Tuesday, June 30, 2009

delicious two

running abbreviated smallish but nicely referenced definition of delicious..

Delicious uses a non-hierarchical classification system in which users can tag each of their bookmarks with freely chosen index terms (generating a kind of folksonomy).

By the way off the top of my head - folksonomy describes the way a bookmark becomes common usage - so all those people using it get to greips with the technology of it and also become a community of knowing the spread of "it" in rwelation to both their common/ shared and speciosu interest.. mebbe

Delicious is one of the most popular social bookmarking services. (Wikipedia)

free - this does mean something peeps

All bookmarks posted to Delicious are publicly viewable by default, although users can mark specific bookmarks as private, and imported bookmarks are private by default. The public aspect is emphasized; the site is not focused on storing private ("not shared") (Wikipedia)

Ok here is a Youtube about using delicious how to do it - can I can I embed the code pliss...




yeehah - that was a double enter moment - copy the mebed code form thje youtube and paste it - lal a and never mind the pixel width of the youtube - cos we dont mind the 425 width moment... youtube carries on.



delicious - not really

a difficult moment - using a prettier word for something which is clearly not
Delicious
by the way:

Noun1.disambiguation - clarification that follows from the removal of ambiguity
clarification, elucidation, illumination - an interpretation that removes obstacles to understanding; "the professor's clarification helped her to understand the textbook"
lexical disambiguation - disambiguation of the sense of a polysemantic word
or
dis⋅am⋅big⋅u⋅ate [dis-am-big-yoo-eyt] Show IPA –verb (used with object), -at⋅ed, -at⋅ing. to remove the ambiguity from; make unambiguous: In order to disambiguate the sentence “She lectured on the famous passenger ship,” you'll have to write either “lectured on board” or “lectured about.”

woah I got side tracked...

socially constructed moodia / calendar

sounds kind of cool - a moodier approach to media.. not sure about media after all..
why are we thinking about mediatisation of learning - I know thats a crazy thing to say but what if we weren't so keen on a grabitalland hang onto it like crazyapproach and instead settled down to the tiny details of learning prowess... more about that on friday... something about the individual.. I wonder if I can pull this off - an ephemereal moment in the oblong history of virtual education..

setting up a calendar is an anathema - timeframing - I was reading about a sequential approach ch to learning - a pace driven by time.. grrr
what if we could pace our own learning - less reliant on calendars... hmm I know its not going to work and I am once a gain a meaningless subject void of institutional desire
err you need a google account - of course you do...
Log into google
2nd link from left is a calendar link
mutter mutter
- enter a few events of the week - thats the next step...
erhem - Im sorry I have a noisy boy as a class mate tonight.. his name is boy stormy - yeah yeah
then
in the left navigation area - click the drop calendar that is next to your calendar and then change the colour
and now having your calendar so pretty and also featuring a different language - how did I get that - wait up - must go back a few steps - always freaky because for some strange reason the machine takes over and decides that it is going to delete all and sundry and strangely even my brain / memory (er)
click the same drop down box and select calendar settings - change the title etc.
when you see the embed code - dont copy it yet...
back to the crazy pixel issue - instead click the link that sez (erf) customise the colour size and other options..
step 6: har har adjust settings to 400 pixels (not 800 cos that was too big and wouldnt fit the our blogsono)
and any other settings...
kinaesthesia
and then the final step is to copy the embed code (its automatically/ magically been updated wow - yep yep yep...) and paste it as a new post in my blog.
La la la
Thomas should see this - he would be so proud of his MUM!!





waaah more crazy thingos and now my calendar is in portuguese - an innovative way of learning a language... sort of embedded learning if you think about it

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

bikram review

really a picture

a picture - we know not which yet..


a picture??

a real dance creature

sylvie guillem

a new video

his is a video of a contemporary dance - unknown - I have no critical comment to make yet

moblogging

moblogging and flickr la la
dumb names for these things I tell ya - anatomical names are sooo much prettier and convey so much more...
how exciting is the thought of plantaris or subscapularis
flickr is OK I spose - I used to get called flick..
back to my thoughts about sustainable education and still from a postural - somatic - performative persepctive..
Blanchet writes - before it is there, no one awaits it ; no one recognises it for it is not there- the disaster. It has already diverted the word "be" realizing itself to such a degree that it has not begun." The Writing of the Disaster, M Blanchot.

