OU blog

Personal Blogs

Design Museum

Reflection

Visible to anyone in the world

I'm not doing enough of this. I don't have to be submitting it for review, but everytime I sit through a class I should pick out what I feel works (or not) and note it down.


This takes me back to my first months with the MOADE - you'd have thought I'd learnt my lesson by now. I do blog a lot. I do talk about this kind of thing to other people often. Sometimes I even record these Meets.

I have a backlogue of lessons to go over. But this is 2021, I have a Meet recording of most of them so can go over the class that way and not have to rely on my attentiveness and recollection. Indeed, you are often distracted by all kinds of things and see things quite differently later on. 

Permalink Add your comment
Share post
Design Museum

Learning at the speed of need

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Wednesday, 2 Dec 2020, 04:30


I used this phrase like this some years ago. I should dig it out. It might be in a 2001 blog. It was in a response tgrigger to studying elearning. If not 2001 when I started the MA in Open & Distance Learning, then certainly in the first module of the MA in Open & Distance Education that I began in 2010 and completed in 2013. 

I was then still wedded heart and soul into corporate learning and development. In the mid 1990s I did a lot of video work for Unipart who were developing their logistics capabilities fast and were adopting and adpating Japanese manufacturing methodolies. All I did was take 'just in time', a Japanese approach to car manufacture that was being applied and think of it in terms of learning on the job; it should not be done in the class, but called up instantly as needed.

It can be now. We do have the answer at our fingertips - literally. 

This is easily applied to business. By forever asking, 'what is the problem'? you look for a fix and apply it to the issue. Is that not hypocondria on an industrial scale? Is it helpdul to be forever thinking there is something wrong? Actually it is 'continual improvement' that is meant to be the drive. The desire to be quicker, faster, more effecient - to be better than the competition.

Now I'm getting a nasty taste in my mouth. This is NOT something to apply to education surely? People are not machines; by definition they are the exact opposite. Perhaps this is the point; people need time. And different people need different time in different amounts.

What if everyone could have their own tutor, their own governess? There was a time, not so long ago, when 'homeschooling' was the best choice - at least until you were old enough to be sent away to school. I should compare and contrast the 'life of hard knocks' experienced by Ely Green whose autobiography I am reading and that of Lady Anny Clifford in the 16th century - education was the exception, not the norm. The gulf between those who got an education and those who did not was vast. In the case of royality and nobility it is what set them apart.

There is a growing digital divide, between those able to race ahead because of ready access to the Interent, the right kit, the best wifi and access and even the money to pay for the courses. 

All of the above has been brought on by panic at the prospect of running a 90 minute online Meet for a class of 17 year olds; I remember what I was like age 17 - not quite as bad as the 15 or 16 year old. 

I'm back on this subject 7 years later - is the answer to all problems a question posted to a smart speaker? 

My inspiration, or urgency, is the need to hold the interest of 20 17 year olds in a 90 minute class without telling jokes or taking my clothes off (metaphorically). I feel myself inching towards the advertising 'Creative Brief' to bring a Churchillian one page answer to the task; what is the problem, what is the opportunity? what do I want to say? how do I want them to respond? How will I say it? 

Ref: Learning at the speed of desire (2013) 


Permalink Add your comment
Share post
Design Museum

A Model of Reflection : ‘Brookfield’ lens Theory of reflection

Visible to anyone in the world

The ‘Brookfield’ Lens Theory of reflection was introduced to us


We are told that we see things as we are … 

I ponder this and reflect on that fact that artists literally see themselves in others as when they draw and paint people often bear a resemblance to them, whatever the age or gender of the person portrayed.

Brookfield Theory PDF attached 

Permalink Add your comment
Share post
Design Museum

When is a reflection a ramble?

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Friday, 20 Nov 2020, 19:01

Look no further. Most of this blog is nothing more than a ramble. What do the likes of Virginia Woolf, Norman Mailer and Henry Miller call it? 'Stream of consciousness' - a vomit of thoughts. There's rarely flow. I just find an idea is better off it isn't stored in my head. 

No word count to stick 2. No critical eye seeking relevance. But this is not a tutor marked assignment. Just as well, 'writing up my reading ...  in a descriptive formulaic fashion without exploring the content or the process .. [I] ... am going through' will not get a tick. Creme (2010) 

Looking at all I grabbed or mentioned on reflection 10 years ago I can see that I had little intention of following the guidelines. My modus operandi is to get it down however it comes out. Not for me a flow chart of prompts to get me from confused to enlightened in six clear steps or a spin cycle set on 'Cool Wash' to get me round the bend and not quite back where I began.

I'm a Dewey man. I just "turn a subject over in the mind". If I get lucky I even dream about it. These dreams are so vivid that I have been searching through my notes over the last 24 hours determined to find a recording, notes and screengrabs from an EdTec session that I believe I attended online on Tuesday afternoon which doesn't exist. Maybe the dream version will do for something, though getting a screenshot from my mind might prove tricky.

'A reflective thought' is nothing more than an 'active, persistent, and careful consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds that support it and the further conclusions to which it tends' (Dewey 1933: 118). Read that back. An editor would limit this to an 'active, persistent, and careful consideration of something'. 

