Tuesday, May 28, 2013
Deanery Conference 2013
Thursday, January 24, 2013
Thursday, October 18, 2012
Thursday, September 27, 2012
The Alexander Men Conference 2012
The Alexander Men Conference 2012
Moffat House Hotel, Moffat, 14-16th September 2012.
Saturday 15 September 09:45 – 11:00
The Life and Significance of Alexander Men (Part 1)
Main Speakers:[Stream 1] Professor Wallace L. Daniel "Alexander Men in Siberia: The Formation of a Priest"
[Stream 2] Canon Michael Bourdeaux
[Stream 3] Panel Discussion, Questions and Answers (for Part 1)
Panel comprising: Dr Ekaterina Genevia, Fr Viktor Grigorienko, Canon Michael Bourdeaux, Professor Wallace L. Daniel.
Saturday 15 September 11.15 – 12.30
The Life and Significance of Alexander Men (Part 2)
Main Speakers:
Saturday 15 September 14:00 – 15:30
Christianity, Contemporary Culture and Society (Part 1)
Main Speaker:
[Stream 7] John Lloyd "After the Great Terror, the Great Silence."
[Stream 8] Panel Discussion, Questions and Answers (for Part 1)
Panel: Dr Natalia Pecherskaya, Dr Ann Shukman, Canon Michael Bourdeaux, Bishop Seraphim Sigrist, Irina Kirillova, John Lloyd.
Saturday 15 September 15:45 – 17:00
Christianity, Contemporary Culture and Society (Part 2)
Main Speaker:[Stream 9] Irina Kirillova "Father Alexander: A Priest for our Time"
[Stream 10] Panel Discussion, Questions and Answers (for Part 2)
Panel: Dr Ann Shukman,Canon Michael Bourdeaux, Bishop Seraphim Sigrist, John Lloyd.
Saturday 15 September 19:00
[Link to transcript] Evening Dinner Address by Bishop Seraphim Sigirst "Detective and Priest"Sunday 16 September 11:15
[Stream 11] Ecumenical St Ninian's Day Celebration at St Andrew's Church. Message by Bishop Seraphim Sigirst
Sunday 16 September 13:00 - 14:30
Religious Experience and the Scientific Mindset
Main Speaker:
[Stream 13] Revd Dr John Polkinghorne KBE FRS "Science and Theology in Dialogue"
[Stream 14] Questions and Answers, Panel Discussion.
Panel: Elizabeth Roberts, Natalia Pecherskaya, Dr Donald Smith, John Polkinghorne, Gordon Mursell
Sunday 16 September 15:15 – 17:00
Open to the World – Our Life Together (followed by valedictory)
Main Speaker:[Stream 15] Rt Revd Gordon Mursell
[Stream 16] Panel Discussion, Questions and Answers, Conference Valedictory.
Panel: Elizabeth Roberts, Natalia Pecherskaya, Dr Donald Smith John Polkinghorne, Gordon Mursell.
Friday, February 03, 2012
Thursday, January 26, 2012
The Rigsby Videos
Some of the (slightly bonkers) Moosehead videos starring the Late, Great Rigsby.
The Tesla Transformer explained
Studenica Monastery Dog, Serbia, August 2009.
Travelling man impaled by angry local
Romanian expatriate barcbecue trashed by vicious troll.
The Banana Skin Game (Director's Cut)
Chapel Troll
Troll Castle
Sea Troll attacks reporter on Southwold pier
Dr. Badgegas and the penny crusher
Sea Troll - The Paxman Interview
Sea Troll on Southwold Beach
Sea Troll at Dunwich, Suffolk
Barbecue Troll
Dr. Rigsby and the Daleks
Thrayper is fatter than Rigsby
Wooden Church Troll
Maramures County Troll
The Prince Nicholas Room
Râsnov Castle Tomfoolery
Traditional Roma Family in Cimpulung, Transylvania
The Sock Baron of Bucharest
Cave Troll
Sea Troll Island
Troll in Stocks
Purple Rocks, Bad Rocks, Cave Troll Rocks!
