More perspective

Last night, I participated in a phone interview with Kristina Schneider for her Master's dissertation on blogging. Before the interview, she sent me her list of questions to help me focus my thinking.

During the course of the interview, I mentioned my ongoing concern for the fact that some people's voices are excluded from this space. I fear we are sometimes in danger of being somewhat self-congratulatory when we gather together in our electronic spaces and tackle the challenges that commonly face us. I wonder if we aren't just a little "holy huddle-ish" - choosing to ignore the challenges facing those who don't have the means to join us in this space (the video clip I included in yesterday's post reminds us how few people actually have internet access). I have niggling doubts at the wisdom of pushing the leading edge further and further forward while leaving the trailing edge ever further behind - especially since most of those with whom I come into contact are vocally opposed to the same model in relation to material wealth. Why then, does it make sense to adopt this model in terms of knowledge wealth? Are we/am I being hypocritical? Speaking in gravely sympathetic tones about those who endure deprivation, only to take every opportunity use the tools at our/my disposal to widen the gap between them and us/me?

Last night, I very nearly lost my elder son as the fan heater in his room burnt out and filled his room with noxious smoke. It just "so happened" that I opened his door to look in on him and discovered this situation. Since my husband is abroad, I had to battle alone to wake him and get him out of the room and then go back into the room to unplug everything and ensure that there was no further danger of the house burning down around my ears. Even that short period of exposure brought on an asthma attack for me, and I had no idea how long he had been breathing in that toxic smoke.

I took him outdoors to breathe the clean, cold air and, as he sat there, looking in sleepy confusion at me as I wrapped a second duvet around him, it dawned on me what had just very nearly happened and what might have been. It was as if his life flashed before my eyes, and I began to shake almost uncontrollably.

Talk about a dose of perspective! It could all have burnt for all I cared. My boys were safe. Of course, spending several hours in the A&E department (with both my boys, just in case) of the local hospital gave me plenty of time to stocktake, analyse and assimilate.

Anyone who knows me well will tell you what a learning geek I am. How rampantly and passionately I pursue learning and knowledge. How I grind my teeth in frustration when I lack the capacity to understand some new concept. But it takes something like this to remind us, as trite as it may sound that, in the final analysis, it's about people.

I told Kristina last night how I recently discovered that I have developed a bit of a reputation for being one who vociferously champions the cause of the learner in every project with which I am involved. When I finally got to my desk today, it was to find that last night's erm... little shake-up has served to renew my commitment to this perspective. So, to all those who find themselves working with me on one or the other project... you have been warned ;-)

Kristina asked me if my tendency to leap onto my ever-handy soapbox about the plight of the so-called third worlders was an extension of this attitude and I was forced to admit that it was not. I have been a learner. I am still a learner. I have empathy with the learner's perspective. I have lived in the third world. I have lived side-by-side with deprivation, but I have never been deprived... not in any real sense. My experience has for the most part been purely vicarious. In that context, I was one of the privileged few who had access to very sophisticated services (which I have since come to appreciate were superior to those on offer in much of the first world). So the best I can hope to do is to shine a spotlight of awareness onto the situation when the opportunity arises. To be the one who says "ahem" from time to time. I acknowledge in advance that I am likely to continue to do this - so my apologies (or maybe not) to those for whom this stance has worn a little thin.

I have a lot to be grateful for today!

A little perspective

Occasionally, I raise my ineffectual voice in this space for the third world.

Having spent the first 36 years of my life in Africa, I am deeply conscious of the plight of those who don't even have a frame of reference to understand let alone the means to participate in the conversations we have about learning.

Today someone posted this on my Facebook page. you may have seen it before, but at this particularly materialist, acquisitive time of the year, it is perhaps a timely reminder.

Beyond ROI

This is a subject I have touched on during the discussions around the recent Corporate Learning Trends and Innovations (CLTI2007) conference.

My mail at the office today included the December issue of inside learning technologies, which I gather is not yet available on line (have you signed up for the LT2008 exhibition and/or conference, yet?). The lead article by Donald H Taylor addresses the issue of the value of learning and ROI.

My gut feel on the subject of ROI is that it is just too difficult to quantify. There are just too many other variables that may impact the situation - the learner may read a book in his leisure time that profoundly influences his behaviour, or he might attend a life enrichment seminar , or hear a powerful sermon at church. He might meet a new love interest, or become a parent. All these things happen outside the workplace, but have the potential to impact profoundly on his workplace performance.

And the move towards performance support will do nothing to firm up those blurred lines, as we see learning becoming more and more seamlessly integrated with the day job.

To use an expression I have probably already turned into a cliche: how do you know where to position your ROI chisel so that you can hit it with the budget hammer?

Donald's article draws this rather wonderful comparison:

Does the IT manager ever feel obliged to justify their department through a ROI analysis of the value of each PC and the time spent maintaining it? Of course not.

The message from IT is simple: "If you want to run the business, you have to invest in IT. No IT, no infrastructure, no business. Of course, we can discuss costs and other details, but the role of the department is non-negotiable."

As I keep saying: you either believe in the value of L&D for your staff or you don't. End of. Either way, you'll find a way to make the numbers support your argument.

Edublog awards

The winners of the 2007 "eddies" have been announced. I would have liked to attend the online ceremony in Second Life, but it clashed with what little family time I have these days, so I had to wait to get the news.

I enjoy the fact that the nominations alert me to some blogs I had not previously encountered. I also enjoy the fact that at least one of the blogs I vote for usually comes through. This year one of my nominees won a category, too.

Not everyone likes the idea of adding an element of competition to the whole social media scene, and I respect that. There has got to space in the blogosphere for all shapes, sizes and persuasions. At the time of the conversation, I stated that I had no problem with it.

What I can safely say now that the whole thing is behind us is that I realised that I was speaking as one not in the running.

It's a really odd thing that I love competition... if I can win by my own efforts: sports, board games, quizzes. But I hate being at the mercy of other people's votes. Always have. I take it all far too personally. When I was 11, I was nominated for the position of house captain at my primary school, but I stood down, because the vote was by a show of hands and I couldn't face the possibility of no hands being raised for me.

Later, in my first year at college, I was asked to participate in the annual beauty contest. Quite apart from my instinctive objection to the whole concept of beauty pageants, I was afraid of being humiliated, so I refused.

Talk about your average insecurity!

You would think I had outgrown that by now. But I went through the same agonies when I was nominated for school governor (that time I was persuaded to stand and I was elected). I imagine that I would be the same if my blog were nominated. I am also fairly sure that I wouldn't feel free to write this post, if I were nominated but didn't garner any votes.

By what do we measure the success of a blog?

My dissertation (which I mention often, but have yet to start writing) focuses on how my use of social media has transformed my professional practice. When I read back over some of my early posts, just a little over two years ago, I am amazed at the extent to which many of my views have changed. To me, this is the measure of the impact of my entrance into the blogosphere. However, this is very subjective and qualitative. It would be nice to include an element of quantitative evidence, but I'm at a loss as to how to do that. Having identified my life as my PLE, I have made my learning journey so personal, so subjective that it can't realistically be measured by anyone other than me, and I'm not sure my own measure is an entirely reliable one!

Wow!

I can't even imagine what went into acquiring this level of skill so young, but this has just made my Friday.

Thanks to Chris Sloan via Dean Shareski on Twitter. Some comments on Chris's post express doubt at the genuine-ness of this clip. It looks real enough to my inexpert eyes, and that'll do for me today. If you happen to know that it was faked, don't tell me about it, okay - it's not important enough to warrant bursting my little bubble!

Unexpected thumbs up

Today was "curriculum progress" day at our sons' school. My younger son and I attended meetings with four of his teachers to discuss his progress against expectations so far this academic year. These days are usually pretty fraught as one dashes from room to room, sometimes in different buildings, in order to make each appointment on time. If you have more than one child, it's even worse.

I got off fairly lightly today. When my sons brought the forms home, my older son said he didn't want to meet with any of his teachers. He said that he was in his final year of compulsory education, already in the countdown to exams. He knew what needed to be done to achieve his grades and he didn't think that a meeting with me and his teachers would have any impact on that.

I wrote as much on the form and returned it to the school, adding that I supported him in his recognition that it was his learning journey and that it was now up to him to "do the work (or not)". His teacher was apparently so impressed with this attitude that she read it to the class, declaring me a "legend" (don't be too impressed, the word is freely used these days!).