REFERENCES

Creme, Phyllis (2010) 'Should student learning journals be assessed?', Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 30:3, 287 - 296

Dewey, J. (1933/1998) How we think (Rev. ed.). Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company.


Permalink Add your comment
Share post
Design Museum

The best of both worlds

Visible to anyone in the world

Back then I become a snob about digital over analogue. I went all Kindle. Books were dead ... so were libraries. My library was Amazon. It saved me time but was expensive. 

A decade on I buy second hand hard back books if I want to read; I still don't go into a library (even if once again I have a student library ticket). The physical artefact matters. If I am reading a the physical thing I am better able to concentrate. On an iPad (long ago replaced the Kindle) I am always a click away from the news, emails and social media. 

If I really care about the author and what they have to say I may get an electronic version of the book too; different things are revealed on the screen compared to the page. Either way a collection of handwritten notes or Post Its are used to build up my impression of what I am being told. No longer do I trust 'highlighting' or note taking electronically as a way of engaging with the text; you don't. You just copy and paste, risk being caught by plagiarism software and more importantly learn little as what you produce hasn't been through the composting process of your mind. 

QQ: What does it mean to be reflective in education?

  • The ability to reflect on an action so as to engage in a process of continuous learning. 

  • Deliberate reflection is essential. 

Is that what I am doing here? Am I supposed to spend as long reflecting on a thing as I originally spent doing it? Is two and a half hours reflection on a class that lasted two and a half hours over the top? 

One 'active learning' exercise followed another. A pattern was established. We were going to have to think, to engaged our brains. There'd be no concentrated note taking while she talked, no lengthy quotes to grab from multiple authors. Though I have them here. 

QQ: Analyse why the process can be helpful (what happens if you don’t reflect)

ACT: Compare and contrast how mere reflection is different from critical reflection.

We were introduced to Kerouac: fixed mindset or growth mindset? 

I googled him to get the right spelling of his name and the link.

"There should be a culture where mistakes are not frowned upon." 

And I stumbledupon Carol Dweck

I'm trying to get to an understanding of what the world of education will look like by 2025. How do we get the best of both worlds? And what about the third world? The hybrid, deconstructed, individualised, non institutionalised approach to education that might come out of this?



Permalink Add your comment
Share post
Design Museum

Reflections on Teaching

Visible to anyone in the world

In a tour de force example of the value of face to face teaching in a class over learning online our PGCE tutor took us through the power of reflection. Look at the title of this blog 'Reflection on e-learning'. 10 years and eight months ago I was keenly filling these pages (on an ever so slightly different platform) as I took the first module in the Masters in Open and Distance Education (MAODE). Search 'Reflection'.

Ten years on, while being invited to dig around in my head for an understand of the what it means to 'reflect', and while listening to my fellow students express their views and share their insights, we collectively construct and shape a meaning.

The beauty of this blog and its value ten years on and 5,000 entries later, is that I can search 'reflection' or seek out the tag 'reflection' and immediately be shown what I was reading, what I was being invited to read and what I was writing about it all. The beauty of this blog and it simplicity is that I can post and keep private, or post and share; it is as much as a private, even intimate scrapbook, mind dump and learning journal, as it is a potential resource for others. 

Reflecting on 'reflecting on teaching' and the profound differences between learning online (as it has so far been able to manifest itself) I see that one cannot replace the other, that certain elements are different to the point of being incompatible, that trying to recreate the class experience online is foolish and bringing the online way of doing things into the class just as wrong.

We have a long way to go yet to distinguish these differences and play to their strengths, rather than thinking one is superior to the other; neither is going away. The class I attended last night in which seven of us where there in person with the tutor and four were online is one I will return to again, and again for two reasons: first of all, to pick through what I was exposed to, what I was taught, the learning journey I experienced and the voices and words of others - everyone, in equal measure, was given the time and chance and encouragement to talk. And second of all, to contemplate the difference between the classroom and the online experience. What worked and what did not? What needs fixing to make it work better? 



Permalink Add your comment
Share post
Design Museum

L120: Reflection - Four Weeks in

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Friday, 31 Oct 2014, 07:30
From E-Learning V

Fig.1. Where to find resources and tasks for L120 L'Ouverture - Intermediate French from Livre 1

The above suggests a simplicity that isn't apparent when you have to do it, rather as if the module has been constructed by deconstructing and uploading an interactive DVD and trying to re-assemble its many fragmented parts. For example, to reach the interactive activities these are the required steps. Of course, although wasn't quit to figure that out, I can and now do save the link either to the Unit (step 6 of 9) or the Session.

The SIX trajectories given above (fig.1) are slightly disingenuous as all but the physical books (livres) split several, even many more times: there are many tutors to pick through, not just your own; the OU and the OU communities sound like two things but are each split many ways while both the AV materials and Assessment materials are offered as a clickable list. We go from these branches to multiple twigs in one, potentially confusing step. I'm going to do an more complete mindmap to get my head around this and then share it here for others on L120. I'll be unpicking the 'design architecture' as it were.

I'm slowly getting my head around this 'landscape' though <<ce n'est pas toujours evident en mon avis>>>.

