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Great Stuff - The Water Cycle

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Tuesday, 8 Nov 2011, 21:33

Water-Cycle Images offered under Creative Commons

The%252520Water%252520Cycle%252520USGS%252520SNIP.JPG

http://quizlet.com/2634344/water-cycle-with-pictures-flash-cards/

How I see learning in Web 2.0 where everything is digitised, shared, communicated and changed. Simply write over the terms and phrases here with:

  • Web 2.0
  • Digital Asset
  • E-tivities
  • User Generated Content
  • Forums
  • Social Learning
  • Mobile Devices
  • Cloud Computing
  • Computers
  • Internet
  • Communities of Learning
  • E-Books

... and so on

 

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The Digial Scholar - Martin Weller - Creative Commons

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Monday, 5 May 2014, 06:25

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

This OU profs new book 'The Digital Scholar' deliberately had a Creative Commons licence allowing all kinds of things to be done to it.

All I've done is read it cover to cover, type up notes and my thoughts along e way and then posted up ALL of this. See Below or use the 'search this blog facility.'

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4 digital scholar

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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

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4Social Media

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Sunday, 16 Oct 2011, 05:14

'We are learning what role those new tools play in our lives, and there will inevitably be mistakes, misapplication, overuse and correction'. Weller (2011)

Reference


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

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Blogging and digital scholarship

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Tuesday, 3 June 2014, 15:26

Blogs as thought sharing

Non-linearity

Criticalness and multivariate collision

Shaohui and Lihua (2008)

'Amateurs' often create content which addresses subjects that academics may not and also in a manner which differs from traditional teaching', Weller (2011)

Generating content as a by-product of what is done anyway: Keeping notes working up ideas Weller (2011)

Networking = crowd sourcing

Lazy web = access to experts

Reciprocity is key

The relationship between a blogger and a reader is maintained if the blogger provides interesting and regular updates.

Reference

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

Shaohui, W and Lihua, M. (2008) The application of blog in modern education

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24 Reasons to Blog

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Tuesday, 20 Mar 2012, 05:03

'Many if the characteristics which would be frowned upon in scholarly articles, such as subjectivity, humour, and personal opinion, are vital elements in developing a dialogue in blogs'. Weller (2011)

I had another stab at this (did one yesterday on the fly). This one I've given a bit more thought as I am keen to promote the idea of blogging to colleagues; the more the merrier to me. It goes under the title 'User Generate Content'.

I do wonder though if it isn't a mindset, that I'd have the same issues getting people to take up drawing or singing.

You either do or don't?

photo%252520%2525289%252529.JPG

I realise that to get this right in the learning context you must define who the learner is and put it in context.

QUESTIONS

  • Why do you blog?
  • If you've just started will you keep going?
  • What's the incentive?
  • Do you have an external blog too?
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The Digital Scholar (2011) QUOTES

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Monday, 18 Nov 2013, 12:36

CAMELOT

'The Camelot comparison - accentuating the positives of the entrenched practice'.

ASSESSMENT

'Assessing quality in a reliable and transparent manner is a significant problem in the recognition of digital scholarship, and its intangibility and complexity are enough to make many give up and fall back on the practices they know and trust'. Weller (2011)

'The Trucker's Deal' Wiley 2009b

'A digital scholar is likely to have a distributed online identity, all of which can be seen to represent factors such as reputation, impact, influence and productivity'. Weller (2011)

BLOGGING

'Many if the characteristics which would be frowned upon in scholarly articles, such as subjectivity, humour, and personal opinion, are vital elements in developing a dialogue in blogs'. Weller (2011)

KNOWLEDGE ACQUISITION

'Knowledge is acquired through research, synthesis, practice and teaching'. Boyer (1990)

'The fact that there is hype doesn't mean the overall direction isn't correct. A technology may not completely change the world in the next 18 months, but it may significantly change practice in the next decade'. Weller (2001)

Publication associated with promotion and tenure.

Shaohui and Lihua (2008)

· Blogs as thought sharing.

· Non-linearity

· Criticalness and multivariate collision

Where Academics get stuck - identity and status.

Zittrain (2008) 'generatively'

'A system's capacity to produce unanticipated change through unfiltered contributions from broad and varied audiences'.

Low product OERs encourages further participation.

The implicit message in these OERs is that the consumer can become a producer - they are an invitation to participate precisely because of their low quality.

KEY

'In educational terms it may be that both (big OERs and little OERs) have a role to play within a learning context or course. Learners may want to feel the reassurance of the quality brand material for core content, but they may also want a mixture of the more social, participatory media that encourages them to contribute'. Weller (2011)

Joshua Bell playing on the underground story.

Top violinist using an instrument worth 3.5 million dollars.

Context of big OER compared to little.

Naive to think putting stuff onto YouTube will get it noticed.

REFERENCE

Boyer, E. (1990), Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate, San Fancisco: Jossey-Bass.

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Digital Scholar (Part 3) Chapters 10 to 14

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Thursday, 31 May 2012, 10:22

The Digital Scholar Martin Weller

Chapter 10

Network Weather

Adam Greenfield (2010) Networked Weather

He talks of Foursquare and a night out, Weller talks of the academic conference.

· Knowledge sharing

· Validation

· Networking

· Recognition

· Socialising

· Remote participation

· Twitter backchannel

· Amplified events

· Socialisation

Twitter hashtags

Blogging

Live blogging

Video

Flickr

Cloudworks and Friendfeed

50% networking

75% content

In 25% of the time

75% greener

Participants not an audience

Backchannel adds another layer, but can be a negative experience for the speaker (Boyd, 2009)

Amplification of the conference

Archive of multimedia, range of tone.

Preservation and curation of such a record

Brian Kelly (2008)

Amplification of:

· Audience's voice

· Speaker's talk

· Across time

· Of slides

· Of feedback

· Collective memory of the event

· Of the learning

· Of the long term conference outputs

Experimentation with:

· Micro-presentations

· Nan-presentations

· Random selection of speakers

· Backchannel

Used to be a choice of attending or not, now there are many alternatives (JV least attending more than one conference at the same time).

2010 Martin Weller ran Openness in Education over two days using Elluminate and Cloudworks.

Four sessions all recorded and made available through Cloudworks.

Sessions chinned and released as podcasts

Also used:

· Twitter

· SurveyMonkey

· Blogs

· YouTube

· slideShare

· Animoto

· Xtranormal

· Pre conference

· And video before and during

Speakers, including Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia.

287 attended synchronous Elluminate sessions

3,500 viewed in CloudWorks

From 14 countries

48% would not have attended in person

Cost 2,500 rather than 30,000

They have a legitimacy deficit to some.

· Attendees not given time from the workplace to attend virtually and readily interrupted.

· Doesn't command as much attention

· Don't plan ahead, so may drop out.

· Technical problems on the day are too late to resolve.

'The Camelot comparison - accentuating the positives of the entrenched practice'.

