...will continue to have one another's company, it seems.Over the last few weeks, the Romeis household has been waiting to hear whether or not I had developed breast cancer - the scourge of the women on my father's side of the family. There was reason for concern after a recent mammogram, and an ultrasound confirmed the presence of cell clusters, but the biopsy results have returned with the good news that I am in the clear.I learned something about myself during this time, and that is that I am unafraid to face death.Because of my family history, most of us feel as if we live under the sword of Damocles anyway. A few have opted for prophylactic subcutaneous mastectomies. I have occasionally toyed with the idea, but that is as far as it has gone.In South Africa, with the joys of private medical care at my disposal, I was able to have screening from an early age whenever I felt the need.When we moved to the UK over 10 years ago, I lost this safety net. Screening here is only available to women between the ages of 50 and 64, and only every three years. For a decade I tried to persuade doctors that I should be screened earlier, to no avail. They only changed their minds recently, when HRT was indicated (for obvious reasons) and I declined on the grounds that it increases the risk of breast cancer. The doctor concerned (a student, as it turned out) asked myriad questions and sent me to a geneticist who concluded that I certainly have an increased risk in comparison with the rest of the population.She set the wheels in motion and the very first screening in more than a decade took place a few weeks later.... and revealed shadows.We now know that the shadows are no cause for concern. But while I was waiting for further tests and the results of those tests, I realised that I was utterly calm about the whole thing. Whatever transpired, I would deal with. My faith was tested - not for the first time - and came through with flying colours.For those who already knew about this and have expressed support in various forms, I thank you.

So there I was in this pre-conference workshop at Online Educa. I wasn't the oldest person in the room, but I was certainly helping to raise the average age.We were talking about how to meet the learning needs of an increasingly digitally literate workforce. One woman expressed the view that our generation wasn't going to be able to achieve this. That we would have to leave it to the next generation. She also seemed to feel that it would have to wait until things had slowed down a bit, so that L&D could catch up.She wasn't talking to me. She was talking to the panel and I was not a member, but I felt compelled to answer. No doubt this was both poor conference etiquette and poor manners, but I couldn't hold my tongue.I asked how she thought the next generation would have it any easier, since they will in their turn be followed by younger people who are more comfortable using technologies that have yet to be invented. She was confident that their current literacy would enable them to make the shift. I'm not so sure. Every generation - in fact, I don't even want to use the word 'generation' since it implies a bigger timeframe than is the reality in my experience - will see the tools with which they are familiar rendered obsolete by new inventions. We don't know what hasn't been invented yet and it may be as different from web 2.0 (and 3.0 and 4.0) as 2.0 is from 1.0. We don't know that it will be any easier for our kids to learn the future technologies than it has been for us to learn these ones.I am also pretty certain that the rate of progress and change is not going to slow down. In fact, I suspect quite the opposite will be the case.I find it odd that, surrounded by people whose mothers may well be my age, I am often the most 'radical' person - or at least one of the most radical people - in the room.How can this be the case? Perhaps I am the one who is deluded.Time will tell.

Well, well! So it's 2010. I have been away for much of December, visiting family in South Africa, with no access to the Internet, which was very difficult. I hope you have had a wonderful festive season and that 2010 brings you all manner of good things.One of the necessities of visiting family in far flung places is air travel. I hate flying. The merest hint of turbulence, and I become convinced that I am about to experience a plane crash first hand. The day before my return journey, my 'sensitive' stepfather regaled me with the story of a flight from Dubai to Durban that, he claimed, pretty much fell out of the sky. Charming. He was adamant that he was being helpful, because, as he pointed out, no-one actually died.The thing is, I'm not scared of death. I just want the bit between being alive and being dead to be pain and terror free. So those people may have escaped death, but they all experienced something really scary. I don't do scary. I don't even go on fairground rides and I'm pretty much scared rigid on a ski-lift or cable car.As luck would have it, the second - and by far the longest - leg of my return journey was pretty much turbulent all the way. After about an hour and a half of smooth flying, we encountered 'mild turbulence'. This lasted for about five hours. Then we had the joy of 'severe turbulence' the rest of the way to Paris.I had been a nervous wreck during the mild bit. I lost the plot during the severe bit.Several people near me were being sick. This was unfortunate, since Air France had neglected to provide us with barf bags. I managed not to be sick. I did not, however, manage to hold together any other shreds of my dignity. In my defence, there were several others who were moaning in fear, too!I have been flying since I was a small child. From the age of 6, I flew with my 2 year old sister to visit our grandparents, and later to visit our father. We flew, if you can believe it, as unaccompanied minors, and there was no special provision for us the way there is these days. We were expected to sort ourselves out. I was the older child and therefore the target of my sister's expressions of fear and uncertainty. I have no doubt that this contributed to my current attitude towards flying.On one of our flights, we were delayed on the runway in Johannesburg for an hour and a half before finally being cleared for take off. Because of the lateness of our eventual take off, I fell asleep. Unexpected turbulence threw me from my seat (we used to keep our seatbelts unbuckled in those days) and I woke up as I was making the express journey down the aisle. The pilot announced that the conditions made it too dangerous to land at our destination. Instead, we would fly to Port Elizabeth, where we would spend the night in a hotel, and be flown back the next day. My sister went ballistic. "My Mommy is waiting for me, down there! She will think I'm dead!" The cabin crew tried to assure her that her Mommy would be informed, but she was having none of it. We had no telephone at home and there was no other way to contact her Mommy. To this day, part of me believes that that brave pilot put that plane down in East London in order to shut my sister up!Be all this as it may, I have decided that this is my year to overcome my fear of flying. So I have enrolled on an online programme. Another aspect of my lifelong, lifewide learning journey. I am fairly sure that fear will be diminished by knowledge and understanding. At least, this is what I hope. Thus far, they haven't told me anything I didn't already know, so we aren't winning, yet! Watch this space!

