Inside View

Productivity by Stealth

ONE OF THE MOST PLEASANT side effects of working in third level education at Tipperary Institute has been the comfort of knowing that the floors would be cleaned by professionals, the hot food cooked by catering staff and the electronics would be cared for by technicians. Unfortunately, with the cold winds of fiscal austerity sweeping across Ireland, at least one of those support structures will be reduced in the near future. If casual cross-talk over coffee has any credibility, the technical support and dedicated information technology services given to our small campus in Clonmel will be reduced from September. The head count reduction follows on the heels of Tipperary Institute amalgamating into the Limerick Institute of Technology. But there may come a time when the level of tech support is not high enough to run scheduled academic classes on account of snags.

Pathways on Storylines

I WATCH STORYFUL AND the New York Times every morning, learning how their editors decide to open pathways to deeper insight behind breaking news. Some of the information flow I see curated by those two trusted news providers give me ideas about the way we present third level learning materials. Things start with a topic that fits into a headline. Inside that section is the main story itself. The NYT often constructs a timeline as a separate piece, which is an effective narrative framework. Then a video clip appears in another part of the sidebar to the main story. I have seen videos that are actually one to four keyframes on top of an audio clip. Finally, there are reporters' notes. In my academic setting, these could be Study Notes. I like this transmedia framework and I learn from it, as I hope students can during the next academic year.

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Sent mail2blog from my Nokiaa E7 using O2 3G Typepad service in Poulmucka, County Tipperary, Ireland.

 

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Still Fighting the Clutter Gene

A FEW MONTHS AGO, I promised myself that I would snap and save a shot from the inside of my very cluttered home office. I haven't done that because it's too embarrassing so I'm using a six-year-old picture that can be easily serve as a suitable alternative. I know it's a huge accomplishment to declutter an entire home and probably beyond my capabilities. So I'm going to focus on the home office, under the stairs, the garage and the kitchen drawers during the summer of 2011. For this resolultion to work, I'm following some clear rules, policies, and tricks to ward off the excess stuff that currently plagues me. I'm inspired by Lifehacker. And for my work colleagues who also read this blog, I'd appreciate getting this post printed out and put onto my work desk. That will prod me to clean my bookshelves and under-desk area. I know clutter at the office affects my work performace.

Free Bus Fare Five Years Ago

FIVE YEARS AGO, I read about a clever way of getting free bus fare. Here's how Eolai did it:

"Once upon an unemployed time in Ireland, I ran out of Unemployment Benefit and was thus applying for means-based Unemployment Assistance. The Benefit that had run out was based on the social-welfare contributions you made while employed.

Or, you got a lot less on Assistance, and formulas applied to calculate your amount were secret (read: arbitrary). Luckily you could appeal if you disagreed with the amount. You just had to give a basis for appeal.

On this occasion it was determined my weekly amount received would be 7 Irish pounds. My basis for appeal went something like this:

Smart Green Energy Camp

WORKSHOPS IN SMART ENERGY are set in Thurles, alongside a field trip to the Cloughjordan Green Village, during the first week of June. The activities are part of a Computing Adventure Camp where fifth year students can learn more about how things like Sverre and Sophie Simonsen's Active House works. Active and passive homes are the Ferraris of energy efficiency. The Simonsen's home is situated in Lystrup, a suburb of Aarhus, and it takes the concept of a Passiv Haus to another level. For the past four years, I have watched the results that a Passive House owner gets with his incredibly effective insulation, heat exchanger and energy management systems. Last January, my monthly costs for heating oil and electricity were more than he paid in a year for his heating. We need to build homes that are smart enough to start saving money and that means figuring out ways to have homes produce more energy than they consumes. That's the essence of the smart green programme. The smart green degree in Tipperary Institute delves into the ratio of glass to the floor surface area of a home. Technologies such as solar panels and photovoltaic cells feature in the course materials. Students need to know the kinds of smart software controls available for retrofitting homes. And practical stories from ecohome owners are part of the syllabus as well.

