Farneheit 451

I found Bradbury’s writing very uneven, and the plot haphazard. There were many clichéd character types, such as the neighbour who stirs up Montag’s  awareness of society’s limitations, Clarisse, who made me think of the ‘beat’ characters favored by post war Californians (like eden ahbez’s Nature Boy).

But, the fusty, forgetful world which we join Montag in being repelled by came with a really strong set of images. That neither he, nor his wife (Millie), can recall how they met was ghastly. And the many scenes in which Millie is engrossed in her tv dramas, three of four walls immersing her, give an awesome foretaste of the big brother phenomena. Montag will ask her what was occurring, and she is breathless about the emotion of the moment, but oh-so vague about who the characters were, and why they were in that exchange…

The later parts of the story as Montag flees the city, and the lengthy expositions about why things are and how they should be, were much more familiar “SF explanatory” – and pretty boring. But I will not forget Millie in her sleepy soaps…

Mishima

Really getting lots out of Mishima‘s Haru no Yuki (Spring Snow) . I found it took a while to identify with the main character Kiyoaki. He is a very refined teenager with aspirations to be more sophisticated than his (bourgeois) parents.

His attitude to love is painfully self conscious, and at times I felt very distant from his choices, but there emerges a strong cohernece to who he is. So much so, that as I got to know him, I felt reminded of my feelings about Rabbit Angstrom (John Updike) – especially in the first book of that tetralogy.

There are some wonderfully written scenes, catching something both emotional and physical about young love, insecurity and cultural brashness. One scene I loved has Kiyo and a friend climbing a mountain with two less sophisticated Thai princes. As they surmount a summit, they see a giant Buddha and the two princes fall spontaneously to their knees and worship joyously. The two Japanese sophisticates eye each other and suppress their sniggers. Later, when they reach the sea, the Thais howl with laughter as the two courtly Japanese youths automatically “do their callisthenics” rather than leaping straight into the water.

There is a real wealth of period detail in Mishima’s writing, and sometimes I am glad I am also watching the anime: Rurouni Kenshinas this gives me a ligh hearted but detailed visualisation of Japan about the same point in history. And a nice contrast in character motivations!

Rurouni Kenshin

“Stress effects may be inherited by future children”

http://scienceblog.com/47186/stress-effects-may-be-inherited-by-future-children/

Depressing link between young bullying and sex violence (harassment) in “Child bullies are prone to sexual violence as adolescents”

http://scienceblog.com/47194/child-bullies-are-prone-to-sexual-violence-as-adolescents-study-shows/

In my day at school we did not have de-pantsing nor “the nervous game” thank god!

Seems like east europeans fall in love more quickly than americans, and have less expectations of a permeneant realtionship

http://scienceblog.com/47214/friendship-timing-key-differences-between-us-eastern-european-love/

Working through KILDUFF , TSAI & HANKE : “A PARADIGM TOO FAR? A DYNAMIC STABILITY RECONSIDERATION OF THE SOCIAL NETWORK RESEARCH PROGRAM ”

Enjoying the gist and some details

Get into:

Imre Lakotas and moving away from a paradigm shift as route to change in “research Programmes”

Reminded about Nelson and Winter 82 and evolution of the firm

So glad to re-encounter Theodore Newcomb and his calm situated work on aquaintance

Need to look at Cilliers 88 on complexity

Re-assured I get (ish) structuration (Giddens 84)

H Simon Bounded Rationality out of Models of Man 57

And excited to hunt out Kapferer 72 who looked at Indians managing a firm in Africa!

Some interesting reflections

Meyer and Land “Threshold Concepts”

Burford ‘a little black pain undressed’

Text taught V by Tony Harrison

‘My father still reads the dictionary every day.
He says your life depends on your power to master words.’

Arthur Scargill
Sunday Times, 10 January 1982

Next millennium you’ll have to search quite hard
to find my slab behind the family dead,
butcher, publican, and baker, now me, bard
adding poetry to their beef, beer and bread.

With Byron three graves on I’ll not go short
of company, and Wordsworth’s opposite.
That’s two peers already, of a sort,
and we’ll all be thrown together if the pit,

whose galleries once ran beneath this plot,
causes the distinguished dead to drop
into the rabblement of bone and rot,
shored slack, crushed shale, smashed prop.

Wordsworth built church organs, Byron tanned
luggage cowhide in the age of steam,
and knew their place of rest before the land
caves in on the lowest worked-out seam.