Stages:

  1. StudentHome
  2. L120 Ouverture
  3. Audio-visual resources
  4. Audio-visual interactive materials
  5. L120 Ouverture
  6. Unité 1
  7. Session 5; Révision
  8. Activité 8
  9. Activité 1.5.2

Learning entirely online as I have done for the best part of three years 2010-2013, as well as two subsequent MAODE modules can lead you to expect that any module will be a simple case of going to the schedule, then clicking through the eight or none or more activities, ticking the boxes as you go along and wracking up the tally to complete the week. This 'pure' online learning has its strengths and weaknesses; it is wholly apt for the study of e-learning. This OU Language module is 'blended' - there are a few face-to-face gatherings, and, I think, once a month we gather online for an hour, as we did last night. Otherwise, the 'activities' are both 'online' and as we used to say 'off-line'. The online content here is not set out as a series of steps, but as the above graphic indicates, offered in a variety of locales. This makes it akin to entering a faculty and having to find your way between the library, lecture hall and tutor rooms, and the computer lab. 

I'm playing a little catch-up as I was right to be worried that I should be doing, I think six to eight hours a week, rather than three or four. A brilliant innovation (I think) is the human contact with a 'Buddy' some helpful lad, a former student, who is more readily available than the tutors/associate lectures to point us in the right direction. Just as one has at university to keep freshers from going adrift.

See how these two environments are learning from each other, the best of each world being adopted by the other?

About time. Traditional universities will have to become as good as this as the OU. One day what differentiates the OU will be lost. Oxford Brookes is catching up. Some schools have excellent VLEs - this is what students will come to expect. The VLE at the University of Birmingham, where I've been a student for the last year, is worse then dreadful. FutureLearn shows the way to go.

One day the OU ought to have more residential courses, halls of residences or colleges, faculties that can be readily entered by students ... and even satellite centres globally.

On Verra. Martha Lane Fox is an inspired choice of new chancellor for the Open University.

I'm waiting for 'Lastminute revision dotcom'

p.s. is the spellchecker really identifying both poor spelling in English and in French? Cool!

Permalink
Share post
Design Museum

Trying to jog my memory - is 'e-learning' the 'ready meal' of learning?

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Saturday, 7 June 2014, 05:42

Fig. 1. Somewhere along Dyke Road yesterday morning I had this thought ...

I had a thought on 'the evil of e-learning' as I drove my daughter to her final A' level exam. She was flicking through some revision notes on cards and intermittently going to her phone to listen to clips of John Donne she was hoping to remember. A bit of e-learning there. I meant to write down the thought but was driving. Six hours later it comes to me again, I write 'e-learning is evil' as the title of one of these posts (I use my student blog as a learning journal and portfolio) and my wife bursts in with some exciting news that I am eager to here and not wanting to be rude I'm sure the thought will wait ... but no, it had gone.

I'm reflecting on this now in the hope that it'll come back to me ... I may have to drive out to my daughter's school simply to see if that jogs my memory. I'd like to think the idea I had was profound, but I've lost it for the moment. I need to get those parts of my brain that were active at the time re-aligned ... 

Four years and seven OU modules and a passing thought about the nature, possibilities and weaknesses of e-learning comes and goes. 

It'll come to me. 

Everything will need to be as it was yesterday. I'm unlikely to have my daughter in the car if I drive out there ... she's done with school smile I guess during the exam she got a text from Glyndebourne to ask if she'd do an afternoon shift which is where her Mum took her in the afternoon - so much for celebrating!

There was something about the moment, reflecting on the end of her secondary education and what she's gained or achieved, the relevance of her circumstances and who she is ... using her iPhone to scroll through podcasts of readings of John Donne ... with sets of handwritten cards. The radio was off; I knew it would have been a distraction. I didn't speak. All the more reason to having given my head the chance to think, where there is a chance there is more activity internally and less competition from external inputs.

Was that it?

E-learning externalising the knowledge and spoon feeding someone else's interpretation of the answer? E-learning as the 'ready meal' of education? That learning the product of a collection of images and impressions? That a tricky quotation my daughter was trying to get to stick, like a PostIt note to the back of her head would forever be associated with the myriad of ways in which she was introduced to the passage, wrote it down, re-wrote it selectively from her A' Level English folder, and was now, in her way, listening to it and reading her handwritten revision card ... and that yes, on quizzing her in the evening over supper she'd referred to the quote as well and was quite chuffed with the whole experience.

This is it.

That e-learning risks stripping out a mass of personalised contexts that make the learning memorable and personal, and even worthwhile. Looking back on my seven modules (so far) with the Open University everything done online (and I have thousands of posts and thousands of screen-grabs and notes on it) on reflection, risks having been very clinical. Not all of it. Not always. But the idea of learning online 'by joining the dots' scares me. What's the use of that?

I'm going to have to go and sit in the car.

If I'm still stuck then when I drive my daughter to work later this morning I may see if any of it comes back to me. There is method to this; I know from years of clawing back dreams, those most wispy of experiences, that the closer you recreate the very moment of thought, the more likely enough parts of your brain will fire up to bring it back ... or, in the neurological sense, to recreate an approximation of the thought. 

