I’m still on Venice at the moment, but Lake Garda is coming up shortly so stay tuned! You can look at the current progress, and watch out for the uploads in action here, on my Flickr page. Go on.

I’ve been playing around with the post-processing a bit in Lightroom, and I’m a bit undecided about whether I like the results or not. Previously, I’ve been doing everything in Photoshop, where I know what I’m doing and liked what photos looked like. But I got annoyed with making massive psd’s out of every image that I wanted to edit and considering Lightroom is supposed to be for exactly that type of thing, I’ve been trying to give it a go. Feel free to leave comments on the images at Flickr. I’ve no doubt that a few of them will get redone with a different look in the future, but for now, they’ll suffice.

One photo that I did have to do in Photoshop though, was this 360 panoramic from the top of the Campanile in St Mark’s Square. Purely accidental. I just ended up with a photo from all the angles looking out from the top and they blended together fairly well. It’s worth a closer look.

Plenty more on the way!

Related posts:

1. photos from Sicily
2. some more california photos
3. phillip toledano – days with my father

I’m still trying to catch up on stuff – like, I only just saw double rainbow guy, how out of the loop am I(?!) – and I’ve got tonnes of photos to sort through so it’s a slow reintroduction to normal life but I’m in no rush. (If you tried to contact me recently and heard nothing back, but are reading this for some reason, then feel free to contact me again. I’m not great at replying to emails etc at the best of times, let alone when I’ve not been near a computer for 3 weeks.)

Plenty of photos to come!

No related posts.

We went there back at the end of March on the ‘free National Trust’ weekend. Not that I knew it was going to be free, but it was a nice surprise when we got there. We also went to Kingston Lacy in Dorset the same weekend to make the most of the freebies.

Plenty more images on Flickr.

No related posts.

Back in January ’09, we took on 3 rescued battery hens in an attempt to give them some sort of nice life after spending their first year in horrific conditions. They were in a shocking state – feathers missing, broken beaks, couldn’t flap their wings – and we were told that they’d probably be lucky to last a year.

Nearly 18 months later, despite a couple of close shaves, we still had all Skye, Nigella & Sindy running around the garden, scratching up our plants, in fine condition – until about a month or so ago when Skye started being really lethargic and uninterested in food (if you have chickens – you’ll know that’s massively unusual!). A trip to the vet showed that she had some sort of growth in her stomach that wasn’t an egg and definitely shouldn’t have been there. We had the chance to put her to sleep back then but the day we went back to go through with it, she of course perked up massively and it felt wrong to take such a drastic action while she still seemed to have some life in her.

This past weekend though, after a few weeks of freely pecking around with the others and feasting on snails and worms as usual, she started to go downhill again really rapidly and it was obvious that she wasn’t a happy hen anymore. So yesterday, we took her back to the vets for the last time. It’s actually the first time I’ve ever had a pet put to sleep and it’s not something I’m looking forward to having to do again anytime soon. Horrible. But the vets were great about it, and it was all as dignified as a chicken could ever want.

I just wanted to take advantage of having my own blog to leave some sort of Skye memorial on the interweb, so this is it. I get that some people are like ‘oh it was just a chicken’ but she wasn’t. She was an awesome chicken – the leader of our little flock – and she’ll be missed. I’m just glad that she had over a year of a nice life which is more than most battery hens get.

R.I.P. Skye! I’m sure you’re being hand-fed grapes and worms in that big hen coop in the sky as I type this!

No related posts.

I’ll warn you now that if you’re into frisbeeing, you might not want to watch this, because it has the unfortunate side effect of making people think they’re not very good at it. It’s not our fault we’re so clearly brilliant. It’s like, the reason we’re not entering frisbee championships the world over is because we want to give other people a chance. We’re that good. Watch for youself.

For those of you of the technical persuasion, in case you’re wondering, it was filmed on a camera by all three of us and edited on a computer by Will.

Oh, and I’m sure you’ll have noticed, but at 11 seconds in, I’m so fresh.

No related posts.

Unfortunately, I’m not on it personally (that’s what I get for being sat at a computer for 18 hours of every day) but plenty of Matt-related things are. Like this bouncy castle.

I went on this pretty much every day during the summers of 1987-1997 (yes, I would’ve been far too old to be going on bouncy castles in ’97, but it’s true nonetheless).

So indulge me and allow me to take you on a mini tour of my formative years in Plymouth.. beginning with a creepy voyeuristic look into my old Primary School playgound.

Those flats on the left used to be an old paper mill that may or may not have been home to murderous tramps. We used to dare each other to break in to try to tempt them out and though we never actually made contact with killer hobos, I remain steadfast in my belief that they were there.

The ‘Private Shop’ that I genuinely thought sold desserts (thanks to the KY jelly adverts in the window). I was a slightly shocked 7 year old the first time I walked in.

The Mayflower Steps – where we discovered America from – and where I rode a bike into the filthy vile cancer-riddled sea. But didn’t get cancer. Just lost my bike.

Plymouth Hoe. Where I learnt to how to ride a bike, play football, had my first kiss / smoke / drink / broken bone, saw many Radio 1 Roadshows and a plethora of other memories that it’s probably best not to go into.

