On-line learning (6 and final)

This is a response to the final reflective task of the "On-line tutoring" course, but I hope it may be of interest to anyone else who happens to stumble by here.

First, and most important, I need to say how much I was impressed by the quality of the course, its design, materials and tutorial support. To declare an interest, it is offered by the Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development which happens to be my current temporary employer---but I wanted to work with them because of what I knew of their work, rather than I want to puff them because I am working there this semester.

And to look at this within a framework; following (roughly) Kirkpatrick's (1994) four levels of evaluation;

1. Did I enjoy it? No. The only time which came close to "enjoyment" was the final week's scenarios exercise. But clearly I was in a minority. I reject the notion of learning styles, but I do have preferences (which are at this level rather than 2,3,4) and this approach--and it doesn't matter what "this approach" is--just doesn't suit me. See below for expansion.
   
   
2. Did I learn anything? Yes. A lot. I'm not sure it was the same as the course set out to teach, though, and that is an interesting issue about this medium for learning. More on this below.
   
   
3. Will it make any difference to my practice? Yes, although since I am semi-retired this is not significantly important. It reinforced what I already knew about the commitment required of the on-line tutor (more, it has to be said, from the model set by the Centre--which was not stinting in its allocation of resources--and the tutors themselves, who were always there, than from what the course explicitly taught.) The difference it will make (at which point some people may legitimately heave a sigh of relief) is that I shall be even more reluctant to tutor on-line than I was before.
   
   
4. Will that affect the practice of my organisation? Probably not in the case of my current employer, but it might make a difference to the advice I offer to others in the future, and particularly to my approach to a staff development session I am scheduled to offer for another university in a couple of weeks' time on just this topic.
   

More idiosyncratically;

• The course emphasised on-line group interaction using the Virtual Learning Environment in particular but Web 2.0 tools in general;


• I found this difficult for various reasons. In their inventories of significant features of the design of on-line tutoring systems (the penultimate activity of the course), many members identified "comfort with the technology" as a basic issue to address. I am comfortable with some of the technology as this blog testifies, but I dislike VLEs. They seem invariably to complicate things which can be done more easily with other web tools.


• But that was not the major point. Diana Laurillard's (2001, maybe later--I'm being cavalier about referencing--this is a blog, remember, count yourself lucky to get any references at all...!) Laurillard's point was that e-learning tools need to be judged principally by their capacity to approximate the richness of a face-to-face learning conversation.


• Real conversation wanders. It moves up and down through levels of abstraction (Dale and Bruner); it drifts off by free association and returns to the main topic (sometimes); it is not constrained by rigid topic boundaries. This is very difficult indeed to replicate in an on-line environment; threaded posts, tags etc. all help, but they do require conscious and constraining decisions on the part of the poster, and complex discussions are defined as much by what people do not access (still less read, still less respond to...) as by what they do.


• I was inhibited by this. One week I hardly posted at all. Each of the list headings I looked at seemed to prescribe a certain kind of response--one which I did not want to make. I looked in vain for one labelled "None of the above" or "Contrarian"! But. I know... I am not criticising, just discussing a real problem to which I do not have a solution. And if you think lists labelled as above are a solution, think through their likely impact on the whole. And look at the research...




• Ah! The research! Considerable effort was devoted to the scholarship of learning and teaching on-line. There was a required textbook and links throughout to useful papers. Some of them were thought-provoking (as is this post, I hope) with plenty of references to previous papers, some endorsed, some qualified, some opposed. All the stuff of SoTL (Scholarship of Teaching and Learning).


• I may well be wrong here, because I cannot claim to have traced to their roots all the references cited in the readings for the course, but although they may be scholarly and (more important) informed by the experience of practice, they are a crust of accretions of legitimated opinion.


• I confess it is now six years since I really pursued this. I was supervising a master's student (in learning and teaching in nursing, specifically) whose dissertation related to e-learning in in-service nursing education. She had produced a very scholarly literature review, comparing and discussing different models... I had pushed her for hard evidence behind these peer-reviewed and published papers. She was upset--who was I to query the evidence? So I undertook the trail back through half a dozen of her sources, to make the point. It took a long time (before Google Scholar) and was I confess incomplete. (Come to think of it, why did I not publish? The evidence is discarded now!) But three generations back on six of her sources, roughly 216 sources, I found only ten which were unequivocally empirically researched, and at least two of those relied on research instruments which have themelves been questioned...