We did speak. Something about exams. The stress, value and differentiation in grading of them. She spoke about Lear, I spoke about Hamlet. In the back of my mind I was reflecting on the benefit or otherwise of our children having their parents both together and at home. We've not been sticklers for revision, rather enablers, helping them see the value and need to get on top of their subject, and to help them or allow them to vary the pace by still seeing friends, getting out, some footie or the gym ... I wonder though if streaming TV series and movies back to back will be my son's undoing; yet I recall I would often have had the radio on as my companion to revision. We'll see. I know that what works is the ability to focus; if you want it to the brain will tune out the distractions.

E-learning is massive and complex. It's neither a panacea, nor an absolute. Can it be too clinical though? The context in which we learn, engaging all the senses, has a profound impact on how and if we form a memory and can then keep it.

Permalink 2 comments (latest comment by Jonathan Vernon, Saturday, 7 June 2014, 17:09)
Share post
Design Museum

Tony Benn - on keeping a diary for 50 years

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Saturday, 15 Mar 2014, 07:04


20140314-203401.jpg

 

I am apolitical. My in-laws used to laugh, saying they cancelled each other out: Tory, Labour and Liberal. (That's, mother, father and grandmother). I never asked and could never figure who voted which way; they kept their politics to themselves. I have voted in all directions from green through blue to yellow and red - I cancel myself out. I often vote different ways in local and national elections only voting for the person, not their party. In fact I wish political parties could be banned, so, I guess like Tony Benn, you can be your own person rather than being forever held to and subjugated by the party thinking.

That's me on politics - an agnostic in religion, indifferent in politics.

Here though to pick up on a phrase used on the BBC obituary yesterday regarding his fifty years of keeping a diary (written, then audio). His view, probably expressed to a journalist to keep things short, was that 'something happens, you write it down, you re-read it, then realise that you were wrong'.

In the aggregation of events, and musings, self-analysis is surely just as capable of creating such an aggregating of similar events and thoughts that you become entrenched, rather than transformed? Surely a bit of both is the reality. Or does it make any difference at all. 

I've kept a diary and blog and relate to several others who do the same - the diary/blogging thing is part of who you are or have become, you do it out of habit, like saying your prayers at night. I cannot see across any of these people, especially those published diarists, that suggests that in any way the act of keeping the diary changed them. I rather think the opposite, that those who keep a diary are very set in their ways.

There's barely been a module across the Master of Arts Open and Distance Education (MAODE) that hasn't expected students to blog. I wonder if this though isn't for purposes of reflection, but is a learning journal or portfolio of work, a accumulation and aggregation of course work and themes upon which you build you knowledge. In these instances reading over does adjust your thinking, you become fluent in the language of your subject and wise to the ideas rather than ignorant of them. That should be self-evident in the diary I have kept here for four years.  

Permalink 1 comment (latest comment by Matt Hobbs, Friday, 14 Mar 2014, 21:30)
Share post
Design Museum

Reflection: we are all so very, very, different when it comes to learning

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Tuesday, 25 Feb 2014, 13:25

Just ten minutes. A live presentation. Why for me should it be such a big deal?

I said to my wife that I have not problems delivering other people's words (acting) and I have no trouble writing words for others to speak (speech writer, script writer), but what I loathe and struggle with is delivering my own words on any kind of platform.

Big fails on this count, emotionally at least would include:

My grandfather's funeral

My groom's wedding speech (I was pants at proposing too)

My father's funeral

My mother's funeral 

...

Because it matters to me far too much when, and only when, the words that I give seem to emanate from my soul. 

Let me blog, let me write letters, let me smoulder from my ears into the atmosphere with no expectation of feedback.

...

Both positive and negative feedback, especially if constructive, sends a shiver through my bones. Why is it that I crave confrontation, that I want to be mentally smacked around the head, then kicked up the arse and sent back into the fray to deliver some amazing show of ability?

...

We are all so, so, so very different, yet how we are taught, or expected to learn seems so very contrived, so set by context and numerous parameters.

I would prefer to be stuck in a cabin for a couple of weeks with an educator who hasn't a clue about the subject, but is a natural educator, than someone who has ticked a collection of boxes in order to obtain their position. The natural educator can teach anything. The subject matter expert thinks they know everything. eLearning can be the subject matter expect - 'IT' (literally) thinks it knows it all.

So, connect me, and for me connect students and educators - worry only about the desire and ability to teach or transmit and manger those hungry to gain knowledge, and for students concentrate almost entirely on motivation. If they want to learn pores will open up in their skull so that you can pour in the information and they'll never be satiated.

Permalink Add your comment
Share post
Design Museum

TMA Blues

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Thursday, 27 Feb 2014, 16:52

It doesn't get any better.I thought I was on top of this by now, like riding a bike, but you don't really know what kind of a beast you have a hold of until you tackle it. All the more reason to get an early draft written and give yourself a week or two to work on it. This would have been fine but the entire process leading up to H818 TMA1 has been to expand, share, search, explore ... and so it went on until like the incredible stretching man my arms reached west to Dublin and east to the Urals. Part One had a work count limit of 1500. My first draft came in at 4,600. I hacked this down by 50% then did the wise thing and began again from scratch working on the basis they I had some juicy content in my head, I just needed to focus.

