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Murder in the Family and 'Uniformed Services'

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The Judge from the Channel 4 TV Series 'Murder in the Family'

90 minutes talking to 'Uniformed Services' and we came away with 6 or more projects, most major, some minor, to undertake over the next 18 months to support their tutors and students.

The easy part was to locate 6 episods of the court drama 'Murder in the Family' which is used to discuss court procedure and roles. This is now on Planet eStream where I can nip out the adverts and add some notes, even create a playlsist of all five episodes and create an interactive quiz at the end of each.

More complex and exciting will be working with students hoping to become drone pilots for the RAF and RN respectively. This could have me at sea - literally. Qualified to use a RIB they are short of volunteers to go out with the students.

And then 360 tours to create of a crime scene.

Video footage of gun and limber junior trials.

And surveillance work for conference centres and hotels.

CPR

Health, Fitness and Wellbeing to Armed Services entry standard ... 

Quite a mix. Quite exciting.


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Has much changed here?

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Thursday, 19 Sept 2013, 12:57

I'm delighted to say the the transformation is an enhancement and the improvements are seamless without any loss of what we had before ... a 'bulletin-board-cum-blog-thingey'. My previous post suggested I might have found a bolt-hole without Internet. It hasn't lasted.

I will get Internet access down the road (I had wanted a garden office but this desire became an insummountable barrier at home).

All that it requires from me is something I lack - self-discipline NOT to get distracted by email, which includes updated postings from forums and the likes of Linkedin (let alone a gaggle of family members on Facebook). AOL is the worst as I innocently go to check email and find 20 minutes later I am still clicking through the inviting gobbets of news and sensation that is offered. 

I had hoped to behave like the smoker trying to give up - I'll only smoke other people's fags. A very, very, very long time ago ... I can honestly say I have never smoked a cigarette since I turned 20.

Back to the Internet. Like Television.

Or diet. We are living in an age where self-control is vital. Having not had a TV for several months I was eventually pushed to buy one. Courtesy of Which? we now have a TV so Smart that it probably tells my brother in South Africa who is watching what .... we can Skype sofa to sofa. I just wonder if our antics could be recorded and posted on YouTube? Not my doing but any of the teenagers with the wherewithal just hit a record button somewhere.

In all this hi-tech I DO have a tool I'd recommend to anyone.

I've invested in an hour-glass. In runs for 30 minutes. While that sand is running all I may do is read and take notes. This might be an eBook, or a printed book, either way they are on a bookstand. I take notes, fountain pen to lined paper. What could be easier? The left hand may highlight or bookmark and turn a page, while the right writes?

This works as the filtering process of the knowledge that I am reading and want to retain needs to go through several steps in any case. The handwritten notes will be reduced again as I go through, typing up the ideas that have some resonance for me.

My current task has been 'How Europe went to war in 1914' by Christopher Clark.

I doubt my second thorough read will be the last. From notes I will start posting blogs and going into related social platforms to share and develop thoughts and in so doing be corrected while firming up my own views. I need this social interaction, to join the discussion if not the debate.

Meanwhile I will revisit Martin Weller's book on Digital Scholarship.

However swift the age of the Internet may be he suggests it will still take a person ten years to achieve the 'scholar' level ... whereas John Seely Brown recently reckoned this was now down to five years. i.e. through undergraduate and postgraduate levels and popping out the other end with a PhD in five years.

DIdn't an 18 year old who was home schooled just get called to the Bar?

She graduated with a law degree while contemporaries did A' Levels and finished High School and then did a year of pupillage I suppose.

The intellectual 'have's' of the future will, by one means of another, achieve degree status at this age. The Internet permits it.

School is far, far, far, far, far too lax.

It tends to the median if not the mediocre. Long ago it found a way to process kids as a genderless yeargroup instead of treading each student as an individual ... so let them skip a year, let them stay back a year ... allow them to expand and push subjects that appeal to them.

