Punch & Judy

Image via Wikipedia

“That’s the way to do it!“

Without wishing to endorse the misogynistic antics of Mr Punch – especially on International Women’s Day.  How many times have you received feedback that is so negative, you’re basically being told what to do and how to do it, rather than how to improve?  To paraphrase Mr Punch – That’s NOT the way to do it!

I’ve been extremely fortunate to have received lots of really positive feedback about my rather amateur film making techniques and shabby presentation style (my words – not theirs).  I’ve had plenty of expert help now and will certainly take it all on board and endeavor to make a better job of it tomorrow.

Isn’t it great to receive positive and constructive criticism?  It certainly makes me re-think the way I’ve critiqued other people’s work.

Related Articles

• Punch and Judy act toned down after warnings (telegraph.co.uk)
• An actual end to Punch and Judy politics (newstatesman.com)
• International Womens Day – Are We Equals (femaleimagination.wordpress.com)

Thank you ladies & gents, boys & girls…

Col Hawksworth CV a video by colhawksworth on Flickr.

Ooops! You’ve just caught me practicing my OSCAR acceptance speech.
Maybe it won’t be for Best Actor or Best Director – but I’m holding out for Best Factual Short Film.

This is all (without acting lessons) you’ll get. There is nothing left, I’m emotionally drained, etc. etc. [I think that's what actors say]

Anyway – in all seriousness – if you do want to hire me. My contact details are in the film and I have a full CV available with fantastic references.

Related Articles

• Creating a video CV (colhawksworth.wordpress.com)

Did you miss me?

Over the last few weeks, I tried a little on-line experiment.  I decided to stop blogging, Tweeting, etc. in my professional capacity – and take-up personal Web 2.0-ing instead.

I was interested to see how easily I could join on-line communities as a lay person.  I created an @AltWirral persona (Alternative Wirral) which was to try to look at alternative lifestyles, culture, arts etc in my local geographical area.

Surprisingly (to me), I gained 68 followers on Twitter – mostly local to the Wirral and a few new friends on Facebook too – within a few days.  Wirral has a lively Twitter community (even has a regular Tweet-up!),  I also had a couple of existing contacts to help me gain the ‘in’ – but I was accepted and people interacted with me.

So, why did I do this?  Well initially, I did want to try to split my personal and professional Tweets and postings – so that I wasn’t publishing my political/social rants in the same stream as my technical/academic posts.  It was quite easy to set-up a separate account on Twitter but I found it much harder on other Web 2.0 services, mainly because I had limited social use for YouTube, WordPress, Flickr, etc.  although I do have some personal postings on these services.  Once I had set up @AltWirral I did begin to wonder about online personas and safeguarding, etc.

Where do you draw the distinction between on-line personal and on-line professional?  Should we draw lines/merge/mix or leave-out certain aspects of our lives on-line?  Why do we publish things on-line?

I posted a blog entry to say that I was not going to be doing so much eLearning work next academic year – I didn’t receive any feedback to that post at all… Should I have expected any?  If not, why did I post it?  I doubt I’ll actually be giving up my Learning Technology work at all – I love it and I firmly believe in it as a practical and positive method of educational delivery.  Would anyone have missed me if I had stopped blogging or tweeting as @colhawksworth ??  Perhaps I’ll get a response to this blog entry?

Cellphone; life-style; advertising

I used this as an introductory item.  20 years ago, this was the technology and lifestyle being sold to us… Did the tech really ‘set us free’? Some would argue that it has been a key driver toward our 24/7 lives. We talk about blended-learning in education, what about our blended-work/life?

A very slick Ad. This is where we are, 2009… a converged device. How many more functions are there? Does the guy in the Ad actually make a call on his phone?  I used this to show the lifestyle now being sold to us – fast-paced, multitasking, social, young. Compare this to the first Ad which was aimed at an older affluent, professional (city) worker.

Interesting… what market is this Ad aimed at? Are they selling a phone or a music player?  I guess that the emphasis is on life-style rather than work – possibly because this is a Sony Ericsson device, perhaps it is modeled on the prior success of the Sony ‘Walkman’ brand.

