The best decision I ever made

Posted on 18th May 2017 by NomadWarMachine

I had a training course off campus today, so all week I’ve been planning to use this as an opportunity to respond to Kim’s weekly photo challenge and take photos of the path I chose to walk along. As a bonus today’s Daily Create asks what the best decision I ever made was, so this post counts as a twofer 🙂

Actually. although I set out with my camera to hand, it was such a glorious day that I nearly forgot, but as I passed by the fountain I remembered and turned around:

The Stewart Memorial Fountain

This fountain was designed as a monument to the late Lord Provost Robert Stewart, “the man deemed most responsible for establishing Glasgow’s first permanent supply of fresh water from Loch Katrine“. I love knowing things like this about my city – so much of it is about the ordinary folk who lived and live here. The whole park was originally designed by Joseph Paxton, head gardener at Chatsworth House in North Derbyshire – a place I used to visit often as it was very close to where I grew up – a serendipitous connection for me when I remember it.

A little further on I stopped to admire some geraniums – these are semi-wild around Glasgow. I was going to move so that my shadow was not in shot, but I decided to leave it as it was:

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Another thing I love about my city is the juxtaposition of different faiths and cultures – such as here:

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and from the other side:

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and here:

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The building that the training course was happening in is not a beautiful work of architecture (it’s the big one at the end of the road with the glass front):

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But my uni rent the 6th floor, and the views from the training room are stunning:

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The Uni tower is in the background of this one:

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And the Mitchell Library, open to the public, is opposite:

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I particularly love the statue of Minerva on the roof:

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Apparently she’s referred to as Mrs Mitchell – though I’ve never heard that myself.

Then down below to the right some more Glasgow treasures – another juxtaposition I note between the opulence of the Mitchell, the necessity of the pornbroker, and the curry shop – so many different messages dancing around in my mind there:

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This restaurant  was first opened in 1964- that’s the year I was born.

So what was the best decision I ever made? Why, to move to Glasgow, of course. I have never regretted that snap decision made almost 20 years ago.

Posted in DailyCreate, DS106, Flowers, Photos, Scotland, University | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Mud, glorious mud

Posted on 16th May 2017 by NomadWarMachine

My dad used to Love Flanders and Swann – so much so that we had a song book for piano – and as a wilful child I used to play their songs rather than practice my set tunes. So when I read the Daily Create today I was transported back to my childhood.

I wandered around campus today looking for some mud – surely there must be some after all the rain yesterday? But the sun was out, and most of the mud was decidedly unmuddy. I found this behind our building, though, and came home still with an earworm. Nothing for it but to sing it out. So here’s the chorus to the hippopotamus song:

And, for those of you not wanting/able to listen to my dulcet tones, here’s the lyrics:

Mud, mud, glorious mud
Nothing quite like it for cooling the blood
So follow me follow, down to the hollow
And there let me wallow in glorious mud

Posted in DailyCreate, DS106, Photos | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

What would you save from a digital fire?

Posted on 12th May 2017 by NomadWarMachine

wood fire

Wow, what a good question. Today’s Daily Create asks:

The internet is on fire: What digital personal effects would you save?

Kevin’s story gave me pause for thought – as he suggests, I wouldn’t have time to log into everything. So what would I care about most? This blog, which has been part of my life for five years now? My Flickr account, which I do regularly upload my favourite photos to? Google Docs, with all of my collaborative writing including our crowdsourced #CLMooc Tech Tools Playground? My Ravelry account, with pics of most of my recent knitting projects? Gosh, so much of who I am exists online. Ok, so a lot of it I could find again – but would I?

So if the internet was on fire, what would you save?

“Wood fire Fury” flickr photo by cogdogblog  shared into the public domain using (CC0)

Posted in #CLMOOC, DailyCreate, DS106, Technology | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

Frog Song

Posted on 11th May 2017 by NomadWarMachine

Rushing to do the daily create today in between marking and cooking tea, as it’s one I suggested and I think it’s fun! My family and friends will know of my lifelong love of frogs, so here is a very brief poem inspired in part by Aristophanes’ play The Frogs.

