Not been on for some time , The bike is about to be consigned to history , much as I would like to be a 63 year old biker , it isn't going to happen , Still I have had fun tinkering , and I know its going to a good home . I tried to get an associate lecture post with the OU but they didn't get back to me , Ill try again next term just really to keep the academic side of my brain alive . Gardening is fine and for the first time ever I have the time to plan , and plant when things should be planted ,not six months after , Photography is interesting and I am getting to grips with the photo editing prog I am using . I have started botanical painting classes , I have painted for some years , mainly acrylics but I am finding the discipline needed for botanical painting quite hard , especially as it is in watercolour . The main thing I miss about work are the coffee break conversations , when all sorts of topics were discussed and the academic challenges offered by the expansion of open and distance learning . now I appear to have just myself to teach and its not the same , My grandson got mugged the other day in broad daylight , on a main road at half past three . Lots of people were around but no one helped and no one saw anything . Whats wrong with this town six blokes demanding money with menaces from two 18 year olds , and no one saw anything !!. I am a person of peace but there are times when I feel that the advice you get to not fight just makes it easier for the gangs . I am now facebooked as well as twittered , trouble is I am not doing much that is exciting to talk about . I need to find some academic challenge I might try writing a book about my nursing career "Mr Sister " springs to mind

Interesting couple of weeks, I decided to change to cable broad band , but on the installation day the company decided that they couldn't actually reach the house with the cable, so I had two weeks without e-mail or Internet access, It was like loosing one of my senses. I eventually purchased a mobile broadband in sheer desperation , slow aren't they? Still it did the trick .Interesting piece on the news this morning about the fact that students who are supported by teaching assistants do not do as well as those supported by teachers , and its not because teachers are trained to do the job, its because they don't know how to use teaching assistants . Don't get me wrong I am not against teaching assistants I know very good and able teaching assistants and I have known some pretty dire teachers . But as a lecturer myself I know from my own experiences that training alerts you to tools and techniques that however naturally good at teaching(or otherwise) you are you would never think of . I am going into "old fart " mode now , Why is it in this country we train doctors ,nurses , teachers to do a job , Then decide that things that they are not prepared for (usually burgeoning paperwork) is more important, and get someone else (not trained ) to do the job that the professionals have spent years training for .You don't get assistant gas certifiers they had to be corgi certified ( sorry I cant remember the new certification) As a nurse teacher we were enjoined to providing a level of education that would satisfy public confidence ,however the actual care was unlikely to be provided by the person we were training , odd isn't it ? I have a theory about organisations , they start as a group of individuals who have a common cause or aim, then they develop a bureaucracy to further the aim , then the function of the organisation insidiously becomes the continuation of the bureaucratic organisation and the original aims become lost and the forms and functions of the organisation become the most important things. just pick any organisation and have a look .

learning society

in a discussion the other day with one of my school age grandchildren,they intimated that it wasn't seen as being one of the boys to be academically inclined ; nothing new really , the footballers and the sportsmen got all the adoration from other students and i am afraid, staff ,even when I was at school , However combined with the report that boys are constantly doing less well than girls,(Atkinson A , Wilson D, (2003)The widening gap in English schools" www.bris.ac.uk/cmpo/mpoissue8.pdf ,) this achieves a greater significance.Bandura rightly in my opinion emphasises the importance of social learning in the development of an individual and their capability for learning . However if the prevailing social ethos (of the students perceived 'most important ' societal interactions) are against academic achievement then the student unless on the fringe of the society , or a significantly strong willed individual will avoid academia . The "geeks" are probably on the fringe of the society before they become geeks not the other way round. Developing an interest in academia may well be a way of coping with not being part of the" in " society . I actually hate the word geek being more than a bit geek myself . If this is true then it is the society of learning that we need to consider. A television report yesterday, intimated that the division between boys and girls started in the primary school ,. However one wonders how much of this separation is a self fulfilling prophecy ? Will society be able to value academic development , are there any cerebral heroes on television apart from Sherlock Holmes and the Mentalist , and the day an academic gets paid the same for a lecture as David Beckham does for a game society will probably collapse out of sheer sup rise . However learning is not completely lost the growth and uptake of web 2 sites and the leisure learning activities available, show that people still wish to develop themselves but perhaps not in a traditional academic matter , is that food for thought ?

