I see the Centre as a physical tipping point in my own thinking about and practice in educational technology.

I like the idea of being InSPIRED and hope to spend much of my nomadic time at the University in the Centre.

The Hiperwall there is just one of the many tools for engagement and connection.

The imminent opening of the Centre has encouraged me to think about the ethos that underpins connected and emerging communities.

Thanks to a link from Stephen Downes to a MediaShift Idea Lab post by Jonathan Stray about visualising documents, I discovered a 2009 post by Dan Schultz that helped me clarify my thoughts.

I have written about reciprocal altruism in this blog and I have been exploring the invisibility of openness. Dan’s post was an excellent catalyst for my thinking. His post is titled In Search of a Community That Takes ‘Me’ Out of Social Media.

He concludes that:

Community tools exist, but they are drastically underpowered… As a result, they are drowned out by the far more successful alternatives… To change this, we need something that can:

1. Host niche communities without isolating them from the rest of the world.
2. Give individuals a chance to shine without letting their egos dominate the content.
3. Attract enough people to drive collective intelligence, while maintaining the level of granularity needed to provide a truly personalized experience.

That isn’t too much to ask for… right? I personally believe that these systems will be the key to meeting community information needs.

I think we will have an opportunity to address these issues in and through the InSPIRE Centre. The Centre:

is a learning commons, a place to imagine, experiment and design new ways of working and learning digitally. INSPIRE services highlight quality teaching and contemporary learning practices through staying connected to global initiatives and trends about learning design and design thinking. We focus on a futures perspective and developing foresight, not just knowledge and skills.

I am hopeful that my visits to the Centre will help me explore learning ethnographies of the emergence of inspirational practice.

Creative geniuses are geniuses because they know “how” to think, instead of “what” to think. Sociologist Harriet Zuckerman published an interesting study of the Nobel Prize winners who were living in the United States in 1977. She discovered that six of Enrico Fermi’s students won the prize. Ernst Lawrence and Niels Bohr each had four. J. J. Thompson and Ernest Rutherford between them trained seventeen Nobel laureates. This was no accident. It is obvious that these Nobel laureates were not only creative in their own right, but were also able to teach others how to think creatively.

In his post Michael identifies eight strategies “that are common to the thinking styles of creative geniuses in science, art and industry throughout history.” Geniuses:

• LOOK AT PROBLEMS IN MANY DIFFERENT WAYS
• MAKE THEIR THOUGHTS VISIBLE
• PRODUCE
• MAKE NOVEL COMBINATIONS
• FORCE RELATIONSHIPS
• THINK IN OPPOSITES
• THINK METAPHORICALLY
• PREPARE THEMSELVES FOR CHANCE

Photo Credit

Horizon Glow & the Conjunction

By coincidence I was think about some correspondence with a PhD student about authentic leadership.

Serendipity brought me news of a series of CPA interviews with Neil Armstrong.

Alex Malley, the CEO of CPA, interviewed Neil Armstrong and observed that:

Look he’s got an extraordinary humility, there’s no question about that and when you look at what they were able to do in ’69 in relation to the journey they went on; these are things we just haven’t seen for a long time.

His capability to constantly talk about team; to have shown the world something that was beyond their mind and just getting the balance right between initiative and entrepreneurship and risk management, whereas these days we seem to be telling each other we can’t do things because of the risk and yet they did that literally on a wing and a prayer.

What is special about the four interviews with Neil Armstrong is that they offer a rare insight into his thinking.

He does not do a lot of interviews so I believe these are outstanding resources with which to contemplate leadership, risk and humility.

Driving home in the twilight did not seem so arduous on Thursday particularly after I heard Neil Armstrong say of the lunar landing:

Then the computer showed us where it intended to land and it was a very bad location, it was on the side of a large crater about – I suppose 100 or 150 metres in diameter. So I took over manually and flew it like a helicopter out to the west direction; got into a smoother area with not so many rocks, found a level area and was able to get it down there safely before we ran out of fuel.

