I’m seriously considering taking some photos of plushies in humorous poses
June 7th, 2009 / No Comments » / by Victoria
… this stuff makes me laugh
Where are you going on holidays this year?
May 7th, 2009 / No Comments » / by Victoria
I won’t be making it back to the Burning Man this year. The funds are dictating a trip to Budapest in August, I can’t wait. Szgeit is the best music festival that I have experienced to date, and the heat is on par with the Nevada Desert. Maybe those goggles will come in handy again this year. So, where are you off to?
Change your Life Fund with the National College of Ireland and Metro
April 28th, 2009 / No Comments » / by Victoria
I just got an email with the following info and I thought *wow*, I have to pass this along. Projects like these make me proud to be working as associate faculty with the National College of Ireland (NCI). They have teamed up with Metro to offer one lucky individual a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to change their lives, upgrade their skills and acquire the qualifications and confidence to succeed.
The winner will earn an amazing prize package including an educational fund worth €20,000 and €15,000 in other supports, like personal mentoring, computer equipment and even a style package. Contestants just need to answer one simple question: Why do you want to change your life, and how could education help?
The competition is open to anyone aged 18 and older and resident in the Republic of Ireland. Contestants have to fill out an entry form and submit a brief essay in answer to the question above. The application form and terms and conditions will be available on the NCI website from the launch date, which is today Tuesday, 28th April.
Judges from NCI and Metro will shortlist applicants and the shortlist will be published in Metro this August. Finalists will be interviewed and the winner will be notified by Friday, 28th August.
One selfish thing - Practical Garden Skills
April 24th, 2009 / No Comments » / by Victoria
[93] Do 27 selfish things and blog about it [1/27]
Number 93 on my list is to do 27 selfish things. I guess that breaks down into one selfish thing every two months or so for the 101 days, I can’t remember exactly where the number came from. Me, I don’t think that being selfish needs to adversely affect those around you, or anyone indeed. In fact, I want to do good things with an ulterior motive that benefits myself.
So, now I am going to trick you into reading about this really neat looking L33t Practical Garden Skillz course that is run for a week every Summer by TCD. The course consists of five mornings of cutting, composting, and all round cultivation and propagation. A rare chance to get shown by some experts how to make your garden grow. It’s a steal at €170 ( €130 for students, unemployed persons and those in receipt of a social welfare pension).
From the official website, there will be five practical sessions in the Trinity College Botanic Garden (located at Palmerston Park, Dublin 6) on weekday mornings (Monday-Friday) commencing in June/July 2009 for one week. Due to space constraints, participants are limited to a maximum of twenty-five.
You can also get a bit of other useful information on there, like phone numbers and emails. I won’t be putting them up here in fear of encouraging span entropy! So, why is this selfish? Simply put, I really really want to do this course and there just hasn’t been enough interest so far for it to go ahead.
I know far too little, and have killed off too many plants trying to learn. I love nothing more than spending time outside with wonderful flowers that I have grown or cultivated, but sadly I’m finding getting green fingered is pretty tough. Things had just started to work out, but I recently moved house, and I’m once again finding my feet in different growing conditions. Not to mention, I think it would be an opportunity to get some fantasticly summery photographs and document the week. Sounds like fun eh?
More than a student
April 1st, 2009 / No Comments » / by Victoria
There’s something distinct about self-directed study. The word student bring words to mind like classes, coursework, lecturers and facilitators. All of which define a particular structure of study. Not that there are no facilitators, or guidance nor structure to the PhD process. I know from my experience over the last couple of years compared to friends in other disciplines, that I have been very lucky in the support available to me. Yet, student, does not seem to encompass the process. I could not say that I started down the path of doing a PhD with the intention of becoming a researcher. Someone who I believe, has those critical thinking skills necessary to understand themselves, the problem, the context, and their resources. I am not there yet, but I have come to learn that these are the qualities that are necessary for my own personal development. So, how do you become a student of worthwhile qualities, of traits that are intrinsic to the pursuit of a research goal? With guidance, yes. Regular meetings with a supervisor, chats with friends and other peers in similar pursuits, and sometimes with brute force and determination not to just quit the lot. Necessary also, are times of self-reflection, self-deliberation, and the conscious effort to understand what you are trying to achieve. I do not just have a research goal, I want to become someone who has a particular set of skills, traits, and still hold on to that drive and passion.
