Playing with Learning

Disreputable Behaviour

2012-01-31T18:46:00.001Z

I'm currently watching Sky News in a London hotel prior to tomorrow's assessment conference and wondering how exactly Fred Goodwin has "brought the honours system into disrepute"? He didn't award himself the knighthood that the queen has just withdrawn; all he did was accept it. You could probably argue that he brought himself into disrepute by graceless behaviour and reckless management of the Royal Bank of Scotland. And you could also make a case that he brought the banking industry into disrepute (admittedly in conjunction with many other supposedly leading lights). But the honours system? That charge really ought to be levelled at those who recommended and confirmed the award for "services to banking" for someone who was effectively just gambling with someone else's money.

Now, it's not that I'm particularly advocating that (the now) Mr Goodwin deserves to keep his knighthood, but unlike previously dispossessed knights, he is not a criminal or a traitor, just someone who didn't turn out to have been quite so brilliant a banker as they thought him to be when bestowing the award in the first place. So it occurs to me that if you consider the many still-knighted leading bankers who must be grateful to Fred Goodwin for effectively taking the public flak on their behalf, you might conceivably say that he's performed his fellow money men a great service. And doesn't great service eventually lead to honours? A knighthood perhaps?....

Troweller in Error

2012-01-06T15:50:00.006Z

Much as I agree that gardening is important, after all the Office for National Statistics has declared it to be one of the few activities which make people of all income levels and national origins happier, but television gardener Alan Titchmarsh has told this week's Radio Times that "Gardening is more important than politics [because] it has a consistent point of view".

No explanation is supplied as to how he considers domestic agriculture on any scale able to hold a viewpoint, consistent or otherwise, or why political variability is apparently undesirable (surely the point of democracy is that change can, and does, happen?), but those of us who thought the appeal of gardening to be creative joy, useful solitude or a connection to nature, are now aware that in addition to the pruning, planting and potting: there's philosophy!

Much ado about nothing sensible

2011-10-27T18:04:00.003+01:00

Now I know that Hollywood produces works of fiction, and takes very extensive liberties with any actual facts upon which a story might be based, but I've just seen on the hotel television a report about the new film Anonymous which said that Sony Pictures were intending to send out "information packs" to schools to promote its release.

Not only did the reporter not point out how far from reality the film's basis actually is, she actually suggested that it was based on a credible theory which hadn't been disproved.
Well, let me have a go, and this is without even trying very hard...

The film advances the claim that Shakespeare’s works were written by Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, who died in 1604. This was before 12 of Shakespeare’s plays were written, a year prior to the Gunpowder Plot alluded to in Macbeth, and five years before the Sea Venture ran aground off Bermuda and inspired The Tempest.

And that's without even trying to pull apart the "possibility" that De Vere put his own name to comparatively poor poetry while submitting works of genius behind an alias to a rival’s theatre company...

Quick (and admittedly not triangulated) research on Google tells me that the originator of this unintellectual drivel is an aptly named J.Thomas Looney, but unfortunately the stuff our schools might be getting won't come with a Looney Tunes label on the cover, just something that says it's "supporting education".

Capital (ism) in action

2011-10-21T13:47:00.007+01:00

Walking back to Kings Cross after the HEFCE/AoC Additional Numbers workshop yesterday, I passed the latest tented village to spring up on the streets of our capital: the one apparently welcomed by Giles Fraser, the Canon Chancellor of St Paul’s Cathedral when the Occupy London Stock Exchange protesters gathered at the start of the week.

Now though, with the Evening Standard claiming that this national icon could be closed due to health and safety issues, he's not quite so keen. The position has rapidly moved on from his only telling the police to go away (Monday) to complaining that tourists are no longer visiting his Baroque masterpiece (Thursday) and therefore aren't contributing to its upkeep. Or to put it in free market terms: no visitors equals nothing spent in the gift shop, no food bought in the restaurant, and no donations from those with change to spare.

The free paper also includes an interview with Naomi Colvin, spokesperson for the protesters, who says that money might be raised to compensate the church for its losses, but she's obviously not bothered to think through how much needs to be put into the collecting tin to balance the lost income of one of the ten most popular tourist attractions in the country.

This is capitalism in action: it's not slogans, protests and collective sleepovers, it's a businessman (for that's effectively what Canon Fraser is) unable to predict the effect of 200 demonstrators outside his door on passing trade, customer access and turnover, and a well-meaning motley crew closing him down because of his naivety.

Leads me to wonder, that since neither of the parties involved seem to understand what they've got themselves into, maybe they ought to start charging the likes of me to take photographs of the tents and possibly sell some refreshments while they're doing it?
Then, they could simply give the money raised to the church and everybody would be happy; except possibly protesters protesting about protester's profiteering...

To Beeb or not to Beeb, was there a question?

2011-09-28T13:26:00.006+01:00

Visiting my father yesterday on the way back from another post-presentation trans-pennine drive, I was amused (and sceptical!) to learn that the BBC had decided to ban the use of BC and AD in favour of the more pensioner-confusing terms BCE (Before Common Era) and CE (Common Era).

Evidently, the front page of his Mail on Sunday displayed the banner headline "BBC turns its back on year of Our Lord" and followed it with claims that executives at the public broadcaster had banned the use of the dating terms and insisted that they be replaced with more "politically correct" ones. As I'm sure you'd agree, this would be an impressive feat even for an organisation with the Beeb's influence, but could it really "jettison 2,000 years of history"?
Well, er, no, as actually reading to the last paragraph makes clear via a spokesperson from the broadcaster...
"The BBC has not issued editorial guidance on the date systems. Both AD and BC, and CE and BCE are widely accepted date systems and the decision on which term to use lies with individual production and editorial teams."

So where did this "story" come from and why does the Mail want to castigate the Corporation for simply saying that two dating systems are common and staff can use whichever they prefer? The BBC's "politically correct, Europhile agenda" is cited as the cause, although how either has any relevance is utterly beyond me. It's not exactly an adherence to "political correctness" to tell people that they can use whatever words they like, and no stretch of my imagination can get even close to any reason why or how Europe might fit in.

As it happens, only a minimal amount of research is necessary to ascertain where the story started, but quite why it's developed into incoherent rage is much more of a puzzle.

On the Frequently Asked Questions page part of the BBC Religion religion website there's a bit saying:
"In line with modern practice bbc.co.uk/religion uses BCE/CE (Before Common Era/Common Era) as a religiously neutral alternative to BC/AD. As the BBC is committed to impartiality it is appropriate that we use terms that do not offend or alienate non-Christians."
a paragraph which is basically talking only about the BBC Religion web site, not making statements about BBC-wide policy, and has probably been there for some considerable time as there's nothing at all to indicates that this is some new rule.

Indeed, as the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority guidelines say "CE/BCE is becoming an industry standard among historians," and "pupils have to be able to recognise these terms when they come across them", why should the BBC be only now issuing edicts about the use of terminology that's been around for over 150 years?

Going back only a week, one of the Mail on Sunday columnists has written in a review of University Challenge that "Jeremy Paxman referred to a date as being Common Era, rather than AD. This nasty formulation is designed to write Christianity out of our culture."

This was followed on Saturday by a piece entitled "How the BBC fell for a Marxist plot to destroy civilisation from within" which links the above irritation to the BBC's website FAQ page (that's how I found it!) and proclaims
"No longer will [The BBC's] website refer to those bigoted, Christian-centric concepts AD (as in Anno Domini – the Year of Our Lord) and BC (Before Christ). From now on, it will use initials which strip our traditional Gregorian calendar of its offensive religious context. All reference to Christ has been expunged, replaced by the terms CE (Common Era) and BCE (Before Common Era)."

So by the time we get to Sunday, a columnist's trivial annoyance with a quiz show, a BBC FAQ and some incoherent rantings built on non-existent foundations have evolved into a full-page story which has fuelled over 1,500 on-line comments from Mail readers (mainly) unable to read past a headline!

Beware: Ninja Tellys!

2011-08-16T21:06:00.006+01:00

After a six hour train journey, I'm now sat in a central Oxford hotel watching television before retiring for the night, a pastime that I've always thought relaxing but according to an article in today's Times is actually hazardous to my health ("TV is as harmful as smoking"). Indeed, every hour spent slumped in front of the box is as "serious a public health problem as smoking or obesity" and can reduce the viewer's life expectancy by 22 minutes, or in other words, you'll live 5 years less if you watch TV for 6 hours a day.

So does that magic box in the corner of the room emit some previously secret carcinogenic rays?
Does a seemingly endless stream of reality drivel, soap operas and gameshows have an adverse affect on the will to live?

Nope, "research" published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine has compared the mortality rates of couch potato Australians with those who had "more active lifestyles". Then, after doing a few sums, the University of Queensland "experts" worked out that every hour spent glued to the screen shortened life by 21.8 minutes, and the "top 1 per cent of the population who watch six hours of programmes a day can expect to live 4.8 years less than a person who does not watch TV”.

So that's not a slow-acting electric assassin in the corner of the room after all. Not only will it not kill me, it won't even reduce my life expectancy, because all these "researchers" have actually done is correlate some data which shows that more active people tend to live longer. Wow!

On the other hand, the report also quotes a Lancet article claiming that "as little as 15 minutes of physical activity every day can increase lifespan by three years", which by my calculations means that I only need to do around 3 minutes of exercise for every hour's telly watching and they'll cancel each other out.

Fortunately for the reputation of the academic community as a whole, and as the participants in tomorrow's scholarly activity workshop will be told at 10.00am, getting your work published isn't quite like Homer Simpson once said, "Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true....."

Skullduggery

2011-07-27T14:05:00.007+01:00

Today's BBC Science website headlines the revelation that anthropologists from Oxford University have examined 55 human skulls from various parts of the world and concluded that we in the North have bigger brains than those who hail from the South.

According to lead author Eiluned Pearce: "We found a positive relationship between absolute latitude ... and cranial capacity" which suggests that a few tens of thousands of years peering through the gloom of long winters and brief springs has enlarged northern brains in the same sort of way that a series of gym sessions is likely to increase the size of one's biceps/pectorals/deltoids/etc.

The Royal Society's Biology Letters journal goes on to say that this hasn't necessarily made Northerners more intelligent, however, it is now over 200 years since Canon Sydney Smith, Dean of St. Paul's Cathedral (born in Woodford, Essex but obviously in possession of something akin to a Big Northern Brain) pre-empted the team's doubts on the matter by saying:
"Never ask a man if he comes from Yorkshire. If he does, he will tell you. If he does not, why humiliate him?".

Of course, it's now only natural modesty which prevents me speculating as to whether or not next week's news might confirm the Pope's religion or enlighten us on what bears do in the woods....

The Truth is Out There. Somewhere. Probably. Maybe...

2011-06-29T12:00:00.011+01:00

I'm currently at Loughborough University engaging in discussions as how to teach students to draw coherent conclusions from their research; something that you'd expect to be second nature to anyone with a professorship.

However, earlier today we learnt on one of the breakfast television programmes that for Professor Andrei Finkelstein, of Russia’s Applied Astronomy Institute, normal rules of academic rigour don't appear to apply. He's observed that since we didn’t know of any exoplanets (planets orbiting other stars) at all twenty years ago, and have now found more than 500 of them, the chances are that stars without any planets are the exception not the rule. This "logic" has led him to conclude that "earthlike" planets (i.e. smallish, rocky and orbiting well-behaved stars at a reasonable distance) are probably extremely common in the universe and therefore life must be everywhere: leading to either an "inevitable" contact with an alien civilisation or the discovery of alien microbes, at the very least, within the next 20 years.

