Schools put science on big screen

Schools put science on big screen: "Young filmmakers are to premier their 10-minute movies at London's Science Museum."

This was a test blog post from the new browser based newsreader Google Reader , re-edited with ecto

pilot exhibition

For the pilot exhibition I want to try and make sure I’ve got all the technology in place, including domain hosting, blog, wiki, ggroup, podcast and feedback mechanism. Then I will be able to concentrate on doing as many research cycles as possible, building up the contacts and content for the main exhibition in March 2006.

See more progress on: decide what my 3rd year exhibition will be like

Still sprouting

I’m still sprouting and learning. Alfalfa and fenugreek are infallible staples, which can be taken to the green leaf stage easily. The chick peas, cow peas and lentils can start to go off and there can be problems with sunflower husks despoiling the sprouts. In fact, I think the seeds I’m using have far too many broken or damages individuals so I shall seek better quality ones.

I tried some dried broad beans from the Turkish shop, and these are really interesting. After soaking for two days and sprouting for at least 7, the green stalks which emerge can be eaten at about 2-3 inches before the young leaves unfurl at which stage they are fresh green and juicy. The rest of the bean and the root looks a bit offputting, so I mashed them up in a food processor to make a sprouted bean paste which was fine. The advantage of these is that fresh broad beans are only available for a short season but sprouting dried ones could be done all through the year.

Yet to try: brocolli, radish, unhulled sesame

See more progress on: eat more raw foods

Carefully

This requires a lot of initial research and thinking to make the right choice. I need to choose a name which will be sensibly descriptive way into the future, easy to remember, not too long, unambiguous, distinctive, interesting.

See more progress on: Register a new domain name

Not much choice really

I was given a pedometer today, along with lots of other people. It says “the first step towards fitness” on the box, and apparantly people should be walking 10,000 steps per day. I don’t own a car, and I have a regular journey to make most days which I think will cover most of the 10,000 anyway. I don’t really want to walk any more than that, it just wears out my joints and makes me feel tired, but what itrigues me slightly, is whether having the pedometer will influence decisions I make about journeys.

See more progress on: walk 10,000 steps a day

Musical Ability: a blessing or a curse

I discovered I liked singing at a very early age, then I was made to take piano lessons which became a chore, so I stopped. A couple of years after, I picked up a guitar, taught myself, and it soon became an obsession. I specialised in 12 string guitar for quite a long time, and then developed a 6 string fingerpicking style which transferred back to the flatpicking. But it’s more about the songs really, than just the guitar technique. It’s opened doors for me but also caused pain. The curse of having a musical capability is that if you try to make a living out of it, much of the joy can get squeezed out of it, but if you don’t then you have to put up with a day job that isn’t really what you’d rather be doing.

See more progress on: Learn to play a musical instrument

Transitional Raw Cuisine

One way of helping to make the transition from eating mostly cooked food to mostly raw, is to introduce more raw ingredients into conventional dishes. You have to be careful this doesn’t become an excuse to eat shepherd’s pie with a few beansprouts thrown in though! The raw food has to be added in right at the end, or better the other way round, perhaps adding a cooked sauce to raw vegetables.
So I made a raw vegetable curry, which was good and satisfying.
I make the masala with chopped onions, celery, garlic, ginger and spices, scarcely browned in olive oil, add curry paste and tomatoes, then turn it into a roux with gram flour. Stir in warm water to make it into a big, shiny curry sauce and simmer until the gram flour has cooked out.
Meanwhile I place pieces of raw cauliflour, mushroom, peas and sprouted lentils into a cold roasting tray or lasagne dish.
Pour the curry sauce over the vegetables, give it a shake and leave for a couple of minutes before serving either alone or with (cooked) rice and salad.
Yum.

See more progress on: eat more raw foods

Distributed Action Research

I’ve pretty much decided to plump for the meta-research angle, looking at Action Research methodologies in the context of online communities. That’s the one on the A4 sheet, which has been fleshed out a little in the learning Set, in the degree title claim, in my voodoopad wiki journal and more so in my head.
I haven’t had any response from LFs yet, but then that also means that no immediate problems have been identified. I’ve even started some initial very small cycles, which wil help to inform the process of refining the proposal.
Next I need to take another look at the Learning Activities for Module 1.