The Lidl Dance
Thursday, December 01, 2011
Orthodox Theological Research Forum
The Place of the Homily in the Divine Liturgy: A Mediated Encounter with the Word of God.
Monday, May 04, 2009
Monday, November 24, 2008
Golden Delicious
My bookmarks are numerous and in a mess, simply thtough working on two PCs, at work and at home, and by using three browsers on each. I tried to order this by only saving bookmarks on the same browser on each PC, and by exporting and importing bookmarks betwen them.
However, this resulted in vast numbers of bookmarks - rather than merge the bookmarks, the imported bookmarks were appended to the end of the existing list, as a complete new list - even though many of them were identical in each list. I didn't realise that this had occurred, so in due course I exported the bookmarks again; then I realized that they were simply being appended, except now I had four vast lists of bookmarks!
To have one's bookmarks centrally stored clearly makes sense - and as bookmarks might be seen as one's own demarcation of the Web - and as the Web comprises an ever-growing proportion of the material that we read - then one can only assume that Delicious will play an increasingly important role for us.
I'll forgive them the ludicrous statement: "Search the biggest collection of bookmarks in the universe..."
Friday, November 21, 2008
Feel the Love!
Thursday, November 20, 2008
The virtual wilderness
Here we go – it’s already nearly the end of the second week – this should have been posted a couple of days ago.
Last week we used Flickr to graphically announce ourselves, naked, to the Web. Course participants were rather shy about what they put up, and understandably so. I put up a few personal pictures, amongst others, but now have restricted access to them.
Working in an academic environment where, by-and-large, folk are generally civil to one-another, one can lose touch with the world outside. Because my work involves using the Web quite a lot, and because I use relatively civilised parts of the Web, I can be lulled into a false sense of security and think rather naively about the virtual world that is the Web. A bit like, I suppose, being chauffeured from one well-off university campus to another in a car without windows, via a sink estate or a war zone.
But there are some very nasty places out there, in the world, yes, we know, and out there on the Web. And some nasty influences. Nowadays, with the advent of broadband, it’s quite usual to have a virus-checker and a firewall on our PCs. How many of us didn’t bother with these, until a virus came along, or our PC was hacked? So we know that this virtual world is no virtual rose garden, and so we’re very cautious about what we put up there.
If we were to post some pictures behind the security that a university virtual learning environment (VLE) - such as Brookes Virtual - affords, then most of us wouldn’t have a problem with posting a picture of ourselves, though a number of us would do so only with some reservations – as at the start of an online course, participants generally don’t know each other. However, as the online course proceeds, little-by-little we disclose more, especially if what we’re disclosing is related to the course content. However, whjat we’re prepared to do is rather different if all that we do is exposed the Web.
However, that’s what we did last week with Flickr, and that’s what we’re doing right now with this blog. Do I mind? Not much, not yet, but that’s because what’s here isn’t much, yet!
Wednesday, July 28, 2004
Hall of Mirrors: Week 3
We had to produce a summary of the discussions we had that were related to the task in Week 2 (see previous blog). Introspective stuff.
Week 3 was not easy for me, because I had some very heavy commitments elsewhere that took up lunchtimes and just about every evening; this, combined with the ongoing problems that are a repercussion of the flood at work two weeks ago, meant that I got way behind on this one, and only contributed right at the end of the week.
Fortunately other team members did a good job, under Jenny's stewardship. Overall I don't think that many of us matched the previous week in terms of input, but then again that would take some beating.
We started off by pairing up in order ask each other questions about how we felt the previous week went; some pairs produced considerable input.
Jenny then came up with a series of questions we should ask ourselves, and this progressed by a number of us each taking Jenny's initial list of questions, and typing in our own responses
She then summarised these responses in a table; on the horizontal axis:
"The questions we asked ourselves"
"A summary of our answers"
"Critical incidents that affected our group performance"
"Additional Comments"
Then on the vertical axis:
"What kick started us? How long did it take to get going?"
