Well, this cheered me up – but I want to know what the tune is!
Thanks Suzi for spotting and sharing on Facebook!
drbexl.co.ukDr Bex Lewis: Polymath
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Cartooned up for #TFBloggers
And how cool is it to have someone create me in cartoon form...
Though there are comments re similarity to a certain TV character:
And here's the official press release - available to chat if anyone would like to.
Re-Enter Narnia?Join me for #BigRead13!
So, how long was it since you read the Narnia series?
I've been re-reading them all for #BigRead13, a Lent course that I've developed a 'layer of conversation' for ... C.S.Lewis wrote the books, Rowan William wrote this commentary, a number of amazing people wrote reflections on themes that Williams...
Have you read 'Less is More' by @Echosounda?
I have spent much of the last 10-12 years, ever since we moved from our large home in Sussex to a much smaller one in Suffolk (not that I have ever truly lived in Suffolk), in gradually trying to declutter and focus more and more on what's important. I feel that I still have a long way to go, but...
Bex's Personal Pages
2012: I currently have a number of roles, and a have a number of websites. This particular website is my personal site. The type of content you can expect to find on here is:
Personal information, particularly related to life history and career.
Interests. As a polymath and an ENFP, these...
Portrait of an ENFP The Inspirer
As an ENFP, your primary mode of living is focused externally, where you take things in primarily via your intuition. Your secondary mode is internal, where you deal with things according to how you feel about them, or how they fit in with your personal value system.
ENFPs are warm,...
#BIGIF: “It’s a scandal that 1 in 8 go hungry every day’
Posted on: 11-06-2013
Category : Charity & Social Action
Definitely agree – let’s hope this wasn’t just a statement, but that real change happens:
A really interesting piece about the culture in Chinese universities:
Respect, in this instance, simply means having regard for those who know more than them. In the West, putting intellectual pressure on students can be dubbed “bullying”; here in China, they expect you to expect the best of them. In fact, most of my students are highly competitive, keen to demonstrate their aptitude for learning as well as their attitude to learning. It is a thirst for finding things out that is reflective of and responsive to the social dynamism in which they find themselves.
…
In the end, it is the willingness of my students to get on, to understand the world (not just their part of it) and to be critical and creative that is rewarding. As a result, there is also a refreshing pressure on me to perform. Besides, when all students are armed with mobile phone cameras – like a phalanx of Chinese tourists snapping away at my blackboard calculations – there is no way that I can blame them for copying things down incorrectly.
Read full post.
Prof Graham Gibbs
Interesting. I got to meet Graham a couple of times before I left Winchester, and he’s producing some really interesting content (as is the FASTECH project):
So what does “improving students” actually consist of? “How to” guides on study skills – how to take notes, how to structure an essay and so on – contain what appears to be sound enough advice (although the similarity between them is both striking and suspicious).
However, attempts to back up this consensus with evidence of the effectiveness of the techniques described have had little success. Students’ scores on “study habits inventories” – questionnaires made up of lists of the kinds of things contained in these books – hardly correlate with examination performance at all. An exception is how to be organised (by managing one’s time, for example). “Organisation” predicts performance where the use of most “skills” does not.
Read full story.
Article in @christiantoday on Community in a Digital Age
Posted on: 30-05-2013
Category : Christian, Digital Media
Had a good email conversation with Quentin the other week, and here’s some of the results:
In days gone by, connecting on a large scale meant Christians having to meet in person, in conference centres or church halls. Now, Christians anywhere and everywhere can connect with each other online every day.
A virtual community has built up around the Bible thanks to The Big Bible Project, which currently has 60 active contributors and has around 148,000 visitors to the website.
And there are other possibilities through existing social networks like Facebook, with its 700 million active users, and Twitter, with its 300 million active users.
Read full article.
BOOK REVIEW: @SheridanVoysey “Resurrection Year”
Posted on: 28-05-2013
Category : Inspirational, Review
Today, this book, from someone I have been incredibly privileged to come to know over the past couple of years, is available for sale:
Having received this book, I settled down to read a chapter before bedtime. A couple of hours later I turned the final page of this beautifully written story that had truly drawn me in with it’s honest insight into a agonizingly difficult journey. The depth of emotion is deeply felt – we share times of both joy and bleakness, with particular authenticity given through original diary extracts which have that unfinished rawness my favourite blogs do. Several sections of the book are eminently tweetable, but this is not a story of simple soundbites: choices are stark and unpleasant, the doubts are heavy, and the questions about suffering and why prayers had gone unanswered are deeply painful.
This looks interesting:
Frank Furedi sets out to do two things in this book. First, he analyses the media circus that ensued after the 2012 airing of a BBC Newsnight report on allegations of sexual abuses committed by the entertainer Jimmy Savile; it presented, among other things, false allegations against Lord McAlpine, and in its wake came the resignation of BBC director-general George Entwistle and widespread journalistic licence that prompted Prime Minister David Cameron to warn against witch-hunts. Second, he examines how such scandals point to the desire for moral surety and moral crusade in a time of deep social disconnection.
Read full story.
A challenging piece … more than those “difficult” students that we all have … what about the ‘student nemesis’?
I know. You think that there’s no such thing as a worst student – only more or less challenging ones. You think that only professors who don’t care about their students have worsts and bests. You’d be wrong, but the mistake is an honest one. In truth, academics who don’t care about their students or about teaching are generally the ones that never encounter a “worst” student. To their way of thinking, every student is a bothersome distraction and the best that one can do is ignore these distractions and stay on task. These academics don’t lose sleep over their students. And trust me, if you face your worst, you will lose quite a bit.
So what do I mean by “worst”? Well, let’s begin with what I don’t mean. I’m not referring to the motivationally challenged ones that congregate in the back of class, or the overly anxious ones in the front. I am also not talking about the ones who have genuine difficulty grasping a subject. None of these are viable candidates. Your worst student, in my experience, is one that runs counter to your deepest care as a teacher. That’s the real reason why bad teachers don’t have worst students. Care. Yes, that virtue of all pedagogical virtues is the thing that makes the mere existence of a certain type of student so excruciatingly painful.
Read full story.
Thanks Bryony for this spot:
Image Credit: RGB Stock
I took on a range of roles to support my studies at all levels, an interesting piece on work to support a PhD:
James, formerly a PhD student at a Russell Group university in the North of England, also approached his institution for help to find a job while he completed his studies.
While carrying out a number of administrative roles, he said, he experienced a “deeply ingrained negative attitude towards postgraduate students working in non-academic roles”.
Read full story.
http://www.sxc.hu/photo/730831
Always a core question – how many hours should a student be working – we worked it at 150 hours per module in my last University, of which around 36 per semester were likely to be taught sessions, plus some tutorial time, with the rest deemed self-focused learning:
If some students worked only half the hours of their counterparts at rival universities, he asked, “is it plausible that they’ve achieved the same outcomes by the end of the study?” He added: “It may be plausible. It could be that a student in one university is brilliant and needs to do less study than another.”
But the 2007 edition of Hepi’s student academic experience report had found no evidence that students with more entry tariff points could thrive by doing less work, he said.
Read full story.
Fascinating idea… very subversive – thanks to @jaybutcher for sharing….
Academic
Chinese Politeness & Education
A really interesting piece about the culture in Chinese universities: Respect, in this instance, simply means...
Career
Too Many Options?
Ha, yes, I can get overloaded with options, so interesting piece of advice came into my mailbox recently from...
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