Hard to compare as they do things differently (and can be blended)

Chapter 11 Reward and Tenure

If it isn't recognised then it isn't recognised when it comes to getting promotion.

Research (more equal than the others)

Teaching

Service or management

Contribution to society

Academic esteem

A conservative value and reward system

'Assessing quality in a reliable and transparent manner is a significant problem in the recognition of digital scholarship, and its intangibility and complexity are enough to make many give up and fall back on the practices they know and trust.

· Recreating the existing model

· Finding digital equivalents

· Generating guidelines that include digital scholarship

· Using metrics (500 views, 4 embeds and a keynote too simplistic)

· Peer review

· Micro-credit

· Developing alternative methods

Keynote speech and reputation

Metrics can be cheated (Hirsh 2005) and gamed (Ealagas and Alexiou 2008)

REF Research Excellence Framework

'A digital scholar is likely to have a distributed online identity, all of which can be seen to represent factors such as reputation, impact, influence and productivity'.

'We continually make the error of subjugating technology to our present practice rather than allowing it to free us from the tyranny of past mistakes'. Stephen Heppell (2001)

'Many if the characteristics which would be frowned upon in scholarly articles, such as subjectivity, humour, and personal opinion, are vital elements in developing a dialogue in blogs'.

· Towards the portfolio approach:

· A range of digital outputs demonstrating impact

· Commendations from the community

· Recognised experts

· Overarching narrative making the case for the work as a whole.

· Peer review = reliability and authority.

· Which could also strangle innovation. (Fitzpatrick 2009)

Chapter 12 Publishing

· Research

· Authoring

· Submission

· Rejection/modification

· Publication

· Dissemination

WHY?

· Accepted practice

· Academic respectability

· Reward and tenure

· Dissemination

· Curation

NB Bellow's Law

'Once the journal has been liberated from the printed format, a number of related assumptions begin to unravel and lead to more fundamental questions.'

22,000 peer reviewed journals from 9,900 publishers.

Questioning the scholarly communication process ... Often the current model does not stand up to scrutiny.

The trucker's deal Wiley 2009b

McGuigan and Russell (2008) Deutsche Bank on how 7,000 people in academic publishing add value to justify 40% margins - they don't.

Advantages of open access publishing Harnad (2005)

· Early advantage

· Arxiv advantage

· Quality bias

· Quality advantage

· Competitive advantage

· Usage advantage

Weller's POV

· Citation advantage

· Time lag to publication

· Copyright

· Alternative publishing methods

Desire for greatest impact and widest dissemination (without compromising its quality or findings).

VS. Time to publication due to peer review and a print mentality that restricts number of items in a journal and how often it is published.

Creative commons keeps rights with the author.

Alternative methods for communication, publishing and debate which are more rewarding.

The traditional article begins to seem remote and dry in comparison.

Google knol web-based authoring.

PLoS hubs

New forms of representation and communication.

Shift from filtering on the way into filtering on the way out. Weinberger (2007)

As they are the product of public funding they should be out there.

We're at a transition state, and Weller gives in ten years for the change to occur. I see it differently as one of the early aeronauts looking out across at English Channel wanting to cross as soon as the weather permits knowing that I may just make it, wait ten years and others will be looking to cross the Atlantic.

Ware (2008) reasons to peer review (for free)

· To play your part as a member of the academic community

· To enjoy being able to improve the paper

· To enjoy seeing Newquay work ahead of publication

· To reciprocate the benefit when others review your postings.

Towards the 'approbation of discerning readers'. Martin Rees (2010)

Chapter 13

Skimming and skipping about instead of deep reading. Easily distracted, or persuasively detracted. But the overall tenure will be rearing to you hear the narrative.

· British Library Google Generation study (Rowlands et al. 2008)

· Has the need to learn by rote diminished?

· Outsourcing mundane memory to Google.

· Skittish bouncing behaviour Wijekumar et al. (2006)

· Web 2.0 and the 'mass democratisation of expression'.

NB 'low quality individual items because of their obvious ease of production, can be seen as an invitation to participate'. Weller

'If the intention is to encourage engagement then low-quality routes may be more fruitful than seeking to produce professional broadcast material'. Weller

'Amateurs' often create content which addresses subjects that academics may nit and also in a manner which differs from traditional teaching', Weller

A facial truism.. Any time you learn anything your brain is 'rewired' at a synaptic level. VS. The pronouncements of the likes of Carr and Greenfield.

Vague and ill-founded arguments.

Plasticity is as true of playing a computer game, or from my experience, coaching swimmers. Adaptation is desirable, ditto for touch-typing, drawing, sight reading when playing a musical instrument even driving a car.

... Based on supposition and anecdote.

'The Internet hasn't changed the way we think any more than the microwave oven has changed the way we digest food'. Joshua Greene.

Also see Gerschenfeld (2010)

... VS pseudo-scientific explanations to back up prejudices will not help us address the issues. Weller

CF Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age. Mayer-Schonberger (2009)

Idea of giving internet content a shelf-life. I disagree. Once rain water flows from a river into the ocean it is there, for potentially consigned to the depths, for ever.

Bug successes, something going viral, is not the norm.

For success, choice of tools and their perceived relevance to the main area of study are crucial elements. See Cann and Badge (2010).

VS. Creepy tree house syndrome (Stein 2008)

VS an LMS that is 'organisationally controlled, bland and singular in focus'.

NB how to do it? 'By making mistakes' with each iteration generating an improvement (Hilbert space et al. 2000/2001)

Experience is required to understand what approaches are suitable.

It also requires a reasonable mass of contributions to work, a motivation for those contributions and an easy means to contribute.

Just as with the initial dot.com. Hubble, the fact that there is hype doesn't mean the overall direction isn't correct. A technology may not completely change the world in the next 18 months, but it may significantly change practice in the next decade'. Weller (2001)

Roy Amara: we tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run. In Weller (2011)

It will never go back to the way it was.

The people best placed to understand it and adapt to it will be those who have immersed themselves in the current technological climate.

A willingness to experiment with new approaches and to explore the tensions between new possibilities and established practice is essential. Weller 2011

Chapter 14 Digital Resilience

Current scholars - anxieties, scepticism and resistance should be replaced with engagement and reflection.

Just as Clay Shirky looks at 20 years ahead.

QWERTY has been too entrenched to over through.

When distribution becomes abundant, rather than scare, open and shared rather than rivalrous, 'whole industries begin to look weak'.

We are learning what role those new tools play in our lives, and there will inevitably be mistakes, misapplication, overuse and correction'. Weller (2011)

CF Kahneman and Tversky's prospect theory (1979) and our feelings about loss and gain.

The world my daughter will inhabit ...

Rather grand-parents and great-grandparents with cars, planes, cinema, radio and TV and for someone born in 1896 who died in 1993 two world wars, the atomic bomb, men on the moon, the Pill, higher education for all, loss of Empire and a video player that allowed him to see his favourite films from Charlie Chaplin to 'All Quiet on the Western Front'.