• Wandering now, but... I have been reading Nick Davies' book on the state of journalism*, which talks about "churnalism", where the demands of the system lead to stories being repeated without checking, and to rumour mills, moral panics and vulnerability to PR... It happens in educational "research" too. Next weekend, in one of my other jobs, I shall be working on a study day for 350 students. The visiting speaker will be Frank Coffield, the principal protagonist in the de-bunking of the egregious scam of "learning styles"--as a spurious, self-serving, commercially brilliant and politically convenient load of ordure. It, and other associated fads such as "accelerated learning" have prospered because pressured academics and practitioners have grasped at straws--and these ideas hovered tantalisingly on the edges of common sense (whatever that is...).



• Back to the mainstream. Consensual, interactive, social constructed knowledge was privileged (sorry about the jargon). We did not explore the nature of authority on-line. And that is a big, but concealed issue. (I am reminded of a phrase from "Cold Comfort Farm" which cannot be repeated nowadays.) The "subject matter" of the course was considered as an inert given, in the sense that it would not affect other processes, or indeed be affected by them. It's a noble gas, man :-) It isn't.

But I want also to thank my fellow participants. No, I didn't really get to know you. Sometimes I am sure that my tone was irksome and boorish. But your responses were unfailingly courteous and constructive, or you benignly ignored me--probably the best strategy (sometimes I wish I could ignore me, but it doesn't seem to work...)

The above goes a fortiori for the long-suffering tutors.

Many thanks!


* Davies N (2009) Flat Earth News London; Vintage Books.

On-line learning (5)

[This post is added pretty well "as is", several days after its original composition. The delay is accounted for by my self-imposed rule not to post if I wouldn't drive (a.k.a. I had a couple of drinks before I drafted it). The parallel is quite close. Mostly what follows is coherent and indeed representative of my views, but observe the twee infantilism of the initial paragraph... I draw attention to this simply because it is so difficult to gauge the state of mind of a contributor on-line, unless they flag it in some way...]

I've been a good boy this week. Or at least a better boy than the hissy-fitting curmudgeon of last week. Why? Fundamentally because a member of our small working group and a tutor were nice to me. That's very basic, isn't it? I got stroppy over something, doubtless in an "immature" way (maturity is independent of age, despite what people seem to think: I'm 64, and I do "immature" much better now than I did at 14...) --and I thought I had burned my boats with the group. Remember that the channels of communication are very limited on-line.

I joined in the conversation again with the merest hint of apology (actually a crass face-saving, "I woz bein' ironic, innit?" angle), and they scuppered my plans to flounce off by being very understanding and building on the few constructive remarks I had made... So! Another attempt to do a good flounce is thwarted. Will I never manage it? Flouncing is a young man's game. Well, no, it's traditionally a woman's ploy... Sorry! the deconstruction of flouncing was not a designated learning outcome for this course!

But was I really back in the group? How much is anyone "in" the group? Regardless of how much I might have offended or alienated the other members, the system posts messages to the group to all of us. Engage paranoia; are there back channels? Does it matter? What is the difference between formative and summative assessment in this context? However...

The above reflections (posh term; incoherent self-mumblings might be a better term) stem from the basic observation that unlike the real world, what happens in the virtual class is either up-front visible or not. "Not" is speculation or fantasy... I don't need to spell out the sequelae...

However! Different tack. I have responded to a number of different threads and forums this week. Actually I have responded to particular points made by individuals who have already posted, and I have done so with reference to those posts, not to the theme set by the tutors. On a couple of occasions I have realised that I could have posted about this issue here, but I have already done so to a doubtless more limited readership, there.

This is a function of the site design, and it has been a continuing bugbear of the whole course. And indeed of all systems which seek to regulate communication.

On restricted and elaborated code

I started reading this simply out of interest in the topic, but as I read on I realised that among other things it was an exploration of Bernstein's restricted and elaborated codes. I don't need to elaborate; but understanding is restricted to those who know the background (in two or even three senses).

This is of course not simply a pure illustration of the distinction; as in the real world (this may even be part of the real world!) it is embedded in and muddied by another discussion.

On-line learning (5)

We have been set up in small groups to work on a task, preferably via a wiki.

The group is self-managing. That is probably the right strategy, because imposing the burden of chairing a group on an individual is unfair when it will last for a week or more, and when the tutors have had no chance to assess capabilities... But. A chair will emerge, and it is interesting to reflect on who will assume that role under the circumstances. Is that person likely to preside over the best possible "product" from the group?

