Mullett's Corner

It's been a few months now, my Chromebook still goes with me to every single meeting at work. From keeping notes on & offline using Google Keep, to collaborating (Google Docs of course) on a discussion paper while sitting in the local Coffice with a colleague  +Aaron Burrell . My use of Google Apps has exploded and I now use a plethora of Googles tools and extensions to optimise and make my work effective and efficient. I guess there's almost a slight smugness about it. Mainly because all the things I worried about before no longer exist and everything I do use in my Google suite is so incredibly easy, it's almost laughable. But somethings wrong, I feel rather alone with it all, yes other members of my team BOTH (yes three people in the team) use Google Apps effectively, but that's it. It frustrates me, knowing that the rest the institution I work for still work using, certainly in my eyes, archaic technologies in their everyday work. Slow machines running ...

I'm going to try and attempt to articulate my thoughts on completing the first week of FutureLearn's 'The Discovery of The Higgs Boson' MOOC. Before anyone says anything, yes, this is now the start of the second week. What? It's a MOOC I can do it when I want! A simulated event at the  Large Hadron Collider . I decided to undertake this course for a couple of reasons, to see how FutureLearn have thought about their e-Learning and secondly I'm fascinated by the subject. I've previously read Jim Al-Khalili's 'Quantum' book and thoroughly enjoyed it. It was more of a ' Did you know that.. ' or ' Isn't it amazing that.. ' even the ' Still remains unsolved.. ' sparking intrigue, excitement of what's to come type of book more than anything. The book takes you on a journey through the fundamentals of Newtonian physics, the 'Standard Model' etc without any mathematical knowledge. This was handy seeing...

I thought I'd write a little post about my ever so slightly weird transition moving from using an iPhone for the last few years to an HTC One. It all started when I moved house.. Basically without going into massive details, I didn't get any signal, like absolutely nothing. It was almost like there was a forcefield around the house, I could walk up to my door and everything would be fine. Step into my house and I would see 'No Signal' on the phone :( I checked all the networks coverage maps and low and behold, there is a gap in the map, just the right size to fit right above my house... Look.. That grey square in the middle, that's where my house is, and it says 'Outdoors only'. Anyway, all of the networks showed similar. The story goes like this, I sent my phone back and cancelled out of my contract. I decided to go with the same network as my partner as she somehow gets full signal. However I didn't see the point in getting an iPhone again...

I did think about using 'Kologarn' in the title of this blog but very few people would understand the metaphor. Again, I digress.. I'm about to rant about the one thing I've evangelised and advocated about for so long.. Google. Yes, Google. I love Google, I really do.. it's given me the ability to not worry about CRC Errors or having multiple devices 'Sync'd'. All I have to do is log-in to Google, where ever I may be to access all of my work/personal stuff. My Chromebook, no matter how visually appealing and wondrous it is (CBHP11 of course), is simply redundant. If it breaks, I get a replacement, log-in and it's back to normal, no panic, no fret. For instance, 'the' aim for my work now is to advocate Google Apps for Education (GAFE) enough that it gets rolled out and I get to teach everyone how to use it, I'll end that sentence there before I start to daydream. Which is why it pains me to raise a few faults with Goo...

Julian Walker Well, as my first dive into facilitating an online course that I created goes, I don't think it went too badly at all :D 30 Students signed up to my 'e-Portfolios for the reflective learner' course which ran in our Mahara system. 13 of which ended up completing the course and submitting a brilliant array of portfolios to the course group. The course it self was split into the following areas or pages: Introduction Task 1 - Introduction to reflective learning Task 2 - Reflect on VARK results Task 3 - Identify on a subject of your choice and reflect on it Task 4 - Create a plan Task 5 - Create an e-portfolio page Task 6 - Reflect on using Mahara - Submission Where next? You can get the gist of the course structure above, pulling the students into the course with the why's and selling of e-portfolios and reflective practice in general before light touch tasks getting the students to actually try out these tools. At the end of the course, ...

gfpeck -  http://flic.kr/p/98X3nk I've taken some time to look into one of the teaching and learning agendas being driven here at my institution. Feedback. I was advised as a starter to read David Nicol and Debra MacFarlane-Dick's (2004) 'Rethinking Formative Assessment in HE: a theoretical model and seven principles of good feedback practice'. This wasn't a massive read but had some very pertinent points about how the general thrust of how feedback should be thought about and articulated. I think one of the points I picked up more quickly than the others due to the work I've done on being a reflective learner was Nicol and MacFarlane-Dick's first principle, 1. Facilitates the development of self-assessment (reflection) in learning. I think this entails more than just reflection though, it lays a pathway to progress further down the principles and provide more than the normal lines of feedback, the 'This isn't very good' and abruptly s...

Marc Thiele -  http://flic.kr/p/7aTDRK Well today saw me up early putting our Mahara e-Portfolio Service into maintenance mode so users couldn't login during the upgrade, 00:03 to be precise. The upgrade went well, I monitored the site from 7:30 and the site was fully working by 8:50am. Several double espressos later and I'm pleased to say all went well apart from a couple of issues I'll report on in my project documentation, one being the hosting solution put back our upgrade day very close to the initial deadline! I'll add this as an additional risk in any future project planning with Mahara and plan accordingly. One slight niggle I had was when I came in this morning to upgrade, it was in full swing open to the world, my early morning switching of the maintenance mode was in vain. This was out of our control but still something to note when requesting any work in the future. Apart from that, I'm pleased the whole process was, well documented, everyone ha...