Occasionally - well, make that relatively often - students where I work ask why they can't do their degrees faster. Most of them (60%) are part time students, but even those who are 'full' time finsh two weeks in to May. And come back at the end of September. Now when I was an undergrad, I needed to work all those weeks to earn enough to come back, but then it was more like 13 weeks. May to October is more like 6 months than 3. Which, frankly, does beg the question why can't they collect enough credits for their qualifications in a shorter timespan - enter the 2 year properly full time degree.

Even over this side of the Atlantic the same underlying factor would be this would very likely ruin the university system/universities, but you have to see the student viewpoint. Of course, there's always the OU. But I have to say I kinda like this concept of $99 a month higher education

There's the thing about twitter and blogging. I can tweet a link with a short comment, that I almost never get round to blogging. Sometimes because there just aren't words to add. Or if it's a well-written journalistic piece, I'd hardly think I could improve on it. So I'll let them speak for themselves here, because somehow I don't want it to get lost in the twitterfall (must learn how to back up tweets too...)

But when I read jouranlistic accounts of things, I do also wonder how hard it is for them to do their job, and what a balance to make. Yes, they need to go to Haiti, so we can see the devastion. No, they/we do not need to be voyeuristic on people's pain and sorrow. And yes, actually somewhere in the back and forth yes, the Haitians need to see journalists doing their job because they need to know we need to know and they need to know that we know this and that we do know because we send journalists. But we send journalists with supplies - like bottled water, and sure, I'd rather the nurses that are there are treating Haitians not journalists with funny tummies, but when I see pictures taken of people in pitifit situations holding out their hands - putting aside any remaining shred of human dignity they have, and let's face it, they've not much of anything left, we can at least give them that - for a sip of the journalists/photographers water - can you refuse? Just because your own meagre supply won't be enough for everyone, is that a reason to hold it back? Gather up the fishes and loaves...

I thought this article on the BBC's From our own correspondant was so poignant, thatI'm unashamedly copying two sections. Firstly because he almost didn't notice the instant service he could have rendered, and secondly because recognition did dawn, if late. The latter reminded me of the staff on cruise ships, and I can almost visualise the staff we had looking after us on our Christmas holiday after Dad died continuing to offer us sterling service if  that had been two Christmases previously and their families had been potentially lost in the tsunami. So easy to forget that the journalists require food and water and shelter, all of which they will no doubt have got, whilst the Haitians have nothing. But well-written all the same. 

...And then the gravedigger, who's been breaking the hard-baked earth with his pick and shovel since Day One at the city's overcrowded cemetery. He pointed at my facemask and asked if he might use it. I gave it to him, and smelt the rotting bodies.

I'm rather ashamed to tell you that I discovered that for myself today, first with a young man called Stanley, who's a waiter in the hotel we're in. He's been working with me from dawn to dusk, helping me do my job. Today I asked about his family. 

It turns out Stanley's grandmother had been crushed to death under her house on Tuesday, pulled out of the rubble on Thursday, and buried on Friday. Stanley had been with me throughout and he hadn't said a thing.

Painful enough? Now go and read the article [again]. Read the introductory couple of paragraphs, and then scroll down to the end. It's now over a week since the article was written. In fact two now since the earthquake and many days since hte search was stepped down and reports of people being rescued were published. And remember those people who sent the text message, and those around them.

 

Oh dear. Firefox has been telling me for days wouldn't I like to upgrade please, and I keep replying not now, not really, I have a squillion tabs open and I'm not risking you losing them.

Funny how we don't always practise what we preach. I once had to rewrite 3/4 of a masters essay when they first had to be word-processed because the computer ate it. So having learnt about floppy disks I have a box of several which hold bits of my masters dissertation (as well as the cdrom that it's on in Hull University library) and every computer in my house (don't ask, may be less than 2.4 children and less than 2 cars, but er, definitely over the average on computer ownership, cats have their own laptop) and almost every flash key and a couple of floppy disks (no, no idea how I'd ever open them again) and google and my webspace and my dvd-rom of my life on it that moved with me from durham all have assorted moth-eaten chapters of my PhD on in various forms.

And it's not like I don't understand social bookmarking. Not only do we teach it, were we on Blackboard's product development partnership for Scholar, but I regularly use Delicious. And it's not even as though half the tabs I have open are not already bookmarked. But for some reason, I like having *mumblenumber* of tabs open to work with. Sometimes because I'm going to read them and if I bookmark them I'll never get round to it. Sometimes because I probably won't want to have bookmarked it when I've read it (I know, I know, ok, I could delete the bookmark). Sometimes because I really want to blog it, maybe here, maybe at work, and then I won't need to have bookmarked it anyway. I do know that on the annual/biennal FF crashes I have, I honestly know I've no actual idea what half of the tabs are and would probably never regret if I never saw them again. But the other half are important. Really :-)

Today at work I spent over an hour reopening FF when it crashed to copy out one url then waiting till it stopped stopped responding so I could reopen it. Looking equally dodgy here too, so about time I did something with them. So I've bookmarked a load (sorry, if you follow me on friendfeed!) and ruthlessly - RUTHLESSLY, I tell you - deleted a few. And now I shall write a few blog posts touse the others where they're supposed to be going. And then I'll let the little FF imp update itself. While you all think I've had three weetabix on the way home or have not enough to do already....!

(oh, and I'll just ctrl+A, ctrl+C before I hit save - it has been known....)

Since Peter has lent his twopennorth to the where next for virtual worlds discussion tomorrow, I thought I would procrastinate from what I'm suppposed to be doing and add mine, as I can't be there either.

I think we are standing in a space which has -still- huge potential and which I suspect is potential in more than one direction but which is also potentially facing stagnation. Funded projects are all very well, but run the risk of producing things that are no longer editable or scalable when the researchers/developers/funding finish[es]. Whilst I have no doubt that each remaining snapshot that John writes will reveal more great projects like the Oxford WWI poetry sim (shoulda seen that one coming knowing them) which the rest of the community may or may not have known was in development, I think that the take up on a general scale as virtual worlds being a tool on everyone's desktop is just not really there yet. And despite the spring term usually being the term when learning technologists should have some space to develop things with staff, this year I'm feeling a bit demoralised that there is no scope for this to happen. The sheer increase of demands on staff time is affecting them getting involved in projects - either learning things themselves (and staying up all hours of the night to do so) or producing the discipline/content input for technologists to work with to produce things for them. This is almost always the problem with joint projects which hit delays - I might have heaps of learning technologist time to develop things, and we might be very capable of the educational bits, but the actual content/list of objects etc to build has got to come from the academics, along with the scenario writing. And there just doesn't seem time to be getting this unless it's a very specific project for which there is time allowance. Now would that there were time allowance for people to use PowerPoint better, but there isn't, they just get on with it and when you make this comparison, we begin to see the lack of more vw stuff coming out-at least they can use (after a fashion) ppt. 

A solution? I do look for a  solution, because I do honestly and genuinely believe that there is potential in vw use that can enhance educational activities, used properly, not just as an alternative for learner preference from readers. All of the things that brought me in to learning technology in the first place have the chance to come together in vws which is why, albeit a bit demoralised, I'm still passionate about it. And having known the guys behind the Oxford WWI poetry throughout developments in technology, I know I'm not the only one. But how do we get vws as tools on everyone's desktops? Well some people have heard me bang on about this enough, but in the spirit of the day tomorrow, here's my take summarised again. 

Work together. Work together. And share. 

Now there are some problems inherent in this. Mostly that many people either do not like to share full stop; that they dare not share as their funding depends on it; that they are more caught up in needing to publish than (thankfully) I am. I'm not really interested in headlines and press releases, leastways not half so much as I am about enhancing student learning and experience. So I think it's a shame when people don't/won't/can't share, and I know there are more people who want to. 

