I fail(ed)

I fail. I failed. Multiple times and that’s ok. This blog post is going to explore failure, why I have come to recognise it as a good thing and why I’m happy to talk about it. I will talk about what failure is and encountering my failure monster. I will follow up with some examples…

Dance into the new with Lucy Nicholson, UCLan Dance

Today’s #creativeHE jam session focused on creative problem solving, with style and considered how moving creatively can help us to respond to new challenges. A lot of changes have happened over the past few months. For some this has meant small adjustments, but for others it has meant everything about the way in which we…

Who am I doing it for?

I’ve been thinking, which is always a good start. I am in the process of writing my dissertation for my MSc in Digital Education. I am currently just shy of 11 months in with just under 5 weeks to go – full of panic that it won’t get done and that I don’t have a…

Building an online support network

March 2020 was a funny time. It started, cold, dark and dreary but not dissimilar to any other March, but by the middle of the month we were in a nationwide lockdown, with very little warning, suddenly having to go about our lives in a very different way. It was a challenging time for everybody…

Who is behind the mask?

Masks can protect, cover, conceal, disguise, decorate. Provide safety, be culturally important. Be entertaining. Masks have many purposes. As a kid growing up, my dads favourite show was the Breaking the Magicians Code: Magic’s Biggest Secrets Finally Revealed, performed by a man known as the masked magician. I remember being scared initially owing to the…

One (marbled) monkey loaf to rule them all

Deciding I wanted to take a risk, I put myself to work trying out an invented banana loaf recipe, a very new thing for me, the one who sticks rigidly to recipes! It turned out amazing, so I’m sharing it. Here we have: One (marbled) monkey loaf to rule them all Ingredients: 160g butter 160…

2503

This is the first time I’ve written since I submitted my dissertation. I wanted to take some time to reflect on the year of my life that was characterised by my dissertation. I’m writing to process what’s happened, to maybe give others some insight into what it was like for me and the kind of…

Space

Space. What is it? Is it physical, material, immaterial? All of those things? That big expanse in the sky. That’s space. The very being around me, that’s space. Even my head has space. It is a distance between things, a continuous area, an expense. It can be free, occupied and unoccupied. But what is it?…

Once upon a time…

…there was an Educational Developer. Although teaching was her thing, it was sometimes hard to find a fit. Notes? Plans? Will they help? How about trying without, she thought with a gulp. She ventured wholeheartedly into endeavours, but sometimes they would reveal, dragons, monsters and ghouls galore. Technology her shield, content ready to wield to…

Working towards a Learning Design

To create a learning design for staff is one of my key objectives, to do so I want to understand different elements so that we are in a position to make informed choices about best options for us. A learning design describes the educational process, not just the courseware but the whole teaching and learning…

What is ethnography?

A mixture of a way of doing research and of writing about it. It is both a method and a way of conveying your findings. Ethnography has 2 routes – anthropology and sociology. Criticism – It is just storytelling? Is it unobjective? Is this also a positive? Stories capture who we are as people. Participant…

IDGBL Week 11 – Motivation and Emotion Notes

What has my IDGBL story been? How has engagement with the course led to a shift in your thinking? Frustration and resilience – WoW being kicked from the dungeon Intrinsic motivation – comes from engagement with a task Extrinsic motivation – comes from the application of an external reward for successful completion Cognition and affect. How we…