On…. Mike Oldfield

Looking back, Mike Oldfield became a significant musical influence for me when my Dad said Tubular Bells as 'boring' and 'repetitive'.

I was listening to my older brother's vinyl copy of Tubular Bells and found it fascinating. This was the moment when I knew that my musical tastes had diverged from my Father's. How could he possibly think something that subtly complex repetitive? (I may not have expressed to myself it in quite that language as I was fairly young, but the sense of it is clear on my memory).

Oldfield has been, on and off, part of my musical landscape ever since. He led me first to Jean-Michel Jarre, and then to Philip Glass and the Minimalists, and to Kraftwerk; music at once contemplative and challenging. But as the years went by the distractions of life meant I listened to less and less music of any sort. Rather like regular meditation listening to an album seemed somehow to be hard to justify when there are so many other calls on my time. However having recently treated myself to a home cinema amplifier, I wanted some surround sound music to try out on it. I spotted that Oldfield had reissued some of his old albums with 5.1 surround versions on a DVD, took the plunge and bought the Deluxe Edition of Hergest Ridge. Different artwork. Had Oldfield messed about with the original too much and spoiled it? No, luckily, a light touch had been applied.

I made some notes after that first listen:

“I liked the 5.1 mix, but thought it a little too 'back speaker' heavy. The stereo mix is rather pleasing, and better than my previous 'remastered' CD version which was based apparently on the 1976 quadraphonic mix, which has always seemed a bit muddy in places, the loud sections in that being sonically somewhat incoherent. Whilst not solved completely (possibly due to limitations on the original recordings?) things are much better here. A bit different yes, but not so much that it spoils my memories of the work from my original cassette versions. Later, I popped on my headphones and listened to the original 1974 demo recordings. Really liked the first side, a well developed sketch of what the work would become, likeable in its own right. The demo of side two did not work quite as well, the massively overdubbed guitar section not being fully coherent (or complete), but still an interesting listen.”

Pleased by how much I had enjoyed Hergest Ridge Deluxe Edition, I ordered Ommadawn Deluxe Edition:

“Surround mix of Ommadawn pretty darn good. Pretty similar to original mix. Vocals clearer on ‘On Horseback’. The 2010 stereo mix exceptionally detailed, vocals on ‘On Horseback’ are much easier to separate into their individual components for example. On the down side it makes the Uilleann pipes on Part 2 seem a bit too realistic, bagpipes have always seemed a little harsh to my ears. In Dulce Jubilo sounds as I remember it, but I had not heard First Excursion before, bit of an experimental feel to it, and some unsettling piano. Argiers (another new one for me) is more melodic if a little inconsequential at first listen, Portsmouth is always fun. The original 1975 stereo mix is inevitably a bit less detailed, but still stands up well against my old CD (dated 1996), there is a nice roundness to the sound. I am trying to remember what tv programme used the tune from about seven minutes in. I associate that tune with watching tv in the mornings on school holidays, maybe something to do with science or art. Didn't know it was Mike Oldfield until much later but the tune stuck with me. The pipes on the 1975 version are indeed somewhat less harsh…. Any song why starts "I Like beer, and I like cheese" is good in my book….. Ironically, the decreased separation of the vocals on the 1975 On Horseback make the children's voices seem sweeter than the more detailed 2010 version…. Hang on, this 1975 lost demo version is interesting…synths!....Oh, that's lovely!....What on Earth? Bizarre comedy overdub to the start of the final section. No, sorry, that does not work. Let us not speak of it again…..Nice ending though….. So, I have listened to four versions of Ommadawn in about six hours. And frankly, I could happily listen to another.”

So, with the one reservation about the comedy overdub on the 1975 lost demo version, a big thumbs up for Ommadawn Deluxe Editon then. The Deluxe Editions of Tubular Bells and Five Miles Out should be in my possession in a couple of days time, and I am certainly looking forward to that.