Quite why Pr Finkelstein has concluded that the possible existence of small rocky planets with water-friendly surface temperatures etc means that "the genesis of life is as inevitable as the formation of atoms", wasn't revealed, nor were any tips regarding the solving of science's greatest mysteries:

how, or where did life begin on Earth (although we have some idea as to the when?

has biogenesis happened once, twice, many times, and is it still going on today?

does the existence of one biosphere preclude the emergence of another one?

In short, while our knowledge of the stars and planets grows daily, what we actually know about life, how it comes about, or even what it really is hasn't moved on very much from the dark age superstitions that a Sky Fairy did it.

The idea that Earth is unique in some way might well fit in with these primitive beliefs, and is a yet-to-be-discounted possibility, but statements of certainty about alien life are currently nothing more than wishful thinking and need to be filed in the pseudoscience box until ET turns up and says that his dad sent him!

28 Hours Later

2011-06-10T19:53:00.003+01:00

I'm glad to report that yesterday's trip to Leicester to deliver a series of critical thinking workshops was completely untroubled by the zombie invasions which the local authority has today admitted that it is not prepared for.

Apparently, a recent Freedom of Information request by a "concerned citizen" asks of of the City Council :
"Can you please let us know what provisions you have in place in the event of a zombie invasion? Having watched several films it is clear that preparation for such an event is poor and one that councils throughout the kingdom must prepare for.
Please provide any information you may have."

Lynn Wyeth, head of information governance, responded by saying that she was unaware of any specific reference to a zombie attack in the council's emergency plan, however some elements of it could be applied if the situation arose.

Nice to know, but as there's even been an official reply to this stupidity, I'm betting that it won't be long before some Health and Safety obsessed jobsworth insists that people like me incorporate dealing with the walking dead into our pre-workshop introduction along with what to do if the fire alarm goes off...

Twitter, to who said the howl of the Democrat

2011-05-23T22:41:00.006+01:00

I'm somewhat coincidentally in a Birmingham hotel, a city partly represented by the Liberal Democrat MP John Hemming who today ended the increasingly farcical situation that forbade the media, but pretty much no-one else, from naming Ryan Giggs as a footballer with an injunction covering his alleged extra-marital affair(s).

Hemming's critics, and there were many at tonight's conference dinner who derided him as hungry for publicity, should appreciate that he didn't name Giggs last month, or last week, but has only done it after the weekend's Twitter explosion in response to the footballer's legal team's clumsy and ill-considered attempt to draw attention to alleged online breaches of the injunction, and after Scotland's Sunday Herald had turned the court order into an international joke.

This afternoon's revelation has generated a great deal of interest in the story, but as I understand the situation it's only slightly less ridiculous than it was this morning. Then, I could easily discover the basic facts surrounding the case, but couldn't write about it. Now, I still can't actually name the subject of the injunction as the so-called super injunction prevents it, but I can describe today's parliamentary proceedings and legally blog to the world that an MP today named the footballer Ryan Giggs as the subject of that injunction!

Not even Edward Lear could come up with nonsense to rival this; the lunatics really have taken control of the asylum!

New Bond-Style Super-Villain Reveals Himself!

2011-05-13T18:10:00.010+01:00

As someone who uses lots of trains, the news that Dr Sang-Woo Kim of the Sung-Kyunkwan University in Seoul, South Korea has discovered a way of charging mobile phones by talking into them strikes me as more of a threat to Western civilisation than anything the late Osama bin Laden could have dreamt up.

At the moment, the technology can convert 100 decibels (about the same level as a busy road) into 50 millivolts of electricity, which isn't enough to charge a phone.

But give it time, and then won’t using public transport be fun? If, like me, you're irritated by sitting near an overly-loud, mind-numbing ‘I’m on a train . . . hello? . . . no, I said I’m on a train . . . ’ conversation, how's travel going to be remotely tolerable when there's a carriage full of half-wits screaming into their Nokias because they forgot to charge them up overnight?

Forget al-Qaeda, the electronics department of Sung-Kyunkwan University needs flattening.
Now!

Some are more equal than others...

2011-04-19T16:21:00.009+01:00

I'm currently in Westminster, London (at the Institute of Directors), where just down the road our PM has today announced that he wants to end the 300-year-old law of royal succession which gives the eldest male child (if there is one) the right to become Monarch of the Realm.

Well, much as I agree with ridding society of unjust discrimination and antiquarian irrelevances, the leader of a government which introduced the £9,000 a year tuition fees that will probably exclude the poor from the Establishment for at least a generation, should surely be targeting something else if his often-stated claims to desire "social mobility" are to be taken seriously?

That the currently underprivileged may now have no way to lift themselves out of their deprivation for decades, it's not in any way reassuring to be told that our country's leader is working hard towards making sure that the as-yet-unborn offspring of our most pampered couple can enter the world knowing that its gender won't prevent it becoming the next unelected Head of State.

Beyond the Pale..

2011-04-03T22:38:00.011+01:00

The BBC today reports that Fulham have become the latest football club to erect a statue outside. This famous old institution has joined the likes of Liverpool, with Bill Shankly outside Anfield, Ipswich who've got Sir Bobby Robson standing proud outside Portman Road and Leeds with Billy Bremner's arms forever raised in triumph at Elland Road by putting Michael Jackson on a pedestal.

Yep, you read that right, Wacko Jacko, the "King of Pop", a man with a history of extremely questionable behaviour, who according to the club's owner and chairman Mohammed Al Fayed, "loved Fulham and wanted to attend all of the matches". Although he only actually managed to turn up once (for a match against Wigan in 1999), Mr Al Fayed apparently thinks "it is something that I and everybody else should be proud of".

Proud?
Will the Jackson statue become more plastic as the years go by; just like the real thing?
Will it lighten over time; just like the real thing?
And will children be allowed to touch it; just like the ...

Wanted: Party Organiser for Charlie Sheen!

2011-04-02T00:06:00.017+01:00

Many of you will do something nice for your mum this weekend, but I very much doubt that you think it qualifies as deserving of a medal. Unless of course, you're Prince Andrew. He, like me, has just spent a day in Northern Ireland. Whereas I was running a series of college workshops and visiting the HEA ICS Subject Centre, he was there as part of his role as unpaid trade ambassador, something for which he's received his latest honour for personal service to the Queen, the Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order to add to his earlier honours for the same thing, the Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order and the Royal Knight Companion of the Most Noble Order of the Garter.

Now I don't want to sound churlish, but how often has he been in the crush to get a seat on a north-bound train out of King's Cross, or spent the night in a Travelodge/Premier/Holiday Inn? His "business", as far as I can see, is all first-class and five-star, and while he might not receive a salary, he's unlikely to have paid for anything either.

Ten years travelling the world "representing British interests abroad", whatever that means, is not something most people outside of unelected dictatorships would consider worthy of a chest-full of medals, and is for most us, something we'd have preferred to have been an April Fool joke.

Cereal Killing

2011-03-22T11:08:00.006Z

In a little under 2 hours, I'm going to be running a scholarly activity workshop in a rural conference centre which is in the middle of many villages looking just like Causton, the setting for the Midsomer Murders television programme. This fictional location, with a murder rate higher than South Central LA during gangland shooting season, was in the news last week when one of the producers said that to include some black faces would detract from its Englishness, even though nobody could possibly think it truly indicative of country life anyway.

If Midsomer was to be representative of the daily lives of the people I passed on the twenty minute journey from Oxford station, then its characters wouldn't be committing ever-more inventive murders, they'd be getting embroiled in bitter planning disputes with farmers wanting to convert maize fields into industrial estates or trying to evict traveller families laying tarmac parking areas where the corn used to grow...

The times they aren't a changing...

2011-03-15T15:49:00.012Z

With apologies to Bob Dylan

I've just taken a short detour through Trafalgar Square on the way to King's Cross (which is where I am now) to join the crowd which had gathered to look at a faulty clock!

This particular malfunctioning time piece is the OMEGA London 2012 countdown clock which is (or was an hour ago) stuck on 500 days and 7:06:56 less than a day after it was unveiled to commemorate the 500th day before next year's Games, and that tickets for the event(s) are now on sale.

Is this matter of national embarassment or an innovative and unique way of publicising that we're going to host next year's Olympics by inventing a stopped clock that isn't right twice a day?

Flowerpotty

2011-02-18T23:26:00.011Z

Returning from South London where I've spent the last two days running critical & reflective thinking workshops, I shared a table on the train back into the capital with three women debating the effect of a children's character called Rastamouse on their impressionable youngsters' speech patterns.

Typical comments included such pearls of wisdom as "I’m struggling to help my two children learn to speak English and it doesn’t help when programmes such as Rastamouse are aired on CBeebies," and "I'll be proper angry if my children start beginning every sentence with the word “me”."

I'd like to have had the social skills to join in and point out that there are different dialects on TV all the time, none of which can compete with the influence of a child's home environment, but having been brought up with Bill and Ben, I'm one of a generation that's been held back because none of us can start a sentence without going "flobbleswobbledobbledeplob"....

It'll be all Rite on the night

2011-02-14T16:06:00.003Z

I'm just back from two weeks in the USA where the current box office number one film is a horror movie called The Rite starring Anthony Hopkins who's been given the job of training a sceptical young priest in the casting out of demons, a role which US Airway's in-flight magazine says is based on a Californian priest called Father Gary Thomas.

Reproducing a Catholic World interview with the "Official Exorcist for the Diocese of San Jose", we get to know that there are about 500,000 exorcisms annually in Italy (yes, you read that right: 10, 000 a week ! ), that there's been an increase in demonic possessions lately and it's all the fault of the Internet, and the utterly bizarre claim that the Catholic Church has "a rite that’s recognized, even by the demons, as legitimate", with no explanation as to why (or how) they'd agree to any sort of framework.

Now I don't know about you, but I just love the idea of Beelzebub's hordes examining the rites of the Catholic Church, assessing them, and agreeing that: yes, those are indeed legitimate.

Got me wondering whether these nasty old demons are supposed to have appointed representatives, simply taken a majority vote, or if the Church got feedback as part of some iterative process until the final version was sanctioned as binding?

Text, Replies and Videotape

2011-01-21T13:55:00.004Z

I'm currently sat in Piccadilly station waiting for my train home after running a critical thinking workshop for history lecturers and watching dozens of would-be Cathy Marrero impersonators, oblivious to the world around them, stepping out onto roads, colliding in the street, and obstructing the path of other commuters.

Cathy Marrero? She's the soon-to-be very famous shopper described in this morning's free paper as "taking a tumble" into a mall fountain while texting on her mobile, and is now taking the shopping complex in Wyomissing, Pennsylvania to court because nobody went to see if she was ok until after she'd left.

Ms Marrero claims she was texting a friend from church who wanted to know her birthday, but didn't elaborate on why she had the urge to read/respond at once.
Was this friend doing a quiz?
Was it a secret question password prompt?
Complaining about the security staff's laughter on the Youtube footage, the text-walker said ‘What if it was a senior citizen, would it be so funny then?’

Watch here and decide for yourself...

The tooth (the old tooth), and nothing...

2011-01-04T22:23:00.005Z

While looking for pictures of today's partial eclipse to use with tomorrow's critical thinking workshop, I found a news story on the BBC website that "Humankind's oldest known ancestor probably lived in fear of several large sabretooth cats".
Since these "cats" had only a minimal resemblance to next door's tabby sparrow chaser, and were actually about half a tonne of solid muscle with razor-sharp incisors the size of bread knives, "probably lived in fear" is the early winner of PWL's New Year Award for Stating the Obvious ...

