THE CHOIR OF MAN

The Flamingo at Gluttony, Tue 20 Feb

There was already a lot happening on and around the stage as the audience shuffled in to the venue for the Choir of Man. It seems we’ve entered a pub, and it’s bustling with activity. Some people are ushered to the fully functioning bar to get a drink, and the show begins.

The Choir of Man are nine men welcoming you to their local. We are introduced to all of them in turn – the talker, the dreamer, the womaniser – time is taken to sketch out a little of each of our guests. This is a pub where you will not be a stranger. If you come for a drink you can sit in silence, talk your head off, or just chew the fat, but you will not be alone.

Most of the musical material is not unaccompanied. Each of our hosts take turns in leading the next song, often accompanied by guitar, piano, ukulele or other instrument. While this adds great variety to their arrangements it also presents some staging problems. It’s always difficult to balance multiple moving sounds in a tent but as engaging and joyful as they were, the songs with instruments didn’t showcase their vocals well enough – I wanted the voices louder. In the unaccompanied pieces their voices rang out loud and true and showed how they good they are.

The Choir of Man has other things to say apart from their music. Don’t sit with your woes alone, don’t keep things bottled up inside. Share your feelings, and if it’s your turn to listen, then listen. “When the choir is working well it’s because we are listening.”

If you’re lucky you’ll be one of many audience members who scored free beers (yes – they give away free beer!)

The show just got better and better as it went. A great communal vibe, lots of positive energy, and infectious music. Go and spend some time with the Choir of Man. You’ll go home feeling much better.

(This review also published in The Clothesline.)

Moodle Good Practice

Originally posted on Wikispaces at http://moodlegoodpractice.wikispaces.com/ in 2011 but migrating here due to Wikispaces' sad but inevitable impending closure. Many links may no longer work. This is more for the historical record.

SOME EXAMPLES (and they were hard to find, or extract from people!)

1. Open Learn – the Open University http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/
Lots of unfacilitated open courses to browse. Check out their excellent list of Learning Tools.

2. On Moodle’s own demo site at http://demo.moodle.org/ there are just two courses offered (use logins provided at site):
i) a Moodle Features demo
ii) Film Studies Module

A more recent demo site from Moodle is at http://school.demo.moodle.net/

3. On the Moodle commons I found this good example on Digital Photography
http://moodlecommons.org/course/view.php?id=5
4. There are some showcase geography Moodle courses on Wycombe High School moodle here I came across the other day:
Krankenzusatzversicherung günstig
http://whs.moodledo.co.uk/course/category.php?id=106

5. Two great examples from Wallace Web Design: (thank you Richard)

i) Career Awareness
ii) Using Quizzes and Assessments in Moodle

More examples from Wallace Web Design at http://moodle.wwdad.net/moodle/

6. Online Facilitation course & others on OER site in NZ
Online Facilitation course by Joyce Seitzinger (little old now, we've made improvements since, but still)
Instructional Design for Blended Learning course by Sue Dark & Anouk Janssens
7. UVCMS Online demo courses : http://test.uvcms.com/mhr/

8. A selection of Moodle sites on a slideshow from Miguel Guhlin. (Links on the sites shown in the slides are clickable.) Useful to see the various ways teachers have exploited the basic Moodle interface. Download Moodle courses you can restore from backup here . Also, a wealth of Moodle related resources, including videos online at http://mguhlin.net/moodle

9. Linux for Education - this site has a bunch of courses, no authentication/login/registration is necessary.

10. A Moodle for a primary class - Second grade in Tampa, Florida. Our wireless has been bad for weeks, so I don't add as much content as I should. Week 6 is a good example of what the Moodle looks like during a week of full connectivity.

User name: pbguest
Password: guestpb

11. Leeds City College - check guest courses

That’s all I’ve been able to find so far that I think are worth showing. There have to be hundreds more. PLEASE ADD THEM.

( Very few did. - Ed) 

What is a blog?

Originally posted on Wikispaces at http://blogsineducation.wikispaces.com/ in 2007 but migrating here due to Wikispaces' sad but inevitable impending closure.

What is a blog?


A blog is an abbreviation of ‘weblog’. It is a web based journal or diary where entries are posted and arranged chronologically. They are typically free, and are found all over the Internet. The most common free blog hosting services is Blogger, but many educators are using Wordpress (http://wordpress.com/) or Edublogs (http://edublogs.org/) for educational blogs. These days many LMSs now have blog tools built in to them.


Why would I use a blog for my students?

