Time passes

What a strange thing time is. Whether you're counting billions of years or the eternal ages that follow after the blip that is our existence in this life. Last summer was supposed to be Pads swansong, with trips all over the country, including Ellen MacArthur. Now he's been a second time! In conversation about this year's sailing, Ally said that if he wants to go again he it would be different: he was something of an old hand, and Ellen MacArthur do another level of sailing for the more experienced crew. Of course that would be for next year. NEXT year...
This is so far into the future! But thinking about the future is something that challenges all of us in various ways, at different stages of life. Pads has been worrying that, if he lives, he won't be able to get a job or be much use because he's so far behind with his schooling. I just tried to reassure him that he's already more literate than many people, and that many jobs do not require an advanced academic education. Of far more consequence and comfort are verses I hung onto when I was his age:
"Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you." Matthew 6:33

I'm a Calvinist

Just read the BBC news item on Dutch Calvinism and took the test...

Test your C-Factor

83%

You are a genuine Calvinist.
You have been tried and tested in Calvinism. Your attitude in live is straight and strict. You are a hard working person, who pays attention to others. However, you never show off these qualities. After all, in the eyes of God, everyone is a sinner. You know how to control your emotions, and no one can say you have an easy and luxurious way of life.

ID	Category	Score	Comment
52	Work	100%	You sure have a Calvinistic working ethos. You never work hard enough; work for you is your bounden duty. You are the type of employee any company desires, but the balance between your work and private life may get disturbed.
55	Strictness	60%	You are rather strict and straight, as are more Calvinists. The advantage is that people can count on you, but your disadvantage is you find it difficult to have fun. Relax a little. Things without purpose make life more enjoyable.
57	Sobriety	67%	You sure seem to be a Calvinist. You live life moderately, restrainedly and systematically. But don't forget that Calvin himself knew well how to enjoy life!
56	Relationships	100%	You are a reliable partner, though you could be more enchanted. Don't be afraid of emotions!
53	Beliefs	100%	You are not necessarily sombre, although Calvin's religious convictions are in your genes.

Pondering past and future

While we ponder the recent past and the hopeful future, we are reminded of different days, with Ally reading the biography of William Carey. This passage about Hannah Marshman (p187),

whose unruffled temper, 'extraordinary prudence', devoutness and zeal made her the settlement's true mother - the Mission's saving health. Her heart was filled with sympathies and her days with deeds of grace. Six times was she called to mourn the loss of infants, but she was too rooted in the trust of God to be morose. Though faced with frequent motherhood, she bore the burden of her own and her husband's boarding-schools with an unruffled temper and a rare sagacity.

Combine this with 1 Corinthians 10:13

There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.

Just sitting across the dinner table with Pads is a privilege.

The hairs of our heads are all numbered!

Someone kindly sent us Luke 12:6-7 which talks about God's esteem and lovingkindness to us...

6 Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings, and not one of them is forgotten before God? 7 But even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not therefore: ye are of more value than many sparrows.

This raised a smile because we had just finished mowing his hair! It hadnt been washed in 2 weeks and had 'stuff' sticking it together from the operations. Ally used scissors but, to be gentle, I used the clippers I had used to play 'barbershop' with my grandad. This game took a decisive turn when I eventually worked out how to actually cut hair with them. They are hand operated, made in the USA, and have a patent date of 12 December 1926!

tribulation and glory

Philipians 4:4-7 says

Rejoice in the Lord alway: and again I say, Rejoice. 5Let your moderation be known unto all men. The Lord is at hand. 6Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. 7And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.