What about the Sanity Clause?

2010-12-22T13:22:00.004Z

Having spent most of yesterday waiting in King's Cross station for some semblance of information as to when a train was going to travel North, I was struck by how little anybody seemed to care about the cold, the lack of anything to sit on or even how much of a wasted afternoon hundreds of people were having. What seemed to be the most irksome aspect of the experience was generally agreed to be the lack of information: the horrible waiting without knowing when it would end, certain only that when it did, there would be some sort of mad priority scramble where the winners got to be packed like erect sardines for the next 2 hours sweating & exchanging viruses, while the losers waited on the concourse for the next melee to take place.

Deep down, we were all aware that the next service wasn't going to sneak off without any of us noticing, but information, any kind of information, would've given us the illusion of control without having any effect at all on how long we were going to be stuck there. Is too much to ask that "damage to overhead lines at Huntington" had been accompanied by some sort of estimated repair time, even one possibly met ahead of schedule? This would not only have made those inconvenienced by the delays feel a little better, but the subsequent dispersal of the expectant throng (for what turned out to be 5 hours) would have made the station far less crowded, and therefore more comfortable for the non-East Coast Main Line travellers.
Or is that just madness on my part?

With a reverential nod to 1935's "A Night at the Opera"
Groucho: It's all right. That's, that's in every contract. That's, that's what they call a sanity clause.
Chico: Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! You can't fool me. There ain't no Sanity Clause!

Figuratively speaking...

2010-12-08T13:00:00.008Z

The Home Office has just (yesterday) launched what it laughably claims to be a "consultation exercise" (the quote marks are there to emphasise how inaccurate the term actually is) on its plans to tighten up visa requirements for foreign students.

The questionnaire on which this "consultation" is based invites the public and interested parties to "Contribute your views to our consultation into how we can best reduce the number of students who can come to the UK". However, it's either been very badly put together (rather ironically for something do with education as it highlights that somebody somewhere needs educating about questionnaire design), or it's been deliberately formulated to preclude dissenting opinions. I'll leave you to decide....

Example:
Q2. Do you think that only Highly Trusted Sponsors (HTS) should be permitted to offer study below degree level (at NQF levels 3, 4 and 5 / SCQF levels 6, 7 and 8) in the Tier 4 (General) category?

Yes – only HTS should be able to offer these sub-degree level courses
No – all sub-degree level study should be prohibited under Tier 4 (General)
No – study at NQF level 3 should be prohibited, even where the sponsor is a HTS
Don't know

So if you happen to think that sub-degree level courses should be available from a wider range of providers you have no box to tick, nor can you tick a box to show that you think that the system as it is ought to be maintained. Only if you believe that the Home Office proposals are insufficiently draconian can you enter an alternative.

Now regardless of whether or not these proposals are desirable, proportionate or in the interests of our educational system, highly biased "consultations" like this not only have no statistical credibility, they're a disgraceful way of canvassing public opinion.

The tooth, the whole tooth, and nothing but...

2010-11-18T20:33:00.006Z

Now travelling back from two days on the South Coast, I've just read Martin Robbin's Lay Scientist blog at the Guardian, where there's the story of a Brazilian evangelical cult leader called Welder Saldanha banning his followers from using USB connections on their computers. This, says the story, is because the universal symbol for the technology "is a trident, which is used to torture souls".

Although the writer does wonder whether the story could be a spoof, and it's hard to tell when you consider the kind of pronouncement Stephen Green made last month, the bit about how the members of the Paz do Senhor Amado cult can connect devices in lieu of USB is undeniably very funny. Apparently, Bluetooth is fine because "Blue was the colour of the eyes of our saviour Jesus Christ"....

Bonfire (night) on the Insanities...

2010-11-05T20:51:00.005Z

For the elite upper quartile of the country's universities, those likely to set their tuition fees close to the Government's £9,000 cap, this week's announcement is close to what they've been long been arguing for, since if students are prepared to pay, then those institutions will be better off. However, the remainder face an uncertain future as cuts in block grants means that they will lose the equivalent of over £7,000 a year for each undergraduate, so even setting fees at £6,000 equates to a large loss of income.

Ministers have claimed that universities could compensate by reducing costs and deliver two-year degrees, but assuming that the credit value required for certification stays the same, then the number of course weeks will need to be increased from their present level by around 50% each year. This leads to the inevitable questions (well they are to me as I've spent many years writing, running and delivering HE programmes) :

When are lecturers working within this educational model supposed to prepare for their teaching (and escalating student expenditure will surely be accompanied by an attendant growths in expectations of quality)?
When are they supposed to engage with any form of scholarly activity?
When are they supposed to set and mark assessments?

Unless I'm missing something, in this scenario, either staffing numbers and the attendant costs must go up, or quality inevitably goes down. Have they just not thought this through, or have the lunatics finally taken over the asylum?

The most unwelcome of cuts

2010-10-19T21:39:00.006+01:00

News here in Leicestershire (where I'm preparing a critical thinking workshop) describes how the USA is helping out the locals with some cuts that President Obama definitely didn't have in mind during yesterday's telephone conversation with our Prime Minister.

Claiming that it's part of a programme to prevent children being born into dysfunctional families or with addictions, an American charity called Project Prevention has "bribed" a 38-year-old drug addict to have a vasectomy. Now I don't particularly object to the trans-atlantic acquisition of our football clubs, the dictation of our foreign policy or the subjugation of our youth culture with their own, but getting involved with which Britons should (or shouldn't) give birth?
That's surely something we're capable of doing all on our own!

So the pot said to the kettle : the sequel!

2010-10-06T08:16:00.003+01:00

Local news here in Yorkshire is that Graham Taylor, the author of "the most frightening children's book ever written", claims that he's having to keep the details of a nationwide school tour secret for fear of lobbying from Evangelical Christians after Christian Voice chairman Stephen Green was quoted as saying "Shame on any head teacher who invites GP Taylor into their school with this book", adding that, "To promote gore, bloodlust and thoughts of death as being healthy topics for the minds of innocent children is bizarre."

Doesn't sound to me like the "voice for Biblical values" has bothered to ever actually read the Old Testament part of the book he's supposedly basing those values on...

You are what you eat (allegedly)

2010-09-21T23:23:00.007+01:00

I'm now in a Telford hotel room, just a few miles from where the local BBC news has reported that a special "God's Acre" service has recently been carried out on the grave of Richard Munslow, the last known sin-eater in England, at St Margaret's Church, Ratlinghope.

The Reverend Norman Morris explained that "It [Sin-eating] was a very odd practice and would not have been approved of by the church, but I suspect the vicar often turned a blind eye".

The BBC report also helpfully explains that sin-eaters were generally poor people who were paid to eat bread and drink beer or wine over a corpse, in the belief they would take on the sins of a person who had died suddenly without confessing their own sins, and so allow the deceased’s soul to go to heaven in peace.

So logically, as a sin-eater wouldn't have been able to acknowledge these unknown sins prior to their own demise, and would therefore always need someone to consume their unconfessed sin collection, isn't it surprising that there were ever any believers unable to see the flaws in it as a career choice?

So the pot said to the kettle ....

2010-09-07T17:31:00.011+01:00

Walking across London because of the tube strike, I've just (30 minutes or so ago) been handed a religiously-focussed magazine (Awake) which states in the first 2 sentences of the first article,
"A new group of atheists has arisen in society. Called the new atheists, they are not content to keep their views to themselves."

As the views of the distributor weren't sought either by me, nor anybody else who politely took a copy without first looking to see what it was (I admit to thinking it was one of the free Time Out style supplements & just dropped it into a conference bag), it's got me wondering whether the irony is deliberate, or is the writer subtly advocating some form of theocracy where people like Stephen Hawking are prevented from making assertions like the one last week?

The proof of the pudding is in the (ch)eating..

2010-09-01T15:40:00.007+01:00

"This is only an allegation," says Ijaz Butt, chairman of what is surely an utterly discredited Pakistan Cricket Board, adding that, "At this stage there will be no action taken because there is still no charge or proof on that account." Possibly not proof as defined by a criminal law court, but the evidence of cheating described in the News of the World at the weekend is as damning as anything you could ever hope to see.

Unfortunately, according to some of the participants in today's plagiarism workshop, the PCB's lack of decisive action is not unique and draws parallels with the attitude of some senior educational managers who fear legal action if students are penalised by lecturers, moderators and exam boards for collusion, plagiarism and the passing off of other's work as their own prior to some form of "official investigation".

Noting that both the PCB and the International Cricket Council are currently striving to maintain any semblance of credibility with their very public failure to act, surely it's time for Education's default position to be one of trusting the lecturer who identifies malpractice and place the burden of proving innocence on the accused student?

Herd of cows? Of course I've heard of cows...

2010-08-11T17:44:00.002+01:00

If today's Food Standards Agency Summary of investigation on cloned animals statement that "no milk ... has entered the food chain" is true, how come all my glasses of milk look exactly the same?

With a reverential nod to 1942's "Ride em Cowboy"
Bud Abbott: No, not heard of cows, that's a cow herd.
Lou Costello: What's a cow heard? I don't care what a cow's heard, I haven't said anything to be ashamed of.

Never mind the quality mark, feel the myth

2010-07-30T18:53:00.007+01:00

Sitting on a train on the way home, I've been reading the TES on-line where one of the headline stories is about the Noah’s Ark Zoo Farm (which somewhat coincidently is located near Bristol which is where I've been for a JISC meeting,) controversially receiving the Government-backed Council for Learning Outside the Classroom's “quality badge”, a kitemark developed last year to accredit outdoor activity centres, museums and stately homes as suitable for children's education.

Hopefully the institution's name ought to be a clue for any educators wanting to broaden the mind of their charges, but the presence of an official badge might sway the unwary into inadvertently exposing enquiring minds to religious propaganda presented as fact.

Now leaving aside problems which are presumably issues of faith, such as where did all the water come from and where did it go, or why did Noah leave all the marsupials in Australasia, the likelihood of the story having any actual, and therefore significant, educational basis can be illustrated with simple mathematics.

Ignoring what we actually know to be the highest peaks on earth (Everest, K2, etc) and instead using Mount Ararat as reference point since that's where the biblical story says the ark ended up, we're left with water covering land at an elevation above sea level of to close to 17000 feet (to be precise the elevation of said mountain is 16945 feet). Since the story says it rained for 40 days and 40 nights, that means in each twenty four hour period the water rose an average of 425 feet (17000/40), or to put it in another way, 17' 9" each and every hour all around the world for nearly 6 weeks, not just local to wherever Noah's menagerie was floating around.

That's an awful lot of water in anybody's (good?) book, and if the family who run the zoo want to believe that it really happened and put on a show about it then that's up to them, but handing out an official educational endorsement is surely not something that's going to help anybody involved in the planning of school trips now that we know there's no apparent care taken in deciding which organisations can be trusted to deliver objective supplements to the national curriculum.

Mad Mullahs Mullets Matters

2010-07-07T19:33:00.012+01:00

News today that Iran is going to ban "decadent cuts" such as mullets, spiked-tops and ponytails as part of a crackdown on "Western hairstyles" after an organisation devoted to Islamic fashion issued a list of what they claim to be culturally appropriate haircuts for men.