A mind map with a mere 7 links on it did the job. 200 words for each and 100 words to share across an introduction and conclusion ... sort of.

I'd references the longer version in my enthusiasm so had to unpick that - there is only one thing worse than missing out a lot of references, is referencing a lof of stuff that is no longer there. 

Then part two.

For reasons only known to the OU IT team I couldn't zip two documents on my Mac so emailed the documents to my wife - I am sitting at her laptop now. The period between sending these files from my office 11 miles away and cooking supper (I do) gave me a chance to dwell on a sentence regarding part two

Students are encouraged to be bold and innovative in setting forth a project proposal.

A breathing space, a chance to reflect, a deadline fast being overdue ... so I went for it. Controversy gets attention. So does death. This has both. And if I play my cards right I'll need to find an actor, dress him up, get some make up then film them in their final moments.

 

Permalink Add your comment
Share post
Design Museum

H809: Reflections at the end of week 7

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Friday, 22 Mar 2013, 15:03

Still playing catch-up after the TMA

Through week six writing and most activities (a few hours left to wrap)

Familiar with week 7 as we begin week 8. I will catch up over the weekend. Perhaps. If it rains a good deal and my son's football is off (again). This will come back to haunt me - with all the bad weather they are moving to two matches a week. The Daddy Taxi might be busy.

For H809 conjured up the 'Perfect Storm of Online Research'

  • Young people, including minors
  • Online - gamified if not virtual worlds, with social aspects (whether wanted or not)
  • Medical - not a medical market research but ostensibly an 'intervention' of sorts that would require expertise, training and sign off for everyone involved.
  • Global - what isn't if it is accessible online?

The good news?

  • They haven't found life on Mars yet so I can keep it contained to Earth.

My plan

  • Set further parameters.

I'm looking at use of e-learning to improve uptake of perventer medication by young people with servere moderate asthma (i.e. they are supposed to take a daily preventer inhaler, like me, I do - they don't).

I may 'contain' the research to a group where in some cases a step has already been taken to amerliorate the situation - swimming. I'll talk to the ASA (hypothetical) and have participants as UK swimmers with asthma

 

Permalink Add your comment
Share post
Design Museum

H809 Reflection on Block 1 - towards compliance for those with moderate severe asthma

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Tuesday, 11 June 2013, 11:16
The most straight forward of assignments has proved anything but ... not for how to write this 2000 word piece, that is straight forward, but rather committing to a subject, then narrowing down the theme, possible research question and then dig up some papers ... and not simply offer the lot, but give the five 'that say it all'. To pick five how many must you read, at least as abstracts. I made three false starts, even read a PhD thesis on blogging before deciding it is a minefield. I may like to blog but I no more want to research it for an OU assignment than sort out pebbles on Brighton Beach. Lifelogging, memory and neuroscience all interest me ... but are too big to get my head around in a few months - a few years perhaps. Looking at my notes I see I have papers also on augmented learning for field trips and museum visits. Then I returned to a platform that caught my eye three yesrs ago on H807 when I interviewed Dr. B. Price Kerfoot of Harvard Medical School on 'Spaced Education'. So far this system has been usef with doctors, to support their learning and decission making ... the next step will be patients. One of the humdingers here is 'compliance' - taking the medication you are prescribed if you have a chronic condition. What dawned on me this afternoon is that as a asthmatic I am the perfect patient - compliant to the nth degree. What surprised me is that such a large percentage of asthmatics are not. But with alleregies - a double-whammy of irritations, I ignore the nasal steroids and antehistemines almost completely. Compliant, and defiant in one go so just about canceeling the two out. But why? This is what fasciantes. You know you need to take something to avoid a return of the symptoms, but as there are no symptoms you stop taking the medication. Anyway, I am sifting through papers to set me straight and to offer some answers. If you have a moderately severe chronic condition and wish to share your medication regime or attitude please speak up - asthma, allergies, diabetes, epilepsy, other mental illnesses - chat on Skype? Meanwhile I checked my preventer inhaler - it was empty. I at least had a spare and will get a repeat prescription in tomorrow.
Permalink 3 comments (latest comment by Cathy Lewis, Friday, 15 Mar 2013, 08:00)
Share post
Design Museum

OLDs MOOC Reflection 1

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Friday, 18 Jan 2013, 16:03

I'm always loath to start a blog or learning journal away from the platforms I've used for the last five years - Wordpress since 2007 (www.mymindbursts.com) 1500+ entries and as an OU postrgraduate student here since February 2010 (1000+ entries) ... and before this in Diaryland.com since 1999 1.5m words.

I believe in the format, I've kept a diary for long enough.

I rather like the idea of being able instead to blab into a webcam like Jack Sully in Avatar. I guess I could talk to Siri on the iPad but then it still has to be edited and posted somewhere ... here if it is to be shared (which is the whole point).

My experience with learning online for the last three years (Masters in Open and Distance Education) is that when at this level someone says it'll take 'x hours' in the week I double the number before I decide if I can make the time - this takes care of needing to familiarise myself with the landscape.

I can take 'x hours' and multiply by 4 if there is new software involved, even longer to the point of giving up if it isn't immediately obvious, intuitive and FUN.

