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Here's an idea - review and grade reports

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Friday, 1 Oct 2010, 12:44

Here's an idea.

I'd like to see a 'review grade' recommends star system on all the resources we're invited to read, whether they are a must read or supplementary.

Whilst it is a skill to skim read something before giving it your all, I'd like to have a second, third or fourth opinion. Or just a fellow student indicating, 'don't bother,' or just as useful, 'don't miss this one out.'

Too often I have got stuck into a report only to find I wish I hadn't, either I'm not ready for it, or someone else says it better.

On the resources on 'Reflection' (H808) I feel I came in as an MA student on a topic that in one context I understood, but in relation to its use in academic study I did not. The 'heavier' text simply wound me up. Then I got the RLO from the University of Central London. Simple.

Something happened. What happened? So what? What next?

See, I can even remember it.

Though required for H807 I don't recall it being emboddied in the module. Were too many of us left to flounder? Or allowed to flounder?

Moon, Creme and all the rest embed this simple message in so much learning theory and psychology that the only thing they needed to communicate got lost. It assumes previous knowledge.

Go back to Kolb, rather than tacking on ifs and buts and provisos, or invent your own 'cycle of reflection.' I want to read Dewey. The book, hardback. From a second hand book shop. In my hand. With a former teacher's pecilled in notes.

I've come across a system that is simpler than any of the above.

You ask the question 'what is the problem?' over and over and over again.

By the time you have answered this six times you may be surprised at the truth it reveals, the real problem that on fixing resolves everything else.

Reflection that produces an outcome, or simply a dog chasing its tail?

REFERENCE

(in due course, I think I've drawn on the thinking of a dozen above).

Imagine if we had to reference everything we said in a conversation at a cocktail party? Or in the pub? I feel a sketch coming along. I wonder if I could get Mel Smith and Rhys Grifth-Jones back together to do one of their head to heads? You know, over the table, resting on their elbows, deliberating. But whenever they say something that requires a Harvard Style reference they must give it. Try that as they have first one, then a second or a third pint of Harvey's ale.

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Perceptions of time

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Sunday, 4 May 2014, 12:25

Ian Peacock interviews:

Marcus de Sautoy
Charles Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science and Professor of Mathematics


Dr Marc Whitmann, University of Fribourg


David M. Eagleman, Ph.D.
Adjunct Assistant Professor of Psychology
Department of Neuroscience, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston,


Dr Peter Naish, Senior Lecturer, Psychology, OU

 

How do we percieve time? What makes it seem to pass quickly or slowly?

All here on the BBC iPlayer.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00p2cbz/Tempus_Fugit/

But not for long, just 'til the 6th October.

I liked the idea the 23 students volunteered to jump 300ft from a building into a net to test if they pericieved time passing more slowly when being scared out of the minds.

I like the idea that by working the brain hard you pack more in to time, that you should do things differently, even brushing you teeth with the other hand to make time matter.

I fancy a new country and a new language. France has its attractions.

 

 

 

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The Institution for Learning and PebblePad

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I've joined the first and believe I get the second free as a result?

If this works then the contents of my MyStuff will be exported to PebblePad.

In terms of my journey towards credibility as an 'e-learning professional' this marks a step outside the confines of the OU.

Volunteering my thinking to three e-learning projects marks a step towards 'professionalism' in the sense of being paid.

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H808 E-portfolio Case Study. Core Activity 2.3

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Monday, 29 Aug 2011, 17:23

1.       What were the anticipated outcomes of using an eportfolio in this case?

2.       What were the limitations to its implementation?

3.       How is the eportfolio in this case supposed to help the user to identify and manage their learning?

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Reflection on IT skills

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Monday, 29 Aug 2011, 08:04

There are several software packages I need to familiarise myself with.

This is the consequence of being a freelance, a one man band. If I cannot communicate the way I would wish without a better knowledge of various tools, then I must grasp the IT nettle.

I'm learning Outlook by using it

A 1000 member swimming club, its swimmers, parents, committee, teaching and coaching staff is my material. As I coach or teach five days a week there are a myriad opportunities to create groups, build profiles and get in touch to make things happen.

I prefer Filemakerpro over Excel, but need both.

Having someone who can make Excel sing I've decided to catch up on my knowledge of Filemaker Pro, after all, I can merge all Excel files in Filemaker then build templates from there. It is this ability to build a multitude of bespoke templates that appeals to me, it gives me as many ways as I want and can imagine into the information I store there.

This I will use for the swimming club, performance records of swimmers, tracking coaches too ... and collating data for the club's Swim21 submissions. I trust it will also become part of my e-portfolio for the OU, even a way, yet again, to tackle 90,000 word long fiction.

Let alone a place to gather client and project details.

On verra.

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e-learning not elearning

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Monday, 29 Aug 2011, 12:43

I've just noticed, that whilst the OU spellchecker recognises e-learning, it does not recognise elearning.

What about eLearning?

No.

