The Commonplace Blog

The Green Grass Grew All Around: Children's Song Lyrics and Sound Clip

2010-08-06T20:51:00.001+01:00

Now on this feather(Now in this feather)There was a flea(There was a flea)The prettiest little flea(The prettiest little flea)That you ever did see(That you ever did see)Oh, the flea on the feather,And the feather on the bird,And the bird in the nest,And the nest on the leaf,And the leaf on the twig,And the twig on the bough,And the bough on the branch,And the branch on the limb,And the limb on the tree,and the tree in a holeAnd the hole in the groundAnd the green grass grew all around, all aroundAnd the green grass grew all around

The Green Grass Grew All Around: Children's Song Lyrics and Sound Clip

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Lyrics and Music

2010-08-06T20:50:00.001+01:00

There was a hole in the middle of the groundThe prettiest hole that you ever did see.Well, the hole in the groundAnd the green grass grew all around and aroundAnd the green grass grew all around.And in this hole there was a rootThe prettiest root that you ever did seeWell the root in the holeAnd the hole in the groundAnd the green grass grew all around and aroundAnd the green grass grew all around.And on this root there was treeThe prettiest tree that you ever did seeWell the tree on the rootAnd the root in the holeAnd the hole in the groundAnd the green grass grew all around and aroundAnd the green grass grew all around.And on this tree there was a branch...The prettiest branch that you ever did seeWell the branch on the treeAnd the tree on the rootAnd the root in the holeAnd the hole in the groundAnd the green grass grew all around and aroundAnd the green grass grew all around.And on this branch there was twig...The prettiest twig that you ever did seeWell the twig on the branchAnd the branch on the treeAnd the tree on the rootAnd the root in the holeAnd the hole in the groundAnd the green grass grew all around and aroundAnd the green grass grew all around.And on this twig there was a nest...The prettiest nest that you ever did seeWell the nest on the twigAnd the twig on the branchAnd the branch on the treeAnd the tree on the rootAnd the root in the holeAnd the hole in the groundAnd the green grass grew all around and aroundAnd the green grass grew all around.And in this nest there was an egg...The prettiest egg that you ever did seeWell the egg in the nestAnd the nest on the twigAnd the twig on the branchAnd the branch on the treeAnd the tree on the rootAnd the root in the holeAnd the hole in the groundAnd the green grass grew all around and aroundAnd the green grass grew all around.And in this egg there was a bird...The prettiest bird that you ever did seeWell the bird on the eggAnd the egg in the nestAnd the nest on the twigAnd the twig on the branchAnd the branch on the treeAnd the tree on the rootAnd the root in the holeAnd the hole in the groundAnd the green grass grew all around and aroundAnd the green grass grew all around.And on this bird there was a wing...The prettiest wing that you ever did seeWell the wing on the birdAnd the bird on the eggAnd the egg in the nestAnd the nest on the twigAnd the twig on the branchAnd the branch on the treeAnd the tree on the rootAnd the root in the holeAnd the hole in the groundAnd the green grass grew all around and aroundAnd the green grass grew all around.And on this wing, there was a feather...The prettiest feather that you ever did seeWell the feather on the wingAnd the wing on the birdAnd the bird on the eggAnd the egg in the nestAnd the nest on the twigAnd the twig on the branchAnd the branch on the treeAnd the tree on the rootAnd the root in the holeAnd the hole in the groundAnd the green grass grew all around and aroundAnd the green grass grew all around.

Lyrics and Music

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Lyrics and Music

2010-08-06T20:36:00.003+01:00

There was a hole in the middle of the groundThe prettiest hole that you ever did see.Well, the hole in the groundAnd the green grass grew all around and aroundAnd the green grass grew all around.And in this hole there was a rootThe prettiest root that you ever did seeWell the root in the holeAnd the hole in the groundAnd the green grass grew all around and aroundAnd the green grass grew all around.And on this root there was treeThe prettiest tree that you ever did seeWell the tree on the rootAnd the root in the holeAnd the hole in the groundAnd the green grass grew all around and aroundAnd the green grass grew all around.And on this tree there was a branch...The prettiest branch that you ever did seeWell the branch on the treeAnd the tree on the rootAnd the root in the holeAnd the hole in the groundAnd the green grass grew all around and aroundAnd the green grass grew all around.And on this branch there was twig...The prettiest twig that you ever did seeWell the twig on the branchAnd the branch on the treeAnd the tree on the rootAnd the root in the holeAnd the hole in the groundAnd the green grass grew all around and aroundAnd the green grass grew all around.And on this twig there was a nest...The prettiest nest that you ever did seeWell the nest on the twigAnd the twig on the branchAnd the branch on the treeAnd the tree on the rootAnd the root in the holeAnd the hole in the groundAnd the green grass grew all around and aroundAnd the green grass grew all around.And in this nest there was an egg...The prettiest egg that you ever did seeWell the egg in the nestAnd the nest on the twigAnd the twig on the branchAnd the branch on the treeAnd the tree on the rootAnd the root in the holeAnd the hole in the groundAnd the green grass grew all around and aroundAnd the green grass grew all around.And in this egg there was a bird...The prettiest bird that you ever did seeWell the bird on the eggAnd the egg in the nestAnd the nest on the twigAnd the twig on the branchAnd the branch on the treeAnd the tree on the rootAnd the root in the holeAnd the hole in the groundAnd the green grass grew all around and aroundAnd the green grass grew all around.And on this bird there was a wing...The prettiest wing that you ever did seeWell the wing on the birdAnd the bird on the eggAnd the egg in the nestAnd the nest on the twigAnd the twig on the branchAnd the branch on the treeAnd the tree on the rootAnd the root in the holeAnd the hole in the groundAnd the green grass grew all around and aroundAnd the green grass grew all around.And on this wing, there was a feather...The prettiest feather that you ever did seeWell the feather on the wingAnd the wing on the birdAnd the bird on the eggAnd the egg in the nestAnd the nest on the twigAnd the twig on the branchAnd the branch on the treeAnd the tree on the rootAnd the root in the holeAnd the hole in the groundAnd the green grass grew all around and aroundAnd the green grass grew all around.

