Ed and I will be doing miserable and annoying video surfing, supported by a real world participative tag cloud. It’s Grumpyman 2.0. And if that doesn’t get on your tits then we’ve got more that’s guaranteed to make you morose, tetchy and downright angry.

The rest of the night promises to hold melancholy music videos and angst film whilst we do the sad web weirdness. There’s a bar and music as well as pictures. So come along and drown your sorrows. We will be.

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Art is the proper task of life.

Art and nothing but art!

When one wants to play the Hero’s part onstage, he should not think of being in the chorus, he should not even know how to speak in chorus.

Over breakfast this morning, as one does, I got to thinking about Nietzsche, art and blogging. One of Nietzsche’s central themes was that one should live one’s life as art and seek out art in all things. One part of being an artist is having (and usually documenting) a process that is not revealed, it’s the final product that is important. Finally blogging, and maybe I’m thinking more about the life/micro-blogging things like twitter/jaiku/tumbls/FB status’. Are these things in opposition? If you want to live your life as art, should you hide away the artistic process behind your life?

One angle is that exposing the process is not bad. Some art does do this, many conceptual pieces play with the idea of the process and may not have a final artefact. Though that opens a can of worms about whether the documented process is the final artefact.

A good writer possesses not only his own spirit but also the spirit of his friends.

Another angle is that blogging like this is performance and that it is edited from the process of “real” life. The readers are an audience, like any other performance, even if the blogger doesn’t think that. I’ve heard and also felt that other people are living more interesting and cool lives. Then there is also the confusion between “real” blogs and “fictitious” blogs, lonelygirl15 or Belle de Jour. But then as it’s art who cares. Nietzsche was against the idea of Truth, it’s all a matter of perspective.

We have art in order not to die of the truth.

All truth is simple… is that not doubly a lie?

I surpised that there isn’t more on Nietzsche and blogging in this line. I’ve only managed to chased up a couple of blog posts. One is interesting in that as he says, blogging works to fracture the nature of truth, so works well with the perspectivist position.

And interestingly at the end, something that has fascinated me. Nietzsche, started as an ancient art critic (philologist) but did he become an artist himself, either in his work or his life?

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Maybe, just maybe, with the advent of all these multi-touch screens, drafting desks would come back. They are better for working on this kind of interface, neither upright like in the Minority Report or flat out would work for these things in a single user situation.

And the steampunk in me hopes that 21st century drafting desks’ll keep all the pulleys, gears and polished wood too.

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We make scalpels not swiss army knives.

Good tools, for the right person, in the right context. They don’t need to do more than they need to. More examples of Why? in design rather than Why Not?

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We are looking for a new lecturer to join our team at the University of the West of England. Basically what we are looking for is an Information Architect, Interaction Designer, Interface type of person. The kind of person we are looking for has industry experience, not necessarily academic credentials - though obviously that is good. You would be teaching on stuff that contributes to the BSc Web Design and MSc Information and Library Management courses.

Now is a good chance to get in on the ground floor of the BSc Web Design course and teach at the intersection of design and technology.

You will be a dynamic enthusiast, eager to develop new areas of research and teaching in information architecture. By the using the term Information architecture we refer to the emerging discipline which includes some or all of the following:

• Content design and management for web sites
• Structural design of information space
• Organising, labelling, classification and navigation schemes within web based information systems
• Metadata development and taxonomies
• Developing principles of design to web based information systems
• Searching, finding and managing information
• Social media and Web 2.0 technologies and applications

An appropriately experienced candidate may be given responsibility for the further curriculum development in web design and information and library management.

Go to the UWE site to download the job spec and apply

If you’ve got any questions then leave me a comment of drop me a mail at dan dot dixon at uwe dot ac dot uk.

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Brain Research and Teaching: “

The science behind learning, for me, is much more important than the politics. Just found a good list of 20 teaching tips derived from brain research.

1. The brain learns from its environment. Enrich the learning environment.
2. One’s personal, emotional state greatly influences what is recalled during a learning episode. Deal with emotional influences in your classroom before teaching.
3. Prime the brain for learning. Provide visual outlines or show select pictures representing different parts of the upcoming lesson.
4. give the brain time to process verbal information. Pause 3-7 seconds between important statements.
5. Wait 5 seconds after asking a factual question and 10 seconds after asking a complex question.
6. Present, rehearse, apply, then review.
7. Develop concept before content.
8. Teach by asking questions.
9. Teach pattern recognition. Often.
10. Research suggests that neurons need some downtime to consolidate information. Teach new information over time, providing periodic review.
11. The % of information remembered increases as the learning episode shortens and decreases as the lesson time lengthens.
12. Change the type of instruction or student activity every 20 minutes.
13. Teach students how to ask great questions while they are reading.
14. Periodically, have students record/share 3 things they learned from the lesson or 3 things they found interesting.
15. Sleep is required to store information into long term memory. John Hopkins University found that it takes 6 hours for a new skill to be consolidated and tagged for long term storage. (Teenagers need at least 9 hours of sleep a night).
16. Have students listen to music before writing and spatial reasoning activities.
17. On average, learners will only remember 5% of a lecture 24 hours after it is given. However, they will remember 90% of the information 24 hours later if they teach it to someone else.
18. Use personal, white, dry erase boards in class to check for understanding as you are teaching.
19. Very specific and positive comments will be remembered over time and will be immediately motivating to the students.

and then, just to keep bloggers happy,

1. Journaling has been found to improve memory and cognition. It enhances motivation to read and reading comprehension.

(Via Monkeymagic.)

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LOLcat take on the story

A web comic take on the story

Reminds me of the Matt Madden book, 99 ways to tell a Story. Though none of them included cats, though I think one might be all furries.

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SWAT is on Saturday 29th and Sunday 30th June. Wander around anywhere in Werbs and you’ll find a lot of cool stuff. All the venues have guides.

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I don’t normally put these sorts of “who are you,” define yourself kind of questionnaires in my blog but I have done it with this one because it looks great and I love the Pullman Northern Lights trilogy. Plus my daemon is pretty cool, and I’m glad I didn’t get a bug or snake.

My daemon has yet to settle so people have 12 days to comment on who I am and influence what it will become.

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