Xtranormal - what fun!

Here's a free tool you can use to put together some quick animated movies. It looks pretty straightforward and rather fun. I can think of umpteen uses for it, both in schools and in business.

Enough is enough!

Just no. The line was overstepped a long time ago. How on earth did it come to this? An English borough council has banned parents from overseeing their own children in play areas because they have not been vetted by the criminal records bureau. The parents now have to remain outside of a fenced off area, while their children are supervised by council appointees.

C'mon people! These are our children! When did the State get this much clout?

Talking about ethics...

Now that my major project is complete, I am treating myself to a bit of fiction. I started off with absolute pulp and have still not taken on anything particularly challenging. Or so I thought.

The book I am currently reading - My Sister's Keeper - has been made into a movie, so my sons recognised the title. They asked me what it was about, and this was when the fun began.

Because it's about a girl suing her parents for medical emancipation. A girl who was conceived to provide her leukemic elder sister with a matching donor. When the book opens, the elder sister has begun to experience kidney failure and wheels have been set in motion to give her one of her younger sister's kidneys.

But no-one ever asked her.

From the start of her life, she has been seen as the source of everything her sister needs, and she has never had a say in it. If she refuses to give her sister a kidney, the sister will die.

So now we have conversations about ethics and human rights and duties and responsibilities and all that stuff in our house.

It isn't easy, but I highly recommend it. The conversation is stimulating. My kids are being forced to think long and hard, and to frame their arguments cogently. For them, it's black and white. So I have been playing devil's advocate - "What if...", "What about..."

It makes a change from results-oriented thinking where only one answer is correct, and I believe it's done them the world of good. Perhaps they should debate this kind of thing in their 'learning to learn' sessions at school!

Inaugural lecture: Jonathan Jansen

The first black Vice Chancellor of the University of the Free State, a province considered by many to be the bastion of racism in South Africa, delivered his inaugural address on Friday night. It is a speech full of hope for the future of the country. I long to see his optimism prove well-founded.

Jansen - author of Knowledge in the Blood, an account of race and apartheid in South Africa - is not known for (as he puts it) snuggling up to power. He is perhaps a surprise appointment, and I hope with every fibre of my being that it this is not window dressing. But he certainly seems to be the man for the hour. Soon after his appointment, a friend sent him a quote from the Old Testament book of Esther 4:14 “Is it possible that you have come into the kingdom for such a time as this?” See the closing anecdote of his speech for evidence of his inspirational qualities among even white Afrikaans students at the university.

I am hoping for the best here!

And as a codicil, while I knew that JRR Tolkien spent time lecturing at Fort Hare University in South Africa and is believed by many to have been inspired to write about Hobbits during many weekends in the nearby Hogsback Mountains, I had not previously realised that he was born in South Africa. Bloemfontein, in fact.

Dress codes for avatars?

Gartner has expressed the view that companies should develop dress codes for their employees' avatars. Computer Weekly and ITPro have both had their say on the subject.

A few years back, when I attended a Second Life workshop, the woman who was facilitating it boasted an avatar with the face of a fox (literally, not metaphorically) and an, er, interesting outfit. My own looked and dressed like me. I felt a little staid. As if I had missed the opportunity for creativity. I was tempted to go for something a bit more outlandish, but decided that a situation might arise in which I wanted a more accurate representation of myself.

I have mixed feelings about the idea of avatar dress codes. I can understand that a company with a virtual world presence will want to project the same sort of professional image online as they do face to face. But I also wonder how far they can push this. Will it just be about dress, or will people be restricted as to body shapes and accuracy of representation? Could a large, bald man be prevented from having an avatar that is a slim man (or even woman) with a full head of hair?

As with blogging policies, there's a lot of grey area here. There's the situation in which you represent your organisation. There's the situation in which you in no way represent an organisation and are free to pursue other interests. But then there's the situation in which you represent yourself, but in a space related to your profession, and therefore populated by clients, potential clients, colleagues, competitors and so on.

I ask the same question here as I did when blogging policies were the hot topic. Where do terms of employment butt up against individual liberties? This is risky turf.

What do you reckon?

