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Going Digital. Another memory aid in a 5,000 year history. A must read for anyone on MAODE, especially H800 and H807

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Tuesday, 22 May 2012, 13:57

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GOING DIGITAL

Evolutionary and revolutionary aspects of digitization

(147th Nobel Symposium June 23-26, 2009. Published 2011)

 

‘A three day discussion on the future of memory’. (Baker, 2011)

 

What is evolutionary or revolutionary when going digital today?


The Pre-digital world. How did we manage?

 

· Where did this come from?

· Access

· What does it mean?

· How academics use it

· Adding value for research

· Where is it all leading to?

 

Videos available here

 

Putting together the best speakers:


· Professor Emma Rothschild, Harvard.

· Dr Lisbet Rausing, Imperial College, London

· Professor Marco Beretta, Bologna/Florence

· Martin Rosenbroek, National Library, The Netherlands

 

Going Digital. Another memory aid in a 5,000 year history. A must read for anyone on MAODE, especially H800 and H807

 

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Going Digital

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Monday, 21 May 2012, 12:05

Going Digital

Evolutionary and revolutionary aspects of digitization

Editor Karl Grandin

Authors including Professor Emma Rothschild

 

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An exciting new way to share the learning experience

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Thursday, 1 Nov 2012, 13:04

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This is just me mashing it all up, but at times I've moaned about wanting to read a relevant book from cover to cover, taking and sharing notes, following references, having a chin-wag and learning by default, on the fly 'vicariously'.

This I've discovered is possible by doing the following:

Buy an eBook, I'm currently doing this to Prof Martin Weller's 'The Digital Scholar' (One of ours, from the Knowledge Media Institute)

You'll come across his name as often as those of:

  • Grainne Conole
  • Denise Kirkpartrick
  • Chris Pegler
  • Diane Laurillard et al
  • Vygotsky
  • Engestrom

on any of the Masters in Open & Distance Education modules. H807, H808, H809, H800 and H810.

As you read through Kindle (which can be on your desktop, laptop, Kindle, iPad, iPhone etcsmile when you 'highlight' something interesting click SHARE and send it to Twitter (my prefered, though it can also go to Facebook).

In this way you indicate what interests you (and where you are up to). Step away from reading mode to chat a bit, then press on or go back.

I like it.

Already done this with:

  • Steve Jobs: the exclusive biography. Walter Isaacson
  • The Blind Giant.Being Human in a Digital World. Nick Harkaway

Currently doing this with:

  • The Digital Scholar: How technology is transforming Scholarly Practice. Martin Weller.
  • All Quiet on the Western Front. Erich Maria Remarque
  • Rethinking Pedagogy in a Digital Age. Rhona Sharpe

I'm thinking of doing the same with:

  • Educational Psychology. Vygotsky
  • Mindstorms. Piaget.
  • Flow. The classic book on how to achieve happiness. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

P.S. I'm between modules!

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The value of Social Learning, lest you forget.

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Monday, 18 Jun 2012, 00:50

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Ebbinghaus came up with the 'Forgetting Curve' to indicate how what we learn is soon forgotten unless we continue to engage with it, social learning is a painless way to repeat this engagement process. It also defies the latent loneliness of studying alone with your books and eBooks, LMS and PLE.


The historian EHCarr said 'study a subject until you hear its people speak', in a social learning context you hear these voices. A commentator on Radio 4 (search in my OU Student blog for the reference) said some months ago 'research a subject until the narrative reveals itself' which as my subject of interest is e-learning is achieved by doing this, over a 1000 e-learning posts in my blog and over two years on the Open University's MA in Open & Distance Learning.

I picked up the name Ebbinghaus in a paper written by James Cory- Wright on the Brightwave website, responded to a prompt for disucssion in an Epic Linkedin Group and am posting all of this in my Open University Student Blog to  share with fellow travellers on the MAODE: H807, H808, H 800, H810, H809 and/or any ellectives a person  may choose to do as an alterantive.

Epic and Brightave, along with Kineo and others are part of the e-learning cluster in Brighton.

Find out more at Wired Sussex.

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Learning Curves and Forgetting Curves

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Friday, 2 Nov 2012, 18:08

I've not come across Ebbinghaus in any of the three modules of the MAODE I have thus far studied (Ivan Illich and Wendy Becker have interesting things to say too).