"you percieve with your mind"

Nicking a line out of the gorillaz song. "You don't see with your eyes , you perceive with your mind" and a later line "its all in your head " . Tim Leary and others used hallucinogenics to widen their perception . Shamen have been using various vegetable products to do the same thing for years . My question is, that If as I believe perception is very individual , How do we work as a society ? Even communication is in doubt . This can be seen very clearly in one type of dysphasia where the words you speak are perceived by the patient as being different words. The brain is interpreting the physical signals in a different way . We achieve a consensus agreement in society through social leaning , conditioning . and constructivist learning about the meanings of stimuli that are necessary for the functioning of a particular society . They are almost agreed metaphors rather than meanings.As Susan Sontag(Illness as a Metaphor (1978) explains some illnesses are perceived , i:e have metaphors that are stronger and have more impact on the individual, and society than their physical symptoms : are perceived as being more or less important than the physical symptoms would suggest . So is this true about many other aspects of our lives , of course it is ask an arachnophobic about the importance of the spider metaphors to them . Perhaps what Leary and the shamen are doing is removing the brain from this agreed consensus . Some mental health issues have been described as socially constructed , perhaps this is another example of a mind that refuses to join the consensus club . I believe that Einstein was criticised as a poor student probably because he did not perceive things in a consensus way . This raises problems for traditional type education if the consensus parameters are set , then anyone moving out of those parameters is mad , bad , or confused . We don't value challenges to the group consensus as they will affect the structures that support our own perception and make us challenge our social and individual learning which contribute to our perceptions . Perhaps the only way foreward for society is the constructivist pathway ?

thunder

did anyone hear the thunder and lightening last night , It reminded me of when i was about 10-11 I used to go fishing on the great Ouse river and several times have sat on one bank in the dry and watched a raging thunderstorm going on on the other bank . The storms used to follow the river as if there was an invisible barrier .On the same note there was a programme on television earlier in the week which was exploring the east cost floods in 53 or 4 I remember being taken by my father down to the inland bank of the river and seeing nothing but an expanse of water on the other side ,where there should have been fields . Later that year we went to Hunstanton by train ,( pre Beeching days when we still had an effective rail system ) and all the caravans which should have been on the seaward side of the line were piled up as wreckage an the landward side .
Its My blog, so I can expand my theories, which I am about to do , Being a fenman I believe that the answer to flooding lies in the creation of more salt marsh wetlands , From my own observation as a child and since; reed beds and shallow water breaks up the power of the waves, and rather than eroding areas, the waves deposit particles in suspension . Look a at Castle Rising in Norfolk , Once close enough to a salt marsh to have a water gate, now some 5 miles from the sea. wildlife breed in wetlands and I'm sure if it was investigated reed beds could be harvested and turned into a renewable energy resource , fish farming is a possibility although the provision of shallow estuary type spawning beds could increase our own fish stocks , and reed beds mussel beds and sunlight are quite good at dealing with pollution. This is quite apart from the pleasure this environment gives to sailors ,fishermen,and others . Quite of the top of my head , and I don't know the answer , or even if it is a silly comment , but wouldn't more wetlands act as a heat sink and help compensate for global warming and the biomass of the reeds and the wetland trees would certainly process some of the CO2 . We need to learn to cope with climate change in a way that is not just coping but looking at what we need to do to maintain a standard of life that is acceptable . Rant over!!!

Retirement has become a reality , for almost the first time in my life I am rally bored , Not frustrated at too much to do in to little time , which I had mistaken for boredom. However I wont comment on boredom just yet I think I will savour what is for now a new experience , and see if I like it . I never realised that day time television is such a collection of hoary old repeats . with a few gems shining through . I have to admit I have become an instant fan of loose women as for the rest my television viewing has actually gone down . Radio 4 has some good bits , once they get over their current obsession with finance . Its odd for the first time I only need to interact with the bits of the outside world I want to . I am actually finding the absence of transport more of a problem now I am retired than when I was working , when I quite happily used public transport , funny that . I am finding that I am putting things off because I have plenty of time . whereas when I had little time I got them done , "Strange" Attitudes from my family have differed as well, Its as if by retiring I have aged 15 years in a day I suddenly need advice and looking after , and being told what I should attempt and not attempt . This is odd because I am actually quite fit , and no one suggested otherwise before I retired . and the attitudes of public servants especially those in the council administration is amazing , talk about patronising once they find out you have retired .I think my Victor Meldrew is coming out .

bikes

Not really about learning , I was looking at my bike today , I have a venerable jawa with a side car . I rode motor bikes up to the late 1980s .When a crash led to me being unable to afford another one until i bought the aforementioned Jawa at a barn sale . Unfortunately I never took a test because at that time you could ride indefinitely on L plates if the bike was below 250 cc . I wish I had taken it then because believe me its a lot more complicated now . I am going for a combo as I am also older and need three rather than two wheels , and don't worry all the people who wish to tell me how bad combos are Ive had two before , yes on an L plate life was simpler then . I am trying to add an image of the bike but blogger doesn't seem to want me to. Is it harder to learn as you get older or is it harder to learn several things ? I don't seem to be finding the theory test too hard although I haven't taken the real thing yet . is it a case of use it or loose it ? I can set up, programme, and to some extent troubleshoot computers ,small networks and IT functions , yet am just about literate with a mobile phone . Is this evidence of" just in time learning"? I think so because my calender ,scheduling and notes were all on my laptop and /or palmtop. I didn't need to use my phone for anything except calls,so never assimilated the other uses . I was probably too lazy to move the instructions to long term memory . Is this one of the problems with just in time learning ,that by restricting learning to what you need, you are also restricting to some degree your awareness of other possibilities and other opportunities? The same could be said about just in case learning , for instance one of the reasons I bought a jawa is I know about their foibles and have quite a large amount of" just in case knowledge" of the specis ( yes and I still bought one ) but were my options limited because of my previous learning ? I know the photo is 2006 but I have been restoring it since.