Mr Aubergine

I long since abandoned the pic of the day on the grounds that my life is too dull to generate interest photo opps on an ongoing basis. Yesterday turned out to be an exception. Meet Mr Aubergine, who constituted a part of my dinner. Isn't he cute, with his little green hat and retrousse nose? All he needs is pair of goggly eyes!

Disempowering parents

Recently, the Swedish government was considering making it illegal for parents to homeschool their children for faith reasons. At the time, I expressed the view that the state appeared to have forgotten that its role is to serve the people, not dictate to them. That parents (should) have the right to educate their children as they see fit, employing state provided education if they wish to do so.

It seems things have gone from bad to worse. A young family which had at one point made enquiries about home schooling their son decided to move to India (which is the country of the wife's birth) to work as missionaries among the poor there. This had long been something they had felt called to do, and the enquiries about homeschooling had been with this in mind. They sold up their possessions and boarded a plane. Swedish armed police stormed the plane and forcibly removed them. They then took their son from them and placed him in foster care. More of the story can be picked up here.

The traumatised wife has been hospitalised.

I can hardly articulate my reactions to this. So I will forebear, and leave you to form your own views.

Adrienne Carlson: iPhone apps for academic types

I am not an 'academic type' I realise this afresh every time I take on the challenge of writing an academic paper. However, I have synergy with a great many of the things that drive people who *are* academic types... and if any of those drivers can be addressed by an iPhone app, so much the better.

Adrienne Carlson is a relatively new contact of mine, and she has listed 100 iPhone apps for academics. Some of them I already use, while others are totally new to me. Many of these I suspect would be of equal interest to people outside of academia, too. What she hasn't done (unfortunately) is indicate which of them are free, but I guess a quick visit to the app store should determine that.

Learning in the outer edges of consciousness

Mo Costandi is a neuroscience postgraduate who writes in such a way that even lay people like me can follow most of what he has to say. Being fascinated by the mind and its relation to the brain, I am regular reader of his neurophilosophy blog.

One recent post sparks my interest as a learning geek. Have you ever wondered under what conditions a person would cease to learn? I have. I had a friend who used to teach children labelled 'ineducable'. She regularly shared stories about how her young charges would show signs that they could in fact learn.

Mo's post on 21 September shares findings that patients diagnosed as being minimally conscious or vegetative (not the same thing, read the post) can in fact learn, that there might be an awareness of surroundings even in those who exhibit no signs of such awareness.

This is exciting stuff!

Mehrabian and all that jazz

Thanks to Cheryl Cooper for the pointer (via Facebook) to this video. We do so love to attach values to things, don't we? Did someone say thymotic urge? ;o)

Social media for business

I recently heard a radio documentary about what 'the media' are doing these days. It seems odd to me now to hear that term being applied to magazines and newspapers. I have been up to my neck in my major project which focuses on social media lately, so the term 'media' to me does not conjure up traditional press, or even their web presence!

However one story really stood out for me. This was the story of NME. This used to be a music industry print magazine. Like so many others, they went web some time back, with a website and a radio station.

So far, so normal. But it's what they've done since then that I found interesting.

NME has a radio channel, and they have recently launched an iPhone app. According to Nick Spence of Macworld, it has been breaking records. Using this app, iPhone users can listen to the station on their phones. Not only that, but if they hear a song they like, they can instantly purchase the download. Users can also interact synchronously with the radio station by text via the app.

The app itself isn't actually free, but at 59p, it isn't going to break the bank. And I'm pretty impressed with the way NME has used current technology to stay ahead of the curve.

Pretty cool.

Your reflections, please!

The discussion threads on my major project wiki are now open for contributions. I would love your reflection on the content.

Many of you already feature in it. Do a search on your name and see if you're one of them! I would be particularly interested if I have shared your story and it has since changed or moved on.

I wish I could have created a wiki that could be edited by the whole community, but that was unfortunately not practicable (long story). So the discussion pane at the foot of each page will have to suffice. The wiki itself is still a work in progress, although it is nearing completion.

And I'm sure I don't have to mention it, but please observe the usual rules of discussion forum etiquette ;o)

On being outed

You could scarcely have spent any time here without knowing that I am busy with a Masters' degree programme. The journey is taking far longer than I had hoped, largely due to a pothole in the road that could have swallowed a Landrover!