This graveyard on the brink of Beeston Hill’s
the place I may well rest if there’s a spot
under the rose roots and the daffodils
by which dad dignified the family plot.

If buried ashes saw then I’d survey
the places I learned Latin, and learned Greek,
and left, the ground where Leeds United play
but disappoint their fans week after week,

which makes them lose their sense of self-esteem
and taking a short cut home through these graves here
they reassert the glory of their team
by spraying words on tombstones, pissed on beer.

This graveyard stands above a worked-out pit.
Subsidence makes the obelisks all list.
One leaning left’s marked FUCK, one right’s marked SHIT
sprayed by some peeved supporter who was pissed.

Far-sighted for his family’s future dead,
but for his wife, this banker’s still alone
on his long obelisk, and doomed to head
a blackened dynasty of unclaimed stone,

now graffitied with a crude four-letter word.
His children and grandchildren went away
and never came back home to be interred,
so left a lot of space for skins to spray.

The language of this graveyard ranges from
a bit of Latin for a former Mayor
or those who laid their lives down at the Somme,
the hymnal fragments and the gilded prayer,

how people ‘fell asleep in the Good Lord’,
brief chisellable bits from the good book
and rhymes whatever length they could afford,
to CUNT, PISS, SHIT and (mostly) FUCK!

Or, more expansively, there’s LEEDS v.
the opponent of last week, this week, or next,
and a repertoire of blunt four-letter curses
on the team or race that makes the sprayer vexed.

Then, pushed for time, or fleeing some observer,
dodging between tall family vaults and trees
like his team’s best ever winger, dribbler, swerver,
fills every space he finds with versus Vs.

Vs sprayed on the run at such a lick,
the sprayer master of his flourished tool,
get short-armed on the left like that red tick
they never marked his work with much at school.

Half this skinhead’s age but with approval
I helped whitewash a V on a brick wall.
No one clamoured in the press for its removal
or thought the sign, in wartime, rude at all.

These Vs are all the versuses of life
From LEEDS v. DERBY, Black/White
and (as I’ve known to my cost) man v. wife,
Communist v. Fascist, Left v. Right,

Class v. class as bitter as before,
the unending violence of US and THEM,
personified in 1984
by Coal Board MacGregor and the NUM,

Hindu/Sikh, soul/body, heart v. mind,
East/West, male/female, and the ground
these fixtures are fought on’s Man, resigned
to hope from his future what his past never found.

The prospects for the present aren’t too grand
when a swastika with NF (National Front)’s
sprayed on a grave, to which another hand
has added, in a reddish colour, CUNTS.

Which is, I grant, the word that springs to mind,
when going to clear the weeds and rubbish thrown
on the family plot by football fans, I find
UNITED graffitied on my parents’ stone.

How many British graveyards now this May
are strewn with rubbish and choked up with weeds
since families and friends have gone away
for work or fuller lives, like me from Leeds?

When I first came here 40 years ago
with my dad to ‘see my grandma’ I was 7.
I helped dad with the flowers.  He let me know
she’d gone to join my grandad up in Heaven.

My dad who came each week to bring fresh flowers
came home with clay stains on his trouser knees.
Since my parents’ deaths I’ve spent 2 hours
made up of odd 10 minutes such as these.

Flying visits once or twice a year,
And though I’m horrified just who’s to blame
that I find instead of flowers cans of beer
and more than one grave sprayed with some skin’s name?

Where there were flower urns and troughs of water
And mesh receptacles for withered flowers
are the HARP tins of some skinhead Leeds supporter.
It isn’t all his fault though.  Much is ours.

5 kids, with one in goal, play 2-a-side.
When the ball bangs on the hawthorn that’s one post
and petals fall they hum Here Comes the Bride
though not so loud they’d want to rouse a ghost.

They boot the ball on purpose at the trunk
and make the tree shed showers of shrivelled may.
I look at this word graffitied by some drunk
and I’m in half a mind to let it stay.

(Though honesty demands that I say if
I’d wanted to take the necessary pains
to scrub the skin’s inscription off
I only had an hour between trains.

So the feelings that I had as I stood gazing
and the significance I saw could be a sham,
mere excuses for not patiently erasing
the word sprayed on the grave of dad and mam.)

This pen’s all I have of magic wand.
I know this world’s so torn but want no other
except for dad who’d hoped from ‘the beyond’
a better life than this one, with my mother.

