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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Sunday, 10 Mar 2013, 00:10

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Fig.1 Baked veggies - assorted everything and oodles of spices and seasoning.

This looks pretier than my flabby belly, but going from 90kg to 84kg in the last 12 months could be my most valuable legacy of the Open University.

Let me explain.

This is year two of a postgraduate degree in open and distance education (MAODE). Finding appealing the jobs ad at the bottom of our VLE (this) for someone to do social media for the Open University Business School (I blog a lot, I do social media, I've been active online since ... the mid 1990s I suppose, with a blog since 1999). Anyway, they say yes and then I think 'oops'.

'Oops' finds me staying with a lovely family in Milton Keynes during the week.

A home. And Mum who is a neutrionist (also works at the OU)

She is much more than this, the 'good life' writ large with a garden that is a small holding. It isn't just food, it is a way of life.

The sceptic at some stage shares a medical crisis - cholesterol at 7.7 and the prospect of a lifetime popping a pill (Statins).

She says 'no'.

My wife (medical market research - she knows her pills) also says 'no'.

The answer is a radical change in diet.

I run with it. No question. Just go with it.

Out comes red meat (most of the time), all dairy and other suprising things. I ditch what I thought was a healthy bowl of muesli every morning with soya milk for plain porridge as the truth was the calories in the fruit muesli were huge.

So vegan for breakfast, vegetarian for lunch ... and to start with, perhaps a piece of chicken (no skin) more likely fish in the evening. I have rice milk in coffee. I very rarely touch cheese. Some of my favourite things are totally out - like duck sad like cassoulet.

A year on fish as the dish - helped by the fish landed fresh every day at Newhaven.

We're inb Lewes, East Sussex. I shop for the week and freeze cod, turbot, skate wings, mackeral et al.

A year on I return to the doctor for a blood test - Cholesterol 6.6.

Still too high, but achieved without a pill. My weight is down from 14 stone something to 13 stone something.

A teen vegetarian daughter is benefiting from a father's new found love for cooking all things veggie. My wife too has shed many pounds too. Our son gets the meat budget.

I'll graduate next year, but what may matter more is better health and a less indulgent view of food.

And I solve a life-time medical problem.

I am allergic to white flour.

Periods of nausea and asthma attacks

Six years ago the NHS had me at the top of the list to see a nutrionist then pulled the plug.

 

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Design Museum

E-scholar, digital scholar, e-prof or e-reader?

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Sunday, 13 Oct 2013, 13:50

We'll have dropped the suffix 'e' with a year and the descriptors such as 'digital' sooner.

Learners should not be defined by the technology they use, whether books, TV, computers, or interactive web-content; they should be defined by the processes of myelination that is going on regardlessly, in it's most mysterious ways, under our thick skulls.

Who indeed is the 'digital scholar', an academic now an 'e-reader' in 'Enter Subject Specialisms Here'.

Some answers are offered in Martin Weller's book 'The Digital Scholar'.

My favoured observation post is to watch out for this slippery fish in the OU Student Blog Roll, more a stream of fish-fry commencing their online, 'electronically-enhanced' learning journey, than a mere list, more news feed, though refreshing from the perspective of the new, rather than the rehearsed and practises mind.

Once a fish, now a fisherman?

I have another 12 months in these waters, more if I postpone completing the MA (more by accident than design, I've not registered for the next module yet - whatever that might be).

The choices are bewildering, not least because I can drift off to do something with a different Faculty.

Part of the brilliance of The OU to enable such choices. Creativity and Innovation with the Business School is attractive.

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H800 wk22 Activity A2a - notes and cryptic thoughts

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Sunday, 1 July 2012, 17:47

Large scale open source e-learning systems at the Open University UK Niall Sclater (2008)

Welcome to a mega-university (Daniel, 1996)

Requires exceptionally feature rich, robust and scalable e- learning systems.

