Personal Blogs

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

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

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

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

It'll come to me. 

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

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

Was that it?

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

This is it.

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

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

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

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

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

Fig .1. The Dynamics of Doctrine: The Changes in German Tactical Doctrine During the First World War. Timothy Lupfer (1981) Combat Studies Institute

Sometimes the technology lets you down. Here, having tracked down an obscure book I discover that it is only available in 'digital form' - though it isn't. Rather it is a series of 80 photographs, not even scans and these are presented in landscape form too small to read without expanding the page.

On an iPad the pages flips to horizontal unless you lock the screen. To read the text I have to enlarge each photograph one at a time. I cannot highlight, or annotate. I cannot search. I cannot link instantly to any reference or footnote. 

It had better be worth the effort to extract the information that interests me (it will, there is very little on German tactics on the Western Front while there is a mountain on what the British were doing). 

The effort to read this book will, whether I like it or not, make what I read more likely to stick - the effort is more likely to result in stuff going into the deeper recesses of my memory rather than floating on the surface. 

Usually books that have had this done to them are printed out, on demand, and couriered; I have a few. Again, with mixed results, some brilliant and book like, one I have like a bad photocopy on glossy paper.

The error was during the inputting. Some student operative faced with a stack of books to put through the digitising system didn't line this up. Or, perhaps, this has been copied from a microfiche? That would explain why it scrolls from left to right.

Read on.

All my schemes and ideas to tackle odd socks have failed: days of the week, patterns, colours, all black (they fade and stretch in individual ways only known to a sock) ...

The answer of course, in summer at least, is not to wear them - I prefer 'deck shoes'.

The other response, something my son adopted years ago, is to wear odd sock and not give a damn. Here the answer is at least to wear odd socks from the same set.

 I then rather wonder if I couldn't have odd trouser legs to match? 

Is it then a case of the problem being in the eye of the perceiver?

That to the colour blind (or blind) there is not problem. The socks are all clean. They are all the same size (odd that in a family of four, but between my wife, daughter and son we do fit the size 6-8 sock).

That one solution to a problem is to ignore it.

Seven modules later and in four years I believe I have had ONE face to face conversation with a fellow student. A couple of weekends ago I sat with a friend who creates learning content for a national museum: I realise know what a bore I became as over two hours I fear I turned every conversation back onto learning in general and e-learning in particular. 

Finding like-minds online is one thing; having them in front of me is another. 

I've noticed something awkward too - a couple of friends with whom I share all sorts through Facebook who I see around town; in the past we'd greet eachother, catchup on personal and family news, even have a coffee - now we grunt, mention something we caught online and move on. As if by knowing so much more about our goings on that small talk is pointless, and more intimate chat now redundant and likely to be repetitive.

Returning to 'like-minds' and the value, even craving to 'let it all out' - this is where there is significant value in the residential school. It matters to have the opportunity to put your enthusiams and problems with a module in words and to see and feel the response from others.

Temporarily I suspect, my teenage children, 18 and 16 respectively over the next fortnight, are learning how mutually advantageous it can be to help eachother out - stronger academically our daughter at our son's request is sitting down with him a couple of times a week to go through his GCSE English papers. There's much laughter, rapport and work.

It made me wonder about the age of a teacher in relation to students - the power of peer support from your own generation, young students who have just successfully 'passed through'. And then the value of empathy between younger teachers and lecturers.

Not meaning to sound sexist and agist, at primary school all my teachers were elderly and female - in a boy's school. I do rather think that we would have responded better to younger male teachers. My son at a co-ed school never had a male teacher in five years - there only ever was one male teacher in the entire establishment who retired to be replaced by a young male teacher who left after a year.

I know I will be told that other qualities overide age and gender, but where empathy and rapport matter would not a thorough mix of ages, gender and other qualities work best of all?

At our level, postgraduate and graduate, 'social learning' far from being of benefit to your studies it is a distraction. Yes, fraternise with fellow students, but don't imagine that 'a bit of a chat' or gregariosness will take the place of the time you must spend on your own with your problems and thoughts. 

For all the effort the OU makes to bring us together, or to generate relationships within tutor groups, far more effort should be given to promoting and supporting your solo efforts - helping you to understand that results are the product of your ability to set aside ample time when you can be on your own, undisturbed and without distraction. And then, on how best to use this time.

Mild panic helps rather than hinders.

I'm reading a new book on education - stress is better than being spoon fed, it matters that you worry you don't understand, that the reading list is too long. By trying to overcome such problems, and tight demanding deadlines that take you out of your comfort zone you form lasting memories, youn engage multiple zones of your brains and draw on your own experiences.

Working with a fellow student we can share each other's notes, but here I question their worth, that coming from your personal choices and sensibilities that should trigger in you the original reasons why you picked a thing out, they often appear disjointed and illogical to another. Perhaps when you sit down together like pushing a couple of combs together the mesh offers a third interpretation from which you can then work?

