I should shortly be heading to China again to prepare for travel with my students over the Easter break — the students seem quite exciting about the trip and during my preparations I’ll explore one or two new places that we could potentially visit to help the students understand more of the economic, cultural and historical richness of China.

I’m once again testing embedding maps in my blog posts … partly to see if it can be a useful way creating some multi-media templates that help us make more sense of our activities. This is using UMapper.com as a method of easily creating the maps. Any changes I make to this map should be reflected along the way.

Rather than manually enter the data in UMapper, I now have a database of links to my photographs, a description and longitude and latitude data (hosted on my server). This can be exported directly to the map above (you can click on the markers to see the photos and control-click or right-click on the photo to open the blog entries). Its also possible to use the ‘link’ button on the bottom left of the map above to get the URL to a new page with a larger version of the map (or click here). Once there, click the circle in the top right of the new page’s map to play the map full screen.

I can also export the same data for use in Google Earth. Open this file in Google Earth and then play the file (select it in ‘Places’ and click the play arrow beneath it) — depending on the Google Earth preferences, a fly-through should result, with a pause to open the photographs (preferences in Google Earth might need to be changed to have the photographs load, I use about 3 seconds).

I received an invitation to download and register with Sony’s Home, a virtual environment not unlike Second Life that is currently in beta and works on the Playstation 3.

The beta is still very limited: you can define how you look and move through your apartment (everyone gets one), a central square, shopping mall, cinema and entertainment complex.

It is possible to interact with objects and other people. You can, for example, move furniture around your apartment, close-up on posters and movie previews, play pool and other simple games (with others or alone). Text chat, gestures and voice chat are also available.

The graphics is quite impressive, much more so than Second Life, and movement and interaction is seamless, not unlike a typical Playstation game.

It will be interesting to see how the environment develops. I suspect the next additions will allow people to buy things to customise their avatars and apartments (the stores in the shopping mall are for clothes and furniture). This part of its interests me because it might make for suitable sites for multi-party audio conferencing (with 3D like sound to help). While the video is not necessary, some 2D / 3D representation of voices does help with multi-party conversations. I suspect though that this is not the primary purpose that Sony imagines.

After some customisation, I guess Sony will roll out more spaces to explore and probably in combination with other companies so that they might be commercialised. For example, arcades of casual games from developer-partners.

The real question for me is the extent that Sony will open the system. In Second Life much of the value is offered by individuals and firms creating spaces with unique content. For example, there are lots of education institutions (many of them with significant ambitions for teaching and learning provision in Second Life).

Sony has never been great at this type of synergy development, so despite the great graphics and user experience (at least in terms of control and interaction), I’m not convinced that it will take off, especially given the crowded space (see kzero.co.uk). If it does, then the content and monetization will have to be tightly linked to the current Playstation user base (unless Sony can introduce a PC/Mac version, perhaps with lower quality graphics, but some of the same user experience). That, though, seems unlikely.

I have slowly been getting back into some experimenting with multimedia. Some of this has been prompted by my experiments with podcasts and subsequent attempts to think about adding supporting text and interactivity to them (all without spending 3 days a week to produce 10 minutes that will only be used once). Some has been prompted by seeing the work of others. Some has been prompted by new technology.

One idea that I had been discussing with a more multimedia and technologically savvy buddy has been produced fantastically and is available on Wired. The project captured sights and sounds for the internet and has them in a visual and sonic collage.

While this is probably not at all useful for my teaching, it could be the basis for a great student project (particularly for field schools). While I wouldn’t expect business school students to be quite so artistic and to, instead, be somewhat more explicit in their expression of meaning, so kind of audio visual collage could be a useful part of making sense of a field school project.

I have also been motivated by by the release of a new Canon camera (the 5D Mark II). I’ve been waiting for this for a very long time as an update to my ageing (camera) body. The new camera is much, much better in low light (for evening and night time footage) and, most impressively, has excellent video capabilities. Vincent Laforet’s blog had (and will have again) links to footage from a pre-release version of the camera.

While, the video capabilities are much better than I could ever use, it will mean only taking one device and using my existing lenses. So, for capturing some sense of movement, video interviews and documenting student experiences on the field school, this sounds idea (if a little excessive). It will mean developing some new skills with video editing and a more dynamic sense of interaction with the world I want to capture.

Finally, I have been pondering the difference between photography from a journalist’s perspective and from an artists perspective. The journalist seeks to show the world as it is, though it might be hidden from view (and perhaps change it through that documentation). The artist seeks to show it in different ways, to force us to reconceptualise what we already know (and perhaps change it through that process). Perhaps there is a third category, who takes photos of pretty things.