How am I blogging? Dial 1-800-mindmug

testing SMS systems

Photo originally uploaded by mejymejy

No, it’s not really a freecall 1-800

I was chatting with a colleague on Thursday – we were talking about embedding our student txt further into our systems. We already use JANET txt service with our own bespoke MIS interface – I also signed us up to a great BETA test running at University of Huddersfield as part of a MSc project, involving student phones used as a voting kit (rather than buying expensive devices).

One thing that suddenly sprung to mind was FREE txt – like Freepost or freephone services.

Does anyone know of, or use such a thing in the UK? A system where students can SMS a keyword followed by their message to a number, which is FREE to them (obviously the institution would have to pay the cost, as with Freepost or Freephone).

Tweets of the favorite kind

This is NOT a ‘Top-Ten’ Tweets! (and to prove a point – there are only nine) Just a snap-shot of favorites from one day trawling over Twitter.

Tried to stay slightly off-line yesterday, to see if I could manage to trim down my online life. Didn’t work, and to be honest – I love my online life as it is

Now, I’m not usually an advocate of ‘list-making’ – but I ended up adding some favorites on Twitter, to read up on later… here they are, no particular theme:

timbuckteethWhat do you think of open access journals? http://bit.ly/HEECw

hopkinsdavidNew blog post: Reading: “A Hoarding Culture vs. A Sharing Culture” #elearning http://bit.ly/TsEO4

jamesclay@hopkinsdavid don’t read http://bit.ly/3QiMP instead read this http://is.gd/1waSd

hopkinsdavidReading: “Tweetiquette; Twitter Etiquette-Top 10 Do’s and Don’ts of Twitter” http://bit.ly/3QiMP

HallyMk1RT @evangineer [@dominiccampbell @AbilityNet]: BBC NEWS | Technology | Mobile broadband notspots mappedhttp://bit.ly/557Du issues for all

moodleUseful post: What are the components of an exemplary high school Moodle course?- by Paul Ganderton Hi Art and other… http://bit.ly/u6xHd

caffeinebombNew Blog Post: Does the Digital Age belong to the Media Scholars?: After a brief discussion with B.. http://jennifr.net/?p=229

alextronicAudioBoo – Digital Detox http://bit.ly/pcMZH

jamesclayRT @warrick_w Firewalls in schools block teachers, not students: http://bit.ly/nGtEy

Telling Tales – Mimas #mimasmob09

I have to admit, I wasn’t too sure what I had been signed-up to… I say ‘signed-up to’ because I quite literally was!  We had an exhibition stand at the recent JISC RSC NW annual event – I had just been off watching a few cool Pecha Kucha shows [David Sugden, Kevin Hickey, Liz Bennett] and came back to our stand, to be told I had volunteered and been signed-up for Mimas: ‘Telling Tales’ conference.  OK, I was going to be down in London for the elearning@greenwich conference the day before, so that was cool.

Of course, I looked-up Mimas and realised what the event was – mobile learning, with the added bonus of a James Clay presentation on ‘the future’!

I arrived, grabbed a coffee and sat at a table, said hello, etc. looked at names on badges – then looked at the running order.  The people at my table were ‘big players’ in the mLearning world – I suddenly felt a little out of place.  But then thought, why should I feel out of place?  Everyone seemed to know each other and I knew a few people, so just go with it.

What a great bunch of innovative, radical thinkers!  The day was excellent.  It was interesting to talk to some new contacts about general ‘learning with tech’ [I'm trying not to box and label, James]   One thing that stuck out for me, apart from the wonderfully interesting presentations, was that there appears to be plenty of funding bodies, willing to fund research projects – but they don’t appear to follow them up or apply the findings.  I’ve been to many conferences now and there seems to be a few Universities and Colleges doing similar research work, funded by different bodies – is there no cohesion at ‘the top’??

One interesting point raised towards the end of the day, during a reflection session, was that the kind of technology we’re currently looking at and researching will be so out of date by the time it comes to being embedded into learning.  Are we wasting our time and resources on researching ‘the tech’ (which will develop anyway as part of the consumer culture) when we could be researching the pedagogy?