Though I don’t believe in afterlife at all
and know it’s cheating it’s hard not to make
a sort of furtive prayer from this skin’s scrawl,
his UNITED mean ‘in Heaven’ for their sake,

an accident of meaning to redeem
an act intended as mere desecration
and make the thoughtless spraying of his team
apply to higher things, and to the nation.

Some, where kids use aerosols, use giant signs
to let the people know who’s forged their fetters
Like PRI  CE  O  WALES above West Yorkshire mines
(no prizes for who nicked the missing letters!)

The big blue star for booze, tobacco ads,
the magnet’s monogram, the royal crest,
insignia in neon dwarf the lads
who spray a few odd FUCKS when they’re depressed.

Letters of transparent tubes and gas
in Düsseldorf are blue and flash out KRUPP.
Arms are hoisted for the British ruling class
and clandestine, genteel aggro keeps them up.

And there’s HARRISON on some Leeds building sites
I’ve taken in fun as blazoning my name,
which I’ve also seen on books, in Broadway lights,
so why can’t skins with spraycans do the same?

But why inscribe these graves with CUNT and SHIT?
Why choose neglected tombstones to disfigure?
This pitman’s of last century daubed PAKI GIT,
this grocer Broadbent’s aerosolled with NIGGER?

They’re there to shock the living, not arouse
the dead from their deep peace to lend support
for the causes skinhead spraycans could espouse.
The dead would want their desecrators caught!

Jobless though they are how can these kids,
even though their team’s lost one more game,
believe that the ‘Pakis’, ‘Niggers’, even ‘Yids’
sprayed on the tombstones here should bear the blame?

What is it that these crude words are revealing?
What is it that this aggro act implies?
Giving the dead their xenophobic feeling
or  just a cri-de-coeur because man dies?

So what’s a cri-de-coeur, cunt? Can’t you speak
the language that yer mam spoke.  Think of ‘er!
Can yer only get yer tongue round fucking Greek?
Go and fuck yourself with cri-de-coeur!

‘She didn’t talk like you do for a start!’
I shouted, turning where I thought the voice had been.
She didn’t understand yer fucking ‘art’!
She thought yer fucking poetry obscene!

I wish on this skin’s words deep aspirations,
first the prayer for my parents I can’t make,
then a call to Britain and to all nations
made in the name of love for peace’s sake.

Aspirations, cunt!  Folk on t’fucking dole
‘ave got about as much scope to aspire
above the shit they’re dumped in, cunt, as coal
aspires to be chucked on t’fucking fire.

‘OK, forget the aspirations.  Look, I know
United’s losing gets you fans incensed
and how far the HARP inside you makes you go
but all these Vs: against!  against!  against!

Ah’ll tell yer then what really riles a bloke.
It’s reading on their graves the jobs they did –
Butcher, publican and baker.  Me, I’ll croak
doing t’same nowt ah do now as a kid.

‘ard birth ah wor, mi mam says, almost killed ‘er.
Death after life on t’dole won’t seem as ‘ard!
Look at this cunt, Wordsworth, organ builder,
This fucking ‘aberdasher Appleyard!

If mi mam’s up there, don’t want to meet ‘er
listening to me list mi dirty deeds,
and ‘ave to pipe up to St fucking Peter
ah’ve been on t’dole all mi life in fucking Leeds!

Then t’Alleluias stick in t’angels’ gobs.
When dole-wallahs fuck off to the void
What’ll t’mason carve up for their jobs?
The cunts who lieth ‘ere wor unemployed?

This lot worked at one job all life through.
Byron, ‘Tanner’, ‘Lieth ‘ere interred’.
They’ll chisel fucking poet when they do you
and that, yer cunt, ‘s a crude four-letter word.

‘Listen, cunt!’ I said, ‘before you start your jeering
the reason why I want this in a book
‘s to give ungrateful cunts like you a hearing!’
A book, yer stupid cunt, ‘s not worth a fuck!

‘The only reason why I write this poem at all
on yobs like you who do the dirt on death
‘s to give some higher meaning to your scrawl.’
Don’t fucking bother, cunt!  Don’t waste your breath!

‘You piss-artist skinhead cunt, you wouldn’t know
and it doesn’t fucking matter if you do,
the skin and poet united fucking Rimbaud
but the autre that je est is fucking you.’

Ah’ve told yer, no more Greek…That’s yer last warning!
Ah’ll boot yer fucking balls to Kingdom Come.
They’ll find yer cold on t’grave tomorrer morning.
So don’t speak Greek.  Don’t treat me like I’m dumb.