Continuing (after a fashion) my theme on air travel, this article in Time struck a chord with me. We the people rock.There is a limit to what the state can do in terms of an individual's personal safety. To protect people completely is to disempower them. Surely I have not yet lost the right to make stupid choices and endanger my own hide in so doing? Surely when said hide suffers damage, I have to deal with the consequences of my own actions, take a big girl pill and suck it up?I'm more than a little tired of attempts to legislate against all potential sources of harm.People are wonderfully creative, resourceful and imbued with a survival instinct and a sense of self-preservation that is astonishing to behold. Read the article. I mean... go us. Really.In a weird way, the article reflects where I am trying to go in terms of organisational learning provision. We need to stop looking on ourselves as having the answers. We need to acknowledge that 'the people' are not something other than us. That we are, in fact, all the people. That people have skills and abilities that they are not getting to use because we are so busy trying to teach them something. Sometimes we need to let them get on with the job and, when we do, we will find ourselves astonished by how much they can achieve without a single intervention from us.Perhaps we just need to get over ourselves.Can we agree to find new ways to empower people to 'do' this year, instead of being so flipping focused on what we want them to 'learn'? Let's stop throttling the life, the zest and the uniqueness out of people by shoving yet another learning solution down their throats, huh?

I was having an exchange with Donald Clark on Facebook today that got my brain whirring on the subject of class.Anyone who knows Donald will know that he detests what he calls 'middle class snobbery'. I guess I don't understand the class thing too well, because I can't for the life of me figure out what a 'middle class' person would have to be snobbish about.I am told time and again that the whole class thing is dead, over, forgotten, past history, yadda yadda. But it comes up so often in conversation that this is quite obviously not the case. And I remain convinced that part of the reason we have not readily been absorbed into English culture is that we don't fit neatly into any of the class categories.If I were pressed, I would probably say that:Working class people are people who work with their hands. Largely 'blue collar' jobs. But is - for example - a nurse or a policeman a blue collar worker? I have no idea.A middle class person tends to be educated beyond high school and works in a 'white collar' job. But very few people wear 'white collar' type attire to the office any more - it's all jeans and polo shirts, these days.Do we still even have a ruling class? Would that be the titled people, even though they definitely don't rule us any more? The mink-and-manure set, even though so many of them are all title and no money?Who knows? And where does that leave people with no job at all? The idle rich and the idle poor. Trust fund beneficiaries and lifelong benefit (dole) recipients. The hackneyed cliche is that the working class doesn't work, middle class isn't in the middle and the ruling class doesn't rule.I suspect each person formulates their own boundaries to fit themselves in where they feel they belong.My husband and I both have a university education. Mine is to postgraduate level. We own a large-ish house. Our children will both almost certainly go to university. Are we middle class?But what about our heritage? How much does that count?My husband's parents were both indisputably 'working class' and of 'working class' stock. Blue collar workers who took pride in an honest day's work. His maternal grandfather earned his keep with a little fishing boat, as did many people on the island. My husband's university graduation was a red letter event in the history of the family. To this day, my husband treasures his friendships with men who work diligently with their hands. I think they remind him of his late Dad. So is he working class?My own parents were office workers. My grandparents consisted of a shop-assistant-turned-librarian, two teachers and a civil servant. Does that constitute middle class? Lower middle class? How many strata of middle class are there? Does it matter?How far back do we go? Do we go back to my titled ancestor (Earl or Lord Grenville or Granville or something) who disowned his daughter for her dalliance with a hired hand, and packed them both off to South Africa with a financial settlement, on the understanding that they never darkened his door again? How very Thorn Birds! Or how about the branch of my family that glories in the surname Bastard, being the descendants of some or other illegitimate off-spring of some or other king or noble or something. Or how about my loony ancestor, the self-styled Emperor of San Francisco (note: this account differs quite significantly from the hard copy accounts I have seen - it is far more flattering of Norton I!). Does this make me ruling class?When we first moved to the UK a decade or so ago, we deliberately chose a 'working class' village school for our children, believing they would be among salt of the earth people. Ha! On every hand we were accused of thinking ourselves better than other families. And yet we never consciously did anything to give that impression. We found ourselves looked down upon by what I assume were middle class people, because we weren't posh enough or rich enough or something enough. And the only time I met a titled person, I caused outrage among my colleagues at the college by treating him as I would anyone else, inviting him to join me in the kitchen as I made him a mug (a mug, mind you!) of tea. To give him his due, Lord Mayhew (for lo, 'twas he!) was completely unfazed and chatted away to me as if he had known me all his life.So no. I haven't quite got this class thing sorted. And in a way, I hope I never do. I'd rather you took me on merit, and I hope you won't mind if I do the same. Whoever you or your ancestors may be.

