E-learning links
What’s happening with Moodle at the moment?
- Moodle vs Blackboard/WebCT
- Â In the Mood for Moodle – an intro to Moodle (pdf)
- Moodle in Schools – An article from the UK
Creativity and Education
How to make navigation interesting
What not to do when teleconferencing
Easter
Friendship and community
All of us in community – and especially, perhaps the people with responsibility – can carry a load of frustration which cannot always be expressed in a group without endangering the community itself. The more sensitive we are, the more we are weighed down by those feelings of frustration, anger, anxiety, incompetence, sadness, and apathy. We have a tremendous need to pour all of this out to someone in whom we feel secure. We may need to say how much we detest someone who challenges us, without being accused of a ‘lack of charity’. We may need this outlet for our emotions if we are to refind peace. But the person who becomes our ‘dustbin’ has to have the wisdom to collect all this without getting worked up about it, without trying to set everything right and without either judging or enjoying it; nor should they encourage bad feeling.
Jean Varnier, ‘Community and Growth’, p.142.
Friendship
A Time to Talk
by: Robert Frost
When a friend calls to me from the road
And slows his horse to a meaning walk,
I don’t stand still and look around
On all the hills I haven’t hoed,
And shout from where I am, What is it?
No, not as there is a time to talk.
I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground,
Blade-end up and five feet tall,
And plod: I go up to the stone wall
For a friendly visit.
Giving a speech – tip
If your speech needs to be prefaced by an apology…
don’t give it. (seth)
The future from 1967
Clip from the 1967 film 1999 A.D. in which we see the family of the future shopping, paying bills and using electronic mail from home.
Just joking
Did you know that the ability to understand a joke is one of the signs of being human.
This is why humor, in a way, is a sort of Turing test for humans. One of the surest ways to figure out that someone comes from a totally different background, culture, generation, whatever, is to make a joke … and then realize they’re staring at you with a completely blank expression.
The article talked about the difficulty programmers have making a computer understand humour. One group have developed an AI program that understands knock knock jokes. But, these are the simplest jokes there are. And even that sounded like a mammoth project.
So perhaps to redefine Descartes,
“I laugh, therefore I am human.”