Or e.learning?

Yes.

If I am corrected for using 'e.learning' am I right or wrong?

Does being right or wrong matter?

It's just a word.

It's not even that.

It's a letter.

e

 

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On Blogging

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Saturday, 27 Aug 2011, 15:47

With thanks to a fellow OU student who asked 'why?'

I’ve blogged since Sept 1999.

More importantly I’ve kept a diary since March 1976 (I was 14 1/2)  ... with substantial two or three year breaks I should add in the 80s, 90s and 00s ... and only on a few occasions ‘every day of every year.’

The diary was never read by others and never of interest to them. Except on one occasion I was aware my girlfriend was looking at it so I wrote some especially nice things about her and she did likewise. A comment, you could say. That was a one off. (She also read that on our first date I thought she had bad breath. Lesson learnt. If you are going to express your mind, keep it private or lie, or jsut leave things out ... and keep it under lock and key).

The appeal in the early days of blogging was to have an electronic form of the ‘journal’ I kept, however this gradually changed into something quite different with the then new additions of ‘friends’ and ‘favourites’ and all the other ‘sticky things’ (technical web term) that are common-place. 

Two things start to happen

1) you make a couple of ‘friends’ you relate to really well and find you’re only truly interested in them and you can develop ideas, support each other and so on i.e. collaboration. (We formed a successful writers group).

2) you go crazy for the statistics and start to wonder why certain pages are read and which get the most hits ... and what you have to do or say to get more hits.

This OU Blog-a-long-a-thon scroll is better for the lack of the many tools, quirks and quasi-personalisation tools that commercial blogsites now offer. 

At this stage the realisation is that you are no longer keeping a journal, nor is it private. Indeed you very quickly find there is a considerable amount of fiction, flaming and writing gibberish simply to fill a page and have your profile picked up in some blog rank-a-thingy somewhere.

I call this turning into an 'e-j'.

It's value is ephemeral. It is not a journal anymore. There's no value in privacy, indeed 'disclosure' and 'exposure' become the way to deliver a high ranking blog. My tactic was to circumvent the entire blog premise by removing any sense of it being a 'log,' writing entries that are tagged or stored by theme, rather than the day they are written on.

I try not to do it in what I call ‘OU Land’ where I am increasingly trying to be more professional and circumspect.

The temptation to write to provoke, or to intrigue is still there which will cause me trouble when it gets to submitting anything for ‘reflection’ because there may not be anything there ... which is why I am starting to post the ‘bland, objective, reflective kind of thing required’ but keeping it private.

There’s a piece on the addictive nature of games and the Internet in the New Scientist. (See below. I wrote about it last week).

I would say between 2002 and 2006 I probably spent far, far too long blogging. When you post 10,000 words on one day and have 1.6 million words online (largely unpublishable farting into cyberspace) I think you could say there was a problem.

Most of this serves no good purpose at all, other than tinkering at the QWERTY keyboard, the piano equivalent of playing chop-sticks. i.e. you quicklky find you are getting the same, repetitive tune.

I never, or rarely read over my old, hand written diaries (a decade is the right kind of timespan to afford them any worth), yet reading a page in a blog is a click away, a search word away. It's as if very day and any day is given equal value. But is it of value to learn that I tend to wash my hair on a Thursday?

Feedback is like gold, it is recognition, and in a tiny way rewarding and flattering.

Once again, there can be an obsessive hankering for comment, to the degree that your views and what you write is geared to nothing else, whilst in OU Land, a type of blogging experience, within the context of academic study, 'hits' count for nothing, whereas there is the potential to gain marks through objective reflection.

And finally ...

Blogging transmogrified through comments, friends and favourites away from being an online journal, to being a form of social networking. The blogging landscape is now so varied and vast that it often ceases to be blogging at all.

Facebook is the equivalent of blogging onto a Post it note that you then stick to the side of a bus.

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e-learning is a term compromising one letter representing a physical property of technology (e for electronic)

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Friday, 25 Nov 2011, 14:08

I wonder of e-learning as a term will last, like email?

What's happened to 'new media?' I guess it's no longer new. What's happend to 'web-based learning?' I guess the web is there, like air, so we don't need to refer to its existance, it just is. And so on to 'online learning' which at the OU has usrped 'open learning.'

I like this thought:

‘Whereas education is by definition a multi-faceted activity understood to involve a variety of players and activities – teachers and teaching; students and studying; institutions and structures, information, knowledge and, it is hoped, learning.

e-learning is a term compromising one letter representing a physical property of technology (e for electronic) and the hoped-for outcome (learning) for one participant in the interaction.

Given the power of language to constrain our thinking, is our current circumscribed terminology making it increasingly difficult to keep in mind and focus on elements of this expanding activity that, while not readily apparent in the term ‘e-learning’ itself, must be understood and included when establishing policy and researching the phenomenon?’