I often feel a pang of want when I hear about my friends who go away on great adventures around the globe. Those people who travel, teach English, get by somehow, learn to survive by doing what is necessary. I have immense respect for their ability to live for the moment. Sometimes I think that I should be out having those great life changing adventures. I sometimes feel like I have diminished horizons because I am singularly focused on getting through the rest of this PhD process. However, I have come to realise that I am changing. My younger need to explore my self awareness has come to fruition in this exercise. My academic career has always been about negotiation my own personal interests with the curriculum. To work out the system, become adept at using the tools that would let me solve problems, about learning all those things that are meta. I guess it should have been obvious that I would end up in this domain; personalized adaptive eLearning that draws from what, as a society, we have learned over the years about how we structure our knowledge and how we understand our own personal cognitive functions. It seems so obvious now, it’s strange to think that I would be anywhere else. I guess teaching, and attending structured courses like statistics, you might say would distract from this development. They have not. What I have learned from lecturing over the last couple of years has changed my point of view immensely. I remember my interview, absolute determination. I knew I could do it, but I didn’t know that I could learn so much. I have massive appreciation for the privilage of attending courses and workshops. To have imparted all that precious foundation knowledge. From a research point of view, the cognitive effort that is spent breaching a new topic, or new domain is immense. Now, when I attend lectures, I feel myself breathing in new knowledge each time.
Survey: How do you regulate your learning process?
February 23rd, 2009 / No Comments » / by Victoria
I’m at a critical stage. I need your help, because you are the target audience of my research. I have been working with the Knowledge & Data Engineering [KDEG] research group in TCD for just over two years now. KDEG pioneers research in knowledge driven systems. Over here, we’re interested in things like Management of Network and Telecommunication, Technology Enhanced Learning, Autonomic and Adaptive Web based Systems and aspects of Health Informatics. Me though, I’m focused on supporting the modeling and acquisition of higher-order cognitive competencies within the context of web-based eLearning services. This includes those useful abilities like communication and critical thinking.
How can you HALP?!
I have put together a survey on metacognitive awareness.
This survey should give me an idea about what strategies you use when you learn. The reason that I am starting to really talk about it now is that I need to understand my audience. Who is my audience? Well, you; people in Ireland who uses the internet for personal reasons and for work, and that may one day participate in learning online. For this I need to get a general grasp of the similarities, the differences, and trends in peoples awareness of their own cognition. Then I can figure out how many people will have to participate in an experiment with my software. I need to know how many people will indicate whether my service actually works. I hope that you will take 10 minutes of your time in order to fill out my metacognition questionnaire.
This service is called Goby. In nature, the Goby fish lives in symbiosis with the burrowing shrimp; serving as a watchman in return for a place to live. Goby is a symbiotic service that engages in a dialog with the learner, and gathers meta-data from the host system in order to model and support the acquisition of a particular cognitive competency.
Basically, I’m interested in skills like communication, social cognition, and in particular metacognition. Right now, the software models a learners metacognition in a way analogous to how we understand our own mental models. The technical model is just like a programed representation of these mental models. You can learn a bit more about the approach taken here.
Why Blog?
I also think that blogging could be a really important to get my thoughts out there, especially because of the self-reflective nature of the process. The research process so far has taught me so much, not only about the adaptive eLearning domain and cognitive processes, but about myself, my own personal strategies, and research ethics, as well as the struggle to balance work and life. Over the remainder of this process I am going to try and set aside some time to write up my experiences, both academic and personal, of going through the PhD process.
Gushy prizes
Participants will be entered into a draw for a 50 euro Amazon voucher as well. Thank you in advance for your response, your input is key to getting my research into the next stage.
