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Building with learning #el30: Week 2

While watching the discussion between Tony Hirst and Stephen Downes as part of the cmooc #el30 (my other posts are here) there were moments of clarity on my part but also I found myself really not understanding. Things that I thought were the important points were not. My lack of understanding only came clear when I talked to a professional who designs and uses containers (although in a non-academic world). You could say I used the ‘phone a friend’ option for help. My friend said things like:

By maintaining a common interface and abstracting the internals you can make changes to the contents of the container by patching it or updating it without changing the interface, as in DevOps.

He went on to talk about CICD and although he said it was an elegant model, and suggested shifting in the direction of Kubernetes (which comes from the Greek word for helmsman) instead of Docker. He did suggest chapter 1 from the book Docker Deep Dive by Nigel Poulton. Thank you to the author who provided a sample of the book via his website! (yes, that’s what I linked to)

– at this point I looked like a tree (that is to say, standing there, and not communicating in an understandable way). With articulate patience he explained containers in terms I, your ordinary academic practitioner, could understand. 🙂 yay! Here’s the non-technical, common person, explanation:Read More »Building with learning #el30: Week 2

Talking Jazz and Rock with Reuben Jackson

I had the (undeserved) privilege of being introduced to a poet and music lover who exceeds any ordinary music listener’s, and even most performer’s knowledge of groups, their influences, and their impact on music and life. Reuben Jackson is a curator, an archivist, and has long written and spoken about jazz. He was curator for the Smithsonian Jazz collection for 18 years, and so an invitation to speak to him was something not to pass up.

This year I’ve been teaching a new class (new to me) and naturally I’ve re-vamped it considerably from what I inherited. What does that mean? Homework for me. Research. Buckets of it. At least I can tell my students I’ve done at least 10 hours of homework a week. I hope they do too 😉

What you find below is the audio and the transcript of my talk with Reuben. Questions are in bold, so you can scroll through and pick the ones you are interested in. There are SO MANY names and references to people and works. I really do recommend you follow up on them and learn. Be a sponge. Challenge yourself – especially if you hadn’t considered crossing, and certainly not straddling the jazz / rock divide.

Enjoy! and huge thanks to Reuben for his generosity, both with his time and sharing his experiences and knowledge. For me it’s people and their living stories that make history come alive. (I also talked to Reuben about his upcoming book, and that segment will appear in another post)

Reuben Jackson Interview (with Laura Ritchie)

Tuesday 16, October, 2018

(ringing)

Good morning Felix Grant Jazz Archives.

-Hi, this is Laura Ritchie, I’m ringing for Reuben.

Yeah, hi, how are you?

-I’m very well. Thanks for making time to chat. And of course permission to share the call – I’m happy to transcribe it.

Oh absolutely. That’s fine.

-Thank you

Read More »Talking Jazz and Rock with Reuben Jackson

Penny drops and the light stays on

I finally understood it.

What’s it? One of those uber-famous quotes that isn’t really a quote at all, but someone must have said it sometime:

‘A candle loses nothing by lighting another candle’

You know, it’s been twisted into any number of wall-hangings and greeting cards, and I’ve heard it generally used as a thank you to describe a random nice thing. -and yeah, I get it, one candle can light another one and stay lit. Fire is one of those things you can literally pass on the flame (just think of the Olympic’s opening ceremony) and it is very moving to see the transfer and the impact of physically carrying the flame in the Olympic torch across the world.

Other things work like that too, but it is more difficult to see the impact with something like laughter, or even with ideas. Often we don’t see the impact until much later, if at all.Read More »Penny drops and the light stays on

OER18 Reflections

This morning at OER, I typed as I listened to the keynote. David Wiley started with definitions. (featured image CC-0 by Alan Levine)

I have a tricky time understanding the labels. Names go with identity, and that is very important, but … I tweeted that I got stuck at the first half of his first question. Not that there was anything wrong with it, but if you’re talking definitions, that means semantics comes into it, and well that is a sort of provocation for me.

An analogy- I realise it is very extreme, and draws a simple connection where there are really a dozen steps, but it illustrates a point- We learn. People, providers, researchers, all like to label the learning. We breathe, and we don’t really talk about it because it is natural to breathe – we all do it. People do discuss air, but generally they label the air when there is something wrong with it- like pollution… If we label the air because it’s broken, does that mean we feel the need to label learning because it’s broken too? Perhaps.

I think many people learn inside of their labelled boxes. How did it get into this boxed state that we have to label the stages of opening the lid. Are we backwards in learning? or just looking at learning backwards?

The seeming desire for so many boxes across education is something that baffles me.Read More »OER18 Reflections