Ebbinghaus

After some number of repetitions, Ebbinghaus would attempt to recall the items on the list. It turned out that his ability to recall the items improved as the number of repetitions went up, rapidly at first and then more slowly, until finally the list was mastered.

This was the world's first learning curve.

The effect of over learning is to make the information more resistant to disruption or loss.

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For example, the forgetting curve for over learned material is shallower, requiring more time to forget a given amount of the material.

I relate to this and having taken many exams in my life it is useful at last to have some terms to refer to it all. The only exam I have ever had to resit should have been the easiest, not the finals of a BA (Hons) as an Oxford Undergraduate (or the entrance exam which was tough enough), but a Level II Teaching Swimming Multi-choice paper that took an hour. I simply hadn’t put in the time, say six hours over as many days, repeating by writing it out and testing myself.

 

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Whilst in an exam the student may forget, there are exams where you want them to retain the information: junior doctors, health & safety in a nuclear power plant, or one I was involved with 'the packing and storage of uranium trioxide'.

Savings is the most sensitive test of memory, as it will indicate some residual effect of previous learning even when recall and recognition do not.

Which is what I just did, three weeks after the event.

If I go to the website where I stored the original mind–maps and lists I know that I could quickly re–engage with the material. Like riding a bike, windsurfing or skiing? Though not recalling the lines of Mercutio from Romeo & Juliette which I performed in my late teens. I can however recite some Macbeth, but only because I have repeatedly tested myself on the lines since my mid–teens).

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Universal use of learning analytics

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Saturday, 26 Dec 2020, 09:21

Another measure, another tool, yet a other invasion of privacy, or an extraordinary opportunity to help students play to their strengths and cover their weaknesses?

To manage their time,moods and lives in a way that helps them achieve?

Reading about Learning Analytics, especially the negativity and concerns, I realise that thereis considerableanalysis, physiological and mental, already, for example ranking or grading chess players, or closely mapping and following elite athletes (I come from a swim coaching background where elite atheltes are closely monitored on a wide range of factors).

Learning Analytics were once crudely represented by termly exams, per centage scores in exams, even form placings: crude, potentially demotivating, but still an attempt to identify what is going on with a student.

In the right nands, the right parents and teachers and environment, surely if understood and managed 'learning analytics' like regular visits to the GP and Dentist will help people to develop and know what they need t do and how to do it?

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Learning Analytics, RefOne,

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Saturday, 26 Dec 2020, 09:23
These are far more intersesting than social analytics, rather than analysing a person's online browsing, purchasing and gaming activies, 'learning analytics' help the educator to understand how a student is behaving and performing. Used appropriately these become a tool for teacher and student,
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Innovations in e-learning

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Can a module (h807) be called 'Innovations in e-learning' without much acknowledgement of iPads, even Google? A model is required for such a course whereby all discussion and resources can be readily brought up to date. MySpace dominates over Facebook. No Skype or Smartphones.
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Because I love my niece ...

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Saturday, 12 May 2012, 08:08

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Verfity & Violet

aka

Jessica and Loui


Baby sat my niece she was a year old and I was revising for my A levels (messy), later saw her perform in professional panto age 10 in Newcastle and later still attended her London graduation performance ... And later still did the photography at her stunning wedding.

The story goes on.

At my daughter's leaving do at school yesterday I reflect very much on it being 'their turn' however much I feel like the teenager I left behind three decades ago.


What's this got to do with learning?

Love, support, encouragement ...

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A writer is only a writer when writing

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Saturday, 12 May 2012, 08:10
‘A writer only feels he or she is a writer at the point of performance, the moment of writing. Do anything else, even related activities like research or background reading, and the claim seems fraudulent. A writer is only a writer when writing. The rest is marking time'. Alan Bennett, Untold Stories (2006)
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An OU Student without a module is like a ship without a rudder

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For the last 26 months my OU studying has had me pointed in a direction (even if it wasn't always clear which port I was headed for I was at least at sea and in motion).

I've been blown along by the regular requirements of activities and assessments (I need the regular drip drip of weekly activities far more than an assignment every sixth week or an exam after five months).

Time to get the paddles out (if I can find them).

Or I come ashore?

