This is another skill I have picked up along the way. Over the last 4 + years I have sent out nearly 20 of these. I have tried all kinds of different approaches, from full fledged digital magazine, to notes with bullet points and links. What works for my audience is something in between: a few things to grab attention so that they open the email, then the widest variety of introductions to, and links to, a variety of events national and local, articles and book reviews.
Event details HERE >> http://bit.ly/2kbrXZX
I've been the digital editor for the Western Front Association for 4 1/2 years. Here is the kind of thing I do, promoting a local branch event. This one is in Warwick tonight. There are 54 UK branches, another 2 in Ireland and a handful in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Belgium and France.
During this time I took an MA in British History and the First World War. I had thought about taking the OU MA in History which covered 1845 to 1945 or thereabouts but considered it too broad for my needs and interests. I wonder now if I should look again? However, three jobs, 53 working working hours, additional volunteer hours for Lewes Town Council and Lewes District Green party - as well as sailing and sailing duties, let alone 12 hours a week commuting leaves me without the time. I do think that in the the past these degrees have served the purpose of filling gaps in my day and week which are now well and truly covered!
Gathering resources together from a choice of millions of programmes from Planet eStream feels no different to putting on a display of popular books or magazines in a library. You're having to promote stuff to an audience who don't watch any TV. They stream it all from YouTube or Netflix. Other than the biggies: Bake Off, Strictly and Britain's Got Talent ... and soaps, how aware are they of the 'educational' content we would have them watch.
And how education is TV anyway if produced to entertain and then repurposed to form the backbone to a class?
I've been running through 32 subject areas seeing if there are programmes that might intrigue our 16 year olds during Fresher's week. They can view any of this via their Student Sign in on Planet eStream.
Bjork Meets Attenborough
Stacey Dooley on Fashion
What will the Future Look Like in 100 Years?
The Beauty of Diagrams
Who Do You Think You Are? Daniel Radcliffe, Cheryl ...
Desert Island Discs: Bill Gates
A Good Read
Horizon: Hair Secrets
The Truth About Vegans
Last year I took over 1,000 360 photos on a Ricoh Theta SC camera. I created some 18 360 tours such as these. I have many other collections of shots of Anne of Cleves House, Lewes Castle and the Langermarke German Cemetery amongst them that I am yet to stitch together.
Do they really 'take you there' ? Yes it is novel, and with a headset there is an immersive experience. Sound helps. But as an experience there is no story, no journey, no narrative or characters. This is where games design experience needs to be involved.
In our efforts to engage students I will be 'manning' a stall at the GB MET Freshers' Fair, each day for 4 hours at a different campus. I will be armed with cards showing something like these above with a QR Code and shortened URL in the hope that some will be curious and take a look on their phones. Hopefully I'll have iPads, Chrome Books, a touchscreen PC and even a giant smartscreen.
This should take you on a 360 tour of the Northbrook MET, West Durrington Campus.
I've taken over 1,000 360 images using a Richoh Theta SC and out of the blue it has started to do this right when I have an elearning project to create using it.
These 360 cameras are OK. Not too expensive. Image quality not wonderful in low light. Not great definition when you try to zoom either, but I have had some fabulous results.
I had been hoping to be working on a introduction/induction to the Learning Resource Centre for students with special education needs. This requires a series of these photographs linked together with further hotspots featuring close ups with annotations and video clips.
I'm working my way through all the possibilities (short of the camera having been damaged).
Update Firmware
Checking the settings for taking images and for uploading them.
Any thoughts?
I had or have credits towards an Open Degree, an Masters in Education and even an MBA - though time is fast running out as I completed these in 2013.
Meanwhile, as I take up a part-time role as the Head Coach of a Swimming Club, as well as looking at adding to my Swim England qualifications I am looking at taking a Sports Science Degree with the Open University.
Sport and conditioning science into practice
The image at the top is the 8 x 25m pool at The Triangle, Burgess Hill where I have coached and taught swimming since 2008. This is part of a test 360 VR tour I created using a Ricoh Theta SC camera and ThingLink.
