Teraknor

In my professional and personal life, I often encounter souls who 'communicate at' me. It is as if, they are set on broadcast mode and the input systems are set to shut down. For my networking geeky mates, they are operating at half-duplex with suspicions of simplex communication. With age comes cynicism an ability to: Ignore them Do what I wish anyway Occasionally inject undetectable sarcasm to see if you are actually listening So, please do check, I do listen and don't take my silence as agreement. Chances are I have a full measure of you within a few words of continual output.

In reading my numerous rants, I am sure you have picked up the faint hint of ire in some of my posts infused with a generous hint of sarcasm. Last week I had a frank conversation with a centre who has been delivering vendor certification. Frank in the terms that we are in agreement, frank, also in the terms that we can see some major issues and jointly frustrated that our mutual efforts seem to be of little avail. Personally I find it comes in waves, you get a tide of optimism, can do mentality and acceptance. Even when participants don't always understand the detail but appreciate the importance of getting it done. Currently it seems to me, that we are encountering a wave, best described as the shrugging shoulders of apathy. Souls on the whole not owning the opportunity and a community meandering aimlessly towards 2015. Come Monday, I will reconnect with some of the activists. I would guess that many are having similar issues. Maybe its time for a cunning plan ;-)

I bet the title of this post befuddled the brains of many readers. I have been out of the loop for some time when it comes to the blogosphere. Nothing particularly sinister; more a case nothing of any particular interest to write about. Anyhow, hello, I is back, innit. So time to introduce a little notion I have been working on and whist I am not as yet going to give away too many secrets. On our Cisco Module at the Open University I am now at a beta stage of using social media to support/drive delivery of an online curriculum and blended distance-learning experience. Personally I don’t think there is anything novel in this idea but research on papers on the web does not ‘as yet’ seemed to have uncovered anything vaguely similar. I could be asking the wrong questions, or missing the point, nothing unusual there. The idea makes use of some interesting tools and apart from the Hootsuite batch-scheduling tool, many free resources out there. Think about what can b...

Not necessarily the most exciting post in the universe; but on a topic that tickled my fancy. For the first time, I was able to use my phone as a ticket on a flight. Wow, you are all going, how amazing, some of you may say, along with other sarcastic comments I am sure. I think for me, the point of interest is not in this ‘advance’, but with it the other challenges and opportunities it brings. Consider : Power, now I must ensure that my phone has enough juice at all times to present my ticket. iShiny owners understand this issue already. That I now have a single point of failure; phone gets lost, stolen or goes kaput. One is, as they say a bit screwed. The potential for proximity permission and the notion that my phone, a device with multiple ‘me factors’ could become a pass to a multitude of experiences.   But, whilst you may wonder why I am keen to post this entry. It may be worth knowing that I did also print the original ticket as a backup. Such is my tr...

To be fair I am sitting in an award board, which in my honest opinion are the most unstimulating of affairs; so seeing Brunton-Spall tweet about self-googling is possibly the most interesting thing I can do at the moment. Is self-googling an unflattering thing to do, on the scale of narcissic behaviours its not quite an onanist act but borders on self-delusional. Hope Mr Brunton-Spall enjoys the experience ;-)  

At some time, we have all been novices in this most noble of ancient arts. Deftly opening gob, to disengage brain and insert a lower extremity with gusto. Yet don't we meet masters of this discipline for whom this has become an art form. There are many in public life, in our circle of friends or at work; like a ninja in the night open orifice and flip that foot right in. So what is my thinking on this, should they be ridiculed, should we mock those who often say something that we could have easily done ourselves. Or should we celebrate this knack of committing oral podiatry as a masterful discipline that should be revered. To be a black belt oral podiatrist; to have your gob registered as a tactical weapon. Able to render the opponent speechless by a deft foot+mouth moment. Think about it, it has its appeal.

Nationally there is a worrying dilly dally delay taking place; government vs awarding organisations, awarding organisations keeping educators in the semi-darkness of a dimly lit room. Come 2015, which is closer than you may appreciate. A large tranche of qualifications reach the end of their normal approval (or validation) cycle. Whilst there is nothing unusual in this process, the worry comes when you discover that as yet nothing has been agreed to replace them and by now you would expect the development to have started. The problem seems to be that there is a government desire to make vocational qualifications more academic, to the point that they would exclude the countless practical students who would have taken them in the past. The reality is that, there is likely to be another six months of wrangling, before there is a last minute panic and rush to deliver a qualification. Resulting in errors being introduced.