Mimas: Telling Tales

To quote a Tweet exchange during the conference:

RT @jamesclay: #mimasmob09 @colhawksworth maybe we should ignore content and concentrate on activity first?

Thoughts, anyone?

Making it Personal – elearning@greenwich #mip

#mip

I returned to the University of Greenwich for the 7th Annual e-learning@greenwich conference, having been inspired and enthused by last years’ conference.

The theme this year, was ‘Making it Personal’ – here are some high-lights:

KEYNOTE: ‘Personalization: the good, the bad and the ugly.’ Professor Johnathan Drori.

A fantastically unique Keynote – which is the delivery style I prefer – a Keynote to challenge your thinking and preconceptions, rather than just listening to someone give you their academic life-story or an overview of their most recent research.   He was witty (which is always good!) and went off on some very interesting tangents.

Session 1: ‘Learning, teaching and social networking.’ – Cheryl Reynolds and Liz Bennett – University of Huddersfield

The basic outline of this session, was that the MSc students did not find official course VLE (Blackboard), to be interesting or particularly useful as part of their course.  A Ning was created and students were invited in http://numanuma.ning.com

There was a noticeable increase socializing and freedom of expression within the Ning. It created a valid social learning space with increased activity and participation.  Students now had some ownership of their group, etc.  The photo below (with permission of Liz Bennett), is taken from the session and is quick round up of suggestions from the audience, as to ‘what makes a good teacher?’

What makes a good teacher?

Session 3: ‘Tag Clouds and Skill Conversations.’ – John Davies and Carol Shergold – University of Sussex

Excellent session on Tag clouds and how Sussex have created software to aid students recognise and build-up a personal profile by answering some questions about tasks and work they have completed as part of the course.  The software builds up their profile for them based on their answers.  Apparently, many undergraduates do not know what skills they posses.

http://www.sussex.ac.uk/skillclouds

Road Out! Use detour

I ‘m supposed to be writing my next blog entry about the ‘tech’ in technology but…

I took a left fork in the road… and came across this virtual classroom:

It’s not ‘tech’ but it is important in the context of what I’ve been blogging about recently.  Students in school now, are going to be coming to our college with the same ideas of learning and creating that these kids have.  I like the fact that at the end they all hold up signs with ‘ENGAGE me’ – kind of works well for us, we have an ENGAGE project

Anytime, Anywhere, Anyplace – Mobile, Managed, Mine

mLearning

ACT Board of Studies M-Learning Workshop: Treasure Hunt

Original photo by In Veritas Lux

So this afternoon I started-out looking for inspiration and content for a Pecha Kucha show… and true to form – I’ve gone off on a slight tangent – which according to one of my colleagues, who is head of psychology – is not a bad thing and is ‘just the way my inquisitive brain is wired’.

I’ve been working on an action research project where we are looking at the formal incorporation of Learner Owned Devices into teaching and learning. This is what I’m supposed to be writing 5 Pecha Kucha slides on.

Typically, what I’ve come up with so far.
encouraging the use of LODs is advantageous because:
1. there is little or no TOC to the institution.
2. technology owned by learners, is more likely to be kept up-to-date, than if funded by the institution.
3. learners have 24/7 access to their own equipment, as they also do to the institutions’ webbed services.
4. staff do not have to spend time training learners how to use equipment.
5. variety of equipment within a group should produce a variety of output.
6. learners can take ownership of content and projects.
7. encourages further collaboration.

some disadvantages:
1. LODs may not always be 100% compatible with institutions core services.
2. there is no guarantee of equipment availability within some groups.
3. some LODs may not have advanced functionality required for some tasks.
4. there is an assumption that learners should bear the cost of upload/downloads on their own tariff.
5. security of the institution computer systems could be compromised, if not secured and managed correctly to allow ‘unauthorized’ devices to connect.
6. staff expectations may differ – teaching staff encourage LODs, technical staff may discourage.

So I need to think over these points and perhaps add some more…