working@home-honest.info

Working from home is WEIRD - I guess this is the kind of self-disciplne you need to exercise when you're studying 'for real' on an online course - it's easy to get very distracted, after all the rest of the net is only a lick away from your course/work.

Against that is the weird time and space demarcations being erased and evapourated - you don't have to get up for x o'clock, put suit on and drive to y then spend z hours there before you return. Instead I drift between doing some reading/planning then doing somehing else then back to reading/planning then read more then it's somehow 9:30pm and I'm thinking'have I done enough today'?

Still, no-one's in at work and there's no real need to be there as I can connect to everything from home now that broadband is up and running. The VPN gives me access to my files and the network drive, I have all the software of work on my laptop here so can open the projec documents etc. excpet the VPN does slow it all down to supid slowness but hey.

And this blog - what's it for? Random rambling musings? A repository for the days insights? A link amalgamation? I dunno - I guess I'll let it evolve and see which of (all) of these things it becomes.

Key stuff from today:

Will need to reproduce the whole of Chapter 10 of Susan Ko's excellent book 'Teaching Online a Practical Guide' for the end of the e-learning experience. Also wondering about extending the course for an extra 2 weeks with the shift in module developments...

Finsihed that book, delved into Alan Clarke's 'E-learning study skills' - definately good pre-reading fo the course, need to look at the guide Kathryn James suggests for their course - will have to get back to her on that one.

Have begun looking through the activities of the Gilly Salmon 'E-tivities' book, need a bit more meat to get discussion and tasks going in the e-learning experience, a combination of case studies dawing on Ko practical approach and Salmon's 5-stage model should produce something concrete, ad I'm feeling I need t move towards the concrete really. Will have to focus more tomorrow (didn't I say that yesterday?) but want to let this stuf wash around in my head emore for now and then maybe brainstorm on big sheets of paper.

Should also try an get chain fixe for my doen'-seem-quite-so-good-now mountain bike which I really hope isn't a headache and will last a good while but fear it may not be quite the great thing i seemed after busting on first ever ride (still that's what I feared for my van - you can't win them all!)

New Year re-engagement time

Happy New Year!

Hope yours was as good and as much fun as mine - and the return to work wasn't too traumatic.

Am still struggling to re-engage brain fully with work after the break and write up new DO LIST'

Found interesting GUardian articles on using Blogs for academic research etc at:

http://education.guardian.co.uk/elearning/comment/0,10577,1311177,00.html

and

http://education.guardian.co.uk/elearning/story/0,10577,1476470,00.html

With blog module delay till moodle 1.6 will probablyn have to plan on initially using external blogs...

Stock cars and frozen hands

My new toy :-)

Have sorted out the onward life of the Red Traveller/Red Demon which will have palliative stock-car care and i couldn't think of a better place for it to go.

Meanwhile the yet-to be named 'smurf' van has come into my life and been an interesting experience. The stomach-cramping sickening feeling of having spent quite a lot of money on it and the risk associated (if it goes bang I'm f*&%€d) as it's kind of drained my remaining savings to their lowest ever ebb.

But with the best service history I've ever seen, genuine 49,560 miles on the clock(!!!) and LPG I'm VERY sure it's going to give me years of amazing slow but sure service.

When I bought Vicky, my Type II van i felt the same, the gut-wrencing fear that this could be the worst mistake and most expensive, but she served me well (and cleared my then savings!) and I ave only loving memories, and fear of ever hearing that bang as the oil cooler went...

LPG is an interesting new world, will be intriguing to find out how it goes, MUCH cheaper and good efficiency but weird to put in and a bit risky too - anything that can freeze skin on contact is hectic!

And then there's naming, she's rust free with a tight body and big up top, so name needs to reflect those attributes... It will cum ;7)

Happy dubbing awaits!

Pre-Xmas Job Scramble

been a while since I got round to writing much into this - should be a daily thing but somehow end of the day and I wanna log off not live on line...

Big milestones have been achieved, just the detail to work out on them and the devil truly does lurk in the details. The flyers need a lot of work - they're not bad in print but not that great either, lots of feedback to give and fingers x'd they'll be great once done.

However settling on the VLE has been the biggest milestone. Without doubt biggest professional decision I've had to make ever, and a tough call. Am confident externally hosted moodle to be brought in house in the future is the right way but also have realisation of the political sensitivities and football-like nature this decision could have... After gloscat experience am very keen to stay onside with people and need to watch that i keep control of my attitude towards the clunky interface and ultra-tight back end connection LUVLE has, it IS a good system but it looks and feels old, and is complex to use due to its tight integration with LUSI. The advantages and disadvantages of each solution are double-edged swords cutting both favourably and unfavourably depending on your point of view and concerns, it will be interesting to see how things develop over the next few months and years with these two systems here.

Could this become just more work?

SO it's blogging time agian - and this one could be as dull as Ben's can be...

Today has brought fresh investigations into Moodle and integration with Questionmark perception. A few meetings and more looking at LUVLE and seeing how cluncky it is. Picked up on some of the politics surrounding the status quo and realised how this decision could be political in its ramifications...

Made a great contact though with a professor whose book I'd read for my MSc - Charles Alderson who specialises in language testing - met a few others in that department and left very happy. Haven't had a chance 9as always) to get enough dev done today - was hoping to get a load of stuff up and running but emailing and admin and thinking got in the way.

Sorted out a venue for my party though which is a HUGE step forward so that's all good - designed the flyer last night and will distribute this eve after making final tweaks.

So, all good, liking this Blog not a bad record of the day...

Today I:

• Looked at LUVLE use for Distance Learning in CETAD with Verity Williams
• Organised Website meeting
  
• Followed up and got quotes for Moodle hosting
• Met with Sheryl about that and about other stuff that needs to be done for MRes course for admissions etc
• Updated project plan
• Got very terse with Tiscali as their service and connection are crap
• Sorted Egg stuff out to pay Mary
• Sorted venue for Birthday
• Went to seminar on Qusetonmark Perception
• Met Charles Alderson and a few others in Linguistics working on development plus someone working on PHd about ESOL in public sector who was interested in work at BBC centre in Glos and cynical box-filling exercise it was.
• Created slides for presentation tomorrow on VLE options.
  

First Posts

OK, so I've been reading about and pontificating on Blogs for learning, Blogs in moodle, blogs in VLEs etc, but not actually writing one.

So time to start - things i looked at today:

Moodle Hosting: http://www.pteppic.net/ which could provide the third way to having moodle as a VLE for the IHR, and acronyms for names.

RSS feeds from journals, which has to be the way forward: http://www.library.tufts.edu/ginn/tutorials/webfeeds/#TOC

And Blogs in Moodle which has to be one of the most interesting developments and a long discussion here which prompted me to actually starts a blog. LEt's see what it results in.

No listening at all today which is unlike me - Mastodon, Matafix and ladytron still on the phone, need to change tonight.

Meanwhile I'll probably get home and keep being a techie with broadband - here's fingers x'd.