See more progress on: Decide what to research for my third year action enquiry

Draft degree title suffix claim rationale

I’ve only been given a few days to work on this, but I’m sure there’s room for improvement.

Requested degree title:

BA Hons, Learning, Technology, and Research: Information Technology

Justify your choice of preferred award title
1. Describe your work context (max 100 words)

I have worked in the IT industry for nearly 30 years, in various fields including Local Government, Commerce, Transport, Print & Publishing, the Voluntary Sector and Education, most recently as an IT Technician and ICT Subject cordinator in a well-equipped Primary school. With an eye on relocation and possibly remote working, I am currently exploring opportunities to develop and deploy my skills and knowlege of emerging internet based technologies.

2. Describe your intended research focus in support of the award title you are claiming. Say what it is that you will do in your studies that is directly applicable to the award title you want. In this you must justify your choice. (max 250 words)

The activities I have already undertaken towards the degree involved:

Year 1

• investigating the role of an ICT coodinator in a primary school.


• researching internet communities.


• experimenting with open souce software


• An action enquiry project looking at the use of net-connected computers in the classrooms.


• Developing my own use of IT to include Flash animation, Java applets, and web streaming video.


• Evaluating the potential for using weblogs (blogs) for school websites in order to encourage wider participation and multi-authorship.


• The use of Social Bookmarking web services ( Furl) to collaborate with others and automatically generate reference lists.

In the PDP module, I identified my most significant learning of year 1 as being that related to the use and implications of weblogs, RSS and blogging software..

Year 2

• A study of Constructivist learning theory and my own practice centered around the book “LOGO – a guide to learning through programming” by Goodyear (1984)


• The use of ‘webnotes’, a globally editable workspace.


• The authoring of a personal multimedia blog with sound video, digital photography, analysis, hypertext links and distributed conversation.


• The development of a Business Plan based around IT tutoring.


• Installation and use of Personal Wiki software ( Wikidpad) to write up course notes and subsequently convert them into an interlinking website.


• Installation to a remote web host of MediaWiki software and the sucessful facilitation of an online Community of Practice to create an extensive collaborative resource using my installation.


• Exploration of the use of collaborative goalsetting web service ( 43things) to drive SMART tasks, peer review progress and publish entries directly to blog.


• use of online photo-sharing web service ( Flickr) to build Communities of Interest, investigate Folksonomy tagging and publish pictures onto blog and Wiki.


• Invention of a markup language in which to author a playscript in a personal Wiki ( VoodooPad) exported and published as a printable pdf file.


• A case study of the introduction of the Wiki to a Community of Practice.


• use of MySQL and PHP to rationalise the MediaWiki database after Spambot attack.

Year 3

My research focus for the final year will be selected according to criteria to which I have added “must have a strong IT focus”

I will continue to publish all of my coursework and other related activities as I go along in the form of a multi-media website, as well as maintaining an online learning Journal, various other blogs and web services.

See more progress on: update my degree title suffix claim rationale

Research proposal on a sheet of A4 paper - done

I managed to find a sheet of A4 in a cupboard but I don’t have a functioning printer, so please excuse the handwriting. As this is a technology degree, I thought – no need to walk to the postbox, buy a stamp and send the piece of A4 paper to the LF physically, you can use a scanner or a digital camera to capture the writing, attach to an email and then claim credit for innovation.

See more progress on: Write my research proposal on a sheet of A4 paper

tagging goals in 43things

goal tagging has been made easier in 43things, and more worthwhile I think. Now you can see at a glance how other people have tagged the same goal and ‘surf’ the tags. You can also generate a personal tag cloud, and ‘see all goals with the tag….’ So I’ll try to keep it. Oh yes, there’s the link with the same tags on Flickr and technorati too. I must re-adopt that goal about technorati tagging blog posts…

See more progress on: tag all of my things

leaning towards....