I still feel quite lucky that I lived on the road parallel to this, probably the best location in the whole city (imho) but it has left me with the ongoing problem that I can’t bring myself to ever live too far from the coast. I’d like a view like that every morning.

The really welcoming looking entrance to my Secondary School where I learnt everything that I know (about wanky A-Level requirements and outdated teaching methods).

Slightly better entrance of my college. The barbed wire was required.

Theatre of Dreams. Home of the mighty Plymouth Argyle.

The Cooperage, where I first (and last) rapped my little heart out into the night.

The posters on the walls there are about the recently incarcerated owner of the Dance Academy; importer of roughly 71% of all class-A’s into Plymouth. It’s Sadly derelict and abandoned now. Doesn’t this view of Union Street just make you want to go out for a night out in Plymouth though(?) So alluring..

Bonus extra: The void of Armada Way in Plymouth city centre that was once an underpass and fountains and flower beds – complete with blurred out faces on a Beryl Cook painting. Is that necessary(?) Censorship gone mad!

I could literally spend days on this.. but I realise that it’s not that interesting for you, dear reader. So I’ll do it in private

Related posts:

1. google street view goes big
2. the whole street view uk kafuffle
3. view my blog posts using google maps!

.. since I last posted here properly.

That’s 3 months, 23 days. Or 2760 hours if you prefer. 165,600 minutes of silience. Roughly 9,936,000 seconds of fuck all. Quite a while.

Far too often I do this, and then come back saying shit like ‘I’ll make a more concerted effort to post!’, but it never happens. Like new years resolutions; meaningless words that float into the ether as soon as they’re uttered. (Mine was to be more productive btw. Ha!). Nonetheless, despite the fact that I know I’ll probably fall at, perhaps not the first one, but a hurdle in the very near future – I’m back with good intentions. I also have a new blog design, which you can hopefully see. There’s a few things that I’m still working on but I’m fairly happy with it at the moment. I have a whole new ‘quickpost‘ category that is populated via my posterous account and has actually been quite successful in ensuring that there is a more regular stream of content for here. It’s basically things that I want to post about but can’t quite be bothered to actually say much about. Full of gold. Subscribe now!!

Anyway, as some sort of explanation, it’s not like I haven’t been busy in that time. The summer months never lose their ability to lull me into a false sense of security regarding how much time I have (or don’t have as the case may be) over the winter. Teaching takes up so much time, it’s not even funny. Obviously, it’s my job, and should be expected. But really, overtime is glossed over and accepted far too easily. They never mentioned that at the interview. Blah.

Christmas and New Years have come and gone, leaving behind a trail of depleted bank balances and bulging stomachs. Same old, same old. There was also the ‘big freeze’ where we had a bit of snow and everyone went mental. It got unbearably cold some days, but at least it was good for a few days off work. What else(?) Lots of football (Champions League woop woop), lots of xbox (Assassins Creed was fun, DJ Hero hurts to play, FIFA is still where it’s at), bits and bobs of other stuff.

I launched a photoblog just before Christmas too, which you might want to look at. It’s come to a stuttering stop as of late (quelle surprise) but there’s generally not been anything that’s caught my eye to take photos of. It’s so much easier getting nice photos on holiday than it is driving to and from work every day. Anyway, Daily Operation (http://photos.mattnortham.com) – have a quick peek.

Speaking of holiday photos, I’m still wading through the thousands of images I took in California and Hawaii last summer, and some of them are trickling onto my flickr every couple of days. There’s a California set, which is almost done, and a Hawaii set which is a work in progress. It’s stupid how long it’s taking me to get to look at them properly but on the plus side, it’s nice to bring back memories of a great trip on these shitty rainy Bournemouth days.

I also finished my MA in Creative Media Practice a couple of weeks ago. Or at least, I hope I did. I’m waiting on the marks for my not-so-great final project so fingers crossed. More on that to follow!

I dunno. Where have the last few months gone(?) Craziness. That’s probably enough of a narcissistic wrap-up for now. Who cares really(?) If you’re reading this, you were probably just searching for ‘top 10 jquery wordpress plugins’ which is what I just typed there to lure you in. Thanks for visiting. Enjoy the site!

Related posts:

1. what i did this summer
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3. (my) genius photography

Somewhere, in a box in a cupboard (or in my loft), in the back pages of a notepad with various rap lyrics scribbled in it, there are usernames, passwords and web addresses, which if used correctly, would allow you to access the most awesome online content ever made. Or at least, they would’ve done. I’m talking about my first few pages that were hosted on the genius that is/was Geocities. As of yesterday, they are officially no more.

In actuality, I lost track of those pages a long time ago, but in all the years that have passed, I’ve clung to the hope that one day I’ll stumble upon that notepad again and be able to revisit those animated gifs / absurdly compressed Wu-Tang videos / early teen ramblings. I even think there might have been some Jenny McCarthy related content somewhere – that’s how old school it was. I’m pretty sure that I had some pages in ‘Hollywood’, and ‘SunsetStrip’ too. And I definitely remember using ‘Area51′ to host my Real Media files but the specifics escape me.