(Melody Thompson, 2007 in Conole and Oliver, 2007:187)

REFERENCE

Conole, G and Oliver, M (2007) Research in E-Learning

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H808 Standards and Specifications. Weller. 2007

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Wednesday, 31 Aug 2011, 05:33

Although Weller applies this thinking to VLEs the same must apply to e-portfolios.

KEY ISSUES

  • Exchange of learning resources
  • Passing of data between institutions
  • Multiple platforms
  • Software applications that communicate with other students

'Agnostic’

Interoperability


The argument for standardisation is made in relation to electricity plugs.

  • platform agnostic
  • language agnostic
  • IPR terms to share


Modularisation – like music through Napster and the commercially through iTunes.

Problems

  • semantic
  • modularisation
  • security
  • quality
  • licensing
  • development tools

Standards

Is interoperability in relation to the transferability of data and resources like issues of access for disabled people?

Transferability adds a dimension from a point moving forward, as well as going back, and weaving across.

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New technologies

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Wednesday, 31 Aug 2011, 12:20

C4 Beyond VLE

‘Looking at technologies is always a moving target.’ Weller. (2007:291)

REFERENCE

Beyond the VLE (2007)

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The irresistible internet. New Scientist 11 SEPT 2010

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Thursday, 16 Sept 2010, 22:24

The OU has stimulated my mind suitably over the last seven months to oblige a subscription to the New Scientist.

I was picking it up every other week for the Web Tech and other 'e-' related topics. These now feature regularly. My wife has ten years in medical market research, though not a Scientist, she will often have an opinion on anything that touches her world of work. It is better read that the weekend colour supplement. In fact, I've ditched the Guardian once a week for the New Scientist once a week with all other stories and news prompted by a sentence on TV, a couple of sentences on the Radio and a paragraph or two online.

Beware the Irresistible Internet

Is it addictive?

Expecting or wishing to look at numerous e-learning style products for H808 I found I had spent 3 hours today doing this with Dropbox and Facebook. I wish I hadn't. I haven't even started to make Facebook sing, so would prefer to exit in tact. And I suspect that Dropbox, like Amazon, Google, Facebook and Twitter is just a neat trap and that within six months we will be enrolled into a myriad of appealing, complementary services that we'll be paying for by subscription.

  • technology-dependence clinic (Richard Graham)
  • young men stuck in multiplayer online gaming environments
  • Women and adolescent girls using instant messaging platforms and social media compulsively
  • obsession with screen-based media (Ofcom)
  • Blackberry-addicted white-collar workers

Hear say or fact? Not evidence and the citations are sparse. But of interest.

  • Is there such a thing as an OU obsessive?
  • A blogging obsessive (certainly).
  • If you have an obsessive nature.

'Now, the potent combination of omnipresent technologies and our addictive nature means more casualties look inevitable.' Paul Marks. Senior Technology Correspondent

REFERENCE

Marks, P. (2010) New Scientist. Volume 207. No. 2777. pp24-25.

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Compendium

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Sunday, 12 Sept 2010, 15:00

I'm keeping a 'log' of my progress into Compendium private for now. I may in due course edit this down into some succinct steps picking out anything that may trip up the unwary or some new take on how it can be used.

Meanwhile, bouyant as a result of advice and suggestions given by other OU students I am going to do some housekeeping on usernames and passwords then give some other software a go if only to have a break from Compendium.

If you are looking at Compendium for the first time do get in touch, we could get our heads around this together.

Yes, two heads are better than one.

 

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Author Steven Pressfield on overcoming resistance by being professional

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Friday, 10 Sept 2010, 23:31

The War of Art: Winning the Inner Creative Battle

by Steven Pressfield

The key word through-out ‘The War of Art’ is ‘Resistance’ – i.e. that which prevents us from doing.

Steven Pressfield’s advice is to sit down and do it like a pro.

That’s the book in two lines.

Professionals and amateurs

‘The word amateur from the Latin root meaning 'to love'.

The conventional interpretation is that the amateur pursues his calling out of love, while the pro does if for money.

Not the way I see it. In my view, the amateur does not love the game enough. If he did, he would pursue it as a sideline, distinct from his real vocation. The professional loves it so much he dedicates his life to it. He commits full-time’. Pressfield (2002)

This is familiar territory.

I heard it first from Richard Nelson E Bolles in ‘What Color’s Your Parachute?’ (New editions most years 1970-2011)

His advice is:

‘You become a professional by behaving like one.’ Bolles (1970)

Pressfield is derogatory about amateurs who toy with their art and blame the way they toy around for their failure.

‘We're all Pros already’ he encourages us to believe.

‘Resistance knows that the amateur composer will never write his symphony because he is overly invested in its success and over terrified of its failure. The amateur takes it so seriously it paralyses him’.
Pressfield (2002)

A Professional is patient

Resistance outwits the amateur with the oldest trick in the book: It uses his own enthusiasm against him. Resistance gets us to plunge into a project with an over ambitious and unrealistic timetable for its completion. It knows we can't sustain that level of intensity.