I'd like to see - possibly in a request for funding to TALIS, if I can manage it next week - an open repository of information. Not content. Information. Skills. I've discussed the kind of skills and capabilities one needs to develop in vws here and in slides here (video) and I'd like to see a f2f couple of days where we take time to organise a curriculum of capabilities, divvy them up and get them written as far as possible into format and detail. Then work out what is missing and how to -commission if necessary- the remaining required info. Not having always been a fan of OER, mainly because I've not seen a good way to split up the content from the process in generic-but-scalable ways that work, I really see that producing a shared and updatable resource on eg wikiversity (like here or here or as Sarah has done with the virtual birthing unit materials here) which people see as a starting point for scripting, tracking, connecting, chatbotting, regAPI-ing etc is not something that I'm seeing elsewhere (stuff on standards, yes, stuff on what's happening, yes, FAQs generally,yes and yes) but not all in one sensible place which noone is making personal or corporate hay from.

This needs supplementing where possible with the kind of thing that Peter has been struggling with about open jorum this week, or which has been discussed around the place since the decision for xlstreet to stop doing freebies - the opportunity to add to this the facility to 'get' things. So for example, the new avatar sets that I created - I want to be able to make them available to people. I'd been looking into xlstreet when they stopped it, so I'm waiting for some other way to get them where they can be delivered to people inworld from the web. Maybe openjorum is the answer, but despote having a staff account at two UK universities, I couldn't work out any way to get into it to submit anything, so work still needed here I think. But has potential. 

And then there is the design of activities. The keynote I gave in April at the RSC Northern's workshop on SL focussed on some stuff I've learned. I wish someone would make me write it up, cos it's pretty good, and extremely useful for both learning technologists to reign in/organise academics and for academics to sensibly evaluate or help themselves to design scenarios.

[Damn I just did a copy/paste/undo and my text editor helpfully deleted a whole chunk of text] And now I've forgotten how I started that next paragraph to get to where it was I thought I was. Boo. I think it went something like:

I know that for us to show any sign of weakness will be jumped on by all those who don't like SL, don't get it, or still have a chip on their shoulder about not having access to it on campus (take your sour grapes to your IT people rather than taking it out on us) but I do think we are at a watershed. The possibility as we move through 2010 with developments like access to bring in resources created in more widely used softwares in animation and graphics and the increased likelihood of via-browser access makes the future look potentially bright. But that light will only shine if there is a scalability which does not rely on project funding, large or small. What next for VWs? To be honest about what has been achieved, what can be achieved, and what can be truly opened and shared in the spirit of enhancing things for everyone. Being able to move resources around and back them up more usefully will help reuse of space (I can't be the only one operating at >14500 of my prim limit) and keeping up with the remarkable ingenuity of the developers inworld who push the boundaries of design and development further sooner with RP ideas than we can catch up with in education as well as the technical developments are all moving in the right direction. (This was SO much more coherent when I wrote it the first time) I shall probably over the next few weeks finally agree to someone shifting my digital Bayeux Tapestry visit off SL to an open grid where it can be used for teaching kids. But there are so many great educational developments as well as developments by educators in vws that there is such an exciting future.And there are developments like the SLENZ ones in New Zealand which have deliberately been built as creative commons so that the rest of us can use them. That's great - though there is an ongoing land cost to those projects now their funding has finished.But I think there are very few projects in the UK that are creative commons, even though they may have been funded. And this is where the sharing of process not content comes back. I like the THEATRON hud, but I'd like it even more if the final report included script snippets and commented code so that I could create a hud to use in a learning scenario that could call info as the THEATRON one does, but that I can't currently do.

I never realised I would see the day when I could see such use for OER in the best sense of it, and my wish for what's next in virtual worlds is that we pool what we have learnt, learnt from the things that haven't worked as well as what have, and remember that we have a common goal going forwards. And I don't see that this has to preclude those who want/need their names publishing on their projects, but neither do I see that projects can't be announced until finished. I think the non-parcel-based audio I have in the digital Bayeux Tapestry would have been really cool for the Oxford WWI poetry, for example. A few people working together could relatively quickly work up similar functionality to Sloodle for Bb - the chat logger > discussion board is a great start.

Have a great day at #wn4vw, wish I was with you

There was an article on News24 yesterday about soldiers recording audio bedtime stories for their kids. It's not actually new, it seems, there are a few BBC search hits about it previously. In one of them they talk of properly publishing them as cds, with added music etc, though in this day and age it should be much easier (remarkably, many soldiers even towards the front lines seem to get access to facebook more often than you'd think) with things like audioboo, twitter pockets etc. In fact many of the things that Nik Peachey tweets about for language learning. Is it not so obvious to other people, are we geeks unfairly holding on to this kind of information, or do we just not realise that others don't know this? Probably a little of both - many of us are still learning ourselves about these little apps - getting more accessible by the week, but then we also may not share it widely enough. We do know that audio is important and really useful to create and maintain relationships - that's why we value podcasts so highly at work. I hope that, although they're not bedtime stories, one day little Joseph will be able to listen to his dad's podcasts from our VLE, even though he will never have memories of John. But it makes me wonder if we hold other knowledge that should be being used by others, like the soldiers recording bedtime stories for the children who they spend up to half their life away from. What is your top transferable skill? Incidentally, I was obviously destined to be a bit of a geek - and the idea of recording bedtime stories isn't that new - I still have a tape of stories and songs my mum did for me, to keep me occupied, having learnt how to press play on the cassette player in my cot :)

I took this picture on the way in to town yesterday, Christmas Eve, at lunch time after a week of snow and ice. The view is always fairly sympathetic to even amateur photographers, but still I rather like it. Can't help being reminded of two things - how blessed we are to live here, and how even Durham has a problem with homelessness these days, so I was glad to hear there is a soup kitchen in the Castle today, and sorry that it hadn't been advertising for volunteers. By evening I dared to drive into town and up on to the Bailey for midnight mass. I was sitting right at the back in steward-reserved seats, and so I already had an inkling of the magical night we were coming out into because I could see as they started to open the great north doors that the world was shrouded in a shimmering fog. Absolutely beautiful. Absolutely freezing. Well below freezing, in fact, not at all a night to be sleeping rough in, missing out on all the sherries and milk and mince pies being left out for that other expected arrival last night. And whilst there was no room in the inn for the holy family, at least the stable was there.

The cathedral was full for midnight mass, and it was pretty busy both at matins and this morning's eucharist. I collected some mail from the chapter house afterwards and added my bag of toys to the extremely large pile of sacks already there for the Salvation Army to distribute. I'm saddened by the lack of real agreement and forward movement in Copenhagen, and sorry to hear the figure quoted by +Mark this morning that 50% of children in Sunderland just up the road grow up today in what classes as poverty. Here's hoping that this coming year is one where the more comfortably off remember the children born in stables around the world, that everyone, as +Mark said, is 'infinitely precious' and that our beautiful world is fragile and that we can look after it better than we do. The snow has been absolutely stunning in Durham this week, but a strong thaw and many communities will be facing flooding again, whilst at the other side of the world they are missing rains again and in Australia are evacuating in the face of forest fires. Here's wishing you a happy christmas and a new year full of hope and joy. For all of us and our world. 

Hmm. Getting back dancing again has relocated an inch or two so that the Karen Millen dress fits again. Well, for an event that didn't include a five course dinner, anyway. However, it's too tight in the skirt to dance in. Which means that I don't have a single black dress that will do for the monochrome ball in January. I've got a new heap of clothes ready for charity shops, so that I can try and tidy the clothes I wear from wherever they are currently living dumped into my wardrobe, and have ejected three black dresses (all I have worn to events where dancing has happened but two are tight and slit to the thigh, and though still fit, probably will never be worn again, and one, from prior experience, is too cowl-necked for safety despite a pretty skirt). Also slightly worryingly I appear to be 2 black dresses short, this one and the one which has a red twin still on the hanger. I do have a beautiful empire Laura Ashley which was in a 2for1 sale when I needed a new concert skirt last winter, but the underskirt isn't wide enough for ballroom, and a bit up-covering for latin. Thus, despite the deep pleasure accompanying the realisation I can wear the blackwhichalwaysshouldhavebeentheredonedammit dress, I will need to rectify the lack of dress before Jan 30. How fun :D

at the risk of seeming only to post rather gloomily (and I've another one up my sleeve too while I'm in this mode), I just wanted to expand on the tweet I just posted, having watched the BBC video of the 100th repatriation of a fallen soldier from Afghanistan . I really appreciate the fact that the people of Wootten Bassett take time out to pay their respects - on behalf of us all - at each repatriation. It's such a little thing, and yet such a big thing, and I guess means a great deal to the families who wait. I also found myself moved this time by the numbers of veterans standing silently, saluting these young men, so soon after Remembrance weekend when we (and those veterans) salute a different and now lost generation. It's kind of nice - though wholly depressing at the same time - that the favour is returned, if you pardon the phrasing of that.