Lyrics and Music

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Lyrics and Music

2010-08-06T20:36:00.001+01:00

There was a hole in the middle of the groundThe prettiest hole that you ever did see.Well, the hole in the groundAnd the green grass grew all around and aroundAnd the green grass grew all around.And in this hole there was a rootThe prettiest root that you ever did seeWell the root in the holeAnd the hole in the groundAnd the green grass grew all around and aroundAnd the green grass grew all around.And on this root there was treeThe prettiest tree that you ever did seeWell the tree on the rootAnd the root in the holeAnd the hole in the groundAnd the green grass grew all around and aroundAnd the green grass grew all around.And on this tree there was a branch...The prettiest branch that you ever did seeWell the branch on the treeAnd the tree on the rootAnd the root in the holeAnd the hole in the groundAnd the green grass grew all around and aroundAnd the green grass grew all around.And on this branch there was twig...The prettiest twig that you ever did seeWell the twig on the branchAnd the branch on the treeAnd the tree on the rootAnd the root in the holeAnd the hole in the groundAnd the green grass grew all around and aroundAnd the green grass grew all around.And on this twig there was a nest...The prettiest nest that you ever did seeWell the nest on the twigAnd the twig on the branchAnd the branch on the treeAnd the tree on the rootAnd the root in the holeAnd the hole in the groundAnd the green grass grew all around and aroundAnd the green grass grew all around.And in this nest there was an egg...The prettiest egg that you ever did seeWell the egg in the nestAnd the nest on the twigAnd the twig on the branchAnd the branch on the treeAnd the tree on the rootAnd the root in the holeAnd the hole in the groundAnd the green grass grew all around and aroundAnd the green grass grew all around.And in this egg there was a bird...The prettiest bird that you ever did seeWell the bird on the eggAnd the egg in the nestAnd the nest on the twigAnd the twig on the branchAnd the branch on the treeAnd the tree on the rootAnd the root in the holeAnd the hole in the groundAnd the green grass grew all around and aroundAnd the green grass grew all around.And on this bird there was a wing...The prettiest wing that you ever did seeWell the wing on the birdAnd the bird on the eggAnd the egg in the nestAnd the nest on the twigAnd the twig on the branchAnd the branch on the treeAnd the tree on the rootAnd the root in the holeAnd the hole in the groundAnd the green grass grew all around and aroundAnd the green grass grew all around.And on this wing, there was a feather...The prettiest feather that you ever did seeWell the feather on the wingAnd the wing on the birdAnd the bird on the eggAnd the egg in the nestAnd the nest on the twigAnd the twig on the branchAnd the branch on the treeAnd the tree on the rootAnd the root in the holeAnd the hole in the groundAnd the green grass grew all around and aroundAnd the green grass grew all around.

Lyrics and Music

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Was John Szarkowski the most influential person in 20th-century photography? | Sean O'Hagan | Art and design | guardian.co.uk

2010-08-06T07:29:00.001+01:00

Szarkowski insisted on the democracy of the image, whether it be a formally composed Ansel Adams landscape, a snatched shot that caught the frenetic cut-and-thrust of a modern city or a vernacular subject like a road sign or a parking lot. "A skillful photographer can photograph anything well," he once insisted.In his still-challenging book, The Photographer's Eye (1964), Szarkowski included snapshots alongside images by great photographers, and argued – brilliantly – that photography differed from any other art form because its history had been "less a journey than a growth". "Its movement has not been linear and consecutive but centrifugal," he suggested. "Photography, and our understanding of it, has spread from a centre; it has, by infusion, penetrated our consciousness. Like an organism, photography was born whole. It is in our progressive discovery of it that its history lies."

Was John Szarkowski the most influential person in 20th-century photography? | Sean O'Hagan | Art and design | guardian.co.uk

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Happy Christmas from the Lowndes Family

2009-12-18T18:31:00.002Z

– Christmas Newsletter 2009 —

Lesley writes: The Lowndes family have had a lovely year in which the many happy events outnumbered those sad ones. We look forward to even more in 2010.

Sad events include the death of Charly’s Aunt Diana in January and my Aunty Marjorie this month. Although the two never met they were very alike in many ways. They shared a great interest in family, always loving to hear news of the children; in sport (they both loved following racing on the telly) and both adored their lovely dogs. We’ll miss them very much.

Whilst Charly was in Italy I had a lovely break with the dogs in Norfolk, staying at Wells-next-the-Sea. Will and Sally stayed overnight on their way up to Scotland and we all had a lovely evening at The Blakeney Hotel where Mum and Tish were staying.

Will and Sally are soon to become parents (end of January). They have recently moved to Watchet on the north Somerset coast and are busy doing up their charming little house. Jonny has spent most of the year in America and has met Briana (who we shall all meet at Christmas). Tim is living and working in London and enjoying life in the Royal Naval Reserve. At the time of writing he is in the Falkland Islands on a RN fisheries patrol ship.

I so enjoyed running the Poppy Appeal for the Shiplake branch of the Royal British Legion that I want to do more fund-raising for them. I’m thrilled that I’ve been given a Royal British Legion place to run in the 2010 London Marathon. I am asked to raise at least £1,800 for them which is a bit daunting but it’s such a good cause that I think I can count on a lot of support - I will get round the course even if on hands and knees towards the end…….! You can sponsor me on line at http://www.justgiving.com/Lesley-Lowndes.

I had a lovely short stay in Spain with William Murphy at Gonzaga’s flat in El Rompido (not far from Huelva, close to the border with Portugal). The weather was fantastic – what a wonderful country Spain is!

We are all looking forward to going to Portugal in June. Generous parents of an ex Burr pupil have given us the use of their seven-bedroom villa for a week which will be fantastic!

Charly writes: The Easter holiday took me to Rome to stay with Rupert Godsal (my best man), who plans to retire there. Good meals in Trastavere; bus rides and walks and a blissful jog through the gardens of the Villa Borghese, easing the legs after running a half marathon in Reading. Then by train and bus to stay with Heather and Mark Roberts (friends since Oxford) near Florence. More jogs, up steeper hills, street markets and oil from her olives. Drinks nearby with a retired Lt General, an ex Buddhist Irishwoman whose partner has an organic vineyard, ended with the discovery of a dying porcupine in a flowerbed as we hurried off so that I could catch the evening bus to the city, and the night train to Berlin – a luxury and a delight. Breakfast in Munich and my German still just able to cope with the main themes in Die Welt. A few days with Karen (dear friend from BFBS days) and Thomas – and another jog round the Rathaus Charlottenburg: grand steps trodden by JF Kennedy. K & T took me to listen to Willy Brandt at the Socialist HQ, Willy Brandt Haus.

Duke of Edinburgh expeditions from school provided another tranche of travel – to France in June, sailing in brisk winds out of Itchenor round the Solent in July, and hot bedding with Lesley on Exmoor – she drove them down, and I brought them back – in October.

Belvoir House (my late parents’ home in Malvern) will be lovely when finished. The builders have done a fine job, dealing with dry rot which emerged, and creating one large room by combining the kitchen and drawing room. We plan a library on the ground floor. The vague idea (we don’t do other than vague) is to move there after I complete ten years as a Housemaster, at about 1.30 on the fourth Wednesday in June 2012 (depending on the length of speeches at the end of term).

I’m having fun in spare moments tutoring an OU course on e-business, and contemplating some sort of research project into teaching method - two possible (and still vague) directions for life after Shiplake.

I realise I’m addicted to stories. It took me a while to realise why the boys told me I should watch “The Wire” – as satisfying as “The West Wing”. I’m enjoying a weighty trilogy by Miklos Banffy about life in the closing years of the Hapsburgs, as seen by Hungarian aristos in Transylvania. Less pompously, re-reading Swallows and Amazons reminded me why I’m attracted to sailing. Lots of stories at the Hay on Wye book festival: big names like Desmond Tutu and Chris Mullin, but also jazz, strong ale and lamb-burgers.

There are some pictures at http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/charly.lowndes/2009ChristmasNewsletter#

And if you are really bored, more albums at:

http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/charly.lowndes

We will be at Shiplake for Christmas with Jon, Bri, Tim, Eileen and Tisha - and Wil and Sal on Boxing Day.

Einstein

2008-08-13T23:04:00.001+01:00

Had on his wall, I'm told, a motto: Not everything that counts is countable, and not everything that is countable, counts.

Godel, simplified.