This is more than just making the awards and telling each story - the short story as a form is discussed and analysed too. Having the skills to construct and perform or communicate a short story is key to much learning practice. This ties in directly with my developing the skills to create 'scenario-based elearning'.
This is a scenario framework for learning.
1) There is a situation
2) There is a certain response
3) click
4) and there is an outcome.
This is NOT a conversation.
It is a situation that will have consequences, a decision is taken to do one thing or another, and there is an outcome.
In this instance I guess they've gone for a beer rather than gone to the movies, or had an argument and gone their separate ways.
Having developed a script along these lines to support age group swimmers with asthma, I am now looking at Independent Travel Training for Students with Special Educational Needs.
My mentor/tutor and guide is Anna Sabramowicz.
The idea is that you leave 5 hours between meals during the day and 12 hours overnight. I just forget to have my lunch. I was 'pooliside' half an hour before the National Squad turned up. Perhaps I should have waited until they had arrived in order to run through some tips on nutrition.
This is no longer a diet: I lost 6 kg from 1st to 31st August eating like this - low to no carbs, no sugar at all, and plenty of veggies.
Changing behaviour takes a great deal of effort by someone.
In this instance it was my wife and a year of reading up on gut microbes. Then she has taken time off work and decided that I would be her 'proof of the pudding' to use the wrong expression. I have cheated now and again: a few bears, packets of crisps.
And then has been running. Supposedly a couch to 5k, but getting a run in during the working week is proving difficult.
Monday: at 6:30am I can't do that too often
Wednesday I can get one in 4:30 to 5:30 before swimmers.
What do I know until I've tried it?
The Greggs Vegan Sausage Roll. It looks, smells and feels like one. The grease, pasty and taste all say sausage roll (albeit a cheap one). Is it better to support veganism in this way or is it all about the bottom line? Being vegan I loath the meatiness of this: the taste and grease are an unpleasant reminder of what meat recovered from a carcass and disguised in a product can be like.
Don't eat meat, don't eat fake meat - turn to veggies.
I'm going to take a bus an imagine it is the first time I have ever been on a bus. I must have taken a bus with a grandparent, or an older sibling. Unlike kids today I was taking the bus a couple of miles up the road to school when I was 7 or 8. Perhaps age 6 with my older brother.
I remember taking my young son on a double-decker bus for the first time. He was so excited about the bus with the 'windy stairs' to the top deck. Similarly on his first train journey he held up his ticket thrilled to be going on such a trip.
I am getting into the head of a young person with special education needs as I work my way through a 90 minute transcript with an educator who works with SEND students.
As an FE College we need to assess levels of English, Maths and IT skills. We do this using BSKB.
This task was somewhat curtailed today by the IT sign ins changing, slow speeds and no staff. I resorted to looking up a get around ... on my private blog, my learning journal for college stuff. THIS is where I see the greatest value in a blog, a learning journal or a work diary, is to keep brief details of what you do, tagged in a way to make it easy to search.
I looked up BSKB and could relive my first run through the system and then the get around. The only pain is that the get around requires typing in a 76 character URL of mizxed upper and lower case, numbers and signs.
Ending my first 12 hour day, 7:30 am out of the door, 7:30pm home, a pheasant 'floats' into the road and hits the wing mirror hard. It cops it. I roll down the window and grab the mirror before it clatters and breaks too. Its neck broken (the wing mirror, and no doubt the poor pheasant too) I can see that the entire unit will have to be replaced. That'll be £125 parts and labour
Otherwise the Digital Editor, Learning Technologist and Head Coach had a great day: an item added to The Western Front Association website - ironically the Gallipoli Association annual conference, a day developing the Students with Special Education Needs projects - transcribing the interviews and seeking ideas and assistance from colleagues internally, and then my first evening 'poolside' as the new Head Coach at Hailsham Swimming Club.
Home as our son gathers up his belongings to head for Paris on a six month placement with Kenzo (male fashion design - though they want him for his graphic art/illustrator skills).
I'm reading stuff and nodding off in bed by a shocking 8:45pm
I'm not so much as 'keeping the wolf from the door' as having the time of my life.
