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!)

Free music: Shelf Life - 'Best Before End'

  Best Before End by Shelf-Life 

This is the second of two free albums offered on this blog as part of the promotion of my recently launched new website. As with the Control K album, feel free to download the tracks, pass them around, remix them or whatever, with two simple conditions:

1. Give an Attribution if you choose to republish (in whole or in part). The simplest one is to Shelf Life. For enhanced attribution, you can add songwriter credits ('Pates/Cheryo'). A linkback would also be appreciated (currently to www.myspace.com/shelflifetokyo)
2. If you want to use the tracks commercially, please come back and ask.

'Best Before End' was written, recorded and released over a 12-18 month period, with the collection finally being issued in December 2007. The band is a four-piece, with me on vocals, Cheryo on guitars (and much more), his brother Chisato on drums, and Jun on bass. The sound is traditional guitar rock - think Beatles, think Clash, think Who, etc - with the occasional Japanese twist. The album was conceived as a concept album, intended to be listened to in one sitting, and covered themes like the Iraq War, the city of Tokyo and global warming. 

It was first made available on CD, then given an iTunes digital release, and now released for free under a Creative Commons license. Although you can download the tracks for free, if you wish to buy them from iTunes, that's still possible and all proceeds go towards the recording of the next album.

We have begun the slow task of writing the next album, made that much harder because I no longer live in Tokyo. Once the writing has been completed, the intention is to record the album. This will be a big challenge as we'll be trying to do it with no budget, significant language challenges and again not being in the same physical space. Whether Shelf Life makes it to album number two remains to be seen, but the intention is definitely there!

Go to the Shelf Life page at PatesOnline to find out more about the band.

Miniature ski resort

A Tiny Day in the Jackson Hole Backcountry from Tristan Greszko on Vimeo.

Been meaning to put this one up for ages. 

This weekend in the UK is the August Bank Holiday weekend, often thought of here as the end of summer. The seasons are shifting, parts of Britain are bracing themselves for another wet weekend (although it's beautifully sunny here in Brighton, at the time of writing), the US East Coast is getting ready for another huge storm - winter's going to start creeping around again soon.

In preparation, the above video will give you a taste of the good side of winter. All in miniature too. I do love tilt-shifted and time-lapsed video!