Sort of related to my musings on class, I had a minor epiphany (if that isn't an oxymoron) during my recent visit to South Africa.My sister was talking about a singer in her church and I asked, "You mean Irene who sang with me that time?" to which my mother instantly responded, "I think you mean you sang with her!"Now Irene is a rather prominent figure in the city's music scene, it is true. But, many years ago, she and I had rehearsed together for an opera. As it happened, because of some or other problem with the venue, the opera never took place. But she was to have played Gretel, while I sang the role of Hansel. As far as I can tell, those are the two title roles of the opera, and Gretel is as much singing with Hansel as the reverse. But my mother had a very Calvinistic upbringing, and was discouraged from anything approaching vanity or thinking too highly of oneself. As a consequence, she has tended to have this knee jerk reaction whenever one of us has appeared to be getting 'above ourselves'.I didn't even notice it on a conscious level until that moment, but numerous other little events came flooding back to my memory. Times when she refused to accept that I had said, done or thought of a certain thing all on my own, insisting that I must have had help. Times when I was discouraged from being too pleased with myself for some or other achievement. Times when my achievements were put down to some or other coincidence or fluke.When I described the adoptive parents I had chosen for my daughter as a radiographer and an architect, she mused that they were obviously far more intelligent than the biological father or myself, and wondered if it was a wise placement.Now she doesn't do it on purpose, and my mother is inordinately proud of me and my achievements, but this is how she has reacted all our lives. And I wondered if this explained the whole impostor syndrome thing.I share this story because - whether you're a teacher, a parent or both - I want to encourage you not to place limits on your kids' expectations of themselves, or their ambitions. So what if they're unrealistic? Let them dream big. Let them believe that they can achieve greatness. Who are you to decide that they can't?If you think about the phrase 'being put in your place', who empowered that person to decide what your place is, anyway? Surely that's not a given.Let's not put them in their place. Let's try to help them reach the place they're aiming for.Why not?

I am bursting with pride right now. My friend Lynette Rudman (who has been featured once before in this blog) has been honoured in an international competition for her tactile books.Some years ago, a blind child enrolled at Lynette's nursery school. Lynette quickly discovered that were no picture books aimed at such a child. Until a blind child learned braille, they were restricted to a vicarious enjoyment of books. She decided to fix this, and set about creating a series of tactile books called 'I read with my hands'.The books are handmade by Lynette and her faithful team.On impulse, Lynette entered one her books into the 2009 Typhlo and Tactus competition... and won!If you work with any visually impaired littlies or have visually impaired children of your own, you might be interested in Lynette's books.Well done, Zinky. Proud of you, girl!

So there I was, on the train to London, when my iPhone died on me. Not in any permanent sense, you understand. Just in that all too frequent battery-needs-charging kind of way. The evening before, there had seemed to be a fair amount of charge left in the battery so I had made the mistake of not plugging it in. I had made the even worse mistake of leaving the house without my charger. All iPhone users know that you simply don't do this. iPhones chomp through their battery life at a notorious rate!As it turned out, it would have been preferable if my phone had not chosen that moment to die on me because, shortly after the trained pulled out of the station, the convenor of the meeting to which I was headed tried to phone me to tell me it had been cancelled due to the weather. While it was too late to save myself the cost of the ticket, I could have got off at the next station and come back home, saving myself a lot of bother. London is a place I only visit out of necessity - when that necessity is removed, so is all desire to head towards the Big Smoke. As it was, I only learned of the cancellation when I arrived at the venue covered in a light dusting of snow with ice blocks for feet.In the absence of my charger cable, I had popped into a few places on St Pancras station, looking for one of those one-off battery doodads that you plug into your phone to give you a DC power supply. No-one had them. Sod's law. At one stage they were everywhere.I did find one option at Vodafone. They have a tower of coin operated charging bays in little lockers. They work pretty much like a parking meter. You plug in your phone, pay your money, lock the box and go and amuse yourself for half an hour (or whatever). Sadly, my phone wasn't having any of that, and the battery was as flat when I returned as it had been when I left. They refunded me my £1 (which was the cost of a half hour's charge time) without even being asked.But perhaps it would have been better if I had had one of these two things for charging up the iPhone, as reviewed in PC magazine (and drawn to my attention by my sleep-in technical support man). I love the description of the solar charger as being "as much use a cat flap on a submarine in Britain’s current climate". Perhaps I won't dash out and buy one of those, then! Especially at that price tag. The Dexim P-Flip, on the other hand, has promise. I might have to explore that.