Throw in some sailing and safety boat duties on the sea, some life-drawing and vegan cooking, running and walking the dog ...
Revisiting my skills at using the 360 camera to create a VR tour through the Learning Resource Centre and several things occur:
1) I had forgotten how tricksy it can be to set up.
2) Once connected between the 360 camera and my iPad I then had to remember how to use the manual settings for White Balance and Exposure, and using the self-timer so that you are not caught in the picture
3) The results were either soft, or, had this ring effect.
I hope it is a further quality setting that I need to engaged - i.e. High Resolution images. I did lend it out for three weeks.
The trials and tribulations of the learning technologist continue.
This blowing in a strong south westerly breeze sums up the state of the United Kingdom: should see Ireland United, should see Scotland taking a referendum on independence. I'm less sure about Wales. Check your history. Was it ever a country? It was at best three regions: North, South and the Marches.
A bust of Asa Briggs graces the Lewes Town Council Chamber after a Cllr Ruth O'Keefe was asked if she could find it a home by the family. I used to see him, in his 90s. on Keere Street or in his garden. I pay my respects at every monthly full council meeting.
One of the many participating in the Stop The Coup gathering on Cliffe Bridge, Lewes on Saturday. Is it RIP Democracy? I wonder, wearing an historian's hat, if this is more a case of going through a painful transition to something different, more modern, more accountable and more representative.
Feeling a certain civic pride and duty as a Town councillor I know pick up litter when out walking or running. There is a pattern: takeaways, plastic bottles and untouchables. I don't pick up used tissues!
In Lewes, until recently, we had none of the take away chains - yet I find Macdonald's milk shake cups, bags and happy meals. We recently had a Subway open and within a 5 to 10 minute walk from their outlet in all directions you can now find a wrapper or coffee cup.
Then there are the plastic bottles.
If we are banning plastic bags, then why not plastic bottles? The town has plans to reinstate water fountains and to add others.
I would oblige take away outlets to at least have promotional advertising on 'Littering' in the outlet, and potentially on the offending litter.
'Please put me in a bin'
Great stuff. I only turn the TV on to watch it. 
As the recently appointed Head Coach at Hailsham SC this paper will be my bible. It has been used for the last few years at Mid Sussex Marlins SC where I have been coaching since 2008.
Dr Zbigniew A Pelczynski 1958 ti 1988 to 2018. Catch him on the radio on Saturday. Polish born he was 14 when Germany invaded Poland, 19 when he took part in the Warsaw Uprising and survived only to be put in a concentration camp. Some story, finally relieved in 1944 he joins the British Army. A visit to Oxford in 1946 and he falls in love. Learns English in Gateshead, gets a scholarship to St Andrews, then turns up in Oxford for his MA and PhD and then he picks up tutoring jobs until he finds tenure at Pembroke College where he tutors Philosophy and East European History.
There's much more besides: he set up scholarships to brings Polish students out of communist Poland and when communism fell he was invited to advice the government on how to set up a civil service and he went on to set up The School for Leaders.
Has he retired? He is blind. He is almost confined to his home. Always an early adopter he has had a Mac for ever, then an iBook for reading very large text books and over the last two years Alexa is his savour for reading books, finding radio stations and even calling his family - whether they are elsewhere in the house or 100 miles away.
He's my father in law.
To conclude a sabbatical after the desperately sad loss of his wife Frederic sets off (two of them) tio traverse the Greenland Plateau. It is supposed to be covered in snow. Rain has washed the snow away leaving bare ice. Dragging a sled is impossible. After a few days years of training and months of planning comes to a sad but sensible end.
Is this a cold hot water bottle, or a cold bottle? Or simply insane! Get yourself a fan or air conditioning?
Take a sequences of video clips on your phone. If you got the shot first time and you have them in order that is you instructional video.
As the safety helm for a sailing club I need to remind myself every few months when I got out how to get away from the birth. A quick look at this helps. It works better than their training manual of photos and text.
It even has someone talking me through what to do.
Good enough.
This blog might contain posts that are only visible to logged-in users, or where only logged-in users can comment. If you have an account on the system, please log in for full access.