I wrote  a two line poem and used an online robot voice generator to “say” it. Then I uploaded it to SoundCloud and added am image of my frog home from our garden.

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/322137318″ params=”auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true” width=”100%” height=”450″ iframe=”true” /]

Enjoy 🙂

Posted in DailyCreate, DS106, Garden, Poetry | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Another year older

Posted on 30th April 2017 by NomadWarMachine

My birthday this week gave N and me an excuse to take a week off from work and head up to the Cairngorms for a few days of bird watching. At least, that was the plan. Tuesday began with a flurry of packing everything we might need, with a pause while N gave me my main present – a tenor uke he had adapted into an electric bass for me:

My brother, Helen, Bron and Hugh (Helen’s dad) had hired a boat to cruise up and down the Caledonian Canal, so we made a detour past Fort Augustus to meet up with them. N enjoyed steering the boat out onto Loch Ness:

They’d also bought me an amusing bottle of malt:

Then up to Granton on Spey, through hail and snow – we found out the next day that 7 inches of snow had fallen (though a lot of it did not settle, plenty did). Plans for walks in the spring sunshine might need to change then …

On Wednesday we drove up CairnGorm and took in the spectacular views:

 

Thursday was dreich, so we drove to Knockando, where I’d found a working Woolmill which dates back to 1784, and still has much of the old machinery thanks to EU funding. Of course I bought some yarn – one skein for my blanket and some lace weight for a future project:

The weather was still pretty dreich, and the hills were shrouded in cloud, but we were determined to take a ride on the funicular, so we drove back up CairnGorm to have lunch at the summit – the view was NOT spectacular from there:

But we appreciated seeing some snow buntings:

On Friday the weather was a bit better. We spent the morning up at the coast, seeing dolphins in the distance a Burghhead before wandering around Findhorn Bay taking pictures of birds in the gorse like this yellowhammer:

 

We then drove to the Culbin forest to look for crossbills – N saw one but there was no way I was climbing up where he went:

Then, on the way back to the hotel we stopped off at Lochindorb and saw these Greylag geese swimming around:

Then home, on Saturday – with two little cats glad to have their humans back.

Posted in Photos, Scotland | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments

How not to run a training course

Posted on 2nd February 2017 by NomadWarMachine

This week I’ve done a lot of knitting. Nothing new there, you’re probably thinking – but it’s been a lot, even by my standards. You see, this week, I have been on a training course – and the only positive thing I have to say about the experience is that my gloves fit nicely and my socks look amazing.

I wasn’t expecting too much from the course, to be honest. It was a fairly generic course for Trade Union learning reps and I knew that we were going to be a mixed bunch. But I did expect to come away having picked up some idea of the rights and responsibilities of being a learning rep, and to have had a chance to work out how to get started in the role (which is a brand new one for my union). One thing I particularly wanted to find out about was what a Learning Agreement between a Union and a Uni would look like, so I asked the trainers right at the beginning about that. Absolutely, they assured me, that would be covered. “Good, good”, I thought.

As is usual for this sort of course, the sessions were organised into group work and then feedback sessions as a whole room. That’s fine – generally there’s enough time to look over any relevant paperwork and discuss it as  a group, and a bit of time to chat and swap war stories with other reps. However, this whole course was a lesson in how not to run small groups.

Here’s what the trainer said we were going to do:

  1. Work with the other three people at your table
  2. Appoint a person to feedback (this person would change each time so we all had a chance to speak),
  3. Work in the group for 20 minutes (trainer will circulate to check we are all on track),
  4. Each group would only feed back one or two items so each group had a chance to contribute.

