Blenheim in sunshine
Monday, April 6th, 2009 | leisure, photography | 1 Comment
I thought it was time for another picture post. So here’s a panorama of the garden in Blenheim Palace with the house itself in the background. (Click on the picture to enlarge)
Power of software to bring system to data-chaos
Saturday, April 4th, 2009 | learning, reflection, tools | No Comments
I am in a very interesting place in my research right now. A very frustrating one as well - but mostly wildly exciting. I’m starting to bring together my data and investigate what actually happened - or at least what actually happened according to me, since I subscribe to the view that analysis = story telling (to some extent at least).
So there I’ve been sitting for the last few weeks, attempting to find a loose end in the bundle of data, which I could grab hold of and start unraveling this mess. My problem was that I had too many ends which I was trying to hold in my hands simultaneously - half-formed understandings, hunches, ideas, frustrations, scraps of old feelings about things. Now that’s all good for story-telling, but how about analysis? In my view, the actual analysis part of analysis (the part that’s not story-telling) - is about bringing some system to the data, and making the story transparent enough to be credible.
After tip-toeing around the issue for weeks, I finally decided that maybe, after all, doing some coding wouldn’t be such a bad idea (yes, I know, the thought should have occurred to me much earlier, and it did, but I was frightened of disaggregating my lovely complex picture into little bits of meaningless junk - untill I realised that my complex picture, so far frighteningly resembled meaningless junk itself).
And yesterday I finally found a tool to do it with - on a Mac! I once did an interview with a Masters student for a project I worked on - and she talked about how using one particular tool - Excel instead of only Word - completely changed her outlook on research, data, and even herself. Suddenly she thought in tables instead of extended text and felt more ’scientific’ in her thinking. While we can probably all agree that Excel does not equal scientific approach to anything at all, I had the same feeling yesterday when I finally started coding. I got myself HyperResearch which does the job remarkably well and is easier to use that some of the large CAQDAS systems that run exclusively (!!!) on Windows. With very little fuss it puts at your fingertips the power of categorising text and retrieving the categories in various combinations. It may well lack some of the functionality of the larger packages - such as building large hierarchies of codes and modelling the data - but I am ready to question the usefulness of such ‘quantification’ tools for qualitative research any day. And althugh I’ve not explored the software fully yet and may well come ot miss a BIT more sophisticated functions (a bit of hierarchy is always good to put my head in order) - so far it’s managed to calm down a bit my search for a way to bring some system to the madness that is my understanding of my data.
When wasting time turns into something grand
Tuesday, March 24th, 2009 | Uncategorized | No Comments
I seem to be having a theme on creative waste of time. Maybe it’s because I like the results that creative waste of time produces. In any case, have a look at this piece of time-wasting - it’s grand! Unfortunately I can’t find the embed script for this, so follow this link instead: http://www.milkandcookies.com/link/152506/detail/
Another bit of changed perspective
Friday, March 20th, 2009 | leisure, photography | No Comments
It seems that I’ve got a theme on changing perspective going on. Tha must be because it’s always intriguing to feel that little click that happens when you see things in an ever-so-slightly different way. Here’s a picture that that changes your perspective in an ever-so-funny way - that’s a good thing to see on a Friday!
The simplicity of genius
Monday, March 9th, 2009 | Uncategorized | No Comments
I’ve just come across a feature of Google that I’ve not been aware of before - it’s probably old news to most of you, but I just have to do a little virtual jumping up and down about this.
We all know that Google has access to almost limitless amounts of information form all our searches and clicks and that it is aggregated somewhere and can be put to a multitude of uses. This particular feature is called Google Flu Trends and uses the search data that we all (or rather so far just the americans) contribute to provide an accurate picture of flu activity across the population.
Turns out that when the flu is arond people make flu-related searches on Google (surprise, surprise!), and that aggregating this data provides a more accurate and up-to-date picture of a flu epidemic than U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data. They even published their results in Nature - now, that’s what I call distributed cognition!
What happens when you wear your researcher-hat while watching YouTube videos
Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009 | e-learning, education, learning, reflection | No Comments
Once in a while it happens that I find some animation on the web that’s actually relevant to my work. Yes, it does happen - rarely. Well, this is one of those instances and this little cartoon rings many bells and raises many questions about children and computers.I hope you’ve got enough steam to read my thoughts once you’ve watched it.
This little movie raises a number of interesting questions. Firstly, how much of a ‘buddy’ does a laptop become? Here it’s given a human form and a very real presence. While this is obviously a work of fiction it’s maybe not so far off reality where we do become somewhat emotionally attached to our gadgets. (Anybody feels uncomfortable to leave home without the laptop? (I do) Anybody a bit sad to turn off your old phone for the last time having replaced it with a new one? (I did)) Even in it’s boxy state it’s a ‘buddy’. Imagine the attachment once we’ve populated the machine with an ‘intelligent agent’ - this work is being done now and although it might take a few years yet, it’s certainly not a fantasy. (And I’m talking about something more complex and less irritating than the paperclip!)