The next module I'm interested in doesn't start 'til February 2013!

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David Pelzer : Life Lessons from the 'Boy Called It'

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Saturday, 12 May 2012, 08:17
Dave Pelzer, ‘A Boy Called it’ and his tips on sticking to your plans.

Life Lessons
Dave Pelzer
I like this book for its simplicity; it is also very short. Five or six ideas are enough to keep in your head at any one time; I’m going to pick through the following, chant them, put them in a prayer, remind myself each day what I want to achieve.

1. Be resilient
2. Learn to fly
3. No one is perfect
4. Let go of your past
a. 'You cannot move forward until you free yourself from the shackles of your past.'
5. Deal with everyday problems
a. 'Settle your problems as promptly and as thoroughly as you are able.'
6. Rest your mind.
a. Get a good night's sleep.
i. I go to bed early.
7. Let go, let rip daily.
a. I go down to the sea.
8. Purge your soul
a. I do so in a diary. Confessional would be the alternative were I notan atheist.
9. If you have been subjected to negative surroundings, use them to make you strive for something better.
a. I don't want to be an absent father, not away all week or for weeks at a time.
10. Limit your response to negative settings and, if necessary, make a clean break. 
a. Tricky, very tricky indeed. In the past I did thisand had spells working in the Alps, Lake District and Paris. London would do.
11. Overcome your guilt. Make amends and move on.
12. Don't give yourself away in the vain hope of appeasing others.
13. To help yourself, be yourself.
14. Never go to bed upset.
15. Resolve matters before they envelop you. Compromise. 
16. Hate no one. It is like a cancer.
17. Forgiveness cleanses.
18. When life's not fair.
a. 'Before you quit on yourself when life isn't fair, exhaust all your options for making things happen.'
19. How badly do I want it?
a. Resolve to make things happen to you.
20. What have I accomplished?
a. Ask yourself what can you not accomplish when you truly commit to that one thing?
21. Know what you want and determine to make it happen.
22. What is truly important to me? 
23. Attempt the so-called 'impossible' until it becomes an everyday part of your life.
24. Don't give your best away.
a. 'We allow self-doubt, time, situations or whatever else to erode our dreams. We quit on ourselves. We carry regret, regret turns into frustration, frustration into anger, anger into sorrow. We've lost one of life's most precious gifts: the excitement, the fear, the heart-pounding sensation of taking a step outside our protective womb.'
25. Go the distance.
a. 'Part of the thrill of success is the journey of the struggle. If it were easy everyone would be doing it.'
26. Be happy.
a. The older we get, the more complacent, hopeless and despondent we become.
27. A consistent, positive attitude makes a world of difference.
28. There may not be a tomorrow to count on, so live the best life that you can today.
29. Start saying positive, rather than negative things abut myself (and everyone around me).
30. Focus. If you have no goal or the self-belief that you can accomplish them, you will end up going nowhere.
a. A little bit of adversity can help to realign you, make you humble and make you want it more.
31. Deflect negativity.
a. Flush it away and replace it with something positive (from a positive environment).
33. Every day see the brighter side of things.
My problem? I make lists, but do something else. What's your strategy?
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Value playfulness and learning how to play together

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Tuesday, 8 May 2012, 09:01
Wozniak and Steve Jobs, their pranks and phone hacks. They learnt how to work together and get the intrinsic reward thatclmes from pulling it off. Wozniak the innventor, while Steve Jobs would make it user-friendly, package and sell it and make a few bucks. isaacson describes Jobs as 'Sensitive, insensitive, bristly and detached. Showing the traits at junior school that he kept later in life'. How can 'useful' pranks and boisterou inventivesness be fostered, rather than killed off? Should they be confined to Secondary School (High School) and university? What examples can you think of, from personal experience or from the press, where a bond has been formed by a 'young people' that has gone on to bare fruit? Beyond the Fringe Monty Python Many rock bands Directors and actors
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Steve Jobs: has to be a more interesting read than Bill Gates

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Steve Jobs: his tale is both instructive and cautionary, filled with lessons about innovation, character, leadership and values. (From the introduction to the Walter Isaacson biograghy). Which faculty or module will be first to have this as a compulsory read?
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Steve Jobs in a word