I attended an ELESIG symposium today (major downside: no connectivity in the venue) at which Richard Sandford delivered a presentation based on Futurelabs' research into possible future scenarios.He reminded us of something I think we would all do well to remember... and to remind others about: the nature of the future isn't a foregone conclusion. Neither is it up to the ubiquitous-yet-mysterious 'them' to shape it. We will have (and already do have) a role to play in what the future looks like. If we think things are headed in a direction we're not happy with, we need to be lobbying for and trying to bring about a different sort of future.Now that may all seem a bit 'well duh', but...It also occurs to me that the education curriculum implies that we have identified what the future is going to look like, simply by virtue of the preparation we're providing. In preparing school-going children for one model of the future, do we not run the risk of a self-fulfilling prophecy? I mean, if the entire cohort of school-going children within a nation is being prepared for one version of the future and not being encouraged to entertain other possibilities, will they not move inexorably toward that future? Should we not be tasking them with imagining the future of their choice and figuring out what they need to do in order to try to ensure that that model becomes a reality?If we're going to be preparing kids for just one future and, in so doing, bringing that future into being, we'd better be damned sure it's one we all want!

Yesterday, for the first time in ages, I had a long car journey to make, with which, in my geeky little world, comes the opportunity to listen to several hours of BBC Radio 4. In the space of yesterday's journey, I discovered three learning opportunities to share with my family.The first of these is 1001 Inventions. A travelling exhibition (currently at the Science Museum in London) of discoveries made by men and women in Muslim civilisation during the period in which Europe was experiencing it's 'dark ages'. It seems it wasn't dark all over the world. The exhibition opened yesterday and runs until 25 April. Like the rest of the Science Museum and most British museums, it's free. We plan to visit soon.Just listening to an interview with one of the people involved in the exhibition, I learned something. Did you know that algebra originates in the Arabic world and that the word comes from 'al-jabr' which means balance, reunion and reconciliation?The second is a Radio 4 series called The History of the World in 100 Objects, but I want to talk about that in greater depth, so will do a separate post on that.The third is a three-part BBC 4 (a television channel, not to be confused with the aforementioned radio station) series that started last night called Chemistry: A Volatile History. This series charts the discovery of the elements in our modern periodic table. We watched the first episode as a family and were riveted. The producers have included loads of practical demonstrations that make the programme appealing to viewers with shorter attention spans (or lower tolerance for anything that it isn't a sitcom), and they've managed to pitch it at a level that will work for a wide range of people.With the benefit of hindsight, the existence of some elements seems patently obvious, and my younger son was amused that serious minded researchers once believed in the existence of phlostigon. Since he is planning to study chemistry when he starts his A levels in September, the programme was perfectly timed for him.

Just moments ago, my husband sent me a link to The Gates Notes. In case, like me, your immediate reaction is to wonder how you managed to miss that, fret not - I gather it only went live yesterday.One huge advantage of being obscenely rich is that Bill Gates can dedicate a great deal of time to learning whatever he likes. Oh for the freedom to do that! The geek in me is green with envy. However, the fact that he's out there doing it and then sharing it on his site, means that I can learn vicariously from his experiences.As a learning geek professional, my interest is particularly piqued by this post on learning and can't wait to get started on watching the lectures he mentions, simply to feed my rampant curiosity about anything and everything.It also has more specific relevance to me. My younger son is bravely planning to take history for sixth form without ever having studied it before. Perhaps the Teaching Company Gates so highly recommends will prove to be a way that we can give him a grounding so that he doesn't start the course at a total disadvantage. The down side is the price tags on their materials for a mere mortal with an insatiable thirst for knowledge.Ho hum, was it Benjamin Franklin who said: "If a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take it away from him. An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest."

The BBC's Radio 4 and the British Museum have joined forces on a series called 'The History of the World in 100 Objects".What's really nifty about it, is that you can add your own objects to it. If you've been reading this blog for a while, you may recognise the object I added, since it has appeared here before.I really like the folksy, common man feel of this project.Of course, while the radio series is in 100 parts, the website is going to wind up with a whole lot more than 100 objects on it. This got me to thinking... if I were to name 100 objects that summed up my perception of the history of the world, what would make that list? The wheel would definitely have to be there, of course, as would the internal combustion engine. But then what about the intangibles that have changed history so much more than any object. Does fire count, for example? And what about the Internet? It's quite an interesting challenge.Then I thought, if I were to personalise that project and make it my life (thus far) in 100 objects... what would make that list, then? My first car. My wedding ring. My Bible. A cryptic crossword puzzle. My laptop. Photos of my kids. That sort of thing. Would I be allowed to include a geographical feature, like Table Mountain?And what if someone were to take on such a project after my death? What 98 objects would they place between my cradle and my grave? How different would those two lists look?My mind is churning with this idea, now, and for a fleeting moment, I wished I were a history teacher to set my students the task of creating a history of their own family in 100 objects... but it was just a moment before I remembered that the national curriculum would put paid to any such ideas.What about you? Is it an idea that has appeal for you? What sort of objects would make your list?