I'm doing the OLDS MOOC 2013. A fellow MOOCer (and successful MOADEr too) pointed me towards Pearltrees and I feel in love.

But then again, I take both a professional interest and have the boyish curiosity that makes me click on everything anyway. So we'll see

I've skipped in and out of week 1 trying to follow the instructions blut feeling like one in a thousand playing a game of treasure hunt.

Or, like one of several hundred on the first evening of an OU Residential School. With an added difficulty here - all Holiday In's look the same, but the platforms here are not.

Even Cloudworks, which I tried during an MAODE module, looks as unfamiliar as it did 18 months ago. I couldn't get it then ... though I played ball, wrote and posted, but got no interaction. It felt like I was being sent into the jungle to list the flora and collect insects and meet fellow travellers but what I found as a desert full of chimeras.

Permalink
Share post
Design Museum

Ditch the tricksy technology and hire a brilliant speaker.

Visible to anyone in the world

Yes, So followed the AGM. Did the Webinar. Downlaoded Xerte.

Now trying to build more than a Power Point Slide Show.

Odd that, the very first effort I made to create a piece of learning was called 'How to make a slide presentation'. I shot it on Sony Reel-to-Reel kit - I was 17.

Page turning, next clicking ... we moved on in the early 1990s with interactive DVD.

It frequently feels that we go two steps forward, then seven back.

I look at some online learning and think - 'Give me a pop-up book'! It would be better.

I'm yet to see or experience anything as engaging as an Audi engine in 3D interactive animation as part of a tool for training mechanics.

There is rich e-learning ... and poor e-learning.

I'm hard to please - judging this stuff for a national panel every decade does this to you.

You expect the extraordinary at every turn, but it very rarely is.

The simplest way to get extraordinary?

Ditch the tricksy technology and hire a brilliant speaker.

P.S. I don't call the OU tricksy - I call it effective. It works. What I expect in e-training is something a bit more inspired.

Permalink
Share post
Design Museum

effort, time and motivation

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Wednesday, 6 June 2012, 09:15

The Holy Trinity of learning.

2 years and 4 months it has taken me on a Masters programme called 'Open & Distance Learning' to realise that this is what it takes for a person to gain knowledge. Of these three, I'd put motivation first, and put intrinsic motivation above extrinsic.

If you want to learn you will and can. Does it help to have a classroom? A library? Some books? Do you need a computer, or smartphone, or laptop? 

You need a teacher. Present is best, small groups or one to one. A teacher who motivates.

I stumbleupon a bix of bits and pieces that my father had kept (he died a decade ago) and found a couple of my school reports from when I was ten; and some old school photos. I've been online remembering school with half a dozen old classmates from when I was 4.11 to 16.

An unpleasant experience with a teacher killed a subject, while a positive experience and even where I didn't excel I was happy and got good reports. A subject I may have enjoyed and came to via the back door by going to live there, French.

Where is the teacher in e-learning?

In the instructional design and the team of content cretors, in the way software recognises and rewards, in the vital involvement of an e- moderator, who like the 'good teacher' know how and where to step in to initiate, to support, encourage, encourage and motivate.

Funny that this should come to me during the vacuum of a Bank holiday. (or not so funny, the last module I did 'creativity, innovation and change B822 gave me the green light to empty my head, go for walks even to dream on it. Which of course I did last night, bobbing around in a world of classes).

There is a paper I am picking my way through too, from ALT- C  2007 and some papers from the Institute of aeducation I am glancing at, so I've hardly stopped feeding my mind.

Effort and Time speak for themselves

I'm not suggesting that everyone can get A grades, there is more at play. The effort benefits fromguidance. Consistency is required too, and not always in a person's mindset. Either way, for anyone, it takes time. The day (or night) will never come where you can go to sleep wearjng a headset and wake up  after an 8 hour mind dump and 'know stuff') But then again, who ever thought a driverless car would become feasible?

Permalink 1 comment (latest comment by Satia Gill, Tuesday, 5 June 2012, 06:58)
Share post
Design Museum

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

Visible to anyone in the world
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).

Permalink Add your comment
Share post
Design Museum

B822 Reflection

Visible to anyone in the world
Working efficiently does not mean filling every day with work. Compartmentalising work, play and study time became crucial. I now get more done by containing it to set times. I'm getting out, working and studying better when I do and feeling far less stressed. Yet to get sleep patterns in order; I sense a need for exercise which for me means regular swimming.
Permalink
Share post
Design Museum

B822 Reflection

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Friday, 2 Nov 2012, 23:51

It is intriguing and of value to be covering learning processes from a different angle; there is some overlap.

The MAODE of course offers greater depth, how we learn is its modus operandi.

The weakness of someone else's conception of learning processes offered in relative isolation is apparent. I am surprised that Engestrom gets no mention as 'activity systems' were developed and used in business settings.

Several such models need to be be offered together:

a) to expose a model for what they are, a conception of reality

b) one person's take, their simplification of something complex.

Tangently Deguid and John Seeley Brown are brought in so I could search my own blog for 23 points where I have read them before, my knowledge, like coral, growing and firming up in the process. 'Metaphor' and 'analogy' are discussed, though the only resource offered leaves me befuddled as the concepts are written up in academic business-speak.

