have done this 20 years ago. I'm a year through the PGCE she said I'd find handy to have. Then again, this is the person who tried to persuade me to return to school, four A'Levels completed, to add science qualifications and become a doctor ... 

We are all influenced and persuaded one way or another. 

Who have you influencers been? Parent? Grandparent? Hero? 

Permalink 3 comments (latest comment by Jessica Shier, Saturday, 30 July 2022, 16:45)
Share post
Design Museum

Five Years blogging here : time to reflect

Visible to anyone in the world

Why is Oxford, with the Oxford Internet Institute and a renowned Education Department not joining the e-learning revolution?

700 years of taking things at their own pace? Their research shows that it adds nothing to their successful and 'elite' model of teaching and research? They don't need to attract students. There can be over 100 applying for every available place.

They do however need to diversify.

It's taken 30 years to tip the profile of the Oxford student from 72% privately educated public school boy to around 49% privately educated and a 50/50 male/female split. By not joining in will they perpetuate the 'Ivory Towers' impression?

There are other reasons to develop massive open online courses, not least to appear open and accessible. The University of Southampton, by contrast, home to Sir Tim Berners-Lee and the only PhD programme on WebScience, have produced nearly a dozen 'massive open online courses' (MOOCs) over the last 18 months. I believe all, or most are on the FutureLearn platform; all are also embedded on the Southampton virtual learning environment (VLE) for students to do to supplement their course work. This I see as an important, valuable and better way to blend the learning experience. It would have been my prefered way of learning, offering some flexibility on the traditional course of lectures.

Is the Open University the only one to have entire degree courses online?

Not a book, not a residential, no face-to-face tutorials either.

By the time I had completed the MAODE, five modules over 3 1/2 years I assumed many other entire degrees, let alone individual courses would be offered in this way. They are not. A MOOC delivering two/three hours of crafted, scaffolded learning a week over a few weeks is demanding enough ... but a module that runs for six months, with 12/16 hours, even 22 hours a week? Though a 'prestige' course the OU MBA programme will spend, I believe, around £3m and three years creating a single one of its modules. These are expected to run for eight to ten years.

How much therefore to design, write and produce five of these, let alone the running and administrative costs?

Is it the right thing to do? E-learning is not a feature film. It is more like a garden; it must change and adapt to the seasons and climate change.

There was no e-learning climate two decades ago; it's the ozone of learning.

FutureLearn prides itself on responding to feedback. I've seen many subtle, responsive changes: several ways through discussion threads like this one which often run to several THOUSAND comments, pooling of creation skills amongst those producing the courses and greatly improving the forms of assessment: quizzes that are masterfully written to teach and to test, tasks for peer review that are part of the learning experience and now opportunities to sign up for a written exam - you pay a fee to attend a test centre, take the exam, and submit your paper. Of course, at this stage the idea of 'Open' is greatly weakened because once again their are parameters and barriers caused by geography and cost, probably also of confidence and familiarity with the formal written exam away from the keyboard and screen.

I reflect, today, on FIVE YEARS of formally studying Open and Distance Education. My blog runs to over 2,500 posts. What next? The same again? I've neither found a home in academia, or in corporate learning and development. Have I studied the wrong subject? I hanker forever to be telling stories. I thought I would successfully make the transition from linear-based video learning and development where I'd worked for some  twenty years, but have not and to rub my face in it the demand for video is finally increasing. Though never again the broadcast like budges we had for multiple cameras and live shoots, for a mini-bus of actors and a director from 'The Bill,' and special effects from The Mill.

I have had my eye on the Creative Writing Course for at least four of the last five years, but felt, for a change, I'd finish something. Instead, I find I am back in March 2006 going through two large 'Really Useful Boxes' which contain the printed off manuscripts of two novels, a couple of screenplays, a TV play and assorted short stories. 

Is this my life? Dominated by a history of making the wrong choices?

Permalink
Share post
Design Museum

Flick the arrow and go and do something else for a while

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Thursday, 22 Nov 2012, 11:36

Twister%2520Flicker%2520Arrow.JPG

Fig. 1. Twister

From time to time I give this a flick - usually when I should be concentrating on an assignment (I am). I just desire to take my head somewhere else for some light relief. For each quadrant put in each of: sport, cooking, fiction (films and novel) and visual arts (drawing, photography)

Today it is the film 'Groundhog Day' - so  a bit of fiction and visual arts in one

This has relevance to learning. There is a moral tale. It even promotes the idea that as a result of effort over time you can be anything. OK, he is an arse for a good while, but then Phil Connors (Bill Murray) learns all kinds of things from 19th Century French poetry to ice-carving, he is a doctor and classical and jazz pianist.

If you know the film, download the script.

Here it is

This is revealing as it gives a half dozen more twists to Phil's antics (good and bad) and gives away the basis of the film - The Frog Prince. He gets tattoos and some biker chicks, carves in stone as well as ice, studies philosophy as well as literature, the drums as well as the piano ... robs a bank as well as the security van and has a long relationship with Nancy until he gets bored with it (and her).

Enjoy

 

Permalink 1 comment (latest comment by Rachel S, Thursday, 22 Nov 2012, 20:59)
Share post
Design Museum

Video expands the mind ... and use of the Internet

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Tuesday, 20 Mar 2012, 16:58

 

 

GoldernGuysofVideo.jpg

I call it the coming of 'WikiTVia;' the tipping point where we view and listen to wikipedia. This will engage, persuade, educate and entertain audiences the way reading can never do (however many links you have).

Jakob Nielsen and his team, as well as academics, are stripping the blogosphere bare to understand how it works.

Birds of a Feather: How personality influences blog writing and reading.

It ain't like you imagine.

Those who generate content are a fraction of total users, 1% is the figure Nielsen gives. This 1% generate content beyond the ken of lesser mortals; you may say they are obsessive about it. Nielsen cites the Amazon book reviewer who wrote 1,275 reviews in one year (is that all). I liken these people to what advertisers call 'champions.' The key influencers of a cohort or group, early adopters, who innovate first and do so with conviction and passion.

Nielsen eleaborates on this and calls it 90-9-1.

Taking this into the realm of video my intuition supposes that these 'Golden Boys & Girls' of content generation will be and are the same people who will have a Flip camera in their pocket (or simply use their phone) to capture or generate orignial content then upload. Content generated on a theme, from a premise, that has some link or basis in its text form will generate an explosive interest in the subject matter beyond its original audience. Video has this power to engage, to persuade, to intrigue and interest the viewer.

Rich content enriches minds.

VJs ?

Like DJs they have a following.

Though the content should be king, not its author.

Me?

I'm this 1%.

Permalink
Share post

This blog might contain posts that are only visible to logged-in users, or where only logged-in users can comment. If you have an account on the system, please log in for full access.

Total visits to this blog: 13123189