All I really know for certain is that along with Angelfire & Fortunecity, Geocities helped to make me the web designer that I call myself today. It was in those badly coded, garish, always-black-background sites that I learnt what an ‘a’ tag is and how to embed a wav file that played repeatedly in the background with no option to turn it off. During the day, I’d hand write basic html (with a pen and paper) that I wanted to use, so that in the evening, I could spend as little time as possible on my Dad’s 56k modem updating my pages before someone else in the house tried to make a phone call and killed my glorious work. Not to mention, we were paying by the minute for that connection and my Dad thought I was using it for ‘research’ for homework and whatnot, so any glimpses of a slowly progressively downloading 200kb image of Ol Dirty Bastard were met with a disapproving frown.

I stopped using Geocities just after the watermark scandal, and before it got bought out by Yahoo, so it’s been about a decade since those hedonistic glory days.. but there will always be a special place in my heart for Geocities.

Related posts:

1. another new year

Poor Michael Jackson. Have they decided what happened to him yet? Was it the evil Dr Death? Was it the stress of preparing for the UK shows? Is he hiding in Cuba with 2Pac and Elvis? I got lost in the deluge of MJ based ‘news’ over the summer and have no point of reference any more. All I know is, I had tickets to see him, then he died.

I’ve been a fan for most of my life. My parents have fond stories of me trying to the various dance moves when I was growing up, and I still have the cassette version of Bad that I got for like, my 6th birthday or something. Even this blog is named after a Jackson lyric. There’s no need for me to go into the whole obituary thing; we all know how amazing his music could be. Timeless. Which is why I forced myself to get up early back in March, to join the millions trying to get tickets for his ‘This Is It’ tour at the O2. It was actually quite easy getting tickets as it turned out, and we got a couple for July 26th 2009, just a few days after we were due to return to England from getting married in California. (They were potentially great seats too). Would’ve been a great way to end the summer. As a warm up, we went to the Bournemouth leg of the ‘Thriller’ musical and the excitement grew!

So on the 25th of June, just after we’d finished packing all our stuff and were about to hit the sack ready for our flight the following morning, when I switched on the TV just to see what was on, it was quite a surprise to see the footage from L.A. of Michael Jackson reportedly dying in hospital. In fact, I didn’t really believe it. I was really tired anyway, and it was very surreal. We waited up for a bit, flipping through the various news channels, until Sky News claimed that he was officially dead, then went to bed. (That seems heartless writing it like that but what else were we going to do? ).

Anyway, the day after, we flew to California, did the whole marriage thing, and saw the hysteria grow via snippets of the news in various hotel rooms. It was literally the only thing on TV for those couple of weeks (and I’m sure, beyond that). Interviews with friends of people who knew cleaners at the same company that did cleaning at one of his houses in the 80′s etc etc.. utter madness. Just a constant barrage of non stories vaguely to do with his death; it began to get irritating. It wasn’t until we got to L.A. that I really paid it any attention, but visiting the Hollywood Star bearing his name was a weird experience. So many people just flocking around this tiny plaque in the ground, leaving hundreds of mementos behind.

We did of course, leave our own note, crudely scrawled on the back of a scrap of paper, but it got swallowed up by the mass of A2 sized collages and drawings. Seriously, some people must have put hours into their tributes.

While we were in the city, as well as driving around blasting out the classics we applied for tickets to the ‘official’ memorial service to be held at the Staples Center but didn’t get them, so we went to Six Flags instead. But that’s by-the-by. We also went to the house in Beverly Hills that he was living at in those last days, and it made the star on the walk of fame look bland in comparison. I felt out of place for not wearing any MJ themed clothing.

When we left L.A., we left most of the madness behind. But Michael Jackson still cropped up now and then over the next few weeks. Mostly, it was an easy thing to fall back on during conversation with random americans who we met throughout the trip. Everyone has an opinion on MJ! And people loved the fact that we had tickets to go and see him – even though they would never get used.

Arriving back in England, we had the choice of getting a refund for the tickets, or getting a ‘souvenir’ ticket stub type of thing instead. We opted for the money. A piece of paper costing £70-odd quid wouldn’t quite have been the same as actually seeing him, so it was a non choice really. At least we still have the confirmation email from Ticketmaster. Show that one to the grandkids.

There was still a part of me that thought ‘oh well, the show probably wouldn’t've lived up to the expectations anyway’ – so I kinda got over the fact that we weren’t going to see him. On the night we were due to be at the O2, we went out in London anyway, seeing as we’d already booked the train and hotel months previously. Walking past the venue for the ‘Thriller’ musical was poignant, but I still had that ‘oh well, it would’ve been blah’ feeling. That persisted until I saw the trailer for the ‘This Is It’ movie. Comments about AEG cashing in on his death aside, the film looks amazing and makes me sad that I never got to see it live, in person. He’s doing the dances, has the outfits, and there are zombies on the stage!! What more could you ask for!?