'This is a period of transition for scholarship, as significant as any other in its history, from the founding of universities to the establishment of peer review and the scientific method. It is also a period that holds tension and even some paradoxes: it is both business as usual and yet a time for considerable change; individual scholars are being highly innovative and yet the overall picture is one of reluctance; technology is creating new opportunities while simultaneously generating new concerns and problems'. Weller (2011)

Research, Application, Integration and Teaching to Engagement, Experimentation, Reflection and Sharing

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).

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27 Reasons to blog

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Tuesday, 20 Mar 2012, 05:14

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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?

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The Digital Scholar (2011) Martin Weller NOTES

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Thursday, 31 May 2012, 10:26

Martin Weller (2011)

INTRODUCTION

Introduced to the power of blogging by John Naughton

(Worth following in the Guardian. Surely a demonstration of how academics blur the line between academic and journalistic writing styles successfully, just as Weller intimates that students will have to learn to differentiate between social networking writing styles and the academic style of an assignment, paper or thesis?)

· Explain things in depth

· Give all sides to the argument

· Why academics can't do the elevator pitch

The Digital Scholar was written through a blog to explore the advent of new technologies.

Wrote his last book on VLEs in 2004.

(By coincidence I am using it to prop up the iPad)

  • Online databases
  • Searching
  • Bookmarks from Delicious
  • Google Reader
  • cited posts from blogs, but not only text, also video.

Blogging for around five years

Also keeps a scrapbook like blog in Tumblr.

(I’ve used Flickr, and Tumblr, even Kodak Gallery in its time. Now I put everything into Picasa Web. The 250 grabs, charts and images are open to share. Dion Hinchcliffe offers his social media diagrams free as separate assets in Flickr River).

  • A way to offer drafts to ask for feedback
  • Sharing resources
  • Working in an intellectually vibrant environment
  • Google alerts providing updates on key words
  • Keeping abreast of the field
  • Declining attendance of conferences

‘With special thanks to’

By sharing content online I believe I may finally find my own way to publication.

Many of these services did not exist or were in their infancy in 2004.

Blogs in particular

A book

There significant changes:

1) The quantity of information available - all digital compared

2) 3000 on Twitter, 2000 subscribe to his blog

Appeals

Distributed, global resource to contemporary issues, puss of new technologies,

contributions by video and audio

3) The richness and range of contributions to include blogs, comments and

debate, video and conferences.

 

A shift I attitude to the legitimacy of these contributions.

 

Both a physical object and complementary material.

Grainne Conole using cloudworks.

Another posting a weekly video to encourage debate.

 

Concept of scholarship

 

Suffiently broad term, not only teaching and research,

not just engaged in research and employed by universities.

 

In a digital

Someone who employs digital and open technologies in a particular field.

Bloggers link to each other, democratic and easy to set up.

Epitomy of the kind

of technlogy that results in innovation.

Read or unread, daily or months,

specialist or generalist.

 

How do we recognise talent?


Should people separate out that academic and informal lives?


· Quantity

· Role of social networks

· Range of resources

 

Transformation of practice


All scholars are digital if they use a word processor and PowerPoint. But this

is 'business as usual'.

 

1) Digital

All digital files and shared by the same method.

 

2) Networked, nor longer isolated.

Easy distribution VS restriction of

scholarship to libraries, conferences, lectures and seminars. Once digitised the

barriers come down.

Dunbar. Friends 150. Reinforce with interaction. Online with a wide group of

peers.

 

3) Openness

Tim O'Reilly 2004 the architecture of participation.

Finely worked material of the journal, compared to seeing where things will lead

by sharing.

 

Digital, Networked, Open.


E.g collaboration between two people (Frank & Sally)

 

The value of a person's individual network for distribution.

The collaboration of two academics sharing their outputs they go along ... Just

a shift?

Collective impact changes everything.

 

Fast, cheap and out of control.


Brian Lamb. 1970 documentary. intersection of

all three is significant to education.

Fast to write and set up, no need for central services.

Cheap tools that have a premium, no need to turn to a budget holder.

Out of control. Outside normal institutional controls.

Money/payment and the need to persist with a certain system.

Student record systems need to be robust.

 

The good enough revolution. Wired (2009)


E.g. Flip video ... Cheap, fast and everywhere.

Dinky, lower power technology that is just good enough.

VS. Dystopian and Utopian points of view.

VS. Technological determination - humans controlled by the kit, rather than the

kit controlling the people.

 

Unpredictable

 

Taking something and using it in a way never imagined

E.g. Flickr started as a game that used photo sharing.

Social construction of technology

Complex process of co-construction

Adoption of new technology is changing scholarship. Boyer 1990

1) Context

2) Evidence

3) Other industry changes in music and newspapers

4) Boyer 1990 scholarship discovery, integration, practice, application,

teaching

*

*

*

*

9) How digital scholarship may change teaching

10) Analogy of networked weather - you can't help but be touched by it.

Digital

Networked

Open

New publishing and conferencing

13) adoption

14) anxieties

Education

1

2

3) Irrelevant

 

Not peripheral, or an issue to resolve, but rather changes to society ... As

John Seely Brown.


VS. Suggestions that our students have changed and cites Marc Prensky.

 

Separating myths from the hype.

What are the solid foundations.

A truism regarding exposure to computers. Prensky 5,000 books, 10,000 digital,

20,000 TV US

75% of 9-19 have access to a computer at home UK

72% South Africa

To get information

To research say on personal health

Oblinger and oblinger

Livingstone

 

Net Gen disappointed


Gen X against pointless interaction in class and kind of connection online.

Cannot correlate truancy to educational irrelevance.

net Gens more likely to be disappointed by how tech is used.

Net gens differentiate between writing to socialise compared to writing for

school.

Those who like writing and have an aptitude are more likely to blog so no point

in getting those with poor writing skills to blog.

 

A good deal of variance.

 

Brown 2009.

 

Teens poor performance, low patience, poor

reading and poor research skills.

 

· Express themselves in personal language

· Just print off

· Visiting a narrow range of sites

· Don't question its reliability

· 21% blogs

 

The net Gen literature sees difference where none exists.

 

  • Older gens did homework in front of TV
  • Did a previous gen have an ambiguous view.
  • Similar angst amongst students in 1908, 1960s and now. Unable to show causality.
  • Differences between net gen students and general public. Differences are not
  • significant.
  • General decline in literature reading.

Bennett et al (2008) not net Gen difference.

 

18-22 students outnumbered by mature students in the US.

 

Google, Dec 2009.

87 billion of 131 billion searches.

55.6 million in 2007 to Wikipedia

Facebook, 500m, 130 friends, once a day

YouTube, in June 2008, content 91 viewers in 2008

 

Significant activity online across a range of society.

 

Future liberation of topics.

 

Griffiths (2008) graffiti artists share and behave in a way that educationalists

would design into a programme of learning, and so it is with many other topics,

on or off the curriculum, formal or informal, from knitting to physics.

Learn as the key motivational desire.

 

Physics 100,000

FLOSS communities

Demonstrates many of the characteristics:

Mentoring

Communities of practice

Learning by doing

Self directed learning

 

Communities can form that would have previously been unable to do so due to

geographical and other barriers.

 

Openness in education - shift driven by technology.

Make academic papers open.

 

Broader trend and philosophy of the Internet.

 

Web 2.0

Top 10

Public or semi-public sharing of personal information

MIT Open 2002

1 million visitors

132 million tertiary students worldwide in 2004

OU 3 million within 2 years and helped recruit students to courses 7,000.

Slideshare

More traffic than MIT

Several hundred years to create the lecture Based models

Using third party content in their lectures.

 

How do universities remain relevant to society?


Apple to iTunes

Guardian to Podcasts

Stephen Downes 10,000 hits per day (video)

Boundaries between sectors less clear-cut

Some perfect storm ... Convenient for some to see. The Net Gen literature is

exaggerated, overblown, HE is not about to face a tectonic shift.

Firm evidence of benefits and that it is necessary.

 

Critical mass

 

Ubiquity

Invisibility

Brown

2007 those using social networks in the minority, now in the majority.

Give students relevant skills.

Asses which of these technologies will be significant.

 

Why do Students choose a university?


Not because of the technology used.

Core suitability

Academic reputation

Jobs

Teaching qualities

 

Non-academic reasons:


Proximity to homes

Scholarships

Non academic services

Cost of living in the uni area

Job prospects (while studying)

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The Digtal Scholar (2011) Martin Weller

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Monday, 18 Mar 2013, 06:38

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Alerted by a Tweat, I bought the book in minutes.

There's never a better time than 'Now'.

Purchase your copy here.

Unwell, so having it read to me on the Kindle, while taking notes on an iPad.

When I wander off I pick up the thread on the iPhone.

It's surprising how much can be read while the kettle boils.

In due course and I'll have my very own 3,000 word interpretation of this 50,000+ worder, far more once I've added my notes, thoughts additional references and illustrations.

My web 2.0 sensibilities are for the online equivalent of the Illustrated, hardback coffee-table book, with video and podcasts, interactivity and links.

I'd have Dion Hinchcliffe's graphic designer do some colour diagrams, Steven Appleby provide some cartoons, while I would interview the author for YouTube and set it all to something suitably camp like Mike Oldfield with a Roger Dean poster decorating the set.

When do we get the webinar?

And I pre-emptivelly wrote a review in Amazon on the basis of the first two chapters, hearing the author debate and speak the subject and reading his blog (as well as his earlier book that he brings up as a way of looking at how things have changed since 2006).

P.S. Buy you e-book version now then return here to discuss, or find you in Linked in or Google+ ...

Or for some blended learning if you live near Lewes, East Sussex, over at the Needlemakers for a coffee.

My 'take-aways' so far:

  • Digital, Networked, Open.
  • Fast, cheap and out of control.
  • Why students choose one university over another.
  • The 'good enough' revolution. Wired (2009)
  • The unpredicatable use of technology.
  • (and Martin Weller's daughter, he writes on page one, didn't think, based on his 'ellevator pitch' that the book would do very well. This, with a bit of 'airplay' on the blogosphere, need not be the case. Get to work tweeting, noting, sharing, putting into Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook, Xing and Viadeo. I can't see a movie in it though).

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Dion Hinchcliffe's Social Networking Charts

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Monday, 18 Mar 2013, 06:19

 

Dion%252520Hinchcliffes%252520Social%252520Enterprise%252520inforgraphic%252520network%252520CHART%252520%2525282011%252529.JPG

 

Dion Hinchcliffe Social Enterprise networking thinking

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hinchcliffe/the-promise-and-challenges-of-benioffs-social-enterprise-vision/1722?tag=search-results-rivers;item0

 

____________________________________________

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Dion Hinchcliffe keynote speech (2011)

http://dionhinchcliffe.com/2011/08/31/dreamforce-11-live-blogging-the-benioff-keynote/

 

____________________________________________

 

Whizzy charts from Dion Hinchcliffe in Flickr

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dionh/6093074681/

 

Dion%252520Hinchcliffes%252520Social%252520INTRANET%252520CHART%252520%2525282011%252529.JPG

 

How best to use social networking in an intranet

http://www.ebizq.net/blogs/enterprise/2011/05/making_an_intranet_more_social.php

 

____________________________________________

 

 

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How viral is your social network?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dionh/6069343004/in/photostream/

 

 

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Dion Hinchcliffe design social business capability

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dionh/6046080068/in/photostream/

 

 

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Dion Hinchliffe social enterprise workforce engagement

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dionh/6029463580/in/photostream/

 

 

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Dion Hinchcliffe key social business trend
s

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dionh/5951245850/in/photostream/

 

 

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Dion Hinchcliffe Attributes of Modern Communication and collaboration methods

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dionh/5716256964/in/photostream/

 

 

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Dion Hinchcliffe Social Business Ecosystem Chart

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dionh/5653961068/in/photostream/

 

 

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Gordon Bell, Microsoft, Extreme Life-Logging

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Friday, 18 Jan 2013, 07:30

 

Gordon Bell

Microsoft Research Silicon Valley

Email: GBell At Microsoft.com is the most reliable communication link
Mobile phone & answering machine:
(415) 640 8255 best voice link
Office & Computer LYNC Phone: (415) 972-6542; this rings on my PC
FAX
only if you must: MS fax gateway(425) 936-7329 address to "gbell"
Microsoft Office: 835 Market Street, Suite 700, San Francisco, CA, 94103

(c) Dan Tuffs, Photographer

Gordon Bell is a principal researcher in the Microsoft Research Silicon Valley Laboratory, working in the San Francisco Laboratory. His interests include extreme lifelogging, digital lives, preserving everything in cyberspace, and cloud computing as a new computer class and platform. He proselytizes Jim Gray’s Fourth Paradigm of Science.

Gordon has long evangelized scalable systems starting with his interest in multiprocessors (mP) beginning in 1965 with the design of Digital's PDP-6, PDP-10's antecedent, one of the first mPs and the first timesharing computer. He continues this interest with various talks about trends in future supercomputing (see Papers… presentations, etc.) and especially clustered systems formed from cost-effective “personal computers”.  As Digital's VP of R&D he was responsible for the VAX Computing Environment. In 1987, he led the cross-agency group as head of NSF's Computing Directorate that made "the plan" for the National Research and Education Network (NREN)aka the Internet.

When joining Microsoft in 1995, Gordon had started focusing on the use of computers and the necessity of telepresencebeing there without really being there, then. "There" can be a different place, right now, or a compressed and different time (a presentation or recording of an earlier event). In 1999 this project was extended to include multimedia in the home (visit Papers… presentations, etc.).