In respect of my younger son, however, there are still some mountains to climb and some battles to fight (such as two teachers blemishing the record of this over-diligent lad by writing in his report that his homework is "causing concern" when none has been set... and I know this, because the planner is online), hence the four meetings. On our rounds, we encountered several of my older son's friends, who asked where he was. When I explained that we had decided that he was now shouldering the responsibility himself, one child declared, "Wow! My Mom forces me to come to these things." I wasn't sure whether he meant it as praise or criticism.

Time will tell whether it was the right decision or not, but I was pleasantly surprised to have earned the teacher's support for it.

What's with all the extras?

With our elder son coming up to his GCSEs, we're turning our attention to 6th form options. Of course, he could stay at his current school, but he is underachieving fairly spectacularly there. Since the university he plans to attend is one of the most selective in the country, he is probably going to need a change of plan to attract their attention.

Last night we attended the open evening of a specialist science school in a nearby town. Unlike his current school, which is a comprehensive (no entry criteria), this school has a selection policy and kids have to qualify to get in. There are only 40 places available to those who wish to transfer in from other schools.

Judging by the attendance last night, competition is going to be fierce!

According to the information we were given last night, this school is one of the "top 50 schools in the country".

Today, I've been thinking about what that means. Are their students the happiest? The best educated? The most well-balanced? The best equipped to deal with life-after-school? I suspect it is based purely on their results and, since I question the validity of the assessment process, this places a question mark over the relevance of this achievement.

Sadly, though, the system is what it is and it is within the constraints of this system that my son is going to have to prove his worth to the university of his choice if he is to have the chance to follow a career in forensics (this is the legacy of CSI and its ilk - every second child now wants to study forensics, whereas 10 years ago, hardly anyone had ever heard of it).

He is too young to see how tough the adjustment to this school will be, should he be accepted. At his current school (unusually for the UK), there is no official uniform. At this school, the sixth form boys must wear suits to school every day. Last night, he was blissfully unaware of the fact that he stuck out like a sore thumb. There were many other kids in civvies, but none of the others was wearing his trousers below his butt, with his underwear on display. Nor did they wear T-shirts that informed the reader that the only reason the wearer had not yet made a pass at them was because "You ugly!"

At his current school, the teachers are known by their first names. At this school, it's Mr this and Dr that (I doubt there is a single PhD on the staff of his current school, but I saw at least one last night and am trying to decide whether this is a sign of anything in particular). At his current school, the stated ethos is one of equality for all (I have my doubts as the successful implementation of this approach, as I have mentioned before on this blog). At this school, the teachers are without question exalted beings. They expect the students to stand aside for them. My son complained to me that one of the teachers had shoulder-barged him. In fact, what had happened was a conflict of expectations: the teacher had expected my son to step aside to let him through, while my son was making his way from point A to point B via the shortest route.

None of the other kids left their parents in their wake and interviewed the teachers for themselves.

Standing back and watching this whole interplay, I realised that my son was not making a good impression. That he was coming across as brash and yobbish. In a one-to-one interview (which will form part of the selection process), he will fare very well, but he has clearly been influenced by the culture of his current school, and it hasn't all been to his benefit!

Listening to the feedback from teachers and students, it certainly seems that they promote a culture of independent learning and diligence. All the students emphasised the need for "further reading" and "reading around the topic". In amongst all the other bumpf, this was what I wanted to know about. It is this that my son does not do. He sails along on the bare minumum of effort. We were chatting to the mother of a boy who transferred to this school from my son's current school. He and my son have similar interests and similar strengths and weaknesses. She assured me that my son would become motivated to work very hard in the new environment. She told me about daytrips to Switzerland for significant events. About opportunities to assist in scientific research. About trips to universities to attend lectures.

So why is it that schools that impose such seemingly irrelevant and outdated constraints such as formalwear, formal forms of address, etc. produce such good results? And why is it that schools with a more liberal approach have such a high incidence of crime and poor performance? Where is the link and why does it exist at all? Surely these factors shouldn't have an impact on learning, and yet in the UK education system, it seems they do. Or is this a case of the Forer effect?

As we drove away, I asked him if he wanted to apply for a place. Unhesitatingly, he said he did. When I hinted at the difficulty he would have in adjusting to the restrictive environment, he said he thought it would be exactly what he needed. I felt as if a huge wave had just loomed up, and I was paddling my surfboard like mad. I realise we are either, by dint of enormous effort, going to ride this one to the shore, or we are going to get unceremoniously dumped and churned (if you've every surfed you know exactly what I'm talking about!). I don't feel as if I have enough left in me to put in the effort to ride that wave, but I also don't relish the thought of the buffeting that is the alternative.

... and we will have to go through this all over again in two years' time with our other son. Oy vey!

What did you learn about learning in 2007?

This is the big question over at LCB this month. Originally, I had thought I'd give it a miss, since I couldn't name one specific thing that I had learnt about learning - it's all been fairly intangible.

Then I realised that, in fact, that's the whole point. That encapsulates what I keep trying to say about learning, so I thought I'd give it a go - but I doubt that it will be very coherent.

I can't pick out one thing that I have learned and put hard edges on it. Does this mean that I have learned nothing of significance? Far from it!

I have been engaged in an ongoing conversation with hordes of people. Some of them have become, well... friends, I guess. Those relationships were already in place - they just moved forward this year. These interactions have contributed to my own personal development.

I have bumped up against people with opposing views to my own. Debating with them has firmed up some of the boundaries of my knowledge set, while moving others. I have even had the unenviable experience of being vilified in the discussion forum of an online publication.

I have encountered opposition at work, and had to defend my position. I have drawn pictures, waved my hands about and foamed at the mouth. I have champed at the bit. I have used every moment of downtime (and, for a while there, there was a lot of it) to learning about this business. I have given thought to my professional future. I have thought about where the learning industry is going and where I want to be.

I have attended lectures at university. I have researched assignments. I have spoken to people I might never otherwise have encountered. I have read material I almost certainly would not otherwise have read. All these things have added to the sum of my knowledge, and impacted on pre-existing knowledge.

I have attended conferences. I have sat through sessions which have set me a light and others where I wanted to stand up and shout, "What a load of claptrap!" (and still others which bored me silly). Both of the extremes stretched me (while the boring ones afforded me time to reflect, I guess).

I have tried innumerable times to explain to people what it is that I do. I'm getting better at it, but it still needs work. In explaining, I find that I think about learning and what I understand it to be.

Some of these situations have taken place online, some face to face. Some in a group, and some one-to-one. Sometimes the situation has been a specific learning event, other times the learning has been so embedded into a situation as to be indistinguishable from it.

I have been a learning professional of one sort or another for close to two decades now, and one thing that has become increasingly clear over this past year is that I don't deserve the title. I'm not sure anyone does. The more I learn, the more I realise what a learning amateur I am. Perhaps that is my "one thing," although even that realisation didn't spring into existence fully formed during the space between 1 January 2007 and now.

Note to Samaritans: the rules are changing

Last night, the police (finally) came around to get a statement from my son regarding Tuesday's incident. At the end of the interview, the policeman advised my son to refrain from offering or giving help to people in the street - "no good deed goes unpunished."

Ugh. When I think how hard we have worked to teach our children to be neighbourly!

When I was in my teens, my mother encountered a man staggering down the high street of the city with a knife protruding from his back, bleeding copiously. He was pleading for help from passersby, but people were giving him a wide berth. My mother drove him to the hospital.

Shortly after we were married, my husband and I were awakened by loud banging on the door of our flat. At the door stood a bleeding man who said he had been stabbed. My husband drove him to the hospital.

If my children take to heart the advice they are now being given, such people will just bleed to death. What worries me most is the thought: what if it isn't one of my children who encounters such a person? What if the person is one of my children?

When I contrast the willingness of my online communities to help one another academically, emotionally, spiritually, informationally, with this sad state of affairs in respect of physical or material help within our physical communities... well, it breaks my heart.

Playing the numbers game... from the wrong end

For those who don't know, South Africa recently won the rugby world cup. So, while other coaches were being axed left and right, South Africa's coach was welcomed home like a conquering hero with a secure future.

NOT.

He was advised that he would have to reapply for his job on his return home. And the conditions under which he would be re-awarded it included the immediate introduction of a quota system which would see 10 black players to 5 white in the team (a rugby team has 15 players: 8 forwards: two props, a hooker, two locks, two flanks, an eighth man, and seven backs: a scrum half, a fly half, two centres, two wings and a full back).