For me, Mike Oldfield’s music evokes nebulous impressions from childhood of some lost Elysium ideal, plus teenage memories of something special that not many of my peers really got, and of an idealized vision of the English countryside; a heady mix of nostalgia and appreciation of its musical qualities.

Oldfield has recorded a lot of albums, and frankly some of the later ones are not in the same league as his earlier ones (for example Tubular Bells II (1992) and Tubular Bells III (1998) both sound good in isolation and are well recorded, but are not as interesting as the original).

Here is my list of recommended Oldfield albums, in chronological order:

Tubular Bells (1973)

Hergest Ridge (1974)

Ommadawn (1975)

Incantations (1978)

Five Miles Out (1982)

Crises (1983)

Discovery (1984)

Amarok (1990)

Water Bearer by Sally Oldfield (1978) is also worth a listen, if you can find it.

“Hey and away we go, through the grass, ‘cross the snow….”

A note on equipment:

My father was always keen on music and he was also interested in hi-fidelity; through the 1970s we had a succession of Ferguson music centres; combinations of a radio, record player and later cassette player in a yard wide case of orangey wood and smoked semi-transparent plastic. Aesthetically rather more pleasing than the vertical faux-separates monstrosities of the 1980s and compact compared to the first stereo I can remember him having which was built into a fairly substantial cabinet, more furniture than technology. Objectively, Music Centres were perhaps not the last word in HiFi, but to my young ears they reproduced music pretty well and even now there is a part of me that rebels when I listen to the flattened sound of a 128kbps mp3. Today I will buy a CD in preference to a download simply because they sound better, I like the sound of vinyl but it is fragile and less convenient to play. Mp3 is fine for speech, but for music I go for lossless. 

Flooding in Boston

Some pictures taken this morning showing the aftermath of last night's floods in Boston, Lincolnshire

 The Stump reflected in the river (inverted)

 Boston College Sixth Building

 The old workhouse and grain silos

Skirbeck Road looking towards Mount Bridge

On... the portrayal of women scientists in the media

The Daily Mail featured an article on it webpage a couple of days ago titled “Trainee botanist, 17, who has the delicate job of pollinating flower that only blooms for two nights a year in bid to create largest lily in the world” about an attempt by Ventnor Botanical Gardens to grow the world's largest water lily. 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2363946/Botanists-attempt-create-largest-lily-world-cross-pollinating-flowers-bloom-just-nights-year.html

It featured several pictures of a trainee botanist in a bikini. It mentioned that she was seventeen three times and that she “had to bravely don her swimsuit to hand-pollenate lilies”.

This raises a number of questions that students of the Public Perception of Science and how science and scientists are portrayed in the media might like to ponder:

• How did the pictures of the curator of the gardens and the trainee botanist differ?
• Why did the article mention her age three times?
• Would the Daily Mail have been less likely to run the article if it did not feature the bikini shots?
• Do you consider the article to be written in a leery way, did it contain there any innuendo / double entendres?
• Look at the sidebar on the right with links to other articles: is the tone of the article typical of the way the paper portrays women?
• What does the comments section tell us about attitudes of readers? (click on the “view all” button)
• Why do you think the the paper is “no longer accepting comments on this article”
• Is this article typical of the portrayal of women in science? Are there any other stereotypes and might these discourage women to take up careers in science?

Tags: Perceptions of Science, Public Understanding of Science, Public Engagement with Science, Science and Society, Women in Science

#WomenInScience #botany #media #feminism

(I came across this article via @DMReporter on Twitter)

Reflections on the Science and Maths Specialist Conference, University of Huddersfield, 2013

Having finally handed in the Year 2 portfolio for my part-time University of Huddersfield PGCE, it is perhaps time to reflect on what was for me the highlight of the course, the two day specialist conference held at at the University during the Easter holidays. I was in the Science and Maths group, but this was a small part of a much larger cohort of students who were all approaching the end of their PGCEs and CertEds.  