The British Library has produced another interesting resource. This time it's an interactive timeline. It starts with the signing of the Magna Carta in the 1210s. I'm not sure why they haven't gone further back than that.You have the option to select what sort of events you're interested in learning about. So, for example, you can look at the core, or central timeline. Or you can explore politics, power and rebellion; art and literature; sacred texts; everyday life or medicine, science and technology. The container for the timeline options is not full, so one assumes they plan to add more at some point.Once you have selected your timeline, you can scroll left and right through the events listed, and select one of your choosing. In the medicine, science and technology timeline, for example, I chose an event dated c. 1300 called 'examining urine'. There is a brief blurb and an image. The blurb ends with the library's shelfmark, while the there is an option on the image to zoom in. There is also a link to a page about medieval times on the library's website.One option I found very interesting was being able to draw comparisons between key events in two of the timelines. For example, I chose literature, art and entertainment, and compared it with medicine, science and technology. This is a great way to see how developments in one field influenced another. At the moment, I am playing with medicine, science and technology vs everyday life. Very interesting.Best of all, you can create your own timeline. Unlike the historical objects database I posted about a few days ago, you can't add your own items to the list. But you can 'favourite' objects from any of the timelines to create a customised one of your own.One small point worth mentioning, there are a few options to manage the display - 2D and 3D, a choice of four backgrounds, and the option to view full screen.There is such a wealth of exciting material out there at the moment, that I can't decide whether it would make being a teacher more interesting or more frustrating. More interesting because it provides a wealth of support materials to bring into the classroom, or more frustrating because the national curriculum restricts the extent to which one can explore such resources with students.I certainly intend to introduce my sons to the timeline, particularly the younger one who, as I have mentioned before, is about to start studying history with the disadvantage of no prior exposure to the subject (other than endless museum trips with his geeky parents, that is!).

So I've been on a diet for a few months now, having returned to the sort of exercise regime I prefer once my major project had been submitted. I've been very good about not leaping onto the scales every day, but I have had a little weekly weigh-in and measure up to keep track of my progress (7.6kgs or 16.7lbs to date). A little performance review, if you like.Today, I poked my scale with my toe to activate it.Nothing.I changed the battery.Nothing.I gave it a little shake.Nothing.I swore at it.Nothing.I engaged in a little percussive maintenance (i.e. I smacked it a few times).Nothing.I went out and bought a new one.Now I just knew this would happen: the new one tells me I weigh .8kg more than I did last Friday. I know that I don't, because I lost another 4cm around my waist in the last fortnight, and I've outshrunk (well, what's the opposite of outgrown, then?) trousers I bought in December. It's an anomaly of the way scales work - no two ever seem to tell the same story, so you just pick one and stick with it, making sure the trend is in the right direction. When you have to change horses in the middle of the race, there's bound to be a bit of teething trouble.Ah, but you see, from now on, my scale will not just weigh me, it will keep track of my weight. It will also keep track of my husband's, our sons' (should they care) and up to 6 other people.Not only this: the scale blithely told me this morning what my body fat percentage is (in the healthy range), what my total body water percentage is (healthy), what my muscle mass is (no guidance given) and what my BMI is (still in the overweight range - go figure).So, I have a ton of metrics to work with.All this makes me think of workplace learning and development (plus ca change!). Here we have this learning department getting on with doing the job. Then we decide to introduce new technology (while, in the case of my scale it was because the old technology was broken, this is not always the case in the world of L&D). While we get used to the new technology, there will be glitches and setbacks. But of course, the powers that be will be won over by the promise of metrics. You will be able to see exactly who's done what, when and how well. Each user's every move will be recorded and reported on.Ugh.Now I'm not saying we should go back to a bygone era. I'd be among the last to suggest that. What I am saying is that we get a little happy with our tracking and our metrics. Sometimes we forget that to deliver the goodies on these, some poor blighter is going to have to generate a report, create a few charts.... and the explain what the significance of it all is.In my case, things are working as they should when I get back into my Levi's.In the case of a business, things are working as they should, when the business is performing as it should.No?

The UK is tentatively sticking its head out from under the recession, so they tell us. The figures show a miniscule growth in the economy during the last three months of 2009. But then, as my 18 year old son pointed out, those are not really reliable data, since we're looking at the period around Christmas, after all.Some news reports have spoken of slowing down of the increase in the unemployment levels. I haven't found any online articles to confirm this, yet. It is some comfort if it's true, but we are all looking for a decrease in the unemployment levels.So, most of us are some way from optimistic.This is reflected by the fact that TV advertising at the moment includes several items aimed at saving money. And, of course, all the major supermarkets are out there proving to us that they have our best interests at heart.Here is just a random selection of the things that have made a blip on my radar in the last week:Asda is offering blankets with sleeves to reduce heating bills. So you can snuggle up on the couch instead of turning up the heating. I'm not sure why you can't just wear a sweater or use a normal blanket. We do... always have done. My husband, my snuggly blanket and the rugby on a Saturday afternoon. Bliss.Tesco has changed their BOGOF (buy one, get one free) offer to BOGOL (buy one, get one later) in an attempt to reduce waste. Let's face it, if you only need one cabbage but take an extra one, because it's free, the second one is likely to go off before you come to use it. So now, instead of a free cabbage, you get a voucher entitling you to a free cabbage when you need it.Sainsbury is trying to encourage us to keep and use our leftovers, by handing out little plastic lunch box thingies at the cash points with every purchase.It puts me in mind of 'Make do and Mend'.I have to say that, as gestures go, Tesco's impresses me the most. But then, perhaps the others have other ideas that haven't made it onto my radar, yet.Let's hope that we have turned the corner and that things start to improve soon.