The list, endorsed by the culture ministry, includes pictures of models with short hair (curly and straight), long sideburns and in one case a 60s-style quiff, but none of collar-length locks. The "... proposed styles are inspired by Iranians' complexion, culture and religion, and Islamic law", and will be promoted at the Modesty and Veil Festival, the organiser of which, Jaleh Khodayar, said "We are happy that the Islamic Republic of Iran's government has backed us in designing these hairstyles."

Wonder how many more new persecution categories could need adding to the world's asylum claim forms now that even skipping a visit to the barbers could result in a visit from a coiffeur copper cluster?

Monkey Business

2010-07-05T23:28:00.011+01:00

In the middle of what are always my busiest two weeks of the year, I'm now in a Peterborough hotel with a copy of the regional weekly newspaper where the main story is about a local woman who went to Thailand in an attempt to overcome a fear of monkeys.

Apparently, 56-year old Dee Darwell was trying to overcome a lifelong primate phobia by travelling to an area near Phuket called Monkey Island as a way of "confronting her fears". The story doesn't say whether the indigenous crab-eating Macaques could smell Dee's fear, or could just detect utter stupidity and found the temptation to mischief too hard to resist, but within minutes of her getting off the boat they attacked "like a pack of animals" (as opposed to????).
Now recovering at home after treatment for bites in a Bangkok hospital, Dee says she owes her life to the intervention of local fishermen after the other sunseekers on her boat trip fled in panic, adding that at the time she thought "This is it, I'm going to die, I'm going to be savaged".

Now personally, although psychoanalysts and motivational speakers might say that this is the way to go, I can't see that in her case it was even remotely necessary. Obviously there are many things round here that having an irrational fear of would be more than worth the effort to cure.
Fens for instance.
Or shoe shops.
But monkeys?
I've only been here for about four hours, but unless the city centre resembles a safari park on weekends, or gibbons plague the bingo, it seems to me that the best thing to do if you have a fear of monkeys and live in Peterborough is to forget all about finding a cure and not go on holiday to somewhere called Monkey Island!

Close, but no cigar....

2010-06-16T13:05:00.007+01:00

On my way across London this morning for a conference where David Willets will this afternoon talk about the value, heritage and future of technical skills at FE and HE level, I picked up a copy of one of the free papers distributed outside Underground stations which today contains a report about an article in yesterday's Daily Mail (lazy journalism part one) regarding the alleged censoring of Winston Churchill's cigar from a poster outside an exhibition near London Bridge by anti-smoking zealots.

"It seems the man who steered Britain through the most dangerous period of its recent history may have fallen victim to the modern curse of political correctness," says the report (of the report!).

Oddly enough, the story goes on to describe that the disappearance of the Churchillian havana is "something of a mystery" with the ubiquitous, un-named spokesman for the visitor attraction "astonished" that such a thing could have happened and denying that the museum has been contacted by any anti-smoking lobby group, and was quite unaware of the airbrushing until a visitor drew it to their attention.

Anway, despite the Daily Mail (or the Metro) being unable to identify who was responsible for the airbrushed image (lazy journalism part two), typing "Winston Churchill Images" into Google gives a listing of which one the higher ranked results is Fanpix, an on-line image gallery. So, on the assumption that Fanpix isn't responsible for removing the cigar (why would they?), presumably someone creating the War Experience display went on to the Internet in search of suitable Churchill pictures and, not knowing that it was digitally altered, selected this one.

A bit more research using Google's advanced search facility gives what is probably the ultimate source of the doctored picture, a 2006 blog about a Washington Post story about politically-correct anti-smoking fanatics censoring old pictures. In this case, the story concerned Hanna-Barbera apparently removing scenes from Tom and Jerry cartoons after a complaint to Ofcom that the scenes were "glamorising" smoking. The blog suggested that "they’d have to go back and edit all the old pictures of Winston Churchill to remove his cigar" and mocked up an image poking fun at the excesses of Political Correctness to illustrate the point, which four years later has ended up getting used as "proof" that PC has, once again, "gone mad". So, as we now know that it's not (in this instance at least), maybe something else is going on: an attempt to attract publicity to the Britain at War Experience, perhaps? Or am I just too cynical?

Hoop, hoop and away (with the money)

2010-06-01T18:34:00.008+01:00

I'm now in Blackpool at the end of my first ever staff development day just for school teachers where the principal topic of conversation has been the hoopla stall owner prosecuted last week for breaching gambling laws by making his game almost impossible to win.

Although none of us were in the least surprised that the blocks were tilted at such an angle the chances of success were calculated by academics at Lancaster University to be over 2,600 to 1, nobody could even begin to comprehend why one complainant to Trading Standards lost nearly £1,500.

According to court reports, secret filming showed punters losing around £1 a minute, which made us all wonder what kind of person would want a shoddily assembled cuddly toy enough to spend what must have been about 3 days vainly throwing money away?

So yes, the operation was crooked, but this particular idiot was always likely to get separated from his money pretty quickly one way or another. Now if only the bbc report had mentioned his name and address, I could forward an e-mail from a Nigerian chief anxious to deposit £5m in a British account, then all he'd have to do to recoup his losses would be to send his complete bank details without delay....

Leicester 2 Colin 20

2010-05-28T23:57:00.007+01:00

This repeat visit to Leicester College (we were there in June 2009) was the 20th Colin Beard Experiential Learning Day put together for lecturers delivering HE level education programmes in a FE environment.

Even though there's been 19 similar events around the country over the last 4 years, and there'll be more in the North and on the South coast later in the year, recommendations from previous attendees meant that delegates were willing to travel from as far away as Brighton and Greenwich, with two of those present making the effort to "experience the difference" for a second time in less than twelve months.

As usual, a full day and an engaging facillitator meant that nobody's attention was diverted from the activities in the room, although our venue on the second floor of the Freemen's Park campus has such an excellent view (from the window to the right in the picture above) of the magnificent rubgy ground which is home to the Leicester Tigers that we should probably have included a mention of it in the programme for the day instead of just alluding to it in a post title...

Space (centre): the no-Phil Frontier

2010-05-17T20:30:00.003+01:00

Having been asked to help coordinate a "Creative Assessment to Help Eliminate Plagiarism" workshop as part of the joint JISC/HEA e-asy Assessment day at the National Space Centre, I arrived in Leicester late last night to be told by the organisers that Professor Phil Race, the advertised keynote speaker, was ill and unable to attend, so "could I step in"?

3 beers, a glass of wine and a pizza-full of persuasion later, meant sleep was postponed while I re-purposed a collection of resources and wrote a presentation to make up a (hopefully!) coherent 2-hour session around the day's theme of "engaging with innovative ways of assessing learners to make assessment e-asy".

Fortunately, when the moment of truth arrived, adrenaline overrode the effects of having had only 3 hours worth of sleep, so my delivery was something close to normal, but after an afternoon workshop, a plenary and three hours to get home, the effects of "boldly going where no one (well me anyway) has gone before" has left me feeling very tired....

C'est la vie (ou la mort) ma femme fatale...

2010-05-12T13:53:00.007+01:00

Looks like those romantic ballards about racing heartbeats might be scientifically based after all, as according to research carried out by the University of Valencia, just five minutes alone with an attractive woman can raise a man’s levels of the stress hormone cortisol to “dangerous levels” that “may be bad for the heart”.

The experiment, approved by the Faculty of Psychology’s ethical committee, involved 84 male students who were told to avoid alcohol and other stimulants for 24 hours, before being led into a room by one of the (male) scientists to solve a Sudoku puzzle. The researcher then departed on the pretext of getting another puzzle, leaving the unsuspecting student to sit alone in a room with a stranger.

Saliva samples were taken from the students to measure their cortisol levels which apparently remained the same when left with another male, but rose when left alone with an attractive female. The study added that this rise was heightened in men who believed the woman was “out of their league", and could even reach levels reportedly similar to that experienced by parachutists, an amount that can “bring on the possibility of heart attacks and strokes”.

As we now know that since pretty women are sociological gravediggers, surely our newspapers should be ablaze with headlines such as “Man dies in front of sexy woman”, “Ban these killer heels” and "French National Suicide Bid: instead of making it mandatory, they're banning the burka!"?

Roses, grants and Guildford signs ahead

2010-05-09T18:25:00.004+01:00

Having just spent 5 hours driving down to Surrey in readiness for tomorrow's Funding Applications workshop, I'm now sat in a country hotel's beautiful rose garden looking up at the dozens of vapour trails criss-crossing what would otherwise be a completely clear blue sky while reading the travel information pages of the BBC website.
Apparently, Eyjafjallajökull, Iceland’s second-least pronounceable volcano (where to even start with Þeistareykjarbunga?) is still moderately active, and later today, due to an expected change in wind direction, it's ash plume will drift over Irish airspace and close Dublin, Cork, Waterford, and Shannon airports.
Although it's understandable that jet planes will be again be affected since they travel at the same height as the ash cloud (around 30,000 feet with lower altitudes not feasible on many levels : fuel usage, thicker air = overheating etc) and would suck volcanic dust through turbines which could theoretically heat it to glass-forming temperatures, what I can't find an explanation for is why are propellor planes also grounded when they fly much lower, or helicopters which fly lower still?

Ian-PWL (whoever he is) says this blog is wonderful!

2010-04-25T15:16:00.003+01:00

The secret's out: how to make any blog appear to be one of the most popular on the Internet, even if it only averages half-a-dozen visits a day (assuming there's no visitor counter like the one on the right).
Just after each posting, leave a comment underneath saying how brilliant it is. Something along the lines of “Fantastic: particularly the headlines with puns in them!”, or possibly "A must read - absolutely fascinating. 5 Stars!!" will do. Then go comment on every other blog you can find and write that they are boring, and perhaps written by morons/idiots/lunatics/etc.

This, according to a BBC news report (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8641515.stm), is approximately the strategy employed by the historian Orlando Figes (a professor at London's Birkbeck College and the author of many books on Russian history) to boost his ratings. Apparently he's been leaving comments like "hard to follow" and "awful" under the Amazon entries of the printed works of rivals, and oozing praise about his own efforts. Unfortunately, there were Baldrickesque flaws in his cunning plan, as not only did he use the ill-disguised pseudonym “orlando-birkbeck”, Rachel Polonsky - one of the authors rubbished by Figes - discovered that the reviewer shared the same home address as the good professor. Oops!

Figes said he was "ashamed" of his behaviour and did not entirely understand why he acted as he did, adding that "it was stupid".
No arguments here!

There's no substitute for experience

2010-04-22T12:02:00.000+01:00

Less than 5 weeks left to Colin Beard's latest Experiential Learning Day (there's been 19 of these days over the last four years, and this one at Leicester college is almost full), so if you're reading this and want to know what a combination lock made from drinking cups is all about, download a programme from http://www.playingwithlearning.com/subpages/images/Leicester_Prog.gif

A-pope-collarish Now (or Never)

2010-04-11T15:30:00.003+01:00

If you happened to pick up today's Sunday Times, you could easily develop an exciting new opinion of Richard Dawkins, author, television presenter and formerly Charles Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University.

A headline in the paper declares "Richard Dawkins: I will arrest Pope Benedict XVI", which suggested to my overly-active Sunday morning imagination that when the Pontiff arrives in September, the good Professor intends do his best Bond-gone-mad impression and personally attack the Papal Plane, kick in the door, rough up a few Swiss Guards, present an arrest warrant, slap on a pair of handcuffs and then drag Benedict XVI kicking and screaming to the authorities to face charges for his alleged role in covering up child abuse by errant Catholic priests around the world.