So this Sunday, I’ll be rejoining the online queues, trying to get a ticket to see ‘This Is It’. Only, it wont be the real show. It’ll be the film of the rehearsal footage. That’s as close as I’ll get to seeing Michael Jackson perform live, but it’ll do, and it’ll be the only way I can get closure after my MJ summer. RIP. Blame it on the boogie.

http://thisisit-movie.com/

Related posts:

1. r.i.p. jacko..

You know when you used go back to school after the summer and had to write down a story about what you did over the holidays(?) – (edit: Did anyone else have to do that? I’m not even sure that I ever did that.. but it sounds like I should’ve) – Well, this is that. Except not in story form. Just the facts. I’m not 100% sure why this is relevant to anyone but it goes someway to explaining my silence and besides, this is my blog, and I’ll cry if I want to. Or something.

I suppose the main thing was that I spent the best part of a month in California and Hawaii. Ostensibly due to a marriage / honeymoon – mine, that is. It went great, thanks for asking – the trip actually served to develop a yearning for a less stringent U.S. immigration policy. Seriously, it’s practically impossible to move there from the UK, which is a shame, but probably just as well because it’s a superb holiday destination and living there would ruin that. So anyway, in a trip that wasn’t too dissimilar from our Californian adventure 2 years ago, we started in San Francisco, stopped in Big Sur to get married, went to a few different places in Los Angeles for a bit, flew to Hawaii (Oahu – Big Island – Oahu again), then flew to Las Vegas. I still haven’t finished sorting the photos yet, but they’ll be here soon, along with a bit more detail. It was a.m.a.z.i.n.g.

(^ custom made wedding figurines of us.. it’s an exact likeness.)

Also went to the Reading Festival and lost a glowstick (and some dignity) to The Prodigy who were the definite highlight for me. They were STONKING. I’ve mentioned before that Out of Space is just immense, and mentalling out to it live was great . Catching the ‘secret’ performance from rock supergroup Them Crooked Vultures was quite good too, and Little Boots was ace. But generally, though the festival itself was fun, the bands are all pretty much meh to me. It’s no ‘rock the bells‘, put it that way. Nonetheless, two groups that I didn’t get to see because they were on the main stage at midday (on different days) but wished I had seen were Sonic Boom Six and Mariachi El Bronx. Until a week before the event, I had no idea who they were but then I discovered them just in time to be disappointed that I didn’t see them live. Ah well. Maybe next time.

What else? Oh yeah, I finished two-thirds of an M.A. (time-consuming), sold my house (exciting), watched the whole of The Wire (awesome), and mastered the art of caring for an injured hen (sadly necessary). Some of those things could do with longer explanations but now that I’ve mentioned my M.A., it’s dawned on me that I really ought to be doing something for it this weekend, so I’ll wrap this up now

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2. photos from California

It’s been a long, rather stagnant summer in regards to this dear website of mine. Not a single post was made throughout May, June or July – and then there was a rather poor excuse for a post in August. Now it’s mid September and I intend to make amends. Whether that happens or not remains to be seen but in an effort to instigate some shit, I have gone ahead and launched a redesign of the site that I’ve been working on for a few months now (on and off).

It’s gone through several states in that time, and I’m still not convinced that it’s finished but that’s what happens when you design for yourself isn’t it(?) So, it is what it is. Another re-align rather than a whole redesign, but it’s definitely different. One of the main changes I made with this was starting everything from scratch – as in, the CSS / wordpress template / images were all blank canvasses. For previous incarnations, I’ve merely altered and added to older layouts which led to a massively bloated CSS file (amongst other messy unnecessary things). Not this time. I don’t think it makes any difference really, but it was nice to start working and not be faced with a thousand lines of code that I had to wade through to try to make simple changes.

What else(?) Oh yeah.. A new version of my portfolio – intended to coincide with the new version of this – is due shortly. I was going to wait until they were both ready, but if I’d waited any longer to start using this blog theme, I really would’ve gone through another redesign process and wasted even more time. But don’t worry, I’ll be vocal about it when it’s done.

Just to end this, I haven’t been completely silent during these summer months. My twitter-ness has been pretty much constant.. so if you want a more constant stream of my blabberings, it’d be good to start following me. I try to keep nonsense to a minimum, but it’s twitter, so you probably know what to expect.

Related posts:

1. scpgt v6 is go!
2. freshening up for summer
3. another day, another re-design..

Activity around here has officially hit an all time low this summer. My utmost apologies due. Doesn’t it look awful when you have a post on the home page which is dated over 3 months ago(?!) Ugh. Effort recommences now.

To be fair, it’s been a mental few months; during which I’ve roamed around Dorset, climbed the biggest mountain in Wales, finished half of an M.A. course, surfed at Wakiki beach. Oh, and got married in California. It was all fun and there’s plenty left to be said about each event so be sure to pop back for future installments. This was just to say that I haven’t disappeared .

Oh, also, I’ve been working a new design. Coming very soon.

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Reflect. It’s about time I posted a picture of a reflection somewhere during this ‘reflection’ bit.