 

Yesterday a friend acknowledged that it was almost impossible to appreciate the loss of a parent until you had experienced it - it's a club that you don't understand until you have joined it. Which makes you realise how empty questions like "are you ok?" or platitudes (however well-meant) such as "time is a great healer" or "I know how you must be feeling" are. You cannot know how the newly bereaved is feeling. You can understand where they are, but for each bereavement the context, conscience, history, relationships are different, so you can never actually know. This makes me feel easier about how one can offer pastoral support in situations where one is not part of the club. Our calling is not to know how the bereaved feels, nor hurry them through the 'process', but to walk alongside them in their pain, with love and understanding.

When it is difficult to pick up the phone because there are no words to say - a hug is inaudible - and that 'we are thinking of you' seems inadequate, the simple comfort of being thought of and prayed for can be more supportive than you think. They are invisible extra footsteps in the sand at each side of God's when he is carrying you.

To my friends:

Remember too that you don't "deal with" or "learn to deal with" or "get over" the grief, anger, regret, raw emptiness etc that you feel right now, instead you learn how to carry them, to live with them, because they are now part of you and your story. There's no deadline, rush or race for that. Be mad and hurt now, whenever you need to be, because you need to be. It's ok not to be ok. Gradually you will be ok, but it will be a new you, not the old you. Nor the you that you are right now. And learning who the new you with the new story is takes time, and may well include regret for the loss of the old you. But we will care for all three of you, and be alongside you in that struggle and growth.

I will blog some thoughts around this eventually when I have a window of opportunity (currently scheduling for July 2010) but my slides from today's conference in Coventry on Learning in Virtual Worlds (from where you can watch the video of my presentation) were:

There are some great photographs on the BBC this week, to draw attention to a new book of Great War Portraits. They are powerful images, and there will be a tinge of change in tomorrow's remembrance events that over the last few months we have finally lost the three last surviving members of the forces who saw action in the first world war. With the greatest of respect to these amazing men - and it's difficult to imagine what they achieved and endured during and after the war (the during bit made very clear to me in a visit to Vimy Ridge aged 12) - I wonder if we will, after tomorrow, move to look forwards rather than backwards. Tomorrow, I'm on duty at the Cathedral Remembrance Day service, and then later I shall attend our College one. The latter will in many ways be more poignant for me, as we will include, after naming all the alumni who have been lost in service, those who currently serve. With the changing demographics of Hatfield students, there are a lesser percentage these days, but I have a number of officer alumni. Out of one year group in particular, at least four are in action, of whom two are right now on the front lines in Afghanistan. Every year, every Remembrance Day service, every time I hear another casualty on the news, I wonder how long it will be before we have to add another name to the roll of honour board. And if it will be one of the young men I had the pleasure to tutor through their time at Hatfield. This week, I almost thought that time had come, living the longest 24 hours after the explosion and loss of one of 3 Rifles until they released the name.

This year, remember still those pitifully young men who we lost on Flanders fields, those who came home scarred and were further scarred by WWII seeming to suggest their colleagues in the 'great' war had died in vain, those lost in Europe and wider afield in the second world war and since. But also, think of the increasing number of small children who are fatherless in our new casualty list. It is ironic that the Afghans are involved in the opium trade, as it simply re-emphasises the relevance of poppies in a new generation. Wear your poppy with pride and pray for those heroes who come home, lost and living. And, do me a favour and include Will (King's Royal Hussars) and Warren (3 Rifles) too (click pics to see them at work).

Last night Sarah Stewart tweeted about a comment she'd made on a blog post about choosing names for second life, and it's kicked me into writing down a thought that has been a mental half post for a little while. I was a bit disappointed that Google wouldn't let me have my own name for my google wave account, when I use it for my main google account, so I used my SL name instead of any of the random number suffixes google helpfully suggested. The only thing that bothers me about this is that it would be fvery difficult to find me if google wave became ubiquitous and you didn't know me in SL. But to a certain extent I will answer to whichever name, I guess, which is interesting, and makes me rethink conversations with Francis. Bert. Him, anyway (more later). In answer to Sarah's question, I created my avatar a long time ago when there were many fewer choices of surname; Hurnung is almost honey in Swedish, seemed more appealing than the others. Why didn't I use my English first name? I have no idea. But back then there mainly randomly odd names appearing and no real sensation of expecting to use this professionally and thus be helpfully more or less identifiable - which Sarah says she would do if creating her account now. Anyway, my first name is my Swedish diminutive, rather than my English one, which probably accounts for why I will answer to it when Angela calls me by it.

My main avatar is me. I've managed accidentally (whether you believe that or not) now to turn up to give a paper on SL dressed the same as her, which probably tells you how much I identify with her that despite her having almost as many evening gowns as I do irl, she never really wears anything I wouldn't. In fact, I'd go so far as to say she's a very useful way of deciding whether I'd like to buy a particular style irl. Some chat last night and recently between UK educators, especially with some of those newer to the party, have included considering your avatar as a way to play dress-up dolls. Or to unleash your inner fantasies (which is a whole research topic on its own, of course) - we were meaning the entirely innocent princess-type at the time. Kattan has evening gowns, sure, and a couple of things for fancy dress events, but she's too me to do anything much else that I wouldn't see myself/be seen being/doing/wearing. That's what alts are for! Some people sit more lightly to their avs than I - I can only be one person at once (again, much to unpick that I'm saving for somewhere else). I don't feel 'me' in an alt, I kind of view from a slightly out-of-body (more-out-of-body-than-usual) experience.

Anyway, part of Sarah's reminding me was that I realised a while ago that I have, if not changed, grown beyond the sense I used to have about identities. Once, I was surprised that Francis Strand wasn't, when I'd met him face to face (there was a post with comments about this, but I can't find it anymore). I suppose that reaction was because he could possibly have been Francis Strand, whereas unless you look hippychick or rock child, I wouldn't expect someone to introduce themselves to me irl as Petal Stransky and believe them. So my distress in the recollection of the rl engagement with Francis remains slightly separate, but his explanation of how used he was to being it and being referred to as it, and even sometimes called it, that it was just also him and didn't occur to him to correct people - that I now understand. I guess in some ways I always did - as I have never seen it as anything but generally amusing that we call Elliott, Elliott and his colleagues call him Steve, and people who cross circles mostly know we mean the same person (even though it took Jonty a while to sort that out). So be warned, Peter Miller, if and when I ever come face to face with you, I shall be guaranteed to call you Graham for at least a year :)

Can't believe where the month has gone - but then it's always like this at the start of term. I want to share Joyce Middlemist with you.

I have about 4 real memories of my maternal grandmother, and very few photographs of her, especially not with me, literally only two or three. She lived really close by, and I spent a lot of time there before I went to school, so it's sad I have so few memories, and sad too that there are so few photos - there are many more pictures of my paternal grandmother with me as a small child because she lived so far away and only [was] visited occasionally. So of her I have photos but probably less memories of the time before my maternal grandmother died. So of my maternal, local grandmother I have birthday cards in scrap books and a Collins English Dictionary she wrote a dedication in for me. She died when I was four. One of my few memories is most likely from after she died, emptying the house. Shortly after my grandmother died, Joyce was widowed. Similarly, looking back, I suppose the two are why we then spent loads of time there, and I was big enough to remember much more of the summers playing in the garden at Joyce's house. Joyce Middlemist was an amazing woman, known around the valley, anyone's ideal fairy godmother. I recognised many of the events told in the eulogy at her funeral service last month, but I learnt something new, and it was a lovely thing I want to share.