‘I’ve done my bits of mindless aggro too
not half a mile from where we’re standing now.’
Yeah, ah bet yer wrote a poem, yer wanker you!
‘No, shut yer gob a while.  Ah’ll tell yer ‘ow…’

‘Herman Darewski’s band played operetta
with a wobbly soprano warbling.  Just why
I made my mind up that I’d got to get her
with the fire hose I can’t say, but I’ll try.

It wasn’t just the singing angered me.
At the same time half a crowd was jeering
as  the smooth Hugh Gaitskill, our MP,
made promises the other half were cheering.

What I hated in those high soprano ranges
was uplift beyond all reason and control
and in a world where you say nothing changes
it seemed a sort of prick-tease of the soul.

I tell you when I heard high notes that rose
above Hugh Gaitskill’s cool electioneering
straight from the warbling throat right up my nose
I had all your aggro in my jeering.

And I hit the fire extinguisher ON knob
and covered orchestra and audience with spray.
I could run as fast as you then.  A good job!
They yelled ‘damned vandal’ after me that day…’

And then yer saw the light and up ‘eavy!
And knew a man’s not how much he can sup…
Yer reward for growing up’s this super-bevvy,
a meths and champagne punch ini t’FA Cup.

Ah’ve ‘eard all that from old farts past their prime.
‘ow now yer live wi’ all yer once detested…
Old farts with not much left’ll give me time.
Fuckers like that get folk like me arrested.

Covet not thy neighbour’s wife, thy neighbour’s riches.
Vicar and cop who say, to save our souls,
Get thee beHind me, Satan, drop their breeches
and get the Devil’s dick right up their ‘oles!

It was more a working  marriage that I’d meant,
a blend of masculine and feminine.
Ignoring me, he started looking, bent
on some more aerosolling, for his tin.

‘It was more a working  marriage that I mean!’
Fuck, and save mi soul, eh?  That suits me.
Then as if I’d egged him on to be obscene
he added a middle slit to one daubed V.

Don’t talk to me of fucking representing
the class yer were born into any more.
Yer going to get ‘urt and start resenting
it’s not poetry we need in this class war.

Yer’ve given yerself toffee, cunt.  Who needs
yer fucking poufy words.  Ah write mi own.
Ah’ve got mi work on show all ovver Leeds
like this UNITED ‘ere on some sod’s stone.

‘OK!’ (thinking I had him trapped) ‘OK!’
‘If you’re so proud of it, then sign your name
when next you’re full of HARP and armed with spray,
next time you take this short cut from the game.’

He took the can, contemptuous, unhurried
and cleared the nozzle and prepared to sign
the UNITED sprayed where mam and dad were buried.
He aerosolled his name.  And it was mine.

The boy footballers bawl Here Comes the Bride
and drifting blossoms fall onto my head.
One half of me’s alive but one half died
when the skin half sprayed my name among the dead.

Half versus half, the enemies within
the heart that can’t be whole till they unite.
As I stoop to grab the crushed HARP lager tin
the day’s already dusk, half dark, half light.

That UNITED that I’d wished onto the nation
or as reunion for dead parents soon recedes.
The word’s once more a mindless desecration
by some HARPoholic yob supporting Leeds.

Almost the time for ghosts I’d better scram.
Though not given much to fears of spooky scaring
I don’t fancy an encounter with mi mam
playing Hamlet with me for this swearing.

Though I’ve a train to catch my step is slow.
I walk on the grass and graves with wary tread
over these subsidences, these shifts below
the life of Leeds supported by the dead.

Further underneath’s that cavernous hollow
that makes the gravestones lean towards the town.
A matter of mere time and it will swallow
this place of rest and all the resters down.

I tell myself I’ve got, say, 30 years.
At 75 this place will suit me fine.
I’ve never feared the grave but what I fear’s
that great worked-out black hollow under mine.

Not train departure time, and not Town Hall
with the great white clock face I can see,
coal, that began, with no man here at all,
as 300 million-year-old plant debris.

5 kids still play at making blossoms fall
and humming as they do Here Comes the Bride.
They never seem to tire of their ball
though I hear a woman’s voice call one inside.

2 larking boys play bawdy bride and groom.
3 boys in Leeds strip la-la Lohengrin.
I hear them as I go through growing gloom
still years away from being skald or skin.

The ground’s carpeted with petals as I throw
the aerosol, the HARP can, the cleared weeds
on top of dad’s dead daffodils, then go,
with not one glance behind, away from Leeds.