It so happens that for various reasons I took my eye off the ball this week (that might not be the best metaphor, since I have never been able to catch balls even when looking directly at them, but...) With two consequences;

• I don't know where to find the group report, still less contribute to it, so
• I feel more left out, and less inclined to log in to find what I am left out of...

I report this not to complain, by any means. ("For Brutus is an honorable man“ OK!) but to reflect on the limitations of on-line communication.

There are no back-channels. For good reasons, I can't "whisper" to a friend, "What's going on?". Nor is there a "new readers start here" facility. A course leader might well argue that to incorporate such a facility would be to give carte blanche to every free-loading lurker to check in when it suited them and to feign participation. But it all depends on what you think people are there for, and I confess that I am now highly ambivalent about the course.

On the one hand, I am ever more intrigued by the challenge faced by course designers and tutors, of reducing the subtleties of pedagogy to the concreteness of rubrics and procedures, like trying to capture the flow and tumble of water in stone. And I am impressed not only by the skill of the tutorial team, but also by their commitment.

On the other, I am frustrated by what seems increasingly to be the demonstrable failure of the model. Rightly, I think, the tutors are trying to promote interaction between the course participants. But I have only the vaguest idea of who they are. We did an introductions exercise, but the other people are still merely labels to me. I have no sense of them as people. Earlier, I went back to the introductions to check on who was "speaking", but it was too much hassle. So I found myself responding to everyone in the same way...

The introduction of small group working is an interesting shift. OK, it's not surprising that I can't hold in my mind the distinctive characteristics and characteristic opinions fo a couple of dozen people. But perhaps I ought to be able to do so for half a dozen? Perhaps. I have failed because I took my eye off the ball, but I don't know what would have happened had I not. (As it were!)

So perhaps this conversation within the group and a broadly socially-oriented pedagogy and indeed epistemology is a challenge too far for e-learning? Or just for a 64-year-old? Or is this topic the ultimate challenge for e-learning? (For new readers, the topic is "on-line tutoring and blended learning")

Incidentally, I have finally got the book. It came from India--there's globalisation for you.

I'll stick with it, but if I started with a motivation score of 7/10, it is now about 3/10. Of course, if I had not been distracted and kept up a constant contact every day, the outcome might well be very different...

On simplifying

Someone called this columnist's bluff and asked for a straightforward account of an obscure argument in a previous column.

What do you make of the result?

• Was it well done?
• Do you now understand it?
• If you understood it before, was anything lost in translation?
• How much does the {lost in translation} stuff matter?
• Accepting that some academic and technical jargon and discourse is necessary, how do we define the boundaries?
  

On outcomes across the pond

An excellent rant about the pernicious outcomes of outcomes models, with some interesting follow-up comments.

On-line learning (4)

I've just been checking in with the course--hey, how better could one spend a Saturday (now Sunday) night?

I'm struck by the increasing demands on the tutors (although they did literally ask for it when they encouraged the use of web 2.0 resources). When I first tutored on-line 12 years ago, we used a package called FirstClass, which kept track of one's time on-line among other facilities. My first significant learning from that module was that I rapidly exceeded the allocated staff hours for the module, logged on to work with the student participants. And I was just one of three tutors working with nine students.

Returning to the fray years later, as a student rather than a tutor, I find that the channels have proliferated. I'm not a fan of the bounded VLE; it's a tool which tries to do too many things not very well and is obsessed not with privacy but secrecy. But, it certainly simplifies things for the tutors. And given that this course has already encouraged us to go to blogs and Flickr (sorry--not got round to that--I use Picasa and E-snips, are they roughly the same?) it must be a hassle keeping up. So, respect to them for their encouraging feedback; at the moment it is probably simple reinforcement for contributing, but in the future...?

But leaving aside the welfare of the tutors... Now, I want to know where we are going. I need a clearer sense of direction(s).

This course actually comes with a book! Sadly, my enrolment deal does not include a free copy; I have ordered it from the great river, but the stream which leads to my house is clearly clogged with ice-floes--we have received no physical mail for the past four days. (The library copies are out.) So I haven't read the prescribed chapters, yet... But I do need input. Input in respect of researched and established theory. Not "Let's have a chat and find out what works for us" stuff. The feedback has concentrated on encouragement; good idea so far as people have admitted their trepidation in joining in. I've received a couple of tutor comments which refer to "thought-provoking" ideas. They probably mean "bullshit", but of course they can't say so. Yet. I can't start learning, because that is what it is all about, until I get Feedback, with a capital "F". So we have to move on...

