I looked in on the Open University's 40th anniversary open day briefly yesterday. What a wonderful celebration. In the queue for registration I chatted to two graduates who started their studies in 1972. They must have been amongst the earliest students and long since finishing their degrees they are still doing short courses. The day seemed to have attracted people of all ages, from the very young, who were enjoying the pink anniversary balloons and the train round the campus, to current and prospective students, the occasional staff member no doubt and those like the couple I encountered, for whom the Open University still holds very dear memories.
I wished I'd had time to see more, as there was a wonderful array of research projects being demonstrated in a wide range of areas across different faculties. In music technology, for example, a cellist was being taught to emulate the teacher's bowing technique, using sensors which gave a graphical display on a computer screen. In a knowledge media institute project, netbooks and webcams brought the close-up detail of a field trip to geology students who were unable to be physically present. I looked at the OU's Milton Keynes telescope and watched as its Majorcan sister was remotely controlled from a desktop PC. I could have spent all day exploring the many exhibits.
Whatever people's motives for attending the event, the day must surely be viewed as a resounding success for them and hopefully will have attracted some new students in the process.
Sunday 28 June 2009
Friday 26 June 2009
Vacances
I was in France a few days ago, in the Seine-et-Marne region, a few miles east of Paris. The local town was very sleepy, but it was interesting how different it was to similar sized towns here in England in terms of possibilities to buy fresh food. We were told that essential shops, in this part of France at least, are protected in that if one becomes vacant, then the lease is offered at a reduced rent to a jeune homme (or, I presume, femme) who is prepared to ensure the continuity of such things as the local bakery, patisserie or butchers. In addition there are the weekly markets which sell the most amazing local produce all laid out in mouth watering fashion.
The French expect to be able to buy beautiful fresh cooked loaves twice a day. In the town where I live, there is often very little left apart from cakes after lunch time and certainly no second baking. We still have a butcher but the greengrocer closed his shutters for the last time several years ago. We have a farmers' market one Saturday in four and good supermarkets, but we don't have the vibrant pavement cafés that you find in France that give their small communities so much atmosphere.
So why are matters so different in France? Is it the fact that parking is so much easier? Once you have bought your parking disc, for example, you can enjoy an hour and a half's free parking there, without worrying about the cost, as often as you like. It can't be the weather. Northern France is probably just as wet as Britain. Perhaps it is indeed just the fact that whenever you go to France you feel you are on holiday, even if, like me, sometimes you are combining work with pleasure. The French make it very easy to do that, as broadband seems to be available just about everywhere. Until the same situation exists in England, vivent les vacances en France!
The French expect to be able to buy beautiful fresh cooked loaves twice a day. In the town where I live, there is often very little left apart from cakes after lunch time and certainly no second baking. We still have a butcher but the greengrocer closed his shutters for the last time several years ago. We have a farmers' market one Saturday in four and good supermarkets, but we don't have the vibrant pavement cafés that you find in France that give their small communities so much atmosphere.
So why are matters so different in France? Is it the fact that parking is so much easier? Once you have bought your parking disc, for example, you can enjoy an hour and a half's free parking there, without worrying about the cost, as often as you like. It can't be the weather. Northern France is probably just as wet as Britain. Perhaps it is indeed just the fact that whenever you go to France you feel you are on holiday, even if, like me, sometimes you are combining work with pleasure. The French make it very easy to do that, as broadband seems to be available just about everywhere. Until the same situation exists in England, vivent les vacances en France!
Thursday 11 June 2009
Treasures
It's ironic really, that on a day when the death of the schoolbook was being predicted [1] I had just spent a good 2 hours searching through a resource online for something I could have found in 2 minutes if I'd only had the book.
Online resources are great for reading about cutting edge technology, up to the minute research, news, weather and opinions. They are cheap, well in fact free, if we have broadband and don't have to worry about the costs per minute of being online. Where they don't score well though, is in providing a familiar friend that we can thumb through over and over again, rereading sections that interest us, bookmarking pages and perhaps tucking away a postcard or other memento inside a particularly special volume. Even an online resource you've read before changes at the whim of the editor, so you might have put a particular page in your favourites list to return to at a later date, but it could have disappeared completely by the time you return to it months later.
All this perhaps goes to explain why my bookshelves are groaning. Some of the volumes are seventy or more years old. I might not look at these very often; they have no pretty pictures, but they are treasures. When I pick up a poetry book and read lines by John Masefield or W.H. Auden, I am truly transported back to another age, not just because of what is on the page, but because I can hear my mother reading out loud to me when I was very young. Will I ever be able to say that about a sheet printed off from the internet?
[1] Harvey, Mike and Woolcock, Nicola (10 June 2009) Schools may copy Arnold Schwarzenegger and junk their textbooks The Times, page 17 [online] http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/education/article6466577.ece
Online resources are great for reading about cutting edge technology, up to the minute research, news, weather and opinions. They are cheap, well in fact free, if we have broadband and don't have to worry about the costs per minute of being online. Where they don't score well though, is in providing a familiar friend that we can thumb through over and over again, rereading sections that interest us, bookmarking pages and perhaps tucking away a postcard or other memento inside a particularly special volume. Even an online resource you've read before changes at the whim of the editor, so you might have put a particular page in your favourites list to return to at a later date, but it could have disappeared completely by the time you return to it months later.
All this perhaps goes to explain why my bookshelves are groaning. Some of the volumes are seventy or more years old. I might not look at these very often; they have no pretty pictures, but they are treasures. When I pick up a poetry book and read lines by John Masefield or W.H. Auden, I am truly transported back to another age, not just because of what is on the page, but because I can hear my mother reading out loud to me when I was very young. Will I ever be able to say that about a sheet printed off from the internet?
[1] Harvey, Mike and Woolcock, Nicola (10 June 2009) Schools may copy Arnold Schwarzenegger and junk their textbooks The Times, page 17 [online] http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/education/article6466577.ece
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