The early majority

This week I have presented at and attended more extra thingies (forums, surgeries, debates) than perhaps I should - there's quite a backlog of stuff I didn't do, and here I am writing a blog.  Oops.

It has been a mind expanding and twit expanding experience.  One completely new concept to me (probably something pretty basic to you social sciencie types) is the 'early majority'.  It was only mentioned in passing at The ESRC acting local thinking global event I'd been representing HGA at, but led me to consider how it applied across other areas of my life.

At the ESRC event we were discussing car culture, train stations, anti-social youths and how, more generally to influence people to change their habits and make social change.  It was a challenge to, I think, a somewhat fatalist attitude, that you can only work 'with' market forces rather than attempting to change them.

Moving on to the digital surgery, the next evening, a good number of students had come out, or stayed out at Campus to meet up and discuss their use of ipads, tablets and mobile devices.  In some ways it was frustrating to see the university as a whole is clearly at the 'early adopters' stage, and we were looking at the 'chasm' of barriers to make more effective and systematic use of these devices.  But there was awareness of the problem, plenty of suggestions how we can go ahead, both as a group, and actions we can take to make it easier for students to use their own devices, apple or other.

The next evening I had off - Nikki was working in Kingstanding interviewing young folk, so still had discussion around how to change adult attitudes to young people late into the night - again huge challenges, and frustrating to change attitudes to young people - are we still at early adopters?

Next evening was Teachmeet, which I had been looking forward to, and maybe foolishly put myself forward for a presentation I knew I probably wouldn't have time to adequately prepare - note to self, even if presentation is short, doesn't necessarily mean less time to prepare.  Again we were looking at the barriers to effective use of ipads, and some of the fantastic examples of uses across education.  there was one particularly impressive presentation by  Finham Park students who were training their teachers to use ipads.  I'm going to suggest this to our students on our iLearn ning - I'm sure could develop something interesting on these lines at University.   Thanks also to @danielharvey9 for organising a great event.

I suspect I'm placing myself into 'early adopters' role, even if I'm looking to early majority, when really I fit in all of them for a whole range of issues, or for the same issue across the many different communities of which I am a part.  And sometimes things don't go past 'early adopter'  -  I've definitely put a mental block on that one.  But if you were to put yourself in a social sciencie box, wouldn't you rather be 'an early adopter' too?

Tonight?  That's our office social.

Useful links:

http://suewaters.wikispaces.com/Rogers

Good Writing

I'm no expert on academic writing.  I'm even less of an expert on medical stuff, but in the last month I've been spending the time I'm not playing with my kids, to help develop on-line writing resources for students at University of Birmingham Med school to encourage academic writing.

My experience of academic writing began with Sigmund Freud.  While I was working at Brooklands Hospital, I'd spend my lunch break reading paper after paper - it's good stuff, and as he covers issues as diverse as  creativity, medicinal use of cocaine and, of course, family relationships.  It's good mainly because it's readable.  You don't need to be a doctor to understand it - Freud is amusing, playful, conversational and maybe a little mischievous.  He knew how to write a story, isn't afraid to be opinionated, or indeed 'subjective', and most importantly knows how to construct a good argument around his findings.  This does not fit into Gillet, Aveyard et al, Levin, and many University guidelines on what 'academic writing' should be, but the influence of Freud, the audience he has reached cannot be denied, and must be, in large part, to his writing -  he lectured extensively, and also wrote letters documenting at least part of dialogues with Jung and others, but his published material reached a much wider audience.  

Over one hundred years ago publishing was very different, and the options to promote your scientific findings far more limited.  Academic journals, the monograph, and monographic series were an important means of reaching an audience, and a valuable means to find out about quite specialist subjects.  They represented a 'who's who' of important people within a discipline.  

In the last ten years we have witnessed an explosion of writers using the internet to publish, while at the same time more traditional peer review academic journals, on-line  and paper, have declined.  More and more people are writing, just not for the same academic journals and monographs that previously were so important.  Doug Belshaw, Stanley Chodorow and Gideon Burton are three of the many 'education technologists' and others who go further, suggesting 'we are gathered here around the comatose body' of this form of academic writing.

Wikis, including wikipedia, blogs, discussion forums of all kinds, are all promoting writing from a wider number of people, some of which is every bit as 'good' as any academic journal.  You don't have to wait months to see if you will be published.  You won't be beholden to experts within your field, who may have considerable vested interests in either delaying or promoting your essay.  You will get valuable feedback from people who read your stuff.  As a research tool you will be contributing to a far more significant shared knowledge than any journal, and as your reputation (hopefully) grows, so will your readership.

You don't have to be an expert to write.  The more you write, the more feedback from your readers, the better your writing.  Peer review academic journals may not always be the best for this, but if that's what you want, writing in other media will make it more likely you'll get the invitations to write for peer review journals anyhow!

Useful links:

• Academic writing

• On (not) working in academia

• The Forever Decline: Academia’s Monograph Crisis

• The Specialized Scholarly Monograph in Crisis: Or How Can I Get Tenure If You Won't Publish My Book?

• Peer review is vanity publishing

• Sigmund Freud

Other academic writing aids:

• ABC Study Guide. Advice about writing an essay. 
• Aveyard, H., Sharp, P. and Woolliams (2011) A Beginner’s Guide to Critical Thinking and Writing in Health and Social Care. Open University Press
• Dunleavy, P (1986) Studying for a Degree in the Humanities and the Social Sciences, Macmillan
• Levin P. (2009) Write Great Essays 2nd Ed.  Open University Press
• The Florence Nightingale School of Nursing & Midwifery.Introduction to Academic Writing. 

And (in case you were wondering) my own limited contribution to published writing

Risk Assessing the Internet

Yesterday was the eighth Safer Internet Day.  One of the schools I work in took the opportunity to have an e-safety workshop with everyone in the school (nursery to year six), and also with parents interested.

In any risk assessment, there are two main actions to take - to remove the risk, or if that is not possible, to 'manage' the risk and reduce the possibility and size of the potential hazard.  Schools/ISP providers can and do block sites seen as 'risky'.  However, if you remove all the sites which could be risky, you remove much of any use on the internet (see Kevin's post).  The whole of  'social media' on the internet, could, and often is, seen as too risky for children.  But if we remove access at school, how is that protecting children at home, or preparing them for use of social media?  What about the families and others at home, who likewise may not be aware of risks to them or their children using the internet?

I am particularly impressed with Paganel Primary to grapple this tricky issue and to make a longer term commitment to work with parents and children to safeguard their internet use, through the initial e-safety workshops, but also to continue with digital surgeries for parents and children to support their school community as a whole to make better and safer use of the internet with their children.

Craig's e-safety workshop with nursery children

Craig Gilman's e-safety workshops exposes the extent to which children already take risks on the internet - children as young as 7 or 8 may have facebook accounts across the UK.  Soon it could be the majority of young people with regular access to a computer will have a facebook or other social media network accounts by the time they leave primary school.

If we ignore the problem, and attempt to screen children from social media, the more likely children will not be honest about their use of the internet (Six out of ten children 'lie about age on internet') and more likely people really will be harmed by their internet use

Related articles

• Microsoft to celebrate 'Safer Internet Day' to help protect kids online (thenextweb.com)
• "Son, there's something you should know" (o2.co.uk)
• Happy Safer Internet Day! (fortinet.com)
• Safer Internet Day / Online Safety Resources (connectwithyourteens.net)
• Safer Internet Day highlights online gaming safety (telegraph.co.uk)
• Six out of ten children 'lie about age on internet' (telegraph.co.uk)