I have mentioned that I am busy working on my dissertation. I have even mentioned that it is to be delivered in an online format.

What I haven't mentioned... yet... is that the university withdrew its approval of the online format for dissertations. It's got to be the blue bound A4 thingummy or nothing. However, they offered me the alternative of submitting my online work as a 'major project' instead. The down side is that I now have to write an additional 3000 word paper in support of my project. This is all due to be handed in on 1 October.

What I also have never before done, was share the url for this (ahem) masterpiece. When I suddenly found it being bandied about on Twitter yesterday, I quite literally nearly fainted. I hadn't exactly been keeping it a secret. I just wasn't ready for it to be formally unveiled. I mean, it isn't even finished yet! But someone found it, the way we web 2.0 types do, and tweeted a link to it. Next thing I knew, it was being RT-ed (retweeted) hither and yon.

So, for what it's worth (and it genuinely isn't finished yet), here is the link to Karyn Romeis's Major Project. The discussion pages will be opened once the university has done its thing and graded me one way or t'other. Then you can have your say and tear the thing to shreds if you so desire. I probably won't look at it again for several months after submission while I remember what my family looks like and rediscover the meaning of the term 'leisure time'.

I'm feeling incredibly adventurous here, I hope you know, and my heart is in my mouth!

Caster Semenya: my 2p worth

In the furore following the news that Caster Semenya possesses the external genitalia of a woman but internal testes instead of a uterus or ovaries, I would just like to make my views known. Whether or not they make any difference remains to be seen. But one of the points of social media is that they serve as an aggregation of many views. Mine are as valid as anyone else's.

The South African government is making protests about the whole incident being both racist and sexist. This is a view supported by many South Africans in the various discussion forums on this topic.

I do not see this issue as being racist. Track events at international level are currently dominated by black people (I am told that this can be attributed to a genetic predisposition towards heightened fast twitch something or other). Semenya has not been singled out because of her race. The woman who came second is also black. She is also African. It is true, she is from a different African country (Kenya), but I don't think that would make a difference to anyone who was being racist about this. So if Semenya is stripped of her title, it will not further anyone's racist cause.

With regard to the sexism aspect...

If we want to play the sexist card, then we need to decide where the line is going to be drawn and that takes us into very grey territory. Is it sexist to say that men can't run in women's races? If so, then there needs to be just one 800m race in which men and women compete against each other. That day may come, but for now, there would be no women in that event. If then, we agree that it is right ot separate the two, we need to have a definition of what constitutes each gender. A line needs to be drawn somewhere. I think many people have been taken by surprise to learn that gender is far more of a continuum than they had previously imagined.

It is tragic for Semenya and any others like her that a quirk of nature puts them outside of the definition of woman (if indeed it does - this still has to be decided). As far as I know, no-one is vilifying the poor girl, or accusing her of any wrongdoing.

Let us look for a moment at a parallel situation: in the paralympics, athletes compete based on the extent of their (dis)ability. So an athlete who is missing just one foot would not be allowed to compete on level terms against an athlete who is missing both legs. Through no fault of his own, the former has attributes that provide an unfair advantage over the latter.

I am deeply sorry for Semenya. I think she has conducted herself with dignity throughout what must have been an embarrassing ordeal. To learn about this anomaly in the full glare of the world's press must be harrowing indeed. Not only that, but she now probably faces a future in which there is no event in which she can compete in the sport she loves. She is too much of a woman to be able to achieve anything remarkable against men, but she is too much of a man to be allowed to run against women.

And there's nothing she can do about it. If that doesn't tug at your heart strings, I don't know what would.

The harsh reality of refugees to South Africa

I haven't lost sight of the fact that this is a learning blog. I will get back to that once the pressure of my major project for my Masters' is a thing of the past. I promise.

But in the meantime, please watch these clips from which you might learn something startling about what is going on in the city I called home for 12 years. The city in which my heart still resides even after an absence of 10 years.

Warning: this ripped my gut. It might rip yours, too.





If you feel moved to do something about this, please visit the website of the Adonis Musati Project.

