May 2008 – Page 2 – event mechanics

Meme: Passion Quilt

I’ve been tagged by Michael over at Eurhythmania.

Post a picture or make/take/create your own that captures what YOU are most passionate for students to learn about.

Give your picture a short title.

Title your blog post â€œMeme: Passion Quilt.â€

Link back to this blog entry [I assume the ‘this link back’ part is to the person who tags you].

Include links to 5 (or more) educators.

I’ve created a diagram of what I am the most passionate for my students to learn about. I use this diagram at some point in every class I teach or tutor.

I learnt it from Prof Bob Hodge. It represents a non-linear process of differentiating feedback. The timeline is the spiral, whenever you start something you are in the middle. The coloured lines are ideas, questions or problems that you return to in different ways in different points in time. I use it to teach about the researching, writing and interviewing process.

An example, research. When information/data/ideas derived from the process (carried out along the black sprial timeline) the points or segments represented by the intersection of coloured lines must be transformed into another line or structure and ordered (this is another non-linear process of differentiating feedback: writing).

Another example, I had a conversation with a student where here was mildly peturbed that I could tell that his essay had not be redrafted. The editing and spelling errors were obvious, but even diligent writers have these sometimes. Rather, it was the location of the central point of his essay, burried 2/3 into it, that signalled he had not written beyond a first draft. Coming up with essay plans works sometimes, but, often in the humanities, part of the thinking work goes on once the actual writing process begins and scholars (students or academics) are forced to order their thinking. This provides the infrastructure for yet another non-linear process of differentiating feedback: thinking.

More complex versions of this diagram are possible. Each time the ‘same’ point (ie coloured line) is encountered it ceases to be the ‘same’ point. Each differentiation is an event.

Hoons

Story is now available for viewing through the NineMSN video player page for the story.

From the Sunday website:

There is a perception, peculiar to fans of talkback radio, that car hoons have taken over the streets of our capital cities, conducting illegal races that endanger the lives of ordinary motorists and road users.

Then, so the story goes, they post videos of their outrages on the internet to demonstrate their contempt for society. Governments and police forces have responded with targetted operations seeking to disrupt and disperse groups of car hoons that gather in suburban carparks to indulge their passion for modified cars.

There is evidence that P-plate drivers are over-represented in the nation’s road toll statistics but it’s arguable whether the street racers and the young drivers dying on our roads are in fact one and the same.

A Sydney academic has studied modified car culture and found that the car hoons actually make up less than 1 per cent of road fatalities, yet millions of dollars is being spent on high profile police campaigns around the country.

Dr Glen Fuller, a former street racer, has told Sunday these campaigns and operations, will do little to prevent death and serious injury on our roads, and serve only to further marginalise young people. Draconian measures such as crushing the cars of repeat offenders will heighten tensions with police and create local folk heroes amongst the hoons.

Dr Fuller has called on governments to give up high profile anti-hoon operations in favour of educating drivers that a hoon is anyone who believes the road is there for their exclusive use.

I am an educated fool, in a Socratic fashion of course…

Hopefully they’ll put some video up at some point.

For those that are interested, some of my published academic writing, and my various blog posts on hoons.

Sunday this Sunday

So I’m on TV again about ‘hoons’. This Sunday. From what I could infer from the tone of voice of one of the producers (or production assistants) it may not be all sweetness and light for me. Hmmm…

At least they know I have passed my PhD now.

I think I’ll have to repost a link to my article here on Sunday.

At the very least it should be interesting to see what happens.