Category Archives: Whimsey

Using the Blackboard

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A comment from Maureen Bell at HERDSA led to an impromptu list of things teachers once learned:

  • Divide the board into sections
  • Hold the chalk at the horizontal
  • Use the same colours for headings and subheadings each time
  • Underline with a squiggly line rather than a straight line (because nobody can draw a straight line)
  • Keep a section for first appearance of terms, vocab
  • Throw the blackboard duster at a student
  • Rub off section by section so slow scribblers can catch up on copying what you wrote 10 minutes ago
  • Have blackboard monitors or helpers, beacause kids love erasing and clapping out dusters
  • Colour in a new blackboard with side of a piece of chalk, then erase normally to ³prime² it for use
  • Fun fact: chalk is not actually made from chalk rock (calcium carbonate), but from calcium sulfate in its dihydrate form, gypsum.

From an e-mail Mike Dickison www.giantflightlessbirds.com/

Illegal chord?

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An Illegal Chord?

In 1899, the man who would one day become John Cage’s teacher wrote a string sextet called Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night). It was one of Arnold Schoenberg’s first major works, and it went on to become his most popular; but to the Viennese jury that considered it for performance, Verklärte Nacht proved unacceptable.
Schoenberg, the jury members pointed out, had written a chord that didn’t exist; it was not to be found in any textbook; it was, if you like, illegal.

From Andrew Ford, one of Van Morrison’s biographers.

How often do we treat new ideas like this? Or new approaches? New ways of doing things?

FOC08: the meaning of online community (1)

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The homework for this week: “Write a post to your blog with your thoughts about the meaning of an online community and its uses. Include a list of identifying features that YOU would look for when assessing an online group or network for features which make it a community”

I’ve said in another post “I know it when I see it”

I’ve found this quite a hard thing to do.  Got very distracted with the blogs.

1. Bron talked about where we started (F2F initially or some other path?) and said

Although I was a teacher I found this new facilitation role freed me from much of what constrained me in teaching.

Can school/learning migrate into learning community?  Yes.   I woujld give up If I thought otherwise.  Community (online or not) includes the aspects of learning . .  not formal, didactice.  Other kinds.

2. Bron (the other one) said:

I am having a hard time keeping my fingers off the keyboard and not participating

This is a displacement activity for Bron – what she does when she should be somewhere else (writing in this case).  She is supposed to be studying.  Online community/networking is slightly seductive.

3. Do communities need a facilitator?  Vida says this:

It is continuous communication which is the key to being a successful online Facilitator, perhaps not the method of communication.

Hmm.

4. Sylvia introduces a special word:

Since the conversation space opened we have been going through the ritual of introducing ourselves

Ritual.  Communities have rituals.

Thats enough warmup

I may post some more tomorrow.  I have very little that is original.  But I will post on my cylinder theory.  If things work out.

Random Postings . . .

A few random blogs I have posted on:Bruna’s Blog (with a quote from Elwwod) | Wayne Thinks (Multitasking and Karate Kid) |

Blog meandering in FOC08

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Diane Holmes has coined a new word: blogbleary.  I think I felt that way a little last night.  Just getting the feel for a few of the FOC08 blogs.

Greg Barcelon has quite a nice post on his ideas on networks > groups > teams > communities.  He also references the superb little summary at Cheryl’s Blog on virtual communities.

For the second time in two days I had to dictionary.com a blog name.  The insouciant Existentialist – “marked by blithe unconcern” – sxyshandy.vox.com/ Trying to post a comment they asked me to join Vox.  (I already am, from some distant past activity) it was just too much for me.  A comment I would have added to the insouciant existentialist

and (you say) inject some structure in nurturing online communities
Is this a good thing?
Is it possible?

I notice in valerie’s Blog valerie.posterous.com/herding-cats she refers to working with communities as herding cats. I am sure there is another blog in the FOC08 list with this in the title, but in my blog surfing I have lost it.

Structure?? .

Lurking.  Deb has commented on Shane’s post.  I do not see Lurking as a problem, but if we all did it . .  I vividly remember my first online class where I was there as a helper to the lecturer.  Met someone in the loos.  They said “I have said things online I never wojuld have said F2F” and “I like having time to think”

Now I think enough. Blogbleary – but stimulated.  Interested to note there were two longer, deeper posts that I just cannot engage with yet – better a serious read after a morning coffee.

What do I want to know?

Random Thoughts

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ust catching up with some links

The Painted Veil: Movie

A superb movie!! – couldn’t figure out where the title came from, but (from you know where!!) The Painted Veil is a 1925 novel by W. Somerset Maugham. The title is taken from Percy Bysshe Shelley‘s sonnet which begins “Lift Not The Painted Veil Which Those Who Live/Call Life.”

Is Google making us stupid?