That’s  a great recipe. It’s one I use as it avoids the tedium of having to sit through multiple groups all saying the same thing. However, this was not what happened. Here is what actually transpired:

  1. Each group looks around the table and appoints a speaker,
  2. Work in a group for 20 minutes,
  3. Look around the room and see the trainers huddled in a corner chatting,
  4. Start chatting about something,
  5. Notice the trainer has finally started circulating,
  6. Carry on chatting,
  7. Say “yes” when trainer gets to our table and asks if we are on track.
  8. Finally, after 40 minutes or so, the trainer asks if we’ve had enough time.
  9. Say “Yes” loudly,
  10. First group feeds back one or two things,
  11. Trainer proceeds to connect these up to everything else that we could possibly have written on the subject. Asks for suggestions from the floor. Repeats these in great detail and gives a mini-lecture on some of them,
  12. After topic is exhausted, trainer asks other tables if they have anything to add,
  13. Expresses surprise that they do not,
  14. Says we might as well have a break.

EVERY SODDING TIME!

To add insult to injury, the topics yesterday were quite repetitive, and I was not the only person to notice. When one attendee responded to the trainer’s question by saying “we wrote the same as we did when you asked this morning”, lots of folk nodded. The trainer, however, seemed oblivious. At morning break today a huddle of [large retail store] learning reps on the course beckoned me over and asked if I was enjoying the course. I asked them what they thought and it became apparent that they were as frustrated as I was by the trainer. Back at my seat I whispered to the person next to me that I felt like not coming back after lunch. As she walked out of the room at lunchtime she said, in quite a loud voice, that she thought that there was barely enough content for a two day course, let alone the five is was scheduled for. I hope that, like me, she takes that back to her union officials.

It wasn’t all bad though – the course was held at the old Nautical College on the south side of the Clyde, and I enjoyed taking pics of the view over there –  the image at the top of this post is near Bridge Street Subway, taken yesterday afternoon. I also smiled each time I walked along to the canteen and saw this view:

I never did find out about the learning agreement though …

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Researcher Journal: Trust and Authenticity

Posted on 21st January 2017 by NomadWarMachine

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the ethics of conducting research on open data. I know that some folk take the view that because Twitter is in the public domain, that means that researchers are welcome to help themselves to any of it and do what they want with it without asking, or seeking ethical approval from an institution, but I don’t think it’s as simple as that.

A couple of years ago, either during rhizo14 or soon after, some of us started to share our participant experiences in an open Google Doc.* The document was open because we did not want to exclude anybody who had taken part and wanted to contribute, and our implicit understanding was that it was for all and only those who identified as being a part of the experience to participate in. But then a funny thing happened. Except it wasn’t funny – it was upsetting – and I don’t think I will ever forget how I felt at the time.

One of our rhizo tribe was attending a conference – I forget which one – and to her surprise there was a presentation by two people who we did not know which contained text copied and pasted out of our Google Doc and into their slides. Just to be clear – this was not text that they had written, and it was not used with the permission of the people who had written it. These “researchers” had chanced upon our open Google Doc and decided to use it without asking the writers if they minded. Now, we’re a fairly open bunch of folk and we are very easy to find. Had we been asked if we minded these “researchers” using some of our text we’d probably have said yes – but they didn’t even bother to ask us. They didn’t comment in the Google Doc, or reach out to any of us on Twitter, or … make any attempt to check that it was ok to use our words.

I remember feeling shocked, and hurt – and that feeling has stayed with me. So now, when I am looking at using some of the tweets from #CLMooc, I want to make sure I don’t unwittingly hurt my friends. So this week, when I met with my supervisors Fiona and Vic, I told them that the question of how I conducted my research was of fundamental importance to me. We had a long talk about how my methodology was emerging from my ethical intuitions, and how I felt that it was vital to include the CLMoocers as much as possible in what I was doing. Vic asked if that meant that I’d be taking my analyses back to the community for their comments – and I said that yes, I thought I should be asking for the community’s opinions about my interpretations.