We will hit the wall. We will crash.

‘A professional accepts no excuses’
Pressfield (2002)

He knows if he caves in today, no matter how plausible the pretext, he'll be twice as likely to cave in tomorrow.

‘A professional does not take failure (or success) personally’ Pressfield (2002)

Resistance uses fear of rejection to paralyse us and prevent us, if not from doing our work, then from exposing it to public evaluation.

‘Starting is not my problem.' Pressfield (2002)

Starting something else is my problem. Being distracted is my problem.

I need to be behave like a professional BECAUSE I am not paid ... and then I will be.

REFERENCE

Pressfield, S (2002) The War of Art.

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Skype across the decades

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Friday, 10 Sept 2010, 21:29

Just spent the last two hours in conversation with a university contemporary and colleague from the 1980s and 1990s with whom I produced numerous training and information films. I would produce and write, he'd direct and edit. Last job we did together? 1996, the launch of the European Stock Exchange EASDAQ. (Which coinsided with the home birth of my son smile

The match of skills that worked in the past will as a result be renewed - he is highly technical and has been generating video material for smartphones for the last year. We've both approached online learning from different perspectives, but have a child-like curiosity still.

We laughed over a comment, very 80s, that a senior producer in corporate video production made to us as we started out, that people can be put into three categories: maps, taps and chaps.

Maps. Making and fixing stuff.

Taps. Accountants and writing.

Chaps. Selling and getting on with people.

My thinking is that a basic team of three needs one of each, though two would do as long as all bases are covered. He is the map, I'm the tap, so we need a 'chap.'

The language may be arcane, but the thinking is sound.

Now that I am happy on Skype I'm more than happy to use this tool more often.

I have several other tools to use though, e-portfolios, wikis, compendium ...

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Learning new software tools

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Saturday, 8 Oct 2011, 14:56

I wonder if I'm weary of learning to use yet another software tool? Those that intuitively add to what I know already are easy, whereas new platforms are not.

A Mac user since the days of the 'Classic' I find common tools such as Outlook quite foreign, plenty of functionality, but very mathematical, boxy and dry. I need to use it to tie in with the work I do with a swimming club.

I'm not even great with Excel having only used it for basic accounts. When it comes to creating and managing a database I have always used FileMaker Pro - I prefer the flexibility of layouts as I like to have bespoke pages depending on what information is being collated.

Any tips on merging contact data from Excell to Outlook would be appreciated.

Meanwhile I'm beginning to use Google Docs and Compendium, but rather than 'playing' I need a specific task to undertake that will require their use. Anyone have some suggestions?

  • Share the writing of a short story?
  • Collaborate on an article related to e-learning?
  • Design a piece of e-Learning on spec?

(I actually would like some collaborators to consider how to share some of the work of a soon to be 85 Oxford Don. Politics, Philosophy and since retiring 'Leadership')

 

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A forum is not a tutorial, yet it aspires to be so

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Friday, 5 Oct 2012, 23:07

A forum is not a tutorial, yet it aspires to be so.

The tutor is afforded no more privileges than any other contributor, democratic, but hardly giving them the attributes or affordances of the 'chair.' (Although I’m sure they have some useful control and buttons behind the scenes!)

A tutorial works best one-to-one (like therapy), face-to-face, or in a small group, say six at most, discussing in an synchronous environment.

(James Turner, Policy Director at the Sutton Trust suggested supplementary tutoring of school students one-to-one was most common, two-to-one worked even better because of the collaboratory experience. BBC Radio 4 10.00 Tuesday 7th September 2010, Accessed again 16.00 Saturday 12th September 2010)

You get a cue from the tutor to speak or contribute while body language and human politeness typically results in each person making contributions. Often the person who says nothing for long spells has the most insightful contribution because they have been listening.

I respect the person who says nothing the most – they have the most to say.

Twelve or more is a class. This is an e-classroom.

Easy to define as such, just consider the numbers.

I have taught classes of forty+ in secondary schools and taken ‘classes’ of sixty (with assistance) in an eight lane swimming pool. Numbers mean something, one to one is perfection, with two to one you lose nothing (and academics suggest you probably gain).

Moving up from this ... a tutor group in the real world might be six.

No surprises when things don’t work so well, whatever the affordances, or excuses of asynchronous learning/messaging when there are groups of twelve or more.

Asynchronous forums are not a listening environment, nor due to the limitations of an OU Forums affordances and attributes does in foster the kind of discussion you'd have in real life.

A suggested improvement would be:

1) Put the tutor in the chair and have this position reflected in the layout of and the way message 'tumble' into the forum.

2) Compress or concertina all messages by an individual so that the 'weight' of their message, either the frequency of contribution or length is not given prominence. i.e. the short, infrequent post has equal weight with the more verbose or frequent contribution. This mimics real life.