From being really small, the old house was HUGE. It isn't, and I'd love to knock on the door and ask to have a look round now to surprise myself at the scale. It had a vast garden (for a four year old) and lovely views over the valley. It had a huge gracious living room which had poofs in. You were allowed to call them that then. I never bothered understanding that they were for adults feet, they were chairs for small people, and there was a green velour turtle which was my best friend. There was a staircase in the main hall (I suppose I remember this because of the spaciousness of the hall, the stairway and the fact it was a proper staircase instead of the stairs running straight up from the front door, boxed in, in the house we lived in. (Actually, strangely, I remember the stairs as one of the few things at my grandma's house too. An odd child, me.) And then behind the stairs was a large old fashioned kitchen, where Joyce was much at home. It was a lovely house, if a little sombre in my non-comprehending small mind.

Then she moved to round the corner from us. This house I spent many happy visiting hours, and though I suspect the old house is now littler than I thought it was, I remember there was a lot less of the new one and not everything she owned moved with her. Luckily for me, the turtle did. I confess to still sitting on it in to my 20s, rather than the sofa :) Joyce was one of those women with very definite ideas of hospitality. Within seconds of you arriving, the kettle was on and trays appeared, with pot, cups, plates and at least two kinds of cake/biscuits. More often than not (this being Yorkshire) there was the offer of Christmas cake and cheese.

She adored Adam, even when he was probably the grandson anyone would most like to renounce. Once I went and he was having a dinosaur phase - the living room was full of them. Later, I turned up to see a whole landscape taking up the front room, for some project he was working on at school. I can't remember if it was something he was supposed to be working on at school, or it was something that the teacher in her cooked up to try and engage him with whatever he was supposed to be working on, but it proved a landscape she and I could put a few leftover dinosaurs onto.

Joyce treasured a photo of me she called her bohemian princess. It was taken at our house in Hull, sitting on the stairs in our kitchen, holding the black cat that had moved itself in with us. In Sweden it's common to make Christmas 'cards' by having a greeting printed onto a reproduced photo, and I used that one in maybe 1996. She loved it, it took central wall space in the collection of photos which grew over the hallway wall. It's still a favourite photo of me - I don't have many I like. It's the way she introduced me to people. It's going to forever make me smile and think of her.

Joyce was involved with all sorts of faith groups across the valley. Sometimes I'd see her at sservices at St Andrews, sometimes she would be at Choppards Mission. When I did music GCSE she produced a poem that the Wooldale WI wanted making into a hymn for their something anniversary. It's a shame I don't have that in my music portfolio, but one day I'd love to hear them singing it and think oh - I recognise that!

We heard at her service about her resistance to getting old, of how on finding someone on her doorstep with a box of supplies for the elderly in the village, she dashed off to the pantry and came back with something to add to it. But age did catch up with her. One visit, some time before her first stroke, she put the kettle on when I arrived and then led me in to the living room. After a while, when we hadn't heard hte kettle whistle, I got up to go and see, and discovered that the kettle was on the side and the red *plastic* teapot was on the hotplate. Remedied just in time. She did hate getting old. She was happy to be back in her own house after her first stroke but hated being fussed over by the carers, or messed about by buses collecting her to take her to things. She didn't take kindly to God telling her to slow down. Sadly, I saw her less over the last couple of years as turning up as an unexpected surprise wasn't fair and she needed time to book in visitors. But I still received and sent cards and letters, and it makes me smile to pick up a handwritten letter. This I remember everytime I see little notes from my paternal grandmother, in her lovely writing. It's something we have lost in the world of email and text messages. It's worth a card or letter to a loved one now and again, especially a handwritten one.

But better than handwritten notes, I discovered at the funeral that she had left something else. I knew she had engaged in the sharing memories project mum had volunteered with, but apparently she had also taken part in a wider snapshot capture by the BBC, 'Telling Stories'. Often people who have lost someone spend hours replaying the answerphone messages from them. We talk a lot about audio at work; about audio feedback which is much richer than brief marginal comments, and audio intros/summaries/lectures. It's a powerfully connecting medium. It sure is. So from a day that I rejoiced in having been able to know this amazing woman to adulthood, which I did not with my grandmothers and thus having her was a double joy, and shared our common pain at her frustration of the last two debilitating years, and quietly commended her to the God in which she never doubted, I came home and heard her voice again. Amazing. I only wish there were more of it. The whole point of the sharing memories project was to keep experiences of past times for future generations, but it really made me realise/remember how lovely it is to have audio snapshots. Enjoy. And rest in peace, Joyce.

"Well, there's a first. it's ten years since I joined Hatfield College and its SCR. I long ago graduated into the old guard, and am certainly one of the longest serving tutors now. Being vice-president of the senior common room isn't a role which requires much effort generally, as the president is almost ever-present. Though not tonight. Tonight I was in the hot seat and we had the MCR president and a couple of MCR tutors with guests with us on high table, with the vast majority of students in to formal being sportsmen and women. It was a loud night. Just as we had finished dessert, and the shushing began (unusual, normally they fall silent exceptionally quickly) so that the senior man could bow out to high table, it became apparent (and, interestingly, mainly only audible because they shushed, even as the doors to the kitchen servery slammed shut) that there was another tone in the air, the fire alarm. I have never heard the fire alarm go off in college, I realised. It's a damn sight louder at work, I can tell you. So after some confusion, the students stood up, unsure why the senior man wasn't bowing out and whether they could go or what was happening. We stood and gestured for the exec to get them out, and eventually it seemed to filter through that the fire alarm was going off and the senior common room members were encouraging them to leave for a reason, not because we'd just ditched all usual habits. We remained, while they began for the exits. I spotted at least one girl collecting up half empty bottles on her way... Out! Go. The senior man came back. There isn't anywhere for them to go. We had to move to make them move on through the porch to the tennis court, the assembly point, rather than the quad. Some were ushered the other directions out of the 'fire exit' door of the main hall annexe. Many loitered just outside the door, lighting cigs and making phone calls. Please, I said, look like you're trying to be on the tennis courts, then the sooner we can dismiss you. There seems to be a faulty alarm in C22, it's already gone off once this term, seemingly. This time the porters managed to discourage the fire service from arriving, which is notable because as I recall when I worked in the building next to the Chemistry dept, the Fire Service has to turn out, whether you know for sure it's not actually a fire. Anyway, this year's senior man is a very sensible chap, so when he dismissed them he pointed out -as requested- in no uncertain terms that clearing the main college building in 5 mins was applaudable, but they are supposed to congregate on the tennis court, and to please respect the procedures even if they don't think there's a fire.

All of which reminded me of my second year at Nicholson . As senior residents, one of us per staircase was back prior to the rest of the students at the start of each term. I had the central room on the top floor of D block, facing out of the back, though not directly overlooking the Quad. That Saturday at the beginning of January, I was back, snuggled up in my room watching Moon & Son in that first series that was better than all subsequent ones. So it was about 8.40pm when the fire alarm went off. With only half a dozen of us resident until the morrow, I suspected foul play from ejits from Ferens, and remained to watch the last few minutes. No let up in the alarm. Dammit. Ok, coat on, better go see what's going on. I knew there was only me, so I had no rooms to clear. Got down to the ground floor, opened the door out on to the stairs to the quad, looked left, watched the windows blow out of the third room in on C Block's ground floor. Luckily the design was a diamond, so although you could almost reach the stairs from the nearest balcony of the next block, the rooms stepped back diagonally. I was not the only one doing the same thing, a couple of the other senior residents were just emerging from the other blocks. eep. That would be a fire then. We returned inside our block to retrieve the fire extinguishers to train on the balcony. We could in fact by now hear the sirens approaching through the village. By the time they not arrived, but managed to get to us, the fire was no longer spreading. It took them a while to get in to get the fire out. A diamond, I said. Yes indeed. So C block spreadeagled the underpass through the front to the mound outside the front, whereas at the back of the quad a covered roof reached from the warden's ground floor room over the drive and the bike shed. This was precision-built with the building to a height that would accommodate a fire engine or ambulance gaining entry to the quad should that be necessary. However, it turned out that by 1990 fire engines had grown, because this one couldn't get in to the quad, and because the middle room in C blockwas pretty darn much as far away from the entrance as physically possible, neither had they hoses that would reach either. They had to join us with extinguishers (well, replace us by then) until the second engine arrived with longer hoses. It turned out someone had left a candle lit on their heater, with the curtains undrawn and the balcony door open, thus draughting the curtain in to the flame. When I say left, I mean gone to the bar and left it. It wasn't as though we didn't already have rules about leaving candles unattended but thereafter it was pretty much no candles full stop.