Contacts

2007-12-18T15:08:00.000Z

French author Pierre Magnan :

Contacts: "En principe, je réponds à tous les eMails que je reçois, mais entre ceux-ci et ma réponse, il peut s'écouler quelques semaines. Je précise qu'un livre prend plusieurs mois à écrire et que pendant le temps où on écrit , on n'est disponible pour rien d'autre.
En dehors des rendez-vous ponctuels d'un écrivain avec ses lecteurs, vous pouvez me rencontrer souvent le lundi matin, jour de Marché à FORCALQUIER, au Café du Bourguet (entre la pharmacie et la Caisse d'Épargne)"

Dubner's blog

2007-12-15T18:10:00.001Z

From the preface to the revised and exampnaed edition of Freakonomics (Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner)

The further bonus material is what accounts for our having called this edition "expanded" in addition to "revised." Soon after the original publication of Freakonomics, in April 2005, we began writing a monthly column for the New York Times Magazine. We have included in this edition several of these columns, on subjects ranging from voting behavior to dog poop to the economics of sexual preference.
We have also included a variety of writings from our blog (http://www.freakonomics.com/blog/), like this revised edition, was not planned. In the beginning, we built a website merely to perform archival and trafficking functions. We blogged reluctantly, tentatively, infrequently. But as the months went on, and as we discovered an audience of people who had read Freakonomics and were eager to bat its ideas back and forth, we took to it more enthusiastically.
A blog, as it turns out, is an author's perfect antidote for that sickening feeling of being dead in the water once a manuscript has been completed. Particularly for a book like this one, a book of ideas, there is nothing more intoxicating than to be able to extend those ideas, to continue to refine and challenge and wrestle with them, even as the world rnarches on.

Basil Bunting Poetry Centre: Bunting texts

2007-11-24T08:27:00.001Z

Bunting's advice to young poets
I SUGGEST
1. Compose aloud; poetry is a sound.
2. Vary rhythm enough to stir the emotion you want but not so as to lose impetus.
3. Use spoken words and syntax.
4. Fear adjective; they bleed nouns. Hate the passive.
5. Jettison ornament gaily but keep shape

Put your poem away till you forget it, then:
6. Cut out every word you dare.
7. Do it again a week later, and again.

Never explain - your reader is as smart as you.

Basil Bunting Poetry Centre: Bunting texts

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New Camera

2007-11-10T10:48:00.000Z

What fun - a new DSLR to play with

Donald Michie

2007-11-05T06:28:00.000Z

From the Daily Telegraph:

And no Christian, however sure of his place in heaven, could have died with more bravery and style than he showed when cancer laid him low. He produced a final couplet, Cancer, or the Biter Bitten.
I used to fancy crabmeat as a treat: / Now Crab's the epicure, and I'm the meat.

Rough Men who stand ready

2007-11-03T09:39:00.001Z

From a tribute to Conor Cruise O'Brien - 90 today.

In words attributed to George Orwell: “We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready to visit violence on those who would do us harm.” The “Cruiser” remains the roughest of intellectuals - and these islands are the better for it.

It's men like the Cruiser who keep us safe | Dean Godson - Times Online

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The novel is your ticket to real travel | Amos Oz - Times Online

2007-11-03T09:35:00.001Z

The novel is your ticket to real travel
From: The Times

Lack of curiosity is the besetting sin of divided places - Amos Oz

If you buy a ticket and travel to another country, you are likely to see the monuments, the palaces and the squares, the museums and the landscapes and the historical sites. If you are lucky, you may have a chance to conduct some conversations with the local people. Then you will travel back home, carrying a bunch of photographs or postcards.
But if you read a novel, you obtain a ticket into the most intimate recesses of another country and of another people. Reading a foreign novel is an invitation to visit other people's homes and other countries' private quarters.
If you are a mere tourist, you might stand on a street and look up at an old house, in the old part of town, and see a woman staring out of her window. Then you will walk on. But if you are a reader, you can see that woman staring out of her window, but you are there with her, inside her room, inside her head.
As you read a foreign novel, you are actually invited into other people's living rooms, into their nurseries and studies, into their bedrooms. You are invited into their secret sorrows, into their family joys, into their dreams.
Which is why I believe in literature as a bridge between peoples. I believe curiosity can be a moral quality. I believe that imagining the other can be an antidote to fanaticism. Imagining the other will make you not only a better business person or a better lover, but even a better person.
Part of the tragedy between Jew and Arab is the inability of so many of us, Jews and Arabs, to imagine each other. Really imagine each other: the loves, the terrible fears, the anger, the passion. There is too much hostility between us, too little curiosity.
Jews and Arabs have something essential in common: they have both been handled, coarsely and brutally, by Europe's violent hand in the past. The Arabs - through imperialism, colonialism, exploitation and humiliations. The Jews through discrimination, persecution, expulsion, and ultimately mass murder on an unprecedented scale.
One would have thought that two victims, and especially two victims of the same oppressor, develop between them a sense of solidarity. Alas, this is not the way it works, either in novels, or in life. Some of the worst conflicts are indeed between two victims of the same oppressor; two children of the same violent parent don't necessarily like each other. Often they see in each other the image of the abusive parent.
Which is exactly the case between Jews and Arabs in the Middle East. While the Arabs regard Israelis as latter-day crusaders, an extension of the white, colonising Europe, many Israelis, for their part, regard the Arabs as the new incarnation of our past oppressors, pogrom makers and Nazis.
This situation charges Europe with a particular responsibility for the solution of the Israeli-Arab conflict: instead of wagging their fingers at either side, Europeans should extend empathy, understanding and help to both sides. You no longer have to choose between being pro-Israel and being pro-Palestine. You have to be pro-peace.
The woman in the window might be a Palestinian woman in Nablus. She might be a Jewish-Israeli woman in Tel Aviv. If you want to help to make peace between these two women in the two windows, you had better read more about them. Read novels, dear friends. They will tell you much.
It is even time for each of these women to read about each other. To learn, at last, what makes the other woman in the window frightened, angry, or hopeful.
I have not suggested to you that reading novels can change the world. I did suggest, and I do believe, that reading novels is one of the best possible ways to understand that all the women, in all the windows, are at the end of the day, in urgent need of peace.

Amos Oz, the Israeli novelist, was awarded the Prince of Asturias Award for Literature last week. This is his acceptance lecture

The novel is your ticket to real travel | Amos Oz - Times Online

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Pedantry

2007-11-02T14:30:00.000Z

A master:

A pedant writes
From Ken Sunshine
I expect there is a valid debate to be had on ‘masterly’ v. ‘masterful’, but my greater concern is with Martin Sanderson’s attack on ‘referenda’ (Letters, 4 October). ‘Referendum’ as used by Perry Anderson is an English language word, albeit adopted from Latin. Its plural form is derived as a matter of usage; ‘referenda’ and ‘referendums’ are both in common usage and in that sense are both correct. The Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors (1981) recommends ‘referendums’, and this form, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, seems likely to prevail. We shall see. Official attempts to regulate language, however logically, generally fail.
Although ‘watering the gerania’ was an amusing end to Mr Sanderson’s letter, it is unfortunately an example of arguing by (in this case, false) analogy, ‘geranium’ not being a gerund. A much better analogy is that ‘no one in their right minds’ would talk about ‘agendums’ (‘agendum’ being a gerund and therefore exactly analogous to ‘referendum’).
Ken SunshineBishopsteignton, Devon

A School Story

2007-10-31T22:59:00.000Z

A dozen boys enjoyed listening to this, by candlelight, for Hallowe'en:

Two men in a smoking-room were talking of their private-school days. "At our school," said A., "we had a ghost's footmark on the staircase. "
" What was it like?"
"Oh, very unconvincing. Just the shape of a shoe, with a square toe, if I remember right. The staircase was a stone one. I never heard any story about the thing. That seems odd, when you come to think of it. Why didn't somebody invent one, I wonder?"
"You never can tell with little boys. They have a mythology of their own. There's a subject for you, by the way - "The Folklore of Private Schools."
"Yes; the crop is rather scanty, though. I imagine, if you were to investigate the cycle of ghost stories, for instance, which the boys at private schools tell each other, they would all turn out to be highly-compressed versions of stories out of books."
"Nowadays the Strand and Pearson's, and so on, would be extensively drawn upon."
"No doubt: they weren't born or thought of in my time. Let's see. I wonder if I can remember the staple ones that I was told. First, there was the house with a room in which a series of people insisted on passing a night; and each of them in the morning was found kneeling in a corner, and had just time to say, 'I've seen it,' and died."
"Wasn't that the house in Berkeley Square?"
"I dare say it was. Then there was the man who heard a noise in the passage at night, opened his door, and saw someone crawling towards him on all fours with his eye hanging out on his cheek. There was besides, let me think - Yes! the room where a man was found dead in bed with a horseshoe mark on his forehead, and the floor under the bed was covered with marks of horseshoes also; I don't know why. Also there was the lady who, on locking her bedroom door in a strange house, heard a thin voice among the bed-curtains say, 'Now we're shut in for the night.' None of those had any explanation or sequel. I wonder if they go on still, those stories."
"Oh, likely enough - with additions from the magazines, as I said. You never heard, did you, of a real ghost at a private school? I thought not, nobody has that ever I came across."
"From the way in which you said that, I gather that you have."
"I really don't know, but this is what was in my mind. It happened at my private school thirty odd years ago, and I haven't any explanation of it.
"The school I mean was near London. It was established in a large and fairly old house - a great white building with very fine grounds about it; there were large cedars in the garden, as there are in so many of the older gardens in the Thames valley, and ancient elms in the three or four fields which we used for our games. I think probably it was quite an attractive place, but boys seldom allow that their schools possess any tolerable features.
"I came to the school in a September, soon after the year 1870; and among the boys who arrived on the same day was one whom I took to: a Highland boy, whom I will call McLeod. I needn't spend time in describing him: the main thing is that I got to know him very well. He was not an exceptional boy in any way - not particularly good at books or games - but he suited me.
"The school was a large one: there must have been from 120 to 130 boys there as a rule, and so a considerable staff of masters was required, and there were rather frequent changes among them.
"One term - perhaps it was my third or fourth - a new master made his appearance. His name was Sampson. He was a tallish, stoutish, pale, black-bearded man. I think we liked him: he had travelled a good deal, and had stories which amused us on our school walks, so that there was some competition among us to get within earshot of him. I remember too - dear me, I have hardly thought of it since then - that he had a charm on his watch-chain that attracted my attention one day, and he let me examine it. It was, I now suppose, a gold Byzantine coin; there was an effigy of some absurd emperor on one side; the other side had been worn practically smooth, and he had had cut on it - rather barbarously - his own initials, G.W.S., and a date, 24 July, 1865. Yes, I can see it now: he told me he had picked it up in Constantinople: it was about the size of a florin, perhaps rather smaller.
"Well, the first odd thing that happened was this. Sampson was doing Latin grammar with us. One of his favourite methods - perhaps it is rather a good one - was to make us construct sentences out of our own heads to illustrate the rules he was trying to make us learn. Of course that is a thing which gives a silly boy a chance of being impertinent: there are lots of school stories in which that happens - or any-how there might be. But Sampson was too good a disciplinarian for us to think of trying that on with him. Now, on this occasion he was telling us how to express remembering in Latin: and he ordered us each to make a sentence bringing in the verb memini, 'I remember.' Well, most of us made up some ordinary sentence such as 'I remember my father,' or 'He remembers his book,' or something equally uninteresting: and I dare say a good many put down memino librum meum, and so forth: but the boy I mentioned - McLeod - was evidently thinking of something more elaborate than that. The rest of us wanted to have our sentences passed, and get on to something else, so some kicked him under the desk, and I, who was next to him, poked him and whispered to him to look sharp. But he didn't seem to attend. I looked at his paper and saw he had put down nothing at all. So I jogged him again harder than before and upbraided him sharply for keeping us all waiting. That did have some effect. He started and seemed to wake up, and then very quickly he scribbled about a couple of lines on his paper, and showed it up with the rest. As it was the last, or nearly the last, to come in, and as Sampson had a good deal to say to the boys who had written meminiscimus patri meo and the rest of it, it turned out that the clock struck twelve before he had got to McLeod, and McLeod had to wait afterwards to have his sentence corrected. There was nothing much going on outside when I got out, so I waited for him to come. He came very slowly when he did arrive, and I guessed there had been some sort of trouble. 'Well,' I said, 'what did you get?' 'Oh, I don't know,' said McLeod, 'nothing much: but I think Sampson's rather sick with me.' 'Why, did you show him up some rot?' 'No fear,' he said. 'It was all right as far as I could see: it was like this: Memento - that's right enough for remember, and it takes a genitive, - memento putei inter quatuor taxos.' 'What silly rot!' I said. 'What made you shove that down? What does it mean?' 'That's the funny part,' said McLeod. 'I'm not quite sure what it does mean. All I know is, it just came into my head and I corked it down. I know what I think it means, because just before I wrote it down I had a sort of picture of it in my head: I believe it means "Remember the well among the four" - what are those dark sort of trees that have red berries on them?' 'Mountain ashes, I s'pose you mean.' 'I never heard of them,' said McLeod; 'no, I'll tell you - yews.' 'Well, and what did Sampson say?' 'Why, he was jolly odd about it. When he read it he got up and went to the mantel-piece and stopped quite a long time without saying anything, with his back to me. And then he said, without turning round, and rather quiet, "What do you suppose that means?" I told him what I thought; only I couldn't remember the name of the silly tree: and then he wanted to know why I put it down, and I had to say something or other. And after that he left off talking about it, and asked me how long I'd been here, and where my people lived, and things like that: and then I came away: but he wasn't looking a bit well.'
"I don't remember any more that was said by either of us about this. Next day McLeod took to his bed with a chill or something of the kind, and it was a week or more before he was in school again. And as much as a month went by without anything happening that was noticeable. Whether or not Mr. Sampson was really startled, as McLeod had thought, he didn't show it. I am pretty sure, of course, now, that there was something very curious in his past history, but I'm not going to pretend that we boys were sharp enough to guess any such thing.
"There was one other incident of the same kind as the last which I told you. Several times since that day we had had to make up examples in school to illustrate different rules, but there had never been any row except when we did them wrong. At last there came a day when we were going through those dismal things which people call Conditional Sentences, and we were told to make a conditional sentence, expressing a future consequence. We did it, right or wrong, and showed up our bits of paper, and Sampson began looking through them. All at once he got up, made some odd sort of noise in his throat, and rushed out by a door that was just by his desk. We sat there for a minute or two, and then - I suppose it was incorrect - but we went up, I and one or two others, to look at the papers on his desk. Of course I thought someone must have put down some nonsense or other, and Sampson had gone off to report him. All the same, I noticed that he hadn't taken any of the papers with him when he ran out. Well, the top paper on the desk was written in red ink - which no one used - and it wasn't in anyone's hand who was in the class. They all looked at it - McLeod and all - and took their dying oaths that it wasn't theirs. Then I thought of counting the bits of paper. And of this I made quite certain: that there were seventeen bits of paper on the desk, and sixteen boys in the form. Well, I bagged the extra paper, and kept it, and I believe I have it now. And now you will want to know what was written on it. It was simple enough, and harmless enough, I should have said.
"'Si tu non veneris ad me, ego veniam ad te,' which means, I suppose, 'If you don't come to me, I'll come to you.'"
"Could you show me the paper?" interrupted the listener.
"Yes, I could: but there's another odd thing about it. That same afternoon I took it out of my locker - I know for certain it was the same bit, for I made a finger-mark on it and no single trace of writing of any kind was there on it. I kept it, as I said, and since that time I have tried various experiments to see whether sympathetic ink had been used, but absolutely without result.
"So much for that. After about half an hour Sampson looked in again: said he had felt very unwell, and told us we might go. He came rather gingerly to his desk, and gave just one look at the uppermost paper: and I suppose he thought he must have been dreaming: anyhow, he asked no questions.
"That day was a half-holiday, and next day Sampson was in school again, much as usual. That night the third and last incident in my story happened.
"We - McLeod and I - slept in a dormitory at right angles to the main building. Sampson slept in the main building on the first floor. There was a very bright full moon. At an hour which I can't tell exactly, but some time between one and two, I was woken up by somebody shaking me. It was McLeod, and a nice state of mind he seemed to be in. 'Come,' he said, - 'come there's a burglar getting in through Sampson's window.' As soon as I could speak, I said, 'Well, why not call out and wake everybody up? 'No, no,' he said, 'I'm not sure who it is: don't make a row: come and look.' Naturally I came and looked, and naturally there was no one there. I was cross enough, and should have called McLeod plenty of names: only - I couldn't tell why - it seemed to me that there was something wrong - something that made me very glad I wasn't alone to face it. We were still at the window looking out, and as soon as I could, I asked him what he had heard or seen. 'I didn't hear anything at all,' he said, 'but about five minutes before I woke you, I found myself looking out of this window here, and there was a man sitting or kneeling on Sampson's window-sill, and looking in, and I thought he was beckoning.' 'What sort of man?' McLeod wriggled. 'I don't know,' he said, 'but I can tell you one thing - he was beastly thin: and he looked as if he was wet all over: and,' he said, looking round and whispering as if he hardly liked to hear himself, 'I'm not at all sure that he was alive.'
"We went on talking in whispers some time longer, and eventually crept back to bed. No one else in the room woke or stirred the whole time. I believe we did sleep a bit afterwards, but we were very cheap next day.
"And next day Mr. Sampson was gone: not to be found: and I believe no trace of him has ever come to light since. In thinking it over, one of the oddest things about it all has seemed to me to be the fact that neither McLeod nor I ever mentioned what we had seen to any third person whatever. Of course no questions were asked on the subject, and if they had been, I am inclined to believe that we could not have made any answer: we seemed unable to speak about it.
"That is my story," said the narrator. "The only approach to a ghost story connected with a school that I know, but still, I think, an approach to such a thing."
* ****
The sequel to this may perhaps be reckoned highly conventional; but a sequel there is, and so it must be produced. There had been more than one listener to the story, and, in the latter part of that same year, or of the next, one such listener was staying at a country house in Ireland.
One evening his host was turning over a drawer full of odds and ends in the smoking-room. Suddenly he put his hand upon a little box. "Now," he said, "you know about old things; tell me what that is." My friend opened the little box, and found in it a thin gold chain with an object attached to it. He glanced at the object and then took off his spectacles to examine it more narrowly. "What's the history of this?" he asked. "Odd enough," was the answer. "You know the yew thicket in the shrubbery: well, a year or two back we were cleaning out the old well that used to be in the clearing here, and what do you suppose we found?"
"Is it possible that you found a body?" said the visitor, with an odd feeling of nervousness.
"We did that: but what's more, in every sense of the word, we found two."
"Good Heavens! Two? Was there anything to show how they got there? Was this thing found with them?"
"It was. Amongst the rags of the clothes that were on one of the bodies. A bad business, whatever the story of it may have been. One body had the arms tight round the other. They must have been there thirty years or more - long enough before we came to this place. You may judge we filled the well up fast enough. Do you make anything of what's cut on that gold coin you have there?"
"I think I can," said my friend, holding it to the light (but he read it without much difficulty); "it seems to be G.W.S., 24 July, 1865."