This a ticklish issue in any country, but especially in South Africa, which is still in its early post-apartheid days. I can understand why the sports minister, wants to see more black players running out onto the rugby field. After all, the South African population is about 90% black. The problem is that, like so many unsatisfactory situations, this one is being tackled from the wrong end.

Traditionally, rugby has primarily been the sport of choice among the white people of the country, while soccer has primarily been the sport of choice among the black people (see this picture of the national side). The way in which this came about has not been entirely without blemish, but this doesn't change the bald statistics of the situation.

Of course, there have always been black South Africans who have played rugby, just as there have always been white ones who have played soccer . But, in the past, these represented a very slight blurring of a rather definite line. Since the downfall of apartheid and the desegregation of sports clubs, the number of black people playing rugby has increased. With improved facilities and coaching at their disposal, many are playing a vastly improved game, with the result that the number of them able to play at international level has also increased.

But it is a slow process. People tend to stick with what they're used to. Just because a person can now play rugby, doesn't mean that they suddenly will develop a desire to do so. The situation is not a million miles from the English tendency to see rugby as the game of privileged, private school educated men, whereas soccer (called football, in the UK) is seen as Everyman's game.

Selecting a team on the basis of their skin colour and sending them out against some of the biggest, toughest, most competitive men on the planet would be irresponsible. They are likely to get hurt. They are also almost certain to get severely beaten which, for a chip-on-the-shoulder-competitive nation, will stick in the craw like a fishbone.

The way to get to a place where 90% of the South African national rugby team is black is to get in at the grassroots level:

• market the game into the schools
• provide rugby fields at schools which currently do not have them
• establish junior rugby clubs in areas where there are none
  
• run coaching clinics in areas where rugby is still largely unknown
• provide bursaries to rugby academies
• seek out and develop talent among the youngsters
• etc. etc.

Then at the world cup competition in 2015 (or maybe 2019) the South African team that runs out onto the pitch will boast more black players than white. They will have been selected on merit and they will be a national side the whole country can be proud of, a side that stands a chance of lifting the trophy yet again. Worthy of the golden springbok on a green field, worthy of the passionate support and loyalty that South African fans give their team. Worthy of the throaty cry "Amabokkebokke!!!!!!"

We tend to see the same approach being taken far too often in education, in corporate training. That's the wrong end. We need to lay the foundation while they're still young.

Or so I think, anyway.

One little mugging can ruin your whole week!

I have been on leave for a few days, during which I attended a non-work-related conference. In the back of my mind, there was a nice little post bubbling relating to non-work related formal learning. Then, last night, just as I arrived in Oxford for lectures, my elder son called me to tell me that my younger son had been mugged.

I can't for the life of me tell you what I had been planning to say about non-work related formal learning.

I can tell you how traumatised a 14 year old boy gets when someone approaches him to ask the time and for directions to the city centre, only to relieve him of his phone when he is kind enough to give his help.

I can also tell you how frustrating it is when the police don't keep their 9:30 appointment (they've rescheduled for 6pm tonight).

I can tell you how heartbreaking it is watching a boy trying to keep a brave face on things and pretending to be asleep when you stop by his room on your way to bed at midnight.

On the plus side, I can also tell you about the sense of relief one feels to realise that, had we still been in South Africa, my son might have been killed. By the time we left the country, a human life had become worth less than a mobile phone. Many is the person who has been killed for theirs, including the 25 year old son of a colleague - just 10 days before he was due to be married.

So apologies if I don't share the insights I gained into learning from a different angle. My mind is elsewhere, right now.

Giving thanks...

Since I have a lot of virtual contact with US citizens these days, the subject of Thanksgiving has loomed larger on my radar than has been the case in the past. So I decided to find out what it was about. I won't go into the back story, because you can get a better picture from wikipedia.

I have found that, whether or not you are an adherent of any faith, it provides a good sense of perspective if you occasionally count your blessings... and today seems as good a day as any.

So I challenge you to name one thing you're thankful for today - even if you're not a US citizen, even if you're a cynic. Put it on your blog, add it to your status on your facebook/myspace page, twitter it, tell someone at work, school or home, send someone a text message or an email. I'm leading a discussion group tonight, and will start by asking each person there to do the same. Whyever not?

As for me, I'm thankful for you.

Even if you've never heard of Karyn Romeis before. Even if this is the first time you've ever read anything of mine and you're so underwhelmed by it you're not going to bother coming back. You're here now, and I'm thankful for that. If you're a regular reader, I'm thankful for you, too. If you're a commenter, I'm especially thankful for you - for the contribution you make to my erratic learning journey.

Thanks.

The whole touch thing

In the past few days, a couple of things have happened that have made me wonder (not for the first time) if haven't gone a bit overboard in our attitude toward touch.

This was sparked off by a tongue-in-cheek email comparing school in 2007 (unfavourably) with school in 1957. While it (probably deliberately) overlooks such things as the utter mismanagement of learning difficulties/disabilities in 1957, it does... erm... touch on the issue of physical contact.

There is reference to the matter of corporal punishment, but those worms are staying in that can - I am not even going to go there.

That aside, there is this little gem:

Scenario: Johnny falls while running during recess and scrapes his knee. He is found crying by his teacher, Mary. Mary hugs him to comfort him.

1957 - In a short time, Johnny feels better and goes on playing.

2007 - Mary is accused of being a sexual predator and loses her job. She faces 3 years in State Prison. Johnny undergoes 5 years of therapy

I remember arguing with my classmates over whose turn it was to sit in the teacher's lap during story time. I remember being held in my teacher's arms as I was rushed to the doctor after I had fallen and split my lip clean through.

In 2000, I started a chess club at my children's primary school. On our very first afternoon, a thunderstorm coincided with the session. At the very first clap of thunder, one 5 year old girl squealed and dived at me. She thrust her head up under my jumper and would not move. She was quivering like a plucked guitar string. I supervised most of that session with a child-appendage. Towards the end of the session, the storm abated and my child-appendage detached itself and played a game of chess, just as another child in the group lost his third game in quick succession. He roared and turned the table over, narrowly avoiding injuring his opponent. I ordered him to sit quietly to one side for a moment. Once he appeared to have regained his equilibrium, I sat down in front of him, took his hands in mine and talked to him about self control and consideration for others. I wiped his copious nose on a tissue and set him a chess puzzle to solve.

After the session was over, the head teacher told me that I was never again to make this kind of physical contact with the children for fear of reprisals from parents. I was astonished.

At around the same time, I started a new job teaching basic IT skills to new users, most of whom were getting to, or well into, their silver years. Using the mouse was a new concept to them, and they made all the mistakes that crop up in stereotypical jokes... I mean ALL of them. We had a little game they could play to develop mouse control, but for one lady, it was just too alien. She was almost in tears as she turned to me and wailed "I just can't get it!" I did exactly what I would have done in my far-more-tactile homeland: I placed my hand over hers on the mouse so that she could learn the association between the movement of the mouse on the pad and the movement of the pointer on screen. She snatched her hand away as if she had been stung and shot me a look that could have split a diamond.

I have since learnt to accommodate the British reserve and now keep myself well and truly to myself, even though I sometimes have to sit on my hands to do so. Recently when a colleague was in floods of tears, I ached just to give her a hug and let her cry it out on my shoulder. Instead I found myself feeding her tea and platitudes. Bleagh!

Surely no touch at all is as harmful to the healthy development of the psyche as inappropriate touch?

A couple I once knew sponsored an ex-street child from a residential project called Highway Home in Cape Town. Edward had been alone on the street since the age of 5. The back of his head was bald. Christine and Mike used to take him to their home for one weekend a month, to accustom him to the concept of home and family. Early on, they realised that Edward was bald because of a peculiar habit of rolling his head from side to side repeatedly when he lay down to sleep. He was assessed for autism. Negative. A child psychologist decided that this was Edward's substitute for physical contact and affection, since he had never been cuddled. Fortunately, Mike and Christine were very demonstrative people. Whenever Edward came to stay, they lavished affection on him. They brought him with them to church and he would spend the whole meeting on their laps with their arms around him. Not only that, but association with their family and friends meant that he became accustomed to incidental touch, too.