3) To make all things equal the images files and silhouettes are reduced in size, to a pinpoint if necessary. Their only relevance is to identify who is speaking or who spoke, in which case our names would do. I’d just as happily pick a character icon from the Monopoly or Cludo, my gender, face, mood at the time of the picture etc: are not only irrelevant but they are probably counter to my usual stern disposition.

4) Use something like Harvard's 'Rotisserie' system, deploy games and other events tactically i.e hosts/tutors and other strategically deployed postgraduate and/or PhD students are invited in from time to time to make a contribution.

Some suggestions. Some ideas.

 

 

 

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The outcomes of H808 Unit 1

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Wednesday, 31 Aug 2011, 03:34

The outcomes of this first unit are:

  1. to appreciate the range of potential interpretations of the concept of an ‘elearning professional’
  2. assess the roles that different technologies might play in your own development during the first four units of H808.

The first has been covered thoroughly and discussions are now playing out in the tutor forum.

The second I need to get to grips with:

Blogging and forum entries I can do.

More work required on:

  • The OU Library
  • Wikis
  • MyStuff
  • Compendium

Have I?

Read carefully through the Course Guide and the Assignment Guide

Scan through the materials for each of the first four units.

Have I? Core Activity 1.3

Looked at the following resources:

  1. The map of the H808 virtual environment (in the Resources section of the H808 homepage). This will give an overview of the technical environment, and also some suggestions as to what you might focus on if you are a novice or an ‘old hand’ with these tools.
  2. The various technical guides that you will find in the OU Computing Guide at http://www.open.ac.uk/computingguide/start.html.
  3. The Technical and skills forum, where the online moderator will be available to answer questions and give advice, together with the more technically expert of the H808 student participants. Please make use of all these sources of help. If you hit a problem, don’t suffer in silence!
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H808 First Impressions. Week 1.

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Saturday, 27 Aug 2011, 13:16

H808 First Impressions

Someone’s been busy over the summer recess. smile

There are several noticeable differences:

In addition to the tutor there is a technical expert (Hi Helen) ‘embedded’ in the course to take a proactive role ensuring that none of us get the hebegebes with the technology. Even the basic functioning of the OU platform and its myriad of tools, attributes, quirks and foibles, can be daunting or at least irksome for the IT proficient. I doubt I am alone when I find at times I ‘just don’t get it’ when all it needs is someone to look over my shoulder and say, ‘try pressing that,’ or you’ve missed out a letter, or ‘there’s a really easy way to do that.’ I am at that stage where I am tripped up by a single letter of HTML code ... only to find that I don't need to be reading or trying to read code, if I understood how to use the e-tools being offered. Curiously this role may do more to bring students from the different tutor groups together than the mere offering of forums for this purpose ... a cafe where there is no coffee. mixed

The tutor is around a lot. (Hi Trevor).

(I have not lurked around other tutor groups to see what is going on, so perhaps we can have a pow-wow on this or what I read in an article on e-learning, a 'tribal meeting; which I suppose is a meeting of department heads, or vice-chancellors i.e. the chiefs?).

This may just be a start of course thing, but I sense a wind change that is going beyond the basic set-up to support collaboration elucidated by Salmon regarding e-moderating. My prediction is that the call-centre like support, online and on the phone, that is offered corporate e-learners and e-trainers may become something that H.E. institutions need to provide, populated by undergraduates (2nd years as it were), as well as graduates, not just the traditional PhD student as part time tutor and lecturer ... as well as Senior Tutors.

I’d like the occasional host guest or a heavy hitter too, the participation of those who wrote the module, designed the course or whose work is most often cited.

The title 'H808 Environment Map' is an unnecessarily disingenuous term for a fantastic, indispensable guide. This isn't a map, it is 'The Lonely Planets' map, plan and guide pocket book for H808. It should be on the inside cover of what is the H808 Course Book. It should be wall-paper on the homepage i.e. you go nowhere and try nothing until you have consumed it. I'm going to print it off, laminate it and put it on my desktop, the tabletop wooden one i.e. extract it from its binary code and give it form on paper.

Something’s been refreshed in the OU Library.

My first impression would be to say from a design point of viewit has been ‘Google-ised,’ i.e, its appearance has been cleared up and simplified. Is it that designers and programmers in time can prioritise their choice of tools and offer in a more clinical way the tools they know users will need as they progress through their search rather than offering a High Street DIY store cornucopia of e-tic-tacs and e-tools that may or may not be required and probably do little more than scare and confuse in equal measure.

The resources and supplementary reading have all been accessed within the last couple of months and the links work.

In H807 it was a bugbear, not overly regular, but frequent enough, to find that links did not work so documents were not found speedily. The sifting out of redundant papers and reports (their points of view have been superseded by the technology and actual practice rather than the conjecture and hyperbole of some academics and commentators) as well as the checking and fixing of links is important. It is a considerable frustration, though understandable, that published version of books.

