Books
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Behold the new wonder chemical
I’ve read a few historical science books recently, The Radium Girls, and The Chemical Age amongst them. One common factor when detailing the dangers of chemicals is the manner in which they were treated as a miracle cure, wonder drug, panacea for all ills. You shake your head in wonder at accounts of people drinking “radium water” to improve their health, or states deploying DDT with wild abandon. In all of these cases, initial positive results in some areas were extrapolated to be a cure-all. Part of the reason these chemicals went on to cause such damage is partly because people were making a lot of money and deliberately sought…
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Monthly round-up Sept 24
(A sketch of my Galway keynote) As the new academic year started, and lots of my peers were back on campus, I was… walking my dog on the nature reserve at Kenfig Sands. The summer is generally quieter, so this was the first time I really noticed my post-OU status. And it felt good. I’ve kept my toe in the academic waters however, giving a keynote at the Digital Ed Conference in Galway, at the (fairly) newly consolidated Atlantic Technical University. They are at an interesting position in their development, having brought together different technical colleges under one banner and now implementing a new learning environment. If you had a…
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July 24 Round up
One month into leaving the OU, and I have been trying to establish some new pattern for the days. It’s been disrupted by parental care (or maybe that is the new pattern), and getting stuff sorted, but it’s beginning to settle down now. The most significant personal event this month has been my daughter’s graduation. She was part of that Covid cohort, who had it rough so it’s been a privilege to witness her growth as a scholar. I just need to persuade her to take up blogging now. As I mentioned last month, I’ve joined the Board of Trustees for the National Extension College, and it was great to…
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June 24 roundup
I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it, but I left the Open University this month. I had a lovely leaving party with colleagues (funded by ourselves I hasten to add). Maren and I marked the end of that era with a holiday in Sardinia. Since I’ve returned I’ve blogged some thoughts about the OU, and am now busy setting other activities in motion. I have joined the board of Trustees for the National Extension College and have my first board meeting next week. It’s largely been a period of establishing a new working environment. I handed back my university Macbook and bought myself a nice shiny iMac. I’ve been setting…
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The Misery of narrative
I’ve been re-reading Stephen King’s Misery recently. For those of you who don’t know the story, it features a writer, Paul Sheldon, who after a car accident finds himself in the isolated house of his “number 1 fan” Annie Wilkes. Wilkes is psychotic, and becomes enraged when she reads the latest of his Misery historical romance books, in which he has killed off the main character. She tortures him and forces him to write a new Misery novel, just for her. It is foremost a great horror novel, but it also acts as an obvious allegory for the relationship between writer and their audience and their own work. From a…
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May 24 roundup
(I’ve been going through some old photos – I’m the little blond one in the above, where it appears that I grew up in the 1930s) I’ve been having a “Month of Lasts” as my OU clock ticks down: Last Open Programme meeting, last JIME meeting, last Applaud Steering committee, last research theme meeting. Shedding all those roles and activities one accumulates like burrs on a poodle running through a field of burdock feels liberating. I’m not quite sure what will replace the interaction, structure and activity that meetings provide though. We do of course like to portray the meeting as the irritating guest at our work wedding, but across…
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April 24 round up
I was looking forward to April, I had booked study leave and had a number of small, fun projects I wanted to get started. Well, it transpired that April had other plans. For no particular reason I had a mental health wobble in the first week, and was just getting over that when an elderly parent emergency arose, which necessitated several trips and stays in Bedfordshire. This included missing the much anticipated hockey playoff weekend in Nottingham with my daughter, and abandoning a holiday in West Wales. Add in an emergency dental appointment, and yes, April can do one. I looked back at my google doc for plans for this…
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March 24 round up
It’s been a busy presentation month. I gave a metaphors talk for Rikke Toft Nørgård’s Digital Pedagogy and Learning special interest group. I like these more informal presentations, and we had a fun chat about Nordic metaphors afterwards. I hosted a session for the European Digital Education Hub, on learning environments. Preparing for this prompted me to think more about AI enhanced learning environments, so it was one of those presentations that help move along your own thinking. Dominic Orr joined me and gave an excellent overview of the work they do at Atingi. I’ve blogged about the OER24 experience, so won’t say more here except to say it warmed…
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February 24 roundup
(photo shows Irwin DeVries, Audrey Watters, Brian Lamb and Rajiv Jhangiani in 2015) As February comes to an end, I feel I am entering the wind down phase of my Open University career, with departure scheduled for June. The replacement for my role on the Open Programme is being recruited, we’re planning for my last GO-GN workshop at OER24, and I’m handing over editorship of JIME. It leaves one in a slight liminal space mentally and work wise – I’m busy doing handover, and continuing workload, but I’m not required for planning things that will take place after I leave. It’s not so much that I have less work, but…
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Dangers of tech metaphors in nature
In Metaphors of Ed Tech I suggested that we should approach metaphors drawn from nature with caution, writing: “it is worth emphasising that metaphors drawn from nature are probably the most prevalent, and the most dangerous, of metaphors. Making appeals to what is deemed ‘natural’ and applying it to any form of human endeavour has led to justifications for social Darwinism, misogyny and repression, with the implication that certain states are naturally occurring and therefore inevitable.” But the opposite is also true – we need to be wary of technological metaphors applied to nature. I came to appreciate this because I’ve been reading Merlin Sheldrake’s intriguing overview of fungal life…