That's two 69s in the same week - from the OU this is so far from a distinction of 84+ not to warrant consideration, whereas from the University of Birmingham 69 is one mark short of their hurdle of 70 to call it a distinction (my previous effort for them got me to 67).

Was I ever cut out for writing about about education? Is it too 'wishy-washy' for me?

By comparison I find far higher scores achievable in subjects such as History, Geography and even Art. I like the essay/assignment where you pick ONE question from twelve or more and get on with it, whereas repeatedly with the OU I find I am not picking one question, but having to answer 60 questions each with a sentence or word, and then somehow hold this together in a compelling narrative. At least that is how the MAODE has panned out, and H818 in particular. 

Art is a performance, once you can demonstrate the required skill levels the 'grade' is subjective. 

The exception to this was the research into e-learning module where a 93 in an TMA had my tutor saying 'you are made for this kind of thing'. I should have been a barrister, that's what. 

With no plans for further e-learning modules the aim now is to go back through four years of blogging in order to consolidate my thinking and experience. I feel like an ant being asked to draw a map.

I use the metaphor of essay writing being like sewing a tapestry but wonder if making a house of cards wouldn't be better? In many respects this is how I now write: notes from copious reading reduced to frames in a presentation, and even notes on Rolledex cards that are in time grouped into a coherent argument and then 'stacked' into shape to form an essay. Looked at in this way an essay is a case of assembling the right parts in a logical order. Looked at this way, on reading through, you can identify a card that is out of place or faulty. It takes great care if the entire edifice is not to fall, or, however reluctantly, you have to dismantle the thing and build it up again from scratch. THIS is where I fail to get the illusive distinction - faced, inevitably with such a house of cards, I am loath to fix that card, wherever it might be, knowing that to reassemble the 'house' will take time and effort and a degree or repeating a task you thought was done.

• YouTube

• Michael Young

There are millions of 'user generated' how to ... videos on YouTube that are the perfect shape, size and tone for applied, just in time learning.

I forget how much it is a default source for problem solving around the house from fixing a leaking tap, to the pronunciation of a word. 

Michael Young undertook research to back ideas that led to the creation of the Open University and the National Consumer Association, to support the democratisation of higher education and to keep us from being ripped off. Not e-learning, more a visionary lime Lord Reith who founded institutions that make Britain 'great'.

Wordpress

Etienne Wenger

Wikipedia (A snowman)

Martin Weller

Web 2.0, Web 3.0, Web 4.0

Web Sciences

Yorick Wilks

H G Wells

Wired Sussex

Having blogged since 1999, then on Diaryland, I lived through the blogging revolution of 2002-2005 when a plethora of platforms came along. I tentatively tried several, including LiveJournal, Blogger, Tumblr and EduBlogs before settling on WordPress in 2007. It remains the most versatile, open, viewed blogging platform of them all. So easy that it is my default platform for a range of interests: learning, swim teaching and coaching, the First World War and more - a couple of 'Books of Remembrance' even and a multitude of other themes, issues and intersts. Try it. And like here, remember there is one very important option: public or private, in both cases it is still a blog, but when private it can be a diary and a portfolio. Mine is both a learning journal, and a journal. As a resource its value grows with regular use and maintenance - like a garden

When it comes to e-learning academics then there are few bigger names than Martin Weller, but when it comes to a demonstration of global reach through 'user generated content' shared by  hundreds of thousands of people forming interest groups and communities then for me, Wordpress, rather than Wikipedia is the e-learning blogging platform of choice.

I've called Wikipedia a 'snowman' as I had called e-mail a 'snowball' in the same sentence; one you aim, the other last as others add to it. Is it still the default for students? The problem now is that the content is like a granite cliff - unassailable it beleived in its scholarship and increasingly inaccessible as the editors become so entrenched - addressing eachother rather than a specific audience. There needs to be a dial that allows you to tone down or filter the content depending on whether you are a primary school student or have a PhD.

Web Sciences is a subject specialism at the University of Southampton.

Yorick Wilks has developed some interesting ideas on Artificial Intelligence and is at the Oxford Internet Institute.

H G Wells is a visionary, the Douglas Adams of his time.

Etienne Wenger - Communities of Practice Wenger, E. (1998) Communities of Practice, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Martin Weller - The Ed Techie

Tapscott, S. and Williams, D. (2007) Wikinomics; How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, London, Atlantic Books.

Pearce, N. (2012) ‘Developing students as content scavengers’, OpenCourseWare Consortium Global 2012/OER 12 Conference, 16–18 April, Cambridge.

Wilks, Yorick (ed.), Close Engagements with Artificial Companions: Key social, psychological, ethical and design issues. 2010. xxii, 315 pp. (pp. 259–286)

The on going story of the heavy metal umlaut on wikipedia.

http://jonudell.net/udell/gems/umlaut/umlaut.html