Step 1. Create an account with flickr.com - er this is the wrong link - just go to the first page you dolt
Step 2. Scroll down the page to - Tools - by help two over..
Step 3. Uploading to your very own precious email - hmm didnt work darn it..
get photo - - on that page - add a tag - its your file name - body stop

Monday, June 1, 2009

examining examples of FL marketing annd articles

Examining examples of marketing and articles about flexible learning - and contrasting them with some writing about arts education...

This blog is partially pre-empted by my previous blog that critiques the chaotic environment of an Elluminate (virtual classroom setting). This blog supports discussion and reflection about transformative thinking which results from chaos. Chaos in this sense means a non-linear learning, where the results of the learning activity are produced as moments in diverse situations (Holland & O’Connor, 2004, pp. 31-32).

 “In a highly competitive international market… …is the first choice of thousands of students”. (Youtube, 2008, 32 secs). This précised comment from a marketing video for University of London, recently released on Youtube, highlights the kind of emphases that have been placed on the advertising profile of flexible learning courses, firstly with a presumption that students respond to the call for higher education primarily through the prompt of competitiveness. Interestingly this clip has been viewed worldwide by just over one thousand viewers (I have seen it 3 times for this assignment).

Paradoxically the clip reveals a key reason that people choose this type of distance learning. “Self pacing” is a term that describes the flexibility of completing study and assessment tasks alongside the ordinary juggle of family roles and responsibilities with work commitments. From this term, several critical notes about this particular presentation and its use as a persuasive tool for recognising the benefits of study access as an educational format spring to mind. Access worldwide is touted as a reason for studying this way, with no real mention about associated fees, course related costs. The very real issue of tutor contact and travel for same were discussed at the end of the video as critical. The costs of travel and sustainability issues for family and work challenged students are hardly mooted, nor the very real carbon footprint issue, engendered by such distance locations.

In describing the University of London as a centre of excellence, the advertising blurb relies on previous standards of qualification. These same criteria define meetings between tutors and students for revision, shared discussion about the subject and challenges to the knowledge input of tutors as critical learning events prior to examination. Once again time dense consideration is not compared with the ongoing schedules of work and family.  Important to note is Annand’s (2007) comment that “despite hopes that social interaction incorporating more characteristics of face-to-face instruction will be facilitated in the ‘post-industrial’ adult distance education era, facilitating significant learner-to-learner interaction requires cohorts of students to move through a course of studies at the same pace. As a result, requirements of social interaction conflict with learner autonomy” Introduction section, para. 2).

Similarly, in this same article about re-organising universities for the information age, Annand (2007) (pre)scribes university education (as) “still generally conducted within pre-Industrial Age organizational structures” and thereby discloses a binary appraisal of different education accesses, somewhat muddled by learning theory, teaching theory and the very real financial problematic of maintaining educational quality in a fiscally disrupted era. The third line of this important article denotes cost effectiveness as a rationale for flexible delivery and becomes highlighted as an anxious and economically driven educational philosophy.

Further to this fear is a very real inhibition created by an increased dependency on technological advancements. Students’ access to learning online and/ or at a distance is to a large extent not yet matched by institutional resources, both human (technical support) and machine (computer and their associated communicational programmes). Alexenberg (2008) describes this same inhibition as “similar to the problem of learning a new language” (p. 16). He states that learners will default to linear or relational pattern of recognition as opposed to the integrative conceptually rich confirmation of learning that occurs in response to learning on site.

Keeping in mind the threads of my crituique, I argue that the same resistance to learning through technologically driven media may catalyse a new model for thinking, where the digital world becomes a conceptual agent, and students are provided with unique pathways to think. Annand (2007) concurs by naming this as a consequence (where) learning can be more autonomous and self-directed. However, Peters (2004) also points out that as this kind of learning is “technically mediated” it must be also be “carefully planned and structured”.

A secondary benefit from flexible learning education is described by this same author as “text-based rather than orally based” (Peters, 2004). In a previous blog I have briefly examined the anomaly which resides in the expectation that the whole world knows how to read. Without diverting this essay into a discussion about such an unreal statistic, this discussion points the way to a surfacing problem with flexible learning of the high level reliance on face to face or tutor to student communication. Both the Youtube clip and the article report the desire for students to be in close communication with their teacher albeit little or no desire to know them.