So in my MA, I’ve been trying to read through and evaluate a range of reflective tools/theoretical frameworks and how they apply to me. Or even, if they do apply to me, because not all of them are methods that I rate, let alone use. At least, not consciously.

Most of the following subheadings are derived from a post on the MA forum which offered bits of information regarding each of these things. In case you were wondering.

typology

I’ve already touched on a couple of online based ‘Are you this? / You like this‘ type of tests but to explore the subject a bit further, I wanted to sum up my views in general. Before I do, just to recap regarding the typological tests (a la Myers-Briggs or Which Star Wars Character Are You?); I think they’re of little real use. I don’t think there’s any value in having a ‘type’ assigned to you because people just generally aren’t like that. Like, I might have elements of Luke Skywalker AND Darth Maul in my character, but a test will only ascribe one set of attributes to me. No good. (Though I can see the potential benefit in terms of employers being able to categorise or easily sum up employees – but again, that’s not good in my eyes). The only possible benefit of these type of tests (no pun) is to use them as starting points for deeper reflection. As in, it could be beneficial to consider why you ticked ‘yes’ next to ‘Would you kill your boss to get the last Krispy Kreme in the box?’.. (hatred of your workplace? insecurity in your job? desires to replace your boss? love of doughnuts?).

Just to note, for all of these tests / models / any type of reflection, I’m assuming that honesty is the only policy. To me, it’s a given that in order to get anything positive out of them, you can’t lie to yourself. What’s the point(?)

But anyway. I’d quite like to give a Johari Window a go at some point, because although it still seems to assign set values to you, at least there are multiple ones, and it’s an interesting approach because it requires input from other people. Finding out what other people think about you (even merely through the selection of words like ‘calm’, ‘logical’ or ‘silly’) could be a bit of an eye opener. Especially when compared to your own view of yourself. Or of course, it could be upsetting; but the Johari House has no room for insulting adjectives so that’s not really it’s remit – it seems you turn to the Nohari to be mean. Feel free to leave a comment if you want to judge me .

experiential learning

David Kolb’s model on experiential learning is the one that initially struck a chord with me, in part due to the fact that it’s pretty straightforward and easy to understand. But the more I consider it, the less convinced I am by it. Until eventually, I’m convinced that it’s great again. I dunno. Colour me undecided.

The basic cycle he puts forward runs like:

1. Concrete experience
2. Observation and reflection
3. Forming abstract concepts
4. Testing in new situations
5. Rinse & repeat from the start.

Fairly straightforward. It’s easy to see how a pattern like that would help self reflection and personal development. I used to think that it was a tad too linear for my liking but really, does it need to be more complicated(?) Probably not, actually. I think that what I had an issue with regarding Kolb is the offer of 4 ‘learning styles’ which are used to determine whether you’re good at abstract concept’ing and observing and reflecting (an Assimilator) or good at experiencing and observing (a Diverger) for example. It just smacks of typology again. Though, apparently there is a recognition that “being ‘locked into’ one style can put a learner at a serious disadvantage” which is good because.. well, it’s just good. Switching learning styles as appropriate maketh a good learner. Blah. In retrospect (from 10 minutes ago), I think I do like this model (there’s the reflection on theories of reflection in action!).

(There’s a nice summary of the whole thing here. I agree with much of it.)

There is a update of the Kolb work by Jarvis that contains the same key points but it much less linear. So, it’s a bit more realistic I think. It looks like this:

So generally, experiential learning works as a concept for me because I know that I do find it difficult to form abstract concepts about things that I haven’t experienced.. I often have to generate practical examples in my mind to relate to wider theories and ideas. Observation and reflection after a piece of work does help me to improve a similar piece of work in the future (I hope), so so far, Kolb is winning.

reflective practice

This is apparently the second stage of the above learning cycle, though I slightly struggle to work out why they’re different at all. The way I interpret it, is that reflective practice is something that is done in a workplace. It’s when you do some work, look at it, learn something from it, and move on to the next bit of work (with that new knowledge in tow). Now, to me, that sounds like experiential learning.. except, it is targeted directly at the employed. So in a sense, it’s actually more applicable to me personally as a learning framework, but I don’t think it has much scope for learning outside of the workplace. Do people really produce better work just by looking at their previous work? Or does it take more than that?.. A look at your approach to work too perhaps(?) Or maybe that type of thing is all work related(?) I dunno. Too many questions there.

Oh, but I do like the idea of reflection in action as well as on action that Schön puts forward because it makes sense to me that learning from what you’re currently doing, and possibly altering your work as you do it, can have clear benefits over a purely retrospective approach.

critical pedagogy

Developed (or at least based on ideas) by Paulo Freire, this is by far the most exciting of this collection of theories because, for a start, he’s Brazilian (which just sounds exciting), but mainly because it stems from a book which was dedicated “to the oppressed, and to those who suffer with them and fight at their side“. It sounds more like foco theory than anything educational but there you go.