I'd like a far broader reading list; rather than three or four chapters offered in the resources book I'd like to see the reassuring long and personal list of the authors, linked by URL to papers that are readily available online. I can see myself Googling authors to see what they have published most recently.

I feel the case is made for external agencies as I don't see too many of the techniques occurring in large organisations.

As our authors say people quickly acquire the mindset of the organisation they work for, this becomes the default position for solving problems.

Certain functions from advertising to consultancy, web, PR and design are best bought in under competitive tender.

Whilst the case is made for intuition over objective analysis I don't see the 'hunch' outside the privately run business or agency as a means to get an idea through.

Rosabeth Moss Kanter may talk of the 'Hollywood' approach to projects, but I don't see the flexibility or process that has pots of money to invest on ideas that are pitched 'Hollywood' style.

I find, at times, I feel as if I am defacing the script from 'Good Morning Vietnam' in which an army communications paladin theorises about what makes a joke in a services radio show whereas the Robin Williams character is intuitively, on a hunch, inventive, engaging and witty. As he is in 'Dead Poets Society'.

Is creativity therefore meant to educate an organisation, department or person on how to improvise?

And surely such opportunities are only possible where systems, seniority or shortness of contract offers.

Permalink Add your comment
Share post
Design Museum

4 digital scholar

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Thursday, 31 May 2012, 16:10

'If Boyer's four main scholarly functions were research, application, integration and teaching, then I would propose that those of the digital scholar are engagement, experimentation, reflection and sharing'. Weller (2011).

Reference

Weller, M (2011) The Digital Scholar. How technology is transforming scholarly practice. Bloomsbury

Permalink Add your comment
Share post
Design Museum

Reflecting on illness

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Friday, 9 Sept 2011, 19:12
I appreciate that some reading this will have gone through months of being unwell or their condition is long term. I am simply using ideas taught to me during H808 a year ago to reflect on what I have been through: 15 days of a ghastliness that has included a day in hospital and three clinic visits. In hospital I counted the seconds and did so for nearly five hours. At home I crave fresh air but repeatedly ended up back in bed. As the last week or so shows I would read, comment and write - though until today my head has felt decidedly befuddled. So I did some digital housekeeping, all my mind could manage, mostly shuffling pictures, screen grabs and such around in Picasa Web, even referencing them properly. And I slept a great deal. I read Martin Weller's new book but know, and will see this from notes, that a second reading will have me picking out different things and adding different notes. We humans are unstable at the best of times, gender, age and background doesn't start to define who we are and how our state of mind, openness to learning, levels of self-esteem, can influence how we will 'perform' one week to the next. Consistency, for me at least, is a futile, even a stultifying quest.
Permalink Add your comment
Share post
Design Museum

27 Reasons to blog

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Tuesday, 20 Mar 2012, 05:14

photo%252520%2525281%252529.JPG

I've forgotten a few, not least the ones that got me started here:

  • As an ice-breaker (introducing ourselves by way of holiday snaps and pets ... not to be recommended for setting the appropriate tone).
  • Reflection (and learning how to do this correctly).
  • Stream of consciousness
  • A Writer's Journal
  • As an e-portfolio

So I've missed out some important ones sad Visiting Channel Flip I was treated to a screening of Lee Hardcastle's new stop animation horror short. Is this blogging, or having your own TV channel?

Permalink 4 comments (latest comment by Sam Harlow, Saturday, 10 Sept 2011, 07:42)
Share post
Design Museum

Digital Housekeeping

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Sunday, 23 Oct 2011, 07:46

Illl-health has impacted on my activity online. This in itself is an insight. On the one hand we lable people for analysis, putting them into groups that vary from 'creator' all the way through to 'inactive' in order to simply its complexity, but more importantly in order to be able to share and discuss.

It has to be two, even three years since I did some long overdue 'digital housekeeping'. It isn't in my nature to go through my virtual pack of cards to put them in order; indeed, is order of any kind necessary so long as you have tagger thoroughly? It is, because such tags are no less valid just because you thoughts, ideas, assignments, references, quotes, pics, charts, grabs and so on are now collated. Indeed, these groups, chronologies and narratives are offering their own insights.

I've been inclined to equate 'stuff' (digital assets) as vegetation in a compost bin, however, this 'stuff' doesn't simply rot, rather it replicates itself ... then rots and transmogrifies in various ways. You think too hard and analogies fail because of the versatility, fluidity and complexity of the World Wide Web 2.0.

Creation is a part of what I do. There is considerable searching, grabbing, highlighting and note-taking too. Screen grabs and 'Snips' are treated like photographs and dealt with off-line in 'Picasa', online they are uploaded to Picasa Web and Dropbox. From here the url is shared in various ways in this blog and elsewhere. This 200GB album was looking like Wembley Stadium after a rock concert so I've gone in and begun to sort out and clean up my 'digital litter'.

What I find is that a grab, chart or image can instantly induce recollection of why I chose the image in the first place; the thinking behind the choice is revived. On their own these images will mean very different things to others until I add the text.