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I'm just about through the Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson and I'm inclined to give it one more pass so that I can blog-along and make some of the insights stick. This second reading has got me quite tearful; i want to say was it worth it? Could he have been a little less intense and so not theinsensitive sh1t that so often manufested itself. 'Intense' is Steve Jobs in one word and largely how the biographer wraps it up. Go read then come join the 'Steve Jobs Walter Isaacson discussion group on Linkedin.
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What the publishers mean

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A witty lok at what publishers at saying at the London Book Fair and what they mean. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/apr/27/what-publishers-really-mean-euphemisms?fb=native&CMP=FBCNETTXT9038
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B882 meets H807

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Monday, 18 Jun 2012, 13:27

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The module ended 10 days ago so what am I doing having a dream about the thing? And given the course, 'Creativity, Innovation & Change' then once again, despite my best efforts, I can share with you that 'Working with Dreams' is a tricky one for the office.

The dream was about collaboration, not in teams, but in partnership. I'm re-reading the Walter Isaacson biography and tossing notes onto Twitter and Facebook.

My thoughts dwelt on the nature of close collaboration, how likeminds may be LESS useful than minds where there is conflict. The key is to have a common goal, indeed, very different 'personalities' by type, experience, background, response are beneficial so long as the 'GOAL' is a significant motivation that overrides everything else.

For anyone caring to join in I've set up a Steve Jobs: Walter Isaacson discussion group on Linkedin.

Currently I am talking to myself (was it not ever thus).

P.S. My bloods have come but negative, so I feel like taking a cold shower and changing scenes.

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How to be creative. What is going on here and can it be measured?

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Wednesday, 2 May 2012, 09:21

BBC Radio 4 in ten minutes time.

That's 'Start the Week' from this morning. See my notes below.

Or click here. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01gnq8y

Then return for a chat?

(Follow up)

How did I get that one wrong?

It turned out to be a rather interesting doccumentary on the children of the Olympics bid.

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The innately interesting 'creativity'

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Saturday, 3 Nov 2012, 12:52

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BBC Radio 4 on Creativity

Start the week with Andrew Marr.

JONAH LEHRER 'Imagine' How creativity works.

  • A universal property of human nature (though it doesn't mean we are all equally good at it). Jonah Lehrer.

What is creativity?

A different kind of mental activity to sweating it out at the office, or the 'ah ha' moment in the shower. the epiphany.

Bob Dylan and his moment of insight (May 1965) when he least expected it (or wanted it), after a year long tour he took a break.

  • The cortex sharing a secret with us. Jonah Lehrer.

What are the mental states and moods. Relaxed. Daydreaming is important, why a walk without the iPhone, a flight without the laptop, even in the bath is a place to tap into unconscious awareness.

Testament to unconscious ideas.

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Value of collaboration, being surrounded by the right people, the big city, the 'cluster', such as Shakespeare moving to London (what was it about the 1580s and 1590s in London?).

Can we recreate another age of genius?

Grit. Single-mindedness. Persistance. Putting in the 10,000 hours.

JOANNA KAVENNA

Joanna Kavenna is a novelist.

Preparing for the 'great out pouring' then the potentially gruelling, striving.Defamiliarising yourself.

SCANNER

Robin Rimbaud – aka Scanner

Neurons firing, the heart beating. The social interactions that feed into this world.

Neuroscience confirms what we had always thought was necessary or going on, such as Colleridge going for walks (or Steve Jobs).

  • Easily distracted.

A wall chart showing 22 projects. A morning, an afternoon and an evening session then quit.

RACHEL O'REILLY

Dr Rachel O’Reilly is a research fellow in the Chemistry Department at the University of Warwick.

A chemist. How to take a material and improve it. Problem solving for a company, the 'audience' we report back to, or funders, another 'audience'.

And here's a creative team to die for:

 

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Steve Jobs and Pixar

Breaking out of the mindset

Preposterous process of 'growing a baby' and a new encounter breaks you out of your mindset and habit.

Childhood play and do i.e. 'playfulness' compared to the business-like 'job' at a desk (even at a keyboard).

If you are at all successful, you are then expected to reproduce what you did before and the habitual way you work becomes a habit. Andrew Marr. (And what publishers/the public expect and want).

A writer and a musician want to change their voice.

Being in the right place at the right time.

