Mc² = E Learning Reflections

  I've written about this before, my love of horror movies.  But I wanted to write down my thoughts after recently going to the cinema to watch a sequel production.  I think what got me was how this movie was little more than a retelling of the original story but with a minor twist.  I was largely a bit bored half way through.  The name of the movie itself doesn't matter, I think what got me was the "sameyness" of it. It got me thinking about one of my favourite characters from a famous shark movie.  She was the wife of Martin Brodie who began as a supporting character backing up the stereotypical male hero figure, staying at home while he goes off to sea to kill the monster shark.  But by the time the the fourth movie came along, Ellen was quite a different character taking to sea herself on a mission to finish it and put an end to the whole watery saga.   ( " 'Jaws' pictogram movie poster " by  Viktor Hertz  is licensed under...

It's a fascinating experience reading through old books.  If you've been following my blog you know that I recently finished reading the work of Vincent Tinto (1993).  This time I'm digging even further back though and looking at the work of Herbert Blumer (1969).  So much of this man's writing is dead on point and very relevant to the field of education (and online education too). Blumer's work on Symbolic Interactionism was based on three simple premises: 1.  The way we act depends on the meaning we assign to things.   2.  Different individuals behave differently towards things depending on the meanings those things have for each person.   3.  As we interact with other people, the meanings of those things can change. Obvious really, aren't they.  But what's perhaps less obvious are the subtle implications that make this an important feature of the learning/education process.   If we look at the world from a relativist s...

I have to say, I've never really enjoyed reading.  I don't know why.  But the idea of picking up a tome and spending hours just immersed in someone else's world, their thoughts, their ideas...  there's something about that process that kind of freaks me out.  Even in fiction reading, the authors language can really confuse me and, depending on they way I read the authors content, it can dramatically change my understanding of a book.  Maybe it's a lack of confidence in my own abilities, or maybe I'm just a naturally slow reader.  And it's probably one of the reasons why I did my undergrad degree in mathematics.  As a strategy to help me with reading I tend to find audio-books helpful in this respect.  Without an audiobook to accompany a text, I genuinely spend hours and hours labouring over the language and never feel like I'm getting the author's meaning. ( " Reading " by  be creator  is licensed under  CC BY 2.0 .)   But in a...

As we're getting to the end of the academic session here in Scotland, I have to say I'm so looking forward to the summer holidays.  It's been a long year, but there's a lot to do still - meetings, paperwork, form filling...  It's been really interesting this past week though because it's allowed me to reflect, not so much on the processes that are underway, but on how they're happenning. (" tea break " by  Kanko*  is licensed under  CC BY 2.0 .) With a range of formal programme review meetings taking place, getting the chance to have those face-to-face informal "water cooler" conversation with colleagues you haven't seen in ages has felt like a breath of fresh air.  Some of the meetings took place face-to-face while others have been online or some hybrid combination of both.  But they've all felt like a pressure release.  Sometimes it's provided the opportunity to venting our frustrations, other times its allowed teams to refl...