Lockside Building

Studying part time at a local centre, I was looking forward to a little taste of the student experience. Whilst I thoroughly enjoyed my previous studies with the Open University (where I had deliberately chosen courses that did not require attendance at summer schools as my then job meant it was impossible to be sure of getting the time off to attend) and having gone into industry after taking my A Levels, I have always had a nagging feeling that I missed out on the student campus experience.

The hotel myself and a couple of colleagues were booked into was on the outskirts of the city and so there really have the opportunity to try out the nightlife, in retrospect this was probably a good thing given the state of some on the second morning! Luckily I was not on the noisy motorway side of the hotel, the view over the backyard of the pub was not especially salubrious but at least I got a decent night’s sleep.

view from hotel room

Never having visited Huddersfield before I had imagined it to be a rather bigger place. Many of the buildings were constructed from a rather attractive pale stone giving a solid, well maintained but slightly old-fashioned air. There were lots of friendly staff about to guide us from the car park as we arrived and overall the organization of the event was very good.

University buildings

All the attendees had prepared a short academic paper on an aspect of teaching and learning as it relates to their specialist subject and were allotted a half hour slot in which to deliver the content and answer questions. I was up second, with a paper was on ‘Engaging Level 3 science students with “The Public Engagement with Science”: problems and opportunities’. The first person to present was very impressive which made me a tad nervous, how was I going to follow that? However once I got going the nerves dropped away and I actually found myself rather enjoying the experience.

There were two formal lectures during the conference which everyone went to in a large lecture hall; Steve Baker on Behaviour Management (useful) and Trevor Gordon on Equality and Diversity (important content but delivered in an almost a ‘revival meeting’ style which was a bit hyperactive for my taste).

Pavel, Adam, Helen and me in the lecture hall for the Steve Baker lecture

We also had a session on Using Social Media in Science and Maths Teaching which is really what inspired me to do these blog entries. I also actively Tweeted during the conference (search for the hashtag #Hud13), this proved to be a very useful and immediate way to share and receive information and experiences with other attendees - even those in different groups who I did not have the opportunity to meet - and with the staff. Following the Twitter streams of people I met (in real life or virtually) has provided me with an ongoing new stream of resources and ideas which has continued to be useful weeks after the conference finished.

lecture on day two - think I may have arrived a bit early!

The second day was rounded off with a discussion of issues from the equality lecture, which we were asked to summarise in the form of a haiku. Here is my attempt:

E&D musings / law encompasses us all / we are not a box

Hmm, I think you had to be there...

Finally, resource sharing, reflections and evaluations. All in all a very useful couple of days which in prospect had seemed like a chore but when I actually got there really fired me up with more than enough energy to finish the course and (funding application permitting) continue my studies in this area.

#Hud13 #PGCE #Huddersfield #UniversityOfHuddersfield #OU #OpenUniversity #student #lecture  #HistoryOfScience  #HSTM  #Science

On... ITC in the classroom: Go!Animate

Looking for something fun as teaching draws to an end and assignment hell descends upon us, I thought that I would try out Go!Animate. The idea of the service is that you can quickly and easily make an animation, you choose characters from a number of presets (or build them yourself) and give them voices by typing in a script which is converted by the built in text to speech app. This works pretty well and includes a reasonable selection of accents (including British), and you also have the option of recording a soundtrack yourself and uploading it. There is a basic free service, and a number of paid options. I will return to this later.

The scope for the use of animation in education is wide: introductions to topics, revision, light-hearted ways to get tricky points across, even collaborative or individual video production by learners is feasible.  I was impressed by the ease of use: going from first visiting the webpage to registering, looking at the tutorials and making a test video took less than half and hour. I think that with a bit of practice you could easily turn out a thirty second video in around than five minutes. This is an important point; I had intended to trial Prezi this week however in the hour I allotted to learn and test it I did not manage to produce a finished product. This was partly down to the site not importing a pre-prepared PowerPoint presentation (not figured out why yet) and partly to my wanting to tweak too much to get things just right. As such, Prezi might not meet all my requirements for ITC solutions: they have to be easy to learn and practical and quick to use (I have not given up on Prezzi by the way and hope to revisit it soon).

