Wise words that sound so familiar and are so true  ... just think of 'expedition' as a 'project'  and you get a recipe for coping with any personal or professional challenge:

"Carrying out detailed planning so that you are confident in the expedition and its success is key, as is developing a mental toughness when faced with difficult situations. It is imperative to stay focused and not to panic if something bad or unexpected happens."
 Sir Ranulph Fiennes: Tips on coping with icy weather

I love Wordle

Going global

It was interesting to see the article in the IndiaEduguide.blogspot.com with my e-interview. It feels so strange - this is my first contribution to anything different from academic papers, lectures and e-mails.

It will be interesting to see whether this will have any impact on applications from this part of the world. Let's wait and see ...

I-learning

Here are my views on the benefits of e-learning, a topic for discussion on the e-tutoring course I am on this month. I am afraid this post is long (apologies) and some of the statements might be seen as ironic (if you decided to continue reading this, bring your sense of humour – I know that I am in breach of one of the recommendations for online communication).

In addition to what has already been discussed, e.g. international aspects, widening participation, flexibility, etc., I do believe that e-learning is very personal, regardless how large the group of learners is:
§ You are facing the computer, reading text that is addressed to you and you are not aware what the rest of the group are doing at this moment of time, even is you’ve seen how many are online (the loneliness and bliss of the online learner) .
§ It is your choice where and how long you study and you can express your feelings about the long lines of text you have to go through, without your body language revealing how ‘fond’ you are of plain text when you are a visual learner.
§ When you contribute to discussion boards you inevitably compare your thoughts and contributions these with others and as a result build your confidence (or angst) about your ability to express yourself though the written word. And, if you manage to stay positively focused after a long day at work, you praise yourself for your perseverance and developing your knowledge and understanding.
§ There is more time to think about something before you say it/write it and more time to question whether this is written using the correct grammatical person (i.e. first person singular or second person). And as you have forgotten the correct grammatical term, you quickly ‘google’ key words that bring in a few suggestions that help.
§ It is great as it allows materials to be available at anytime of the day at any place with Internet connection for as long or as many times you need them. It does not mean that you can’t have the face-to-face – you can, if your tutor(s) provide video messages/materials.

From a tutor’s point of view, the latter is time-consuming and could be nerve-wrecking if you want to get things perfect. I spent about 3 hours of recording and deleting to produce my 5min welcoming message to my online cohourt before I accepted the fact that I am not Audrey Hepburn and would never be her, neither will have her diction. But my students know (if their infrastructure supports Flash files and can cope with bigger file) now that I exist in the physical world…

Traceability is another benefit that I, as a tutor, am so grateful to. I would not refer to this as e-learning, as it is about the management and monitoring of the learners. The VLE (Virtual Learning Environment, e.g. Blackboard, Moodle et al) duly reports that students have accessed the materials (or not) even if they have not contributed to the exercises. This allows for choosing a more appropriate tone for the tutor’s messages. Needless to say, this presents a reliable evidence of the support offered and given that helps in addressing any unfair/false accusations.

You''ve been warned - this was a long message. Yes, e-discussions could be very time consuming for both learner and reader, if the topic strikes a cord. But it was your choice to read it till the end. ;-) For which I thank you warmly.

Nine great reasons why teachers should use Twitter

Laura Walker's paper on Nine great reasons why teachers should use Twitter is a great starting point for considering the role of Twitter in education. Still, is this a practice that would exclude some of our students? Could this be integrated with the VLE and/or SMS service?

Some of my favourite TED presentations

TED stands for Technology, Education, Design and have some brilliant presentaitons. Today's choice to watch included:

• Clay Shirky's presentation to TED on the new media (incl Twitter, Facebook) & politics (http://bit.ly/swtw3)
• Evan Williams's (co-founder of Twitter) TED presentation about Twitter, its uses and how its developments happen,
• And just for fun: Raves's TED presentation on texting with emoticons. Strange, but good braintraining ;-)

Cycles & lifecycles

It started with thinking about how to balance the latest urgent and importnat tasks (and not Iasm writing, as it is important to me to clear up my mind, to be able to concentrate on the urgent things later... this night/morning).

I was wondering which of the blogs to post to and the decision cycle kicked in:
- Is it worth doing it? Can I change/use it or shall I accept 'no change' ? [see * below] - Is it relevant to this group? (Shall I post it?)
- How much level of detail is needed & how much time I can afford to spend on providing the content? (Sadly, the time is often exceeded, and the quality of the final product is only 80% of the desired perfect version)
- Shall I do it NOW, or postpone it for later and spend the time on a more important/urgent task?

Then it was the turn of my typical workflow & development cycle:
Act, reflect and move on to the next act enriched by the experience of the previous...and staying positive because of the learning that has taken place. (yes, it reminds of Kolb's lifecycle)

Still, often it is not so easy to stay positive and the emotions cycle is in full force:
I started trying to formalise this cycle: curiousity, confusion, frustration, exhaustion, or excitement... It did not look right; reminded me of Kübler-Ross's grief cycle, but had a positive start and then I found this model of the Market Emotions cycle, which helped me with this task (I had to think of a context to test whether it is 'correct': i.e. when I pilot/test a new web tool or gadget). And here is my emotions cycle:
- Curiosity;
- Thrill/Excitement;
- Euphoria/Anxiety;
- Recognition of reality;
- Desperation/Satisfaction;
- Despondency/Relief;
- Urge to talk about the findings, the impressions and the feelings in search of conceptualisation of the value of the 'object of my affection';
- Quiet observation (depression?hope?Optimism ?);
- Acceptance;
- Satisfaction with the ooportunity to test object and self.

I wish I had more time to find what theory is available on these cycles... [Action point]

And through this journey throught the cycles, here is what else was 'discovered' :

* I did not know that the prayer to have "the serenity to accept the things you cannot change, the courage to challenge those you can, and the wisdom to know the difference" is attributed to Reinhold Niebuhr? I thought it's much older than 1934...

** some beautiful thoughts on human curiosity and ingenuity required to go through the lifecycle experiences (heroic qualities? :-) ).
"Some of the transcendent qualities that underline scientific inquiry become focal: curiosity to know just for knowing’s sake, knowledge sought regardless of its utility, and ingenuity and persistence in the search".