Educational Development

The story of the frustrated student is the subject of a short video produced by students at Manchester Metropolitan University. The university is looking into alternative ways to communicate with students, specifically an SMS service in which messages are sent directly to students’ mobile phones. The system is incredibly simple: staff post a message to the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE), and if the message is urgent, the staff member begins the message with the keyword ‘urgent’. The next 160 characters are then sent as an SMS. It’s an opt-in system which students value - not least because they are more likely to receive the messages if they go straight to their mobile device.

We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us. - Marshall McLuhan

The whole point of the seminar is that ... maybe the students don't get it right, and maybe the students don't know everything about the subject, but it's the fact that the students figured it out on their own that makes it their own, and it makes them able to internalize that subject. ... I learned more in my [seminars] than I did in all my prior learning experience. And I think mostly its because I retained more ... because I was able to take my education into my own hands ... take what I was reading and make it my own.

a game I developed to let them explore the dynamics of building a reputation online by giving and capturing attention.

I am very disappointed with Philosophy in the Flesh - I think trying to explain away most philosophical debates by re-interpreted them in relation to basic metaphors is simplistic.I was also disappointed with their limited view of the history of psychology - assuming that cognitive psychology started in the 1950's leaves out some important influences - their attempt to produce an embodied theory of the mind would benefit from comparisons with the psychology of Rubenstein and later activity theory.

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