Illya Arnet-Clark :: Blog

Coming to Our Senses by Jon Kabat-Zinn

As a lifelong learner, relationship and task oriented facilitator, teacher and instructor, it should come as no surprise that I would find a connection between mindfulness, falun dafa (gong), and technology. I have been reading Coming to Our Senses for a few weeks now. The process has been such a pleasure, I don't want to complete the book. I could go on reading the book indefinitely. The reason I am adding mindfulness here in this blog is that Kabat-Zinn states that we are so tied up in using technology to connect with others that we forget to connect to ourselves. Isn't it time we came to our senses to make sure technology facilitates our lives instead of draining us and keeping us from our true selves as Kabat-Zinn suggests in his book? Kabat-Zinn's sense of humour hits home as he keeps reminding us that we should also consider checking in on ourselves from time to time just to make sure we are still there.

Here is the first of five exercises from Falun Dafa (Gong):

Here is the second of five:

Her is the third of five:

Here is the fourth:

Here is the fifth and last set of falun dafa (gong) experices:

http://theconnectedclassroom.blogspot.com/2008/08/here-we-go-again.html

Free Rice - a vocabulary game that donates rice through the UN World Food Program to help end hunger
Aid to Children - another vocab game
Free Poverty - geography game. See how many cups of water you can donate by testing your knowledge about the world. Each correct answer means they will be donating 10 cups on your behalf.
Free Corn - the more you visit, the more you give . . .

Hi,  

 

I work at the DIUS in the UK.  Part of what I do is to raise awareness online about a Higher Education (HE) ‘debate’ which we have ongoing here in the UK at the moment (http://www.dius.gov.uk/policy/he-debate.html). 

 

This HE debate was initiated by John Denham, the Secretary of State with responsibility for universities, when he invited a number of individuals and organisations to make contributions on a number of specific HE related themes.  The intention being that these contributions will inform thinking on this issue leading to a formal public consultation on a policy framework for HE in the autumn.  

 

He also said that he’d like to hear from a wider audience of those with an interest in HE  –  particularly those already discussing these issues online – so that these views can be fed into the policy review process in parallel.   

 

Since this is an education focused community focusing amongst other things on HE I thought I should let you know that this is happening and tell you how you can provide input if you wish to.   

 

On our behalf JISC Involve is hosting a blog on the broad HE debate (http://hedebate.jiscinvolve.org/).  As you can see the blog is divided into nine individual parts on which comment is possible.  The blog is only a few days old and will be live for about seven or eight weeks.  As you can see it is early days yet but already we’re starting to see some interesting points raised, and we’re keen to broaden the debate further. Some of the issues being discussed include:  

• What will demographic changes mean for the shape and nature of HE?
• How are higher education institutions currently responding to student expectations?
• How should HE respond to the fact that adults, often studying part-time will make up an ever-increasing proportion of the home student population?
• How can the interaction between academia and public policy makers be improved?
• How do we anticipate the international market for higher education will change over the next 10-15 years?
• How attractive are research careers to graduates, and what can be done to enhance this?

While this is obviously a UK focused exercise many of the issues are relevant across the globe.  Demographic changes, part-time study, the internationalisation in HE, etc.  Input from anyone on these issues regardless of location would be welcome.  Broader experiences help I think with a better understanding of the issues.  

 

Thanks for reading and I look forward to reading your comments.  

 

Vincent McGovern

http://knowmansland.com/learningpath/?p=126

Leigh, this is a very hard question to answer…!!!!!
I thought this was going to be a easy, relaxing course…after all it’s summer time! Just kidding. Although this was my immediate inner-response.
Defining online communities is not as easy as it may seem. Despite all the theoretical background, how do you define, [...]

We're pleased to announce that Elgg has been featured as the best open source social networking platform in InfoWorld's 2008 Best Of Open Source Awards. Elgg joins WordPress, which won for best blogging platform, Firefox, which won for best web browser, and MySQL, which was featured as the best database system.

From the article:

While Elgg lets corporations, governments, and schools quickly establish blogs, the system's collaborative features encourage building communities of users with shared interests. Other Elgg fine points include podcast support, file repositories, user profiles, an RSS aggregator, and branding features. Significantly, the software integrates with other IT systems and provides OpenID authentication.

Elgg is the software which powers this EduSpaces service.

http://theconnectedclassroom.blogspot.com/2008/08/blogs-for-moms-and-dads-too.htm

Well, I finally did it. I was able to offer a blogging class for parents. Since all of the kids had a blog this year (which served as their process journal for their IT classes)I thought it would be fun to get some of the parents involved too. This introduction to blogs would also serve as a tool to help them understand the role of the blog in the classroom. Five moms and the secretary from the Senior School attended the class and we had a lot of fun setting up 1st blogs!

http://knowmansland.com/learningpath/?p=125

Today Michael Coghlan shared this great video - a presentation by Michael Wesch on Youtube - An anthropological introduction to YouTube.
I just Loved it. As Micheal Coghlan said, it is bloody Brilliant. What an inspiring and true report about how media are changing the way we connect to people!



I especially like Wesch’s  idea that [...]

http://theconnectedclassroom.blogspot.com/2008/07/slidecom.html

http://knowmansland.com/learningpath/?p=124

This is indeed an assumption many tend  to make when they are introduced to it. Is it because at the first sight it doesn’t seem to comply with the traditional ways of teaching? Is it because learning technologists sometimes may sound like geeks - when getting involved with social media in a rather overwhelming way? [...]

As we gear up for the first release of the next generation of Elgg, we are inviting those who are Elgg users into our test site to help with debugging etc. Not all the features have an interface on them yet, but there is enough there for people to get an idea of what the new Elgg is going to be like.

Elgg is the open source social networking software that powers this site, Eduspaces. 

If you would like an invite, please send an email to info at elgg dot com

Cheers.