"How did we establish the roles within the group and how happy were we with our individual role and that of others?"
"Which roles did we feel were most significant for this task?"
"Which events/actions were critical to the completion of the task?"
"What were the strengths of the group?"
"What were the weaknesses of the group?"
"Would we have worked any differently f2f?"
"How would we evaluate our final submission?"
"If we were being assessed for the submission, how well do you think we would have done?"
"If we were being assessed by our peers for our contribution, how well do you think we would have done?"
"What could we have learned from Yellow and Blue groups (the other two groups from the cohort)?"
Each cell of this table comprised a summary of the answers we gave to the list of questions that were originally as circulated by Jenny.
Our final submission was OK - but Jenny really did most of the work here.
The plenary task asked of us was to each prepare an inventory of good practice in e-moderation.
What we've learned so far was reflected in these postings.
I believe that if you're a good f2f teacher then you'll probably make a good e-moderator, although I don't think it's necessarily the case the other way round, due to the additional demands and pressures that face a classroom teacher. However, it is my opinion that a good e-moderator will make a good f2f tutor.
I tried express this view by looking at what an authoritative text said about being a good teacher; or rather a special kind of teacher - the preacher; the text was the King James Bible, 1 Timothy, chapter 3, vv 1-7:
"1This is a true saying, if a man desire the office of a bishop, he desireth a good work. 2 A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife, vigilant, sober, of good behaviour, given to hospitality, apt to teach; 3 Not given to wine, no striker, not greedy of filthy lucre; but patient, not a brawler, not covetous; 4 One that ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection with all gravity; 5 (For if a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the church of God?) 6 Not a novice, lest being lifted up with pride he fall into the condemnation of the devil. 7 Moreover he must have a good report of them which are without; lest he fall into reproach and the snare of the devil."
Nobody can doubt that these are fine principles to abide by, and there are very specific reasons why a Christian preacher should conform to each and every one of them.
Are they relevant to any teacher? Of children - I think so; are they relevant to a University lecturer? And one that isn't of the Bob Jones, Grace or Lipscomb ilk? That's an ideal, though how far does one want to go? Tutor George Roberts (the Development Director for Off-Campus e-learning at Brookes) answered my applying this text (in attempting to put together an inventory about what makes a good online tutor), by asking how blameless we have to be to teach, citing the current Ericsson furore, where, it might be argued, sanctity is expected even of those who teach football.
I certainly believe that key principles derived from the above passage can be applied to tutoring, and if applied to the process of e-moderation, will result in very effective e-moderation indeed.
What's needed is to apply these principles to the current context; I would do so initially by applying them with respect to Scollon's "Maxims of Stance", which are given in our course material (Scollon, 1998). The gist of this calls for consideration initially to be given to the "channel". I take this to mean the medium of communication - is it possible to do what we wish to do, or need to do, as tutors, in the environment offered, and how should we go about it.
The next consideration refers to "relationships" - the practice of refining interaction between tutors and students so that it becomes productive in terms of meeting learning objectives. The final consideration is the "topic", or subject material. It's significant that this is the final consideration, implying that a good online tutor should meet initial generic online tutoring criteria first; only then can specialist subject knowledge be effectively applied.
I didn't have time to actually do this, stopping short at a series of general principles.
The Collaborators: Week 2
There are about 30 of us on this course, some from Brookes, but many from much further afield, and now this cohort has been divided into three teams.
In the previous week we needed to study 'icebreakers' - these are activities that are designed to get a group of students who study online to participate in various activities that allow them to get to know each other, and ensure that they are familiar with using the software.
The group task that we've been set this week is quite complicated to understand.
We're told about a task - a task that asked students to compile an annotated list of their 4 favourite, definitive, Web-based, resources that are about good practice in online tutoring.
We then needed to change this task so as to make it suitable for
- a group of students to work on together
- this group to work on together exclusively online
How on earth did we manage?