Not overly burdensom or keen to read two study-related books over the summer (July/August) Weller’s Virtual Learning Environments(2007) and Conole and Oliver's (eds) Contemporary perspectives in e-learning Research (2007), that very few of the links to URLS given to follow up references work (very few, may be none!) and then seeking them through the OU library doesn’t always prove successful either, no fault of the library, but links into this amorphous universe that is Cyberspace leaves some e-references wanting. And being who I am I want these references as qualifying and verifying is part of the ‘bonding process’ that this student requires to feel thoroughly engaged with the material.

Might I suggest that putting an URL for an article or blog comment into a print-published book is about as lasting as putting a sparkler in a birthday cake - by the time you want to eat the cake the sparkler has burnt out.

I like the new 'tick box' alongside the study planner to help mark off your progress.

Happy Days, Exciting Days in OU Land

P.S. Did you know you have access to the Oxford English Dictionaryonline as an OU Student. This is like being invited to Versailles during the reign of the Sun King. Brilliant. Except it can't help me with 'hebe-gebe.' A term used by my family, or a Geordie term for feeling a bit nervous, gets the goose-bumps up, a tad scary in a Ghost Train ride kind of way?

P.P.S. Just learnt a few tricks to search for a word in the OED and found 'heebie-jeebie.'  A feeling of discomfort, apprehension, or depression; the ‘jitters’; delirium tremens; also, formerly, a type of dance. (OED) Far from being my native Geordie, it is 1920s New York American.

6.00am and I've learnt something new already! approve

9/9/10 is going to be a fun day.

8/9/10 was magic.

I wonder why? thoughtful

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Re-invention of e-learning

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Thursday, 31 Jan 2013, 06:07

Isn’t ‘re-invention’ the word? (Rogers, P114 & P115, 2002)

Not wholesale repurposing, but as Rogers puts it 'It should be acknowledged that rejection, discontinuance and re-invention frequently occur during the diffusion of an innovation and that such behaviour may be rational and appropriate from the individual's point of view.' (Rogers, p114 2002)

I wonder how my experience might have been with a group of colleagues or friends, signing up together ... but might this too ‘spoil the party.’ And how over a longer period fellow students would be emailing and messaging and getting on the phone ... let alone meeting up.

This fascinates me primarily because I am convinced that collaboration, sharing, discussion and so on is crucial to a deeper learning outcome. But does this not have to be down to the drive of the individual and permitted by the institution they belong to?

How much motivation can others really offer or be expected to offer?

If neither a carrot or stick will work with adult learners, especially in a online environment, then what do you do? ‘You can take a horse to the trough, but you can’t make it drink.’ As I’m about to take a course on the Psychology of Sport as a Senior Swimming Coach I may gain some further insights into waht motivates people to do something and how outsiders can influence this in a positive way.

And just because we’re invited to drink from this trough once, dos not mean we will do it again, or often or with enthusiasm. Our moods will wax and wane, or commitments beyond the course will impinge.

Deep learning, as I’ve learnt, benefits from, even requires a rapport with one or several others at various levels of understanding – a Subject Matter Expert (SME) or experts, a tutor, a couple of fellow students on the course, and perhaps someone more junior who can be in turn mentored or tutored by us (first years being buddied by a second year, a post-grad student supervising a fresher).

How much this mix can be set by what little the OU or other Distance Learning Provider knows about an individual is quite another matter.

Do you run a call-centre like team of facilitators/moderators ... or aspire to the one-to-one relationship of tutor or governess to student mimicking some land-owning/aristocratic model of the distant past? Where is or how can that rapport that can work between student and tutor be recreated here? Or is this something for a DPhil?

A free-for-all would create imbalances, inevitably ... for the institution. But whose experience are we prioritising here?

Whilst a balance must be found, if the best outcomes are to give tutors and SMEs much more time online to forge relationships then this should be - a good coach attracts the best athletes and attracts the interest of other coaches. How does she do that? (Expertise, training and personality ... enthusiasm, putting the athlete at the centre of things)

Perhaps by pursuing ‘educational social networking’ institutions are shooting themselves in the financial foot?


The time put in to make a freer networking between students, tutors and SMEs, with students in different time zones and different priorities would be prohibitive. Undergraduates studying on campus, in a homophilous cohort, with fewer worries (other than debt) don’t know how fortunate they are to have this opportunity to study, probably for the only time, before the life of the wider world impinges.

REFERENCE

Rogers, E,M. Diffusion of Innovations. (2005) 5th Ed.

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Blogging. A private journal, journalistic or academic?

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Sunday, 8 July 2012, 13:05

Three Degrees of Blogging

If it plays to how it is defined, a ‘weblog’ then it should be nothing more than a captain’s log, in the style of Star Trek, that logs position and events as they occur.

Web pages, cobbled together into a journal like experience defy what the web affords.

The person who keeps a diary in a hardback notebook, or one of those Five Year Diaries with a flimsy padlock, have to keep notes on specific dates in the calendar, online the daily webpage is a falsehood, it is a devise that obliges something that is wholly unnecessary.