The bus to the station’s still the No. 1
but goes by routes that I don’t recognise.
I look out for known landmarks as the sun
reddens the swabs of cloud in darkening skies.

Home, home, home, to my woman as the red
darkens from a fresh blood to a dried.
Home, home to my woman, home to bed
where opposites seem sometimes unified.

A pensioner in turban taps his stick
along the pavement past the corner shop,
that sells samosas now, not beer on tick,
to the Kashmir Muslim Club that was the Co-op.

House after house FOR SALE where we’d played cricket
with white roses cut from flour-sacks on our caps,
with stumps chalked on the coal-grate for our wicket,
and every one bought now by ‘coloured chaps’,

dad’s most liberal label as he felt
squeezed by the unfamiliar, and fear
of foreign food and faces, when he smelt
curry in the shop where he’d bought beer.

And growing frailer, ‘wobbly on his pins’,
the shops he felt familiar with withdrew
which meant much longer tiring treks for tins
that had a label on them that he knew.

And as the shops that stocked his favourites receded
whereas he’d fancied beans and popped next door,
he found that four long treks a week were needed
till he wondered what he bothered eating for.

The supermarket made him feel embarrassed.
Where people bought whole lambs for family freezers
he bought baked beans from check-out girls too harassed
to smile or swap a joke with sad old geezers.

But when he bought his cigs he’d have a chat,
his week’s one conversation, truth to tell,
but time also came and put a stop to that
when old Wattsy got bought out by M. Patel.

And there, ‘Time like an ever rolling stream”s
What I once trilled behind that boarded front.
A 1000 ages made coal-bearing seams
and even more the hand that sprayed this CUNT

on both Methodist and C of E billboards
once divided in their fight for local souls.
Whichever house more truly was the Lord’s
both’s pews are filled with cut-price toilet rolls.

Home, home to my woman, never to return
till sexton or survivor has to cram
the bits of clinker scooped out of my urn
down through the rose-roots to my dad and mam.

Home, home to my woman, where the fire’s lit
these still chilly mid-May evenings, home to you,
and perished vegetation from the pit
escaping insubstantial up the flue.

Listening to Lulu, in our hearth we burn,
As we hear the high Cs rise in stereo,
what was lush swamp club-moss and tree-fern
at least 300 million years ago.

Shilbottle cobbles, Alban Berg high D
lifted from a source that bears your name,
the one we hear decay, the one we see,
the fern from the foetid forest, as brief flame.

This world, with far too many people in,
starts on the TV logo as a taw,
then ping-pong, tennis, football; then one spin
to show us all, then shots of the Gulf War.

As the coal with reddish dust cools in the grate
on the late-night national news we see
police v. pickets at a coke-plant grate,
old violence and old disunity.

The map that’s colour-coded Ulster/Eire’s
flashed on again as almost every night.
Behind a tiny coffin with two bearers
men in masks with arms show off their might.

The day’s last images recede to first a glow
and then a ball that shrinks back to a blank screen.
Turning to love, and sleep’s oblivion, I know
what the UNITED that the skin sprayed has to mean.

Hanging my clothes up, from my parka hood
may and apple petals, browned and creased,
fall onto the carpet and bring back the flood
of feelings their first falling had released.

I hear like ghosts from all Leeds matches humming
with one concerted voice the bride, the bride
I feel united to, my bride is coming
into the bedroom, naked, to my side.

The ones we choose to love become our anchor
when the hawser of the blood-tie’s hacked, or frays.
But a voice that scorns chorales is yelling: Wanker!
It’s the aerosolling skin I met today’s.

My alter ego wouldn’t want to know it,
His aerosol vocab would baulk at LOVE,
the skin’s UNITED underwrites the poet,
the measures carved below the ones above.

I doubt if 30 years of bleak Leeds weather
and 30 falls of apple and of may
will erode the UNITED binding us together.
And now it’s your decision: does it stay?

Next millennium you’ll have to search quite hard
to find out where I’m buried but I’m near
the grave of haberdasher Appleyard,
the pile of HARPs, or some new neonned beer.

Find Byron, Wordsworth, or turn left between
one grave marked Broadbent, one marked Richardson.
Bring some solution with you that can clean
whatever new crude words have been sprayed on.

If love of art, or love, gives you affront
that the grave I’m in ‘s graffitied then, maybe,
erase the more offensive FUCK and CUNT
but leave, with the worn UNITED, one small v.