Indeed. Is this true of you? From www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google

Bruce Friedman, who blogs regularly about the use of computers in medicine, also has described how the Internet has altered his mental habits. “I now have almost totally lost the ability to read and absorb a longish article on the web or in print,” he wrote earlier this year. A pathologist who has long been on the faculty of the University of Michigan Medical School, Friedman elaborated on his comment in a telephone conversation with me. His thinking, he said, has taken on a “staccato” quality, reflecting the way he quickly scans short passages of text from many sources online. “I can’t read War and Peace anymore,” he admitted. “I’ve lost the ability to do that. Even a blog post of more than three or four paragraphs is too much to absorb. I skim it.”

I’ve been reading one difficult piece regularly recently. I started with the New Yorker. Can’t manage a book yet.

Punished by rewards: Book

by Alfie Kohn, Punished by Rewards – The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A’s, Praise, and Other Bribes (reference via Tony Barrett)

Nice article from Educational leadership. (in PDF format) and interview with Alfie. www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/pdf/Punished%20by%20Rewards.pdf

” In this groundbreaking book, Alfie Kohn shows that while manipulating people with incentives seems to work in the short run, it is a strategy that ultimately fails and even does lasting harm. Our workplaces and classrooms will continue to decline, he argues, until we begin to question our reliance on a theory of motivation derived from laboratory animals.

Drawing from hundreds of studies, Kohn demonstrates that people actually do inferior work when they are enticed with money, grades, or other incentives. Programs that use rewards to change people’s behavior are similarly ineffective over the long run. Promising goodies to children for good behavior can never produce anything more than temporary obedience. In fact, the more we use artificial inducements to motivate people, the more they lose interest in what we’re bribing them to do. Rewards turn play into work, and work into drudgery.” www.alfiekohn.org/books/pbr.htm

Teaching Awards?? How does this apply to these strange entities? As I have quoted before:

At present the universities are as uncongenial to teaching as the Mojave Desert to a clutch of Druid priests. If you want to restore a Druid priesthood, you cannot do it by offering prizes for Druid-of-the Year. If you want Druids, you must grow forests

(Arrowsmith, 1967, pp. 58-59) Arrowsmith, W. (1967). «The future of teaching.» In C. B. T. Lee (Ed.), Improving college teaching (pp. 57-71). Washington, DC: American Council on Education.

Cool optical illusions

Got diverted. This is freaky: the winner of this year’s optical illusions competition.

Edupunk

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Not sure what I think about this. The term has surfaced on the TALO list. I didn’t even have a clue really what it was all about. It’s probably pretty much the same as cyberpunk.

“Gibson said it in a short story somewhere. Cyberpunk is the stuff that has EDGE written all over it. You know, not edge, it’s written EDGE. All capital letters. Now ask me how I’d define EDGE. Well, EDGE is not about definitions. To the contrary, things so well known that they provide an exact definition can’t be EDGE. They probably once were but now they ain’t. SO DON’T TRY TO DEFINE IT!!!”

This is an oft quoted defintion from Thomas Eicher. eg Syberpunk The original link to Thomas Eicher is dead, but if you want to see his real pages (not updated since 2002) try this: www.teicher.net/cyberpunk.html

Cyberpunk

The word ‘cyberpunk’ first appeared as the title of a short story “Cyberpunk” by Bruce Bethke, published in “AMAZING” science fiction stories magazine volume 57, number 4, in November 1983. The word was coined in the early spring of 1980, and applied to the “bizarre, hard-edged, high-tech” SF emerging in the eighties. The story itself is about a bunch of teenage hackers/crackers. (From syberpunk)

Snowcrash of course is the 1991 book from Neal Stephenson that is a classic ‘cyberpunk’ novel.

You have come of age when you have a professional website.

Cyberpunkproject 300x218

Edupunk

Some of the stuff I read doesn’t make sense.  It’s not commubnicating in verbal propositional form in a way I can grasp.  Or coherent images and metaphors.  A bit self indulgent.  Never mind.  In some respects I did identity quite a lot with just the ‘has edge’ bit.  We need edge.  for instance, many ‘academic’ papers don’t have edge.

Hmm. “Has EDGE” I’ve done little more than ponder this: I wonder if I have lost the amount of edge I once had? School can often be injurious to your education. Maybe working in a university can have a similar effect. Nothing more to say really.

PS.  Not everyone likes Edu-Punks. Ken Carrell.

“So here is my take: Allowing Edupunks to define themselves as agents of humanitarian uplift is absurd. Forty year old tenured men in hoodies, talking about revolution is no more than perpetual adolescence and self-indulgence.  By appointing themselves as the Defenders the Oppressed they are pre-empting the right to lecture on the subject. Personally I reserve that right for someone with a grown-up argument and a relatively serious attitude.”

I need less serious and more fun.

Open source Cola and other links . . .

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I remember reading years ago that the secret ingredient to Colonel Saunders was pepper. Tried it, and you know, they may be right. But you need pressure cooked deep fryers to really bury the fat molecules and the taste.

