The New Media Consortium: its sudden death and what comes next

#becomingeducational Sad news before Christmas – another blow for creative EdTech…

The beauty of the web and using the web and the tech for creative education are the networks of creative, enthusiastic and engaged people who have been working for the best possible outcomes for Technology Enhanced learning – for technology and society.
This post tells of a seismic blow to the EdTech community in the USA…
And the very nature of this blogpost shows how good people respond when bad things happen…
Our thoughts go out to the people of the New Media Consortium – their lives are being drastically impacted – what to do? And how to save all that legacy – all that work.

Bryan Alexander

Yesterday many of us learned to our shock that the New Media Consortium (NMC) was going to be liquidated.

We learned via an email announcement, as follows:

Black background in the original.  This is a screen capture.

Shortly after receiving this Campus Technology asked for my reaction.  Here’s what I told them:

I am heartbroken and gobsmacked. The news comes as a terrible shock. My heart goes out to the fine NMC staff, who don’t deserve this. Instead they deserve being snapped up by smart employers, stat. I also rue the blow to the community of splendid innovators that gathered around NMC since the 1990s. Can we use our imagination and technology to build something new in the NMC’s ruins?

I stand by those words.

Right after the announcement broke Twitter lit right up with questions, pleas, mourning, and brainstorming.  I had just finished a long…

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Pilates/Yoga and Helping Students Write

#Becomingeducational It’s Week 11, last teaching week before 2018

 
Time to think about… Supporting Student Writing

 
The blog post below discusses QMUL’s Thesis Boot Camps – their structure and benefits – and also some lessons learned.
What tends to work: set times to write – collegial space to write in – support from structure – support from presence of other writers…

All this so expected?

Well – what also works is building in Pilates and Yoga – and focussing on the self care that you/we all need – not just for PhD writing – but for all our academic endeavours.

Question of the Month: Should we begin to develop Writing Retreats here at LondonMet – and not just for our PhD students – but for all our students?

Do post your thoughts in our Google+ group: https://plus.google.com/communities/117838420157865034181

DoctoralWriting

By Heather Campbell

Heather Campbell has a PhD in History and has studied and worked at Queen Mary University of London for a number of years. As a Learning Developer she now works with undergraduate and postgraduate students helping them develop insights and practices that will contribute to their success at university. As part of this role she helps to organise and run the ‘Thinking Writing’ PhD and staff events which include retreats, workshops, reading groups and Thesis Boot Camps. For more about the work of Thinking Writing, you can take a look at the website: www.thinkingwriting.qmul.ac.uk.

For the past three years Thinking Writing at Queen Mary University of London has been running a Thesis Boot Camp for late stage PhD students. We style our events after the award-winning program developed at the University of Melbourne, in order to help PhD students get over the final hurdle of ‘writing…

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Some Notes about Notes

#becomingeducational W10 It’s all about the notes…
We really love this Tactile Academia (and oh so #creativeHE) blog post about preparing to make notes…
Here the author has prepared her notemaking pages in advance – colour-washing a notepad – different pages – different colours and effects…
Then she chose which page suited which sort of note – which topic…
This is a cool way to get into the mindset of studying – and of taking control of studying…
But not in a rigid and strait jacketed way…
What are you notemaking or preparation strategies?
And if you are wondering what to do right now – why not join in with this week’s #creativeHE: http://www.creativeacademic.uk/creativehe.html

Tactile Academia

I am at the beginning of a new research project, and have been thinking about note taking. Not the note taking that you do once you are in the process of collecting data, whether primary or secondary, but rather the notes that you make before.

There is a very early phase of your research, sort of initial research, when you are finding your focus and honing your ideas into one clear question – a very exciting stage because at the moment there are lots of things this research could turn into.

For me this was always the stage where notes can be found all over the place. Filling up old envelopes is a favourite of mine, maybe because there seem to be some coming through my letterbox a few times a week and once they are emptied of their initial message they almost cry out for a new one. Of…

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