That raises another question: if the computer is a ‘buddy’, to what extent can it be seen as Vygotsky’s ‘more knowledgeable peer’ rather than just a tool for operating on information? Can ‘loving your computer’ lead to learning? Currently, I’d say it’s unlikely. I love my computer. Even though I don’t imbue it with human qualities (at least not enough to talk to in hushed tones in the library), I definitely and perhaps excessively love my computer. Still, ‘I operate it’ rather than ‘we operate together’. It is to me still a machine which provides me a window upon content created by other humans - a window which I choose to point in various directions.
But this line is shifting: take Stumbleupon. How do you think I found this animation? I didn’t search for it. A community of ‘taggers’ and ’stumblers’ enabled by the internet thew the video my way when I pressed that faithful (and oh so time consuming) Stumble button. Having watched the video it made me wonder, reflect and write this blog post. Now, how is that not a ‘more knowledgeable peer’?
The computer is also presented in the cartoon as an extender of the child’s capabilities - in the sense of ‘distributed cognition‘. In that sense it’s a tool, just as a piece of paper where you can write a memo to yourself - it remembers and displays.
Finally I put myself in the shoes of the principal. Is it right to take the computer away from the kid? Or is there some way to reconcile World of Warcraft with maths? I believe there must be and I don’t think prohibition is the way. Yesterday we talked to some parents at a PTA meeting, some of whom had taken quite a radican stance on regulating computers. At the same time these very parents were aware that this tactic might backfire and cause their children to be obsessed with the machines. Surely the balance must lay elsewhere than in severe restriction of access to computers, but rather in negotiating a reasonable position that the child can agree with and in support of the development of the child’s capabilities to regulate their own use.
There you have it. - As spoken by someone without kids.
Putting things in perspective
Sunday, February 15th, 2009 | leisure | No Comments
It is often good for troubles to be put in perspective. I’ve so far been lucky enough that most of mine have been bumps small enough to be all but obliterated by the weight of just a little perspective. I came upon a short animation that I find quite humbling, since it does that to the entire human civilization. That, with a healthy pinch of humour… and lichen. Enjoy!
Fun in the snow 2
Thursday, February 12th, 2009 | leisure, photography | No Comments
Four pictures in one post are too many, I’ve decided, and split this post into two parts.
… On the quieter times of our little outing - and also where I was actually the one holding the camera, this is what came out (yes, I DID make some fun people sledding down small bumps shots as well). The first piccie of the snowy meadow was my attempt to play with the RAW format in Adobe camera RAW. I love the way you can manipulate the photos almost indefinitely doing no damage at all to the actual image - and the fantastic effects you can achieve doing it.
The second picture of the boats on the canal is another of my attempts at HDR - I’m quite happy with this one. Again, having a camera that actaully has auto bracketing helps immensely by eliminating the need to fiddle about with controld when what you’re supposed ot be doing, is keeping your camera absolutely still. This one was even taken without a tripod - although I did have something to lean the camera against.
Well, this is the photographic fun for this round - I’ll have to go do some more shooting soon.
P.S. a word of warning - or rather regret: the pictures don’t come out very well on most browsers it seems - I’m much more happier looking at them in my photoshop and preview rather than in the web.
Fun in the snow
Thursday, February 12th, 2009 | leisure, photography | No Comments
Firstly, thanks to Joe for lending me his old SLR! It’s so much more fun to have a real camera - there’s just something about having something solid in your hand, where absolutely everything is adjustable - it just invites you to explore the possibilities. The possibilities explored on our (the camera’s and mine) little outing were not all that many - but we sure had fun together (well, my friends who were participating in the outing were included in the fun).
..And Rachel said: I dare you to take your shoes off. And I replied (with about 0.3 seconds delay): sure! (knowing full well that she’d have to do it too if I did it). And so it came about that I was running in the snow in my bare feet and having considerable fun - and Rachel was perhaps slightly regretting her dare - but putting on a brave face. I turned out to have the most frost-resistant feet of the two of us. 
Uniclock
Saturday, January 31st, 2009 | leisure | No Comments
This is probably one of the most fantastic pieces of advertising that I’ve seen: the uniclock. Advertising woolly jumpers by the Japanese clothing company Uniqlo, it’s uplifting - especially if you’re a bit of a fan of modern dance - and ALMOST makes me want to by a pair of gloves. Almost.
It’s really quite addictive as well - I find myself having the music running in the background to whatever I’m doing and then once in a while switching over to look at the dancers and just stare at the clock for a disproportionately long stretch of time. So beware!
(N.B. It can take a while to load - detracting from the strength of the advert, no doubt - so give it some time.)