He puts nearly all of his atom- and electron-based bits in his local Cyberspace—the MyLifeBits project c1998-2007. This includes everything he has accumulated, written, photographed, presented, and owns (e.g. CDs). In February 2005 an epiphany occurred with the realization that MyLifeBits goes beyond Vannevar Bush's "memex" and is a personal transaction processing database for everything described in June 14, 2005 SIGMOD Keynote. The MyLifeBits project with Jim Gemmell is described in an article by us in the March 2007 Scientific American. Alec Wilkinson described Gordon and the MyLifeBits effort in the 28 May 2007 issue of the New Yorker. By the publication of the book the final epiphany was that our e-memories are where the records reside and bio-memories are just URLs into these records.

He and Jim Gemmell have written a book entitled Total Recall: How the e-Memory Revolution Will Change Everything which was published in=n September 2009. You can order it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Borders, orIndieBound. Please check out the Total Recall book website. Your Life, Uploaded: The Digital Way to Better Memory, Health, and Productivity is the paperback version published September 2010. It is available in Dutch, French, Italian, Japanese, Korean, and Portuguese.

The remainder of the site includes these pages:

  1. Papers, books, PowerPoint presentations, videos since 1995, when joining Microsoft
  2. Extended Bio-- education, work history, honors... Alaska fishing and France biking
  3. Vitae: Listing of books, computers, interviews, papers, patents, projects, and videos
  4. THE COMPUTER MUSEUM ARCHIVE An archive of The Computer Museum in Boston 1980-1998.

5. Gordon's  Cyber Museum that has Bell's books, the Hollerith Patent, the CDC 8600 Manual, a talk about Seymour Cray, an album of supercomputer photos, posters about the history of computing, etc.

6. Gordon's Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) Cyber Museum has artifacts, books, brochures, clippings, manuals, memos (e.g. The VAX Strategy), memorabilia, photos, posters, presentations, etc. relating to Digital Equipment Corporation a.k.a. DEC.

7. Supercomputing and the CyberInfrastructure lists articles, memos, talks, and testimony regarding the various aspects of high performance computing including funding, goals, and problems in reaching to the Teraflops in 1995 and Petaflops in 2010.

Bell's Law of Computer Classes and Class formation was first described in 1972 with the emergence of a new, lower priced microcomputer class based on the microprocessor. Microsoft Technical Report MSR-TR-2007-146 describes the law and gives the implication for multiple cores per chip, etc. Established market class computers are introduced at a constant price with increasing functionality (or performance). Technology advances in semiconductors, storage, interfaces and networks enable a new computer class (platform) to form about every decade to serve a new need. Each new usually lower priced class is maintained as a quasi independent industry (market). Classes include: mainframes (60's), minicomputers (70's), networked workstations and personal computers (80's), browser-web-server structure (90's), web services (2000's), palm computing (1995), convergence of cell phones and computers (2003), and Wireless Sensor Networks aka motes (2004). Beginning in the 1990s, a single class of scalable computers called clusters built from a few to tens of thousands of commodity microcomputer-storage-networked bricks began to cover and replace mainframes, minis, and workstation. Bell predicts home and body area networks will form by 2010. See also the description of several laws (e.g. Moore's, Metcalfe's, Bill's, Nathan's, Bell's) that govern the computer industry is given in Laws, a talk by Jim Gray and Gordon Bell.

Description: \\research\root\web\external\en-us\UM\People\gbell\CGB on Segway 020405_small.jpgDescription: \\research\root\web\external\en-us\UM\People\gbell\CGB on GM Segway GM model_small.jpgGordon was with his Diamond Exchange colleagues at the Boulders, Carefree, AZ where the group tested the Segway, a dual-processor, two wheeled, computer and Human Transporter.  Since the test in 2002, he has taken and recommended tours in the Pacificia near San Francisco, and Washington, DC. Yes, this is a product endorsement. Right is the Ford SUV version

 

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Digital Housekeeping

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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.

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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.

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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).

 

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HOLIDAY ILLNESS

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Sunday, 10 Mar 2013, 00:23

Down with something hideous and find myself on antibiotics. Want to be studying but haven't the head for it, not academic papers.

This cover 20 benefits of mobile learning though.

As an asthmatic I wonder if the kind of videos I used to produce as interactive Apps might be of value?

Watch several movies, the wonderful 'Barefoot in the Park' with Robert Redford and Jane Fonda, the TV movie on the rise of Hitler with Robert Carlyle and 'The Englishman who went up a hill and came down a mountain' with Hugh Grant and Tara Fitzgerald.

'The Rise of Evil' is historically accurate though somewhat eager, understandably, to ensure that Hitler has no redeeming points. I'd recommend it as viewing alongside the two volume biography by Ian Kershaw.

'Barefoot in the Park' which I must have seen on TV in the 1970s drew me into the wonders of a stage play making it onto the big screen. I also admire the way five days of sex is handled by showing newspapers being put outside their hotel bedroom door every morning. I thought Paul put his shoes out to be polished, another film?

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Talking about social media learning

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Thursday, 3 Nov 2011, 22:03

A call from a colleague with a major corporate and we talk social media learning for nearly three hours.

During this time I repeatedly search this blog, using the e-portfolio that it has become, sending charts and grabs from Picasa and from the iPad, creating a mind-map in Bubbl.us and balancing how the MA in Open and Distance Learning compares to the OU MBA he completed last year and the MRes he is doing now.

Just a phone call. We could have gone to Skype, Elluminate or even Google+. The phone freed up the laptop. Several photos picked up from workshops, as well as screen grabs, were emailed from the iPad which was also running.

Social Media Learning Bubbl.us Mind Map

Fig.1. Social Media Learning Mind Map

Timely as I am procrastinating over the ECA which will be on the use of Forums and Mobile devices in e-learning.

A reminder of how a synchronous conversation can achieve so much, especially when there were items set before our eyes to discuss.

We also discussed (I hadn't the energy to take many notes. In retrospect I wish I'd recorded it):

  • Belbin Team Roles
  • Activity Theory
  • Management Mindsets
  • Silos
  • Web 2.0
  • Learning on the periphery
  • Vicarious Learning
  • Medical Market Research
  • TV Production
  • The role of an Alumni Board
  • Narrative
  • Research
  • Assessment
  • Blogs as 'electronic paper'

It was invaluable to have the external point of view, someone from a global comany of thousands talking about social media learning. Looking at the devices we now have, such as smartphones and tablets, it was particularly interesting to be reminded of human nature, how devices may be used for things and in ways that they were not designed.

Whilst the iPad permits mobility, we often use it when static: in our favourite chair, recumbant on the sofa, even in bed or in the bath. Is this mobile learning? It's hardly getting out of the house, drawing down data on the run using augmented technology to enhance the environment your in. And simply having content on an iPad so that you can using the touch screen to open and close the text, enlarging text, flipping the screen size between portrait and landscape all the time - the joy of its tactile nature. Unable to sleep I use the light from the iPad as a torch to sneak away from the marital bed and passed the children's bedrooms and to find my way downstairs withouth having to put the landing light on.