The 'Semilweis knee-jerk reaction'.

[While doing some of this at Connect Wisdom]

Peak ages of creativity

  • Poetry early 30, like Physicists.
  • Novelists mid 40s
  • Caused by 'enculturation'.
  • So always try new things, constantly risk reinvention.
  • Painters peak late.
  • Historian late.

Imposed archetypes

Inestimable confluences of influences. The writer who is obsessed with reading other people's works as well as writing.

Exploring the science of creativity

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

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Sunday, 4 May 2014, 09:41

Re-reading the Steve Jobs biography with four months in hand before another MAODE module I am struck by what it tells you about Gates and Jobs and how self-evidently one is an adaptor 'doing things better' while the other is an innovator 'doing things differently'.

This drawn from doing a KAI personality inventory and all the reading around these tests for B822.

I came out at 144 on a scale of 160; I'd envisage Jobs as somewhere on the outer edges of 150 while Gates gets a 20 or 30, neither would be in the 60-130 zone for two thirds of respondents.

If they ever did one of these are the results known?

As most managers do observation and experience of a person's behaviour and responses must suffice.

I feel a desire to revisit H807 'Innovations in E-learning' while mixing it up with B822 'Creativity, Innovation and Change'.

I can do this through the 1000+ entries I have here and by refreshing my mind from the current and archived blogs of others blogging here currently (though few if any blog there way through the MBA programme and I am yet to find anyone blogging about B822).

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Poolside swim teacher support

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Wednesday, 2 May 2012, 09:25

I'm poolside with an iBook, Kindle and various smartphones looking at how best to support swim teacher development. Micro-sized, images based, sequences, drills, parts of lesson plans.

Content needs to be:

  • Simple and clear
  • Varied
  • Of use to coach and swimmer
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Mind-map, Mind-dump and the written examination

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Friday, 27 Apr 2012, 08:55

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Faced with an exam this is what I do. Here is Block 1, ostensibly Part 1 of a three part examination.

I've grouped sets of ideas and reduced them to a mnemonic or phrase.

These become the 'peg' from which I recreate something not dissimilar to the above on a sheet of Rough Paper.

In practice, never having done an OU exam before, I used an ENTIRE question book, filling it with part 1, part 2, and part 3 doodles and lists such as these.

When I saw the questions I took out a coloured pen, they happened to be red, orange and yellow.

I then circled those chunks of ideas that I planned to use for that question

a) seeing that per question I was essentially sticking to the appropriate block and

b) ensuring that there was no (or mininmal) over lap.

In fact 'SPICES' and 'CHALKPR' (as I rephrased it) cover some of the same ground in defining a creative organisation so I used the first in one question and the latter in another.

Did it work? We'll see.

As for the learning experience?

However much I dislike exams I am reminded of the extraordinary value of having to refresh, consolidate and build your knowledge. It had to stick for a few hours for an exam, but I feel that without the exam I would never have compressed my thinking or seen how many of the ideas are remarkably straightforward.

Were I designing learning I would certainly want an examination during and at the end.

Not just the written paper, but multichoice, open debate, a testing tutorial designed to get the synapses working ... many ways to get students to engage with the cotent and make it their own so that it can be applied and remembered.

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Digital Marketing

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Saturday, 3 Nov 2012, 00:02

I fancy giving this a go;

Diploma in Digital Marketing

 

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Is the written exam an expensive and archaic indulgence that fails e student and the institution?

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Saturday, 5 May 2012, 06:46

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Sitting an exam for the first time in 28 years got me thinking how so much is assessed by assignments and 'doing'.

Just clinging to a pen for more than 5 minutes is a novelty to me.

Surely the technology we now have is capable of 'getting into my head' to show that I do or do not know my stuff. But here's the difference, have I been taught to pass an exam which could only prepare me to become an academic, or have I been applied to apply what I have learned which is very different.

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My first ever OU exam in 2 hours

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Saturday, 5 May 2012, 06:50

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My first and only ever exam too as 'normal' MAODE modules don't require them relying instead on asignments.

I wish I was this keyed up before tackling an assignment, that feeling that I can now sit down and write actively, with a smile on my face, for three hours.

A lesson I may take forward, putting far more into the preparation of an essay so that I write fluidly rather than assembling stuff.

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