So I am very happy that I was able to have his conversation with my supervisors, and that they agree with me that there’s a lot more to conducting ethical research than just gaining ethical approval from my University. I’m also excited that they are encouraging me to make my research open, and to write about the ethical implications of doing open research and make this writing an integral part of my thesis. For me, issues of trust and authenticity need to underpin my writing, and that’s what I’ll be thinking and writing about next.

* That Google Doc eventually ended up as this: WRITING THE UNREADABLE UNTEXT: A COLLABORATIVE AUTOETHNOGRAPHY OF #RHIZO14

“Ask Me” flickr photo by misterbisson shared under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-SA) license

Posted in #CLMOOC, #rhizo14, Learning, MOOC, Online learning, Peer interaction, PhD, Researcher Journal, Rhizomes, Writing | Tagged , , , , , | 6 Comments

Researcher Journal: Research Questions

Posted on 14th January 2017 by NomadWarMachine

When I changed my PhD thesis title a while back, I omitted to think through any accompanying research questions. At my last supervision meeting, Vic suggested that it was time to think about what my up to date research questions should be. Good plan!

My current thesis title is: “Underexplored issues determining the effectiveness for learning of peer interaction”, and I am looking at the #CLMooc community to try to find out what the secret sauce that makes things work. There’s three areas of educational research that I think that I will be using:

  1. Co-operative/collaborative learning (I’ve done a lot of reading around this early in my studies);
  2. Active learning (I’ve really not looked into this at very much);
  3. Social constructivism (Vygotsky) (I’ve read a fair bit about this, but need to read more).

So what questions do I need to guide my research? I am sure that I’ll think of more as time goes on, but so far I have thought of these:

• How do we know when learning has happened? (This is the biggie for me).
• What types of peer interaction lead to learning? All of them or not?
• What is different about interacting and solo learning?
• How does collaboration aid learning?

What questions do you think I should be asking?

“Beach Question” flickr photo by cogdogblog  shared under a Creative Commons (CC0) license

Posted in #CLMOOC, Learning, MOOC, Online learning, Peer interaction, PhD, Researcher Journal, Writing | Tagged , , , , , | 6 Comments

Year of the Frog

Posted on 9th January 2017 by NomadWarMachine

At last it was the year of the frog. Frogina McFrog checked her fancy timepiece (1). “Cover my back” she said to the other reptiles (2) “I’m off”. After a drink or two she felt very emotional (3). “I can go anywhere I like” she said to herself. “Why make do with Swartswood State Park (4) when the world is my oyster? If female humans can explore space (5), so can I”. THE END

All images labelled for reuse in this Google search as per this Daily Create

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Interaction

Posted on 2nd January 2017 by NomadWarMachine

With the new year comes a new challenge for me: as of 4th January I take up my new post as a Good Practice Adviser at the U of Glasgow. This is a brand new role in what will soon be a restructured service, and nobody knows how it is all going to pan out. But it’s a promotion, and an opportunity to make the job what I want it to be – and that’s exciting. I’m sad to be moving away from working as a learning technologist  – but to be quite honest I will not miss being the first person folk think of when there is a problem with Urkund. It’ll be an opportunity to talk about designing non-plagiarisable assignments – to look at alternative methods of assessment such as Patchwork Text – to think about putting together some resources for using the Jigsaw Classroom in out new active learning spaces – to work with Niall to publicise his ACJ software more widely – to use the skills and knowledge I’m gaining from working on my PhD and with all of you friends who I engage with online – and who knows what else.

So Michael’s challenge – to choose one word to define my hopes for 2017 – came at just the right time for me. I’ve been mulling it over in my head, but as I’ve been writing this post it became obvious to me which word I should choose.

My word for this year is interaction – something that is vital for everything I do. Peer interaction is the magic that often makes learning happen, imho – and my interactions with all of you enrich my life and my learning. Here’s to an interactive 2017 🙂

“Interactions.” flickr photo by Moses Noghbaudie shared under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-SA) license

Posted in #CLMOOC, Jigsaw Technique, Learning, Online learning, Peer interaction, Teaching | Tagged , , , , , | 9 Comments