It also was clear how both devices and approaches to learning cannot be isolated, we got our joint heads around Engestrom's 'Activity Systems'. The technology is complementary, the move to personalise everything through device and software choices.

I'd played Devil's Adocat a couple of times suggesting that 'nothing had changed' only to come away agreeing that many of my behaviours were/are different as a direct result of Web 2.0. I have gone from learning in private, hunched over my books never showing it to anyone to a situations where, more like someone tending a public garden, or at least one seen from the street, people can see my thinking. Ironically, it is the end result that often fails to appear because I'm not about to post TMAs and ECAs online.


Some authors I quoted/cited during the conversation:

  • Vygotsky
  • Engestrom
  • Richardson
  • Moon
  • Cox
  • John Seely Brown
  • Jonathan Swift

To which I subsequently add as a result of browsing the blog and so re-engaging with my own experience within the chronology of the module; it is this, after all, that is to be examined, rather than my knowledge from this and the preceding modules. A learning design fault?

  • H807 You diddle about with every instrument in the orchestra and several that have just been invented.
  • H808 You learn to conduct, or at least why a conductor is important (even if you can't play an instrument or read music).
  • H800 You learn to play an electronic keyboard

I quoted Swift as saying (paraphrasing) 'I don't know what I mean until I hear myself speak'. If anyone has any idea how to cite this please do offer your thoughts.

More authors to consider in this context (mobile learning, forums, e-learning, web 2.0):

  • Haythornthwaite
  • O'Reilly
  • Weller
  • Traxler
  • Gregory
  • Mason
  • Sharpe
  • Beetham
  • Belshaw
  • Hinchcliffe
  • Bacon and Dillon
  • Siemens
  • Boyer
  • Wenger
  • Bruner

Other topics that we should have discussed:

  • User Generated Content
  • Collective Intelligence
  • Apprenticeships
  • Problem based learning
  • Participation
  • Demand Pull

BEING DEVELOPED FURTHER HERE

http://socialmedia4education.wordpress.com/2011/09/08/social-learning-for-corporates/

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Walled Garden or Swimming Pool, how would you define this environment?

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Monday, 7 Nov 2011, 06:01
As an exercise I have for the first time since I started this blog in February 2010, gone through EVERY tag. The typos are going and there is some consolidation. Do I need the duplication of Agnes Kukulska-Hulme and Kukulska-Hulme? I don't need the duplication of h808 week 5, and h808 wk5. And are the tags e-learning and MAODE pointless if so many entries are so identified? My view is to get stuck in and alter stuff as I go along, exactly like gardening.

Blogging here in OU land is to do so within a 'walled garden' (a technical term for a safe haven, a nursery if you will, polytunnel or cold frame if you prefer, even the training pool in a Leisure Complex rather than the open sea.

Can I gather my thoughts this way? That's the idea. More than an aide memoir once you have 100 entries + (there are more like 500 here) with tags, they can be as personal as you decide, and you can search anyway.

What I have found over ten years blogging, and 18 months here, is that almost EVERYTHING you write and tag, title (and categorise if you cut, paste and duplicate into an external blog) sparks off a memory of when and why you made that note or had that thought: you can build on this.

So why go public?

This is where a blog differs from the private diary or journal (which are valuable in their own right). A blog, shared with a discrete tutor group, or just your tutor, with the cohort for that module or the entire course, let alone ALL current OU students and the www, is guided by comments. These are always supportive, constructive, considered and relevant. Only ONCE was I ever 'flamed' and that was nine years ago on an external blog. The thoughts of those on other courses are often the most insightful of all as they come unburdened, curious and willing to challenge.

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What next regarding e-learning?

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Monday, 8 Oct 2012, 04:54

This has me thinking and going through http://www3.open.ac.uk/study/postgraduate/qualification/F10.htm

With the MA in mind I have done:

H807 Innovations in e-learning

H808 The e-learning professional

And will complete next month:

H800 Technology Enhanced Learning

For the 180 credits required for the MA there is no choice (unless I am misreading it) but to do the only two remaining 30 credit modules:

H810 Accessible Online Learning

H809 Practice-based  Research in Educational Technology

Or have I got that wrong?

With this in mind it's H810 in September then H809 in February 2012.

To confuse issues there are professional reasons to start the MBA programme from October. Decision time then as I won't be doing two courses concurrently. Something I tried by doing over a three year period the UKCC ASA Senior Club Coach (swimming) qualification ... 

Freedom is LACK of choice.

I look forward to H810. Search H810 in the OU Student Blogs for an idea of what it is about; we did a rich, engaging and valuable period on accessibility in H807.

I'd do H807 again as I feel it was wasted on me. It took me six months to get into the postgraduate groove and my IT skills despite being online for a decade were woefully inadequate. The disappointment is that the reading and activities cannot possibly be contemporary so that you feel as if it is 2005 at best, 2003 at worst. I expected technological fireworks; at least I understand why that is not realistic. Perhaps the model whereby a module that aims to be innovative is designed and reinvented continually?

H800 is the 60 pointer but I have found it LESS onerous that previous 30 Pointer modules, not only is it spread thinner, but the pace is adjusted, the roll-over and degree of repetition embeds the learning outcomes and a TMA as prep for the ECA is inspired.

What next is asked by many MA qualified postgraduates I am finding. We hanker after more but short of a PhD what can be offered? Indeed, I think there is a gap in Tertiarty, or should it be called 'quartertiary' education?

If offered a further choice of modules beyond the MA I'd do them ... Towards at MA+ or MA* ?? Though in truth for how the thinking is applied, as a form of CPD.

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E-learning is like a take-away

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Friday, 4 Nov 2011, 19:41

The idea of thinking of e-learning as a chicken tikka is sound, though I'd perhaps prefer pizza or a Chinese takeaway.

Whether it's e - learning or m- learning, it must be ME learning.

Chapter 12

Rosemary Luckin, Diane Brewster, Pearce, du Boulay, Siddons - Corbay.

From Mobile Learning:a hand book for educators and trainers. John  Traxler and Agnes Kukulksha-Hulme (2005)

I read this on vacation in a couple of days in between learning to surf on the north Cornwall beach of Mawgan Porth. I have barely managed a day without dwelling on either e-learning or social media, dreaming of them even when a signal is difficult to come by (on the knoll above the farmhouse where we are staying).

Written in 2005 and so based on research of the previous five years I have to wonder at my haste to download it (e-book). It takes me back to my own first forays into online learning in 2001 when amongst others FT Knowledge was my account.

The problem with the content is that is is woefully out of date. All the research being done at the time was on the useless PDAs of the time; I stuck with a PSION that served me well as  a pocket word-processor.