I agree with the notion that it’s a poor approach to treat students as ‘empty bank accounts’ that are just filled by the words of their teachers and I like the idea of a mutual approach to education. It’s always occurred to me that those students who merely sit in lectures, take notes, and regurgitate theories back word for word in essays aren’t actually making the most of their education. Yes, they might be learning about something, but they’re not learning something. However, I’d never considered how something like that would have a knock on effect on a wider society, as it does when the mutual approach to learning develops into conscientization (critical consciousness). I like this quote:

Conscientization is an ongoing process by which a learner moves toward critical consciousness. This process is the heart of liberatory education … Conscientization means breaking through prevailing mythologies to reach new levels of awareness—in particular, awareness of oppression, being an “object” of others’ will rather than a self-determining “subject.” The process of conscientization involves identifying contradictions in experience through dialogue and becoming part of the process of changing the world.”

In fact, the more I read about critical pedagogy, the more I like the whole concept. Note to self: get away from the Wikipedia articles and actually read more about this. The slight issue I have with it is that I see it more as an approach to teaching as opposed to learning so I’m not fully sold on how it’d be useful in the sense of self-reflection that we’re embarking on for this unit. Is that me being critically conscious(?) Either way, it’s very interesting and definitely something I’d like to explore a bit further at some point.

stages of knowing

This is an area that on the face of it, is perfectly simple. It suggests that en route to understanding a subject, a student goes through various stages of knowing/learning;

• Absolute knowing – learners think there are absolute answers, don’t question things, remember and repeat ‘facts’
• Transitional – trying to actually understand what they’re learning
• Independent knowing – hear multiple opinions and begin to explore and form their own
• Contextual knowing – developing their own ideas and backing them up with evidence

Basically.

I dunno, I just find it hard to get enthused about this theory because although it’s nice to see those stages articulated, the whole process just appears to be painfully obvious. So someone introduced to a subject accepts what they first hear about it, then they start to think about it, then they question it, then they formulate a new opinion. Really(?!) Wow. I always thought that being a student meant you already knew everything!

learning journals et al

The idea of maintaining a learning journal as a “repository for reflective thinking” and various thoughts and whatnot has never particularly appealed to me. Concept maps/brainstorming/flow charts even less so. Not necessarily because I don’t think they have any value, but because often, if I write something down, I’ll never go back and look at it again – then I’ll forget it and will have wasted a bit of paper. (Save the world and all that). I generally find it hard to write things down and keep track of them so it’s never been a useful option for me. It’s unfortunate because I actually have a terrible memory and it’d be great if I could get into some sort of system where I can write things down for future reference. (If only I had an area where I could write down my unfiltered thoughts.. Somewhere digital perhaps.. Maybe a log on the internet.. I could call it a lognet.. )

Really though, writing this post for instance is about the closest I’ve got to a usable (for reflection purposes) journal and I’d like to continue with things like this because writing all of this has helped me to think about these theories. It’s just been time consuming. It’s taken over a week of on/off writing to get this far. It better be helpful when I read it back!

There are a few other related things that I’ve stumbled onto while writing this out but rather than actually tip over the 2000 word mark, I’ll save them for a later post

Related posts:

1. self reflection!.. you’re heading for self reflection!
2. assignment #1 – looking back a bit
3. i didn’t fail my first MA assignment

Yay!

It’s vulgar to discuss details but I’m happy to say, I didn’t fail my first ever MA assignment. In fact, I did much better than I thought I would. Joy to the world.

The feedback was good and will hopefully help me to improve for next time; the one irritating point made by the markers was that I could’ve made more of the website that I had intended to submit as part of the hand in (as it was, I just submitted a screenshot with a little explanation). It’s irritating because as I mentioned in my last post, I fully intended to make more of it and I’m disappointed in myself for not achieving what I wanted to achieve with the example of an actual website. Still, tis done now. At least I was semi-expecting a criticism of that sort. I also think I need to be more applied in terms of scope with the next assignment so with a bit of work, things should get even better.

I had a Wispa earlier to celebrate

Related posts:

1. assignment #1 – looking back a bit
2. self reflection!.. you’re heading for self reflection!
3. reflecting on reflective theories of reflection

Picking up from my last MA post, I thought I’d briefly embark on a little bit of reflection regarding the essay I wrote for the last assignment..

Last time, I wrote about the merits of honesty in self reflection. Then I re-read my last essay and have decided that honesty isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. With that in mind, my essay was the best essay in the world. True story. OR, if we’re rolling with my original honest thought, I’m now slightly concerned about getting the marks back this week.

Writing 10,000 words isn’t, in itself, too difficult. Writing 10,000 words about a subject that you get to choose and that you’re interested in is easier still. However, keeping those 10,000 words coherent and relavent is harder than I remembered (from my B.A. dissertation). I actually started writing a decent time before the deadline which meant that I wasn’t rushed toward the end but also meant that by the end, I had far too many words and felt like I had lost sight of my original point. In fact, I’d not even intended to do 10,000 words; the submission criteria allowed for (and almost actively encouraged) alternative documents to form the final assignment (e.g. videos, presentations, websites, whatever) so I hoped to take advantage of that and submit a couple of web pages too.