So, Go!Animate passes my ease of use tests. So far, so good, but what about the downside? Well, the free service is rather restricted, Go!Animate really want you to pay them a monthly subscription. Fair enough, they are a commercial company, but I am looking for free teacher resources here. With the free basic account you are limited to videos of no more than two minutes in length; this is not a great problem, keep them short and snappy is a good maxim. You could also do several short linked videos and use the breaks for discussion. The next restriction is more of a problem: limited sharing options with no downloads. You get a url you can paste into a worksheet or a presentation, or an embed code, but that is it. You cannot download the video to edit yourself, and you cannot post it to YouTube without forking out some cash. You are therefore slightly at the mercy of their continued largess, I am a bit reluctant to invest too much time into creating resources on a service that (potentially) could deny me access to that work at some point in the future. Not likely to happen, but it is a nagging doubt and a disincentive.

Learner reaction so far has been very positive. I will leave experimenting with getting them try to make videos on their own until next academic year: this could be useful as an alternative and additional method of assessment.

So, will I be using Go!Animate regularly in the future? Probably yes. It is so quick and easy that I see it as a good way to make rapid but effective recaps of previous lessons, especially dealing with points learners found difficult. The free version is limited, but good enough to be useful. Not one to deploy every week perhaps, but as part of a suite of ITC applications it has the potential to be a handy addition to my teaching toolkit.

http://goanimate.com/

On... how to embed a Twitter feed into Blogger

Fairly easy once you know how, but this was initially a bit trickier than I had imagined, mainly because most of the “how to” guides on the web are out of date. So with the caveat that this worked in May 2013 but will probably not if you are reading it next year, this is what you need to do:

Stage 1: Twitter

• log on to Twitter and go to settings
• in “Create and manage your Widgets” select New

  

• a settings page will come up but the defaults work fine
• press create widget
• some code will appear (highlighted) in a box above where is says “Copy and paste the code into the HTML of your site” (a copy of the code for your new Widget will be stored on the Widgets page for future use) copy this code, and move on to stage 2

Stage 2: Blogger

• log in to Blogger (the overview page), and select the layout option
• an outline of your blog will appear, with various spaces marked “add a gadget” select one of these (probably best to choose one down the right hand side).
• A box will pop up: in the basics tab, scroll down to find and select “HTML/Javascript” and press the + button

 

 

• add a title such as “my Twitter feed”
• paste the code from Twitter into the “content” box and then press save

done!

#Twitter #Blogger #embed #guide #HowTo #Widget #Gadget #feed

On... IT in the Classroom: Socrative

Following last week’s trial of Google Forms to run quizzes, this week I tried Socrative which takes a different approach to achieve the same result. Socrative is an online service available at http://socrative.com that according to the website “empowers teachers to engage their classrooms through a series of educational exercises and games via smartphones, laptops, and tablets.” The teacher creates an account at http://m.socrative.com/lecturer/#lecturerLogin and is given a ‘room’ number, and can then make and save a quiz either on the webpage or via a dedicated app on a smartphone or tablet. During the class the teacher logs on and makes the quiz “live” and the students access it via a slightly different address: http://m.socrative.com/student/#joinRoom - this has to be done on different devices to that being used by the teacher.

The website  takes you through the various options in an easy to understand way. The whole process of setting up is fairly painless, it only took me a few minutes to produce a test quiz. You can choose either multiple choice or text based answers; with multiple choice you can choose to display the correct answer to the student after the question if you wish, and there is also an option to randomize the order of the choices for each answer so that students do not all get the answers in the same order.

Quizzes can be run either at student pace (start it off and let them get on with it) or at teacher pace (you send them the questions one at a time, keeping the class all together and allowing discussion of the answers between questions). With the latter option combined with multiple choice questions you can display a live graph of the incoming answers on an interactive whiteboard, this proved popular with my students however some of the cannier ones waited to see what the popular answers from others were before submitting their own, so this feature is perhaps used with caution. Like Google forms there is the option of downloading a spreadsheet of results, useful for tracking progression.

