Much Ado About Twitter

Twitter is an example of a microblogging service, the above video, Twitter in Plain English by the excellent Common Craft, gives a succinct overview of its features and functionality. Other microblogging services like Yammer, Identi.ca and Jaiku have been around too, but have not garnered the high-profile “celebrity status” that their most illustrious competitor has […]

Chauvet Four Horses

The Four Horsemen

Yesterday, I attended the Fourth Symposium on Social Learning Spaces at Oxford Brookes University with my boss who is, incidently, doing his masters on professional development and the use of e-portfolios. We had hoped to have come back from the symposium with lots of ideas and food for thought with regards to our University’s new […]

The Learner with a Thousand Identities

One of my pet interests is that of identity. Gee not only devotes a whole chapter on idenity (and learning), but also another chapter that looks at identity (and culture). Gee suggests that learning that takes place within, what he describes as “semiotic domains”, or as he puts it more plainly: “an area or set […]

The 36 Steps

I have finally finished reading James Paul Gee‘s “What Video Games Have To Teach Us About Learning And Literacy” where Gee gives an inspirational treatise on how the Education sector can look to the principles and methods employed by the games industry to get people playing their computer / video games and how the players […]

The Language of Play

Reading this week’s papers from Pat Kane (2005) and Brian Sutton-Smith (1997) were a sheer joy and delight compared to the James Newman chapter the other week. I think the issue between these three writers is one of how an argument is being presented to the reader. We start with Sutton-Smith (1997) who sets that scene […]