[Oh, just to note, the title of my piece was "Did MySpace Kill The Music Community?", (even the title makes me wince now), and the basic point I was trying to make was that since the advent of 'community' sites like MySpace, real world communities have fallen into decline - and for musicians to maintain any sort of following these days, they have to become part of the digerati. I might post excerpts at some point.]

So yeah, as part of my assignment, I made a MySpace page and a home page for the ‘fake’ hip hop artist, English Bob. The home page had content from youtube, twitter, facebook, last.fm, iphone and a forum – the MySpace page had some music and all the messiness you’d expect from a MySpace page. Crucially however, I forgot to tell anybody about either of them (and it only dawned on me a couple of days before the hand-in) rendering their ‘social network’ value low enough that it didn’t really support the point I was trying to make with them. Totally the opposite in fact. So I scrapped them from the submission. Possibly not the best decision ever because it meant that my entire assignment comprised of a single 10,000+ essay. For a start, who wants to read that much(?) And secondly, as I’ve mentioned, I’m not sure that those 10,000 words are very good.

I suppose the main issue I have with what I submitted comes from a post hand-in glance at the assessment criteria. Obviously I’d read it prior to starting but somewhere along the line, I seem to have ignored some of the things that are outlined in that document and as such, I’m concerned about how that’s going to reflect on the marks. Note to self: print out the criteria and refer to it lots!

I also have reservations about my research methods.. I mean, my bibliography was pretty extensive (if not a bit narrow in scope) but in terms of research off my own back (i.e. questionnaires/interviews), basically, there was none. Again, I’m the only one to blame for that. I did produce a series of questions that I intended to put to a selection of facebook / MySpace users as well as people at gigs but I severely overestimated how much time I had left and before I knew it, it was the Christmas break and everyone vanished. 4 respondents does not a valid piece of research make. Scrapped.

Bah. It’s frustrating because I feel like I actually put a lot of work into the assignment but I’m just unsatisfied with the final product. I’m sure there was a bit of overconfidence there, and also a selective memory regarding how difficult it actually is to write a decent, long, essay. Not to mention that I probably tried to cover far too much and thus sacrificed a quality look at a more specific area of interest. Or *shock horror* I might’ve actually done alright and all this is an example of those nerves that everyone gets after they finish an important piece of work and send it off to be judged. (Everyone does get that right?). We’ll see.

I was going to end this by saying, ‘honest self reflection is depressing’ but really, despite it conjuring up all sorts of fears and insecurities, I hope that I’ve learnt something and should do better next time . Live and learn etc..

Related posts:

1. i didn’t fail my first MA assignment
2. reflecting on reflective theories of reflection
3. self reflection!.. you’re heading for self reflection!

me me me

Currently in discussion is the nature of/value of self reflection; which got me thinking about the fact that I’ve neglected this blog and thus, you’re now reading a post. Clever that. I’ve always considered my blog as a form of self-reflection, being that it’s a blog about me and my interests. I don’t have any misconceptions about how many other people are interested in reading it (and yet I still write as if I have an audience.. must maintain blog protocol, otherwise it’d be a diary, and that’d be too emo livejournal esque), but I do like writing it and I repeatedly mean to pay more attention to this part of my site/life. I’m just lazy busy tired shy good at finding excuses.

But annyyyway.. I just wanted to write up a short recap of sorts, regarding the whole self reflection issue. The discussion has been going on for a couple of weeks now so there’s little chance of me covering everything (I should’ve been making smaller incremental posts like some other more sagacious people managed) but in a nutshell, I think that self reflection is a good activity. Or at least, it can be.

We started off by doing various online test things like “What sex and the city character are you?” and “What level of hell do you belong on?” (I’m Charlotte York, on the 6th Level Of Hell apparently), and while those type of tests can be fun, they’re really just useless time wasters.

Or are they?

I originally wrote them off as superficial hard coded if statements that don’t tell you anything other than you ticked a certain series of boxes. Drawing comparisons with a fictional tv character based on whether you like the colour pink or not is hardly grounds for serious self reflection but then, not all of the questions are as mundane as that. For instance, in the Dante test, one of the questions is “Could you picture yourself assassinating someone or ordering an assassination on someone if it meant that you would become very rich and powerful?“; on its surface, it’s just a casual question about your predilection for murder but if you treat it as a more general question of your desire to become rich and powerful, you could begin to ask yourself what you would really do to achieve those things and then start to look at what you’re doing that isn’t getting you there and how you could start to alter those things etc etc etc.. It could eventually lead to you making changes in your career that result in that cushy desk in the corner by the window with the company car and mucho cash money. Or this. Either way, it relies on you thinking more about the questions that those ‘fun quizzes’ ask you. But no-one does that. They’re just distractions that create fodder for those irritating ‘all staff’ emails or facebook boxes.

getting serious

What are perhaps more useful (as far as yes/no true/false type tests go) are things like Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (a version of can be found here) which in some realms is used as an actual method of ‘serious’ assessment. The questions are more formal and the results attempt to give some semblance of formality; I took it a while ago and came out as an INTJ.

