There have been phases of automation. An earlier phase (mid 20th c.) saw the elimination of many metal-bashing "male" jobs. AI is set to do the same to "women's work". Receptionists, PAs, Librarians, Admin Staff and HR. These roles were core to the domestic work portfolio of "traditional families" or households with two earning adults … Continue reading Automation
Category: Infrastructures
Identification of appropriate softwares and platforms including the repository architecture for research outputs, learning objects, and personal and professional development portfolio items; elaboration of the service matrix; workflows and procedures for identity management, authentication and access for diverse users and groups in open and accessible ways; support and development of test environments.
With my tin foil hat on
I am suggesting that there are sets of affinities that encourage people and their friends, firms, institutions, communities, governments and enterprises to act in certain ways. Blackboard provided a means towards control of the curriculum should someone want to. The patent application was, possibly, late dot-com chutzpah. Its subsequent deployment strikes me as strategic and in line with neoconservative affinities. Evidently, today in the deep winter of 2025.
Why there is shit in the Thames
This story about national infrastructure should be salutary. Anything fiddly and hard to deal with has been slid off the shoulders of the private sector back onto the "common-wealth". The "state" has no interest in anyone but the biggest profit-takers.
Composting
The composting system. Kitchen and soft garden waste in... We get two veg boxes a week. One is from a local organic farm. The other is an "Oddbox" of farm-rescued veg that is surplus to supermarket requirements. We eat a lot of vegetable soup. Rots down And then gets turned into the second chamber... Second … Continue reading Composting
The war machine’s greed
George Monbiot was speaking over Al's shoulder, of the vandals who are wrecking the earth, and spoke of the energy industries, water and other extractive activities. But I didn't hear him name the "war machine", the defense and security industry, the military-industrial complex or the fin-tech infosys sustaining it all. When the masses are happy … Continue reading The war machine’s greed
Beginning of term
Systems or people? We can model learning in order to develop ways for our machines to acquire, store, process and apply data: information gathered from the world around. Although I put it as a vague question of preference at the start of this essay, it has many ramifications. Are people not just quite complex systems? … Continue reading Beginning of term
Brookes Blogs
... or does it? Blogging is growing like topsy at Brookes and across the academic spectrum, but what form should it take? Should the University have a hosted bog platform? Under what rules of engagement? I have trawled around the site and found some of what is going on in out droplet of the blogosphere. … Continue reading Brookes Blogs
Testing ecto settings
I use Ecto, an off-line blogging editor and archiving tool. Very handy for mobile and nomadic blogging at conferences, on the train, anywhere cannot connect to the Internet or do not want to be burning up the battery maintaining a wireless connection. It also keeps an archive of my posts on my machine, which I … Continue reading Testing ecto settings
Interesting question: the requirements for a learning platform
I offer this as a component of an evaluation framework: what are the user requirements for different kinds of users of a VLE. A professional acquaintance from another university is advising his department on the procurement of a learning platform. He asked me a simple question last night: "...is there a web site or paper … Continue reading Interesting question: the requirements for a learning platform
Why WordPress?
I have been using TypePad for blogs and will continue to do so. The Brookes Benchmarking blog is TypePad-driven. So is myWORLD. TypePad is owned by 6 Apart, who also have LiveJournal. LJ was the first of the "friends" networks and developed a lot of social software, which is open source, as well as a … Continue reading Why WordPress?
rWorld2 