review
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August round up
Now that I no longer have a school-aged child that necessitates taking leave over summer, August has become one of my favourite work periods. The OU doesn’t operate conventional term times, so people take their leave whenever they wish, but summer is generally quieter, and the number of meetings drops away. What remains is something akin to what I always imagined being an academic would be like – working on writing, reading, developing interesting projects, walking the dog while pondering deep things. We had a face to face (!) GO-GN meeting over a couple of days this month, planning the next phase of the project. This included revisiting our social…
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A year in horror
No, it’s not a review of the news this year, but rather looking back over what I’ve read over the past 12 months. I am a horror film fan, but since my late teens I haven’t really read much horror. I’m not sure why, there was probably some genre-snobbery applied to books that I didn’t hold for movies. Maybe I associated it with youth and now I was a Grown Up Adult, I should read literary fiction. And, to be fair to my past self, I wanted to expand reading tastes, understand the appeal (or otherwise) of classics, struggle with some ‘difficult’ books and generally develop those reading muscles. But…
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My ten (work-related) highlights of 2022
via GIPHY Maren has done a Ten Milestones of 22 post, so I thought I’d tag along and think back on my highlights on what was not always an easy year. So in no particular order: Publishing Metaphors of Ed Tech – I think that of the books I’ve written, this is the most ‘me’. It was great to get it out this year, through Athabasca University Press. It’s obviously brilliantly written and insightful (ahem), but what I like most about it is that I think it’s also playful and kind of fun. Not many books on ed tech meet those criteria. A new Masters in Online Education from IET…
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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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August review – ticking it off
Highlight: I completed the final revisions of my book, developed an online course (for someone else), worked on the action plan for the Open Programme following our recent review, worked on GO-GN outputs and ran a research session. In short I did a lot of stuff that I don’t normally get to do because I’m in meetings about doing stuff. Theme: Get stuff done. I feel I can start the busy September to December period now with a relatively clean slate. It’s amazing what you can do when you don’t have meetings all the time. I know I am guilty of arranging meetings myself and they’re often necessary to progress…
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July review – Summer workin’
via GIPHY Highlight: The month started with a week’s holiday, exploring local beaches. And since then I’ve been enjoying summer work mode. Now that my daughter is grown, I don’t have to take holidays during peak months and it’s a really good time to do work. Meetings have plummeted, so I’ve been ticking tasks off my to do list, having dog walks at lunch, written a book chapter and scheduled in remaining work. In short, it has felt how work should feel. I wake up at night and think “oh, it’s ok, I’ve got a fairly easy work day tomorrow”. Not that I’m one of those people who work weekends…
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Metaphor beach – June review
Highlight: As I’ve probably bored you all with mentioning, I wrote a book recently, “Metaphors of Ed Tech“. It’s sort of a companion piece to 25 Years – one is the narrative approach to a subject, the other the metaphorical. I submitted the completed manuscript to Athabasca University Press in February, and it has since gone out for reviews, which all came back favourably. One reviewer commented that it was “a fun and robust read” and the other that it was “a delight to read”. Those are the types of comments for which you would make up false identities to post on Amazon, so it was an unashamed ego boost…
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Carry, carry on – May review
Highlight: I’m going to wrap three GO-GN events up for this (although one took place in April). First, we ran a one day seminar prior to OERxDomains21, which saw the incomparable Bryan Mathers running a fun session on “Draw your PhD”. We used pens, and paper! In May we hosted a new member special, with Barbara Conde Gafaro, Stanislaus Agava Litsalia and Dave Cormier (who he?) presenting. I’m really pleased that even in lockdown we continue to recruit new members to GO-GN who are conducting such fascinating research. And towards the end of the month we launched not one, but two, cohorts of wiki scholars on a 6 week course run…
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Let’s go to the ocean – April review
Highlight: The OERxDomains21 conference was a big highlight this month. When we’ve all become accustomed to online conferences, it is difficult to make any of them feel different. They are in the same platforms (Zoom/Team), they have the same structure, and they don’t feel different from your everyday work. What I admired about OERxDomains21 was the thought, and successful implementation, of an overall aesthetic. Beyond a logo, not many conferences do this. The Community TV theme was carried through in the programme (like a TV guide), the platform (StreamYard and YouTube), the intro and end credits to each talk, and the old adverts shown in breaks. In addition Discord came…
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Rising – March review
via GIPHY Highlight: In a time when fun is in short supply, it was a ball to be a guest on Terry Greene and Anne-Marie Scott’s podcast “Check the O.L.: Liner Notes from Groundbreaking Online Learning”. I discussed 1999’s Open University course, You, Your Computer and the Net (which I’ve mentioned on here several times). With apologies for my audio quality, it’s a good chat, and we each choose a song from 1999 also. As well as being an informal, friendly listen, what Terry and Anne-Marie are doing here aligns with the aim of 25 Years of Ed Tech, and the accompanying Between the Chapters podcast, namely that there is…
