Life (not least a gathering of the clan for my 60th birthday) got in the way of working AND studying AND blogging: something had to give. Nevertheless, I enjoyed playing with metaphors & meeting the challenge of writing the first TMA.
The final stages of Block 1 involved a leisurely, nostalgic ramble around terrain that used to be very familiar in the days of T171. Finally got to watch a whole episode of Triumph of the Nerds, but in one of those ironies that life sometimes throws at you, I was studying it as an Olde Worlde example of 'new technology' - a television broadcast made in 1996 & now, 20 years later, available to the world though YouTube. It seemed an appropriate coincidence, as T171 was my very first OU course, with Cringely's book (on which the TV series was based) as a set text, & I'd taken up OU study in a belated spirit of 'life begins at 40'... where does the time go?
Next up was the Interpersonal Action-Learning Cycle, which I'd never heard of, though it sounded oddly familiar. Light dawned as I realised this was the tarted-up postgrad version of Zimmer & Alexander. PCP2 Acknowledge before differing.... it all came flooding back, ingrained from marking dozens, nay, hundreds of student assignments dutifully trotting out the principles in between savaging each other in the forum 'browser wars'. Happy Days :-)
I see Block 2 begins with 'design narratives'. I wonder if story-telling will prove to be as thought-provoking as metaphors?
Here's a picture, for old times' sake:
Image from T171 website