An amusing image, but it didn't take much research to discover that the headline was, to say the least, misleading. Dawkin's own website points out that the headline did a disservice to both himself and the Times journalist responsible for the article, and unless someone decides to make the movie (& if they do, who owns the rights?) that image of Dawkins the action hero will have to remain nothing but a diverting fantasy since the rather less funny truth is only that Pr Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens have been exploring the possibility of mounting a legal challenge to the Papal Visit.

Thanks to Marc Horne, the Sunday Times reporter, for not only providing a topical addition to Tuesday's Critical Thinking workshop, but also inspiring the Photoshopping which has produced an image for the summing up session.

A distinction without a difference....

2010-03-30T19:05:00.003+01:00

After spending the day delivering a critical thinking workshop at St James Park, I've now spent nearly two hours sat on a train parked just south of Newcastle.

Apparently, we (the passengers) aren't entitled to free food and drink because it's not our locomotive that's broken down: it's the one in front!

No wonder the likes of Stephen Byers (recently discredited MP) describe themselves as "like taxis for hire", since not even the most unscrupulous of our politicial elite would be daft enough to risk association with our rail network when they behave like this.

Springing in the rain

2010-03-24T17:08:00.005Z

Trying to drive back up the M1 after attending a JISC Project Assembly, I'm now parked in Leicester Forest service station due to the torrential rain which the local Midlands radio describes as "unseasonal".
As today is officially three days into spring, "unseasonal" would appear to be putting it rather mildly.
Unlike the weather, which isn't mild at all.....

Bearing False Witness is a Highway to Hull...

2010-03-03T18:54:00.007Z

Watching television in my Humberside hotel room (in the middle of delivering a two-day team building workshop), I've just seen a local BBC news article about a school due to open up the road in September called the "New Life Academy", which apparently claims to be "Ofsted approved".

Now feel free to send corrections, but to my knowledge Ofsted doesn't "approve" anything; it inspects and regulates. A quick Google has produced a website promoting the "Advanced Christian Education system of individualised learning" delivered in a school which is "Ofsted approved, and with an excellent track record".

However, since it won't open until September the New Life Academy doesn't have a "track record" in anything, so it can't possibly relate to the institution and must mean the curriculum instead? Nope, Ofsted doesn't "approve" curricula either.

Therefore, the New Life Academy's Christian Fundamentalists must have considered "Thou shalt not bear false witness" to be simply an option not an instruction and decided to ignore it.

Wonder if they've considered that making false public declarations might lead the inspectors to doubt the contents of their Self Evaluation Process when the day of judgement finally arrives - Ofsted that is; not Armageddon?

The Elephant in the Room..

2010-02-25T15:38:00.004Z

The Higher Education Academy has apparently been informed by the funding councils that its grant will be reduced for the forthcoming academic year, something which the subject centre workers I've spent today with think is going to significantly impact primarily, and unjustly, on them.

It's my view, and it's also one apparently shared by all the delegates at today's event (not just those representing the subject centres), that whoever makes the decisions needs to very seriously consider the educational impact and current returns on expenditure.

The HEA board will doubtless claim to look at the big picture as it considers the challenge of managing the prospective funding cut, but given the contractual position of the subject centres, reducing/stopping their activities is relatively easy to implement and representatives of the central function are hardly likely to admit that their well-documented ticking of many boxes isn't a desirable output?

However, the easiest option is unlikely to be the best one, as the subject centres are not only the most visible part of the HEA, (other than running a recognition scheme, what do all those people at York actually do?), they are also, according to 2008's interim evaluation of the HEA "valued because they tackle enhancement from the ‘ground floor’" and “widely cited as the Academy’s flagship programme”.

It is also the regular engagement with those lecturers actually delivering the HE programmes, individuals who can have a direct impact on standards, that makes subject centres so effective: extensive repositories of generic information and strategy/policy documents do not have anything like the same potential for positive change as working together within and across learning communities.

Therefore, surely either reducing the size or number of the centres before, or instead of, reducing the size (& cost) of the central "coordinating body" first, will eventually lead to the closure of the HEA anyway, as without them what's left of the organisation won't be able to deliver anything of use to any of the people who want or need it?

Anyone willing to assuage the fears of centre personnel that they won't be bearing the lion's share of the Academy's cuts while the York white elephant is protected like the endangered species it now surely is?

Kirpaning it in the Family...

2010-02-09T08:36:00.004Z

I'm currently sat in Leeds/Bradford Airport reading yesterday's remarks by Sir Mota Singh QC, a retired judge who's apparently stated that Sikhs should be allowed to carry their ceremonial daggers in public places, and wondering whether he's thought about how this assertion might apply to air travel since even nail files are on the banned list?

No exceptions are proposed in the BBC article, but it does describe a case where a boy was banned from wearing his Kirpan (dagger) at the Compton School in Barnet, and that even though the school offered to compromise by offering "the option of wearing a smaller knife, welded into a metal sheath" the boy's parents declined and removed him from the school; causing me to wonder what would happen if they (or their son) wanted to fly?

Mass homeopathic overdose - none dead!

2010-02-01T10:38:00.004Z

Setting off to Derby on a 10.23 train to deliver an assessment workshop has prompted me to declare my admiration for all those who took part in Saturday's mass homeopathic overdose (at 10.23am: various locations around the country). Or not as it happens, since nobody succeeded in taking their own lives despite hundreds of people downing entire packets of homeopathic pills.

Hopefully the 10:23 campaign has succeeded in raising awareness (a form of education, just by another means?) of the inefficacy of homeopathic medicine, and the double-standards of leading pharmacists who happily stock them while admitting that they don't work.

Effectively it's a secret?

2010-01-29T17:45:00.002Z

Surfing the Internet whilst on the way home after delivering a day's training about running effective meetings in Manchester isn't yielding any information about yesterday's HEFCE meeting to decide this year's funding allocations.
Thinking aloud - is this because:

no decision has been made yet? And if not why not?
they're waiting to tell the institutions/organisations first? Which means it's not looking good for the support providers.
or maybe they'd also like some help running effective meetings?

Note: today's staff development hasn't been specifically "Running Effective Meetings in Manchester", it just happens to have been in Manchester as that's where the client's based...

New Team Building Exercises

2010-01-22T10:23:00.002Z

Although some might think this is a little sad, I spent part of my holiday working out how the cleaning staff constructed these (and others) daily towel sculptures. There'll be some instructions and team building exercises based on these images written over the next week or two - available "origami-style"!

Minus Seven!

2010-01-07T01:16:00.005Z

Well that's it - I'm fed up of weather like a dwarf-less Snow White pantomime; so assuming Manchester airport's open (and the M62 is clear) it's scuba-diving for two weeks in the Maldives and hoping that this strange white stuff has all gone by January 20th.

Snow work without flyer

2010-01-06T12:21:00.006Z

Due to yesterday's closure of Southampton airport, I've had to postpone today's "Moving from Group Work to Team Work" workshop on the South Coast and stay home watching cricket on Sky instead.

Jet2 have agreed to refund my airfare to/from LBA, but DeVere Hotels are still charging me £95 as I didn't (couldn't) give 24 hours cancellation notice and won't take my weather-enforced non-appearance into account for any future booking when the training day gets rearranged.

Am now wondering how the snow is costing British industry £oos of millions a day (ref: Sky News during the lunch interval) since although I've incurred some expenses without any income, DeVere have benefitted by that same amount without incurring any costs, and the college still has the funds they were going to pay me, all the money involved is still in the system somewhere.
Isn't it?

Steeling myself against the weather....

2009-12-17T19:24:00.005Z

Contextualising workshops to suit the subject area of the participants isn't easy, but fortunately one of today's Research and Scholarly Activity workshops was with engineers, and the other was in an area I've worked very closely with in the past: Art/Design/Media.

This in some ways made up for today's sessions clashing with my friends and ex-colleagues' christmas dinner in Loughborough, but has now been more offset by only having to drive home from Sheffield in a very surprising amount of snow.

Can't remember the last time so much fell in such a short space of time, or when it fell this side of the New Year, but at least that's my travelling done for three weeks so it'll be "working from home" and golf until early January.

Strategic Priorities and Managing Risk Conference

2009-12-10T20:59:00.002Z

The big day!
After 3 months of planning and publicising, 85 (who according to their feedback sheets were very happy) delegates attended what will now be an annual HE/FE conference organised in association with EIAT Consultancy.
Keynotes were delivered by John Widdowson: Principal and Chief Executive, New Durham College & Chair of the MEG Group, David Jenkins: Director of Educational Partnerships, Staffordshire University, Executive for Associate for Collaborative Provision, and Charlie Woodcock: Executive Director Business & Community Development, Chester University, and I ran two workshops on "Scholarly Activity and Applying for Third-Party Funding to Support it" with Madeleine King.
Not only will the conference pay for two weeks somewhere equatorial in the new year, but 4 colleges offered me staff development work in February/March and one of the delegates asked if I could help her put together a Scholarly Activity conference next Summer.
Full programme details can be found at http://www.eiat.org/hefeconference.php

Strategic Priorities Conference Dinner

2009-12-09T22:50:00.002Z

Queens Hotel, Leeds
Spent a very enjoyable evening at our pre-conference dinner discussing amongst other things (leaving the "work talk" until tomorrow) such random topics as phantom whippets and pigeons with the Association of Colleges HE Policy Manager Madeleine King, why there's no real ale south of Sheffield with the Mixed Economy Group's Chair John Widdowson, and how LUFC will be back in the big time possibly at Stoke City's expense with David Jenkins from Staffordshire University/SURF/ACP.
Although the company has been stimulating and the food/wine excellent, unfortunately it's bedtime as there's serious work to be done in the morning...

Acronymed Out!

2009-11-11T18:07:00.006Z

As I'm now on a train heading North after attending today's HEFCE FEC Data Day at the Regent's Park Holiday Inn, I'm wondering who decided that everybody in education had to have some sort of snappy acronym to confuse first-time delegates at these kind of events.
In no particular order there was NUS, HEA, IFF, HEFCE, TQI, NSS, IM, QAA and many more mentioned in the presentations, all of which I knew but there were many delegates puzzled by what some of them stood for. Time for conference organisers to include a glossary?
Memo to self - add one to next month's Strategic Priorites pack after I've read the presentations.

Strategic Priorities Conference

2009-09-07T15:41:00.001+01:00

Having now agreed to be party to the organisation of a national conference for HE/FE - this blog entry exists only to publicise the date & venue, December 10th, Queens Hotel, Leeds.

Working with EIAT Consultancy it's going to bring together expertise and experience to assist colleges in developing their strategies to manage risk through informed choice.

More details to follow on both the main PlayingwithLearning website, and the EIAT one, but I'll be helping to set it up, publicising it to the world (you heard it here first!) & running workshops on the day.

It's Grim up North (& South, & West & East probably)

2009-09-03T18:01:00.001+01:00

Am now sitting waiting for my train home after delivering a day's staff development for a college management team & reflecting on how I don't miss the annual nightmare of enrolment week.

I think everybody working in education would agree that the treatment students receive at enrolment informs their impression of what to expect on their course and needs to be a positive one, but while we've been coccooned from the world in our team building workshop, prospective students have been in the main hall getting agitated by not being able to get answers to their questions as the poor lecturing staff on the desks are repeatedly interrogated on courses about which they know nothing.