He stopped rolling his head from side to side and his hair grew back. He finished high school. I lost contact with them after that, so I can't tell you what became of Edward. I know that one member of that first group went on to study law at university, but whether it was Edward or not, I can't say for sure.

I know that we're trying to protect children from predators, but are we not depriving them of a very real need? Is it just a cultural thing that makes me ache for a time when people... well, I dare not say "touched each other" because that has come to have unseemly connotations.

How sad.

What's in a name?

Scott Adams (of Dilbert fame)'s post about the extent to which your name determines your fate in life. Okay, so it's probably not wise to take anything that Adams says seriously (I can't believe how many people do - his comments are littered with people who seriously need to get out more), but it got me thinking anyway.

A long time ago I was going to be famous. And I was going to need a suitable name to go with that fame. While I was at drama school, I gave serious thought to what that name should be - I was a bit concerned about the possible impact of my indisputably Afrikaans surname.

Then I decided not to be famous anymore, so my name became a non-issue. Oddly, almost as soon as I decided not to be famous anymore, I was asked to present a series on national television. I was caught off-guard without a catchy name, so I went with the default: my own. Fortunately, my Afrikaans surname was not beyond the skill of my audience to pronouce since the programme was in Afrikaans!

However, I discovered that I had a hidden talent for being a dreadful television presenter, so decided to carry on not being famous. For many years, I succeeded at this. This was fortunate, because I went and traded in my Afrikaans surname for a German one courtesy of my Swedish husband (yeah, I know!). The problem is that my German surname is dangerously close to the Afrikaans word for ice cream. As a consequence, our business contacts (and even our friends) didn't bother trying to pronounce it correctly, they just opted for the convenient and familiar approximation. In fact, our friends usually referred to us as "the ice-creams". But this was okay, because I wasn't famous.

Then I started blogging.

Don't get me wrong, I'm still doing very well at the not-being-famous thing, but I find that my name is being spoken by a growing group of people with a variety of accents and mother tongues, and it's causing some problems. Even people who have heard me say it out loud for years and years don't get it right, so what chance is there for those who have only ever seen it in print? BTW - If you're interested in the correct pronunciation, I will add a piece on at the end of this post. In this space, I encounter names like Vicki Davis, Cammy Bean, Wendy Wickham, Doug Belshaw, Clark Quinn. No problem. Excellent names. Easy to pronounce - no surprises.

But I'm not the only one with problems. I used to have trouble with Mark Oehlert's surname, but had the opportunity to ask him during an online session, so now I've got that one sussed (it's A-lert, by the way). But I confess that I have no idea how to pronounce the surname of someone I've come to regard as a friend: how the heck do you say Jarche, anyway? Zhahsh? Zhah-shee? Jarr-chee? How do say Guhlin? Is Wegner pronounced Germanically as Vegner or is it anglicised with a W sound. Fortunately, I have the inside track on Eylan (EE-lan) Ezekiel, since I met him in person before I ever saw his name written down!

So, in case you care, my name is Karyn Romeis. CAR- inn row-MACE.

If I ever decide to stop not-being-famous, you have the definitive version!

If you can read this, you've been to elementary school

Thanks to Jeff Utecht (whose blog rates the same readability level as mine) for the pointer.

It seems that, in order to read this blog, you need at least an elementary school education. What the algorithm measures is not mentioned (the embedded link text comes complete with spam, which I have removed - cheap trick).



So let's suppose for a moment that this is an accurate reflection of this blog's readability. How do I feel about it?

Part of me is tickled pink that even a primary school child would be able to read and understand my posts. I like the mental image of an independent-minded 10 year old wanting to find out more about learning and coming across Karyn's erratic learning journey. I quite fancy encountering on my comment moderation page a contribution from a pre-teen. I suspect I would hit publish in a heartbeat and write a whole new post about how this kid has engaged with the conversation, and please will everybody make him/her feel welcome.

And yet...

Part of me is miffed at the poor estimation of my erudition (bite on that, you imaginary elementary school whipper snapper!). How am I ever supposed to engage with the likes of Downes, Cross, Snowden, Karrer, Siemens, etc. etc. when my writing aspires to no greater heights than can be scaled by a child barely past the learning-to-read stage?

As Mongkut (allegedly) said: Is a puzzlement...

Seamless networking

Last night, my son asked me to help him with his maths homework. He had to solve some simultaneous equations, and was struggling (his assertion in this post notwithstanding).

The first few had to be solved using the elimination method. Neither my husband nor I were familiar with this method, so the three of us looked it up in the Internet, then we sat together and applied the new knowledge to the problems. Note: we did not do his homework for him, but alternated between the roles of cheerleader and sideline coach.

The next few had to be solved using visualisation. I had never heard of this method, so was preparing to try the same site we had encountered before, when my son turned to his laptop which was beside him on the table. Via msn, he contacted a friend who could be relied upon to know all about it. I had to grin as the IMs from the friend took the form of xy graphs (charts) drawn using a mouse. Could you draw an x and a y axis complete with numbers using just a mouse... and keep it legible? Not only is there a new literacy, there's a new dexterity.

These two lads discussed the problems using the usual IM shorthand (interspersed with questions about girlfriends and such) and soon the penny dropped. At this point, my son dropped the msn conversation and began to use us as random number generators so that he could solve the remaining problems. It was just as well that nothing more demanding was required at this stage, since CSI Miami was on telly, and we had adopted the slack-jawed pose required to suspend credulity enough to be entertained by Horatio and his sunglasses-of-justice.

One of the elimination approach problems just would not resolve, however, and my son chose to leave it and discuss it with his teacher in class today. Ha! Long after he had gone to bed, several sheets of paper were passed back and forth as my husband and I tried to figure out where the mistake was. I hate not having the answer! Today, when he gets home from school, my son will be expected to explain the problem to me, so that I can put it to rest.

I summarised this incident on Dave Warlick's Social Networking for Teachers wiki, in response to his question about how learners use social networking today, compared with the way their teachers might.

Just think for a minute about the ebb and flow of networks and communities (both on and offline) who have been involved in, exposed to or influenced by this one single incident in the learning journey of a 14 year old boy.

Doesn't it just rock?

Is it possible to self-diagnose a brain condition?

I am so excited as to be almost incoherent. I finally got around to watching Vilayanur Ramachandran's presentation to TED. It's been sitting on my computer desktop waiting for me to get around to it for weeks on end.

His talk is fascinating, engaging and accessible enough for a numpty like me to be able to keep pace. I was riveted from the outset.

Then he started talking about synaesthesia and a light went on in my head. Now I know that we are essentially self-involved beings - some of us more so than others. I know that there is a real danger of psychosomatically diagnosing ourselves with every condition we learn about. Student doctors, psychologists and psychiatrists are often warned against this as they embark on the diagnostics sections of their study programmes.

And yet...

I know that taste is as much about the olfactory sense as about taste buds, we learned that much at school. So when I say I don't like goat's cheese because it tastes like the smell of goat, don't look at me like that - there's a good anatomical explanation for it.

But the first time I tasted beansprouts, I announced that they tasted like green. This provoked much hilarity. I was informed that I was daft. My case was not helped when I retorted, "Well, what colour do you think it tastes like, then?" I was in my late teens/early twenties at the time, and it was my first inkling that other people didn't associate tastes and smells with colours.

In his talk Ramachandran doesn't refer to tastes and smells being cross-linked with sight. He mentions numbers and musical notes, and the tendency of some people to see these in terms of colours. So perhaps the areas of the brain involved in processing tastes/smells and colours are too far from each other for cross-wiring and perhaps I am just daft.

However, he did indicate that synaesthetes have enormous proclivity for metaphorical/allegorical thought. All my life I have thought in analogies and talked in allegories. And that's not just my take on it - it has been remarked upon by countless people at various points along the way - most recently by one of my lecturers on Monday. It has always been the strongest tool in my teaching toolkit and the factor from which my writing has benefited most. Read back through my past few posts and see for yourself if I'm wrong!

So maybe I'm just falling victim to a self inflicted instance of the Forer effect here, but without fuss or fanfare, it felt as if a piece of the puzzle of my anomalous brain function slipped quietly into place, so (needless to say) I hope not.

When it goes right

I don't usually pick my children up from school. After all, I work full time and they are teenagers. However, yesterday I was working at home and, at around about the end of the school day, the wind suddenly began to blow a gale and the rain came down in stinging torrents. I took pity and went to collect my younger son (the older one had a catch up class). Just as well, because, when I got there, one of his current tormentors was circling like a shark (how does a child get to have such empty eyes at only thirteen?)