Chicken%252520Tikka%252520SNIP.JPG

'Whichever mode of delivery I choose, the meal I eat will still be Chicken Tikka'. Luckin et al (2005:122)

The only idea of lasting significance that I have taken from the entire book is this one, that and fig.1 which I'm a mind map indicates the many devices that provide mobility, ALL of which now reside in an iPad or iPhone with all problems long ago resolved by commercial organisations rather than any institution who without fail take far too long to commit to anything and invariably design by committee trying to please everyone so put everything in, and rarely consider the commercial feasibility of their actions.

On reflection, 'take-away' says it all for e-learning as convenience is everything.

REFERENCE

Luckin,R., Brewster,D., du Boulay, P., Corbay, S.  (2005) in Mobile Learning. A handbook for educators and trainers. Edited by Agnes Kukulska-Hulme and John Traxler.

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You don't learn to swim by reading a book ... An applied degree must therefore be situated in the workplace?

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Friday, 2 May 2014, 11:17

Too much theory without practice was described by the owner of a successful specialist engineering firm in Germany today as 'like trying to learn to swim from a book.'

Apprenticeship in Germany run for 3 1/2 years of which 8 months a year is practical. The remainder of the year they go to a special school. 'If you  only learn theory it is like learning swimming from reading a book so you need both.' Leonardo  Duritchich, Chief Technial Water, Sief Steiner Pianos.   The Today Programme, 27h36, Wednesday 17th  August.

I agree, though when it comes to swimming, there are some great books made all the better in electronic form. This is 'The Swim Drill Book.'

Putting into practice what you learn, learning construction rather than simply knowledge acquisition; I believe this to be the case with something like The OU Business School MBA, something I needed each time I started businesses in the 2980s and 1990s.
As a swimming coach it matters that you swam competitively and/or still swim. A flightless bird cannot teach a bird to fly. So engineers learn through doing, often from apprenticeship. Junior Doctors need to put in the hours, solicitors start as trainees, the list goes on. It is particularly the case in the TV business where after starting as a trainee producer I was happier with kit, shooting, editing and drafting scripts, learning my trade, something that an a degree had not prepared me for.

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Scrambulation

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Sunday, 24 Feb 2013, 07:46

I think I did the equivalent of throwing the files out of the window yesterday afternoon and no doubt the TMA grade will reflect this.

I reached a stage of total scrambulation.

Currently doing a 24 hour spring clean, pack the car, find wetsuits that no one can get into, fix the box on car roof, get keys that work for the car ... listen to Pepys dramatised on the radio (see the blog) ... while feeding teenagers and accommodating my wife whose computer died when it was purloined for World of Warcraft duties sad

(P.S. I am advised that my avatar remains wondering this world in her underwear. Meanwhile, after three weeks of doing a paper round my son has purchased a virtual motorbike for his World of Warcraft avatar - think Harley Davidson - he also has an upgrade on his pet -  an Elephant.

Both impress I am told.

Educators enter here at their own peril.

valdesire%252520nickers.JPG

My advice would be to so so with an experienced 13 year old to assist and you may end up like me, female, in your underwear, doing dances for your living. Seriously, this is my experimental taste of virtual worlds.

I learned that my son has several characters online, somehow, and each has a distinct personality and I suspect gender. I am 'Val Desire' her twin - is creation - is 'Not Val Desire'.)

And the dog is on heat sad

And my 15 year old daughter has decided the contents of her attic room are childish and is currently bagging it (while my wife is going through said bag convinced that everything has a value and ought to be put in our lock up garage for the next decade or two. A garage that is 11 miles away and we took possession of temporarily when we moved house ... four years ago.)

Otherwise a normal day.

Pencils and pastels I have, but I need cartridge paper and a new drawing board.

I'm disinclined to over use the digital camera as it will require immediate downloading to a laptop then editing, then uploading and all that eJazz. Do I go with the flow, indluge this? Maybe I should, passing on some basic craft skills along the way in relation to shot size, editing, action cuts and so on.

I realise too that this desire to go off and draw is akin to being behind a computer screen.

A sort of hunkering down escape into my own head. Though drawing is likely to be less distracting than being online.

Basically, what I crave, and did for decades with my Dad is a boat, to sea with all those challenges and absolutely NO contact with the outside world.

On these trips I took books, paper, guitar. I am inclined therefore to need the iPad that now is the books, the paper and all the sheet music my heart could desire.

Impossible of course because he is long dead and the boat sold.

 

 

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The 350 year old blog of a 26 year old - Samuel Pepys

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Tuesday, 20 Mar 2012, 05:25

Episode One (Saved in BBC iPlayer for one week from broadcast)

Episode Two (10h45 Today, repeated 19h45 this evening)

This first episode is a wonderful interplay between domestic and civil life, the prospect of joining the ship that will fetch the King from exile, while the 'wench' who works for them refuses to kill the turkey they've been feeding up because it's her friend.

Samuel%252520Pepys%252520SNIP.JPG

On the 1st of January 1660, the 26 year old Samuel Pepys decides to start keeping a diary.

He's behind with his rent, he goes out too often, and drinks too much. He lies awake worrying about work, and despite being happily married, can't keep his hands off other women.

He gives us eyewitness accounts of some of the great events of the 17th century but he also tells us what people ate, wore, what they did for fun, the tricks they played on each other, what they expected of marriage, and of love affairs.

Pepys.jpg

This BBC radio drama is on every day at 10.45 and again in the evening at 19.45. Episode 2 today.

Samuel%252520Pepys%252520SNIP%2525202%252520.JPG

Follow Samuel Pepys on Twitter. You get regular 140 characters or less updates.

 

Pepys%2525202.jpg

Read his diary, offered on a the basis of 'on this day 350 years ago.'

Nothing's changed much, the most important things in our life are loves, family and friends. Our lives may touch on the politics and events of the time, they may not. Pepy's got through the restoration of the King, Plague and the Fire of London.

He so often ends is entry with, 'and so to bed'.

For radio for boring bits have been left out; it therfore reads like a novel.

Not a recommended style for these pages, but great for an external blog in Wordpress, Blogger or LiveJournal. Or my favourite, Diaryland.

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Why blog? Why not!

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Tuesday, 20 Mar 2012, 14:10

DSC01353.JPG

As an advocate for and practioner of blogging since 1999 and I couldn't let this pass by (even though I am meant to be writing at TMA that is due today).

Search 'blog' or 'blogging' in my OU Student Blog (here) or click on one of the tags.

The research shows that in the overall active online community of many millions online:

95% read (lurk/observe/consume blogs)

4% will go one step further and engage (i.e. add a comment)

1% actually 'create' (write essentially, though this may now include blogs that are essentially photogalleries or YouTube  uploads)

Neilsen, J (2011).

In the student population (the study was last done in 2009 with undergraduates in Australia), the figure rises to 34% having uploaded content to a blog ... 'in the last 12 months'. (which for my money means they are not blogging at all).

Good luck, enjoy!