Photo Credit

Neil Armstrong

The title of his thesis is:

The Role of the Internet and Online Technologies in Destination Choice for Australian Cycle Tourists.

This is the third PhD to be submitted for examination since the establishment of the National Institute of Sport Studies at the University of Canberra.

It is the first thesis to emerge from a cross faculty collaboration. Dennis is registered for study with the Faculty of Business, Government and Law. I have been his primary supervisor from NISS in the Faculty of Health.

Some of Dennis’s findings about cycle tourists:

• They are very active in their use of online technology to explore their options for cycling away from their home base.
•  They seek general information about accommodation and natural attractions at a location, albeit with some cycling specific aspects in view, such as cycle friendly accommodation and cycle friendly routes to attractions.
• Transportation options to reach a destination were identified as important, but with options that allow them to take their own bicycles with them.
• Information about  cycling related facilities is important to this group, as is information about cycling events, specifically from a participant’s viewpoint.
• Information about organised cycling tours was seen as important to many in this group.
• Bicycle hire (especially overseas) and access to drinking water were identified as important information items and the weather forecasts are more important to cyclists than to many other tourists who have options to avoid bad weather.
• Age is not a barrier to the use of technology, and in many respects those that are not time poor (older/retired) are just as active online as their younger counterparts.

Overall, Dennis points out that:

The standout feature of this research in regards to cycle tourism is that road safety for cyclists came through as the most significant aspect of cycling away from the home region. Information related to safe routes for cycling was paramount in the needs of this group, and this has significant implications for cycling specific maps both hard copy and online.

Immediately after handing in his thesis for examination, Dennis packed his bags to present a a paper on his work at the Velo City Conference in Vancouver.

The story indicates that:

• England’s friendly against Belgium at Wembley on 2 June will be used to test the Hawk-Eye goal-line technology system.
• Independent testers from the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology and representatives from FIFA will monitor the system.
• It will not be available for use by the match officials on 2 June.
• The Hawk-Eye system was tested in a English minor league cup final between Eastleigh and AFC Totton in April.
• An alternative system, GoalRef, has undergone trials at two Danish league matches this month.
• The International Football Association Board will consider reports from these trials to consider the introduction of goal-line technology at its special meeting in July.

Photo Credit

Goal!

We were exploring how to develop a Wikiversity resource to support continuing professional development.

I feel more comfortable each time I use Wikiversity but I have lots to learn. I am hoping that this project will help me do so.

James Neill is helping with the back office part of this project and the whole idea is the brainchild of Holly Northam.

I am hopeful that this project will have the energy exuded by Ian Miller in his blogging.

Ian aims with his eclectic mix of reflections, tutorials and articles to:

educate, to stimulate some introspection, to inform and amuse. More importantly, they are offered in the hope that they might be used as a jumping off point to inspire other nurses to think about their own practice, to explore the latest research, best practice guidelines, and to search out and deepen their knowledge, improving the quality of care they deliver.

• Locate an existing professional portfolio relevant to you and deconstruct by identifying and extracting key concepts and features.
• Plan your own professional portfolio by integrating and organising the key concepts and features you have identified, as well as any other concepts and features you wish to integrate.
• Identify the range and types of tools available for portfolio implementation and choose one that suits your needs.
• Begin construction of your own professional portfolio.
• Identify good practices for application in your own eportfolio teaching strategies.

The workshop is taking place as the InSPIRE Centre is completing preparations for a grand opening next Monday. These preparations include the installation of a Hiperwall.

RT @INSPIREDU2:

The awesome @Hiperwall coming to INSPIRE soon … just ask @munnerley@rfitzgerald

The workshop comes at the end of a semester when 70 students on the #SCP12 unit have developed their own eportfolios.

Their collective efforts have been curated on a Wikiversity page.

She was being interviewed by Natasha Mitchell in Melbourne, I was driving to Canberra.

It was a fascinating discussion about personal change and neural plasticity.

I was particularly interested in the personalisation central to Barbara’s work and the role cognitive exercises play in the transformation of behaviour.

