OK – enough already! I am a patient man but now I have had enough of rain. I no longer want to be damp after going anywhere around town. Since my main mode of transportation is my bike this is really enough. Who do I turn to to register a formal complaint?
As it’s soon Christmas some snow would be nice too…
Last week The Guardian art critic Jonathan Jones released a list entitled: 50 Works of Art to See Before You Die. These kind of lists are fascinating. There is a superficial desire to go through lists like these and tick of the things you have done. To see if you fit in – if you are on track. But there is also a nice thing about easy lists – they create a kind of canon which we can relate to.
Naturally there it did not take long for a collection of images to appear online – so now you don’t even have to look around you can easily browse the list.
But should lists like this be easy? I would prefer to change the focus of the list and call it 50 Works of Art to Understand Before you Die. Simply “seeing” art is not enough. Or is it? A long time ago I was at the Louvre (only a brief visit) and I was shocked at the amount of people thronging around the one piece of art which they probably had seen most in their lives (though not in real-life, whatever than means).
Most visitors stood in front of the Mona Lisa while they seemed to ignore most other works. What were they really looking at? A work of art or a great PR campaign?
Tomorrow itâ??s back on the rails again. I am off to Stockholm to meet family and then to do some work early on Monday. The three-hour trip to Stockholm is becoming a very common occurrence lately but I donâ??t mind I enjoy train travel. Also the train has power outlets at all seats and wifi. All this means that I can surf while traveling at 200 km/hour.
On Monday I shall meet with people from Solidaritetshuset (Solidarity House) to discuss how the FSFE can help with their plans for holding seminars and training courses in Free Software and developing an open archive for their material.
Faslane 365 is a one year continuous peaceful blockade of the Trident base at Faslane from 1st October 2006 to 30th September 2007.
The blockade is being “manned” by several different groups (look at the list here). Usually the groups organise and promise to take a certain period of the blockade.
Faslane 365 is asking a wide range of local, national and even international groups from all sections of civil society to come to Faslane with at least 100 people committed to stay and make their visions for a just and peaceful future visible for at least two days.
And guess what? There will be a group of academics blockading Faslane in the 7th January 2007. The method for blockading is a method which academics should find natural – the seminar!
Academic Trident Seminar Blockade on the 7th of Jan 2007 within the Faslane 365 Campaign in Scotland, Faslane (www.faslane365.org). In this positive and pro-active action we do not simply protest the existence of nuclear weapons but do direct action to stop them from being used by doing the professional work we do as academics; a scientific seminar. The seminar is then simultaneous a blockade of the Trident Submarine base at Faslane since the seminar will happen directly at the North Gate on the road, i.e. a blockade of base work by scientific discussion! (Academics & Scholars)
There is still time to submit a paper for the blockade (deadline 10 December): Seminar papers are supposed to be short and written by those who participate in the seminar at the gates of the base, i.e. risk arrest. The papers are our statements on why we are blockading with as usual appropriate academic references (1-5 pages, complete texts done by deadline 1st of January).
The first time I saw the Obey image was on a t-shirt. Then I saw it on a wall in Barcelona. Since then it appeared and re-appeared on walls around the world. It was naturally there before I saw it, but since then it I have seen it on other walls and t-shirts. Not really sure what it means but it is intriguing.
One of the spookier versions of this images is a mashup from Iran. Not that I have ever been in Iran but I found it over at the Wooster Collective.
Pretty spooky…
Powerpoint is my crutch. As a teacher I have long been dependent upon powerpoint*. But I have also been concerned about the way in which it forms the way I teach and the way in which students learn. Increasingly students have an expectation of getting the lecturerâ??s powerpoint slides â?? Preferably in digital form and in advance of the lecture.
Powerpoint Students
What is a lecture? University is filled with them. They are praised by some and reviled by others (this will be the topic for a future post). To the student the lecture almost defines university life. Therefore it is maybe not all good when the lecture has become confined to the square space and bullet point list defined by presentation software.
Most often I do not hand out my handouts, nor do I provide my powerpoint slides in digital or any other form to my students. This is not an attempt to monopolize or capitalize on my knowledge. To understand the purpose of this we must look at the purpose of powerpoint slides.
Slides are used (in my teaching) for two purposes. First, and foremost, the slides are there to keep me on track to help me keep my thoughts in order. Second, the slides are intended to underscore certain more important thoughts or concepts. Thirdly, the slides may provide light entertainment they can help the listeners to keep listening.
As these points show, the slides are not a replacement for the lecture, lecturer, or literature. So in order to make sure that this message gets across: I do not hand out my handouts.
Powerpoint Lecturers
If the student has become used to being fed with powerpoint slides then what about the lecturer. We have (generalization warning!) become dependent upon powerpoint. Planning a lecture begins with the opening of presentation software. The knowledge we want to transfer is confined by our ability to condense it (knowledge) into squares and lists.
By adding features, such as effects, sounds and images we believe that we are somehow helping the students to understand what we have learned through reading, scientific method and experience.