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Sign up for the Tipperary Institute Computer Adventure Camp, 7-10 June 2011.

Andrew Purcell "Light Years Ahead" on the green pages of The Guardian, 21 May 2009. Photo by Morten Fauerby.

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Shifting the Culture of Learning

AFTER 11 CONSECUTIVE years delivering third level programmes in Ireland, I have abruptly brushed up against students who remain firmly preoccupied with cookbook exercises, grades, lessons by presentation slides, and credits on transcripts. These conventions arise as part of the the grammar of education in Ireland but for most of the last 10 years, I have taken a creative approach to how I filled my role in higher education. My approach is being challenged at the moment, both from the trenches and from the upper levels. While I know I will have my way, I'm left a little exposed as I plough my own field. That would be a field of knowledge speckled with technology, with cheap data connections linked to treasure troves of reading material and with easy collaboration between fellow students and lecturers. It is a field that has grown as a result of an intellectual revolution. By playing in this field, collaborative skills emerge, sharing gains in respect and connections emerge between school and community.

Using my iPad Mouse

WE HAVE AN iPad Mouse (shown) that gets regular service by a three year old power user. Important apps like Angry Birds, Angelina Ballerina and the Doras Coloring Book work better when the chocolate is wiped off the screen with our iPad Mouse. I plan to scrub down the iPad well because it will be handed over to another lecturer in Tipperary Institute for extended research. I like several iPad apps that give me more info per minute than anything else on my laptop. This American Life is one of those apps. And I am addicted to the easy sync of Evernote, an app that puts documents on the iPad, iPod Touch, my Nokia E7, my laptop and my SonEricsson X8 within minutes of upload on any of the other devices. During the next week, before hand-over, I will mine DBD, the Delicious Bookmark Discovery app. I used it to curate more than 5000 bookmarks and to develop lecture notes in my classrooms.

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Sent mail2blog usibng O2 Typepad service in Dublin from my Nokia E7.

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Continuing Professional Development for Teachers

ONE OF THE MOST VIBRANT uses of online social networking happens from 8:30PM to 9:30PM most Monday evenings in Ireland. It's a well-organised online meet-up of educators on Twitter. They use the hashtag #edchatie to foster a lively conversation about a pre-selected topic. Tonight's was about CPD. At the end of the hour, I scraped all the tweets that used the #edchatie hashtag and generated a 31-page Word Document. Then I copied and pasted that document into Wordle to produce the word cloud at left. Wordle is a little thick so I cannot parse the results to eliminate the names of contributors but seeing them appear in Wordle gives viewers an idea about who was the most talkative during the hour-long session. I'm taking away some important thoughts related to CPD in the Irish education system nonetheless.

Barack Obama in Dublin's College Green

Click to Play

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA spoke to an audience of more than 50,000 in Dublin's College Green. His words will make every showreel when historians rewind the second decade of the 21st century in Ireland. And if Obama's view of the resilient Irish character is correct, the current cloud of austerity sweep the Irish countryside will quickly blow away.

Obama in College Green

 

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Thoughts About SAM TWO

Listen

IN THE 80s, I occasionally flew the Lockheed C-141 Starlifter on Special Airlift Missions that supported both the President and Vice President of the United States. I've put a photo of a DV (distinguished visitor) comfort pallet alongside my blog post and it's obviously dated in terms of the way it's furnished. Nonetheless, the comfort pallet did what it said on its nomenclature. It had some of the most comfortable seats aboard any aircraft in the sky. On one mission, we pulled some of the aft-facing seats and replaced them with a wooden kitchen table that was attached to the floor with large bolts. The team aboard the aircraft used it to play cards while we crossed the Atlantic. Up front, flexibility was our catch phrase. I babble a little about what that means in the Audioboo I made about flying my SAM TWO missions.

Memories of SAM TWO

 

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Listen on Audioboo

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