I overheard a conversation today between two members of the sales staff at a sporting goods shop. They were discussing someone who wore one of those ankle tag doodads and were expressing their surprise and disbelief. This person was apparently not 'the type'. Too old, too fit and too respectable looking, it seemed.I was a little surprised to realise that they were talking about me.Apparently, one of the sales assistants had briefly spotted - from under the fitting room door - the weight strapped around my left ankle, and leapt to conclusions. How odd that in a sporting goods store, their first thought would be ASBOs, rather than fitness! After all, I'm fairly sure that they sell these things there.Perhaps it's because I only wear one (in attempt to address the fact that my right leg is visibly more muscular and better toned than my left).I once encountered a woman on a train who was on her way back from having had her tag removed. She was very proud of this fact, and was showing her tan line to anyone who would listen. To my prejudiced eyes, she was every inch 'the type' and she got on the wrong side of me when she tried to light up a cigarette in the train carriage.I'm very glad that I'm not 'the type'. I'm also glad that I give the impression of physical fitness and respectability. I'm less pleased that I appear to be too old to make trouble! It gets my dander up ;o)I'm saddened for people who seem like 'the type', but who wouldn't dream of doing the sort of thing that would earn them an ankle tag. That must be quite a barrier to overcome in life.

It was on this day in 1990 that President FW de Klerk announced the decision to release Nelson Mandela from prison. His actual release date was 11 February 1990. So, once the decision had been announced, the wheels of bureaucracy moved comparatively quickly.During the next few years, the apartheid regime was systematically dismantled in South Africa and, in 1993, Mandela and de Klerk jointly received the Noble Peace Prize in recognition of the role they had played in this process.On 27 April 1994, the first fully democratic election took place in the country. For the first time, every adult in the country had the right to vote. 20 million South Africans exercised this right. Many of them standing patiently for hours due to the logistical delays in rural areas.Not a drop of blood was shed.It is poignant to realise that Nelson Mandela was voting for the very first time in the election that saw him become President.

Listening to a Training Magazine Network recording of Allison Rossett talking about what e-learning is and isn't, I came across this YouTube video. Good for a chortle.Have you considered First Life for your business meetings, yet? ;o)

The free London paper ran a front page article today on the relationship between Internet addiction and mental illness, as researched by Dr Catriona Morrison.If people are addicted, it can affect a person’s ability to perform at work or they may be failing to do chores so they can go online.’However, she admitted more work needed to be done to establish whether addiction or mental illness comes first.We all know that it is possible to become addicted to things that are otherwise pretty harmless, even healthy. But once things have reached addiction levels, it is a different matter entirely. I once saw a man selling his own children's toys on the pavement in order to get money for the next bottle. In the throes of addiction, people will contravene even their own codes of decency.The thing is, when you're addicted to something, the only option seems to be a complete break. An alcoholic will never have the control necessary to become an occasional social drinker.So what hope is there for an Internet addict? Cutting off all usage of the Internet would be akin to a voluntary imposition of illiteracy and near-hermitage.Is a puzzlement.

A South African airline called Kulula has apparently rebranded its aeroplanes, settling on an 'aeroplane for dummies' approach. This is the sort of thing that could so easily be a hoax, so I've done a bit of background searching and can't confirm or refute the story.I hope to goodness it's true. Who wouldn't? Just have a look at the article and the images. Isn't the whole thing delightfully tongue in cheek? It puts me in mind of a t-shirt I once saw on a young guy in our church. On the back, it bore the words 'Arse' and 'Elbow', with arrows pointing in the appropriate directions.I hope you are inspired and/or tickled by this as much as I was.

I confess, last night was my first conscious exposure to #lrnchat on Twitter. The theme was online learning myths. Jane Hart has captured the event nicely with this post.It is quite a challenge to capture a cogent thought in just 140 characters! Fortunately a myth can usually be expressed quite succinctly.Next week's theme is confessions of trainers and learners. That might be less conducive to brevity.It's worth noting that I came to know about #lrnchat via Jane's Facebook status. It was updating with her contributions to the conversation and Donald Clark and I began to respond to her updates on Facebook. Jane invited us to join the conversation on Twitter. I did, briefly, between the various things and people that clamour for my attention of an evening.This ties in with a question Wendy Wickham asked on Facebook about blogging: "Question for the long-time edubloggers - is it just me or are we all getting quieter? How frequently are you posting these days?"My response was: "I don't blog as much as I used to. The conversation appears to have moved elsewhere... like here [Facebook], for instance!"Harold Jarche's response included: "Maybe life-streaming is replacing blogging for some people, but it's still a key part of my online professional communications and learning."Stephen Downes (after pointing out that he wasn't getting any quieter, which is true) observed: "a lot of the 'connector posts' (I link to you, you link to me, we form a chain of conversation) have moved to Twitter and Facebook, etc. Still a lot of good blog posts out there, a lot of good commentary, but they aren't tightly linked the way they used to be."One thing I've noticed is that threads of the same conversation run through a variety of spaces. As happened with the whole lrnchat thing, I come across fragments of a conversation in one space and follow the trail to where the main body is taking place. Once there, I find and follow links to all manner of tendrils in a host of other places.Sometimes the links are to contributions I would not have related to the subject at hand (in fact it is unlikely that the original contributor would have done so, either, in some cases), until the connection was identified by another participant. In those situations, it's a little like looking at one of those optical illusion images and only being able to see one perspective, until someone says, "No look. That's her cheek there, and that's a feather in her hair. And she's kind of looking away from you..." Suddenly it all becomes clear and you have an "Ooooh, yeah - I see it now" moment.But the conversation is everywhere. In all the spaces at once. If I were to suddenly stop twittering or facebooking or reading blogs, I feel as if I would stand to lose a valuable strand. So, even though I have been quieter here than in the past, I feel no less engaged in the conversation.What is your observation?