Now, OpenCola. www.wikihow.com/Make-OpenCola

Other odd links.

Comparing IE and Firefox and Safari. Photos in a blog.

Yet another list of web2.0 apps: www.shambles.net/web2/index.htm

shambles.jpg

Too good to forget: www.flexilearn.com/?p=5

  1. e-learning 2.0 or the ‘network way’ is the future of learning – we will all ‘learn’ by using web 2.0 tools and linking our personal learning environments to others in a complex ecology of connected nodes. The traditional role of the teacher as the transmitter of knowledge is over. We are all equal – no more groups, no more unequal power relations, no more hierarchies. There is no need for the structures and constraints of schools and universities as we know them – indeed, the network way is rapidly dissolving them. You can get education direct from the ‘teacher’ and assessment is an optional extra – when you want a qualification. We will all pursue our individual learning desires unhindered by institutional constraints of curriculum and timetable. A Catholic school in Australia is hailed as the exemplar of this new approach. Stephen has just posted a comprehensive philosophical basis for this which I haven’t had time to read properly yet.
  2. Institutions will still be around for the foreseeable future, but is possible to incorporate the innovative features of e-learning 2.0 into institutional practices. But instead of focusing on the cool new tools, widgets and network hype, we should more think about the process of learning and whether the new modes are actually effective for learners across different fields of knowledge. Teachers will still be needed to model values and guide development, culture will still be created in groups or communities, and the institutions will continue to play an important role in the accreditation, funding, and quality of learning.

www.toondoo.com/Home.toon “ToonDoo is a wacky way to get creative with comics. You can now create your own comic strips, share them or insert them in your blogs with just a few clicks and drag-n-drops!”

And a thought for the day: “Debugging is twice as hard as writing code in the first place. Therefore, if you write code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it.” – Brian Kernighan

PLE’s (My inevitable post)

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I’ve been in and out of this topic for a month, ever since the SCoPE discussion finished.  I don’t have a coherent view, and whenever I’ve talked about them it’s been more a show and tell and dialogue about our lives and personal habits.  Tonight on a chat Leigh referred to them as an ‘ethic’.  Agreed.  Not a thing.

Apparently they (PLE’s) are a big fat nothing. Alex Hayes on the Connections and Conversations blog, from the first of the four Learnscope events. (Like that name!!)

biffatzero.jpg

A story . . . (the second for today, sorry)

The blind men and the elephant: In various versions of the tale, a group of blind men (or men in the dark) touch an elephant to learn what it is like. Each one touches a different part, but only one part, such as the side or the tusk. They then compare notes on what they felt, and learn they are in complete disagreement. The story is used to indicate that reality may be viewed differently depending upon one’s perspective, showing how absolute truths may be relative; the deceptive world of half-truths.

From something closer to the supposed original story:

“Just so are these preachers and scholars holding various views blind and unseeing…. In their ignorance they are by nature quarrelsome, wrangling, and disputatious, each maintaining reality is thus and thus.”

Then the Exalted One rendered this meaning by uttering this verse of uplift

          O how they cling and wrangle, some who claim
For preacher and monk the honored name!
For, quarreling, each to his view they cling.
Such folk see only one side of a thing.

Udana 68-69

I really enjoy talking about the habits and ethics around a PLE.  For me it is a useful container to put ideas into, and I’ve had some great sessions.  I’ve been unable to really ‘define’ mine in a nice neat succinct description.  Sure I have delicious, bloglines, gmail, evernote, filing cabinet(s), 1B5′s, Firefox (plus plugins), google docs, skype (etc) . . .  but otherwise I am too shambolic.

Maybe to be continued.

Miscellaneous reflections. 

  • There are a lot of little presentations on the web now.  Huge and rich resources on all sorts of things.
  • Lots of conferences leave their legacy online.  Learnscope. TAFE linkups
  • Amazing what is being done through the Otago Poly course.
  • So much, there is just so much. . .   an ocean of ideas and I have a teaspoon.

Technology Typology

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A technology use survery

Where Do You Fit?

Do you cringe when your cell phone rings? Do you suffer from withdrawal when you can’t check your Blackberry? Do you rush to post your vacation video to your Web site? The questions below allow you to place yourself in one of the categories in the Pew Internet Project’s Typology of Information and Communication Technology Users. To identify the typology group to which you belong, please answer the questions . . .
www.pewinternet.org/quiz/

Apparently I fit the ‘connectors’ category.  In spite of the fact that I hav just got a cell phone after a 7 month gap.

Shift to UCTL (2)

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I now have a name plate on my door, and work is ramping up with calls about things WebCT for the new semester.

But I’m still not sure about workshops as a vehicle for professional development. I found this video on a website today, one of two CareerBuilder.com‘s adverts at the super bowl. One of the themes is people who hate workplace training.

I think others at my work feel this way also.