Ballybofey hydro lights
February 13th, 2009 / No Comments » / by Victoria
TreeHugger recently featured an article on Ireland trying out water powered street lights. It’s pretty funny, because the photo that they include is of the Ha’penny Bridge when in fact the scheme is setting up over in Donegal. That’s beside the point, it’s good that these big global blogs are picking up on stories from the smaller towns in our country. In fact, I’m surprised I hadn’t heard about the scheme earlier as my old man works part-time in renewable energy.
“It can produce enough energy to power up to three lights. However, we will just use one light at first,” [energy development officer Toni] Needham said.
The hydro unit cost €3,000. The council provided €50,000 in 2008 to pilot alternative energy lighting. LH Ecotech Ltd in Co Laois has been contracted by the council to supply and install hydro and solar power lights on the Ballybofey bridge.
After the winter water levels drop on the River Finn, a micro hydro-turbine is going to be installed under a bridge in Ballybofey. The water pressure will power a 110 watt turbine, energy generated will charge up batteries, which will then power a 30 watt LED mounted above the bridge. The lights will also have solar panels for times when the water pressure drops. This move by the county council is progressive, but not enough. Once they tap into the power of the river, they may realise that they can power more than just the lights on the bridge. It will be interesting to see how the council starts to harness more renewable energy-power, and if other county councils follow suit.
CV writing woes
February 12th, 2009 / 4 Comments » / by Victoria
Vicki from Recruit Ireland just posted a nice blog about her top CV writing tips. I thought I’d distill her post into a list of tips and give some insight of my own.
First, make sure that your spelling is correct. I remember writing a funding application a couple of years ago with a line like, “I will be leveraging a number of research institutions”. Well so I thought. A week or so later, I came across the pdf and decided to have a look over it with a fresh eye, to get some perspective on how successful I thought I was going to be. On second reading, I realised I had written ‘intuitions’ instead. Well, I laughed at the time, spell check obviously had great faith in my research intuitions. Fortunately I got the funding, but now remember not to trust the spell checker. One trick is to read the document in reverse which means that your brain doesn’t automatically fill in the blanks.
The second recommendation is that it is essential to sell yourself, particularly in the first couple of lines in your CV. Presentation is also pretty important for pimping yourself out. Over the last couple of years of writing and rewriting my own CV, I’m slowly getting the hang of this. I guess it’s an inherently Irish thing to be modest, or at least try and not seem like you are blowing your own trumpet. This is the wrong attitude when it comes to selling yourself. You need to push yourself, each section should be full of bang. Personally, my initial push comes from a personal statement, but this might not be necessary in some domains.
Which brings us to the next tip: relevance. I couldn’t count the number of CVs that I’ve reviewed for friends who include their Leaving Certificate results despite many years of education and experience in between. I’m sure there are some government jobs that still want to know how you got on in Geography at 17, but frankly, leave it out. If you don’t have anything better to put in you probably won’t get the job.
Vicki talks about keeping it short and sweet. There is a common consensus that two pages should be the max. This is a good start, but when you’re in academia, sometimes it’s necessary to use more pages in order to include a personal statement, and a list of publications and project participation. This doesn’t mean that you should write a short novel revealing in your academic exploits. Keep it as short as possible. Condense condense condense, and push the important tools and abilities that you brought to each project. Don’t be afraid to use italics and bolding in order to catch the readers eye. Finally, she talks about the order in which you present the information in your CV. This is very dependent on your audience. Things like hobbies can be left out, but even if they don’t seem too relevent I think that they can add depth to your charachter. Especially if you can show that you have worked at them persistently and have competed.
Those are my two cents on the tips. I’d also reccomend doing a number of drafts of your CV. First time around fill in all the technical details, then work on displaying what techniques/abilities you brought to and learned from these jobs/projects. Work this into their description, what was your role, how you were key. Then rewrite and rewrite, get advice from others, and rewrite again.
What’s your favorite Guitar Hero song?
February 5th, 2009 / No Comments » / by Victoria
Not my favorite song, but for playing along with, for bashing the keys on time with the music and bopping your head… Freak on a Leash is fantastic!! Not yet on expert mode, but give me a couple of months!
But, cool, Maynard licensed three Tool tracks to be used in the game. Here’s Adam Jones talking about why they went ahead and did it. They even have Alex Grey sit in on the interview.