M.R. James

Time

2007-10-29T07:03:00.000Z

Heard on a radio report from Afghanistan:

"The West have all the watches. We have all the time."

Babbage

2007-10-28T22:57:00.000Z

Quotes
“On two occasions I have been asked,--"Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?"
In one case a member of the Upper, and in the other a member of the Lower, House put this question. I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.”

Chapter 5, Passages from the Life of a Philosopher, Charles Babbage, 1864. ISBN 1-85196-040-6, illustrating that even Babbage had to deal with people who displayed illogical levels of what would now be called "computer illiteracy".

We called a society for the intellectually curious, at school, after this wonderful man.

Another quote (from http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Charles_Babbage):

"It is therefore not unreasonable to suppose that some portion of the neglect of science in England, may be attributed to the system of education we pursue."

Poets Against War

2007-10-27T18:16:00.001Z

My friend Karen Margolis told me about a reading in Berlin (link below)

The power of poetry as a grassroots political medium was vividly demonstrated once again on 9 September 2007, when poets, human rights activists and audiences the world over took part in stage and radio readings for democracy and media freedom in Zimbabwe.

Poets Against War Newsletter Spring 2007

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Slow cooking is political

2007-10-27T18:11:00.001Z

A delightful piece in the London Review of Books, mentions the Cittaslow movement. I love the idea that slow cooking is seen as a political statement - politics at the heart of nourishment.

The most charismatic of the speakers was Silvio Barbero, the national secretary of Slow Food Italy. In a fiery speech, which showed some surprising continuities with the finer aspects of Mao Zedong Thought, he talked about the importance of solidarity among non-corporate food producers across the globe; peasants and small farmers of the world, unite!

LRB | Thomas Jones: Short Cuts

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Autumn Bonfire

2007-10-27T17:40:00.001Z

Mobile phone picture - getting rid of the cuttings.

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Delusions of grandeur - Telegraph

2007-10-24T17:41:00.001Z

I had so many typewriters. The first was a huge. upright, long carriage Royal. I produced a family newspaper when I was 11. The last was a small Olivetti portable I left in the Falklands when I finished a tour there with BFBS in 1986. I've been using word processors ever since, from a BBC Micro to Word 10.

This from the Daily Telegraph today:

When did you last write a letter? Jefferson Hack knows a literary bar in Paris where patrons use vintage typewriters and fountain pens to compose billet-doux

Delusions of grandeur - Telegraph

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RFI - Internet - Wikipédia, libre mais peu fiable

2007-10-24T09:36:00.001Z

I'm trying to learn French. The web sites of Le Monde and Radio France Inter are a great help and both have audio feeds.
This, about the limitations of Wikipedia:

C’est en voyant ses étudiants faire des copier-coller des articles sur Wikipédia, sans prendre la peine de les vérifier, que Pierre Assouline, professeur à l’Institut d'études politiques de Paris et ancien rédacteur en chef de Lire, a eu envie d’évaluer la véracité des informations sur l’encyclopédie libre. Wikipédia, est ce qu’on appelle une encyclopédie participative. Ce sont les internautes eux-mêmes qui alimentent les articles, et d’autres internautes qui les contrôlent et les modifient en cas d’erreur.