• To have all their work in one place (writing, images, video, etc)
• So students have a portable ongoing record of their work (like an e-resume, or eportfolio)
• So students can read and comment on each others’ work
• Perhaps make student work available to a wider audience beyond the institution or college
• To improve student writing skills
• To encourage and promote digital literacy
• To use as a reflective journal for students who may be off campus
• For a teacher to write regular reflections, summaries, etc about the class
• A way to give students ownership of a personal space - a web site that encourages active engagement by the students and teacher

Some Examples of the use of Blogs in Education

• Bakery: http://www.thebakerscrust.blogspot.com/ (seems to have grown crusty) (Hunter TAFE, NSW))
• English as a Second Language: http://ourclass08.blogspot.com/ (Sydney Institute of TAFE)
• Business English course, Argentina: www.busyenglish.blogspot.com
• Professional Development - Designing for Flexible Learning Practice: Graduate Certificate in Tertiary Learning and Teaching, Otago Polytechnic in Dunedin, NZ. http://flexible-learning-course.blogspot.com/
• TAFE SA staff: for info on using blogs in IVEC and Cert 3 Womens Studies contact Karen Middleton

Resources:

• Why Should Students Blog? - http://classroomblogging.wikispaces.com/
• WIKIS AND BLOGS - Tools for learning: http://margoconnell.wikispaces.com/wikisandblogs=

Steve Foster

I guess I was 18 or 19 when I first heard Steve Foster play. I used to attend the lunchtime concerts held in Union Hall at Adelaide Uni. They were usually band gigs, but Steve played a couple of shows there on his own. I was smitten on first take. I had been playing guitar for a while, learning the same few chords that most beginners latch on to and I thought my guitar playing was pretty average.

Steve had just released his Coming Home in a Jar album, and most of the songs I heard him play at these Union Hall concerts were from that album. They were strong songs – catchy and meaningful. And by and large simple. Steve used chords I played, and didn’t use any fancy picking. He just strummed. And the songs and his delivery of them were beautiful.

It was a moment when I thought “you know, I could do this. I know those chords, I can strum, and I have a reasonable singing voice. “ It was a moment I’d never forget. I learnt a couple of Steve’s songs and had great pleasure over the years telling people who liked them that they were written by Steve Foster, the Adelaide Steve Foster. (There is a much more famous Stephen Foster – the American songwriter responsible for a great many famous songs like Oh Susanna and Camptown Races.)

Steve left Adelaide for Melbourne and ports beyond in an attempt to make the big time and for whatever reason he didn’t quite get there. He should have – he got close – but that’s a story for others to tell. In my eyes he was certainly good enough.

Fast forward to 2016 and the Adelaide Fringe. Steve was back in Adelaide and performed his Dylan & Donovan: The Prophet, The Poet & The Sorcerers’ Apprentice at the Semaphore RSL Club. It was a wonderful show. As I wrote at the time, it was a real treat to hear that beautiful musical soul sing and play and tell his stories again.

Some months later Steve contacted me. He wanted to meet for coffee and thank me for my review – he figured it had gone some way to getting him invited to the Edinburgh Fringe. I hope it was that way. If so, it would be some repayment for the enormous influence Steve had had on my musical development. I was really pleased to be able to tell him firsthand about the impact his Union Hall concerts had had on me.  I told him how he had unknowingly helped me believe in my musical self.

Steve was to do another show featuring songs of the sea in this year’s Fringe but alas it won’t be happening. Steve died yesterday. One of Adelaide’s finest voices will sing no more. Thank you dear man. Rest in peace Steve.  

Collecting People

As people that have been part of my life start to die around me it occurs to me that in a sense one collects people. You gather around you people who make you feel good, or make your life better and richer. With friends and family you do this by enjoying their physical presence, but there’s a whole host of other people you have never met who mean a great deal to you, and who you will likely never meet.

In recent weeks I feel like I have lost 2 very dear friends – Vin Garbutt and Geoffrey Yunupingu. They were both extraordinary singers who filled my heart with joy and wonder and since I first heard them – Vin Garbutt in a folk club in Zaandam in Holland, and Gurrumul at WOMADelaide – I have collected their songs on record and tape and CD, and tried to see them live whenever possible. They were an intrinsic part of my world. They both gave me emotional highs of happiness and wonder. Vin also made me laugh. They made me feel fantastic and I took on the values they represented – dignity, compassion, joy, passion.

My world made sense with Vin and Gurrumul in it. I had sought them out on multiple occasions, and could play their music anytime I wanted. I can still do that, but something deep down has changed. I can no longer see them live. I can no longer imagine them playing live to others. I will no longer read reviews or see film clips of their recent concerts. They now become a memory.

