Mullett's Corner

I can't stay long here as I have an assignment to do for my PgC in Academic Practice course I'm trundling through at the moment. Just wanted to post with a little list of potential blog posts coming in the near future, probably after February when this assignment is done :) I tend to think about subjects I'd like to blog about, make notes, then never blog so maybe if I blog a list here, it might spur me on to actually write them! Here we go: Experiential Learning - As nature intended Skills not Tools Technology changes overnight - Deal with it. Paperrater Mahara Community of practice Observing the learning wavefunction These probably will not be the titles as I tend to try and be a bit more creative through the use of metaphor with my titles and conclusions. Fingers crossed I get some of these out as I've got some nice ideas I'd like to extract from this noggin of mine, a bit like Dumbledore's Pensieve!

Check out the quote below from the late Bruce Lee: “The great mistake is to anticipate the outcome of the engagement; you ought not to be thinking of whether it ends in victory or defeat. Let nature take its course, and your tools will strike at the right moment.” - Bruce Lee Bruce Lee in 1946 - Unknown It encompasses what I have been thinking about with regards to my course observations and what I have learnt so far about teaching methods, session plans, activity structure etc My train of thought has been building over the last few weeks as I've been inundated with methods and strategies, Vygotsky, Laurillard, Collis and Kolb etc It's mounted to a single question I was asked to come up with to ask a guest speaker for a webinar this morning. The question was this - 'Do you think that there is too much emphasis on teaching methods and strategies and not enough around the skills needed to read both learner and environment then to subsequently adapt?' Due

I haven't posted in a while, my partner and I had a baby, called Jared :) However I'll keep my baby talk to personal networks, in this post I'd like to reflect on a recent session I had with a course I'm undertaking at my institution. The course is PgC in Academic Practice and this weeks session was around 'Designing for Learning' specifically looking at 'Threshold Concepts'. The term was coined in 2003 with the following definition: “A threshold concept can be considered as akin to a portal, opening up a new and previously inaccessible way of thinking about something. It represents a transformed way of understanding, or interpreting, or viewing something without which the learner cannot progress. As a consequence of comprehending a threshold concept there may thus be a transformed internal view of subject matter, subject landscape, or even world view. This transformation may be sudden or it may be protracted over a considerable period of time, wi

Well, I spent last week tinkering with the Open Badges Generator that I worked on. I managed to implement a couple of features that I was keen to get in, specifically referencing each issued badge with a unique ID rather than a row number. I had a little scout around stack overflow  and found a nice little chunk of code by 'thoughcrime' which generated an 8 character random string. This would create me my uniqueID I was after. Here's the snippet: function genRandomString(len, bits){   bits = bits || 36;   var outStr = "", newStr;   while (outStr.length < len)   {     newStr = Math.random().toString(bits).slice(2);     outStr += newStr.slice(0, Math.min(newStr.length, (len - outStr.length)));   }   return outStr.toUpperCase(); } I did have to change the whole flow to accompany this new addition though, so the auto-email that was sent with the dynamically generated URL had to be amended, the querystring capture in the doGet() function had to change and

It's a bit weird saying LEGO Serious Play, a little oxymoronic no? LEGO by it's very roots is all about not being so serious, so when I was invited to a 'LEGO Serious Play Facilitation Workshop', I had my doubts. LEGO Serious Play is all about getting individuals to express themselves and their thoughts through their hands using the medium of little LEGO blocks. Building on Piaget and Papert's constructivist approach to learning it's supposed to help eek out our creative and metaphorical sides by getting us to move away from building literal factual 'things' (A desk to represent your desk at work) to building 'things' with meaning (A cloud to represent thinking, thanks +Aaron Burrell  ;) ). Leaning towards being a kinesthetic learner, I was keen to see what LSP could offer. +Andy Priestner  was our facilitator for the day, he wasn't just demonstrating LSP, Andy was there to help guide us on how to facilitate our own events

Before I go into the actual event and what went on, I thought I'd take a moment to say how wonderful what little of York I saw was. Stepping off the train into Eboracum, walking past ancient Roman settlements and towering parapets was truly a sight to behold, often in stark contrast to the modern architecture that now sits quite comfortably next to the old. The still very grandeur Roman structures still had a place in the bustling city of York, very much like the scene I witnessed on the train up there; two young lads both reading next to each other, one with a kindle, one with a paper book. A common theme I picked up on during the Google Apps for Education European User Group 2014 (GEUG14) ... and breathe... event. The old and the new. GEUG14 took place in The Ron Cooke Hub in the Heslington East Campus of University of York. The Ron Cooke Hub - University of York Pretty impressive place! I met a rather enthused  +Tom Smith  to whom I had to apologise to fo