As of this morning, although I have not yet completed a systematic process of choosing a research topic I am leaning towards the idea of using the running of an after-school club as a domain to focus within. This could incorporate several of the possible research quetions/ problems/ ideas which came out of the brainstorming and it also seems to fit the selection criteria well. One possible stumbling block might be finding others adults to cooperate with, but all I can do really is to try my best to draw anyone in, then I’d have a clear winner I think.

See more progress on: Decide what to research for my third year action enquiry

Criteria for choosing a research project

• builds on learning identified from Y1+2
• attempts to solve a niggling problem from daily work
• something within my power to make changes
• can be made to fit into an AE cyclical methodology
• bear in mind the need to work towards an exhibition of it
• Must be something I would actually like to do
• important not only to me but to others
• a body of relevant literature to build on

See more progress on: Decide what to research for my third year action enquiry

Sprouting

The most convenient way to increase the availability of raw food ingredients is to grow sprouts. I’ve got this well underway now, with containers, netting, rubber bands and a box to keep the different kinds of seeds together.
The mung beans were problematic, with too many not germinating.
Chick peas need to soak for longer than 24hours.
Alfalfa is a staple
Amaranth is a bit weird.
cow peas are good
lentils also seem reliable.
quinoa still to try
hemp – not enough germination
sesame – doesn’t look hopeful.

See more progress on: eat more raw foods

A good start

I?ve mostly done these:

• remove trackbacks
• change comment system
• review title
• change colour

see http://blog.ultralab.net/%7Eblogger/andy/

so that leaves me with:

• review or remove categories
• move search higher up
• review links

See more progress on: redesign my blog

Remembered

I used PHPMyAdmn to explore the MySQL Database and this reminded me of the syntax for creating queries.
So now I have saved query scripts which will delete all rows from the ‘old’ table where ip-text = whatever, and clean up the recentchanges as well as emptying the archive for deleted pages.
Luckily I remembered eventually that nothing actually gets done until after you issue a “commit” command, and that the tables need to be optimised again in order to release the saved file space.

Low priority task remaining:

I still haven’t worked out which tables the individual page histories are stored in, or why the recent changes won’t go back very far.

See more progress on: Learn MySQL

Working

The glitch with getting the 8Meg ADSL working was caused by the master phone socket unbeknown to me having a microfilter built in to it. This meant that I was trying to plug the modem + filter into a filtered phone socket rather than plug the modem without its associated filter directly into the unfiltered ADSL output.
I worked this out after research led me to this useful site:

http://www.clarity.it/telecoms/adsl_bits.htm

See more progress on: Choose a new broadband ISP

Last Minute Changes to Module

Passed on to me from Cohort 1 today, a message from Stephen Powell, which, just 1 week before the deadline, appears to make important changes to a module which has been running all year long.

“Not sure if this has been covered elsewhere so I will say it again.

1. The CBSP template has had a slight change. Previously at the top of the self assessment template it said ‘The Intended Learning Outcomes for this module are…’ It should have read The Assessment Criteria for this module are….

2. Note that ‘Select and negotiate appropriate tasks and meet learning objectives’ self assessmnet is about finding evidence from any of the level 2 modules. It does not refer to just this module.”

See more progress on: finish my final report of the year

Bulldog

Bulldog appear to have offered me:

unlimited 8Meg broadband for £17.50 pm .
£1 for the first month, no connection fee, no contract.
a free wireless router.

See more progress on: Choose a new broadband ISP

Annet - Bird Sanctuary

Annet is one of the largest uninhabited members of the Isles of Scilly, 28 miles off teh coast from Land’s End. It’s designated a bird sanctuary because of the Puffins, Manx Shearwater and other seabirds which make nests or burrows on the cliifs. Landing is normally prohibited, but I was with a small group led by a leading local ornithologist who had obtained special prmission. The best part was looking down from the top of the cliffs at an enormous colony of kittiwakes.

See more progress on: Annet