bodmas blog

a moved line

Picking up carrying placing one thing to another along a 22 mile walk

moss to wool
wool to root
root to peat
peat to sheep’s horn
sheep’s horn to stone
stone to lichen
lichen to toadstool
toadstool to bone
bone to feather
feather to stick
stick to jawbone
jawbone to stone
stone to frog
frog to wool
wool to bone
bone to bird pellet
bird pellet to stone
stone to sheep’s horn
sheep’s horn to pine cone
pine cone to bark
bark to beech nut
beech nut to stone
stone to end of the walk

Dartmoor 1983, Richard Long , A selection of works by Spacex Gallery, Exteter, 1996, exhibited in the Henry Moore wing at Leeds Gallery of Art. More textworks are available

Dropped into the Duke of Devonshire’s yard for some tea and a stroll, along with about two thousand other people. Bolton Abbey is a good day out. The estate charges only for car parking (¬£5 per vehicle per day) so a lot of families come with tents and picnics. Very tame cows add a Constable effect to almost all views.

• Skipton bound
• A visit to Saltaire Mill and the Opera Cafe for lunch is essential
• Lots of rain no doubt (we are having some now)
• Normal service resumes Sunday 7th August
• The Yew tree in the courtyard of Skipton Castle has seen 350 years – always gives me a sense of (false?) security

Some differences between blogs and forums

• Blogs-with-comments allow students to read material and then decide to contribute or not as they wish.
• Linear (non-threading) forums might be better for a structured activity or ‘turns taking’ discussion – student posting is required by the discussion format.
• Blogs with comments switched off (like this one) can be used as simple ‘update’ pages to keep students informed and to provide links to resources easily.

• I picked this train of thought up from a blogroll link on the O-Journalism blog
• The Blogsperiment pedagogy blog has an article comparing forums and blogs for use with HE students
• The Blogsperiment article links to an ealier post by Lee Lefever in Common craft blog.

I found out about O-Journalism after a routine visit to the College by a Media lecturer from the local University – who happens to be one of the authors. A subsequent e-mail had the link to the blog in the signature…

“The scam claimed over 20,000 victims in 45 countries including Britain, France, Germany, the US, Canada, Australia, Japan and a number of Arabic countries, officials said.”

The Register, Jan Libbenga

419 scams carried out by a gang in Spain amazingly attracted 20,000 people to part with real money in ‘advance fees’ in the hope of gaining large cash rewards. Spanish police arrested a total of 310 people in raids this week in three cities in Spain.

A 419 scam takes the form of an e-mail inviting you to benefit from a quasi-legal money laundering operation. You are (supposed) to provide some details and pay a small ‘bank clearing fee’. Yeah, sure. Scams pitched by the gang operating from southern Span included, according to The Register’s journalist, the following

• Stash away money taken out of Iraq by Sadam Hussein’s family members
• Money found in the remains of the Twin Towers building after the 11th September attack
• More details in Anatomy of a 419 scam from The Register

It costs very little to bombard millions of people with scam e-mails, and a spoof Web site can be constructed fairly cheaply given access to easily learned Web design skills. If one in ten thousand fall for the scam, the gang is making money. Truly, W T Barnam would be lughing his head off (“Every crowd has a silver lining”, “There’s one born every minute”)

• Early in my teaching career I hit on an ‘opener’ lesson for algebra
• I drew a variety of symbols on the whiteboard including the Hindu swastika (often seen around Birmingham painted on the ground near thresholds and doorways), a Pentagram, and a few others – the idea being that ‘symbols’ are really just lines drawn and the meanings are socially defined. Convention plays a major part on the way we write maths
• It took months and several interventions by the (then) College Councillor to convince one student that I was not some kind of magus
• Don’t use occult symbols of any kind, even as a lead in!!