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Another blog mentee
As I mentioned before I’ve offered to mentor some nascent OU bloggers. Patrick McAndrew was first (I’m being lenient on him as he’s been on holiday, but now we start!). Next up is Will Woods. This is just by way of shaming them in to action. And following on from my previous post, while I’m on a Scoble love-in here is an excellent slideshow on creating a killer blog from him and Maryam (it’s nearly a year old now, but still a goodie), which I sent to Will and Patrick as starting advice.
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This week’s blog sport – Scoble bashing
Now if there’s one person who doesn’t need my support it’s Scoble, as Kathy Sierra has said ‘Scoble can handle it.’ But this week’s attacks on Scoble have been interesting to watch since they say both good and bad things about the blogosphere. Firstly, Scoble’s crime for those who don’t know, was to post a video where he argued that "Mahalo, Techmeme and Facebook are going to kick Google’s butt in four years". From what I can understand he is just plain wrong in some of the statements he makes (Danny Sullivan has a detailed long post on what’s wrong with his argument – he’s right, but he’s angry!). Secondly,…
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Childcare, summer holidays and my neglected blog
This summer has been tough on the old blog, and it makes me realise I’m a fairweather kind of blogger. We’ve had a couple of holidays, and I think divorce would loom if I were to say, ‘do you mind if I blog while we sip our G and Ts?’. And when not working we’ve been juggling childcare. My day usually goes something like: the morning I work, while daughter watches TV/plays with toys/gets frustrated with playstation; in the afternoon we go out and do something child oriented; in the evening my wife takes over and I do some more work. This means I can just about keep up with…
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Software sedimentation
I came across this term from Jaron Lanier (in an essay in the book The Next Fifty Years). He writes: "Software sedimentation is a process whereby not only protocols, but the ideas embedded in them become mandatory. An example is the idea of the file…. Files are now taught to students as a fact of life as fundamental as a photon, even though they are a human invention." I think there is truth in this, and I like the mental image of sediment building up within the concepts built in to software and technology. To expand the idea out somewhat, the same might be true of many educational practices. The…
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Virtuous circles – a blogging quiz
A ‘how addicted to blogging are you’ quiz available here, which of course, anyone who is addicted to blogging will take and then blog about (via What counts). You can’t stop this stuff even if you want to. This is a promotional aid for an online dating service, which has nothing to do with blogging, but they know what we’re suckers for. I didn’t want to blog about it, but felt compelled to. It’s not as good as my connected academic quiz though. 81%How Addicted to Blogging Are You? Mingle2 – Dating Site
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The butterfly learner
As I mentioned in my previous post, I’m encouraging Patrick McAndrew to blog. His first proper post is a goodie – it sets out his concept of the Butterfly learner. This is an idea we have discussed over beer/coffee before, but he has never got around to publishing formally. Enter the blog and you have an immediate outlet. Anyway, the idea is that small changes in the environment can have unforeseen effects on learners. As Patrick says, this may have significant implications for learning design work, since it may be that learning is just intrinsically chaotic. There are too many variables and the inter-relation between them is too complex to…
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Becoming a blog mentor
As part of my mission (that may be aggrandising it somewhat) to promote blogging in the OU, I have offered to be a blogging mentor to three or four colleagues. The idea is to help them become regular, stable bloggers. They will then promote it to others and soon the whole world will blog! What do you mean pyramid schemes are dodgy? Anyway, I have no idea what I mean by being a blogging mentor, so we’ll have to make it up as we go along. If anyone has done something similar I’d really appreciate any tips. My plan is to be open about it, hence this posting, and to…
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Books, playlists and the granularity of ideas
I have mentioned this before, but thought I’d revisit it (hey it’s the summer holidays, time for reruns all round). In Everything is Miscellaneous, David Weinberger gives a nice analysis of how the digitisation of content has altered our perceptions of what we thought was the basic unit. In talking about music he says "For decades we’ve been buying albums. We thought it was for artistic reasons, but it was really because the economics of the physical world required it: Bundling songs into long-playing albums lowered the production, marketing, and distribution costs … As soon as music went digital, we learned that the natural unit of music is the track."…
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Simpsonize yourself
(via John Connell) Burger King offer the ability to Simpsonize yourself. You upload a photo, do some adjustments and hey presto, there’s a Simpsons character that doesn’t look much like you. But it is fun. Here’s me: Whoever devised this for BK deserves to have their meal maxed – this is exactly the kind of marketing that works online. It’s fun, irresistible, quick and very viral. Look – even grumpy old professors do it and then blog about it. Whether it will make me buy a whopper is another question though.
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Blogging the course design process – leftovers and sausages
I’ve mentioned this in passing before, but it deserves a full posting I think – my colleague James Aczel is keeping a blog as he chairs the production of a new course in our Masters in Online and Distance Education. The course is H809, "Practice-based research in educational technology", and the title was even voted on by readers and students. I would like to see more courses keeping blogs during the design phase, because a) it might help create a buzz around the course before it starts, b) it acts as a useful resource once the course has started and c) it probably aids the design process itself if you…