ON REFLECTION

Certain habits, such as titles, tags and references save you scrambling around later. Too often a great chart from a survey is rendered, in academic circles, useless, if I cannot locate the source. I can feel like riding a bicycle with square wheels ensuring that quotes and images are properly referenced at the time you highlight, note or grab, but it means that when you put them into an assignment, or simply a presentation or blog, this reference, usually with a URL is readily available.

This suits the kind of person who for a very short period (one month), not only kept a diary, but stuck the ephemera of the day into the folder/scrapbook too. Unsustainable, but extraordinary how a 3d bus ticket from the 1970s does more to remind me of the Yellow 45 bus I took along the 'Great North Road' to primary school then any words (that I couldn't have written at the time) to explain it.

Intermittently, having come across him during H808, I think about the Microsoft programmer who uses a digital device to RECORD everything he does, all day (sound and vision). That's the easy part. The hard part is creating the software to extract and store content of worth. The problem is that the mind, which must equate to how innovative we are, is anything but well ordered.

How often do we stop and think?

I may be an atheist but perhaps on the seventh day we should rest; we unplugged the router, put the phone on charge for the following week, turn off the TV and buy a paper? Or go to church ... or the non-religious equivalent.

Gordon%252520Bell%252520MICROSOFT.JPG

A search for 'Microsoft' in this diary brings me the name 'Gordon Bell', the entry I wrote in January and a link to the New Scientist article and its author. Gordon Bell wrote that he hoped eventually to unconver some patterns 'you would never have gleaned unaided.'

I very rarely look at old diaries. Doing so I was in despair. Neither the chronology, nor the day of the week is relevant, rather it is the unlinked themes that run through it, but to get at those requires transcription and digitisation.

I'd prefer to live life than live about the life I lived.

What Microsoft may achieve, though Google are surely doing it, is to formulate a better way to manager knowledge.

Which brings me to my final though for now, and that is to go entirely Google.

I use Google tools extensively already.

Picasa%252520LINKS%252520SNIP.JPG

I've never done much with 'Blogger' prefering 'Wordpress,' but Google makes it seamless, indeed, collectively Google tools are half-way between a virtual learning environment (VLE) and that amorphous collection of tools we collectively give the term 'personal learning environment' (PLE).

 

Permalink
Share post
Design Museum

EMA in six images

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Monday, 5 Sept 2011, 05:32

I use this blog as an e-portfolio.

It now holds notes from entire books, ad well as an assembly of key points for the H800 EMA.

This way I can pick up where I left off via desktop, laptop or iPad.

I know there are other even better ways to do this, Google Docs and Dropbox, but what I like here is the search function, tags and chronology.

On the basis that I always tag I can now assemble searches by author or topic.

I then return to these pages to edit or add.

I like having the HTML coding so that I can cut and paste into an external blog.

Images: photos, screen grabs or snips, as well as photos and charts, come from Picasa Web.

(See below)

In a concerted effort to narrow down my ideas I am trying to cover the EMA in images only. As a result of all of this I believe I know my stuff, the problem, is to demonstrate that to others in a format that is academic rather than journalistic and highly visualised.

ON REFLECTION

I ought to use the affordances of PowerPoint to construct this thing, using the frames like cards that I can move about and bullet points as a way to construct the treatment. Then write it up, and read it out. Better still record this and play it back to be sure of it's sense before checking further that it meets all the criteria.

With excellent planning H800 gives us this time, whereas in H807 and H808 I'm sure there was course work offered, but very few people coming out to do it.

Could the contents of this blog be put into FileMaker Pro?

Would that make it more versatile?

Permalink Add your comment
Share post
Design Museum

An abundance of e-learning riches ...

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Saturday, 13 Aug 2011, 13:53

Reflecting on H800 Week 27 or something.

I live breathe and certainly dream social media and e-learning. They are my being, for now at least.

About to go on holiday to Cornwall I plan to have a wetsuit, a pad of A3 cartridge paper, a sketch pad, soft pencils and pastels. I may take the guitar (though I may feel I need the indispensable MusicNotes and Guitar APP).

Is it wise to go gadget free?

Change refreshes the mind. A total break, refreshes the mind. I will do more (and it will make more sense in the long term), by doing nothing (for a while).

There is a reason why God made the seventh day day of rest.

We're rubbish at that in 2011. It is relentless, continual, not a landscape but a fluid river of activity. No wonder I am never certain what day of the week it is.

Or is it a case of self-discipline regarding gadgets?

People would say a mobile phone at least is essential to keep in touch with family and friends as they scatter across the beaches. Lack of signal will hopefully be the decided.

Sitting down to study at 06h00 I am yet to engage with the papers I am meant to report on or get beyond bullet points for the 3,000 word essay.

The problem is the blog, the habit of writing it up as I go along.

The problem, or virtue, of playing with Google+ with some fellow MAODERs which has sent my mind into a jitter. It's relevant anyway, I have an ECA that includes the use of forum discussion groups in e-learning.

My interest in the MAODE has gone from all-consuming, to complementing work, so associated with and thought of as work.

Being on holiday I therefore feel I ought to keep away from it.

However, if I think of it as my hobby, an interest, then it is easier to handle. Indeed it may be more conducive to my enjoying the experience.

Permalink 5 comments (latest comment by Jonathan Vernon, Sunday, 14 Aug 2011, 05:43)
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: 13137318