I know! Were I a tutor, I should be more circumspect. But I'm not a tutor! So I can be...

Frustrated? Yes. Is this a good thing? It does mean I am hungry for something. But it also suggests I am on the cusp of getting what I want or giving up... I shan't do that, but is this "normal" for e-learners? Is there an equivalent process to the supposed group development process of forming-storming-norming-performing?

On-line learning (3)

I logged on "casually" tonight, to find 71 unread messages. Too much. I logged off.

Face to face, the rules influencing contributions and attention to them are hugely complex and we all filter and attend selectively and wilfully ignore and prioritise, and we do it in "real time", as contributions are made and conversations unfold.

I don't know how to handle this as a "student". As a tutor, I just had to get on with it, and I was rarely off-line for long enough to let messages build up. After all, tutoring an on-line course was part of my core business, as it were. Paradoxically, I was less selective in my attention than I would have been in a real classroom.

I've read some of the posts, and thought, "Hmm, interesting point, I might respond to that---but no, don't be silly, responding only encourages them!"

---and that is of course really interesting in terms of being one one side of the fence or the other. As a tutor I desperately wanted this intercourse and debate; as a student I want to cut to the chase and get the substantive content. All these ideas from my fellow participants who (with of course all respect) don't know much more than I do are all very well, but... In class, the lecturer/teacher/tutor would (because the conversation is synchronous) close it down and move on. That option is only available via draconian measures on-line, which are experienced as censorship while being "normal" class management in the face to face world.

Of course, the other factor is to ask just how real this on-line course is? There are two issues here;

• first, this is a course about on-line learning so it has attracted people who are interested in it, and presumably have more to say about it. My comments about "don't encourage them" might be quite irrelevant/otiose in the context of a required course for undergrads.
• On the other hand, the distribution of contributions seems at first glance (the tutors have access to the stats, so they may confirm later) to follow the same broadly power-law distribution identified by Bales et al in the 1950s on participation in groups in general (see here)
  

Enough. In the time I have spent writing this, I could probably have learned more by reading those 71 posts, and perhaps responding to them and joining the debate rather than standing (arrogantly?) and sniping on the side-lines. And this critique is about the issues inherent in e-learning; it implies nothing about any individual or indeed implementation.

On-line learning (2)

The on-line course is now getting going; there are 22 participants including me and several tutors, of whom two have so far made an appearance. Several initial impressions;

• Every post is (at this stage) religiously responded to by the tutors. That really matters on-line. Frankly some of the responses are banal, but that is not the point. In class, I can nod, make eye-contact, smile, or note a key-word on a flip-chart. All such responses send "message received and (at least) valued", and they require no deliberate effort. Not so on-line; perhaps as the learning community grows (there are only about 4 contributors to date) the tutors will back off a little. If they don't, there is the danger of creating a "hub-and-spoke" pattern of communication which might inhibit direct "network" interaction between participants. I don't think that is very likely with mature, confident participants, but it could well happen with undergrads. (Of course, all this is my opinion and speculation--one of the things I am hoping to learn is whether or not it is well-founded.)
  
  
• I'm not exactly finding it difficult to navigate the site, but it is a little unnatural. The tutors have provided an excellent and comprehensive user guide/course orientation/study guide. I remember working with Steve Ryan and Bernard Scott in 1996 on my first "resource-based learning" course, and their emphasis on the Study Guide. I initiallly thought it rather patronising, but later learned how necessary it was. But it remains a really tricky job to "pitch" it just right. And my own ambivalence testifies to that. Part of the time I am irritated by the assertion of the plonkingly obvious, only to have to refer back to it because I have missed something...
  
  
• ...but of necessity the course site is segmented into separate areas. Each week or assignment has its discussion board, there is a virtual coffee-bar (where participants are already unsure about what belongs and what should be elsewhere) and so on. In the real world---for better or for worse---we would move, slide, elide between these different conversations, without too much concern about what belonged where. Uh oh!...
  
  
• ...The net does not do ambiguity! (sorry, folks, if this is self-indulgent, but the problem/necessity [?] of ambiguity in curriculum design has been a preoccupation of mine [and colleagues] for many years).

Enough for now.

On course details

I know how you feel!