In the car on the short journey home, we were chatting about bullies and what makes them become bullies when, suddenly my son volunteered, "Maths was so cool today!" When I asked him why, he said, "I learnt something."

He then launched into an impassioned explanation about the three different ways he knew to solve simultaneous equations (elimination, transposition and a third one I now can't remember). He said that, of the three, two were dead easy but he couldn't figure out transposition. Since that was my preferred method of solving them when I was at school, there followed a discussion about the merits or otherwise of each method. It was brief, but we really connected.

When your daily questions about how school was are met with variations of "meh," it can become a little wearing. To get anything more detailed than that I have to ask targeted questions about certain pieces of homework or specific issues. So this was like a breath of fresh air. For once, my son could see what it is about learning that lights my fire.

It was just a small hiatus before we each delved back into the things we had to do, and I don't think he even begins to know how profoundly it touched me, but I could have walked on air.

Dissertation other colours

Apologies for the title - its a rather trite reference to my post called Dissertation blues, and it serves as a sequel/rebuttal. To be honest, this post belongs more on my Ardent Student blog, but the edublogs server seems to be out to lunch today and I need to get this done so that I can move on with other stuff, so here goes:

I attended my first meeting with my dissertation supervisor on Monday. We had two items to discuss, since he is also my tutor for an independent studies module. The first discussion went fairly seamlessly - especially since he advised me not to get too hung up on the whole peer-reviewed reference thing, that professional journals would do just as well (terms and conditions apply).

Having got the independent studies module out of the way, we turned our attention to the dissertation. I explained what I was hoping to cover, we discussed the question that would form the title of the work and then I dropped my bombshell. I mentioned that I was hoping to submit the dissertation in the form of a wiki.

His initial response was a head-in-hands "Gordon Bennett!" (which, for those outside the UK, is a substitute expletive/blasphemy along the lines of "jumpin' Jehosaphat"). His recovery was pretty immediate, to give him his due. He explained, holding a up a beautifully hardbound A4 book with gold lettering, that "this" was what the university tended to want.

I opened my mouth, but he stalled me with, "However..."

I had been thinking about this for some time and had all my reasons, arguments and justifications backed up in an assembly line, ready to be trotted out. As it turned out, most of them were unnecessary, he was tasting the idea and developing a liking for it.

His thinking out loud went something like this:

You're going to be writing about the use of social media, so it makes sense to use social media. After all, if you were getting an MA in art, you might present a sculpture, or in music, you might perform an original composition. Why should everything always be vanilla? No. We are aiming to accommodate a wider range of student submissions. Why shouldn't you be allowed to submit something that works for you? This makes sense.

Since he would be one of the people marking it, we knew that the skills existed in-house and we could think of another person with the skills to be the second marker.

We discussed the fact that a wiki is by definition a community project and an MA dissertation is most decidedly an individual effort. Potentially, what I will have to do is submit as the dissertation what would be the straw man for a wiki. Who knows, once it's submitted, I might throw it open and make it a proper wiki...

Anyhoo, I left the meeting feeling far more positive than I had expected. Of course, because it represents such a break with tradition for the university, he is going to have to seek advice/approval on the matter, but, by the end, he seemed as positive about the idea as he had initially been negative. At least he didn't turn me down out of hand, and I feel confident that he will fight my corner.

One thing I know: if I am to be the guinea pig, I had better submit a kick-*ss dissertation or the naysayers in the faculty will have grist for the "I told you so" mill and poor John's butt will be in a sling.

And I have to work out the hows, wheres and whys of hosting. Public domain is a must, but the university needs to have unfettered access. And what do I do to guarantee against the host server crashing or the piece getting corrupted?

What have I let myself in for? My brain hurts!

Make it worth the effort!

Warning: this is another analogous ramble.

On Saturday morning, my post included a slip saying that there was an item waiting for me at the post office depot. It couldn't be delivered because postage hadn't been paid and an amount of £1.20 was owing.

There were various things I could do. I could go to the post office during the listed hours and collect the item. I could phone and make arrangements for redelivery. I could affix the required stamps to the notification post card and pop it in the mail, and the item would be duly delivered.

I was expecting one or two things I'd bought off eBay and two of Ricardo Semler's books bought through Amazon. Hmm. Which could it be and why would the seller not pay the postage?

I decided to phone and see if the depot could help me narrow it down so that I could decide how to handle the matter.

They didn't answer their phone. I tried several times during the course of my very busy Saturday and Monday.

Resignedly, I made the trip to the depot yesterday (Monday) evening. By this time I had received all my eBay purchases, so that left only the Semler books. I was prepared to cough up £1.20 to get one of those, but would certainly give the seller a piece of my mind!

The clerk duly produced a rather fat looking A4 envelope from a shelf.

Okay, so it wasn't a book. What could it be?

The clerk laid the envelope down on the counter. It was addressed to The Occupier.

The Occupier? Someone who can't even be bothered to find out my name has posted something to me, and I'm expected to cough up for the postage?

I asked the clerk if I could just refuse.

I could. I did.

As I drove home, muttering at the wasted time and expense, it occurred to me that I ought to guard against the same thing in my learning provision.

• Do I make my learning resources easy to get to, or are there hoops that my poor learners have to jump through to get at them?
• Do all the means of access actually work, or are some them dead ends?
• When they get at the material, is it relevant to them or is it bland and impersonal?
• Do they get what they came for or go away empty-handed?
• Will they feel that it was worth the time they spent on it or will they be resentfully thinking about all the other things they might have been doing?

As I've said before - terminally analogous, that's me!

With no further ado...

This video speaks entirely for itself.

There's a great, gaping hole!

There's a hole in the market, dear Liza, dear Liza.

As those of you who follow me on Facebook will have noticed from my recent status updates, we are househunting. We have outgrown our current house to the extent that our older son is currently occupying the conservatory. The conservatory is single-glazed glass, including the roof. It is autumn and he already has to have a heater on in there full time. I shudder to think what it's doing to our carbon footprint. Come midwinter, the conservatory will get colder than the inside of our fridge. We will have to get a more powerful heater and an electric blanket and will probably push our carbon footprint into the stratosphere! They may even name a hole in the ozone layer after us.

But I digress.

Property in England in expensive - especially in some key areas, one of them being the "commuter belt" - the area within an hour's train ride to London. Since my husband works in London (for an organisation that does not countenance telecommuting), we are compelled to live in this zone.

My search has revealed that it is possible to get a small 3 bedroomed house for around £160K about 20 miles away (closer to home, it looks more like £180K). I don't want a small 3-bedroomed house. I want a house with three decent sized bedrooms and a space to serve as a study/home office. I also insist on a garage so that my husband's ice hockey kit need never venture indoors (trust me - the area within smelling distance of an ice hockey player's extensive protective wear is not fit for human - or any - habitation!)

It seems these don't exist.

I tracked down a new development boasting 2, 3, 4 and 5 bedroomed houses. The two bedroomed houses go for £140K. The 3 bedroomed houses go for £160K. The 4 bedroom option for £260K. The...

Pause. Rewind.

WHAT?

You're kidding me, right? £160K to £260K in a single bound? What happened to all the perfectly useful numbers inbetween? Numbers like £180,756.24 or £201,743.68.

£100K for one bedroom?

Ah. But it's not just one bedroom. The 3-bedroomed house has a combined lounge/diner, only one bathroom and no additional space to have a study. And the bedrooms are small - especially the 3rd one, which will never house a teenage boy, his computer and three guitars. When you have two sons, you don't feel right about putting one into a bedroom that is half the size of the other's.

The 4-bedroomed house has a separate dining room. It may even have a utility room. It has three double sized bedrooms, two bathrooms (plus the downstairs loo), and a small room you can use as a study. At £260K, one would also hope that it has the capacity to clean itself and cook your dinner, but alas...

So instead of making a gradual climb up the property ladder, we find ourself faced with a monumental leap past what appears to be several missing rungs.

With my terminally allegorical, analogous bent, I find myself wondering whether I do this to my learners. I certainly see teenagers grappling with this kind of leap as they face the gear change from GCSEs to A levels. Am I guilty of the same? Do I design resources that make the switch from facile to PhD with an airy wave of the mouse?