Donald Clark shared via his Facebook status that "while 7 out of 10 teens use social networking websites like Facebook, only 1 in 12 teens use Twitter - Pew Internet and American Life Project - survey middle of last year 12-17 year olds."I located said report and found it interesting reading. You might, too, if your life includes teenagers.One caveat I found quite telling was that "the question wording for teens is quite different from how the question was posed to adults so the results are not strictly comparable."That said, it seems that only 8% of online American teens use Twitter, while the figure for adults is 19%. It should be noted, however, that the figure for adults varies hugely across different age bands, showing a steady decline from the 37% of 18-24 year olds to just 4% of those over the age 65. So it seems that between their 17th and 18th birthdays, American teenagers experience the sudden urge to make the shift to Twitter. I wonder why? The report suggests that it "may be partially due to our question wording capturing status updates on social networking sites."But enough of that, I wanted to focus on the 'only 8% of all teens' bit.My own teenagers are avid users of instant messaging and have been for several years, now. Their usage patterns would not be supported by Twitter.For example:They use a lot of emoticonsThey use extensive font formattingThey frequently use more than 140 characters per messageThey conduct huge numbers of 1:1 conversations simultaneously, sharing private thoughts they would never dream of sharing in a single, multi-user stream (connected in parallel, rather than in series?)They change their user names often, using these as a mini status to reflect their mood, their (frequently) changing romantic status or a significant event in their livesThey use web cams as part of their conversations (and some parents would be appalled to know some of the uses to which their teenagers put these cameras!)Of course, this is just a single snapshot, based on my observations of my own sons and their friends, and does not constitute research. But I throw my snapshot into the pool to be aggregated with the rest of the fragments.Graeme Duncan suggests (on Donald's FB page) "My hypothesis is kids use these media as communication tools but like it to be network building and relationship building. Twitter is a broadcast media not a two way communication channel whilst FB, MSN, etc etc are profile builders and also communication channels."I have to say that I use Twitter to engage in conversations with people. Many of my messages start with @someone-or-other. But Donald has a view on that, too, to wit: "Spot on Graeme - Twitter is boomeresque (new word!) in that it plays to our need to either receive or transmit, not share and engage in dialogue. Even on Facebook, we're the exception to the rule -far too many boomers simply post their own entries and don't respond - you two [that would be Graeme and me] are very much the exceptions."I'm trying to decide whether to forgive him for calling me a "boomer". I'm too young for that label, and he should know it ;o)