Don't have an answer as to how colleges can solve this problem without securing increased funding, but until some system (on-line enrolments? in-depth FAQs? Admission Tutors? available ex-students?) is put into place, they'll always be considered as inefficient by their local community in comparison to any local HEI, even if the course delivery/management is in reality far better.

Enhancing the Student Experience conference

2009-07-09T22:10:00.000+01:00

After the "star billing" of Monday, today was the rather more usual relegation to "support act" on the "Enhancing the Student Experience" conference bill at Nottingham's Basford Hall. First up was HEFCE who told us that times are hard, there's no money, and their continued role in UK education is not guaranteed etc.
The delegates then chose from many workshops: by me (3 times: "Involving students in Assessment"), Wendy Stubbs from QAA, JISC RSC, Confetti Institute, Nottingham Law School, Trent Uni, Castle College, Leicester College etc and also heard from the NUS about what students want (subject knowedge that will get them a job, social experiences so they're not alone, feedback so they can improve, etc : no surprises, although one did say that their degree certificate would make a good table mat if it was laminated, but while unlaminated served no other purpose! Times are hard apparently.....).

RSC Tour

2009-07-07T22:36:00.000+01:00

No, nothing to do with the Royal Shakespeare Company, it's three JISC Regional Support Centre conferences.

June 23rd: For the third time in only 5 days, I had the pleasure of visiting Leicester, on this occasion for the local JISC RSC's annual conference held in the Walkers' Stadium where the keynote outlined how difficult it is to find what you want on the web.
Lots of page returns from Google searches apparently...

The second date on my one-week summer tour of JISC Regional Support Centre conferences was out on the west coast (Southport) where I witnessed a wonderful presentation/lecture/demonstration by Russell Prue, an "ICT evangelist & corporate trainer" who agreed in principle to be part of PWL3 (dates permitting).

The third (& last) date on my summer tour of JISC RSC conferences was at the newly built (completed just before the LSC started pulling the plug on construction developments) Epping Forest college, which for some unknown reason is not in Epping, but in Loughton 7/8 miles away. On the way there, my taxi driver kindly pointed out local features of interest ("Jade Goody's buried in that cemetery", "Jade Goody used to live there", "Jade Goody went to that school" - you get the idea by now I'm sure!) while I tried not to make jokes just in case he was a relative or an acolyte of some religious sect that I'm not yet aware of (called maybe the Goodies? - oh no that's been done).

Seren atynfa daledig i mewn gwin!

2009-07-06T21:58:00.000+01:00

After spending most of Sunday on trains (6 of them: 5 connections) travelling to North Wales I had the honour of being keynote speaker (or as the facillitator described me, the "star attraction") at today's "Best Practice in Higher Education" conference.
A memorable two days out, not least because following my 30 minute presentation, I'm now better off by a crate of wine. Yep. 12 bottles. Not exactly easy to carry across country, but they had assumed I'd go by car & I didn't want to offend them by refusing: after all it is another country & I am unfamiliar with local customs....
Free bottle to the first person to guess what the heading says (there are clues in the text) and convince me you've worked it out & not simply copied it into a translation site (which is what I did in case you're wondering).

All in the best possible Taste

2009-06-19T21:29:00.001+01:00

Twenty college delegates from across middle-England (East to West: Worcester up to Stockport) joined us in Leicester College's hospitality suite (part of the Taste restaurant - "Leicester's best kept secret") for the latest Experiential Learning Day with Dr Colin Beard.
As an aperitif , I introduced myself & stated that there were no planned fire drills (although we had 4, apparently due to incompetent builders), and who Colin was (is?), followed by a main course of teaching techniques that can readily adapted to individual subject areas.
Dessert was me swapping strips of raffle tickets for completed feedback sheets (20:20 happiness) & a prize draw for some copies of Colin's book which were left over from last year's Playing with Learning Conference. As I've been to more than a dozen of these so far, the highlight for me was finally (after 4 failed attempts) getting to experience (geddit?) Taste resaurant's food part-way through the day.
Everything I'd been led to believe it was. And more. Absolutely delicious....

KC in the Sunshine: new brand

2009-06-16T21:44:00.003+01:00

Just spent a very sunny (30 degrees+) afternoon at what is now Kirklees College, an institution formed from the merger of Huddersfield and Dewsbury & Batley colleges.
This was their inaugrual HE staff development day, and I was asked to deliver a workshop on how/what/why scholarly activity (HE in FE's big topic at the moment if you hadn't gathered from past posts...), but have only blogged it so I could use the title pun....
Sorry.

Expectations, Experiences and Encounters in HE and HE in FE – The 3Es

2009-06-12T19:39:00.001+01:00

The theme of this one-day conference, hosted by the University of Bolton on behalf of the NW Network Group (the universities of Bolton, Central Lancashire, Chester, Manchester & Cumbria, and the colleges of Bradford, Burnley, Stockport, West Cheshire and Blackpool & the Flyde) was student expectations, experiences and encounters, and exploring staff perceptions through innovative research partnerships between staff teaching higher education in universities and further education colleges.
I was originally asked (back in December) to be the keynote speaker, but was relegated to first-up after lunch to accomodate a presentation on the issues that have arisen from research undertaken on the student experience. After listening to 30 minutes of figures and looking at graphs which couldn't be read from 10 metres away - and I was at the front of the 60+ audience! - I fully understood why the organisers had decided to start the second half with someone (i.e. me!) less likely to induce a post-pastry snooze-a-thon. Not an easy thing to do if your talk is on "why and how HE in FE staff can get involved in scholarly activity, the value that both sides attach to, and can get from, working in partnerships"...
Feedback forms are getting sent out to the delegates along with the day's presentations, so it'll be a couple of weeks before we find out whether visiting the Final Year Students' exhibition on the ground floor would've been a better way to while away an hour or two.

No Stone (Henge) Left Unturned...

2009-06-05T21:28:00.000+01:00

Having spent a less than exciting evening in Chippenham (where an "About the Area" guide lists one of Swindon's roundabouts as a "place of interest"!), an early morning train ride took me to Corsham for a HE/Partner Staff Development day. Appoximately 50 college lecturers gathered to hear a welcome, a short talk by a HE Manager, then yours truly on why college lecturers should get involved with scholarly activity and how they can be supported before dispersing to attend sessions entitled “How does a FE lecturer become a HE lecturer?”, “Improving recruitment, retention and achievement ”, "Assessing group work with work based learners"and “Building confidence: the transition into HE”.

Although by the time these had started I was already making the 5 hour journey back wondering whether the locals thought the stone circle down the road was some precursor to modern roundabouts.....

One Man Went to Mow (Bray)

2009-06-03T22:07:00.002+01:00

This week's hurricane tour (4th presentatio/workshop in 3 days) blew into Melton Mowbray to deliver a speech on " The Regional Impact of National Policy on FE/HE Partnerships" at PERA (Production Engineering Research Association as was) for the local LLN.
The day started with Oxygen's Earl Lynch getting everybody to hold hands (knowing what was coming - see past post on Pork Pies - I made sure that I was in between two attractive women) and jiggle about (experiencing partnership working in action apparently).
As DIUS's Sean Simon declined to attend at short notice (so I still don't whether HE in FE comes under him or Lammy), the day's opening address was given by Chester University's Charlie Woodcock who outlined how their multi-HEI/college partnership worked.

Workshops and a nice lunch were followed by delegates tieing one another together with string handcuffs (made sure I was on a table with no blokes), and getting out of of them by cooperation and unnessary (as it turned out when you knew the solution) close-quarter gymnastics!
Still fuelled by adrenalin, I then delivered my much-rehearsed 25 minute talk to probably the most animated 200+ audience I've ever had - conference facillitators take note!

Where's Fiona Bruce when you need her?

2009-06-01T19:01:00.003+01:00

Spent today at my old college, not just seeing some old (well they do look old - FE does that to you!) friends and colleagues and fielding job offers (yes they'd have me back), but also helping PlagiarismAdvice.org to run a workshop identifying where plagiarism in student work is likely to occur, developing strategies to prevent problems recurring and encouraging student engagement.
The workshop participants also learnt how to use plagiarism detection software, in this instance TurnitinUK, to assist with detecting student plagiarism and also as part of a more formative approach.
Nice to go back, but glad it was only for a day....

Scholarly Activity Workshop

2009-05-19T21:52:00.001+01:00

Spent today at Solihull College's Woodlands Campus running a workshop for FE lecturers who work at HE level and want to increase their engagement with research and scholarly activity.
In addition to my input, delegates benefitted from the expertise of:

Liz Willis from the HEA Engineering Subject Centre
Sue Moron-Garcia from Coventry University's Centre for the Study of Higher Education offering an introduction to what is meant by scholarly activity, guidance in getting started with carrying out research, gathering evidence on learning and teaching, and writing papers for academic journals.
Becky Turner from the HELP CETL showcasing some examples of successful practices from colleges in the SW to give an idea of the kind of things college lecturers could realistically achieve with their limited resources (of time and money).

Without a doubt, one of the best scholarly activity workshops I've been involved in, and thanks very much to Liz, Sue & Becky for making it possible.

PWL 2 : Still glowing like a RediBrek kid outside Sellafield!

2009-05-13T23:38:00.002+01:00

Scarman House, Warwick
After 11 months of anticipation and 9 months of planning, Playing with Learning 2 : Making Connections finally arrived to showcase what conferences should be about.
Starting with yours truly doing the welcomes and setting the tone for the day, we then had Gary King, Britain's No1 Graphic Facilitator, explaining how/why he was going to create this year's conference image (last year's is below).

My good friend Kev Brace from the local JISC RSC demoed some interactive voting buttons supplied by Promethian and showed how we were going to use them during the day, followed by Dr Colin Beard and Pr Alan Mortiboys staging a "Desert Island Discuss" - yes, with music - about teaching with emotional intelligence.
Prior to an interruption from a pair of puppets beamed in from California (really the room next door via Huddersfield and back - courtesy of Direct Visual), Kirsten Hardie described her NTFS-recognised "On trial" teaching technique that would follow what proved to be an excellent lunch. Using students - yes we actually get them to participate - and volunteer delegates as prosecuting/defence counsels etc, we put the nation's educators on trial as "not using technology effectively to the benefit of their students". Guilty, by the way. After attending a choice of one from four workshops (while I helped to disassemble our television studio), the delegates gathered again in the main auditorium for 45 minutes worth of final summations from Gary King, Kirsten Hardie & me, before exchanging their feedback sheets (see below) for a free copy of Alan Mortiboy's latest book.

Sample comments include:

"The best event I've been to since 1994" (We can probably assume that he/she started teaching then, not that 1994 was a landmark year for education!).
"Not just talking about innovative delivery, actually doing it !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! - why can't all staff development be like this?"
"A truly wonderful day out, thank you, thank you, thank you"
"Will be including some of this in my teaching from tomorrow - first time I've ever been able to say that"
"Thanks for a great event. Truly inspirational"
"I just wish that all my colleagues had been there too. The ripples of the impact of this event will spread ever outward. It was terrific to be involved in such a high quality event."

Proper Planning Prevents Poor Pork Pie Performance

2009-05-07T20:23:00.004+01:00

I was sent by the HEA to the Skills for Sustainable Communities Lifelong Learning Network (based at the University of Leicester) after a request for a conference speaker had been passed to me with no details whatsoever about audience type. After outlining the work of the academy & its subject centres, we then spent the afternoon discussing my high-profile speaking engagement at their annual conference next month in Melton Mowbray: "Maximise the potential of your people for improved business performance".