This photograph is in the second category. Its in the second category because I have attempted to highlight the grand old building in Market Square. Lots of people don’t like the new fountain. However, I think it works powerfully to not overshadow the building and not overpower the space for people to meet. By hyper-saturating the colours, I hope to show the building as it is, and as the square will be once the fountain because an accepted, naturalised part of the square.

The last two weeks have been great.

I took at trip to Greece for a friends’ wedding and managed to catch up with family and friends. The weather, food, beer and festivities were all fantastic.

The weekend just passed was a trip to Oxford for the alumni weekend and the first event of my soon to be merged college. It was great to see some old faces — and all of them looking healthy and happy. One of the nicest parts of this was meeting some new people (postgrads and fellows at Green) and also being remembered at my own college when I rolled up. Its really rather easy to forget how touching such things are until they happen.

Its now the beginning and term and things have got very, very busy.

Trundling on the same as last year would be the easy option, but when has that ever been an option for me?

New things on the horizon this year include:

• My first attempt at using podcasts as part of teaching. I think I have the technology largely sorted, but this will probably turn out to be the easy part. I have also put a lot of careful thought into how this might work. In particular, I want the podcasts to augment rather than replace existing methods of communicating with students. This of course breaks with tradition, so there are embedded practice issues (for students) that I have to nudge. I’ll report on this as I see how it works (or not).
• Getting back into the swing of research. There has been something of a hiatus for me in terms of traditional academic research. I have now submitted two workshop papers and am about to submit a conference paper to get back into the swing of things. My hope is to consolidate and use as a catalyst all of the exciting things I’ve done over the last couple of years (particularly involving China).
• I have plans to extend and vary again the Overseas Project trip and introduce some new types of assessment. Nothing major, but probably much more work for me than the students. The same issues emerge here as with the podcasting: how to engage with new media, technology and practices without diminishing the best of traditional education.
• Reengaging with some hobbies — all work and no play is not healthy, so I want to spend less time in front of the computer and more time out and about working on my photography — and if the timing is suitable take a documentary making course.

This all seems like a rather heady agenda. However, as much as being mid-career and almost middle aged seems an almost certain recipe for having the ambition kicked out of one, ‘they,’ whoever they are, haven’t got to me yet.

I have spent some time this last week thinking and playing with to-do list management methods and software (and, perhaps more importantly, thinking about how to manage different tasks across different projects).

I have for some time been using OmniFocus. The application builds on the (famous) “getting things done (GTD)” method of having contexts for work and projects. I’m experimenting with the method in a slightly unusual way, having created a number of contexts that relate to my mode or mindset for work (such as administration, teaching and research) or personal activities (such as shopping (for grocery and household goods).

These contexts contain activities that i can do in clusters reasonable efficiently (e.g., admin typically contains tasks that I can do at home or office, on the computer with each requiring relatively little concentration). Teaching tasks are much the same, but require a different mindset (focused on pedagogy, use files in a different part of my computer, etc). Some projects require tasks to be undertaken sequentially others in parallel and this can me noted.

For each context, I am developing a view (or perspective) so that they are grouped and sorted in logical bundles (with admin sorted by due date, research by project, shopping by category of goods, etc).

I am also trying the iPod Touch / iPhone version of the software, which syncs with the copy on my Mac so that I have my to-do list with me to add tasks and mark them as complete as necessary.

I have yet to fully explore the follow-up capabilities. This is important when we either depend on others’ actions before we can continue, or where we need regular contact with people (who are likely to be as busy as we are). I have marked some activities as periodic, so I’ll see how that works.

I have been back in the UK about two weeks now and my time has been spent getting back into the routine of work in the office, settling into my new place and catching up with friends and on sleep.

Perhaps the hardest bit has been settling into a new routine at home. Some mornings I wake and can be working by 530. Others its a struggle to get out of bed before 8. I’d rather the former than the latter.

From next week some time I should be able to have my worldly goods brought out of storage. I’m looking forward to being reacquainted with my stereo, coffee machine and cooking equipment. Its all been in storage for about 18 months while I have been living out of a suitcase.

Anyway, I need to do some more reading for tomorrow’s meetings and think about dinner. Hopefully more regular posts from now on.

Why is it that little things seem to eat up so much time. Is it a certain existential nature of the ostensibly little thing to mirror its true magnitude from the humble observer / worker? Or are little things likely to bring out the perfectionist in us, luring us to iteration after iteration of refinement (of increasingly marginal value, each another step toward addiction)? Why does this seem especially true of technology related activities?