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New blog post

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Sunday, 25 Sept 2011, 11:34

Monday 26th Submit EMA (by previous Friday preferably) then a day off everything. I may go for a swim.

Tuesday 27th Have no choice but to accept that having been 34 for the last 16 years I am now 50. Take part in a conference call to discuss webinars. Birthday lunch or dinner, or both.

Wednesday 28th (if I am still living) get stuck into MOOC 2011 while attending 'The World of Learning' if only to speak to Laura Overton about benchmarking through 'Towards Maturity'.

Thursday 29th Attend and video an inaugural lecture. (Cherie Blair QC)

Friday 30th Supervise uploading between 6 and 15 interviews with our new MBA students to our website (Business School).

Saturday 31st fly to Grenoble, pick up hire car and head to Tignes for a weekend skiing on the glacier where I asked my wife to marry me 20 years ago.

Spend a fortnight skiing various European glaciers.

Some of the above is wishful thinking

(Three days later I have not submitted my EMA; I am working on it today. I should be doing a paper edit of some student interviews then will be cut in my absence on Monday. I need also to finish a script for an MBA workshop.)

 

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Legal Verdict

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A new and refreshing blog on the law

Legal Verdict

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Some mind enriching blogs on the arts, politics, law and business

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Tuesday, 20 Mar 2012, 14:52

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Wordpress Showcase

Dan Ariely

Dan Ariely does research in behavioral economics and tries to describe it in plain language. These findings have enriched my life, and my hope is that they will do the same for you.

Timothy B.Lee

Timothy B. Lee writes about technology, public policy, and the intersection of the two.

UK Student Bloggers

Belgravia Dispatch

Gregory Djerejian, an international lawyer and business executive, comments intermittently on global politics, finance & diplomacy at this site.

Stephen Bainbridge

Stephen Bainbridge is the William D. Warren Distinguished Professor of Law at the UCLA School of Law in Los Angeles, where he currently teaches Business Associations, Advanced Corporation Law and a seminar on corporate governance.

Ann Althouse

Ann Althouse. blogging about legal matters since 2004.

3 Quarks

A one-stop intellectual surfing experience that culls good stuff from all over and puts it in one place i.e what has come to be known as a "filter blog". 3 Quarks is not to be afraid of challenging material.

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Face-to-face learning versus e-learning

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Saturday, 3 Nov 2012, 20:53

Crucial to my development and understanding of e-learning is to have some one or two people I can discuss issues with face-to-face.

One an multiple MA graduate now with a Diploma in E-learning, the second a PhD Tutor in Environmental Law and the third someone who commissions e-learning projects (though he sticks with 'online learning' as the only term that is understood by lay-people).

A fourth person is a giant in education who in his 85th year just wonders if I can help put the papers he is still writing online to share with students. All he has in mind are a few dozen papers on a platform such as EduBlogs, which I can do.

My goal is to 'map' the many thousands of papers and books that are stacked three layers deep, to the ceiling, in his three-storey 15th century Cotswold home! i.e. The Contents of his Brain.

On verra

P.S. We've jsut had an hour long power-cut. The panic as two adults and three kids scramble around not knowing what to do is notable. I got my hands on the laptop so could press on under battery (but no internet connection as the router was down). My wife took a break from a mega pharmaceutical report she is writing to take her dog on an extended walk, while the boys (family and friends) gave up on dual Xbox and Internet activities to play poker!

Perhaps I could put a time on the electricity junction box to deny us electricity at random times through-out the day.

We might start talking to each other instead of e-mailing and messaging around the house.

Meanwhile, three computers are up and humming and my son is back on Skype planning some 15 rated Afghanistan-like raid with his cousin (300 miles away) and couple of Americans (one who calls himself David Hasselholf, but isn't as his voice hasn't broken) and someone's Mum who pretends to be her son as she likes the game more than he son does (I listen in).

All computers are in communal spaces in the house so that activities are surrepticiously or indirectly monitored.

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