So which is best; Socrative or Google Forms?

Socrative is slightly more visually appealing than Google Forms and feedback from my students (all aged 16-19) was positive, with a slight preference shown over Google Forms. However I think that the two systems are best used in slightly different situations. Socrative is really designed to be used ‘live’ in the class (some of my colleagues use it for ‘votes’ on verbal questions), you start and stop the activity and only one quiz can be running on your account at the time. Google Forms is better if you are setting homework as you can have multiple live hyperlinks to different forms, so different classes can use the system for different quizzes at the same time, or different learners in the same class (for example with different abilities) can access different versions of a quiz in the same class at the the same time, useful for differentiation.

Summing up Socrative

As usual, I would advise having a quick practice run-through of all of your quizzes before delivering them to students, just to be sure they behave as expected. For this you will need to have two devices though, not always possible. I certainly liked the ease of use and, like Google forms, will be using Socrative again in future.

But I do have one caveat; buried deep in the FAQs  when I checked on Friday (under Teacher web-based solution) it says that:

“Socrative provides a free student response service for everyone, with no restrictions as part of our beta product launch. There is no registration fee, usage fee and no credit card details are required and no hidden catches.

Since we truly believe in customer collaboration we are here first to gather your thoughts, requirements, comments while we are working day and night to launch our turnkey product.

Don't miss this amazing opportunity to enjoy our product while they are free of charge!”

This implies that they do plan to charge to use the service  in the future.

Socrative video

On... why are office staplers so rubbish?

This morning I needed to staple two sheets of paper together. Not an unreasonable thing to do in an office setting you would think? Well, stapler number one had two twisted staples sticking out of it in an uncanny impression of the teeth of Douglas Adams' hideous creation Agrajag, staples so jammed in that they could not be pulled out by hand. Stapler number two had the pushing mechanism misaligned with the staple holder and also did not work. Stapler number three, a little red number I had not seen before managed to actually draw blood while I was loading it. I therefore felt disinclined to actually try stapling anything with it. Stapler number four managed to drive a staple through the sheets of paper, hooray! However said staple was mangled with a sharp end sticking out and frankly looked a mess. Stapler number five finally did the job, but I know from experience that it too is temperamental, and has a good chance of jamming the next time I try it. So five staplers, several minutes of wasted time and paper (I had to print the document twice), blood and annoyance just to join two sheets of A4 together.

This seems to be the case with just about every stapler I have encountered in a office environment in the last few years. When I started my career, staplers were pleasingly solid things made of metal, not the poorly made apologies for staplers we have to put up with today with their veneer of shiny (or more often grubby) plastic over cheap, thin metal which fails to do what the machine is (or at least should be) designed to do: staple paper together in a reliable and predictable manner. Those old staplers might have cost a bit more but they worked. Reliably.

Perhaps I should calculate the interminable man hours lost in battling with cheap and nasty staplers, and present a cost benefit analysis of the importance of spending just a little bit more on a good quality stapler instead of the semi-useless items littering the stationary cupboards (and shortly thereafter, the bins) of offices across the land. Except that I have the nagging feeling that it is now only economically possible to produce cheap and nasty staplers. Perhaps all the manufactures of staplers that worked reliably for many years have gone out of business, victims of the quality and utility of their own products, and we are now left in a never ending cycle of substandard machines which need replacing ever more frequently?

In my previous career I had a 1970s stapler which despite its venerable age hardly ever jammed and served me well for many years. It was made by Rapid and manufactured in Sweden. Halcyon days, wish I had had it this morning....