Victory?  For vast, slow, coal-creating forces
that hew the body’s seams to get the soul.
Will earth run out of her ‘diurnal courses’
before repeating her creation of black coal?

If, having come this far, somebody reads
these verses, and he/she wants to understand,
face this grave on Beeston Hill, your back to Leeds,
and read the chiselled epitaph I’ve planned:

Beneath your feet’s a poet, then a pit.
Poetry supporter, if you’re here to find
How poems can grow from (beat you to it!) SHIT
find the beef, the beer, the bread, then look behind.

And then Katy offers us Kim by Jean Gittins

I can’t understand what has happened to Kim
There’s been such a terrible change
When I think of how that girl acted before
I can’t understand such a change
A lovely hand with the pastry she had
Her sponge cakes were lovely and light
But now it’s all muesli and yoghurt and nuts
While she’s out at meetings each night
We could have gone on for the rest of our lives
Never knowing just what she was like
And she’d have been trapped in our image of her
If it hadn’t been for the strike.

The relationship between lit (form etc) and politics, past and present…

http://arts.brighton.ac.uk/study/english-literature-studies-brighton/news/literature-and-politics-day-september-24th

Already found a brochure on Online Discussion in English Studies, interesting. The HEA are very good at cross disciplinary practice!

Starts with politics by w b yeats

HOW can I, that girl standing there,
My attention fix
On Roman or on Russian
Or on Spanish politics?
Yet here’s a travelled man that knows
What he talks about,
And there’s a politician
That has read and thought,
And maybe what they say is true
Of war and war’s alarms,
But O that I were young again
And held her in my arms!

Differentiation between study of politics and literature. Silos, not necessarily bad thing (mentions agri-storage!)

He draws on his reflections on his life enjoyably, and it is relevant.

Literature

And on to the cannon, at the top, Shakespeare: tragadies and histories, all about power. Can we ignore the political events/

Milton, paradise Lost after the Civil war.

Drydan, Swift, William Morris, Huxley and ideals/satire and utiopias…

Awareness of imperialism, Conrad, Ragged Trousered Philanthropist

Journey’s End, Spanish Civil War… Orwell

It is pretty well impossible to miss politics, even in the cannon.

We are approaching 50 yrs after the Penguin (D H Lawrence) trial and the ‘eruption of culture into politics’.

And then identity, post colonial, gender etc

Even reached SF, cyberspace and the challenge to ‘text’ of new media. Good update!

Teaching

Good aside on Media Studies – demonised, especially by the media.

But Eng Lit: everyone wants it taught, but what is it about?

What are the politics of teaching Enf Lit?

Choices of curriculum are never neutral. What books to teach? Do we want a parody of academic freedom? Each to teach their own chosen texts?

And how to teach? Are our expertises to dominate students own perspectives?

Reads about Orwell from Counter Course: A Handbook for Course Criticism, by Trevor Pateman: quite good on the dynamic: are we in awe of the text and just responding to it, or do we have a view, that we want to test against the text?

Good quote from Literature, politics and culture in postwar Britain
By Alan Sinfield – should we have ‘hem of the skirt’ reverence or engage and criticise?

via Did the Stinking Rich create the Great Divergence? (8) – By Timothy Noah – Slate Magazine.

A really good series on Slate raising lots of questions that have been on my mind since hearing Richard Wilkinson talk about the Spirit Level (http://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/) this summer

Need to read more about the work: Saez and Piketty’s 2003 ground-breaking paper, “Income Inequality in the United States, 1913-1998,”

Interesting maths teaching resource I gathered from colleague from ZDNet France (thanks Mustapha). Not THE future perhaps, but an interesting additional tool, especially for this anxious about maths…

Feels a hot topic as I prepare for the first Business e-Learning (BeL) research group symposium on Friday.

Introduction

This was my first workshop at ICICTE, and I had not attended any till Friday, when I went to Gorg’s excellent session on Facebook.

I had brought material from the UK, which was a presentation I had made with Sue Greener, twice. As part of the Business eLearning (BeL) Research Group’s Faculty e-learning seminar series, and to a Wired Sussex event. Anyway, there were some notes on how I had used Twitter in teaching, and some examples, but little to structure a 90 minute workshop.

Henk was giving a parallel workshop on Web 2.0 tools, and we discussed merging if the numbers were low. I was keen to have the Twitter session take place, but planned to merge if there were less than six. I really thought there might not be many/any.