Personally, long ago, I ditched all pretence at writing a daily entry (even if I did so), by archiving entries by category.

Weblog as webstorage or repository.

More like the modern e-portfolio I suppose. The idea concept is easily controverted. Writing pages of fiction, with comments turned on make sharing and critique immediately possible. Allow any number of readers to contribute directly to the pages and the weblog becomes both a blog and a wiki.

Can we ‘wikify’ a website?

And do I coin such a word as soon as I tell my dictionary to accept the term? Which makes me wonder – is there a way for multiple users to share the contents of their dictionaries?

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H808 Activity 1.1. The e-learning professional Professional

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Saturday, 27 Aug 2011, 12:08

The following bullet points list the views of the Senior Tutors regarding professionalism. There were speaking in the introductory podcast to the module ‘The E-learning Professional.’ (H808)

What does it mean to be a Professional (or simply professional)?

Robin Mason

* Has been doing it for a long time or hasn’t.
* PhD vs. Undergraduate.
* Has put in the hours or hasn’t.
* Mature or not.
* Experienced or not yet.

Gill Kirkup

* An established field vs. new field.
* Follows standards. vs. No standards followed.
* Part of a professional association. vs. not.
* Part of the UK Higher Education Academy or not.
* Part of a legitimate community or not.
* Committed or not.
* Respectful of learners or not.
* Licensed or not.

Robin Goodfellow

* Genuine vs. not.
* Recognised vs. unrecognised.
* Experienced vs. Inexperienced.
* Independent or not.
* Has a technical foundation or doesn’t.

Chris Jones

* Takes time or doesn’t.
* Specialist (secretive) vs. Part of the mainstream.
* Enthusiast or not interested enough.
* The professional sports person vs. amateurs.
* Autonomous vs. dependent
* Independent vs. not objective or balanced.
* Part of such a trade association or not.
* Specialist vs. generalist.
* Part of something vs. an outsider.
* Formalised standards vs. none
* Monitored vs. Unmonitored
* Little ‘p’ pr big ‘P.’

To these I would add:

* A Professional had form whereas a non-professional does not.
* Self-taught or received a formal education (HE and beyond)?

I disagree with Gill Kirkup suggestion that only in an established field is something professional. I agree however, with Gill Kirkup’s views regarding ‘respect’.

I disagree with Robin Goodfellow’s view that a professional must be independent. Being Professional doesn’t mean you can’t also be biased or bigoted.

‘Big P, little p’ is an interesting idea.

Depending on how your measure up, by Chris Jones’s definition, you are either Big P or Little p. Is it the case that a practising lawyer is a Professional, while a painter and decorator can be professional? Is a good lawyer a professional Professional, while a good decorator is simple a professional painter?

The term ‘professional’ is an adjective and a noun.

Anyone can be described as ‘professional,’ (adjective) by dint of their behaviour and experience, however to be a ‘professional’, (noun), various criteria should be met.

Might a professional be defined as someone with ‘qualified confidence in their field?’

Professionals put in the time and effort, and follow rather than ignore guidelines for the community in which they operate. It matters that you are paid for something you are good at; being a Professional implies that you are paid.

A final thought

What’s a professional Professional? The opposite of an amateur Amateur.

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Up and running. H808

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An hour in the middle of the night has been spent reading through the first task and all the various forum entries in H808 'The E-Learning Professional.'

This and applying for a job. Stymied by the need for three references. I've been such a hermit these last few years I worry that beyond family and friends the only reference I could get would be from my hairdresser and she might say something like 'he may be on time but I know he's seeing the barber down the road as well.'

Three dreams over the last ten days are bugging me - my lengthy reflection on these will go into the WordPress Blog (unless they prove to have something to do with the OU). I use a 27 point survey that usually reduces the dream to some mundane conclusion, though occasionally offers something more profound.

Ever on the look out for 'e-' words I spotted 'e-nose' in last week's New Scientist.

The e-nose refers to an 'electronic nose' rather than an 'electronically enhanced and largely online nose' that is the 'e-' of e-learning. The e-nose can identify certain scents electronically, it transpires ... (though not across, the Internet) ... yet. It wouldn't surprise me if a Google-e-nose were developed that could be used to search for and then offer recipes for food from your fridge that has escaped its packaging. Hold it up to your webcam and Google will advise.

The following was written out long hand with an ink pen.

I wonder if there is a stylistic difference, greater fluidity? (My son had squirreled the lap-top away and being the dead of night I didn't want to disturb him).

Is there software that can spot the stylistic difference of something written directly into a word-processor, like this ... or written out long hand, like this:

Reflection

Whilst reflection is meant to help tackle complex problems, what if the issues are so chaotic, long term and intractable that far from helping to resolve a problem the act and habit of reflection simply re-enforces the mess?!

E-Learning

How much of it is online?

And how much of it is even electronic and/or enhanced?

