Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.
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Open Education – the importance of a critical approach
As Bayne, Knox, Ross (2015) highlight in their paper, there has been a continuing trend towards ‘openness’ in many walks of life. My own experiences in this space have largely been in open technology, and the use of this within education/training. There’s certainly a lot of positivity about it: it’s seen as low-cost, tapping into…
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Using image to support an argument
In approaching the second structured blog activity, I initially struggled to get my head around how to ‘support’ an argument, rather than simply ‘illustrate’. Naturally, there’s a key difference here, and I considered how this happens in the real world. The one example I could think of is in the world of advertising. As much…
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The playground as a spatial metaphor for IDEL
The park was brought up in the video from Rosi Braidotti in Week 6. Braidotti discusses the relationship her institute (Utrecht University) has with the rest of the city, and the role the park plays in this as a public space. I thought about this further and discussed how the park bench could be considered,…
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Bayne, S., Gallagher, M. S., & Lamb, J. (2014) Reflections
Being back ‘at’ university over the last seven weeks, after so long outside of more formal education has been a challenging, but invigorating experience. This week we’ve been building on previous themes around online environments, community and spaces to think about our experiences as distance education students, and what it means for us to be…
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Online environments and Minecraft – first thoughts
(Please note this has been written before I’ve given Minecraft a more than a initial trial. It’s just intended to capture some early ramblings on this). Although I’d never consider myself a gamer, on reflection my experiences in this area have always involved ‘big spaces’. This goes way back to early ‘point and click’ adventures…
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Metaphorical concepts
So it seems that how we think, act and speak is influenced by the metaphorical choices we use to conceptualise ideas. Another eye-opener in week 6, this time from Lakoff, G. and Johnson, M. (1980). As someone who resorts to metaphors quite often in language (in my on-going battle to articulate myself with clarity), it…
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Cousin, G. (2005) musings
Week 6 of IDEL and I think we’re moving into more familiar territory. Although digital environments is a very broad term, and Minecraft is still very much an unknown, we’ve begun to start using terms such as VLE, which is a bit closer to home. Cousin, G. (2005) has been a really interesting read, and…
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Communication channels within IDEL (so far…)
Using Canva, I’ve put some thoughts on each of the communication channels we’ve used so far on the IDEL course. While this is a departure from interpreting and discussing the recommended readings, I felt some consideration of this could have some useful bearings on my course development in the ‘day job’. Am looking forward to…
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Themes and terminology
In the spirit of IDEL, I thought it was about time to start experimenting on this blog with a few different online tools. I’ve pulled some of the recurring themes and new terminology (for me) that I’ve picked up during the course so far and pulled them into a wordcloud. It’s not hugely different from…
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The challenge in choice of terminology
Bayne, S. (2015). intertwines with similar themes as the paper I critiqued, namely Hamilton, E., and Friesen, N. (2013). While Friesen looks at the approaches to research in the relationship between technology and education, Bayne raises some another difficulty (and one that could be argued that contributes to the same blinkered viewpoint) in the term…
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