Les cinq étudiants chargés de l’enquête ont donc voulu tester l’efficacité de ces modérateurs, et pour cela, ils ont introduit des « coquilles » dans plusieurs articles. Pour voir ensuite combien de temps elles allaient survivre. La première surprise, pour Pierre, un des étudiants auteurs du rapport, fut la facilité avec laquelle on peut modifier Wikipédia : « Pas besoin de donner d’adresse internet, ou de s’identifier, il suffit d’aller sur un article, de cliquer sur le bouton modifier, et ensuite c’est comme une page Word. On enregistre et les modifications apparaissent en ligne ». Et c’est aussi simplement que cela qu’ils ont modifié la notice de Tony Blair, rajoutant qu’il était de confession catholique (et non anglicane comme c’est toujours le cas).

RFI - Internet - Wikipédia, libre mais peu fiable

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Moleskine

2007-10-23T21:16:00.000Z

Another obsession, cheerfully exploited by Moleskine marketeers, is good notebooks. http://www.moleskine.it/eng/_interni/storie/immagini.htm

Grignan

2007-10-23T16:47:00.001Z

Grignan, originally uploaded by clowndes2.

Museum of Typography. My love of books is pretty much an obsesion.

2007-10-2302

2007-10-23T16:31:00.001Z

Now I can blog direct from Flickr :)

A Country Walk

2007-10-23T16:20:00.000Z

Great walk today, amongst leaf-soaked woods. More pictures at http://flickr.com/photos/clowndes/

Today turns 50 - Times Online

2007-10-23T09:57:00.001Z

Libby Purves:

And I had fun. On a good day, being a Today presenter is like being a small child waking up first on a winter morning and running round the house telling everyone it has snowed: you are first up in the morning with a story to tell. Lennon has been shot! The embassy siege is over! The Pope is dead! Mt St Helens has erupted! With talkback in your headphones, snags, changes, fixed points and pips to hit, it is technically fun too. Although as presenter you are not – ahem! – quite as important as you think, there is a genuine minor skill involved in keeping a complex programme sounding relaxed, a thin one sounding interesting and the whole machine rolling smoothly along. It is a bit like being a juggler in the kind of novelty act where audience members hurl unpredictable objects at you – a ball, a banana, a pencil, a paperback – and you adapt to keep them all flowing evenly through the air. You sit next to your co-presenter – clever chippy leftish Brian or grumpy conservative John – and grow fond of them, developing private jokes, cooperating, and putting rivalries aside because, frankly, it is too damn early in the morning to bother sulking. Sometimes you get the outside broadcast – I anchored the first-ever programme live from Beijing, another from HMS Invincible at sea, and a number of deeply tiresome European summits at which nothing happened of interest except for Mrs Thatcher saying Non, non, non! and Bernard Ingham conducting allnight briefings in rooms full of smoke.

Years later, Sue MacGregor was writing her autobiography and rang to ask whether it was true that I – like her – felt bullied as a woman. I was amazed. I never was. Today was not the testosterone flash-flood of legend; many editors and producers were women, and I had worked with them in the office. Timpson used to say, “Your trouble, young lady, is that you have peaked 20 years too early” and I would reply, “Your trouble is you’re a fossil”, and all was serene. The point is not that I was the first regular woman and the youngest presenter, but that I remain the only one to rise through the ranks. In Drop-the-Dead-Donkey world, that helps.

Today turns 50 - Times Online

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Howard Gardner

2007-10-22T15:13:00.001Z

I had the delight of listening to Howard Gardner recently, and am reading his book "Five Minds for the Future"

The Disciplinary Mind: the mastery of major schools of thought, including science, mathematics, and history, and of at least one professional craft.
The Synthesizing Mind: the ability to integrate ideas from different disciplines or spheres into a coherent whole and to communicate that integration to others.
The Creating Mind: the capacity to uncover and clarify new problems,questions and phenomena.
The Respectful Mind: awareness of and appreciation for differences among human beings and human groups.
The Ethical Mind: fulfillment of one's responsibilities as a worker and as a citizen.

Howard Gardner

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New Blogs

2007-10-22T15:03:00.000Z

I've set up separate blogs for the Shiplake College Royal Navy CCF section, Burr House, and one of the ICT courses I teach.
I'm also working slowly towards an online politics course, at ALevelPolitics.com.

New PC

2007-09-29T16:32:00.000Z

A new, fast PC arrives and the irritation of sitting waiting for things to happen disappears. I resolve to post more often. This is a weekend off from the busy world of Shiplake College - time to watch episodes of The West wing. DVD is a great medium, - no commercials and the chance to watch 5 episodes at a sitting.

Our friend Penny Adie on the TV news last night, receiving a new piano after the first one was dropped by the delivery people. http://www.thetwomoorsfestival.com/

Pilot course set up on Moodle

2007-06-10T11:57:00.001Z

The H807 etivity pilot is now pretty much ready for use. It took me about two hours this morning, which inclouded getting to griops with GIFT formatting for questions. There is one small error which I have left in as bait for participants to comment on - tere may be others as well.

Cole, J (2005) Using Moodle, Sebastopol CA, O'Reilly - very useful.

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More on Facebook

2007-06-04T06:37:00.001Z

David Sacks, in the TechCrunch blog:

Google has continued to leverage its lead in search to become a full-fledged portal. Once users have found what they are looking for, Google makes it easy, through their iGoogle product, to subscribe to that content through alerts, RSS feeds, or a huge selection of widgets, all of which are compacting more useful information onto fewer start pages than ever before. As a result, iGoogle has become Google’s fastest-growing product. But iGoogle has a serious limitation: it doesn’t involve sharing; each user has to make an individual investment in set-up and can’t benefit from the work of others. It’s not really a Web 2.0 product.

Facebook has a new answer to the portal question. The “social graph,” or your network of relationships, will push information to you. You’ll learn from your friends. Thanks to Facebook’s new developer platform, the types of information being disseminated now include not just news, photos, events, and groups but also music, videos, books, movies, causes, political campaigns — and the list is rapidly growing into almost every conceivable category.

The New Portals: It’s the Bread, Not the Peanut Butter

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Great phrase

2007-06-04T06:22:00.001Z

A post by Nigel Gibson

Almost by definition OU folks can be perverse and will be using the most esoteric browsers including some hand-rolled by goatherds in Uzbekhistan - the VLE will need to handle all these or we'll get back to where we are now; ALs and students use, and in the main, love/have affection for FirstClass but central folk don't use/know/understand FC.

OU VLE: Blogs

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Anne Stott's blog

2007-06-03T15:46:00.001Z

Example of a tutor using a blog to offer material to her students

A207A weblog for students studying the (UK) Open University course Enlightenment to Romanticism, hosted by Dr Anne Stott, tutor for the South-East Region (Region 13). This is an independent weblog not officially connected to the OU, who are not responsible for the contents

A207: June 2007

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Facebook - another experience

2007-06-03T10:32:00.000Z

Thanks to Rosanna's OU H807 blog for this interesting extract.

Michael Wesch, PhD, is Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University. If you've been reading Searchblog, then you know him as the guy behind this amazing video.