Unfinished symphonies

Yesterday, Dominick Dunne died aged 83. He overcame a drinking and drug problem to start writing at the age of 50... and went on to become a best-selling author.

He didn't consider himself 'too old' to start something new.

Stories of octogenarians going back to university abound. There are even stories in Africa of these old folks going back to school. Why not?

Have a look at the wikipedia entry for unfinished symphony. Many, many composers started pieces they did not live to finish.

But they started them.

Some years ago, my mother in law needed a new pair of shoes. I took her shopping. She took a shine to a certain pair of good quality shoes. Of course, the quality came at a price. Her view was that at her age, she didn't need to invest in a pair of shoes that would last and last, because she wouldn't be around very much longer herself. She chose something cheaper and altogether more ill-fitting. That was eight years ago. She is still hale and hearty and walking without the aid of a stick, with better eyesight than mine. Eight years of wearing a cheap pair of shoes (if they even lasted that long) when she could have treated her tired old feet to the sort of comfort and good craftsmanship they have earned after a lifetime of faithful service.

Have you noticed that people no longer talk about 'dying of cancer'? Nowadays, we talk about 'living with terminal cancer'. Because dammit, until you actually die, you're alive!

So why not start that thing? Enrol for that study programme. Sign up for those lifedrawing classes. Start knitting that Kaffe Fassett pattern with the 23 different yarns.

So what if you don't get to finish it?

There's a choice: you either give up on life and sit back waiting for death, or you take the chance that you might not achieve your goal in your lifetime... so you bow out still reaching, still stretching, still striving.

I know which I'd rather do! When I talk about my lifelong learning journey, I fully intend for it to last as long as I do.

On being shallow

I learnt something about myself this week. I am more shallow than I would like.

On two occasions this week, I attended meetings at sexual health clinics. When I reported to the front desk, I felt the need to make it clear that I was there in a professional capacity and not as a patient.

I was disappointed in myself. Several people have responded with variations on the theme of "Eew!" when I have mentioned my current project. I have no such reaction. I consider sexual health to be a subject of critical importance. Since the material I am working on is of a clinical nature aimed at specialising clinicians, I realise that I am going to see and include in the learning materials some rather gruesome images. I have no qualms about that. Our doctors need to know as much as possible about these matters and they will see far worse things in the course of their careers. Somebody needs to put the learning materials together. It might as well be me.

I was reminded of a group of people I once encountered. All wore matching T-shirts and name badges. They were obviously on some sort of outing. Some of them gave outward signs of some form of mental disorder, others were indentifiable as having Down Syndrome. Among the group, there were also some with no discernable impairment/special need. But of course, not all mental disorders manifest by means of any outward signs, so it was likely that some of those who seemed unimpaired had special needs, too. Some, however, had to be staff.

Such is the graciousness of these people that they felt no need to distance themselves from their charges in any outward way. They felt no need to wear anything that identified them as carers rather than patients. I was deeply impressed by this at the time.

My experience this week tells me I am far more superficial than they.

Mea culpa.

Good doll, bad doll

Linda Hartley shared this link via Twitter today. It broke my heart. No child should ever be given the impression that they are bad or ugly. Just look at these precious little faces as they effectively write themselves off as both of these things! These kids need a dose of Maya Angelou!



What are we teaching our children?

Maya Angelou: And still I rise

If you know me personally, or if you have been reading this blog for some time, you will know that I have a love for stories of triumph. I am prone to standing up and whooping (at the very least metaphorically) for sheer joy at all that is unquenchable, indomitable and indefatigable. Like you, I have been crushed, battered, bruised and broken at some points along life's journey. Like you, I have had to overcome these setbacks.

Does Angelou not capture it perfectly with her words? And does she not perform her words with consummate skill?



I like to carry with me into every project a sense of the people who will use my resources, of their own falling and rising. I like to to strive with every resource I create to make a small contribution to that rising.

How 'bout you?

This wondrous world we live in

Apparently, a competition is underway to name seven new wonders of the world. This site would like to suggest a few lesser known alternatives. Just looking at the photos gives me such a lift. Is this little planet of ours not rich in natural wonders fit to blow the mind?