What I’m listening to…

Here is a current mix of music including some that got stuck in my head…

• Norah Jones “Sinking Soon” from Not Too Late listening over breakfast caused it to go around in my head for two days. Smokey bluesy vocals. I admire her courage in speaking what she feels on these topics.
• Chick Corea and Return to Forever’s classic “Spain” got stuck in my head, and the whole Light as a Feather album recently re-purchased on iTunes, Brazillian-flavoured jazz, holds up to repeated listening and wears well 35 years later.
• Chick Corea and Bela Fleck 2007 album Enchantment sophisticated jazz interplay with lots of tensions using piano and acoustic banjo. NPR has interviews http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11598402
• Aphex Twin – Selected Ambient Works vol II. Very nice. I’m looking forward to the film Sleep Furiously, shot outside of Aber and featuring Aphex Twin’s music on the soundtrack.
• John Coltrane Blue Train always creates a nice mood for just about everything, and it was commented on as ‘good choice of music’.

The Mid Mad (midsummer madness) was good, I liked Blazing Fiddles traditional Celtic music from Scotland, very cool to see hip Aber teenages dancing so enthusiatically to this.  The Cuban Charanga group also had everyone dancing.

 

podcasting workshop and more

The podcasting workshop on 6 June was a big success.  See the two podcasts I posted to my podOmatic site for an interview with Antonio Barriga Rubio, the organiser, and feedback collected from participants at the end.  This was a pre-run of material that will form part of our new training provision for staff in the Autumn, so it was quite nice to gauge the response to the group activity I designed.

The E-learning Team has also been active in the Podcasting for Pedagogic Purpose Special Interest Group, and I gave a little reflective contribution on dissemination of good practice at the meeting last Wednesday.  Key factors in making the workshop a success include hands-on experience (which empowered staff and made them realise they can do it), a wide range of examples (which demonstrated that podcasting is much more than just recording lectures and putting them online), and enthusiasm of all three presenters (Antonio, Carol Comer of University of Chester, and myself).

The aim was for staff to go out and use podcasting in creative and pedagogically-effective ways.  I think we achieved that. A critical mass of creative ideas sparking off each other tends to spin outward and cascade down to eventually affect the mainstream of academic practice – our long-term aim.

Please do check out Mary’s podcast link and also the PPPSIG Wiki and podcast sites.