They were part of who I am, or was. I was someone who loved their beautiful singing. I loved the way they looked, the clothes they wore, the way they spoke and carried themselves on stage. They were familiar to me. I had made them part of my psyche; they represented a part of how I viewed the world. They were singers that touched me deep in my soul. They both made me cry regularly.

It seemed a little cruel to take these two remarkable singers so close together – to rid the world of such voices in the space of a few weeks. We have lost two beautiful souls and a great many beautiful sounds.

And as I live on, I realise that bit by bit the people that I have collected; the people I have discovered that both nurture and nourish my soul – the singers, the writers, the speakers, my friends and family – will disappear. Until one day I will too.

In the meantime I either go on living feeling like I’m losing people and things I love, or better, try and continue to live and acknowledge the role they played in creating me, and making me who I am.

If you live to really advanced years this must get harder and harder – to have so many of your light posts disappear so that it’s just you and a few of your favourite things left – so it’s seems that I must collect something new. Find other ways of replacing what Geoffrey and Vin gave me; augment their memories with new songs, new books, new movies, new conversations - to make sure I don’t shrivel under the weight of sadness and disappointment their passing has wrought. Collect, assemble, and welcome new ideas, new experiences, and new people. I’m sure there are worlds I know nothing about…..

Patmos 1981

Psili Amos, Patmos. (Image courtesy of patmos-island.com)

Many years ago in pre-Internet days a friend (Peter) and I spent a week or two on the Greek Island of Patmos. Peter recently wrote up his diary entries of the time, and it inspired me to finally record a song I wrote as I left the island by ferry on a wet and windy night. It's called Lights Across the Water. The lyrics are printed below. I may elaborate on the background to the song at some later date. But for now, here it is.

LIGHTS ACROSS THE WATER

I'm on a late night journey across the sea

Wind and rain callin' out to me

Lights across the water

Callin'  out to me

Golden man smiles through his beard

Lady on his arm is cryin' tears of fear

He doesn't even hear her - her screaming agony

And the wind across the water 

Brings sweet misery

The lights across the water 

Are callin' out to me

It's time to leave this island home

Time to break this island's hold on me

And sail across the water

To another land

The wind across the water

Is callin' out to me

Copyright Michael Coghlan 1981

Talking to the Other Side

It has been measured and noted recently that the impasse between left and right, liberal and conservative, Democrat and Republican in the Disunited States is greater and more bitter than ever before. Obama referred to this in his parting speech. Though not as extreme as the DS, there’s probably something similar occurring in Australia.

Since the shock of the Trump election there has been a realisation that democracy needs meaningful conversations to take place across this political divide. America, and democracies in general, need healing, and need to find a way to talk to each other across the chasm to aid this healing.

Robb Willer, psychologist, in his TED Talk about how to have better political conversations reveals that the political divide in the DS is underpinned by a moral divide. Each side of that divide has its own set of values. In broad brush they look like this:  

And in essence, as long as the values of each side remain steadfast and refuse to accommodate the point of view of the other, no one is ever going to change their mind. He argues that if a liberal thinker wants to change the mind on some issue of a conservative thinker then you have to do it by appealing to values that the conservative relates to – patriotism for example. Or respect for authority. And vice versa of course.

Now it turns out that someone else using a different set of data – a study comparing what parts of the brain are used predominantly by liberal and conservative thinkers – came to the same conclusion. That we need to use the language and perspective and values of the other side if our appeals to them to see an issue differently are to get any traction. What this study found is that liberals and conservatives use different parts of their brain to process information. Not exclusively, but they each have a tendency to use a part of the brain more than others.

• Liberalism was associated with the grey matter volume of the anterior cingulate cortex
• Conservatism was associated with an increased right amygdala size

Amygdala – seat of fear

Cortex – logic, rational argument, ideas,

• Conservative brains are more active in declarative and episodic fact-based memory and negative emotions like fear.
• Liberal brains are more active in terms of emotional awareness and empathy.

For more on this go to my podcast on the topic.

References:

http://factmyth.com/factoids/liberals-and-conservatives-brains-are-different-on-average/

Turns out there's quite a lot of commentary around this issue in the American context:

https://braindecoder.com/post/politics-neuroscience-1282982492

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/calling-truce-political-wars/

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/how-conservative-brains-are-wired-differently-and-what-means-our-politics

http://www.salon.com/2014/07/29/secrets_of_the_right_wing_brain_new_study_proves_it_conservatives_see_a_different_hostile_world/

https://www.ted.com/talks/robb_willer_how_to_have_better_political_conversations#t-265472