They have a multitude of uses and value and I will of course say that this value greatly increases over time.

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Informal learning, Google+ and iPads

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Friday, 2 Nov 2012, 23:55

I've set myself a challenge to take mobile learning to the nth degree, 'testing to destruction'.

If I thought the iPad would survive the experience I thought perhaps a jacuzzi or sauna?

Signal might not be good.

In my gap year eons ago I discovered that the hotel owner (4 star) thought it great that guests and staff, including a very lowly teen me, could 'chill' out together in 'his' sauna.

There is relevance and that is the idea of 'informal' learning.

Indeed, I wonder if many OU students, enjoying and enrolled in a 'life of learning' practice in a more informal way then us 'regular' students who (and I applaud it) take it reasonably seriously.

I could knock out the TMAO4 in a first draft before lunch today, not bother with much referencing and checking meaning, grammar etc: and submit expecting to scrape through with a 40 something at worst, a 50 something more likely. The problem I have is enjoying the present too much and even with e-learning being fed the latest through the likes of Zite and Stumbleupon.

Recording our hang-out session may have made for fun viewing.

On the other hand by doing so it radically changes the dynamic. I wouldn't want the student me confused with the business me.

(Four months in to a 12 month fixed contract).

That said I'd love a playback of my slow descent below the frame.

This is the trickster at play.

Belbin I believe categorises people and how they work in teams, I know where I belong! The very fact that it has become a catalyst for conversation shows it's value; where now Elluminate?

I've started to make comparisons in my OU Student Blog.

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H800 WK15 Activity 4 Role-Play - An Avatar

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Tuesday, 20 Mar 2012, 14:17

The entertainment and learning continues.

I didn't think playing World of Warcraft would become like a game of Monopoly, kind of.

My wife decided she too should be introduced to our son's world. Her response is to moan about how long he spends online. My reposte is always that he is learning (he is supervised, he does this in the sitting room).

I haven't taken notes (perhaps I should), but I am aware that there are bonds with his closest friends that transcend the screen.

Leaving my Avatar in their safe hands I go off to do some errands.

I return to find this.

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I had left her at Level something with oodles of gold and a sack full of weaponry; she was also clothed, I am informed that to buy some vital spell my son had advised my wife (operating the avatar) to sell all her clothes.

My son then delights in showing the she will dance sad

In narrative terms I would say my son is playing the role of the 'Trickster'.

What compensates him for having to teach/shadow his parents in this world is that he will from time to time do this. It isn't difficult to imagine what kind of tricks the highly adapt and experienced Virtual Worlders in a class of young teenagers would (do) behave if given the chance to gain or exploit the upper-hand.

Why female?

As I went through the various characters in the alternative 'camps' my son muttered things about his perceptions of the types of people in the avatar skins. He had no issues with this 'character'. I feel disembodied, primarily because I have entered a world that he has mastered, so like going skiing with someone who does extreme and heli-skiing while I am on the nursery slopes (with a sledge).

As I passed the 'controls' to my wife, and indeed, in my absence my son can be this character anyway, it had me thinking of 'her' in the same way as one of the many pet guinea-pigs we had until recently. Part of the family, but at arms' length.

Jonathan Franzen bemoaned authors who could only write as themselves, indeed at Harvard being part of a writer's group where most people could do little else than invent characters who had been on a gap year or had a difficult term at school.

It is insightful to think yourself into the role of a.n.other, old, young, male, female, different cultures and class. Doing the reading I am impressed and informed by those with series injuries or disabilities who can find a compensatory form of existence when playing in these worlds (exactly like the movie Avatar of course in which the protagonist, paralysed from the waist down, finds legs).

Thinking further, might or could behaviours be like that of controlling a ventriloquist's dummy?

That you let your avatar be your more bold and outspoken alter-ego?

A mindfield for teachers. I wouldn't like to enter such a world with a bunch of young teenagers!

This is why South Korea has it right putting all new teachers through e-learning training.

I learnt that World of Warcraft is far too robust for cheats, indeed that the culture of its creation mean there are none. In one respect, again, like a movie (the narrative theme), the world is consistent even though it is of course 'other wordly'.

I also learn that my wife has bought stuff from other avatars in the belief that these purchases would get our son through a level without him having to spend hours/days on a quest. I think she should appreciate that this thing is never ending.

In a learning context you can't buy yourself a skill or knowledge set.

Plagiarism tools should pick it up if you have bought a paper, but more importantly there will be an assignment at some stage that is robust and designed to test what you know. However, as I have shown with my wife taking over my Avatar, could not, and do not people do this?

As the learning, not the qualificaiton, is that what matters to me in MAODE might I share this entire experience with another? Split the cost and do the work together, but only one of us taking the credit?

We are a devious lot, we humans. If something can be got for free ...

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Regarding 'dressing-up' and role play I was reminded as I ran through a list of authors I have read extensively that Virginia Woolf and some friends once dressed up as Middle-Eastern Royalty and were entertained by the officers on a vessel of Her Majesty's Navy.

There is in us, all of us (certainly as children), to dress up and role play as a form of learning (and entertainment). Are virtual worlds not simply playing to this innate trait?

And rock musicians? From Alice Cooper and David Bowie to Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber

Many are acting out a fantasy or role-playing.

Are we not obliged to take silly-names in things like Twitter anyway as most variatons of our own name have gone? Was there not a first-adopter, classroom clown approach to email addresses too that some might regret, certainly change in due course?

As a diarist going online I regret being open simply because I see now how open and revelatory people want to be, which is best achieved by remaining anonymous, the best and apt blogger going by the name of 'Invisabledon' (see below) being one such person who after a decade I can only know as a bloke in his 40s or 50s living in North America. Going in as myself had its compensations from a 'branding' point of view but such first-name 'public' secret diarists are rare. (I locked this diary in 2006 and am slowly migrating some of the 17000 pages to www.mymindbursts.com).

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This from Diaryland shows that kinds of names people adopt. Do they then live up to the names they choose? Often they do.

If you are interested in blogging, this platform, launched in 1999, has barely changed though copied a thousand times over. Here a limited list of 'buddies' (75) are revealed in a simply menu that tells the blogger when someone last updated. I've long ago abandoned blogging here, but you would edit out those who didn't update, certainly once they'd got the the 3 month mark. I can't think of any blog platform that gives you this kind of insight into a selection of fellow participants.

Parameters, as here, have their virtues.

(Like learning music, you don't start with a cathedral organ, but a piano and Grades 1-3. Being given the full orchestra may be overwhelming).

Something else they have are 'Diary Rings', sets of like-minds who opt in to a huge variety of 'circles of friends' which sounds like (and is like) Google + Circles.

The problem/issue Diaryland has, and they have stuck with this, is to refuse ALL advertising anywhere so leaving it, clearly, underfinanced so unable to modernise.

For a blog coach looking for a 'training pool' to put novices testing the water I can think of no better place. You even have to learn or remember some Basic HTML.

 

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