The aim of the event is to bring together their educational partners to celebrate success of partnership working, help provide ways they can work together in the future and overcome any barriers to help vocational learners progress.

After agreeing a biography they're putting on the website & in delegate packs, I now know that I'm supposed to be an expert on "The importance of FE and HE working together, new developments for FE/HE (good job I went to an Advanced Apprenticeships meeting yesterday!), can give many successful examples of FE and HE partnerships, and talk about regional policy/strategy as it affects HE in FE".

Fortunately the content of the speech won't be a problem, but it would have been nice to know what the brief was before the meeting so I could have put some proposals together. Still, this will serve as a good example of the 6Ps I can give out to give students prior to their vivas.

Lights, camera, action!

2009-04-09T18:20:00.000+01:00

As Playing With Learning 2 now includes a hamper of puppets (think that's the correct collective noun: apologies for showing off if it is; serious embarassment if it isn't), I had to find out if the company filming the day could set up some sort of teleconferencing facility in Scarman House so that the puppeteers could work in a different room - one reserved for the afternoon workshops - to the main event, preferably at no extra cost.
Technically, it turns out to be no problem at all - probably! - and after I've outlined how much more beneficial to them the footage will be for their own promotional work, it fortunately won't cost any extra except a couple of beers the night before & additional stress on the day while I worry about something else that could go wrong...

Master of Puppets

2009-04-08T20:03:00.002+01:00

Denby Dale (home of the world famous pie)
Spent this afternoon with a puppetry company called Get Your Head Round It! who currently specialise in teacher's lesson plans, DVDs and semi-improvised workshops covering four subject areas: Sexual Health & Relationships, Careers, Drugs & Alcohol, & Citizenship. Although their work is aimed at teenagers, it had been suggested to me that they might make an interesting addition to Playing With Learning 2 if they/we could come up with a suitable scenario/characterisation to include in Kirsten Hardy's "On Trial" part of the conference. As they're keen to work at a higher educational level, and the conference's intention is to explore the boundaries of innovative teaching & ways of engaging students, I travelled across West Yorkshire with a distinct feeling of doubt that there could be any kind of degree-level pedagogic value in adding some talking dolls to the grand day out, even if they are life-sized & operated by professionals.
Four hours of discussions later, and our student witnessness for the prosecution have been briefed and signed-up, ready to tell all about why it's the lecturers fault that they don't attend, work or achieve. Although it'll necessitate interviews by a remote link (as is sometimes the case with vulnerable adults/children in real court cases), having caricature students will prevent any associations with real institutions/individuals, and allow for exaggerated situations and comments on both sides. As Direct Visual are filming the day, the enhanced impact of the puppetry (would you ever have watched Spitting Image if it had been real people making those "jokes"?), ought to make the final DVD more interesting to people who weren't there, and hopefully help to engender comment/debate about the techniques used on the day - even if it is only "so were you responsible for that the conference with the puppets then?"

Scholarly Activity Forum

2009-04-02T23:51:00.002+01:00

High Melton, Doncaster
April 2nd 2009
This evening's (yep evening: 7 'til 9) staff development session for Doncaster's University centre (part of the local college), was on why staff should conduct scholarly activities and what it means.
The latest session I've ever delivered went well and included wine (I was driving so don't know if it was any good or not), although as the college is attempting to engender a research culture while expecting staff to deliver 850 hours plus of HE per year, most of the questions were perhaps understandably about how other colleges manage to do it, and not about how to go about it.
As a result, there'll be a collection of best practice examples available through the main PlayingwithLearning website as soon as I've decided on the format.

HELP Conference

2009-04-01T16:40:00.002+01:00

30th – 31st March
No, not 180 Beatles fans discussing their favourite album, it was the Higher Education Learning Partnership CETL's conference, HE in FE culture and experience: a partnership perspective.
As an invited guest, I neither presented nor got involved in the running of the event, but have spent two very enjoyable days at the University of Warwick catching up with old friends and making new ones, although the main reason for attending was to keep up with what's happening in and around HE in FE.

Opened by Professor Gareth Parry, Professor of Education, University of Sheffield, and closed by LMU's Professor Sally Brown ("QUANGOs are finished", "end of HEFCE in two years"), we were treated to a series of workshops and presentations in 2/3/4? very-badly signposted buildings on "The creation, operation and future of HE in FE partnerships", "The quality and style of HE in FE learning spaces and facilities", "The HE in FE experience and culture for staff", "The HE in FE experience and culture for students", and what I thought was the best of those I attended, “Regional support for implementing IQER & HE strategy” by the West Midlands RSC.

Back in 6 weeks for PWL 2: just up the road & in a much nicer venue that will definitely be well sign-posted...

Experiential Learning Day

2009-03-30T13:37:00.000+01:00

Pershore College, Worcestershire 27th March
This latest Experiential Learning event featuring Colin Beard took place at an agricultural college south of Birmingham, which for no cohesive reason was the most successful (in terms of numbers) run over the last three years. 30 delegates (plus 11 on the waiting list for next time - probably Doncaster), were treated to Colin's Introduction to a working model to help design teaching activities, Teaching models and theories, Improving student assignment introductions, Developing higher levels of critical thinking for HE work, Developing innovative thinking in students etc...
As two of the attendees had travelled down from Stockton-on-Tees (who got a recommendation from a colleague, but since nobody else from SoT has attended any of the previous 9 that's a bit of a puzzle) and wouldn't be home until 11.45 pm, I'm not going to whine about my 4-hour trip in each direction on a Friday. Or maybe I will....

Show me the Money!

2009-03-21T23:25:00.000Z

17 March 2009
As one of three "Dragons" at a workshop for FE colleges about bidding for project funding in Wellington (ish), Somerset (the others were from the local RSC and the HELP CETL), I gave a 30 minute talk outlining my own experiences of scrutinising funding applications both for JISC and the HEA, and the opportunities available for third party funding.
The delegates then formed groups to critique anonymised bids the local RSC had acquired from JISC under the Freedom of Information Act and report their findings while the presenters and local RSC staff operated as roving "experts".
After an excellent lunch (where I overate on cheesecake to allow for the 6 hours plus journey home - don't tell the wife: she thinks I'm slimming), and giving out some funding application guides, the 6 delegate groups generated bids which were theoretical but nonetheless pertinent to their current institutional agendas e.g. e-Assessment, Repositories etc and presented them to the three of us plus the local JISC HE Support Coordinator in a “Dragons Den” style format for constructive criticism and advice.
Feedback on the day, particularly with regards to the format, was all very positive, so I'm now going to formalise the delivery model and offer it with a variety of presenters to colleges on demand (well on request anyway...).

Yorkshire HE Symposium, Doncaster

2009-03-11T19:20:00.002Z

Having presented down the bill at last year's event in Sheffield, I was this time promoted to keynote and asked by the organisers to speak about scholarly activity and its impact on the learner's experience. Although I originally agreed to talk for 20 minutes, most of the previous evening had been spent re-writing the speech to last for 40 minutes due to a late programme change and the organisers "didn't think I'd mind"!
As it happened, the day's introductory presentation overran, there was an unscheduled (false) fire alarm, lunch turned up late, and yes, you've already guessed: I was asked if I could possibly shorten my bit so that the conference could finish approximately on time (the grovelling about "trains to catch", "car parking about to expire" etc was accompanied by a nice bottle of Shiraz, so of course I acquiesced). Fortunately, as the original speech I wrote last Friday was still on my pen drive (& in my head), I could deliver a coherent 20 minute slot without having to rush and now have a spare (admittedly padded), unused speech for sale if anybody's interested......

Furthering Higher Education 2009

2009-01-31T23:05:00.002Z

30th January, Aston Business School

Working with Blackpool & the Fylde college, I yesterday ran two sessions (both on "Support for Scholarly Activity and it's Impact on the Learner Experience") at this year's QAA/HEA joint conference exploring perceptions of scholarly activity in the FE sector, how Blackpool & the Fylde have supported and developed scholarship through the Teaching Quality and Enhancement Framework project implementation, and the ground-breaking FE Alliance and the Journal of Further Education Alliance which celebrates a number of papers relating to HE in FE.
Each of the two fully-booked workshops (30+ attendees both times, standing room only!) introduced the profiling tool used by the college to indentify and quantify scholarship on an individual and institutional level, and decribed how these activities have enhanced the experience of their students. B&F received a number of requests to demonstrate their tool at institutions & I've been invited to 6 colleges to run an extended version of today's session(s).

Think I'll write a paper on why (after again spending 2 hours stood up all the way back from Birmingham) more carriages/trains surely can't be that hard to organise and submit it to the journal of travel planning...

Blackpool Illuminations

2009-01-13T22:57:00.003Z

Spent today at Blackpool and the Fylde College discussing their wonderful scholarly activity programme, Teaching Quality Enhancement Funding and the FEAlliance which exists to bring together Further Education colleagues by providing networking opportunities that will inform the FE Sector about the communities collective views.
As a result of some workshops our centre ran about a year ago Imperial House Publishing has been commissioned by the FEAlliance to publish a journal which is intended to assist FECs and their partners to share good practice, develop their research capabilities and provide an exciting and valued body of knowledge for further reflection and debate.
The FEAlliance recognises that most FE staff including Academic, Administrative and Corporate, undertake day-to-day work or study for qualifications that yield knowledge, research, assignments, studies and reports that would not only benefit their own department but also staff in other colleges. The journal has been conceived in order to provide a platform for these staff to publish their work and raise their professional standing by sharing good practice and knowledge across educational institutions.
As a result of this meeting, I've agreed to run a joint workshop at the HEA/QAA collaborative conference towards the end of this month which will explore perceptions of scholarly activity in the FE sector, and how Blackpool & the Fylde have supported and developed scholarship through their innovative TQEF project and the FE Alliance Journal, Issue 3 of which celebrates a number of papers relating to HE in FE and should be available for distribution any day now.

So far south, it's almost in France...

2008-12-17T18:40:00.002Z

On what is now my last day before flying to Portugal for some winter sun, I'm now on the way home from two days working on a much-warmer-than-Yorkshire South Coast where I've been presenting to 30+ FEC engineers at an airport in the Sussex Downs, and around 40 performing arts lecturers in Worthing (both part of Northbrook College) on why bother doing, and how to go about, scholarly activity and writing for publication.
So warm, that it's got me wondering whether the four hour journey home & getting up at 5am for a 4 hour flight is worth it, & maybe I ought to just stay in Brighton for two weeks...

Who ate all the pie?

2008-12-06T22:27:00.001Z

3rd/4th December, Bolton
As a reward for my concerted efforts at a two-day event on the Student Learning Experience , I got to stay in a very posh hotel (the Reebok) and find out what a £20 steak pie tastes like. Disappointingly, it turned out to be pretty much the same as a £5 one, but was probably placed on the nice plate very carefully and with much pride. After all, how else could they justify £20 for a pie in Bolton?

Other than sampling the culinary delights of the North West, delegates from a diverse range of institutions (e.g. HEA Subject Centres, JISC RSCs, FECs, HEIs and a LLN) discussed student expectations, experiences and encounters with higher education, challenges and priorities for the HE sector in using technology by:

considering the effectiveness of resources which have been developed to support the student learning experience,
considering how to improve access to and take up of resources for a range of stakeholders,
identify additional developments/support that may be required to support the student ‘life cycle’,
exploring how organisations might collaborate further to enhance support for the HE student learning experience.

