learning and education | Frances Bell

Cycling between private and public in researching Rhizo14

Our first paper Rhizo14: A Rhizomatic Learning cMOOC in Sunlight and in Shade from the research we conducted at Rhizo14 was published last week at Open Praxis. We would love you to read it and respond. One of the themes that has engaged us in the research process is the delicate dance between the private…

ALT Annual Conference 2015: Shaping the future of learning together – submission deadline approaching

The ALT-C 2015 Conference is at the University of Manchester 8-10 September, and will be hugely enjoyable if my experience of previous conferences is anything to go by. Two excellent keynote speakers have been announced: Laura Czerniewycz who does great work in Open Education and Steve Wheeler , a prolific and popular blogger and tweeter….

The Flexible concept of the Terrible Sea lion

I saw this cartoon again a week ago and it reminded me of my first reaction to it so I went off to see what some others thought. David Hopkins gave the following response to the Terrible Sea lion cartoon “I don’t tweet, but I’ve found the Sea Lion strip quite thought-provoking. The most interesting…

Revealing and celebrating learning beyond education

Note: this blog post is written to accompany a Twitter chat 8-9p.m. GMT, Wednesday 11 February 2015, follow #LTHEchat Figure 1 What am I thinking? Dave Young https://www.flickr.com/photos/dcysurfer/4928601429 CC BY 2.0 Learning often wears an invisibility cloak. It’s not even that we think it’s magic, but rather that it happens in the course of other…

Nobody asked you, sir she said

My first ever memory of a ‘feminist’ reaction was to this nursery rhyme “WHERE are you going, my pretty maid?” “I am going a-milking, sir,” she said. “May I go with you, my pretty maid?” “You ’re kindly welcome, sir,” she said. “What is your father, my pretty maid?” 5 “My…

A Dialogue for Shaping Educational Technology

This post was triggered in part by Stephen Downes’ response to Audrey Watters post, and in part by my experiences at and discussions around fedwiki ( Link to reflections). For me, doing fedwiki has allowed me to try out ideas in the company of other ideas from and with people who think like me sometimes but…

The Markedness of Identity

//storify.com/francesbell/women-as-marked-form/embed?border=false[View the story “Markedness and Identity” on Storify] This little exchange on Twitter brought to mind a story of when I worked in a Computer Science department. Out of a staff of about 30 academics, there were two women, and women were in a minority in the student group too. I guess that sensitised me…

Blogs- identity balance and meta homes

Since I retired from full-time employment two years ago, I have been planning to revamp my blog to become my personal web site. I have had a quiet time for personal reasons but I am finding the new me and I’m ready to reach out a bit more. One of the things you lose when…

A table of cMOOCs – can you improve this?

During the course of a research study that Jenny Mackness and I are doing, we have been thinking about cMOOCs. What have been the subjects and purposes of the various courses that might style themselves as cMOOCs? Who does cMOOCs and why? It’s difficult to say what a MOOC is – apart from it being a Massive…