Before

I was glad I had attended Gorg’s Facebook workshop. His format of opening statement of domain, posing of questions and then getting us in groups worked well. I spent an hour after breakfast this morning putting together a set of guidelines for creating an account on Twitter, making a first posting, following, re-tweeting and tagging.

I had three instructional slides, interspersed with my guidelines and suggested questions. When I got to the room, there was one person there, checking her email. At the start time there were three and I prepared myself for merger. And then a dozen came, within a minute. And we were off..

During

The time passed quickly. I tried to refrain from lecturing, and within 20 minutes from start, I had the participants creating accounts and pumping out the ‘hello world’ first tweet. There were some technical difficulties: not enough laptops (I ran off and borrowed, thanks Nicole), lost passwords and missing email addresses, but after another twenty minutes the first tweets appreared.

Getting everyone tweeting, following, re-tweeting, tagging and embedding links took us to the hour, and then I announced: time for the real work. We formed three groups around use before a learning session, during a learning session and after a learning session. Each group had a scribe (thanks to those), and we created a stream of material, I intend to embed here.

After

The workshop had to be finished ready for the closing ceremony. All participants seemed engaged, and a couple said they had got something of use. I felt pleased with the process, and keen to read the tweets generated.

Reflections

I learned much about getting a group to generate useful magterials. I enjoyed the process. There were some interesting issues raised, especially about multitasking, sufficient time and space for analysis and the risks of publishing in a public area where institutional control is low.

There were several topics raised that I felt might lead to research, and several connections made, that are likely to endure.

Tweets from workshop

Before the learning:

1. Testy ICICTE ICICTETesty

#ICICTE2010twitterbefore : need to assure students that they’re not being judged

2. Testy ICICTE ICICTETesty

#ICICTE2010twitterbefore : allocate related tasks to students, harvest focused tweat summaries to wiki, peer-review….

3. Testy ICICTE ICICTETesty

#ICICTE2010twitterbefore : use for announcements – if all students using twitter

4. Testy ICICTE ICICTETesty

#ICICTE2010twitterbefore : use twitter to obtain discussion questions from students; use of twitter would engender/stimulate communication

During a learning session

1. Jonathan Round jround999

#icicte2010during will it work mixing multiple different parts of your life in twitter?

2. Jonathan Round jround999

#icicte2010during are the ‘best’ academics tweeting? if not why not?

3. Jonathan Round jround999

#icicte2010during retweeting not the same as reading the tweet!

4. Jonathan Round jround999

#icicte2010during twitter enabling constant learning, but only from people on twitter. majority of academics not tweeting

5. Jonathan Round jround999

#icicte2010during twitter – spontaneous reaction easy, reflection more of an issue?

6. Jonathan Round jround999

#icicte2010during twitter clearly v useful for communication one to many and to collect information. can it be used to analyse?

7. Jonathan Round jround999

#icicte2010during can we use technology to extend out abilities or are they getting in the way and distracting?

8. Jonathan Round jround999

#icicte2010during i think we might ok would get distracted and look at a hot topic not focus on a session

9. Jonathan Round jround999

#icicte2010during can set up rss for a twitter feed for a particular # so that you see how things develop. can be archived too

10. Jonathan Round jround999

#icicte2010during in a session there may be a need for ground rules – the data is recorded forever and may comprimise in the future

11. Jonathan Round jround999

#icicte2010during this is a public forum – quite different to SMS

12. Jonathan Round jround999

#icicte2010during tweets might facilitate the group contributing esp in large groups

13. Jonathan Round jround999

#icicte2010during the tweets could be amalgamated later and changed into a FAQ type article

The Rest….

1. Sophie Vaughan sophiebro1

Good potential for inter-student discussion #icicte2010twitter about 2 hours ago via web
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2. Melinda Grose xoxlol144

#ICICTE2010twitter – it would be interesting to compare comments participants might make at a presentation during with those one hour later about 2 hours ago via web
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3. Lou ICICTEpaparazzi

going on duty again… #ICICTE2010twitter about 2 hours ago via web
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4. Melinda Grose xoxlol144

#ICICTE2010twitter – need to set some ground rules on how to use twitter during a lecture or presentation – no inappropriate comments etc about 2 hours ago via web
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5. Sophie Vaughan sophiebro1

Instant feedback from students e.g. any queries – could then provide links to further explain your answer (tweesponse!) #icicte2010twitter about 3 hours ago via web
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6. Sophie Vaughan sophiebro1