This happens to be a reflective note being written long-hand onto a recyled A4 ruled pad of paper. It is anything but electronic, or digital. Nor, as yet, is it shared or offers any chance of interaction, let alone collaboration with a group of friends, community of fellow students or the wider world.

The most important part of this experience is taking place in my head and is either one step behind, or one step ahead of this writing process. It is stream of consciousness. It is a singular, lonely and individual occurrence from which little will be gained by sharing it.

This is it: learning in which the 'e' is highly tangential.

Indeed, I'd go as far as to say that the 'e' component of my online learning, or web-based learning, or iLearning experience with the OU thus far is one in which the online quality of the process can be as discretely packaged as you would a book, a lecture or a face-to-face chat with a fellow traveller - it is one part, even a distinct part, an entity with barriers, parameters and a physical presence.

It is a part, not even a large part. But a catylst. A resource. A tool. A track. (a word-processed addition here)

An audit of how this learner spends his time studying shows that half is off-line doing that all too traditional act of reading and taking notes; that of the remaining half another 50% is spent at a computer keyboard sometimes not fully aware or bothered about whether I am working online or off, using software on my hard-drive or the OU server.

(a hand-written omission here replaced with the following while typing online)

And if I continue this fractal-like halving of time spent studying, at what point do I reach 'e-'

And does it matter?

The 'e-' is the fleck of saffron in a risotto.

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Making up e-words

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Wednesday, 31 Aug 2011, 04:11

Why is it so easy for English speakers to create words if one doesn’t exist.

‘Web-based learning’ or ‘e-learning’ ?

Which do you prefer?

Does it matter so long as we have a good idea of what it means and entails.  ‘e-tyres’, which I saw ten minutes ago on a van, confounds the logic of 'e-mail' or 'e-forum', it is easy to understand its meaning - ‘buy tyres here online’ (rather than ‘electronically enhanced tyres.’) But when was English ever logical?

The ‘Cambridge Encyclopaedia of the English Language’ talks about word-building or ‘compounding’. This is possible we are told because of the way the Old English vocabulary builds up through the process of affixation and compounding.

A prefix I wasn’t aware was one is ‘to’ as on the English prefix we see in ‘today, towards and together.’

One from my home town, so clearly embedded in its Danish roots is ‘gan’ as in ‘go’ which is used on Tyneside as in the Geordie for go home ‘gan yem’.

The readiness to build up words from a number of parts is a feature that has stayed with English ever since.

In English we tend to concertina words, to simply them. If it can be understood in one syllable, then this works best of all.

Most English vocabulary arises by making new words out of old ones – either by adding an affix to previously existing forms, altering their word class, or combining them to produce compounds. Cambridge Encyclopaedia of the English Language. (1995:128)

Common affixes are:

un-
de-
hyper-

I think there has to be something poetic, something logical, simple, immediately understood and that rolls naturally off the tongue. Web-based learning, web-based training, web-based virtual asynchronous communication ‘Web/VAC’ have had their day (a decade even, 1995-2005). We will ‘google’ forever – no need here for e-search (was that ever used?) and 'to yahoo; would not do. Or e-encyclopaedia when we had Britannica Online and now have Wikipedia.

Never hyper-learning, though if we create the holy grail of game-like learning for the current generation of net-savvy, game-savvy, texting, blogging, social-networking kids then ‘hyper-tivity’ could be exactly what would describe their engagement. I watch and listen in to my son’s antics on the X-box, using Skype, online to the world, organising games, while clicking through web-pages for the latest ‘cheat’ and viewing YouTube ‘how to ...’ Training or Learning?

Terms can be made to change their word class without the addition of an affix – a process known as conversion nouns from verbs – verbs from nouns.

‘e’ isn’t a prefix, it’s a compound of ‘electronic and/or enhanced’, that has been abbreviated to ‘e-‘.

Does it matter?

If it is in common usage and it is understood then whether it follows a rule or a former pattern or not means nada. The great thing with English is that anything goes. What counts is whether people adopt a word and if it sticks. and gets into everyday usage.

‘A compound is a unit of vocabulary which consists of more than one lexical stem. The parts are functioning as a single item which has its own meaning and grammar.' (Cambridge Encyclopaedia of the English Language. (1995:120)


REFERENCE

Cambridge Encyclopaedia of the English Language. 1995

 

 

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4500 hits

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This is OU Land.

Does this mean anything?

There are 350,000 registered OU students.

How many appear here?

Less than 0.5%

How many are active here? Less than 0.005%

Why?

Isn't it obvious.

The platform is five years behind the commercial alternative. This platform should be a roller-coaster of inventive thinking and debate ... it should be ahead of the garbage that is 'social networking.'

If 'Education social networking' is ever going to exist this is the place for it to happen.

The OU is feeding hungry minds into the e-hungry sales profile of others.

 

 

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Face-to-face learning versus e-learning

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

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

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

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

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

On verra

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

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

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

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

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

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