Handicap Warning
Powerpoint can be, for both students and lecturers, an invaluable support. But letâ??s not forget that the same software can be used as a way in which to hide the fact that no transfer of knowledge is taking place. Each student should as him/herself what they hope to see in the handouts and why they are so eager to obtain the handouts â?? at the same time so disinterested in the original.
Lecturers should stop and think before resorting to powerpoint. If powerpoint is necessary then they should stop and think about the content and its presentation. Would the students be equally served by the applying the old adage â??less is moreâ?? to powerpoint?
Did Einstein hand out handouts?
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* the term powerpoint is intented to refer to a generic set of presentation software. The same results are obtained by Open Office presenter, Macâ??s Keynote, or any other such program.
Humor: The Gettysburg Powerpoint Presentation: Gettysburg Address as a powerpoint presentation http://norvig.com/Gettysburg/index.htm
Recommend Reading
Allan M. Jones. The use and abuse of PowerPoint in Teaching and Learning in the Life Sciences: A Personal Overview, BEE-j Volume 2: November 2003 http://bio.ltsn.ac.uk/journal/vol2/beej-2-3.pdf
David B. Daniel. Using Powerpoint to Ruin a Perfectly Good Lecture. Presented to the 1st Biennial SRCD Teaching of Developmental Science Institute 2005. http://www.srcd.org/biennial_archives/atlanta_2005/documents/daniel.pdf
Greg Jaffe. â??Pentagon cracks down on … PowerPointâ??, The Wall Street Journal Online. http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-502314.html
Jens E. Kjeldsen. â??The Rhetoric of PowerPointâ??, Seminar.net – International journal of media, technology and lifelong learning Vol. 2 â?? Issue 1 â?? 2006. http://www.seminar.net/volume2-issue1-2006/the-rhetoric-of-powerpoint
Jeffrey R. Young. â??When Good Technology Means Bad Teaching: Giving professors gadgets without training can do more harm than good in the classroomâ??, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Vol. 51, Issue 12, November 12, 2004. http://chronicle.com/free/v51/i12/12a03101.htm
Yesterday was buy nothing day. All I can say is that the buy-nothing idea was not particularly noticeable at Ikea. So I must consider myself a buy-nothing failure. Here is some information about the day.
Every November, for 24 hours, we remember that no one was born to shop. If youâ??ve never taken part in Buy Nothing Day, or if youâ??ve taken part in the past but havenâ??t really committed to doing it again, consider this: 2006 will go down as the year in which mainstream dialogue about global warming finally reached its critical mass. What better way to bring the Year of Global Warming to a close than to point in the direction of real alternatives to the unbridled consumption that has created this quagmire?
Read more over at Adbusters.
Oh well, there is always next year…
The first day at the Swedish Armed Forces Academy (at Karlberg Castle) is over and today is the second, and final, day. Yesterday we had a tour of the facilities and also a long open discussion between the project members and the rapporteurs.
Apparently the Swedish military academy is the oldest in the world. The building is filled to the brim with old military nick-nacks which seem to be (almost) spread out at random. The more representative rooms are better arranged but the room we had our discussions in contained two oil portraits of 16th century characters an Admiral and an adviser to the King and two ugly worn down wood and leather sofa’s from the 1970s, the kind that you find in the clubhouse of the local chess of football club – very postmodern.
The discussions are going well. Interesting topics and interesting people. One side-topic which came up was the notion of military tourism. Military officers traveling to other military units and living their reality for a while. This was particularly interesting when after discussing this modern version we say the names of those fallen in battle in the Karlberg chapel – it was filled with exotic locations and plenty of foreign names.
Yupp another rainy Saturday has rolled around. While taking a walk around town I managed to pick up Vilém Flusser‘s book Towards a Philosophy of Photography which seems very exiting. Also discovered that the cool exhibition by Mattias Adolfsson (blogged about him earlier and he also has a blog with images) was still available and so was my favourite picture. So I bought the Beatnik Dragon.
Not a bad bit of procrastination – but now it’s back to the the real writing. Or rather as LP would say – the stuff that I really get paid for…
Right now in Bangkok itâ??s the 6th annual World Toilet Forum. The Forum has as its slogan: â??Happy Toilet, Healthy Lifeâ?? â?? which I must say if you are going to pick words to live by then these are as good as many others! Much better than the ridiculous â??Dulce et Decorum Est Pro Patria Moriâ?? translated: It is sweet and noble to die for your country (If you donâ??t think its ridiculous then you should read Wilfred Owen or read more current affairs).
Anyway back to the original subject of Happy Toilets. Not only is there a World Toilet Forum but there is also a World Toilet Organisation, which I thought must have been a satire on the WTO, and there is also a World Toilet College in Singapore, whose nr 2 objective (sorry I couldnâ??t resist it) is â??To establish Singapore as the premier training hub for the restroom industry.â??
The WTO site (Toilet not Trade) also has a selection of photographs entitled Beautiful Restroom Images – but I thought that I would provide something more low-tech so this is from the public latrines in Ostia
Why the sudden interest? Well I just wanted you all to know that tomorrow is the International Toilet Day – a fitting tribute to the technologicalization of the natural processes. What can I say? Except â??Happy Toilet, Healthy Lifeâ??
Oh and of course you can also buy t-shirtsâ?¦