electric dreams

The new bike is a little odd , Not quite what I expected You can't just scoot off at the speed of a geriatric snail , and it doesn't really propel you up a hill of any camber , however it does make cycling a pleasure as even going up quite steep hills it feels as if you are on the flat , I have successfully negotiated a hill ,without getting out of breath which for the last 20 years has left me needing resuscitation half way up . I think I am a fan of electric bikes ( but I would still prefer a 650 cc Norton ) . Retirement is still odd I find myself talking to the dog a lot

gone electric

Hi Back again , after getting rid of the bike I felt a little deprived , but ive gone electric, ive bought an electric bike .15 miles an hour downhill with a following wind . its fun but not on a day like today

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!!!