INTJs are strong individualists who seek new angles or novel ways of looking at things. They enjoy coming to new understandings. They tend to be insightful and mentally quick; however, this mental quickness may not always be outwardly apparent to others since they keep a great deal to themselves. They are very determined people who trust their vision of the possibilities, regardless of what others think. They may even be considered the most independent of all of the sixteen personality types. INTJs are at their best in quietly and firmly developing their ideas, theories, and principles.

As you can see, it’s more in depth than “you are batman!” and it goes some way to explaining why I don’t write very much on this blog. I work best quietly. Like Leon. That’s how I roll. In fact, I remember when I first read those results, I thought ‘yeah, that’s definitely me’ but in retrospect, I could just be falling for the Forer Effect. That’s when you interpret something as being specific to you, when in fact it could be about anyone – it’s all in how you read it. It’s also a possible example of the idea that these self evaluations are just narcissistic and flattering in that I could happily welcome the above description because it calls me mentally quick and determined. So even if it’s not 100% accurate, I’m willing to take it as gospel because I like how it portrays me.

so basically..

Ultimately I still think that all of these types of test are pretty much void of real use but can potentially offer some decent insights. However, to try to gain something from them, you need to be completely honest with your answers. If it’s a true self evaluation (be it using online tests or even just a thoughtful 15 minutes or so) honesty is definitely the best policy because you’re only lying to yourself and that’ll get you nowhere. If you’re the type of person that is desperate to come out of a test as Darth Vader and not poxy Jar Jar Binks then being honest isn’t necessarily as easy as it sounds.. It’s even harder in the case of appraisals with managers (where you sit down with a boss and discuss your work, evaluating pros and cons from the past year and whatnot) because if you’re 100% honest there, you might find that your boss isn’t massively impressed with the fact that last week you managed to sort your iTunes library and make sure that all the album art work for every song was there. It takes a bit of discretion to come out of the appraisal in a good light (and keep your job for another year). But if it’s just you that you’re talking to, or if you don’t care what other people think, honest self reflection is good and should be beneficial to future endeavors.

Education begins the gentleman, but reading, good company and reflection must finish him.

- John Locke (not from Lost)

And that’s that. Now that I’ve managed to get the ball rolling, I’m hoping these posts will be more frequent. It should be easier to post small chunks of stuff than doing a thousand words in one big bulk like this so fingers crossed..

p.s. (re: the post title.. almost.. )

Related posts:

1. reflecting on reflective theories of reflection
2. assignment #1 – looking back a bit
3. i didn’t fail my first MA assignment

So, happy new year and all that.. I’m not really one for retrospectives (nor for any blog posts at all it would appear) but I thought I’d briefly kick off the new year by commenting on my most listened to music from the past year. Because I’m sure you’re interested. Bear in mind that this is based on my last.fm stats so doesn’t take into account any stuff played at home or in the car (thus ignoring a lot of dance music). But still, it’d be fairly similar anyway.

In a year in which I got to see Atmosphere and Rage Against The Machine, it’s hardly a surprise that they both feature heavily in my rotation. Between them, they make up my top 20 tracks of the year, and rightfully so. The new Atmosphere album is brilliant, and the Rage shit never gets old.

In fact, in the top 60-odd tracks, the only other artists that featured were Justice, Brother Ali (both of who I also saw last year), Nas, Wu-Tang & Doomtree. Quite a Rhymesayers-themed 2008 for me then.

So there you have it. Just something to get into posting in 2009. It’s a start. Incidentally, my most listened to track so far of 2009 is Columbia University Orchestra – Mozart – Symphony No. 40, IV. Could be a sign of things to come. Though it probably wont be.

Related posts:

1. last.fm chart – 7.jan.2007
2. atmosphere & brother ali. live.
3. so i went to the reading festival..

It’s a little sad to be saying happy birthday to yourself but fuck it; it’s my birthday! I will be doing fun things and celebrating the past 26 glorious years! And then I’ll be feeling oooold. I swear it was only last year that I was 18 without a care in the world (except basic math’s would suggest that it was perhaps slightly longer than a year ago).. Time really does fly.

[photo via here]

No related posts.

Fairly lengthy title there but it does what it says on the tin. After a bit of tinkering yesterday, I’ve added a nice little alternative way to browse my blog posts; via a google map. I’ve limited it to any posts in the ‘travel‘ category because that’s really the only section that warrants the feature. Otherwise, the map would have tonnes of markers all above my house – it’d be odd.

So if you have a look in the travel category, you should see a custom map with various markers of my face (with shades on naturally, because most of the posts are holiday based) and if you click on them, you’ll get a little pop up telling you about that post. The map will only show you posts from the particular page you’re looking at – as in, there’s more than one page of ‘travel’ category results, so the map will display markers relative to the posts that are displayed below it. It’ll also center itself to wherever the top post on that page is located.

It’s fairly basic but I think it’s nice and it wasn’t actually too difficult to pull off. Feel free to praise me for my fine work haha..

(Oh, and I’ve added this post to the travel map, in a fairly random location so don’t go thinking it’s broken – I meant it to do that).

Related posts:

1. google street view goes big
2. street view hits the UK.. properly this time..

Much like the spoon predicament.

You ain’t seen this, right(?)..

No related posts.