What is in Kelvin's Head?

  • Sermon preached on 4 August 2013

    I used to work in a church with murals. Well one mural. It wasn’t this church and it wasn’t these glorious murals. It was somewhere else entirely.

    (By which I mean Edinburgh).

    Throughout the late fifties, the sixties and early seventies, a sustained period of liturgical reform had happened. The altar had been pulled away from the wall. The priest now faced the people. The peace was shared and communion started to happen every Sunday. Those of you who have been around for a bit might remember that story from all kinds of contexts. Those who are new to Episcopal worship might be surprised to learn that how we do things is not in fact as old as the hills at all.

    Anyway, these liturgical reforms in this church had left a big space to fill. Somewhere along the way, the East Window had been bricked up and whitewashed over and now there was a giant wall to fill.

    And, of course, just as we can be sure that someone was heartily trying to encourage the congregation to sing Kum By Yah. so, inevitably, someone got to paint a mural.

    Unlike Gwyneth Leech’s paintings, which surround me here in this church. this was a rather less successful piece. (more…)

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3 responses to “Listen up! Moocs are the future”

  1. Jaye Richards-Hill Avatar
    Jaye Richards-Hill

    Great stuff – peer assisted learning and peer assesvent to boot. The feedback you get from peers is incredibly motivational as well as informative and powerful in stimulating further learning. Have a look at Sugata Mitra’s work on Self Organised Learning Environments for further evidence of the power of a heutagogical approach to learning. I call it Knowledge Grazing! And it’s lifelong, isn’t it…

    The certificates and the open ‘badges’ for learning like this are great on a cv or profile. They demonstrate a self-motivated desire to learn for lesrning’s sake. We need to use thus approach more in schools to re-engage kids with learning and turn ‘schooling’ into real meaningful education.

    Well done you…and the thousands like you 🙂

    Reply
  2. Kelvin Avatar
    Kelvin

    One of the things that interested me was how much of a learning experience it was assessing the work of others. I’d thought it would be a bind but in fact it was incredibly interesting seeing what other people had made of it.

    There was an option to assess extra students than the three one needed for credit. An interesting concept – that marking is fun, interesting, educational and not for teacher.

    Reply
  3. PamB Avatar
    PamB

    As a graduate of the Open University I have to say that a lot of this sounds very familiar in essence, if on a much greater scale. However, I would nitpick (it’s my job) that moocs are PART of the future. Not such a snappy title, though.

    Reply

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