I shall have to look into this! If my own reaction to the housing situation is anything to go by, I could be responsible for severe stress, insomnia and potential heart failure in my learners.

We can't have that!

The beta generation

When we are developing learning solutions for clients, we have a process that we follow. Once a project has been scoped and the contracts signed, we draw up architecture and design documents and start to mock up the solution. We do this in stages with sign-off at the end of every stage. Alpha. Beta. Gold.

While the process is restrictive, it is also necessary to prevent "scope creep". We will have quoted our clients on the delivery of a specific product, and entered into a contract to that effect. As the project progresses, there is a very strong chance that one of the stakeholders (or one of us) will have a brilliant idea that has the potential to transform the solution. Or the client will suddenly realise that a particular issue wasn't mentioned at the time of scoping, but is critical to the issue at hand. Unless the client-side sponsor is prepared to completely re-evaluate the budget for the project, it may be impossible to implement said brilliant idea, and there will almost certainly be an additional cost involved in expanding the brief to include the overlooked issue.

I totally understand the drivers behind this. We can't work to an ever shifting brief off a fixed budget. That's what the scoping document and change control process are there for.

Sadly, we now live in a different world, where it is not just the epiphany that has the potential to upset the apple cart. Allow me to elaborate.

I have been working with a client on and off for about two years on a transformation project. My role is to design the learning solution to support the client side staff members through the transformation process. The problem is that the transformation process keeps, well, transforming. We never seem to reach a point where the processes are robust enough to warrant spending money developing a learning solution to support it. We seem to be burning budget just keeping up with the changing process, without ever getting as far as building the solution. Every now and then, the client will call us in, thinking that the time has come to start developing the learning solution. Then, in the course of the discussion, it will become evident that this or that area of the process has yet to be finalised, or an issue comes to light that no-one had even considered before, so we will be put on hold while these matters are addressed.

And while all these changes are going on, the staff members are speculating and no-one is quite certain where everything is going and what the medium-to-long term implications are for them as individuals. This has happened more than once, with different clients. On a previous occasion, the project simply fizzled out.

It puts me in mind of all those analogies we use about life being what happens while we're waiting for something else, or about children learning as much from their parents' unguarded moments as they do from those that are intended to be informative. It seems to me the time has come to develop a business model for a permanently beta learning solution for a permanently beta transformation process, because these seem to be increasingly the norm.

If we wait for the processes to be firmed up before we deliver a learning solution, we may never deliver the solution and, in the meantime, the staff are wondering what the heck is going on and why no-one ever tells them anything. In extreme situations, they may even get the impression they are deliberately being kept in the dark.

So how will this model look? Maybe it will have to look more like an SLA and less like a fixed contract. Or perhaps there needs to be less initial solutioneering and more on-the-fly stuff developed on a time-and-materials basis.

Looking ahead, (I think) I see an increased need for fleetness of foot and handbrake turns. And my opinion is that, not only will/should this influence the nature of the learning solutions put in place for staff. It should also influence management styles. Keeping everything close to your chest until you have "something definite" to tell your staff may see you never speaking to your staff again!

Those with more commercial nous than I have tend to groan at my naievete on this point, but I can't see how we are going to successfully navigate our way through the murky waters of permanent beta unless we are open, honest and transparent about it.

So that was me, thinking aloud. What do you reckon?

Edublog 2007 Awards

Josie Fraser has been letting us know via Facebook, her blog and Twitter - to name but a few ;-) - that it is once again that time of year. In an exciting development, the award ceremony will take place in Second Life this year (on Saturday 8 December), so if you're planning to attend, you will need to create an SL account.

Head on over to the nominations page and make your views known about the edublogs you read. There is a whole raft of new categories this year, as well as the old faithfuls, so get your thinking cap on about who you might nominate for:

1. Best individual blog
2. Best group blog
3. Best new blog
4. Best resource sharing blog
5. Best designed blog
6. Most influential blog post
7. Best blogged research paper or project
8. Best teacher blog
9. Best higher-education student blog
10. Best librarian / library blog
11 .Best educational tech support blog
12. Best elearning / corporate education blog
13. Best educational use of audio
14. Best educational use of video / visual
15. Best educational wiki
16. Best educational use of a social networking service
17. Best educational use of a virtual world
18. Best educational use of open source
19. Digizen’s 13-19 competition
20. Conveners award

Cry yet again the beloved country!

If you're a reggae music fan, you will already know the name of Lucky Dube (pronounced DOO-beh). If you're not, let me explain that this is a South African reggae musician whose name has often been mentioned in the same breath as Bob Marley. See here for a sample of his music.

Last night he was murdered in Johannesburg.

Was he murdered by someone with a score to settle? Was he targetted by someone with an axe to grind? Was it a political thing? Was it motivated by the same sort of factors as Lennon's murder?

No, this icon was shot dead by three would be hijackers as he was dropping off his children in one of the southern suburbs of the city. He was younger than I am, and his children - who witnessed the incident - were roughly the same ages as mine. Somehow the fact that the attack was impersonal makes it even worse, although I would be hard pressed to explain why.

When I heard the news report on the radio, I groaned in wordless anguish from deep in my gut. And my grief was for more than just the loss of a great musician, an icon and a human being. I wish I could put into words the emotions that are swirling in my innards right now.

I so desperately want to be proved wrong about South Africa. I so long for the reasons we left to be be proved groundless.

But things like this keep happening.

And the beloved country keeps crying.

So much so, that Anne Paton the widow of Alan Paton (author of Cry, the Beloved Country) has chosen to leave, holding out no hope for the future of a country so desperately in need of hope.

Tomorrow the South African rugby team faces England in the final of the world cup tournament taking place in France. It will be more than just my love of the game and my abiding loyalty to the 'boks that will see me longing with every fibre of my being for a South African victory.

I apologise if I'm being a bit obscure and somewhat inarticulate. Forgive me if I resort to cheesiness for a moment and thank you for being there for me to unload my incoherent jumble of thoughts on today. I promise to be in better form soon!

Nkosi, sikelel' iAfrika;
Malupakam'upondo lwayo;
Yiva imitandazo yetu
Usisikelele.

Facebook - couldn't resist!

How DOES she do it?

I get a lot of questions about how I do what I do during the course of a day. The most recent of these is inferred in this post from Doug Belshaw, which also includes a challenge to me to do a "life in the day" (no - that's not a typo) type video of the same sort as he has done. I'll get around to that eventually, although I would like to warn readers that I'm nowhere near as technically skilled as Doug is.

I won't steal my own thunder by laying out my daily timetable here, but I thought I would reveal some of the timesaving devices I have in place.

Email alerts and aggregators
I seldom go looking for the material I read. It comes to me. A combination of my aggregator and email alerts keeps me in the loop whenever there has been an addition to any of the myriad conversations I follow.

Internet shopping
I buy the groceries (and a whole lot else besides) online. It takes me less than half an hour to do the week's grocery shopping and then a wonderful person comes and delivers it to my door within a two hour slot of my choosing. Thanks to my nagging, the delivery is (almost) carrier bag free, btu such carrier bags as they are get whisked away the following week by said wonderful person. The online service I use keeps track of everything I buy in their store or online, and stores it in a list of "my favourites", making it even more convenient. I am also notified if there is a special offer on any of the products I usually buy. There is a small cost for the delivery service, but I calculate that it is far less than the cumulative costs of my time, my fuel and the extras I would buy while strolling the aisles.

Cleaning service
At enormous expense, I have a weekly cleaning service for the house. When I worked freelance, I made sure I always kept the workload light enough to allow time for my children and the housework. When the kids were well established at school and I went back to work full time, the load of housework got spread across the family - all four of us pitching in. Gradually, as they got older and I took on extra activities, my sons were taking on more and more of the load around the house (and not with any great skill or enthusiasm, it has to be said). Then their own lives became too full: guitar lessons, sport, paper rounds, and we found ourselves spending our precious weekends doing the housework. We decided to splurge on a cleaning service. I'm too embarrassed to tell you what a dent it makes in the family coffers, but it frees up th
eir weekends to spend socialising and ours to do run other errands. Occasionally we might even get to do something together as a family ;-)

Multitasking
I keep Twitter open in the background all the time I am working and take mental breaks from my work to catch up every hour or so. I might do the same with a blog post I'm working on (such as this one) - adding to it every now and again when I need to come up from under on a task. I never just watch TV. I do so while doing the ironing or working online.