Thanks to the Marginal Revolution blog for the pointer.

On-line learning (1)

My apologies for the heading! I somehow fell into the pattern of prefacing all the post titles with "on" from the very start...

I posted a link a week ago about a Canadian professor of tourism about to embark on his his first e-learning course as an instructor. Well, I'm doing the same thing as a student; I have previously designed, written and run two quite different blended learning modules through several iterations, but I have never before been at the "receiving" (if that is the right metaphor) end of such a course.

The heading links to the course description, and since one of the requirements is to keep a reflective journal or blog (surprise!), I thought a bit about whether to create a blog solely for the purpose or to use this existing one. There is of course the danger that I will simply bore stiff those of you who for whatever reason read this in the real world, and those of you kind enough to sunscribe via RSS may well not be pleased to have esoteric ramblings pushed at you... On the other hand, the knowledge that I am not writing purely for myself or to be read only by "insiders" should impose some constraint on my self-indulgent ramblings. I promise not to post too frequently.

On the other hand... This blog's "manifesto" (pardon the grandiosity) is about modelling reflection, or at least producing samples of it for illustration or critique, so I have to share my thoughts to live up to that.

For those of you less interested in this, I'll keep to the same heading for related posts with updated index numbers and possibly sub-heads.

On obedience, nowadays

See also here

So! A researcher has reproduced (almost) the irreproducible!

Stanley Milgram's 1970s experiments on obedience to authority are some of the most famous in the history of psychology, but (as the linked article notes) they also deceived the participants to the extent of inducing persistent psychological disturbance; hence the discipline's attention to ethical clearance nowadays. It had been assumed that this self-imposed barrier would prevent the replication of the experiments, but (as in the case of Zimbardo's simulated prison experiment) it was possible simply to ignore those constraints by not pretending to be subject to academic control.

The linked post (as some of the comments note) simplifies greatly a complex experiment, but the results 35 years on were...

You'll have to read them for yourself to find out!

On my son's career

What do you do with a joint honours in philosophy and sociology? Go into fitting floors, in his case. It's a fascinating study, of course;

• All the political rhetoric about promoting social mobility fails to recognise (unlike Michael Young in 1958), that in a finite system, if some elements go up a corresponding number need to go down.
• It seems to be a trade without regulation or qualifications (they may exist but they exercise little influence), so my son is a sort of "apprentice", but without the safeguards implied by that. He is simply being inducted into a community of practice.
• But that confers enormous power on his employer. While my son is learning, he is a self-employed labourer. His employer has no obligations towards him, and if he has no work for him, he is simply laid off. His employer does not like paying him (or his other workers), but since my son is not yet acknowledged as a full-fledged fitter, he can't move on in reaction to delayed payment. The tax deadline is looming at the end of this week; the employer shows no inclination to provide the required paperwork to evidence tax deducted at source. Marx and Robert Tressell would love this!
• My son has just done his first free-lance job in his own right. It was a simple laminate flooring job, but it took him twice as long as he expected, and so he only got half the rate he thought he was charging.
• It took so long because he had no-one to ask about problems he was encountering, and had to work them all out for himself. On reflection he thinks this was a good thing, because the lessons will stick. Well, yes; but did he learn the best techniques? He learned to survive, but is that enough? Will his mere survival actually hold him back?
• One thing he did learn was a variant of the Pareto principle (a.k.a. [roughly] as the 80/20 rule) He hadn't heard of this (he has a sociology degree? But it's more economics and not fashionable nowadays) but recognised it instantly. You get 80% of the job done in 20% of the time, then spend the remaining 80% fiddling with the remaining 20%--and that's not time-wasting, it is built into the nature of the system...

Of course, he wanted to do something practical... he'd had enough of theory!

On negative capability (a.k.a. "I don't know")

After some discussion with colleagues about how to "do reflection", it occurs to me that it might be interesting to devote occasional posts to "tools to reflect with". The first is the sine qua non;

(drafted Friday)

I spent over three hours in the car today, as ever listening to news and comment about the recession and the incessant question, "how long will it last?" Only the bravest pundits were prepared to say, "I have no idea."

Being not only prepared to admit that, but also to defend it against both explicit and insidious pressure until it is no longer true, is the prerequisite of reflection. John Keats coined the phrase:

Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts without any irritable reaching after fact & reason.

