What I want from my poetry

I like clusters, soups and smoothies, putting things together and feeling the energy generated between the one and the many. My cluster of three: individuation, compassion and capacity. Individuation: each person, place and thing is unique, a moment, a point, an instance. Compassion: treat each and all with kindness. Capacity: know your shit; have allies. … Continue reading What I want from my poetry

Feral Angels: wild

Tom Hirons runs the regular on-line Feral Angels Poetry Cafe. (https://tomhirons.com/events/feral-angels/feral-angels-poetry-cafe-february-26th-2023) This week the theme was: How does wildness exhibit itself in form and use of language - in how we put words on a page? That wildness we are pointing to, we are trying to bring that wildness into our poetry. What wildness? To find it, first ask, where can you be wild in your life?

Cottage weavers

In another twist to the spiral curriculum thrown up in discussions triggered by the responses to Covid-19, we learn once again that things come round again, but different. In Britain much heavy and primary industry has moved off the islands, where logistics, marketing and finance networks continue to make it uneconomic either: To engage in … Continue reading Cottage weavers

Reflection in action: professional development study visits

How close to the moment can you get? "Be here now," urges 1960s psychologist Richard Alpert. A mythical Google aspires to a perfect concurrent rendering of this reality: in real-time, in software. How much rewinding can we do before anyone notices the pause for thought? Reflection in action often has the effect of: "Oops! Don't … Continue reading Reflection in action: professional development study visits

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

Tinkering with algorithms

I read Franklin Foer's Facebook's War on Free Will the Guardian's "Long read" for Tuesday 19 September 2017. He recapped a familiar argument: you are Facebook's product. But when he hit "data science" I turned up my sensors. He says, "There’s a whole discipline, data science, to guide the writing and revision of algorithms". Then he … Continue reading Tinkering with algorithms

Learning design: heroic goal in a held space

What was I trying to do in my talk to the Solstice conference 2016? In the talk, I analysed learning using metaphors of “Held space” (Plett 2015), The romantic or heroic quest (Wikipedia for summaries) And “heartwork” (Hogan 2011) or the concept of “emotional labour” (Koster2011). I wanted these to be seen in the light … Continue reading Learning design: heroic goal in a held space

Dialogic multimedia

What kicked me off on this audio exploration of academic multimedia? Two things. First and proximal cause: when I reported that my colleagues and I had been asked if we could give workshops on technology enhanced learning (TEL) the suggestion was scoffed. Why give workshops when you could do a series of three minute talking … Continue reading Dialogic multimedia

FSLT16 Week 1

Week one has flown by like a simile. There are 58 participants on the course of whom 22 are doing the module for academic credit (10 credits, level 7) towards a PG Cert in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education (PCTHE). Sixteen (16) of the assessed participants are from Brookes and six are from other … Continue reading FSLT16 Week 1