Her program is based on the philosophy that it is possible to treat learning disabilities by identifying and strengthening cognitive capacities. The program involves intensive and graduated cognitive exercises that are designed to strengthen the underlying weak cognitive capacities that are the source of the learning disabilities. Each student’s program is based on a careful assessment to identify the specific learning difficulties.

I listened to Barbara’s discussion of the seminal impact of the neuropsychologist, Alexander Luria on her thinking. After hearing of her admiration of his work I realised I must read about him too … and Mark Rosenzweig.

The interview was a reminder to me that as I explore transformative pedagogy I must extend my reading to areas I rarely visit. Perhaps this is my first cognitive exercise!

Photo Credit

The Night Before, setting Up for the Cognitive Cities Conference

He was talking about the social determinants of health.

In part of his conversation he discussed social status, well being and disease risk. I was intrigued by his mention of a study of macaques.

Jenny Tung and her colleagues propose that social environment is associated with gene regulatory variation in the rhesus macaque immune system.

They point out that:

• In humans and other primates, adverse social environments often translate into lasting physiological costs.
• Dominance rank results in a widespread, yet plastic, imprint on gene regulation, such that peripheral blood mononuclear cell gene expression data alone predict social status with 80% accuracy.
• These results illuminate the importance of the molecular response to social conditions, particularly in the immune system, and demonstrate a key role for gene regulation in linking the social environment to individual physiology.

In the introduction to their paper they note:

Social status in nonhuman primates is encoded by dominance rank, which defines which individuals yield to other individuals during competitive encounters. In settings in which hierarchies are strongly enforced or subordinates have little social support, low dominance rank can lead to chronic stress, immune compromise, and reproductive dysregulation.

On reading the paper I started to think about the way status is established in sport performance environments. I am now wondering what arrangements should be made to induct athletes into any performance context and to monitor their long term well being, particularly those who move from team to team.

Jenny Tung and her colleagues point out that:

Our results reinforce the idea that sensitivity to the social environment is reflected in changes in gene expression in the immune system, supporting an increasingly widely recognized link between neural, endocrine, and immune function. Moreover, our results demonstrate that these associations also appear to be highly plastic. Not only were gene expression data sufficient to robustly predict relative dominance rank but gene expression profiles also tracked dominance rank shifts closely enough to allow us to predict different rank positions for the same individuals across time. These observations indicate that any causal relationship between dominance rank and gene regulation likely begins with rank, rather than vice versa.

This paper reinforces my thoughts about the support needed for the personal journey of athletes and has refocussed my consideration about the post-athlete career part of their lives.

Photo Credit

Crowds

I was particularly aware of it being a family occasion this Saturday.

My early morning read, thanks to my wife Sue’s find, was a story in The Guardian about Parent Gym.

In his post, Robert Booth pointed out that:

Parent Gym is one of 15 organisations that will deliver the lessons for mums and dads as part of a trial which is expected to reach over 50,000 parents. Others include Barnardo’s, Save the Children and the National Childbirth Trust.

He concluded his post with this observation:

A recent study led by the National University of Ireland involving academics from England and Wales examined the impact of parental training on 636 people involving children aged from three to 12. It concluded “group-based parenting programmes improve childhood behaviour problems and the development of positive parenting skills in the short-term, whilst also reducing parental anxiety, stress and depression”. The cost of around £1,700 per family was “modest when compared with the long-term social, educational and legal costs associated with childhood conduct problems”.

This post became a topic of conversation at Dojos.

It was a beautiful morning. Some people were sitting in the sun shooting the breeze:

Bronwyn and Helen were selling vegetables:

supporting shopping experience

and offering a tutorial on QR Codes!

I wondered if Saturday at Dojo’s could be a great example for the Parent Gym. There is socialising … and socialisation.

Young children play, people sit and chat whilst observing this play.

I think there is something magical about this and I often equate Dojo’s Lane with Diagon Alley.

Today there was an even stronger synergy. The Parent Gym founder is Octavius Black … a Harry Potter type name if ever I heard one.