musings on worth

I was watching television again and several items awakened my interest on perception .This time it was how human beings perceive worth . three areas really , number one was a discussion on antiques road show about a piece of glassware , the discussion was around
if it could be attributed to a specific maker , in which case it was worth several thousand pounds more than if it couldn't . What then was the intrinsic value of the object ? Tom Keating asserted on his death bed that there were several of his paintings displayed in museums as works of the old masters .My feeling is that if they are unable to be distinguished from the original , then they are as intrinsically as valuable as the original especially as many of them were not copies but were "in the style of" .Later on a footballer was discussing his ( to my mind) somewhat obscene amount of money he got per game whilst as the evening progressed a newly qualified nurse was talking about leaving the profession as the stress involved was not compensated for by the wages . I once ran an intensive care unit and at that time I was the lowest paid of three of my friends , one lorry driver , one trainee footballer , and a club entertainer . I would not hesitate to admit that the situation has changed and present wages are much better , but the perception of worth is still an important factor. The third area was about food ,one of the cookery shows was extolling the virtues of belly of pork.I grew up in a farm working family , and my father always maintained that the only part of the pig you couldn't eat was the squeak , belly of pork was cheap tasted good , and provided lots of calories .Ideal for a farm workers family . It definitely was not trendy . However now it appears it is and the price has risen accordingly , So is it the endorsement by some TV chef or is there a real change in perception taking place ? Especially as the food in question although undeniably tasty, would seem to go against the lean and keen ethos of today . a fourthbut somewhat risky example does occur to me , benefit fraud is as we are told punishable by having a criminal record , but alowances fraud (oh yes, to my mind just as fraudulent and more criminal as many of the benefit fraudsters have very little , but i know of very few poor MPs ) does not .Fraud is fraud the difference must be in the perception of the act

more thoughts

Odd how when you think you have lots of spare time, life expands to fill it . We are having our loft insulated and there is 30 years of junk ( sorry !treasures! ) up there . No-one wanted it when it was up the loft, but its interesting to see how much is needed now I want to bin it . I took the dog for a walk today and saw a five spot Burnett moth . They used to be very common on a patch of waste ground which was covered with thistles . but disappeared when it was built on , its nice to see one back even if they are loaded with poison . The dog did try to eat it, as it does with most things but I dissuaded it . It tried to eat a bee yesterday and walked around with a fat lip, as the bee objected. but it still tried to eat another one today . She will try most things in the hope they are edible. and so far the only thing she will not have a go at is orange peel .Oranges are OK she will eat them but not the peel. We found some of my old nursing notes from when I was a student in the 60s , strange how much that we thought was gospel, was wrong , anyone remember preventing skin breakdown by vigourous rubbing with soap and then rubbing with spirit? Two ways of removing oils from the skin . but our patients (the word clients hadnt been invented ) didnt break down because the ritual of "the backs " involved strict two hour turns and inspection of the pressure areas. ritual does have its place some time . I was discussing just in case and just in time learning witha coplleague and cant help feeling that we are missing something important here . There should be a third category "just about" I have allways held that education is about allowing people to use their mind . Just in time is learning that is needed for application to the business or process you are engaged in , just in case is a business you may be engaged in but what about learning that allows you as a human being to develop and explore your environment and expand your perception ,( Im not talking Timothy Leary here) just learning .If you teach people to think they will challenge, they will explore, and they probably will reject concepts you as the teacher hold dear; but is that such a bad thing as Dylan says "the times they are achanging"

First Thoughts

First post in my new blog , Getting to grips with being retired after having worked since I was 15 , Great having the time to do all the things I need and to explore all the "I wonders".But a bit worrying having to organise direction and structure rather than having it imposed by the needs of work . I wonder if my changed perception of life will affect a lifelong need to learn , I hope not . The availability of life long learning has been enhance by the use of IT , I hope to re-learn German on live mocha the web 2 site and later perhaps Hindi . I don't know why people say you cant spend all the time on the garden . I spent all day yesterday weeding, and after a nights rain you can't see where I've been .That's a thought, a database of weeds, their uses ,and Achilles heels; accessed as a podcast and downloaded to mobile media. So when you see the little swine you can find out if they are useful and how to deal with them on the spot .