Music
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September round up
Well, this was an eventful month in this household. Maren stood down as CEO of ALT and is off to ventures new. If you’re interested in leadership coaching or consultancy on running virtual teams, then drop her a line. And then I announced that I’ll be leaving the Open University (although not until next June). All change here! I visited the ALT-C conference just for the dinner to see Maren get an award and have her send off. I did manage to attend one talk though, which was David Kernohan’s fascinating dive into the ALTC archive. He presented the various themes that had emerged and disappeared over the years in…
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Your social media choices, as 70s disco tracks
Let’s play an imaginary game (it might actually be real for some of you). You are applying for a large research grant, and one of the work packages relates to dissemination and community building. Beyond the standard conference papers, academic articles and workshops, there is an assumption that there will be a strong online element. What platform or approach do you write into your grant? For the past decade or so, the go-to answer would be a Twitter account, probably with associated website and maybe a YouTube channel. The other bits may vary, but the Twitter account was often the sine qua non in getting engagement with a project beyond…
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July round-up
My “doing it for the newsletter” monthly round-up of activity and random bits for July. It’s been a bit of a disjointed month, because after returning from the Eden conference in Dublin at the end of June, both Maren and I came down with covid (no-one else from the conference seems to have been inflicted so probably an airport/plane thing). It was as rough as the first time around, a reminder that it’s still there and still carries a punch. I made sure to take time off work this time around though – last time I soldiered on attending Teams meetings and I think that meant it lingered around longer…
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Niceness is nice
I watched some of Glastonbury on the BBC last weekend, and like many people one of my favourite acts was Rick Astley and the Blossoms doing a whole Smiths set. It’s difficult to explain to people who have grown up in an internet age, how important groups like the Smiths were in the brash, money obsessed 80s. But then Morrissey has become increasingly right wing and it just means there is a shadow hanging over any listening experience now. But it’s impossible not to love Rick Astley, and so you could enjoy this set guilt-free and marvel at just how good those sings were. This is not a Smiths post…
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Yankee Shed Foxtrot
Partly in response to the existential implications of AI, I have been pondering aspects of what humans are good at recently, and then how our society, institutions and infrastructure need to facilitate these. In essence, getting humans to do repetitive, formulaic work is done for, AI will do that (whether we think that’s good or not is probably not going to stop it happening). Maybe that’s ok, we were forcing people to become more uniform in their outputs and that isn’t playing to our strengths. Humans are messy, inefficient, unpredictable and often wrong. Well, at least this human is. But most of what we really value comes from this process…
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Vinyl of the year
Yes, it’s time for the least anticipated post of the year. I’ve been doing this daily countdown over on Instagram (pity my followers) so here it is all gathered into one self-indulgent post. I’ve gone for a top 15 this year, with the caveat the entries and order would probably change if I did it all again tomorrow. My criteria for inclusion is albums I think I listen to a lot over the next few years. This isn’t always the same as critically interesting albums. So, here goes pop pickers: No 15 – First Aid Kit: Palomino.First Aid Kit’s release this year is a good case in point. It doesn’t…
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Analogue micro-rebellions
It was Spotify Wrapped week last week, when those of us who didn’t do the honourable thing and decamp to Tidal following the Joe Rogan fiasco, had some data on our listening habits summarised in a nicely shareable format. It’s kind of fun of course, but it was interesting to look at mine as it was largely unrepresentative. I buy vinyl, so most of my music listening is in that format. It seems I mainly use Spotify to listen to Songs:Ohia/Magnolia Electric Co (top 1% of listeners worldwide folks), when I’m driving on my own or feeling a bit sad. I buy my vinyl in a physical record shop (Spillers!)…
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Vinyl of the year
End of the year posts inbound! Starting off with my vinyl selections of the year. I bought a lot of records this year, hey, it was 2021, whatever it takes. I’m restricting choices here to a) records I own and b) that came out this year. I’m too much of a radical, free thinker to go with a top 10, so I’m going with some random categories instead. Pop is art dammit – Claud: Super Monster. Claud is the type of artist who might have chosen political punk or avant-garde for their outlet, but instead has selected the perfectly crafted pop song as the artistic form of choice. Classified as…
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Welcome to dial-a-view – February review
Following on from last month’s hugely successful (ie completely unread) monthly review, here is my February one using the same categories. Highlight: Puppy! After going through the home improvement and the cutting your own hair stage, we entered the puppy stage of lockdown. Welcome Posey! Not very work related I know, but come on, it’s a puppy. Teaching: With my colleagues I completed a 40 page document document for the Periodic Quality Review exercise at the OU, for the Open Programme which I chair. This takes place every 6 years for all qualifications. It’s a lot of work, but a good opportunity to reflect and suggest improvements. I’m always impressed…
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Like an extinct fish: January review
via GIPHY Seeing as January seemed to last about a year, I may as well do a review of themes over it as if it was an end of year review. I may attempt one of these at the end of every month with the same headings. Highlight: I sent the complete draft manuscript of my book Metaphors of Ed Tech off to the publisher, Athabasca University Press Teaching: In IET under the tireless direction of my colleague Leigh-Anne Perryman we continue to develop Microcredentials for the FutureLearn platform. We have a new one, Online Teaching: Accessibility and Inclusive Learning, starting in March which joins these as part of our…