Twitter after class: Potential use for detemining your students view of the take home message from your lecture. #icicte2010twitter about 3 hours ago via web
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7. Jonathan Round jround999

#icicte2010twitter making comments about the presenter could be difficult to allow concentraition on the topic about 3 hours ago via web
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8. Marilena Aspioti MarilenaAsp

our group is looking into twitter during class #icicte2010twitter about 3 hours ago via TweetDeck
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9. Marilena Aspioti MarilenaAsp

brainstorming on using twitter in pedagogical contexts #icicte2010twitter about 3 hours ago via TweetDeck
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10. Cabsta Uk cabstauk1

Struggling to get it to work as well ….RT @Long_P123: trying to get twitter to work on mobile at #icicte2010twitter about 3 hours ago via Snaptu.com
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11. Cabsta Uk cabstauk1

RT @Long_P123: trying to get twitter to work on mobile at #icicte2010twitter about 3 hours ago via Snaptu.com
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12. Lou ICICTEpaparazzi

Check out photos from the past three days of the conference: http://bit.ly/ak2DZg #ICICTE2010twitter about 3 hours ago via web
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13. Jonathan Round jround999

http://bit.ly/beP8Be #icicte2010twitter cool video on emotional recognition by computer. is this the future? lots of peeps rude to kiwis about 3 hours ago via web
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14. Polly Long Long_P123

trying to get twitter to work on mobile at #icicte2010twitter about 3 hours ago via web
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15. Jonathan Round jround999

why is no one talking to each other – are we too tech focussed? #icicte2010twitter about 3 hours ago via web
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16. Marilena Aspioti MarilenaAsp

shame that #icicte2010 is coming to an end #icicte2010twitter great conference about 3 hours ago via TweetDeck
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17. Sophie Vaughan sophiebro1

http://bit.ly/cjmjuu Short URL for Jack Johnson twitter page #icicte2010twitter about 3 hours ago via web
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18. Testy ICICTE ICICTETesty

#ICICTE2010twitter – a lot of advertising ‘noise’ on twitter, as elsewhere… about 3 hours ago via web
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19. Cabsta Uk cabstauk1

#icicte2010twitter can’t use full twitter features on mobile about 3 hours ago via mobile web
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20. Marilena Aspioti MarilenaAsp

Academic Earth – free video lectures / courses from leading universities http://bit.ly/u4VtP #icicte2010twitter

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# Lou ICICTEpaparazzi

#ICICTE2010twitter Temporarily off-duty conference photographer enjoying Twitter workshop! about 3 hours ago via web

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# Cabsta Uk cabstauk1

icicte2010twitter about 3 hours ago via mobile web

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# Testy ICICTE ICICTETesty

#ICICTE2010twitter – the hash key is alt-3 on macs about 3 hours ago via web

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# Melinda Grose xoxlol144

Hey world … great thing about #ICICTE2010twitter is learning to tweet! about 3 hours ago via web

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# Jonathan Round jround999

this is a proper workshop. actually learning how to do something #icicte2010twitter about 3 hours ago via web

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# Marilena Aspioti MarilenaAsp

@roseluckin really enjoyed your keynote #icicte2010twitter about 3 hours ago via TweetDeck

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# Cabsta Uk cabstauk1

#ICICTE2010twitter……..hello? Hello? Anyone there? about 3 hours ago via web

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# Rose luckin roseluckin

ISILBOY #icicte2010twitter RT @aelloway: V. useful link Podcasting as an Educational Tool http://bit.ly/aHi9jN #edtech about 3 hours ago via web

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# Testy ICICTE ICICTETesty

#ICICTE2010twitter – Apple Macs don’t have a hash key! about 3 hours ago via web

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# Marilena Aspioti MarilenaAsp

@jround999 Great to see you online , stay in touch #icicte2010twitter about 3 hours ago via TweetDeck

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# Rose luckin roseluckin

#icicte2010twitter was tweeting in private and wondering why nothing appeared, maybe this will?! about 3 hours ago via web

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# Marilena Aspioti MarilenaAsp

Hi all – tweet away #icicte2010twitter about 3 hours ago via TweetDeck

Brighton put on its cheekiest face today as more than 1,000 naked cyclists took to the streets.

The bare as you dare cyclists brushed aside calls for a ban on the event to take part in the city’s fifth annual Naked Bike Ride.

via Naked bike riders take to the streets (From The Argus).