Just updating a presentation on reuse of multimedia (to follow shortly) and some recommendations:
You can switch lights on and off for quick preview and also search by colour
Other high quality sites include:
Everyone in our group passed the practical today, it was a really nice group and friendly atmosphere throughout. Everyone chose different activities / kicks. We were advised to keep it simple so it ranged from axe, spinning back hooks & side kicks, 360 jumping turning kicks to basic blocks, some basic wrist work, patterns and leg control. It was like being in a small seminar. It feels like we’ve been in a fight day due to the range of activities and each session was 20 minutes, including a warm up, main session and cool down then 5 min break between sessions. Everyone was really nice to each other and tried really hard. Apparently on some previous sessions, coaches have said I’d like you to pretend you’re 5, 8, 10 yrs old and telling that to a bunch of martial artists in a small room who don’t get many play days off, you can imagine…
I’m meeting Master Worsfold tomorrow and our new club secretary soon to plan out the inclusive taekwondo, arrange publicity and training sessions for the senior belts. I don’t know if we will have anyone at the Para Taekwondo in London in October, unlikely at this point but who knows. British Nationals are back in the velodrome in Manchester in September and who knows for that as well. Apparently you now need a global athlete licence (GAL).
The ‘elders’ are hardy souls & done better than some of the middle age lavenders with new leaves:
The new kids and babies planted last summer are also doing well :
Lots of healthy plants and bees. I found out today that on the adjacent allotments alongside quite a lot of English plots there are Caribbean root vegetables, further along Chinese vegetables and who knows which others are represented. No plants seem upset by the presence of others and all doing well each year.
A million miles away from bigAI, machine learning and technology giants. Due to time I have a mix of some Botlibre sentences I have written and some imported chatscripts.
Some other links and interesting videos will be working through:
Chatbots and conversational UI scripts
AIML and Rivescript comparison
Unsupervised learning and AIML:
As part of the government’s refusal to fund the NHS properly, the latest attack is on gluten-free prescriptions amongst others i.e. gluten free bread, flour for coeliac patients (not biscuits and cakes as reported in various places).
A friend who is a paediatric specialist in gastric health has kindly shared the following information which may be helpful for anyone who has friends who require gluten free foods via prescriptions (as there aren’t any drugs available). It is a false economy as patients affected are very likely to develop more complex conditions costing the NHS more than the prescriptions.
Julie Wood’s words (“This is not about cutting essential services or restricting access for patients to services they need—it is about allowing local clinical leaders to make the best and most efficient use of the money . .”) wont cut much ice with coeliac patients, but fits nicely with the current philosophy of getting local teams to make the cuts in services while government absolves itself of any responsibility for the chaos caused by NHS underfunding. Distractions such as ‘low value prescriptions’, along with charges to overseas patients also draw attention away from the massive waste associated with running the NHS as a market, profligate use of management consultants, cost of PFI, etc. It is estimated that 1 in100 of the population have coeliac disease, although many are undiagnosed. Not adhering to strict gluten free diet presdisposes to long term complications such as growth failure in children, osteoporosis, anaemia, micronutrient deficiencies, infertility and lymphoma.
A key aspect of management therefore is promoting strict adherence to a gluten free diet. This is not as easy as it sounds, and the withdrawal of gluten free prescriptions will act as a barrier to achieving this goal in some patients (and further costs to the NHS down the line). Following a recent ‘head to head’ in the BMJ (1) a mother of a child with coeliac disease clearly outlined some of the difficulties including the high cost of gluten free food in supermarkets, and the inclusion of gluten as a bulking agent in cheaper brands of some foods such as baked beans (2). The arguments against prescribing related to the bureaucratic process, and the relatively high cost of prescription gluten free products, neither of which should represent insoluble problems to the NHS.
Coeliac UK has pointed out that Simon Stevens has misrepresented the situation with regard to gluten free prescriptions (whether through ignorance or mendacity is unclear). Suggesting that patients could shop for gluten free food in Lidl is disingenuous when this outlet does not routinely stock such products. Furthermore, budget and convenience stores, which are relied upon by the most vulnerable such as the elderly, and those on low incomes, have virtually no provision.
He also misleadingly implied that significant sums are spent by the NHS on biscuits and cakes, while guidance (supported by Coeliac UK) for many years has rejected such spend. His argument that ‘the price of gluten free alternatives has come down substantially’ is not backed up by the evidence. Industry data since 2008 shows that gluten free bread costs about six times as much as its gluten containing equivalents and this has not reduced. Abandoning gluten free bread by switching to rice and potatoes poses the risk of nutritional deficiencies. Hippocrates is credited with the injunction: “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.” We should continue to treat those with coeliac disease on the NHS, and stop blaming patients for the problems of a cash starved service.
References
1. Kurien M, Sleet S, Sanders D, Cave D. BMJ 2017;356:i6810 doi: 10.1136/bmj.i6810
2. Gleed G. Commentary: we’re under financial strain without prescriptions for gluten free food.
The group meets once a term to share ideas, practices and code they are developing.
Some experience with UX with designing and developing themes / features but not always to complete into core Moodle because of time taken to review and test, although features and themes are being shared on
Github: https://github.com/
Atlassian bitbucket: https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/bitbucket-integration
Most successful student engagement is when they are in paid roles. Sometimes student projects are not possible to go into Moodle code because further dev required after project end but students benefit and can implement some if not all. Some students specifically providing accessibility and usability feedback which is essential.
Next meeting will include some sessions on LTI as integration ongoing topic as well as what is a VLE / LMS for and where learning takes place (someone pointed out that these discussions started more widely in late 90s)
With the exception of couple of cups of tea in Yorkshire at the weekend, have almost completely given up caffeine (currently green tea & decaf coffee only and moving to green tea decaf in about 10 days when finished off existing supplies). Up until 2 weeks ago had 1-2 pints of coffee / caffeine daily.
Had initial 3 days of migraine type headaches & accompanying grumpiness but seem to have passed through that now. Feel better for it. Sugar next – by end of April if not before.
Back in early 2000s the phrase ‘blended learning’ began to be used more widely. At the Marsden with a colleague we decided to reuse and try to make the idea for trainers or anyone involved in learning design really explicit. We started a learning commissioning guide but did not get the oppportunity to develop further – these are some screenshots from an early Articulate Storyline 2 draft based around the television show Masterchef.
We were asked yesterday to put together a training session for induction with academics or those interested in new technologies and how they can be used to enhance / improve learning. I suggested doing an actual blend with a blender – learning ‘smoothies’ based on different choices participants made e.g. class sizes range from raspberry sized to much larger blueberry sized (i.e. we could fit more blueberries on a plate than raspberries). And so on. We piloted it this afternoon and made an actual smoothie and it seemed to go down well – we weren’t sure if it would be too silly / patronising but the smoothie was appreciated.
We will probably try again in the future. My colleague also found that University of South Wales have done something similar in the past too.
Interesting post and what likes like a really good initiative with the new online education offering in Kazakhstan MOOC, MOOC, meet Kazakhstan: Surfing a new wave of MOOC innovation – http://wp.me/p1TvCL-YG
Very timely too for those of us involved with People’s Uni as they consider if / what / how they want to move forward. Context, relevance etc
It doesn’t mention who the other sponsors are but hopefully not the usual suspects from US,UK and Canada, so hopefully won’t get ripped off by consultants or see local entrepreneurs gobbled up as they develop.