"As a university professor I have also found Facebook to be useful. I was inspired to use Facebook for teaching by something I saw while visiting George Mason University. Like many universities, they were concerned that the library stacks were rarely being accessed by students. Instead of trying to bring students to the stacks, they brought the stacks to the students, placing a small library right in the middle of the food court where students hang out. We can do the same with popular social networking tools like Facebook. Facebook is not only great for expressing your identity, sharing with friends, and planning parties, it also has all the tools necessary to create an online learning community. Students are already frequently visiting Facebook, so we can bring our class discussions to them in a place where they have already invested significant effort in building up their identity, rather than asking them to login to Blackboard or some other course management system where they feel “faceless” and out of place. "

Facebook - quotes

2007-05-31T22:18:00.000Z

As impressed as I am with the platform, I still wish it were more open. I want to combine my presence on Facebook with my presences on my blog, del.icio.us, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, iTunes, Daylife, Amazon, eBay, and lots of other places — that is beginning on the platform — but I also want them to interact with each other and with my friends’ presences in those places to see what surprises result. Maybe I start to see that my friends are buying the same books. Or I put together a Twitter group for an event. Or I find that my blog readers who are in my same group are going to the same event.
It’s said that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has a vision for his service to become the social operating system of the web, the Google of people. Mark talks about bringing communities elegant organization. I say the internet already is a community of communities and there’s a winning strategy in bringing it elegant organization.

http://www.buzzmachine.com/2007/05/29/amazing-facebook/

and

Bringing Learning into Facebook via Wikipedia
I'm pushing Facebook as a tool for our students. It provides them with pretty much everything they want: connectivity, e-mail, blogging, photos and media linking.
The real challenge is to then bring learning and creative endeavour into Facebook.
So I read with interest this suggestion from Nicholas Carr:
Facebook should capitalize on Wikipedia's open license and create an in-network edition of the encyclopedia.
It would be a cinch: Suck in Wikipedia's contents, incorporate a Wikipedia search engine into Facebook (Wikipedia's own search engine stinks, so it should be easy to build a better one), serve up Wikipedia's pages in a new, better-designed Facebook format, and, yes, incorporate some advertising.
There may also be some social-networking tools that could be added for blending Wikipedia content with Facebook content.
Watch that space...

http://www.unreasonableman.net/ Saturday, May 12, 2007

Notes on web 2.0

2007-05-30T08:20:00.001Z

This series of online learning activities are designed as professional development for
university faculty and staff who want to focus on the pedagogy of using Web 2.0
technologies within the learning process. The series of activities aims to be grounded in
pedagogy before technology.

http://eduspaces.net/rawsthorne/files/6426/14552/Web2.0PDV1.0.pdf

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Bliki

2007-05-30T08:18:00.001Z

Due to the increasing popularity of both blogs and wikis, and their consequent commercialization, a great deal of ambiguity as to the distinction between the two has been created. Some software marketed as being for the creation of wikis, are little more than partner blogs, some are nothing more than text editors. The key difference to keep in mind is that a true wiki is actively collaborative, that is, anyone can edit the document at any point in the document, whether that is to insert a comma, strike a sentence, or add an additional page. Blogs tend to function more like monologues, or pronouncements from the author(s) to which readers may append their own comments without the ability to alter the original blog text

Bliki - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Facebook Stats

2007-05-29T22:05:00.001Z

# 1.7 billion user photos# 2.2 billion friends tagged in user photos# 160 terabytes of photo storage used with an extra 60 terabytes available# 60+ million photos added each week which take up 5 terabytes of disk space# 3+ billion photo images served to users every day# 100,000+ images served per second during our peak traffic windows

Facebook | The Facebook Blog

Using Facebook

2007-05-28T22:23:00.001Z

ICT4 A level revision
Because ICT is such fun

Facebook | ICT4 A level revision

An experiment to see if any of my students pick up the idea on facebook, and if it spreads from the three I have invited.

Thanks to Sarah for Flock :)

2007-05-28T21:43:00.001Z

Fellow H807 student Sarah gave me a useful tip:

have you had a look at Flock, Charly? It's a Firefox-esque browser which has things like blogging etc built in. Could be interesting, but I'm not sure it's any better than Firefox itself.

Re(2): FutureLab

So that's two new tricks today - ScribeFire and Flock. What I really need now is a similar functionality for readfing PDF files - academic papers - which would also pick up the citations :)

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Wiki as a PIM and Collaborative Content Tool

2007-05-28T12:19:00.001Z

Quickiwiki, Swiki, Twiki, Zwiki and the Plone Wars Wiki as a PIM and Collaborative Content Tool

Quickiwiki, Swiki, Twiki, Zwiki and the Plone Wars Wiki as a PIM and Collaborative Content Tool

The icebreaker exercise

2007-05-28T12:16:00.001Z

ASCILITE 2004: Augar, Raitman and Zhou - Teaching and learning online with wikis

 In a classroom situated environment the icebreaker exercise consisted of a list of questions printed on a piece of paper. Sample questions include: 'Find someone who has the same colour car as you?' or 'Find someone who speaks a language other than English.' Students must list the name of at least one other class mate under each of the questions. Usually there are about 15 different questions, 20 students and the activity takes about 20 minutes to complete. Students get up and circulate in the classroom, asking each other questions, to try to locate people who match the criteria outlined in the questions. In completing the exercise they introduce themselves to their other classmates. Because all students are participating the exercise creates a non threatening way for students to introduce themselves to others in the class. Observation indicates that students respond well to the exercise, establishing new friendships that continue throughout the semester.

Wiki - storytelling in primary school

2007-05-28T12:12:00.000Z

We have shown that teams of 2 to 5 students at the primary level Grade 4-6 are able to use Wiki for the purpose of
collaborative web-based storytelling. We also provided a detailed “recipe” and guidelines to allow teachers to use
Wiki for this type of activity in their own classroom. Our work yielded a number of valuable insights into the
collaborative process that children undergo when using Wiki for collaborative storytelling. It also suggests that Wiki
could be enhanced by the addition of a graphical, editable electronic map similar to the paper map that used by
children during our storytelling activity.

http://iit-iti.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/iit-publications-iti/docs/NRC-48234.pdf

Wiki as a Tool for Web-based Collaborative Story
Telling in Primary School: A Case Study *
Désilets, A., and Paquet, S.
July 2005
National Research
Council Canada
Institute for
Information Technology

wikipedia problems

2007-05-28T09:51:00.001Z

Johnson slapped on wrist for recommending Wikipedia | E-learning | EducationGuardian.co.uk

Mr Johnson described the internet as an "incredible force for good in education" at yesterday's annual conference of the National Association of Schoolteachers and Union of Women Teachers (NASWUT) in Belfast.

"Wikipedia enables anybody to access information which was once the preserve of those who could afford the subscription to Encyclopedia Britannica and were prepared to navigate its maze of indexes and content pages," he said. "Modern technology enables a whole range of new educational tools to be used by pupils, teachers and schools."

But teachers and the website's founder, Larry Sanger, criticised Mr Johnson for encouraging pupils to use the website.

The general secretary of the NASWUT, Chris Keates, said the union itself had been the victim of scurrilous claims on Wikipedia. She said the online encyclopedia was popular but she would not recommend it to children as their sole source of information.