Superficiality
I have all the depth of a pondskater, and am usually moving on to the next thing before I've finished this one. I am incapable of tranquility unless I am halfway up a mountain far from civilisation with nothing but nature filling up my every sense. I tend to skim read the posts in my aggregator. If they delve too deeply or get too technical, I either abandon them or mark them for later consumption when I am able to focus my scant attention on them.

Sleep
What's that? In Doug's video, we see him rising at 6am and back in bed by 10pm. I wish. I get very little sleep. I'm seldom in bed before midnight. I make up for it by getting up at 11am on Saturdays.

Exercise
I used to exercise 4 times a week, including training with the local masters' swimming club. Since starting my Masters' degree, masters' swimming has gone by the board and my thrice weekly workout sessions are no more than a pipe dream. I promise myself that I will return to it the moment I have submitted my dissertation.

Convenience food
I hate ready meals and I am very suspicious of what they contain. Usually I cook proper meals from scratch. However, on Tuesday nights I have lectures and no-one else has the time to cook, so that's what's on offer. On Friday nights we might grab a takeaway. The kids call it chip night, since it's the only night of the week they ever get to eat genuine junk food. Once my Masters' is behind me, Tuesday nights will once more see the my family eating home cooked food, but I don't think I will be able to wean my family off chip night!

Telecommuting
Once or twice a week, I work from home, which saves me a total of over 3 hours of travel time per week.

Social life
I don't have one. Apart from my husband and sons, all my friendships are now conducted online. We have not formed any meaningful social relationships since moving to the UK eight years ago. There is no way I would ever have had the time to do what I do online if we were still living in South Africa where our lives were filled to overflowing with "people with skin on". Thankfully, the wonderful world of web 2.0 has enabled us to stay in touch with friends and family in the far flung places in the world or we would have withered away long since.

There are a few other minor things, but I will leave those for the video project.

LOLCAT moment

Mark Oehlert has recently discovered lolcats and his delight has reawakened mine. So, with absolutely no pretence at relevance to learning, here's my favourite lolcat for today...

more funny pictures

What kind of fool, sorry BLOGGER am I?

Rats, now I've got Shirley Bassey going in my head! The link will take you to a page with a sampler of the song so you can have it stuck in your head, too ;-)

Thanks to Harold for the link to this widget:

Queensberry rules?

In the two-and-a-bit years that I've been blogging, I have had occasion to visit purely soapbox type blogs, where people have set forth their strongly held views on some or other topic, only to come in for a fair amount of vitriol from readers. It seems there is this whole sector of the blogosphere just spoiling for a fight, and it can get really ugly, petulant and personal.

I have always returned from these forays grateful for the civilised nature of the bloggers in my neck of the cyberwoods. We don't always agree, but it always seemed that we had our eye on the ball and our end goal was the quest for knowledge, for improved learning provision.

I have posted comments disagreeing with the views expressed by various bloggers and they have responded with their views. Similarly, there have been disagreeing comments posted on some of my posts, with the same result. We have continued to disagree, but it has all been polite and mutually respectful. Some of them have gone on to become Facebook friends, Twitter friends, LinkedIn connections and people I would like to meet in person, should the opportunity ever arise. I have found the whole experience enriching, empowering and informative.

But that seems to be changing. Either that, or my veil of illusion is being stripped away.

A while ago, Donald Taylor made an appeal for evenhandedness in our responses to a controversial issue. I thought it was a little odd at the time, since I hadn't seen much evidence of anything else. Since then, I have spotted an occasional foray into character assassination that has sat very uncomfortably. This weekend one post in particular seemed to generate a debate that involved personal insults from rather surprising quarters.

I feel led back to the point I was making in this post about "the gatekeepers of truth".

I would just like to point out, be it ever so humbly, that even the wisest and most learned among us are looking at the world through the skewed perspective of what (we think) we know. There is just so much information out there that we don't have or that we haven't taken into account because we didn't realise it was relevant. No one person has the complete picture - omniscience has thus far eluded mankind (as far as I know!). So how can any one person categorically state one thing and resort to namecalling against those who dare to disagree?

For those who are hoping to find links to the "offending" posts or individuals - sorry, I don't work like that. But I would like to raise my ineffectual little voice in feeble protest... as either Dean Shareski or Darren Kuropatwa recently pleaded on Twitter: why can't we all just get along?

Please, please, my highly respected, valued community... can we be gentlemanly about this?

Dissertation blues

Edited version: see comments below.

I don't set out to be a rebel, honest! Yet all my life I've been branded as one, which leaves me in a semi-permanent state of bemusement. I see rebellion as a deliberate rejection of authority. That's not me - I don't spend enough time thinking about power structures and such like to be a rebel.

Instead, I tend to make choices based on circumstance, only to find out fairly often that my chosen course of action is unacceptable. It's at this point that I push back. Why isn't it acceptable? And don't tell me: "because I say so" or "because this is the way it's always been done". Not good enough. Oddly for someone with traditional values, I don't observe tradition for tradition's sake. As a trite example, I don't do either turkey or Christmas pudding at Christmas - look, if I'm going to spend that long in the kitchen, we're flipping well going to have something that we really like at the end of it! If you can't give me a good reason for doing a thing a certain way, then excuse me while I do it the way that makes sense to me.

I've been accused of intransigence, but I reckon that's the refuge of people who can't come up with a plausible explanation for what they want me to do.

So last night I once again found myself on the wrong side of the fence. It was our first dissertation workshop and (of course) I was flying in the face of convention.

I am planning to do an action research project based on the difference that the use of social media has made to my professional practice as a learner and a learning provider - terribly subjective, I know! I didn't embark on the social media road with a view to writing a dissertation about it, but it has proved such an interesting and topical journey. I thought I could also add some narratives from the members of my various communities (that means you, by the way, so be prepared to be called upon to contribute). I'm struggling to come up with some ideas for the inclusion of at least one quantitative data model that won't completely hijack the dissertation (suggestions welcome).

Anyhoo, I had thought that the dissertation itself should be an example of what it sets out to relate. So I would like to publish it primarily as a wiki, keeping it transparent from the get go and opening it to members of my various online communities to comment on and contribute to. I would like to use links where possible (begrudgingly in addition to Harvard referencing, since this is a stated requirement for all submissions). I would also like to embed some Youtube videos such as this one:

If I had my way, it would be only a wiki, but I have to submit a printed version, too - so then the challenge is whether I completely rewrite the thing so that it works better as a flat document, or submit a printed version of the wiki. I also have to think about the issue of authorship - for a book, it's one thing to have co-authors, but for a dissertation?

Since writing that last sentence, I have had a conversation with my colleague Mark Berthelemy who gently (he doesn't have another mode) reminded me that, if I want this institution to award me a Master's degree, I'm going to have to make sure I submit something that they have the skills to assess, which limits my options severely.

I'm simultaneously grateful and petulant that I have friends like that!

Trends and innovations in corporate learning: online conference

George Siemens is about to do it again... host an online conference, that is. This time he has assembled a line up of speakers familiar with the constraints of corporate learning such as:

• Tony Karrer
• Dave Snowden
• Jay Cross
• Rebecca Stromeyer
• Richard Straub
  
• Clark Quinn
• Steve Mahaley
• Gaurav Rastogi and Jai Ganesh
• Roger Larsen
• Donald H. Taylor
• Janet Clarey
• David Wilson
• Rae Tanner
• Bill Bruck
• George Siemens

It will run from 15-20 November, but I suggest you get in early to make sure of a place. The conference is free, but you will need to register. Once you have done so, you gain access to the wiki which will become an integral part of the conference, as well as providing a form of back chanel.

If previous conferences have been anything to go by, it will be well attending, even for those whose timezone makes it inconvenient.

Okay, this is just TOO cool

Thanks to Dave Snowden for the pointer to this post. It's one of those things that just makes chemistry jump up and smack you between the eyes with how exciting it is!

I watched the embedded video clips while while also watching the South Africa v Fiji rugby quarter final, and totally annoyed my family by shrieking delightedly and clapping my hands while nothing of note was happening on the rugby field.

Why can't learning always be like this: a joyful romp of discovery?

And notice how much fun the "teacher" is having, too. It reminds me how within days of moving to Cape Town in 1987, I met my husband who took it upon himself to show me the sights. He knew them very well, but they came alive for him all over again as he saw them through my eyes. Every new batch of learners should do that for us, should reawaken the delight that made us decide to become learning providers of whatever description.

