Personal Blogs

P.S. And an age-appropriate photo will replace the happy Dad of 9 years ago that you currently see. Intellectually I feel like a 19 year old - fighting fit and argumentative. The way I will go down here on in.

I have never gone grey, not lost much hair, still swim a mile or more a week ... avoid the sun, but tan easily.

I do NOT need reading glasses ... but my skin, in places is starting to look like rice paper ... I'm a baby of the 60s.

Thrilled to be alive, highly mixed up in e-learning ... a century ago (like my grandfather) it would have been planes, motorbikes and cars.

About to go out and eat on an extraordinary evening on the South Downs with views across the English Channel with the three people who matter the most to me in all the world, my wife and children.

Have I done my bit?

When they emerge from university and have five years steady employment, with a partner ...

When do you let go?

Given than my mother's parents, aunts and uncles reached their 90s ...

I feel, and celebrate that we never let go.

If in 50 years time my mother and my siblings and our cousins and second cousins and our children are all still present ?

• I want to have a role in the Olympics.
• I want to have a role in remembering the First World War.
• I want to be a grandparent.
• I'd like to be by the sea and on it most days.
• I'd like people to grin with pleasure feeling they've achieved something extra-ordinary and unexpected.
• This for me is the OU.

P.P.S. I am neither jingoistic or necessarily a patriot. The above is a statement of circumstance. Those millions of us living here ought to reflect more often on how great it is to live a life in peace, with food, a roof over our heads, clothing and friends. The challenge of the next 100 years is to educate some people not to abuse it: flytipping stinks, littering is no better. There are too many people in our society who frankly don't give a monkey's +@#

I got an iPHone three weeks ago.

Today my son (13 years 3 months) loaded the Carling APP, and a fish pond.

He then showed me how to turn it off. So one of these and one of those

I do now follow various foriums with the RSS feed to my email, picking them off as the happen, responding from time to time, rather than letting them stack up.

For the second time today I did a Google search only to come back to this student blog, whilst in one respect chuffed, it doesn't help me correct the considerable volumes of nonsense that exist here.

This possibly explains the 1,000+ page views a day.

Keen to get the initials of e-learning authors/academics I put 'Hawkridge, Morgan and Jeffs', into the search engine Bing and was directed to a not very helpful student blog ... this one

Whereas Google offered the correct journal, and paper authored by these three and corrected Jeffs to Jelfs. One click and I had the paper downloaded (for the umpteenth time) as a PDF.

I don't bookmark or save documents anymore, I just Google it. Now, is this because Google is intuatively following my choices? I hotdesk between computers though, I'm on my wife's laptop now, was on my son's desk top earlier on ... while during the week I'm on my own laptop or iPad.

I guess it depends on how I am signed in. Who knows. I should (but don't).

Listen - Engage - Create Simplified to a traffic light (see below)

With the additional thought, 'you can't understand social media unless you do it'.

This IS the new TV, new Radio, new wordprocessing ...it will and is transforming the way we do things forever.

We'll have dropped the suffix 'e' with a year and the descriptors such as 'digital' sooner.

Learners should not be defined by the technology they use, whether books, TV, computers, or interactive web-content; they should be defined by the processes of myelination that is going on regardlessly, in it's most mysterious ways, under our thick skulls.

Who indeed is the 'digital scholar', an academic now an 'e-reader' in 'Enter Subject Specialisms Here'.

Some answers are offered in Martin Weller's book 'The Digital Scholar'.

My favoured observation post is to watch out for this slippery fish in the OU Student Blog Roll, more a stream of fish-fry commencing their online, 'electronically-enhanced' learning journey, than a mere list, more news feed, though refreshing from the perspective of the new, rather than the rehearsed and practises mind.

Once a fish, now a fisherman?

I have another 12 months in these waters, more if I postpone completing the MA (more by accident than design, I've not registered for the next module yet - whatever that might be).

The choices are bewildering, not least because I can drift off to do something with a different Faculty.

Part of the brilliance of The OU to enable such choices. Creativity and Innovation with the Business School is attractive.

If Boyer's four main scholarly functions were research, application, integration and teaching, then I would propose that those of the digital scholar are engagement, experimentation, reflection and sharing'.

Weller (2011 in Chapter 4, 20% of the way through, Kindle Location 1005. Is there a page number related to a print version? Amazon say not in a polite, informative and lengthy e-mail. What therefore is the answer to this referencing conundrum?)

Does Weller's suggestion make anyone who keeps a student blog and shares it openly like this a scholar?

Making us all digital scholars?

(I love the term as a hundred years ago in Census Returns it was used to describe anyone attending an academic institution, whether school or university).

Goals of the Scholarly Activity

• Provide students with an opportunity to employ their unique skills and talents to pursue a project of their choosing under the mentorship of an expert in the field.
• Provide mentorship and guidance for students interested in careers that integrate research, teaching, and clinical service (academic medicine).
• Foster development of analytical thinking skills, rational decision making, and attention to the scientific method.
• Enhance communication skills.
• Enhance self-directed learning.

Reference

Boyer, E.L. 1990. Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate. The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Princeton, NJ.

Weller, M., (2011) The Digital Scholar

Water-Cycle Images offered under Creative Commons

http://quizlet.com/2634344/water-cycle-with-pictures-flash-cards/

How I see learning in Web 2.0 where everything is digitised, shared, communicated and changed. Simply write over the terms and phrases here with:

• Web 2.0
• Digital Asset
• E-tivities
• User Generated Content
• Forums
• Social Learning
• Mobile Devices
• Cloud Computing
• Computers
• Internet
• Communities of Learning
• E-Books

... and so on

The most a busy blogger can do when unable to blog is to jot down some notes in the hope that in a quiet moment you can return.

After a protracted absence from work I have that to catch up on, as well as an End-of-module Assignment (EMA) to deliver in 10 days times (far earlier I hope).

I need to return to:

• Presenting to Buckingham Marketers on Social Media Marketing.

I drew all I needed to share from this mind-map (to upload indue course). Most telling for me is being just as interested to engage face-to-face so I need to do this regularly. Social Media is complementary, not replacement technology.

• The following day I was a guinea-pig in the Institute of Educational Technology Labs on the next offering of the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE).

I found the process as well as the likely outcome to be fascinating. For all you H810ers, the Chair of this module was the observer in the TV Gallery follwing my behaviours and actions. More to come.

• And then today, the first in a four part presentation that will eventually run to eight hours, on how the concept of 'personas' is used to inform web design and functionality for different user types.

What the outsider cannot appreciate is the extraordinary depth and quality of thinking that goes into what the OU does.

• And finally (the day after) a presentation from the Head of Legal at JISC on Creative Commons and OER.

Another vital lesson that in a two hour form (they could edit the video from its six hour length) ought to be part of an induction package for anyone coming into Higher Education in a content creation role. More to follow once I have H800 out of the way (end of September).

Having failed to register for the next module I'll have good time to reflect on the content of this blog and migrate most, if not all of it, over to my external blog My Mind Bursts or to a new blog focused exclusively on e-learning.

'If Boyer's four main scholarly functions were research, application, integration and teaching, then I would propose that those of the digital scholar are engagement, experimentation, reflection and sharing'. Weller (2011).

Reference

Weller, M (2011) The Digital Scholar. How technology is transforming scholarly practice. Bloomsbury