[Letter to George and Thomas Keats (21 Dec 1817).
in H. E. Rollins (ed.), (1958) Letters of John Keats, Vol. 1, 193]

This more than merely not "jumping to conclusions"; it is an active—and sometimes tense—determination to stick with ambiguities and uncertainties, lest their richness be lost in coming down on one side or the other. Most conclusions are reached "on balance"; like an election won with 51% of the vote, where the 49% of the losing side may well count for nothing, it is important not to lose the possibilities inherent in the alternative accounts of what may have been going on.

In the days when I taught residential social work, I had a simple exercise to illustrate this;

• A 12-year-old child* comes to you at breakfast time and complains that she has a pain in her tummy.
• On the basis solely of this information, what might that mean?

All the answers would be written up on a flip-chart—and I would not be inclined to let a small group off the hook until I had at least a dozen accounts. Only then might we proceed to eliminate some of them on the basis of more precise information and look at the potential consequences of acting on any of them. It is perhaps worth noting that field social workers, who rarely acted precipitately or without lengthy consultation, found it much easier than residential social workers, for whom there was no premium in dithering. For them, it was more important to act, even if they acted wrongly.

* You can tell how long ago this was, by the presence of a twelve-year-old in a children's home.

On an old dog reflecting on new tricks

The heading is precise; this is a reflective blog from a Canadian professor offering a course on-line for the first time. I look forward to following his experience. I'll put the link in the "shared" section of the side-bar so you can keep track, too.

On hiccups

Very little to do with learning and teaching, but a possible answer to a fascinating question, and another example of what evolutionary theory can do (in this Darwin bi-centenary year). I had always believed that hiccups were totally inexplicable, there being no way in which they could contribute to the fitness of any animal; but it appears they make sense if you are a tadpole. And presumably, annoying though they are, having arrived through conferring an advantage only on this transitional phase of an amphibian's life-cycle, they have not conferred sufficient disadvantage to have been bred out of the population, even as far down as ourselves.

Thanks to Mindblog for finding it.

On 45 years on

I'm an outsider (British, if you haven't noticed), and political comment is not the business of this blog, but today is Martin Luther King Jr. day in the USA, and tomorrow is arguably the most tangible fulfilment of his dream of 28 August 1963. There is a synergy here which cannot be ignored;

On the possibility that they are right after all...

The other night, I was watching the immediate aftermath of the New York crash landing on the news channel. Apart from being amazed and gratified that everyone--everyone!--survived, I was challenged at a personal level. I've watched those videos and witnessed those choreographed demonstrations so many times (including a micro-teaching exercise about training cabin crew to do it...) and always thought it was simply a benign euphemistic mythology which no-one believed.

I suspect that the airlines and the authorities thought the same. There's a common joke about the assuming the crash position which concludes, "...and kiss your a*** goodbye!" It was well advised but never tested.

I heard some expert on the radio being interviewed about it and his reaction to seeing the plane floating. Was he surprised? No, not really--that was that it was supposed to do--but he was pleased, because to his knowledge none of the manufacturers had ever tested it in practice (it would be prohibitively expensive).

So perhaps I should not be so sceptical? Perhaps.Hey, it is difficult to re-learn trust...

On self-indulgent nostalgia

Why not? It's my blog!

Actually it is a little more complicated than that. This blog is (largely) about reflection, and the point at which reflection tips into self-indulgent or self-justifying wallowing is not clear.

Just something to contemplate while you listen to Les Paul and Mary Ford's "Meet Mr Callaghan" (c.1957?) There was a feature about Les Paul on BBC4 this evening, and this was the theme I chose (no doubt with total disregard of copyright) for the first film I ever "directed" courtesy of the film society at school, around 1961. The only bit which had any merit at all was the initial titles sequence of a girl (Sandra Whitehead, should you ever google yourself under your maiden name; I directed you in awe, as callow youths did/do at 17...) cycling through the town...

That may be legitimate reminiscence (for me), but it is not in itself "reflection". What is the added value of "reflection"?

Incidentally, the tv remained on as I wrote the above and I looked up to see a tribute to Oliver Postgate. I have enormous affection and respect for his work, and I'm delighted to find an excuse to post a link to him. But that is not reflection, is it? What would need to be added to make it so?

On "brain-based" education

Not only is this a beautifully clear exposition and an exemplary simple video, it is also an important corrective to a lot of rubbish!



And, of course, see this one about "learning styles" (which just happens to coincide with my own view here!) Willingham's site also has a lot of material well worth reading.