I muse on this for two reasons. One - whilst not particularly nostalgic - is that I have never (ok, we know when our start of term fire practices are, so yes, I have time to put my coat on and pick up my coffee on the way) again taken for granted a fire alarm going off. It's surprising how little respect one pays to something that one day could actually truly really save your life. Five seconds later leaving that night and I've been sprayed with glass and flames. Annoying, yes, but one, go, and two you learn where to go. So lesson one, which sadly I think you have to learn the hard way, and one hopes the hard way is with no damage to life, is that when a fire alarm goes off (any time, but definitely unexpectedly) get out of the bulding. Make sure you have paid attention to where you are supposed to get to and how. Some times you have less time than you think (never mind all the learning that comes from watching the fire service videos that show how a room can explode within 47 seconds).

Secondly, it's worth a fire practice not just measuring how quickly you can evacuate a building, but the whole process beyond this. So just as finding out that the fire engine actually can't enter the quad, a review of fire procedures everywhere is healthy. So, tonight, a couple of things disturb me, that I could probably have not really noticed if you ever asked me without seeing 300 almost enebriated to well oiled and high-heeled students, gowns flapping everywhere trying to leave Hatfield main dining hall.(If you want to follow the next bit, you might want some reference or a map!) One is that the students who finally left via the annex fire door to the Fellows' Garden then followed the path between M stairs and the kitchen round under the chapel to the main college drive. Fair enough, only that technically brought them back nearer to where the fire alarm was sounding from. And er, there is no other way out of the fellows' garden unless you scale the wall down to the river... And those we got on to the tennis court - therein lies the first problem - if you were trying to evacuate the whole of college, they wouldn't fit worse than they didn't fit tonight. But, what absolutely horrified me was that we still expect them to congregate on the tennis court, in a fire. If we have a secondary meeting point, I don't think I have ever been told it. You would have to left along the Bailey toward the the grassed area behind the Cathedral east wall, as you'd expect a fire engine to be coming up the Bailey from the right. However, if you had all the students on the tennis court, and the faulty alarm in C22 turned out to be a real fire in C stairs or Kitchen stairs, and the windows blew out, then there would be a problem. Firstly, I wouldn't like to try and turn a fire engine in to College gates, although it may well be possible, but I wonder if they try places like that when they take delivery of a new generation of engines (and, similarly - betcha they can't get right up to Castle's quad either...). Secondly, if the fire were, for example, Kitchen stairs, those people leaving via the Fellows' Garden - do they stay congregated outside the bar, and doing counts then would be quite tricky. But worst of all, I was just looking at all the humanity on the tennis court. It was dark, and they were gowned. The tennis court is rarely used as a carpark, so it was empty, as were the three parking places in the quad itself, but there is a double gate in to the tennis court opposite the entrance to Kitchen stairs, where they were crammed in, a single gate to the right of this leading to the Gatehouse stairs, and then one single gate at the other end, leading out onto the very narrow path behind the boiler house behind the church back wall to the blue gate out the side of Rectory on to Bow Lane. These three single gates are the size, basically, (width, certainly-possibly higher, but that's not much help) as a door. The double gates on to the tennis court are big double gates, and were chocka. But, having got them IN to the tennis court, they are now 300 students within 3-5 metres of College buildings on each side, penned in by a 12 foot high fence. With two titchy ordinary-sized doors out of that. Penned. So, if we keep my potential fire in Kitchen stairs (or, clearly, perhaps in the Kitchen which happens to be below Kitchen stairs, no kidding), then we have 300 students penned into a cage with 12 foot high fence and one big and  two little gates out of it. Of these, the big gate and the Gatehouse gate would be out of action as they led back to the fire. The also lead to the main gate of College, which one hopes would have a fire engine stuck in it. There is a large gate out the back of the bar, next to the laundry at the bottom of J stairs. This would be a good exit route for those stuck behind the hall in the Fellows' Garden, if they can get out of the Fellows' Garden round the MCR Pace buildings into the Jevons quad to get to that gate. The 300 students penned on the tennis courts cannot reach this gate. That leaves 300 students penned on the tennis court inside their 12 foot high  (pretty strong) fence with the one little gate out the back to the narrow path to the single gate to Rectory. In fact once they get out the back of the tennis court it's possible to go down the Rectory fire excape to the car park and out of the large back gates onto Bow Lane and Kingsgate Bridge. But you have to get out of the tennis court first. The path along the east length of the tennis court, where A & B stairs doors are, is about 4 cosy students wide, and as it's so close to the buildings and there's no congregation point really sizeable in front of Rectory, it isn't likely you would automatically send students down that path rather than on to the tennis court in the first place. So my 300 students remain penned on the tennis court maybe only 5 m from a fire blowing out windows, while the fire engine tries to get in to the front gates, all trying to re-evacuate out of a normal door-sized gate.

Now, I'm not much of a pessimist really, but when you put the first lesson with the second lesson, and assume that if there were windows exploding from quad-facing Kitchen stairs, students would get on to the tennis court faster than loiter around in the quad as they did tonight (though we'd be leading the first of them out into it until we realised where the fire was and then leading them through the corridor past the SCR and out the lower ground floor passageways either out the back to the car park or back up and out of A stairs out to Rectory - either way narrow narrow corridors and we're talking 300 students here. But in 10 years I don't think I have ever - well I know I have never - received any level of detail about where to evacuate to and assemble in the case of fire from various points around college. As one of the longest serving tutors, this now bothers me. Or at least it doesn't bother me, as I've just evaluated all options for evacuating students from all the various buildings beyond those described here, and could confidently do that in grim circumstances. But I don't know if others would think the same. It's entirely possible that there may have been some addition to the tutors' file that has only appeared on Blackboard rather than in my paper version, and no, I don't make it to many college meetings since I moved to Middlesbrough, but before that I never missed one and it never came up. I've also played a part in many initial tutor training sessions and I absolutely know it's never been covered. So let's just hope that there is never a real fire! Sure, it's not like Penny and I were handling it alone. The porters were out when they'd been to investigate the alarm and they presumably have very detailed evacuation plans. But still.  I will never ever forget the night that I nearly sat and ignored a fire alarm that nearly caused me harm, and so I'm glad I've mentally done the exercise of evacuation in my head. 

Note: Fire extinguishers are damn heavy and actually therefore pretty tricky to use if you're not a rugby player. I doubt they've got a lot littler in 18 years.  And, how many of you know where the nearest one to your office is anyway?! And,even in January, it's pretty warm standing within 3 metres of a fire blowing out doors and windows