And did it go better for us as a group, than if we simply worked on this task as individuals?
Though I was initially a little cynical about whether working online as a group would be highly effective, I think it actually worked better for us as a group that had we tackled the task as individuals.
Initially there was a little discussion about team roles, for which we were provided references, such as Belbin. I was soon concerned that this would take our efforts from the actual task, but rapidly we fell into a few key roles.
Things got going rapidly when a group member divided up the task into bit-sized sub-tasks. In my Week 3 exercise, which I'll blog next, we were required to digest just what went on in Week 2, so I can repeat some of my observations in my reflective blog here.
Thus this first step represented a division of the whole task into a 2-D set of tasks: On the X-axis a timeline, which recognised primary, secondary and tertiary tasks, and on the Y-Axis, these groups of tasks drawn out (like a chromatogram) into discrete, easily-accomplished sub-tasks. Jenny from our team defined the list of primary sub-tasks, enabling us to bite.
Aware that my profession is a learning technologist at Brookes, where the course was run, and that I had some experience of being an online tutor, I thought I'd better step in and allocate these tasks to specific members of the group, so that we all could have a much clearer idea of what we should be doing.
The results started pouring in rapidly, and after couple of days we had literally hundreds of postings. We were then faced with what appeared a mammoth task - to distill this lake of information, the result of a huge amount of labour - into a flask that could be passed to the course tutors.
Again, Jenny, and another prolific poster, Fabrizio, were very practical here, in producing a spine document that could be linked to the contributions of others.
It was then a matter of putting this document, and various others contributed by different team members through courseGenie. We're fortunate enough to have a site licence here at Brookes for CG - it's a Word template with a numbers of unique styles and some complex macros. One applies the styles, then the macros render each style - via XML - into HTML.
CG was a little temperamental with the tables, and I had to return to the task whenever I had time throughout the final day when we could submit to the tutors. Eventually I had success and was able to get CG to produce an index which linked the spine document, produced by Jenny and Fabrizio (with the help of others) to the various contributions, such as Anthony's context document (detailing the scenario in which the brief was to be used), and Nigel's detailed critical path.
Tuesday, July 13, 2004
Rising waters
I may work on top of a hill, but I had to evacuate my office last Thursday as the neighbouring computer rooms went under water. Now I know why they're called the 'pooled rooms'.
For me, the most unfortunate consequence of this is that I had to miss almost all of the third biennial e-learning conference at Brookes on Friday, so that I could sort out things here - specifically the Teacher Training Agency's QTS skills test centre, which needed re-locating, re-scheduling, etc. All this whilst trying to spend time on the online Tutoring course. It was a tough first week, but the next week is even tougher, involving collaborative learning, teamwork, etc. Rewarding it will be - but it's quite a slog, especially as it's difficult to see exactly what we're aiming for.
I'm now hoping that the mists will clear as more of our sub-group of ten students start posting in the discussion topic set aside specifically for our collaborative exercise.
Wednesday, July 07, 2004
The course has started...
I've been a 'Learning Technologist' here at Oxford Brookes University for 9 months; I've worked in Learning Technology (LT) for a few establishments, and Brookes is by far the most forward-looking.
Technically, LT at Brookes is largely based on the use of a virtual learning environment, or VLE. We use WebCT. WebCT is supported by the Media Workshop, of which I'm a member; however, I'm not present in the Media Workshop physically: I'm based at the Harcourt Hill Campus, a former teacher training college, which now houses the Education department of Brookes.
In additon to the Media Workshop, another department at Brookes, the Oxford Centre for Staff Learning and Development (OCSLD), is heavily involved in e-learning, although their focus is more on the pedagogy behind e-learning. It's OCSLD who are running this course, which I thought I'd better do, as I have no doubt there'll be numerous gems of useful information that I can pass on to my colleagues at Harcourt. I anticipate that the course will be most interesting.
Well, this is the start, and we've been asked to keep a learning log - and it's been suggested that we might use blogging as a means to do this....so here we are.
Jim