The peace of God has to be experienced or proved to be properly understood. Although it is natural, like a gasp of the soul, to think, 'I wish this hadnt happened', Paul takes another view. This will seem perverse to eyes that lack Faith but in Romans 5:3 he says this:

And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience

And we may then be tempted to think, well, is such tribulation worth it for 'patience'??? But he adds...

knowing that tribulation worketh patience; and patience, experience; and experience, hope: and hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us

Thus, the path to a greater sense and appreciation of the love of God is right through tribulation.
The sooner we can come to not only accepting tribulations but thanking God for them as kind providences, the sooner we can be blessed in them to the end that we better know and make known the God of Peace.
One other feeling that the Enemy, as accuser of souls, would have us mull over is that it is because I have been such a lousy Christian that this 'misfortune' has hit me: his activity in this regard is plainly seen in the book of Job. But the fact that God allows this exceedingly gracious and spiritually diligent and prosperous man to suffer, at Satan's hands, should give the lie to such treacherous thoughts. So I hope and pray that we will, as James says,

count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations; knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience.

and intend to

'...let patience have her perfect work, that ye [we] may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing'

blackboardasaurus

This term (blackboardasaurus) appears in Jon Dron's book 'Control and Constraint in e-learning' which I have recently read for review. I like it because it works on several fronts. For one thing Blackboard looks and feels 'old' compared to any decent Web 2.0 interface. I have sympathy with the view that learning technology would be released from a pall of drabness if blackboardasaurus would do the decent thing and become extinct. Far from promoting innovation, it sinks all too readily to the lowest common denominator of faceless 'document dump'. Indeed, I am slightly miffed that if you propose something genuinely useful, blackboardasaurus is rolled out to stifle such... 'why go to the bother of doing x when you can do y (something approximating to x) in blackboardasaurus'? Result=nothing gets done.

imagine a curriculum based on this

Currently our curriculum is based on these 4 principles:
(thanks Ken!)
Utility: shapes the curriculum
Linearity: informs choices about what matters
Conformity: growth of standardised testing
Standardisation: quality agenda

Compare with these...
living vitality
creativity
diversity
customisation
What would a programme look like based on these instead?

zotero vs endnoteweb

Zotero is one mean tool for culling stuff from the web. I really like how, having found a webpage to read, one can save a snapshot of it and then annotate it. Although the snapshot file is not stored on the web (I think that's coming), there are advantages to that of course: you keep full control of the material. Where it falls down is at work where users may not have the rights over their machines to install the add-in. I really need to check this out...
As we found yesterday, endnoteweb feels like a technological tightrope walk when trying to do real work in work...

reflecting on first flirt with wikiing in L&T

On the negatives:

1. Students were thrown by the request to edit a page within Blackboard - cant get away from the fact that this may be partly my own baggage with this perception but that is literally what I witnessed from some who came in to attempt it. I would not lay all the blame on Blackboard as a monolithic VLE, nor the fact that the course is set up around didactic transmission of knowledge. It is the simple fact that it took a while to sink in that they could edit in there.
   
2. I think the layout that I have run with on several occasions now (only with a discussion list in the past) was too rigidly following the mindmap I did of module themes. To make this easier I need to streamline and probably leave out some pages. Even in the discussion list version this would be a good idea. In fact, I have had a sense that some of the themes cross-over anyway so there is duplication which can only lead to confusion. I could organise it with the front page having a limited list of topics and then students edit the front page to add a linktoanewpage naming it with the website's name which would then come up in the list of pages on the right. (Ok - done that now after an hour or so!)

I've set up an evaluation page anyway and emailed students asking for feedback so lets see what comes of that...

Reflections on Dundee trip

Jon and I had come at 'teaching IT' in very similar ways - ie to integrate it into the course and send off those who really struggled to central IT provision. In many ways we have not really helped students by forcing them to all do ECDL - not least because the flavour of the month is moving off ECDL in the NHS
More later hopefully!

reflections on Greece

I am not sure what to do about Greece - in terms of feeding back stuff from it to folks back home. The sessions I went to were quite theoretical, for example, in terms of researching learning technology or taking a critical view of developments and trends. I gave my presentation to a packed audience and not everyone was comfortable with the idea that networked learning may actually mean something different than e-learning - perhaps they were worried that I was potentially challenging them about their right to be at the conference. I am trying not to go down that dogmatic route, the one that sees networked learning as somehow 'better than', or a step change forward compared to, constructivism or cognitivism and certainly behaviourism.
I may come back to this and edit sommore later - off to email someone.

affective intelligence gap spotted

... trying to capture the moment here but I have recently had a couple of email replies to mine which had clearly made the recipients yelp, judging from the responses. Note to self: I need to set the tone of a 'functional' email before sending.