Founded in 1069 not 1970(JV)

(Slight slip on the iPad there, but an interesting idea that we might be able to trace the origins of The OU to 1069 rather than 1969, which would place The OU as an older institution of the founding universities of Bologna in that century and the Oxford and Cambridge Colleges of a century later)

'Creativity is mistakes'

(Greyson Perry 2011. Search this blog for more)

I applaud the mistakes we make typing at a thousand words an hour on a keyboard that's akin to ice-skating in well-worn calf-skin slippers. This aren't Freudian slips they're breaks and laughs in our stream of consciouness; ideas we didn't know that had formed that break-out.

The OU 2008 to 2011

Was 180,000 OU students in 2008 now it is 210,000.

Was 7,000 associate lecturers now more like 8,000 or is it 10,000?

Online conferencing and e-assessment expertise disparate systems vs consolidation and unity of design LMS to restrict, present and monitor enrolled students.

+ collaborative activities through forums, blog and wikis.

Control as a means to acceptance therefore Open Source rather than commercial software vs fears about systems nor people being ready for it after the failure of UKe university.

Mark Dougiamas and Moodle with the leadership drive and qualities of Linux Tordvalds.

  • Understand the entire application
  • Optimize at every opportunity
  • Spot new requirements

Ensure that they are fulfilled

  1. Functionality
  2. Usability
  3. Documentation
  4. Community
  5. Security
  6. Support
  7. Adoption

Enabling socio-constructivist learning

  • Prisoners and the visually impaired.
  • Enhancement to the calendar system so that students can keep track of their work and tutors can keep track of them.
  • Additions of an eportfolio and audio both now semi-defunct.
  • Issues over deadlines, over responsibility for key functionality,  over whether to incorporate blogs or not, the value or otherwise of comments functionality and the delays over seeking consensus.

To Wiki OU or to wiki SP?

NB How to move from a primarily print-based educational paradigm to one that also effectively exploits the dynamic, interactive and communicative aspects of the Internet. p9

Rather like saying that we want to integrate text books that pop-up and exercise books that deliver assessments as a kind of origami; at some stage like a glob of stuff in a lava-lamp the new platform will spawn an entirely distinct way of learning.(JV)

Many in the faculty have been engaged for large parts of their working lives in the development of text for a large part of their working lives and do not have the inclination or skills to think about delivering parts of their courses as podcasts or wikis. p9

NB Enhancing the learning experience for students.

Ensuring central quality control, copyright clearance, branding and good design and high- quality audio recordings often means that faculty and tutors feel they have less autonomy and can be less creative than they wish. p10

Or abandon the institutional LMS for PLSs. p11

Not so much food for thought, than a smorgasbord; not so much an hour and a half to ponder, but the weekend and beyond, including walking the dogs and when asleep.

I dream in page flips on an iPad.

I've been engaged in some bizarre dream world in which multiple varieties of fish leap from one pool to another. I presume this is some intellectual dance that is going on and ought to take time out to reflect on this.

I blame it on the level of digital interactivity, not just this QWERTY keyboard typing thing (which I do with my eyes shut as a party piece), but the way I constantly exchange hands when using an iPad, flipping the page from portrait to horizontal, opening the page out or closing it down, wiping the tip of my little finger across the page to flip a page or roll down through content.

I even wonder if six years playing the flute and piano with some seriousness haa not made this adaptation all the more easy?

All I need now is a mouth-piece, something like a gum-shield or orthodontic plate so that I am given additional control to select and highlight by moving my tongue.

Never so far fetched as you may imagine.

Now answer the following:

What criteria should we use to assess whether our LMS is meeting our requirements?

Might we be better served by a different (possibly open source product)?

What are the benefits and the challenges of our institution’s engaging with an open source community, given its inevitable compromises and delays?

In what ways are we using our LMS to control the experience of learners, and how are we using it to empower them?

How can we avoid getting tied up in discussions surrounding technologies and keep our focus on finding solutions that enhance the learning experience for our students?

 

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New media, old thinking ...

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Sunday, 8 July 2012, 08:19

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.

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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?

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Who are you?

Go fishing and post your fishy-self image in the comment box!

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