In the article, Anderson (2003) posits the following equivalency theorem: Deep and meaningful formal learning is supported as long as one of the three forms of interaction (student–teacher; student-student; student-content) is at a high level. The other two may be offered at minimal levels, or even eliminated, without degrading the educational experience. High levels of more than one of these three modes will likely provide a more satisfying educational experience, though these experiences may not be as cost or time effective as less interactive learning sequences. (p. 5). In conclusion, the economically driven decisions of distance and flexible learning has not yet made inroads into the teacher hours to student self directed learning ratio.

Reference list

Alexenberg, M, (2008). Educating artists for the future: Learning at the intersections of art, science, technology and culture. Bristol: UK, Chicago: US. Intellect

Anderson, T. (2003). Getting the mix right again: An updated and theoretical rationale for interaction. The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 4(2). Retrieved June1, 2009 from: http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/149/230

Annand, D. (2007). Re-organizing universities for the information age. The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 8(3). Retrieved June 1, 2009 from http://www.unescobkk.org/information/news-display/article/re-organizing-universities-for-the-information-age/

Distance Learning & Flexible Study - University of London External System. Retrieved June 1, 2009 from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLyEiYC_0Xg

Holland, C. & O’Connor, P. (2004). Like writing off the paper: report on student learning in the arts. Ministry of Education: New Zealand

Peters, O. (2004). Distance Education in Transition. New trends and challenges (4th Ed.). Oldenburg : Bibliotheks-und Informationssytems der Universitat Oldenburg.

Flexible Learning Practice Blog - orientation and introduction

I am Felicity Molloy - just come back from a massage conference in Invercargill - the most significant thing about this period of time (not the event) was a trip (hauntingly ugly Mataura - we chose to go through the back roads and came by the mill and a dirty sad river and crumbling houses - is this who I am - a traveller on a misused pathway??
Felicity means happiness and Molloy is an oldish Irish name. Born in England of Irish/ New Zealand heritage. I live here but I am not from here. Nor am I from there because I have not lived there for the last so many years - so in many ways I see myself as a gypsy - this informs how I think - about myself and about thinking. Also about knowledge - that it is transient - fixed impermanently in the scribes who care to write it and it seems more recently - I have come upon a perhaps gross assumption - that all people have a capability for flexible learning because all people are capable of reading and writing.
I (dont think of myself as an expert in anything but I have been doing and integrating these things for a long time)
parent
wife
read
write
dance - perform teach critic choreograph direct
massage - clinic teach
practice and teach yoga/ somatics
cook
think
research
there's more but I always get bored with this as a list - the lables are as transient as the emphases on why I do them
I am interested speciously in this flexible learning course. As always I am tempted by the thought of more ways of thinking about learning to inform the framework from which I teach. I had no real aim before starting and my previous aim since was to use it as a way of skills building into technology/ blended delivery.. - I have found disappointingly that this is not the case so instead I maintain my focus and interest (spurious) in the attempts of others to endorse learning through technology as a way of reachnig all students. As a student I have not found this to be the case so suffer. Once again flung about as gypsy - unbelonging.. etc. etc.
as a flexible learner - I find this course more of a brainwash attempt. Oh well. Safe in the thought that no one reads stuff - my absent teachers..
I have no questions or demands on either the schedule or the orientation. My demand for learning skills was met with a negation. Suffering is part of the learning pathway - I am familiar with that.
Some other course I had I realised that what I learnt most was about how other people experience things - Nussbaum (2008) calls this the capabilities approach... more about that later..

Nussbaum M.C. (2000). Women and human development: The capabilities approach.

Oh and I think for this course I will endeavour to only use books as a resource - this may not be possible. I hope that some readers - if anyone does read this blog will make there way in cool clear air to a library (maybe smile at some other human on the way) and find the volume (asking for help from a real live person?) - smell the rich read smell of books and feel that lovely feeling of opening the "right" book, finding the page and wondering how many others have touched those pages, connected their thoughts slowly single focussed like I do, and thought how those same thoughts are then revealed as a shared sensorial moment. Spend time in the roomy silence of a vast spacious cavern of mingled thought. Touched, smelt, seen..
The massage conference was great!
FM