Category Archives: University

Appreciative students

Posted on 15th February 2016 by NomadWarMachine

I had a lovely chat with some of my students last week. It was a usual level 1 philosophy seminar and I’d put them into groups of 2-3 to go through some Rousseau quotes together and decide what to make … Continue reading →

Posted in Learning, Philosophy, Teaching, University | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

Making an ass out of you and me

Posted on 17th October 2015 by NomadWarMachine

In his History of Animals, Aristotle asserts that: Males have more teeth than females in the case of men, sheep, goats, and swine. History of Animals 2, 3 One wonders why he did not conduct an empirical study before making this … Continue reading →

Posted in Learning, Philosophy, Teaching, Twisted Pair, University | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

Gonnay no dae that

Posted on 6th October 2015 by NomadWarMachine

I’m keeping half an eye on Chrissi Neranzi’s Creativity for Learning in HE, which started for real this week. The first activity for this week is to: Select a few objects from home/your office you would normally never use in your teaching. … Continue reading →

Posted in Learning, Teaching, University | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Fools march in (a #twistedpair post)

Posted on 3rd October 2015 by NomadWarMachine

For Fools rush in where Angels fear to tread Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism We all know them, don’t we? Those enthusiastic colleagues who launch into everything they do with fervent enthusiasm without a thought for the consequences. Remember Roobarb? … Continue reading →

Posted in Learning, Teaching, Technology, Twisted Pair, University | Tagged , , , | 24 Comments

What’s the point of feedback?

Posted on 3rd September 2015 by NomadWarMachine

I recently had a conversation with some other academics about the whole marking, assessment and feedback parade that we go through in HE, and the NSS student survey results, which always score lower for feedback than for other areas. We … Continue reading →

Posted in Learning, Online learning, Teaching, Technology, University | Tagged , | 1 Comment

When is a pilot not a pilot?

Posted on 29th August 2015 by NomadWarMachine

Student pilot Jean McRae of Homosassa: Tallahassee, Florida flickr photo by State Library and Archives of Florida shared with no copyright restriction (Flickr Commons) Recently we’ve been running some software pilots in our unit. Although I am sure that some … Continue reading →

Posted in Online learning, Technology, University | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

Vicarious learning

Posted on 24th August 2015 by NomadWarMachine

If we think that tutorials and seminars are an important part of the campus based learning experience, then how to we replace these when we are designing and delivering online courses? One way might be to use virtual classroom software … Continue reading →

Posted in Learning, Online learning, Peer interaction, Teaching, Technology, University | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

WYSIWYG

Posted on 17th August 2015 by NomadWarMachine

There’s a new challenge going around – watch a short video and write a bog post tying what you have seen into something about education. So Whitney sent me this one about the Landfill Harmonic, who make musical instruments out … Continue reading →

Posted in Learning, Teaching, University | Tagged , , , | 5 Comments

Introducing the swarm

Posted on 13th May 2015 by NomadWarMachine

 I used to refer to myself as “One of Eight” in emails regarding my tutoring. Back in 2009 (or thereabouts) the University conceded to pressure from the trade union and put we lowly teaching assistants on a proper pay scale … Continue reading →

Posted in #rhizo14, #rhizo15, Rhizomes, University | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Be careful what you “black box”

Posted on 12th May 2015 by NomadWarMachine

I often describe my job as a learning technologist as “trying not to break things”.  Folk respond to this with a nervous laugh, because they are fairly sure it is a joke that they don’t understand, but there’s a serious … Continue reading →

Posted in #rhizo14, Politics, Rhizomes, Technology, University | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment