robyn jay

For the second year running we have enjoyed Maria’s gorgeous Portugese Tarts over at Dot’s tree-trimming so this year, armed with my iPhone and Evernote, I sat with her as she walked me through the process.

Now to find time to give them a go!

Maria makes the custard mix and then leaves it covered in the fridge for up to a week, cooking the tarts in batches as needed…

In a saucepan dissolve 500g of caster sugar and half a litre of water. Simmer 10 minutes.

While the sugar syrup is simmering, whisk 10 egg yolks and 2 whole eggs.

Remove enough milk from one litre to mix 100g of cornflour to a paste.

Mix the remaining milk with the beaten eggs, and then add the cornflour mix.

Pour the sugar syrup onto the eggs/milk, mix and then pour back into the saucepan.

Cook the custard as usual and refrigerate until needed.

To make the tarts, cut a sheet of puff pastry into rounds using a glass or cutter and line a muffin tin tray so the pastry extends up the sides.

Bake in a moderate over until quite dark and caramelised.

CC FlickR image by xmascarol

Alex Hayes asked for a list of what I’m reading. I have to say it has not been a big reading year for me but here’s a couple I can certainly recommend:

Cognitive Surplus – Clay Shirky

The Element - Ken Robinson

I have, however, a rather large pile awaiting my 2011 change of direction.

So here’s my as yet unread bookshelf of non-fiction (somewhat work related) :

The future of ideas – Lawrence Lessig

The wealth of networks – Yochai Benkler

Leadership for the disillusioned – Amanda Sinclair

The new influencers – Paul Gillin

Made to stick – Chip Heath & Dan Heath

What do you do for a living? – Stephen Johnston

What is your dangerous idea? – J Brockman (ed)

What makes us tick? – Hugh Mackay

What’s mine is yours – R Botsman & R Rogers

Multipliers – Liz Wiseman

Drive – Daniel Pink

Socialnomics – Eric Qualman

The power of pull -  J Hagel et al

Digital Habitats – Etienne Wenger et al

The brain that changes itself – Norman Doidge

What I find interesting is the underpinning themes and how they differ to Alex’s list over here.

Same field; different directions

CC FLickR image by lanier67

This post is in response to Alex Hayes’ request for comments regarding his post over on Posterous. It’s an important debate that needs to be spread more widely so I’m repeating here in the hope it will gain some broader readership.

Alex, I’m speaking frankly and openly here as a critical friend, and hopefully to drive the debate forward . Thankfully I did have a posterous account as I would otherwise not have commented at all via the twitter and facebook login options – a tad ironic under the circumstances I think. I guess what concerns me most about your post and current state of mind is the ‘cup half empty’ lens. IMHO it’s about sensible high level policy, being informed, having the required literacy skills, and having and exercising choice.

As a company promoting a particular technology it naturally IS job to provide full and detailed information about what that technology can and cannot do, and the known inherent risks. As such, with educational clientele,  it would be pointless to offer any technology that was at odds with core educational principles (ie wellbeing of learners). It is, therefore, good to alert those customers and to facilitate debate.

People are buying POV cameras because they make the videoing that they’ve been doing since 8mm days more convenient. What has potential (as opposed to being a threat) are advancements in bandwidth that allow that content to be sent handled electronically. How it’s sent and where it’s stored and the systems that that content interacts with OF COURSE must be considered and evaluated. I don’t doubt that technologies exist that have the potential to capture more than a ‘rich media clip that shows a skill’ but to paint this as something ‘sinister’ and impending sounds a little paranoid. Risks and potential misuse exists with almost ANY technology; gaming is a good example.

Of course there are negatives around broadcasting your location and exposing your activities and habits etc. We all must be informed, learners must have choice, educators have a duty of care. Again it comes back to contemporary and ever-evolving literacy skills. All choices must be made intelligently but I don’t believe that that choice will not remain.

Educational institutions, armed with that information and skilled/professional staff then choose products and methodologies to meet the needs of their learners and contexts.

To say that geolocation is one of the most influential forces in the VET sector is just a tad over ambitious at this point in time but indeed it has POTENTIAL.

It’s easy when something is a passion or focus to think that the world should also have the same urgent interest. Unfortunately there are also students for whom traditional (safe) text-based modes of communication has failed, trainers who stand and lecture at poor unsuspecting students, kids who live in such poor circumstances that they cannot attend to learning. We all have our interests and passions and together that builds the diverse and rich professional community of which we are a part. Multimodal L&T and the use of multimedia in education are truly WONDERFUL things. A scare campaign is not what is needed.

I agree that the majority of adults are very poor at critical reflection generally however if there is ‘little open discourse about the implications for pedagogy that this technology is set to unleash’ it is probably because a) people are too busy dealing with more pressing matters, b) there is little balanced information to debate at present and c) there is no evidence that this IS or will in the near future be an actual legitimate concern for people.

‘Insidious modes of digital employee compliance’ is a separate and wider issue. We must be aware and able to opt-in and out even if OUT means leaving an organisation. But to be honest it concerns me little that the employer of Mike and John the landscape gardeners are aware that they spent 2 hours relaxing in the shade under the trees of my local park instead of getting on with their list of jobs including my new garden.

So having said all that we DO need to be informed and I’ll look forward to any further information you provide us and we DO need to focus on the implications of what we implement for learners but we must do so with a positive mindset lest we go sit in a cave and scratch on the walls with sticks.

And as for Latitude, most of us turned that off months ago as a pain in the arse.

CC FlickR image by paloooza

I’ve been working on my eLearning10 session today; trawling through sites and tools and papers about FlickR in education and gathering my thoughts. For many years now it, along with social bookmarking, has been at the top of my list for ways to engage educators in the world of e-learning.

After all this time there is little that comes even near it in terms of functionality and it seems that even Blackboard and Moodle have recognised it’s benefits with both Bb9.1 and Moodle2.0 including search and mashup tools in their new in-built functionality. To be honest with increasing use, geolocation interest and 3rd party tools to supplement FlickR I can only see its usage growing further. Interestingly there are now over 1.6m creative commons images in FlickR available for use under various licenses; it makes my lowly 9,000 odd very trivial.

In my session I’ll be focusing broadly on FlickR’s potential uses but will look in particular at how it could be used to enable individual portfolios of work within courses. The presentation will be is now up in my slideshare account . My FlickR in Education guide is on my wiki and there’s also a list in Diigo that may be of interest. Here’s a start of a brainstorm of uses but I’ve love to hear more ideas if you have them.