Portraits from a Zombie Parade

Brighton held its annual Zombie Walk today, from Victoria Gardens near the Pavilion, through town, and on to Marine Parade. Now in its fifth year and better know as Beach Of The Dead, the parade is one of many that go on around the world. 

I didn't end up following the parade, but stayed in one place to get my pictures. It was a sunny day, which resulted in some good lighting on the subjects, and I was able to grab a few fine portraits before I made my way back home.

Moments from a Catalan summer

It was a three-year wait, and ultimately a short city break. But this summer, my wife and I finally managed to get what we could call our honeymoon. We had a long weekend in Barcelona - her first visit, my second - and it was well worth the wait. 

Day One was a Gaudi day, with visits to Sagrada Familia, Park Güell and La Pedrera. I'd been outside the remarkable building that serves as a cathedral before, but this was my first time inside. It was fascinating to gain an understanding of how much Gaudi was inspired by nature and how that informed his work. This was demonstrated even further with the park, where the architecture was fused with the natural environment rather than just inspired by it. The roof of La Pedrera was unlike anything I'd seen before, and was a most striking example of what can be done with a building when the architect's imagination is the only limit.

Day Two took in the ocean and the hill that looks over the city. We started off with the wonders of La Boqueria, Europe's largest food market, then strolled down La Rambla to the sea, taking in an exhibition on Latin peoples at the Museu Marítim, the sights of the marina, then a cable car ride up to Montjuïc. The whole trip ended up being heavily loaded with with museums and galleries - up on the hill, we took in another two. These were Fundació Joan Miró  (an artist whom I was intrigued to learn had spent some time in Japan and been greatly influenced by his time there) and Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya, a seriously impressive building housing 2,000 years of Catalan art from Roman times to 20th Century photography. The day ended with a fountain show set to lights and music, in the grounds of the museum, which amusingly was also flanked by a Spanish bikers convention.

Day Three saw a longstanding ambition of my wife's realised - a visit to the Picasso Museum. With that one under the belt, we took in the neighbouring Chocolate Museum, where I learned of the role that the cocoa bean has had in the Spanish Empire. On the way out, we were rather shocked to be standing around in the street an witness a police altercation. Two cops appeared from nowhere on bikes, one started shouting at a man with no shirt on, then chased after him and knocked him to the floor - with the motorbike he was riding! The man was still on the floor when things began to flare up with other onlookers, and we decided to slink away.

The photo gallery above contains images from some of the highlights of the trip, plus a few other sights not mentioned above. Really a fantastic city, I could easily go back again and again.

Skies

 

I left work last night as the sun was setting over Brighton. There were some fantastic colours in the sky.

 

I'd spent the day locked into a screen, but the explosion of subtle variation was the treat at the end of it all.

 

The colours and tones reminded me of watercolours, as if somebody had been sky painting.

 

 An old adage from photography is that the best camera is the one you have with you. These were all shot with my iPhone.

 

In some places, the light was more subtle...

...and in others, more dramatic.

All Things in Moderation

Gilly Salmon's 5 Stage Model for e-Moderation

I've just completed Week One of a new course I'm taking in E-moderating (kind of like teaching online, but with the differences that would come from all being online rather than in a physical classroom). The course is based on Gilly Salmon's 5 Stage Model for running an online course, as depicted in the diagram on the left, which demonstates the balance needed between teaching and technical skills in E-moderation.

The timing on this course is pretty tight. I began it from a hotel room in Sydney and will complete it during the first full week of the MA I'm about to start. Despite that, it's been a very positive first week and I'm looking forward to the next one. Every week is summarised by the participants in a reflection posted in the course forum. My reflections on Week One are below.

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Before I respond with my particular reflections, I'd just like to mention that Reflective Learning Journals were a major feature of the course I taught on prior to this new job. It was a one term course in core IT skills to prepare non-native speakers of English for life at a British university. Most of them seemed to find the activity to be very effective for consolidating what they had learned and for gaining a useful perspective on their own learning process. It’s good to be able to try such a feature out from the other side (so to speak).

For me, I've found that having an active and experienced moderator can make all the difference in terms of teaching the core principles of how to run an online course plus the encouragement offered to keep going. Ken has been doing a marvellous job here.

I'd come across Gilly Salmon's model before, as part of my research for a qualification I completed last year. For the assignment, I looked at blended learning and designed a course based around it. This model was a vital part of the course design, so it has been really useful to put that theory into practice by taking a course run on the same model.

Although I’ve spent a lot of my teaching life in face-to-face learning contexts with people from many different countries, it’s the first time that I’ve been in one where they are all still actually in those countries. This means that issues such as time zone differences have to be factored in to the momentum of the course, as do other participation constraints (people doing a course such as this are likely  to have pretty busy full lives too). However, it does make for a fascinating learning experience.

Major issues that arose from the first week include time and timing. To get the most out of it, it is really worth putting aside the time to give, take and interact with the other participants. Although we all have those busy lives, taking that time is likely to mean getting the most out of it. This can often be challenging, but if done means getting more out of it.

The second issue for me relates to levels of interaction. I also run my own blog and have found that there is always much more activity there when I engage with other people elsewhere on the Web (particularly on their own sites) than when I simply put something of my own out there. The same applies to this course – while it is necessary to post my own messages in the forum, my participation comes alive more when I interact with other people. This can be harder and take more time, but is ultimately more fruitful than just using the forum as a ‘broadcast mechanism’.

I plan to apply the insights gained above by continuing to pay close attention to the moderator’s techniques (including when he takes off the stabilisers to step back from the coaxing), look forward to what I can learn from the Week Two sections on managing timing, and try to continue both posting and interacting with others on their postings.

(PS Managed to get the writing down a point on the Fog Index, but still on 13.45 – gonna have to work on getting that one down!)