Have you heard this story? It's probably an urban legend, but it amply demonstrates a point:A new husband was adoringly watching his young wife cook the Sunday roast. He noticed that she cut a slice off the end of the roast and carefully placed it on top of the joint before popping it into the oven. He asked her why she did that. His wife looked at him in puzzlement and said, "That's how you cook a roast. That's what my Mom always does." The young man expressed surprise, explaining that he had never seen it done that way before (he carefully did not say that his own mother didn't do it that way). The wife gave it some thought and realised that she had no idea why her Mom did it that way, just that it was what she did.So she phoned her mother.The mother explained that that was how one cooked a roast. Her own mother had always done it that way. "But why?" asked her daughter. The mother realised she didn't know the answer to this question, just that this was how it was done.So she phoned her mother.The grandmother was puzzled for a moment. She had no recollection of doing any such thing and could see no reason why anyone would handle a roast in this way. But as they spoke, the middle aged woman and her elderly mother, the light dawned. "Oh!" explained the old lady, "I remember! I had five children, so I had to buy a big joint. The problem was that I had a rather small oven and a small roasting pan, and the joint was too long to fit, so I used to take a slice off the end and put it on top. But, goodness! As soon as I got a bigger oven, I stopped doing that."So there are times when we do things a certain way because 'this is the way its always been done', without stopping to question whether this is the best way.But there are some things my Granny knew.I still make tea the way my Granny taught me. As the eldest grandchild, it fell to me to make the morning tea when the family was all together in the holidays. I was well-schooled. You use fresh water every time - you don't just reboil the water that's in the kettle. You use a fairly large teapot, to give the tea space to move. You heat the teapot before using it. You put the tea into the pot before adding the water - you do NOT add the tea to the already poured water. And, when you pour the water into the teapot, it must be absolutely boiling - it must not have been allowed even a moment to go off the boil. Tea can be served with or without milk (note: NOT cream) and sugar or lemon. The one rule I break is that I use mugs instead of cups... only because I like a generous portion of tea. My ludicrously small kitchen does, however, include a few teacups, although I regret they are not paper-thin porcelain.People who take real pleasure in a cup of tea - usually those of advanced years - often remark that I make a 'nice cup of tea'. My Granny would be proud.I checked. There are reasons for each of those steps, and they still apply.My Gran also boiled eggs in a specific way... and I have only just learned why. She used to bring the water to boil in a saucepan, then she would add a generous amount of salt, and gently pop the (room temperature) egg(s) into the water. If she was boiling more than one egg, she would write numbers on the eggs with a pencil and place them into the water in numerical order, and remove them in the same order.I did what the two younger ladies in my first story failed to do. I thought about it and could see no reason to do it this way. I found my own way to boil eggs to my liking.I keep my eggs in the fridge, because we eat fewer of them nowadays than in my Gran's day, and so need to store them there to keep them fresh. Taking an egg from the fridge and putting it into boiling water is a sure-fire way of cracking the shell. Now the salt in the water is supposed to help congeal the white, so that it does little more than bulge out a bit from the crack. But I have found that all this can be avoided if you just pop the egg into cold water with salt, and then bring it to the boil. Once it has come to the boil, 3 minutes will give you a soft yolk and 5 a hard yolk. Job done.But wait. There's a thing my Gran used to do with boiled eggs when she was preparing finger snacks that involved the eggs being cut in half lengthwise, the yolks being removed and mixed with a few other ingredients and then piped back into the egg whites. Apparently (and this is the bit I only learned when speaking to my aunt during my recent trip back to South Africa), if you put the egg into already boiling water, the yolk stays in the middle of the egg! I have to confess that my yolks are seldom, if ever, in the middle of the egg, which has meant that my attempts to make my Gran's egg thingy have always looked somewhat amateurish.But now that I know... just you wait until the next time I am asked to prepare finger food for a church do! I shall produce a perfect batch of my Gran's egg snacks... and even though she's been gone for 23 years, I shall no doubt shed a sentimental little tear as I picture her approving smile at my efforts.Some things my Granny just knew.

Be informed that comment moderation is in place on this blog and I will not allow this post to be the springboard for the expression of anti-semetism, neo-nazism or holocaust denialism. Any such comments will not be published.This post has been very hard to write. This has been an uncomfortable learning experience for me, and I am assailed with uncertainty as to the reactions it will garner. I implore you not to misinterpret it.Last night I watched a documentary called Hitler's Private World (see part 1 here). It made me horribly uncomfortable. Not because it revealed what a monster he was. I already knew that bit, and was enormously comfortable with it. I was happy to think of Adolf Hitler as a terse, inconsiderate man. If I thought about his personal relationships at all, it was to assume that he was cold and distant. Unfeeling. A psychopath, even.I was not prepared to see him as warm and affectionate. I was not prepared to see him as someone who adored children. I was not prepared to see him as someone who cared about the environment. Someone who saw the potential for user-generated content.I was happy only to know that he was responsible for the mass slaughter of umpteen million so-called undesirables (Jews, Soviet PoWs, Gypsies/Romanies, Poles, left wing political prisoners, homosexuals, the disabled, Jehovah's Witnesses, Catholic clergy, eastern European intellectuals, etc.) and then to welsh out of facing up to the consequences of his appalling actions by taking his own life.Don't get me wrong... the documentary was not a pro-Hitler rant, and I am not about to join the ranks of those who think he was 'just misunderstood'.The documentary was made using home movie material overdubbed with dialogue as ascertained by automated lipreading technology. It showed Hitler flirting with Eva Braun, gossipping about the likes of Goering and Himmler, playing happily with children, affectionately commending young soldiers.It forced me to see additional dimensions to a man I prefer to think of in only one dimension... and it made me very squirm because, as the narrator pointed out, if this man had the capacity to care about the things I care about, to interact with people as I do, then perhaps he is not as different from me as I would prefer to think. On some subconscious level, I think I had ascribed him to a different species, but material such as was shown last night forces me to acknowledge that this is not the case.Here was a man who grieved to see trees being chopped down. A man who wanted every German family to have a cine camera to record history from their own perspective. A man who could not bring himself to eat the flesh of a living creature. A man who adored children... something which showed plainly on his face as he interacted with them. A man who patted the young members of the Hitler youth with what seemed to be genuine affection as he inspected their ranks. A man frustrated by the effects of Parkinson's disease.In some of the footage, perhaps with the help of the suggestive voice of the narrator, it was possible to see him psyching himself up, putting on the role of the orator at the hands of a (Jewish, as irony would have it) spin doctor.Where was the monster?Of course, his monstrous legacy remains and speaks for itself, but in his private life, he was disturbingly ordinary. I am struggling to find space in my mind for this new information.I encourage you to watch the footage yourself. I'd be interested to hear how you respond to it.