I love the house I live in, don't get me wrong. I am not a tidy person and I need more storage space. I have decorated this house from top to bottom and I like it a lot. The kitchen's been done twice. I like the look of it. I like it better if it's empty of stuff. Which of course it never is. It's not like I have a lot of kitchen stuff - well, ok, I probably do have a fair amount of baking stuff. And a breadmaker. But no gadgets going dusty or being well used. More cookery books than I use, but probably no more or less than everyone else. But you know what I don't have? More space. Not for gadgets, or books, or dirty washing up (I may only wash up when I've no worktop left, but I'm hardly unusual in that either!). But a kitchen isn't really a kitchen unless it's a hub of the house. Now it's easy to put space into your kitchen, and IKEA are good at helping make the tiny kitchens we have here into as spaceful as possible, but for some reason today I've been pondering the relativity of size in English kitchens. Now I do have a separate little kitchen - for example Jo and Andy's house down the road doesn't have the extension and in many ways I prefer their smaller-in-total kitchen diner to my kitchen and dining room, so estate agents probably rate it as a handy separate room. And obviously it's nice to be able to have a dinner party and guests not to be looking at the chaos of the kitchen... But still. My grandmother's 1930's house in Warwick was the same basic layout as my parents' in Yorkshire, the latter being more lucky to have had an extension that provided a double sized kitchen than the additional study/bedroom and bathroom. So we've obviously been building houses 'wrong' for a lot of the last century, which make comments I'm about to make about society not a new building issue. Indeed, some new expensive buildings have huge fancy kitchens, though some of them are basically all kitchen, island and all. What I miss is a big kitchen space. I used to do my homework sometimes in my bedroom, sometimes in the kitchen while mum cooked tea. We always sat down at the kitchen table to chat when we got home before homework started. There is something right about a ktichen which has the space not just to squeeze in a table that you can eat breakfast at, but that can be the heart of a home. Even in a small house/flat, a teeny tiny kitchen as a separate room doesn't do it for me as well as a room that you can be in. You almost never find flats or houses in Sweden that have stupidly small kitchens. In small-ish rooms, the kitchen simply runs the whole of one wall, making sure there's room for the dining table. The old Victorian and 1930's houses in England prove we didn't necessarily provide the space then either, before society televisionised, but I do think that it affects society now. Indeed, busy parents who both work, single parents, singles who feel 'feeding themselves' a chore - everyone has good reason to spend the minimum time in the kitchen, but is it such a travail to spend more time in the kitchen than in front of the TV/PC? It's hardly surprising food comes from the kitchen to the sofa if that's where people are. If you have dining room space, it's often sacrosanct as tidy and a bit grown-up, for dinner parties that hardly ever happen. And there isn't space in the kitchen for people to help out/kids to learn to cook/non-cooking partners to keep the chef company with wine/discuss the day or week in the steam or aromas of dinner cooking. Much as I love my diningroom, I'd sacrifice it for a huge kitchen (huge, bearing in mind just one extra person in my kitchen gets in the way, unless you stand in the door, is to a certain extent relative).

Would a huge kitchen make me cook more? It would be nice to think so, but I'm not entirely romantic nor misguided. My not cooking runs in phases, sometimes I'm better than others, but when I don't it is due to many things, and blaming a little kitchen is not what I'm about.  But it would be good to be able to leave out the bread machine, or to have kit to hand and space to make things, surrounded by people. One day I'd like a really big kitchen. As long as it wasn't a kitchen, but a true kitchen-diner, a room that could be the heart of the house. The real heart of the house. 

Yesterday, my first tweet in a few days (had to concentrate on MA reading for a while) said:

En route to my godmother's funeral, after practical theology reflection exercise on funerals & funeral practice.. match or mismatch?

I guess it was both. I'll probably write a blog post about her, but this is just to remind myself how often something helps me back up every time I doubt myself. Last year when I started the MA modules I didn't attend the induction, so this year I did both the general induction and the first part of the TPR (Theological and Practical Reflection) core module, which I didn't do last year but have to take this year.  Even buoyed up by my hermeneutics result I left yesterday to get the train somewhat depressed. On Monday we did some group marking of essays, and some talking about TPR seminar/summative essay structure. Yesterday I had to miss the example seminar that might have set my mind at rest, but was there for the exercise, where I was conscious that like last year, so many people in the room (actually more ordained than ordinands it seemed this year) had coherent and articulate things to say, and I had none to contribute to our group. Admittedly, I could probably have used it not being a funeral practice exercise, to be honest, however that is no excuse to any better likelihood of my having anything to say at any other point in time.

As I headed for the train there, I was seriously wondering not just where I am going to find the time to keep up this year, but extremely seriously whether I should go back in today and say, really, I don't think I can hack it, I'm too incompetent and inferior. The DDO (and possibly God) must have lost his marbles. I had absolutely no intention or desire to ponder the meta-narrative of the funeral practice whilst grieving as much as we were allowed (she'd outlawed it, to the point that the committal was before the service, so the coffin was no longer with us during the service) although I was vaguely interested by the different style that the vicar employed at the service of an 87 year-old church goer from the raw service he had to take after one of our best (not-religious) friends committed suicide in 2002.

As I headed for the train home, I was reassured by all the support from friends and family, and the stories of a life spent drawing out the vocation and talents of a woman I was proud to know and love echoed through me, as though she herself was telling me to get on with it. I'd pottered round the bookshop at Ushaw College on Monday, and brought The Parish away with me, to read on the train. That helped too. Great book. By the time I neared Darlington, I was a lot happier. Onward, soldier. Keep fighting.

This week, a 'parishioner' from my placement church was deported. Elizabeth's attempts to seek asylum had failed, and she was taken from the vicarage and deported back to Uganda. The basic details are here, but actually knowing the people involved makes it a subject it's hard to turn a blind eye to. In the time I was at St Columba's, I learnt that Elizabeth gave much to the community, easily as much as she may have received. She's smart, funny, educated, taught the community a lot about diversity, culture, cooking, and Christian values. Commentators on that newspaper article imply that all asylum seekers are after a free ride. Yes, I suppose if you are fleeing for your life, you should be tempted to stop at the first place you'd be safe, not make it all the way to England. But does that make everyone someone out to grasp all they can get? Difficult to believe that of Elizabeth, to be honest. A shame to deny the community the talents that she brought with her. I would venture to add, talents and preparedness to work hard that sometimes seem sadly lacking in some of our own citizens. Ah, you say, but our citizens are entitled to live off my tax, because they have a right to. Because what? Because they were born here? Well, actually so were Marie and John. What rights do they have? 'This island is full' says another commentator. A clip I heard yesterday as an advert for the Today programme was David Attenborough saying how many more people there are on Earth since he began making nature programmes. Astonishing. Can the earth support our future growth, never mind a particular bit of land mass or island? To answer that, we probably need to think more coherently and collaboratively, not by closing our own borders and ruling people with contributions to make out on numerical grounds. Sure, immigration is a huge issue for many, not least the people who have to decide who does and doesn't have a 'right' to come in. If there were no borders, what would happen? Is it really a case of geopgraphical borders, or is it more a case of financial borders, not letting people come in who will then be a drain on our structures and systems. England has always had comers-in. Not always peaceable ones. The Vikings, who chased Cuthbert's monks to Durham. William the Conqueror, whose regime saw Durham Castle and Cathedral left for us. The refugees from World War II, all the way to those who came from the Indian sub-continent to take the jobs 'we' didn't want, and now both keep our lazy convenience-seeking supported by all-hour shops and provide many of the medical and scientific personnel this country depends on.

The immigration officers trying to stop illegal immigrants coming over from Calais will struggle to just 'close' the camps. On the news the reporter just said people are drawn to Britain because of our relaxed attitude to asylum and our benefits culture - the lads from Afghanistan don't want to seek asylum in France, they "don't get given a passport there". The benefits culture is as much of a problem to Britain by Brits. The relaxed attitude to asylum? Tell that to Elizabeth's children, separated from their mother in a dawn raid and deported to a land they've never known. Go back and read the details . And the comments on the main story. I am fearful for Elizabeth and the future of her children. But I am also fearful for Marie and John's generation of British-born children, growing up with ignorance and prejudice, and in some cases 'values' that I cannot recognise. Immigration and asylum are huge issues, and how can you think of it any other way than globally when you have to find a strategic 'solution' to it? But equally, how can you look the other way? How can you forget that these are individuals we are talking about here. Individual men, women and children. Whose 'right', if any of us really have any, is to be treated as a fellow human being. For as you do unto them, you do unto me....

At times it almost seemed that it was only last year I was last at ALT-C. This week I was back, for the first time in 5 years and it was lovely to see some old friends and faces, who I've missed over years when I've only done the Bb circuit along with HELF and EPEDexperts. In retrospect - not that this has been entirely my own choice - it was a mistake to be away so long, for me and for my institution (although, the institution has had delegates there). It was interesting to see how many of the faces are what - a few of us are senior managers, a few are 'researchers' (wherever they sit in the academic/L&T hiearchy), a few are still doing the same job (personally, I and Andy R were a little quietly envious of this) and there were plenty of others I didn't know and some I did because they have appeared on the scene in the intervening years and work for/with people I know. Others are still in subject centres or with vendors and a delight to see them too.

