Personal Blogs

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.

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).

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.

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.

I forgot to mention this one but two months ago I was given nasty cholesterol score and a dear friend and neutrionist rather than see me on satins gave me a comprehensive health review, some don'ts and does (recipes) and some supplements.

Six weeks on and my pot belly has gone, my poo still floats and I fart a lot and my cooking range has been extended.

I was also supposed to give up alcohol and coffee; whilst the former is down to close to zero I drink even more coffee, though it is black. My vegetarian daughter is delighted and our shopping bill is down 30%.

Porridge with soya milk every breakfast, fresh pesto and pasta at lunch, home made soup in the evening sometimes turned into a casserole or with brown rice.

And as well as coaching the local swim club I now swim with it too; the extraordinary insight at being the swimmer being coached for the first time in 32 years a bonus. So a healthy mind and a healthy body, both thanks to The OU as it was while living and working up at Milton Keynes that all of this happened.

And I have an exam tomorrow. Just surving this far through the module has been an achievement as life around it has been somewhat difficult.

'Consider this medium as like talking with your fingers - half-way between spoken conversation and written discourse.' (Hawkridge, Morgan and Jeffs, 1997, quoted in Salmon 2005)

Salmon, G (2005) E-moderating.

The Key to teaching and learning online

This works for me and plays directly into B822 'Creativity, Innovation & Change'.

Listen then act.

John Cleese on Creativity

I'm going create the space and make the time! And play.

1. Space
2. Time
3. Time
4. Humour

FURTHER READING

Amabile, T. M. & Sensabaugh, S. J. (1985).  Some factors affecting organizational creativity:  A brief report.  A paper presented at the Creativity Innovation & Entrepreneurship Symposium at the George Washington University, Washington, D. C.

Ekvall, G. & Arvonen, J. (1983). Creative organizational climate:  Construction and validation of a measuring instrument.  Stockholm, Sweden:  The Swedish Council for Management and Organizational Behavior.

Gryskiewicz, S. S. (1982).  Creative leadership development and the Kirton adaption-innovation inventory.  An invited paper delivered at the 1982 Occupational Psychology Conference of the British Psychological Society meeting on "Breaking Set:  New Directions in Occupational Psychology" at Sussex University, Brighton, England.

MacKinnon, D. W. (1961). Creativity in architects. In D. W.

MacKinnon (Ed.), The creative person (pp. 237–251). Berkeley: University of California, Institute of Personality Assessment Research.

MacKinnon, D. W. (1978). In search of human effectiveness: Identifying and develop

MacKinnon, D. W.  (1978). In search of human effectiveness:  Identifying and developing creativity.  Buffalo, New York:  Bearly Limited.

This isn't something new; the best way to learn is from and amongst others. John Seely Brown gets it right when he talks about 'learning from the periphery'. Think how in the playground or when joining a club where there may be no formal induction or training, how you gravitate towards the centre over time as you listen in to conversations, get the drift of what is being said, get up the courage to ask questions (which is hopefully encouraged), and in time gain knowledge and confidence to offer your own unique take and things. In time you gravitate towards the centre; you may even become the centre. the 'leader' or part of the 'leadership' those wise folk at the centre of things.

I recall this as an undergraduate on campus, an outsider for a year, at the centre for a year and then worrying about Finals.

The OU launched 'Social Learn' yesterday.

This is exciting. It brings the hubbub of the eclectic learning community online. This is more than a forum, it is a virtual learning space.

It will take all kinds of participants for it to work otherwise it is like one of those South American Pipe Dreams to build cities from scratch in the Amazon Jungle. It is the people and their ideas, thoughts, knowledge and participation that will bring it to life. It will require moderators, and leaders, and champions, and people to listen and guide and share. It will require moderators:

'The essential role of the e-moderator is promoting human interaction and communication through the modelling, conveying and building of knowledge and skills'. (Salmon, 2005:4)

And a new take on things:

'Online learning calls for the training and development of new kinds of online teachers - to carry out roles not yet widely understood'. (Salmon. 2005:10)

'I could use a colourful swimming costume'.

This pegs the following ideas:

Interconnectness
Complicatedness
Uncertainty
Ambiguity
Conflict
Societal Constraints

And recalling the authors Mason & Mitroff (1981)

However, I need to visualise this. Perhaps the actor James Mason (in his Nabakov role of Herbert Herbert from 'Lolita') with a Russian girl called 'Olga Mitroff'. Everyone around them are wearing colourful Versace swimming costumes whereas their's are plain black. She is black and young, suggesting the 'complexity' required here and they are standing on the end of a springboard, like walking the plank, and holding hands to give me 'conflict' and 'connectedness' even disaproval from those around them and so 'societal constraints'. All I need to do now is peg this further with an orange flavoured fruit Polo. And then be able to add a couple of relevant sentences to each. Assuming there is a question from which this 'mind dump' can provide some detail.

Why does this all matter?

I've been learning in B822 how to apply a variety of creative problem solving techniques to business problems; both the theory and practice says the the problem you are dealing with has to indicate all the above to warrant a creative problem solving approach.

Beyond the exam I can and will apply this to what I do which has in the past been solving communications problems using creativity in the execution of ideas.

The iPad came on as I set off to my 'workspace' lighitng up he bedroom and conveninetly helping me locate slippers and dressing gown.

I held the suprisngly bright tablet close so as not to wake my wife.

As I passed a mirroer the errie glow made me think of a ghost and how ghosts might be travellers wandering through your present nosing about, researching their family or on an adventure of some other kind.

An iPad might be a valuable piece of kit for any timetraveller (not that you'd get a signal), handy for keeping a record of what you discover and perhaps a Google Timeline that let's you navigate in both space and time.

Time I went and wrote a trial exam question!

The MAODE has no exams, it is all done through assignments. The MBA module I am doing, 'Creativity, Innovation & Change' has three two TMAs and ECA and an exam. The exam is the clincher.

An exam obliges you to do things in a very different way. You not only have to be able to tap into your memory banks, but you need to be able to drill deep enough for substance and then wrap this around the exam questions.

With a TMA all you have to do is wrap what you can pick out of the course books, notes and resources (on the basis that you have read the materials and know where it all is).

Surely as a form of assessment the exam is a crucial form of judging how mauch a person has taken in? Whether they have engaged extensively, iteratively and collaboratively with their student cohort and tutor during the module or whether they have confined themselves to a room with the resources and picked their way through them (or a bit of both).

In addition to the exam and assignment I rather like the idea of the viva, though I have never faced one. This suits my mind set and probably my way of learning, I like to hear what I have to say and respond to others. And I write the way I think, as stream of consciousness.