Wikipedia is among the top 10 most visited sites on the internet but it has been dogged by concerns in recent weeks over the veracity of its information. In March, a prominent and longstanding Wikipedia contributor was revealed to be a 24-year-old college dropout.

Mr Sanger, one of the founder members of Wikipedia, left the site after concerns for its integrity. He launched a new online encyclopedia - Citizendium.org - two weeks ago, which will be monitored and edited by academics and other experts as well as accepting public contributions.

Mr Sanger said the aim of the new resource was to avoid the inconsistency and potential for vandalism of Wikipedia while retaining its democratic ideals. Volunteer contributors to the new site will be expected to provide their real names and experts in given fields will be asked to check articles for accuracy. Approved articles will receive a green tick to indicate their reliability.

Universities have long questioned the reliability of information posted and edited on Wikipedia. Marketing officials in UK universities monitor the information on the site because it can affect institutional reputations, acting as an alternative university guide.

Some American colleges have gone a step further and banned undergraduates from citing the website in their research papers. Middlebury College, in Vermont, proscribed citations from Wikipedia in January.

UK universities could well take similar measures, predicted Will Murray, director of a plagiarism advisory service for British higher education.

In class, I have to power down

2007-05-28T09:31:00.001Z

Children's experiences of technology outside the classroom way ahead | E-learning | EducationGuardian.co.uk

'In class, I have to power down'

Children have been quick to grasp the joys of new technology. Why are schools lagging so far behind, ask David Puttnam

Tuesday May 8, 2007
The Guardian

At a recent digital education conference in San Francisco, one of the more memorable remarks quoted came from a child: "Whenever I go into class, I have to power down." That roughly translates as: "What I do with digital technology outside school - at home, in my own free time - is on a completely different level to what I'm able to do at school. Outside school, I'm using much more advanced skills, doing many more interesting things, operating in a far more sophisticated way. School takes little notice of this and seems not to care."

It is a sentiment that might (and should) shock educators, but one that an increasing majority of today's kids would understand and agree with. I have already tried it out on one 12-year-old of my acquaintance. It's a no-brainer, in his view.

"At school, you do all this boring stuff, really basic stuff, PowerPoint and spreadsheets and things. It only gets interesting and exciting when you come home and really use your computer. You're free, you're in control, it's your own world."

Leon Cych, also at Futurelab, also on how ideas spread - and what it might mean in schools

2007-05-28T09:17:00.001Z

Flux » Articles » Hit the ground running…

It does seem to me that web 2.0 distributed resources are a more organic and malleable way of pulling together ways of doing rather than frozen brain dumps in walled-in repositories. Bobby Elliott, Qualifications Manager at the Scottish Qualifications Authority talks of Assessment 2.0 in a recent Futurelab Viewpoint article, whereby online apps such as Google Docs can be used for formative and summative assessment. Here we have an enlightened vision of the binding of distributed resources for a focused purpose rather than the possible cul de sac of the VLE - which may insitutionalise, sanitise and effectively keep change dead in the water before its implemented.

Dan Sutch at Futurelab on how ideas spread

2007-05-28T09:13:00.001Z

Flux » Articles » networked discovery

I’m writing this post whilst browsing another webpage, using scribefire, a plugin to Firefox that allows you to make notes, annotations and publish them directly to the blog of your choice. The site I’m browsing is musicovery which enables you to listen to music governed by the mood you’re in (or presumably the mood you want to be in!). As I’m finding these new tools I’m capturing them with my Diigo tool that allows me to annotate, tag and share the findings and from there I can find other links, tool or people that have also found this site interesting.

But it’s not just the tools that are interesting, but the way in which I came across them. scribefire was sent to me by Andy Black after a conversation in London. Diigo was discussed on Flux a few posts ago and musicovery sent to a Futurelab ‘cool stuff’ space by Tash Lee which prompted to me to re-find a post by Doug Belshaw.

ScribeFire

2007-05-28T08:58:00.001Z

This is an example of a formatted note note

ScribeFire - A Firefox add-on and a blogger's friend or foe? - Download Squad

From the account wizard launch button, you can add the url's of your blogs with their passwords (uh, triple good luck remembering them). ScribeFire will then list your blogs in a side window, where you can select the blog you want to post to.

Scribefire - lovely tool :)

Working Blog

2007-02-18T12:09:00.000Z

A lot of my spare time is devoted to the final course for an M.Ed course - from now until July I'm exploring innovations in eLearning. If you are interested, see http://blogs.open.ac.uk/H808/caml2/

Face Book

2007-02-12T17:37:00.000Z

Rather touching to find that I have been invited to be friends on Face Book by a number of students. Also that there is a group in memory of Tim Crewdson who was killed in a car crash - he must have been 17.

Flooding

2007-01-07T16:11:00.000Z

Heavy rain - the river is full and flowing fast.

Bridges

2007-01-05T16:51:00.000Z

This has been a good day. I've completed some family paperwork which I've been putting off since September. The car headlight which I thought had blown had just worked lose, and lit up when I wiggled it to see how to extract the bulb. And Mike has made a most useful comment - thanks, I and will read up http://www.bridges.org/ later this evening.

Cyber Cafe in a box

2007-01-04T20:27:00.000Z

Research target: creating a cyber cafe kit in a box, suitable for installation by relatively unskilled in relatively undeveloped countries.

Shopping list:

Some PCs - schools like mine throw them away each year. Clean the HDD and install Linux, OpenOffice, a browser and anything else which is free and useful.

A server - with Open Kiosk or other management software. A proxy host ? Email ?

Language ?

Hub or switch and cables.

Pre loaded ducts with data and power sockets in simple lengths.

The two main issues are power and connectivity.

Power from solar ? Battery bank and inverters.

Connectivity - if landlines are there, easy. If not, cellular ? Satellite likely to be prohibitive.

Flickr

2007-01-02T17:17:00.000Z

I have hugely enjoyed playing around with Flickr, which is easy, useful and fun. My son Jonathan (http://www.flickr.com/photos/powndes/) takes interesting pictures and stores them there, with thoughtful comments.

We all love Banksy (http://www.banksy.co.uk/) who did the maid on the wall - which has perhaps been embellished by other disciples of the wall painting genius. Wil, who lives in Bristol, met him once. Two copies of his book "Walls and peace" were round the Christmas Tree this year. I love the quote on the back: something on the lines of "there is absolutely no way you're getting a quote from us for the back of this book - Metropolitan Police spokesman."

Lowndes

2007-01-01T19:37:00.000Z

How interesting to discover Alison Lowndes' blog at http://avifvolunteers.blogspot.com/

Many Lowndes details are to be found at http://homepage.ntlworld.com/mike.lowndes/lowndes/

I gather from Radio 4 this morning that there is a 20% chance that any two people with the same surname are related: or rather that a y-chomosome DNA sample has a 20% chance of matching someone with the same surname. It seems the probability is greater for less usual surnames - like Lowndes, perhaps.

Mike is a distinguished media manager at the Natural History Museum (one of my favourite buildings).
Alison works to organise summer schools and other educational projects in Kenya.

There's a link of learning and helping others which I find deeply pleasing - although I've never met either of these people and only knew that Alison existed this afternoon when idly browsing blogger.

New Year - sunshine

2007-01-01T10:51:00.000Z

Noticing - noting - reflecting - changing.

Which is the hardest part of this recipe ?

Photoblogging

2006-12-31T07:45:00.000Z

This is a place for images, ideas and fun.