I came away with contrasting emotions, some of which I was still struggling with with Matt and Steven on Tuesday, and explored long on Wednesday night with Andy R in agreement. Monday and Tuesday were quite frustrating. I felt I'd missed 5 years and not missed anything. Some of the issues inherent in such a large conference where the abstracts go in up to 8 months prior to the event, where you only have 12 minutes to present (please - 3 presenters is a nogo unless you really do have understood how to present in 12 minutes) which is an art in itself, and where the range of institutions, levels, topics and role srepresented by the speakers and audience. is so broad. These issues were all still there. 

And some of the things still being discussed were things that we were discussing in 2002/3. Why is this? Interesting to reflect on the changes that have happened. I have just circulated my ALT-C2002 presentation on Embedding the Giving and Receiving of Feedback to some staff at Teesside, as it is still very relevant to improving some ailing NSS results. I remember giving the paper, standing room only and people sitting on the floor and it being well received. I did have the powerpoint available on my old webpages at Durham but because we don't have webspace at Teesside and I've never got round to rebuilding a personal website and have only just got round to thinking that all of those resources I had (remember this is someone who never used to approve of giving the same presentation more than once!) need to be slideshared. If we had had twitter and slideshare as common back then - or even Crowdvine - so many great resources would still be helping people now. I wonder how many are gathering dust? So I've learnt I must do this soon - and record audio over them, and I hope others do too. Or perhaps they have, so where do I go to collect all their work? I resisted putting all my details in to crowdvine - I twitter so much personal drivel it looked a bit odd on my profile page to people who don't know me. But perhaps a crowdvine type thing is the way to extend networks and resources beyond the blogs, slideshare accounts etc that I do know about. My new year's resolution (always makes more sense to me for people in academia to make them now) is to find out a way to find these and collect them in a way I can review them. Netvibes, perhaps. 

So I began the week frustrated by how some things haven't changed. After all, we're in the business of change management and moving forwards - surely shouldn't that 5 years have taken us to a level where I was aware of the gap? At least I didn't feel I'd got behind (tho I will talk about virtual worlds on an official update, and it was such a prevailing theme that I regret not having made it myself to EDEN and ReLIVE instead of sending staff) in most areas. But I suppose I'm disappointed that much of the same ground was being covered - what should we be learning/have learnt about these things we were discussing? Are we missing something about being able to scale and embed these ideas and enhancements? Is it because we've been hung up on VLEs - do they affect it? (I think not, judging by the same or similar issues across institutions with different flavours of VLEs or none, so no point in wasting more breath on that.) So what is it? On the one hand, we all still seemingly have fodder for papers for another few years of our careers - ideal if you are a researcher, but more worrying to me if you are in Learning Technology and should be horizon scanning too! We're all falling in to an economic contraction - if we haven't embedded the things we've been trying over the last few years with all the staff, projects, fundings we've had, how are we going to do that in the coming leaner years? Is the onward march of free social software suddenly going to bring a tipping point where generation V solves all these questions for us....? I fear not.

And this brought me to slightly different emotions by the end of the week. As well as the opportunity to catch up with the lovely people I've missed over the years, and whose work I've deeply respected for years, I also saw new cliques, new leaders in the current field (if that is, in fact at all different from the one it was when we were the resident group of buddies). I saw people who come and go as the new names in a crowd. Some there 5 years ago have gone, have moved on and now others are established. I can see others who will take on that mantle in another few years, both in LT generally and in the Bb communities too. I've never had any real desire to be famous, and whilst it was nice that people remembered me, I'm very happy for my work to speak for itself (so, I have to make sure that I am not gagging it, and release it into the social wild), and my expertise on crowdvine of self-effacement in pretentious get-togethers is an honest reflection. But it did make me think about the future - some of the hellos will have been goodbyes. 

Not feeling a part of the crowd anymore meant I wasn't really sure about hanging out with the F-ALT crowd, as I wasn't sure that I 'belonged' anymore. On the other hand, we do a great job in our team and I've known for a while that we need to get out and share more of the stuff we do, and was hoping to be able to do more of that now with a bigger team in place. I need to promote the good practice we have much more, but I don't really feel comfortable about throwing myself back into the middle of the fray!. And at the same time as I'm thinking about withdrawing from the field altogether. So I came away with the comment of 'Come on, you've missed it all. You love it really' from Tuesday night ringing in my ears, but facing a reality that events I do this year to put us [back] on the map may be the last (though am mostly not trying to think this until that is a certainty, way too many chickens). So how do I therefore do my best to promote my team and our work and remake and consolidate relationships, knowing deep down that this may be a fleeting relationship with me personally. How will that affect me personally? Will it make it harder to leave? The experience last year of the two periods I took out of work were that I didn't look back. But that was from an internal and a Bb perspective. Steve was right, I probably do miss the wider buzz of the community. Regaining the whole spectrum of LT activity that I have missed being involved in while at Teesside - it seems such a long time since I was up for an NTFS - makes me think that there'll be more to miss than I thought. Also because it's going to be more common to think of 'possibly lasts' - and already this summer I've faced that and I'll have to develop a coping mechanism for that, and quickly, so that work doesn't suffer - not that I think anyone would ever fear a demob happy attitude from me. But also so that when the Bishop asks if I will mind giving up work, I still don't hesitate.

How on earth am I going to give enough to my study this year while getting all the rest of my LT career done, tied up and finished in the time that would be left? Even if I kept in touch as a 7th day ministry? SO much to do! And a pile of reading to do for seminars a week on Monday, which I'm really looking forward to, so perhaps in the end it won't be a hard decision after all.....What will the next five years hold? Thanks for all the great discussions and company this week. Whatever happens next, I've been blessed to work with such inspiring and thought-provoking colleagues over the last 10+ years.

Update: a great summary here too!

[Response to Matt 's "Bloggers blogging less since started tweeting http://twtpoll.com/9f890h Will blog this later :)"]

I think I've managed to get back to my blog a bit recently, after it almost having gone in to deep freeze when i twittered/facebooked and had only enough time to do quick updates. Terry Wassall just said on twitter "I'm struggling these days to write blog posts. They turn into essays so I run out of time and don't post!" I found this had become the case. I have many blog posts in me that I mentally wrote in bed, or away from a keyboard, and never got chance to write up but didn't get twittered either, and things I want to say that are too big for twitter. Then again I want to more permanently home some of the things I've just thrown onto twitter as though it were delicious. Over the last couple of months I've realised I want to find the time more to write more quantatively, if not qualitatively, again, and am making more of an effort.

I'm not sure though, that this is directly attributable to twitter in either direction. I already had run out of time to write (or, frankly read) blogs, but since I can tweet from my phone on the run/way to&from work, I could twitter instead. The topics probablly overlapped only minimally - if I knew what software I could analyse my blog in I would probably find there were few 140xr equivalent postings.

However it would possibly be true to say that since I've been twittering I've read more tweets and less rss of other's blog posts, only going to them if directly linked posts on twitter interest me. I'd be curious to know if others had experienced this. I don't -or only ver rarely- post my own blog posts to be entered on twitter, so I don't encourage that traffic, I've never done that. In fact I've only relatively recently (ok, couple of years, as it were, possibly less) made it so my name appears on my blog, and that was through my twitter feed, which I've since stopped. Although I don't hide my blog or deliberately hide who I am, it's not really either a work blog or one about technology, so advertising it seems unnecessary - friends subscribe and you can link to it from my twitter and facebook profiles if you wanted.

Going back and attempting to blog more is partly a space to reflect, though I currently feel the need to consider a more personal portfolio type space to reflect more openly than I do on my blog - I also contribute very occasionally to a blog a few of us started a couple of years ago to share on our theology course, and I'm aware I should use that more too. Thus although I might have amplified in posts things that have made it to twitter, there is no competition between the two.

So, have I blogged less since I started tweeting? Yes, but not to blame twitter for that.

Have I blogged more/about the same since I started tweeting? Yes, too, because after a gap I've got back into it a bit and possibly either the amount of twitter, or the lack of depth of twitter has helped encourage me to keep it up/get back to blogging.