Managing expectations

The recent catalogue of mismanaged expectations around my husband's eye surgery have reminded me how important it is that people know what they're in for before they embark on something.

Even when a learning event is mandatory and people don't have the option to back out, we can't be cavalier with their time. They need to know how much time they're going to have to invest and what the impact is going to be on their lives.

We knew that this op was necessary. We also knew that it was delicate. What we didn't know was the level of post-operative care that was necessary.

We didn't know that knew he wouldn't be to go to work for two weeks.

We didn't know that he would be expected to hold certain positions for days on end (called posturing), or that there are aids that can be hired to assist with this.

We didn't know that I would have to be on hand four times a day for two weeks, to apply ointment and drops. (Even under normal circumstances, like many people, he is unable to keep his eye open to apply drops. These circumstances are not normal. For a start, the eye is swollen shut.) The fact that I have a full time job seems not to have been factored into the equation.

Of course I don't resent having to take care of him, I don't even resent having to do stuff that makes me feel really queasy. What I resent is that no-one saw fit to LET ME KNOW!

I feel unprepared and... I guess... used, taken for granted.

Learning isn't surgery. I know that. But people's time matters to them just the same. They have commitments, they have lives, they have families. They need to know exactly what is expected of them so that that they can plan and make informed decisions. It is not up to us as the providers of the learning to make assumptions on their behalf.

When I started my MA programme a year ago, our course leader asked a guy at the other end of the programme - just about to submit his dissertation - to come in and talk to us. To tell us what he wished he had known when he embarked on the course, and to share his experience and hard earned wisdom. This was the single most useful session of the first semester and it had the effect of making me feel respected and valued.

Concentration is a timid creature

Today is a normal working day for me... supposedly.

However, my husband is in hospital, having had surgery on his eye yesterday. After the coffee klatsch in the morning, I went to the office and was so useless to man or beast that my colleagues ordered me home.

This morning, I was due to fetch my husband from the hospital at 11am, but they had advised me to phone ahead at 10am to check. This I did, only to be told that the doctor wanted to re-evaluate him at noon. Of course, no-one saw fit to tell me why. They might have told my husband, but he is very squeamish, and is likely to have stuck his fingers in his ears and "lala-ed" loudly, so I'm none the wiser.

How much work do you think I'm doing as I wait for noon to roll around? You guessed it! Not a stitch. My attention is elsewhere, and I can't muster together enough brain cells to focus on anything much.

Having grown up in Africa, I'm familiar with the rules when gamespotting: if you go out there making a racket, you'll see nothing. Some of the bolder creatures might be spotted if the circumstances are less than ideal, but if you want to see the timid ones, you have to have the right set of circumstances. Preferably in the dry season, at sunrise or sunset, if you take your place in a hide at a water hole and keep dead quiet, you will see the timid creatures of the wild come down to drink.

Right now, inside my head, it's the wet season and there's a heck of a racket going on. The timid creatures of my mind are nowhere to be seen. The waterhole is deserted!

There are those who would call me lacking in self discipline. They might be right. But my husband is more important to me than my job, and so the motivation isn't there to override my jumbled emotions. I am very much a heart-led person.

How about your learners? How many of them are heart-led? How many of them are struggling to marshall their thoughts in the face of something that matters much more to them right now than the stuff they're supposed to be learning?

Picture: JW Blonk

School of everything

I went to a coffee klatsch this morning with the Creative Coffee Club where I met Andy Roberts in the flesh for the first time after being connected through facebook, twitter, blogs and Ning (at least, I think we're connected via Ning, too - it's kind of hard to keep track).

Anyhoo, among all the other interesting people I met - people whose names I have encountered before online - was Mary Harrington (what - no blog, Mary?) of the recently launched School of Everything. The name pretty much explains it, but head on over and have a look for yourself. You are encouraged to make use of the little link in the top right hand corner of their home page to make your views known.

I can think of several people I know from this space who ought to be adding themselves to the "teaching staff", but I shall forebear from naming names ;-)

Getting the front end right

Confession time: I started my career on the stage. To my cost, I discovered that being a talented performer and actually being tough enough to make a go of life as a professional performer were two very different things! I kind of drifted into training, which later transmogrified into learning... and I'm really glad I did, because here I am 20 years later in exactly the right field for me.

Anyhoo, the drama training influenced my career in so many ways. Quite apart from the ability to speak clearly and audibly, to connect with the "audience", and to get comedic timing right when using humour, there was the little matter of presentation:

Anybody arriving at one of my f2f end-user training sessions would find the venue spotless. Every monitor clean, high quality learning materials neatly lined up in exactly the same relative position at every workstation, together with pen, notepaper and a (blank) desk nameplate. Coffee and tea at the back of the room, with the cups (all the same size, and in the organisation's brand colours) neatly arranged. When the session started, all the machines were loaded with the files needed for the practical exercises. In the early days, a flip chart displayed my name and the course name - in my very best approximation of calligraphy. Later, this was replaced by a plasma screen which looped a presentation about these and other logistical details.

Before the delegates arrived, I ran around like a headless chicken, getting everything set up just so, testing the machines, loading the files, filling the urn, straightening everything up. It was like the preshow prep.

One thing that was hammered into us at drama school was that the audience never got to see into the wings - it broke the illusion to catch glimpses of the real world. The example was used of a swan: so beautiful and elegant, gliding along the surface of the lake... not so beautiful or elegant if you got to see the swan from underneath, where the legs were frantically churning. The audience should only ever see the swan from above, dahlings!

Don't get me wrong - I'm well aware that there are higher priorities (and I wasn't trying to con my learners) but it seemed like such a small thing to do to to create a positive and welcoming environment. I have tried to carry that over into the solutions I design - adding those little thoughtful touches that make a user feel welcome and inspire confidence in the resource.

I see it as a form of good customer service.

Of course, once you've done all that, you've then got to live up to the tacit promise you've made....

Vicki Davis: Burmese hunting down bloggers

Some years ago, I was trying to persuade a friend of mine to recycle, rather than just chucking everything (including glass bottles) into the bin. She was quite off-hand and asked, "What difference does it make? I'm only one person." My response was, "Name someone who isn't!"

When I read Vicki's heartfelt rallying cry on behalf of the persecuted bloggers of Burma - drawing attention to this post from Marshall Kirkpatrick - my first thought was "What difference can I make? I'm only one person." But then, so are you, and so is everyone else. I'm not sure if the addition of my voice will make any difference, but it is all I have.

Summative assessment - rugby style!

As those who follow me on Twitter will be painfully aware, our house is full of rugby at the moment, due to the fact that world cup is currently taking place in France. The quarter final round is about to begin and South Africa looks set (on paper, at least) to go all the way to the finals. Now before you North American types assume that this competition doesn't involve you, I would like to point out that both the USA and Canada have teams in the competition. Unfortunately both have been knocked out at the group stage, but still...

I have been a rugby fan for as long as I can remember. My father and grandfather both played the game well, and my maiden name was at one stage synonymous with the sport, since an assortment of second cousins x times removed featured prominently in the national team.

So where am I going with this?

During this competition, I have been struck again by the role of the referee in a rugby match. In no other sport that I can think of, does the ref behave in quite the same way. You see, rugby refs (in national and international matches) are miked up so that the television audience can hear what they're saying... and they say an awful lot.

Quite apart from explaining infractions when they have blown their whistle, they also call out things like "Hands off, blue!" "Watch your distance, green!" Constantly making input into the way the game is being played and ensuring that the teams observe the rules and the flow of the game is interrupted as little as possible. To be honest, it is almost as if he's coaching them... but this is a world cup match! And instead of just penalising the infractions, the ref is involved in minimising stoppages. Another way he does this is to "play advantage" - this means, if an infraction is made against a team, but that team maintains possession of the ball, the ref will let the game go on. If possession is quickly turned back over to the offending side, he will then impose the penalty for that infraction. He always indicates when he is playing advantage so both sides know the deal.

It got me to thinking about the extent to which we could apply this approach to situations in which we normally apply summative assessments in learning. An assessment that followed this approach is far more likely to be seen as formative, and yet, here is the rugby world cup being awarded only once every 4 years on the basis of a series of "formative" assessments.

Hmm. I wonder...