I am taking you with me on an adventure. Okay maybe a micro-adventure, nevertheless if you need a mental break from thinking about work–come along. As pebbles crunch underneath my trailrunners I notice: today smells like adventure, here in Scotland! Adventures smell of summer and soil, petrichor, deep dark woods; they smell of minerals in […]
Category: Learning and Teaching
Didaktik und Hochschullehre
Evaluating learning: an uncertainty principle
Here is my hypothesis: The more we focus on one aspect of the learned, i.e. in exams we force the expression of learning into a specific way and the closer we look at that one specific factor the less we are able to see the effects of said learning more widely. A personal experience example […]
Academia and Buzz Word Bingo
One of the themes of our engagement in #ALTC Winter Conference and #LTHEchat was that the terminology we have chosen to use ‘disruption’ and ‘active learning’ smell too much of buzz-word bingo to sit comfortably with colleagues. And we agree. But … There is also a but … what else are we to use. We […]
The Power of Doodle
The origin of this post goes back to 2011, much has changed since, including my own personal development and career. But let’s get the pens out: I was rather keen on going back to the topic of doodles as I have become more and more interested in Sketchnoting, which you could think about as purposeful […]
Roots in times of Upheaval
All the upheaval this year has brought on reminiscence and reflections–many of which circling around a childhood whose remains can only be found in museums, dusty atticks, or maybe the odd collections treasured individually. Nobody would know of the books we have read. East German children books had such sophisticated and brilliant illustrators. Where did […]
Neurodiversity Celebration Week
So I promised a little contribution for this week’s events. For more about the UofG Neurodiversity Network go here (link opens in new window). Without further ado: My ADHD Superpowers –an attempted poem I design and make clothes, mainly dresses that fitSilversmith, wordsmith and sometimes do knitI draw life with words, images, pens, and brushBut […]
Ethnography of a Museum
Context I am experimenting with writing again. So back to the beginnings of my academic journey and ethnographic writing. Without further ado: An Excerpt The smell is difficult to describe, an echo of floor polish clings to the dry air, the worn Lino floors make my shoes squeak, but it smells of something else; I […]
Granddad
During the last months I have often been thinking of my granddad. And today after blurting out crying a couple of times I thought I write up a couple of memories and inevitably learning about teaching. He worked in an agricultural boarding school, after having to stop being a farmer. The young adults—many of which […]
SoTL Definition Conundrum
I have had a bit of frustration with getting a definition sorted. So I made a thinking thing … ‘definitions are living creatures’. That’s the premise.
You can find Learning Everywhere
Reflections on a summer holiday where almost nothing went as planned My granddad always said: There is always something to learn, in every situation, and in the least you will learn how not to do a thing. Writing some contributions to the Life Wide Magazine* for which the editors asked to reflect on how imagination […]
Hybrid Spaces
I am having an ADHD day from hell so to get my brain back into focus I just went down to the kitchen and made a chocolate cake and now I do what I always do to get the thinking thoughts out of my head–I write. (Okay I cheated and used a bake mix so […]
101 Photo Flash Cards for Teaching Prompts
The link below downloads a pdf document with 101 different photo flash cards that can be used as teaching prompts, for object based learning or story telling. Also available via the FigShare Link below: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.12479438.v3
Emergence
I am going on walks every day, often Nordic Walking–which in Scotland earns me strange looks and the occasional comment. As spring takes hold and the days become longer, if not necessarily warmer, I was thinking about emergence. As educators we are used to being in an autopoietic state (Kidd, 2015), but the process of […]
Remote Working First Insights
I won’t be writing about remote working ever day just when things emerge that might be useful to share. Plan and Accountability Buddy So the accountability buddy system is definitely worthwhile! I haven’t had much chance of planning due to ad hoc meetings. However, after the morning chat with accountability buddy. We decided to treat […]
Adventures in Academic Development 