If we'd done this four five six months ago, I'd probably have said I blog less, and possibly blame it on randomly twittering rubbish instead. But the lack of time isn't caused by or being eaten up by twitter. Now I'm probably hesitantly prepared to say that twitter arrived in my psyche (i had an account for quite a while only using it professionally whilst still facebooking personal statuses) and took over from status-posting in facebook at a point when my blog was running out of time/space/steam. Twitter helped keep me connected through that, and has potentially helped me back to blogging. Or perhaps I'd have come back anyway. Either way, I couldn't rightly feel that I could vote in the poll without skewing the results.

Ooops, there's an essay. Most of my blog posts aren't that long!! Interested for other's views

Intressant. Denna vecka har jag varit på konferens, en som jag har slippat i nästan fem år. Lite oroligt, då, att ingenting verkade annorlunda. Samma ansikten - gamla vänner och de andra. Samma presentationerna också, som jag hört sista gången - det var lite tråkigt! Några saker skulle jag har tänkt skulle inte hända så ofta nu, nu att många av oss har sambor och barn, även om vi drycker lika mycket... Det kan vara att faktsikt vi druckit lite för mycket igår kväll, men det är väl bra att komma hem med ett leende på lapparna!

The video is only available until the 18th of September, so please, please, go and watch. It's subtitled where it's in Swedish (although scandies will be interested by the occasional creative gaps in the subtitling). It's an hour long, but worth finding enough tea breaks to watch it all the way through to the end. All sorts of information which I would bet my mortgage on you not knowing. Probably may of us know that the US harangue China over environmental factors and Kyoto, but did you know it's as big a gap as China putting out 3 whatsits of CO2 per year, while the US spits out 21? Or that Malaysia currently has the best health statistics? If you can't manage the whole documentary, watch him on TED, it will send you to the documentary!

Rosling's World: Hans Rosling is a professor in international health, who has made an unlikely global success. His presentations on global development evokes laughter, rejoice and reflections. People with power, like Al Gore or Bill Clinton, ask for his advice. He wants everyone to question their prejudices about the world - as he himself has needed to do. A documentary by Pär Fjällström, SVT.

 

It seems ages since I've lost hours of my life to Second Life, not since before the approaching deadlines of my third life took precedence Back then, I was seemingly comfortably up there with other people around the academic community, leastways with those who didn't contract dedicated developers. What a difference a summer makes. Probably not helped by many of the 'competition' being academics, who have had a few less demands on their time over the last couple of months to be able to up a gear on developing themselves. So now I'm fallen waaaay behind. This last week, where I've ventured back in and found noone has knocked anything down but that lingering sense of wanting to knock it all down myself and start afresh, if only I had the few weeks with nothing else to do, I've been pottering around a few places. Mostly medical/nursing ones, and been exceedingly impressed/envious. As we were beginning to understand at Easter, most of it is almost within reach of understanding how it's done, but without knowing actually how it's done. And now - more depressingly as I know I have no time to learn - I have a shopping list of skills I lack. Then again, I think, would I be able to learn them with time? Possibly, but it would take heaps of time.

HUDs I have a couple of plywood boxes on my HUD now, which rez a forklift truck and move it, only in one direction, I can only do one direction, and it rezzes relative to where I'm standing. But this ought to be a basic knowledge I could base figuring out things like THEATRON's director HUD, and the midwifery ones are even more impressive.

Scripting So I can make a clock. And I can birth a baby. And I can play an audio guide. But I borrow and adapt to do this. Which is indeed how most people start learning to do most things. But I don't know a huge amount about what I'm doing, and LLScript isn't totally transparent to me. I got out of courseware design type of technology before scripting really took off, so I've nothing much beyond 10 Print Katie 20 Goto 10 to work from. Although, funny how life turns out, as I started a Computer Studies Olevel at 13, stopped because of teacher strikes and had computers around from the very early days of Vic 20s and BBC Masters...

Animations Am irritated by not having a baby rocking anim to put in my baby for the midwives. There are free softwares such as whateveritwasidownloadedbuthaveforgotten and there's Puppeteer (was it Puppeteer? Perhaps it was). And I managed a perfectly lovely lying on beach stil pose, but the animated ones are only more frames, so this ought to be possible, it's just longer time to do nicely. (see, I nearly said 'tp perfect', I'm learning). And then is it easy to put them into an object rather than wear yourself? If so, I could have a wriggling baby too. But animating linked  prims doesn't seem quite as easy somehow.

Holorezzing I can produce, from the OS holoscripting scripts, a small bedroom set or a living room set, so I suppose I ought to think - again, with tim spare to improve it - that I could more or less do this. But I'm far from being able to use it properly. Isa Goodman's shops/interview/catwalk tower I saw last night was way better at this than my inadequate little attempts. Rats.

Sculpting prims Here I'm a sure noob. I have a handful of sculpties in my inv that I keep forgetting, so I managed to produce a much more comfortable bed yesterday with a duvet, but building them myself? Blender is the standard freeware package, I don't think I ever did more than download it on my old machine at work. Sculpt Studio is probably a much better option in the long run as you can work inworld. We have some excellent examples of SS work in the Factory, where the mixing machines were built on site by a student who is a whiz with SS. I've got the instructions and I can sort of see the theroy underlying the shapes, it's getting all the textures onto them that stumps me. [more, that is.] 

Transforming prims I've seen some of Chris' scripting do this in the factory, in pies being 'boxed', ie transforming from round to square and taking on the box texture. This is how you do things like draw curtains, open/close french windows (I do them by change texture on touch, it works for simple things), and more physically shaped things like drawing bedclothes back. So a bedcover which is 1.5m long when 'drawn' squishes to 0.5 when folded back. And you need to act on this from a dialogue window with buttons eg fold covers, draw covers, raise pillows. And I haven't even got the hang of creating a dialogue window and making options work from it yet...

Linking prims to talk to each other Chris has got this working with the cathedral bells. I don't know how, they're not visible to anyone else, but again, unpicking and being talked through it didn't ought to make it too difficult a concept to grasp, then you're just back to needing to learn the scripting to do whatever it is you want to do.

Bots Bots have appeared variously over the years I've been in Second Life, usually as small objects trying to follow you round selling you things. I've also seen some basic AI functions by people like Daden. I've always felt they were objects, and so I've seen them on a separate trajectory to all the times I've seen various developments of bodies for medical beds. So it was a bit of a blow-away to head over to Glasgow Caledonian's nursing ward and see Andy Whiteford's patients. Better than PIVOTE, no need to prefix the question so the bot knew you were talking to him, he was a real avatar. But he's always there, so he can't be a real avatar - how does that work? Amazing.

Taking all these into conjunction with building and photoshopping skills, then you're beginning to talk building some serious kick ass learning scenarios. Did I just write my own syllabus for a learning and teaching in Second Life course? Can I take a year out to learn it all? Can someone teach me?! See them coming together in the SLENZ midwifery builds.

 

This is rather sweet. Someone has not only had the idea but has shared the steps to cheeseburger cakes. Yes, really. I would just twitter this, but I might want to keep it as it links to all sorts of other inspirations for party cakes.

Ibland finns det dagar som man tror aldrig skall vara slut, där allting går fel. Idag har varit en sån dag. Jag längtar efter att bytta job, eller ha det så lugnt att vi kunde slippa skit and bara jobbar. Det är alltid svårt att vara borta från jobbet en stund, tycker att idag var värsta  an någonsin att komma tillbaka. Tydligen ska jag överleva och till slut har lärt mig något från det, men ikväll bara undrar hur vi ska komma over de kommande månader. Det finns så mycket att göra, vi inte hinner med omstruktueringar just nu och jag vill inte att vi måste oroa oss allihopa om våra arbeten.  Jag vet att det händer internationella kris i ekonomin, men ändå, vi kan säkert spara pengarna på nåt annat ställe.

A dove, a flame, a cross
        an ikon orthodox...

Woven damask, satin silk or cotton plain
        the choice, it seems, is yours to name.

Red bright, red Passion, red celebration
        new ministry at ordination.

 

Pray for them, these whom today You sanctify
        their offered self, their life, their gifts,
        which with Grace You amplify.

Bless them, Lord, support and keep them,
        uphold that they retain...

the Hope, the faith, the strength, the awe, the Peace, the Love...
        the flame that burns -
        today as You ordain.