PWL 2 - The story so far

2008-11-24T19:20:00.002Z

Spent today finalising the programme for the next HEA HE in FE conference at Scarman House on May 13th - "Playing with Learning 2: Making the Connection".
This year's doubtless fantastic conference will involve Alan Mortiboys (from Birmingham), Colin Beard (from SHU), Kirsten Hardie (from Bournemouth) and a courtroom theme "you, the lecturer, stand accused of failing to engage your learners etc..." (or something like that anyway).
It will also have 4 workshops, a man wearing a papier-mâché head, another graphically-facillitated large painting (might need another house with an extra room for it to go in) and more freebies.
The local JISC RSC are providing voting tablets (delegates=jurors) and technical support for the day, but insisted on some social networking angle so we don't have to pay. Unfortunately, this got translated into a reason for incorporating Second Life so I now need to find someone to facillitate the attendance of assorted daleks, falcons, teddy bears & talking vending machines at my flagship production...

HELP (& advice)

2008-11-13T11:09:00.000Z

No, not a request for assistance, but an acronym for the Higher Education Learning Partnerships CETL (based at the University of Plymouth) who invited me to make two 7 hour train journeys in order to be part of their 2-day Advisory Board, most of which was taken up with helping them to plan their "HE in FE: A Partnership Perspective" conference next year.
Most of day 1 (2 pm start as some of us had been imprisoned on a train since 6am) was taken up by various HELP CETL employees describing what they've done since inception & their plans for the next year, and an ex-consultant to fdf outlining an evaluation report which I'd read last week.
Day 2 (9am start so that some of us could get home for 10pm), mainly concerned their conference & how to evaluate its success/impact, and who, if anybody, would care if the CETL wasn't going to organise a subsequent event for 2010 (but they might).

VETNET LLN Annual Conference

2008-11-13T09:03:00.000Z

5th November 2008, London

Working with MEDEV's Megan Quentin-Baxter and Gillian Brown, I helped to run a workshop on "Making use of resources to support education: Health and Life Sciences". JISC Intute's Laurian Williamson also contributed to a session attended by approximately one third of the 95 conference delegates.

Participants were given a very short presentation to outline who the presneters are and what they do, then broken up into small groups to examine some of the resources available such as the Assessment Playing Cards and a Student/Lecturer interview DVD.

Our session was particularly well-recieved (anecdotal evidence only at the moment, particularly in contrast to the LANTRA 14-19 one which took place next door apparently), and the University of Gloucestershire's Professor Stephen Hill wondered whether I would assist in their college liaison programme - nice to be asked.

Other sessions over the day included:
The Appeal of APEL
Barriers to Progression for Vocational Learners
Information and Advice (but not guidance!)
Curricular hurdles to vocational progression
Supporting vocational students transition to higher education
Curriculum response to employer needs
Curriculum development to stretch talented vocational learners

There were also a couple a keynotes which were too subject-specific to be of interest to anybody who's not a vet. And even if you were, they might not have been that exciting. Wouldn't have thought so, but can't be sure...

ICS Annual Conference, Liverpool

2008-08-30T10:42:00.002+01:00

26 - 28 August 2008,
Liverpool Hope University
As usual, the necessity to travel on a bank holiday did nothing to dampen anybody's enthusiasm for what is always an enjoyable conference experience (as evidenced by the majority of delegates attending year-on-year).
After 4 preliminary workshops and a formal opening by ICS's Pr G.McAllister, the first keynote by Stanford University's Eric Roberts entertained over 100 Computer and Information Science lecturers with "Rediscovering the Passion, Beauty, Joy, and Awe: Making Computing Fun Again".
Multiple sessions (including ones chaired by me) covered themes such as:

Supporting New Academic Staff

Emerging Technologies

Evaluating Learning and Teaching

Pedagogic Innovation

Groupwork and Collaborative Learning

Improving Assessment and Student Feedback

Managing Change

First Year Experience

Enhancing Employer Engagement

Internationalisation

Outreach and Widening Participation

Responding to National Policy

Computer Ethics and Social Responsibility

Teaching and Research Nexus

More details of the conference programme can be found on the ICS website, but if you want to know about wine & Klimt at the Albert Dock, wine & a harpist in the Sefton Park Palm House, wine & beer at the Cavern club....sorry, you'll need to fill in your own blanks!

Not a holiday - honest!

2008-07-10T12:08:00.001+01:00

7/8/9 July Isle of Man

What was by necessity (one mid-morning flight out, and one early afternoon flight back) a three-day trip for one day's work, did include three rounds of golf at some lovely courses and an evening at the Southern Cross motor cycle race meeting, so technically it was mainly leisure.....

As the college has only just moved towards delivering degrees (from September 2008, validated by Chester & Liverpool John Moores) they requested that I go over & share some thoughts with the college's HE staff (7 departments) on a few pertinent issues such as:

How to create and sustain a HE culture in a FE environment in terms of resources, teaching and research.
How HE and FE differ in terms of students’ needs and how they might need to change or develop their offering to improve the student experience.

A very challenging day, but hopefully has helped what is a remote (in terms of staff development opportunities anyway) part of the British Isles to see how what they compare with the mainland.

Denman College, Marcham

2008-07-02T16:18:00.000+01:00

Delegates from around the Oxford/Herts/Berks/Surrey area gathered today at the Women's Institute's Residential Adult Education College near Oxford to hear a welcome from Di Batchelor, Abingdon and Witney College's Vice Principal, followed by John Raftery, Pro Vice Chancellor (External Affairs), Oxford Brookes University.
I followed with "Higher Education in Further Education: Challenges and Opportunities" and other speakers included Liz Starbuck Greer (Deputy Director, South Central Lifelong Learning Network) "Increasing Progression to Higher Education", Bill Hunt (HE Co-ordinator, Swindon College) "Preparing for IQER", Lorraine Goss (Educational Consultant) "Effective Teaching Strategies in Higher Education" and Sue McGregor (Curriculum Manager, Solihull College) "Feedback Strategies for Higher Education Students in FE".
A enjoyable good day out, & well worth last night's 4 hour train journey and what will be a nearly 6 hour trip back as my first train is already delayed so I'll miss the connection in Birmingham....

ELSRN Summer Conference

2008-06-30T23:05:00.001+01:00

Approximately 100 delegates, mainly from the South East, attended this year's ELSRN (Eastern Learning Skills & Research Network) conference "‘Challenges for the future of the HE in FE sector". First keynote was Bill Rammell MP, Minister of State for Lifelong Learning, Further and Higher Education, DIUS who outlined the challenges facing the delivery of HE in FE (strangley never mentioned too many contact hours, no time for scholarly activity & subject updating etc) and (inadverently?) paraphrased Spiderman when he said “With increased power comes increased responsibility”.
He was followed by Professor Yvonne Hillier from the University of Brighton who, amongst other things, told us about the growth of Fds before HEFCE's Ruth Tucker spoke on "HE in FECs: a review of HEFCE policy", followed by QAA's Ian Welch on "IQER – The story so far", Professor Robin Smith (MOVE/LLN) on "FE/HE partnerships in vocational progression" and the conference closed (on a highlight?) with yours truly enthralling(? hopefully!) the assessembled masses with "How HE in FE practitioners benefit from HE support". On the original programme Bill Rammell was supposed follow me & close the conference but at short notice "had to reschedule" without any explanation given.
Make of that what you will.

HE in FE Think Tank - Norwich

2008-05-21T20:42:00.001+01:00

I was asked last month to help convene a ‘think-tank’ to seek the views of those with recognised expertise in the field of HE in FE on how best to support HE in FE practitioners in their use of technology to enhance learning, teaching and assessment as part of a collaboration between the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) and the Higher Education Academy.

It was held at City College Norwich using HE in FE Research Centre as host venue & local RSC invited some college practitioners with the aims:

to consider the effectiveness of resources which have been developed to support academic staff in their use of technology to enhance learning, teaching and assessment, by the two organisations (including the Academy Subject Centre Network, JISC Services and Regional Support Centres)

to consider how to improve access to and take up of resources,

to identify additional developments/support that may be required by HE in FE practitioners

to explore how the two organisations might collaborate further to enhance the provision of HE in FE.

11 of us, including representatives from SURF, Netskills, CETIS assembled for dinner the night before, and 18 of us met in CCN's bespoke Business Development Centre for 8 hours to present on, and debate/discuss the aims above.

The HEA will be publishing the outcomes of the day as part of their collaboration project with JISC early next month.

Bid Writing - to bid or not to bid?

2008-05-19T20:38:00.000+01:00

Presented (& facilitated two workshops with the local HE Advisor) at a JISC RSC event in York on bid writing regarding a current JISC e-learning funding call to 20+ colleges (and two HEIs) in the Yorkshire & Humber region. Outlined my experiences as both marker & panel member, what the process is, what we (the markers) look for, how final decisions are reached etc..

ESCalate annual conference

2008-04-30T18:29:00.003+01:00

Now on my way home from what has been a very rewarding two days at Stirling Management Centre working at the HEA ESCalate Subject Centre's Annual Conference where this year's themes were: Widening Participation (progression and retention), including the role of HE in FE; Technology Enhanced Learning; Contexts of Learning. Approximately 100 delegates attended 5 keynotes (mainly opportunities to watch the rain!) ; a choice from 70 paper presentations and workshop sessions; 14 of which were delivered by FEC lecturers (some of whom benefited from the having the conference's "best session chair"......). Other than when I was being talked at (see above reference to Scottish rainfall), it was an excellent conference run by, for, and with people who are enthusiastic, skilled teachers & educators from a range of subject areas.Personal highlights were:UPC's "Developing an (sic) HE culture within a disparate HE in FE partnership" where I got an (unexpected) name check for help given 18 months ago and "The Link Between Research and Education: an FE example". Being dragged (forcibly!) onto a dance floor to "start" the Ceilidh was unfortunately filmed and is doubtless on Youtube already. However, the case for the defence would like to point out that it was in exchange for free 10/12/16-year-old malt whisky for the next few hours.......

JISC Annual Conference, Birmingham

2008-04-15T20:25:00.001+01:00

More than 700 delegates (from colleges, HEIs, educational developers etc), a range of speakers, presentations, demonstrations, workshops and more than 50 stands in the exhibition hall.
Professor Sir Ron Cooke, Chair of JISC opened the conference, and Lord Puttnam of Queensgate and Angela Beesley, Chair of the Wikimedia Foundation, were the keynote speakers.
Among the subjects under discussion: the benefits of e-learning; the Google Generation report; identity management; student experiences of ICT; virtual research environments, and much more. In addition, the winner and shortlisted entries for the JISC/Times Higher 2007 Award for 'Outstanding ICT Initiative' showcased their work.
Other notable highlights of the day:
* The inaugural JISC infoNet Innovation in Records & Information Management Awards presented by Lord Puttnam
* Launch of a range of e-learning publications, including briefing papers, and case studies on the DEL regional pilots
* Launch of two new resources from JISC TechDis - an online database of accessibility information for UK publishers and guidance for librarians and learning support staff on alternative formats
* Launch of the 'Tangible Benefits of e-Learning' publication by JISC infoNet
* The 'digital library zone', an area dedicated to digital resources reflecting the changing role of the library in a modern academic environment,
* An open source demo stand supported by OSS Watch, showcasing a range of innovative open source applications
* Launch of - 'Libraries of the Future' - which attempts to initiate a debate about the future of the academic library.
* No mention of "Second Life" anywhere - has the bubble burst?
Managed to convince/cajole/bribe 10 attendees for my HE in FE "Think-tank" in Norwich on May 21st - if interested, ask me!