In Part 1 of this blog-post series I emphasised the importance of the foundational planning phase. If you haven’t already read it, take a look before you get stuck into this part of the post. As a freelancer my work is project-based so having a system that is as powerful as Tana to interlink and
Continue reading ...It’s that time of the year; calendars and diaries are on their last pages and new ones are being offered in some shops for those who like to track the passing of time with paper prompts on the wall. There’s a sense of Auld Lang Syne, of things ending, of the old year dying and
Continue reading ...It’s the first of the month, so today is the second ‘give a damn day’ where I nudge myself out of my self-absorption into an outward focus on things that need attention … things at least, that I can deal with. I’m a great believer in personal responsibility, and little things building up over time
Continue reading ...Image via Wikipedia Yes it’s been ages; my regular posting pattern has disappeared, and visits have dropped away. Those readers loyal enough to stay with me would have read between the lines of my last post some 3 weeks ago. It was a guilt-trip that I laid on myself for exploring a slew of social
Continue reading ...This is a comment ‘upgraded’ to a post. The original was in response to an inquiry from a colleague in the US. She asked for some tips on using a class blog. My response got long, and by the end I thought it probably could do with a dust-off and a reshaping into a stand-alone
Continue reading ...Michele Martin and Tony Karrer are two writers I enjoy. Their individual contributions to the sphere of workplace learning come together in their new endeavour WorkLiteracy. Check it out and engage if you can. One thing I’ve come to believe in the past 6 months or so is the power of the serendipity of our
Continue reading ...You know how the old saying about mothers goes …. they’re sociologists, counsellors, tutors, managers, chauffeurs (add your own personal favourite). So it is these days that I find my role as a university lecturer diversifying in the oddest ways. Now this has probably got more to do with the nature of the discipline field … theatre, and preparing young artists for a professional role in the entertainment industry. Most of my classes are involved with training students for careers as actors. Yes, I teach and direct, but also and for nearly 10 years now as the industry has changed its face, I’ve been training them to think about themselves and their work in a business-like way. Empowering them to engage in what the economists like to call disintermediation, and which in the arts industry means extracting yourself from the middle man and the control they can have over your work (aka agents of all kinds). The jury’s out on whether or not it’s a good thing to cut the painter entirely, and let’s face it, actors wouldn’t be actors if they didn’t have an agent to blame for most things.
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There’s been something of a theme running through the last half dozen or so posts here. I guess it’s a function of the time in the new academic year … beginnings and the raising of issues that are challenging us all. I was at another faculty meeting last week where e-learning was discussed. You could feel spines stiffen a bit as the topic went round the table. The conversation went something like this: ‘People won’t (make an effort/change their way of doing things/appear to be even slightly interested in innovation or … add your own phrase here) unless they are made to.’ Now the ‘people’ being referred to are academics. I’m moved to ask what happened to the spirit of intellectual inquiry and the desire to develop one’s scholarly practice? Well that’s another matter, but for now there’s a management imperative that has to be addressed by individuals in the faculty collective, and fast.
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photo credit: Greg Melia
Next Monday is day 1 of teaching for a new academic year… or should the emphasis be on learning! Change is in the air. It’s a change in thinking, a sort of ‘can-do’ feeling that is beginning to nudge colleagues into giving this e-learning stuff a go. I’ve experienced this several times this week alone at my place. Now change at institutional level can be notoriously slow in uptake, and never more so than in academe. Tried and true ways that ‘work’ are hung on to perhaps long past their shelf freshness date, and for all sorts of good reasons. One of the prime excuses is time-poverty, and free-thinking academics are notorious for resisting the kind of change that comes from above … administrative mandates being one of the most resisted. But I digress a little.
Continue reading ...The past couple of weeks have been busy for most academics in
Australia. If they’re not grabbing the last of the summer before term
begins … and it’s been a miserable, wet summer for most of us …
then others are jetting home from far-flung cold climes. Most probably,
like me, they’re prepping for the first semester of the academic year.