ITC in the Classroom: Google Forms

After last week’s successful trial of Padlet, this week I used Google Forms to make a short quiz for my learners to try. Google forms is part of the suite of applications available to anybody with a Google account (basically that means everyone who has gmail), just log on via the webpage, and select ‘Drive’ from the black option bar at the top of the page, press the ‘create’ button (red, on the left hand side) and select ‘Form’. You can also download the Google Drive application for your computer to speed things up a bit. Up until now I had used the Documents, Spreadsheets and Drawings, but hadn’t really tried Forms. I like Google Docs as they are accessible from any computer, tablet or smartphone with an internet connection, and you don’t have to worry about synchronizing over multiple computers or carrying a memory stick around (other than as backup in case the internet is down). They also save every few seconds, so it is much harder to lose your work - students please note, that’s one less excuse!

The concept is simple: you make the form, it has a unique URL which you can give to your students, they fill the form in and submit it, and the answers are recorded on a spreadsheet. You can choose from a variety of question types - short text, paragraph text, multiple choice, checkbox, choose from list, scale (eg rank from 1 to 5), and grid; so plenty of opportunity to mix and match to suit your needs from a quick quiz to long-form answers. Actually constructing the Form is quick and easy, especially if you have questions pre-prepared.

Before trying it ‘live’ on the class I did a test run and was glad I did; I had forgotten to make ‘what is your name’ a question, without which the data is somewhat less useful! Also the grid question only allowed one correct answer per line, this restriction was not obvious.

Google Forms has been tried on three classes so far (one of which was an observed lesson), and feedback from the learners had been generally positive. You have a fair amount of control over the look of the form the learners see. I chose a  simple, clean layout and no learners had difficulties in understanding how to answer the questions or submit the form. The spreadsheet updates live and so if used in class you can give instant feedback to early finishers or encourage or help those who are a little slower completing the task. Although I have not tried it yet, they should also work well for homework tasks as once the form is live, there is no time limit for completion (unless you take it down).

Next week I will be trialling a different way of running quizzes; Socrative.

ITC in the classroom: Padlet

After recently attending the Science and Maths Specialist Conference at the University of Huddersfield (#Hud13) I have decided to try a few new IT solutions in the classroom. This week I tried Padlet (formally called Wallwisher) free at http://padlet.com

(in this image I have removed the names of learners)

I tested Padlet on five on my classes (none of who had used it before) and overall it worked very well. Padlet is a web-based service allowing a number of users to 'write' messages onto a 'wall' simultaneously; the teacher sets up the wall and the students access it via a hyperlink. The students can edit their own entries but not those of their peers, the teacher can amend or delete any entry if logged on.

After some initial confusion as to what to do and how to post entries and pictures (which I largely let the learners solve for themselves, encouraging them to explore and help each other as necessary) they enthusiastically accepted the concept. Indeed we spent rather longer on the activity than I had initially planned, they seemed to get a lot out of it.

One of the five classes had a less mature attitude that the others and initially some silly messages were posted however after a warning they soon managed to produce some good work. Minor difficulties notwithstanding, all the groups quickly took to the concept and managed to do some useful research for their assignments. Ad-hoc collaboration between learners spontaneously developed and the finished Padlet walls were downloaded and posted onto the VLE for future reference.

Padlet is definitely something I will be using regularly form now on.

Tip: always log on yourself during the session so you can control the wall dynamically.

Next week I will be trialling Google Forms

The tv portrayal of a science lesson on evolution

I don't normally pay too much attention to what my daughter watches on CBBC but was surprised and pleased this morning to see a fairly realistic and sensible portrayal of a biology lesson about evolution on the teen werewolf series Wolfblood followed by an explanation of the limitations of using school microscopes to analyse blood samples. Most tv dramas (irrespective as to whether they are aimed at children or adults) would I suspect have taken the easier route of portraying the 'science' inaccurately to drive the plot along. Not seen any more of the series so not sure if this particular episode is representative, but a hopeful sign.

links 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01ndm1h/Wolfblood_Dark_Moon/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfblood

a couple of other resources on the portrayal of science in film and tv:

http://www.berfrois.com/2011/06/david-kirby-hulk-smash-accurate-science/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_Science