Eugene's Blog

750,000 YouTube views - a nice ring to it!

2012-01-27T21:51:00.002Z

My regular readers will know that I like to keep an eye on my YouTube Channel view data - this evening the channel passed the 750,000 mark! On September 27th last I (boasted) wrote about reaching the 500,000 mark.

Once again I am both humbled and astonished that so may people find my videos useful - never in my wildest dreams did I think that I would reach so many people. Thank you so much to all my viewers for viewing the videos and making so many kind comments.

As a YouTube Partner I get quite detailed analytics for my channel - below is a chart of the last 30 day's viewing data:

Viewing figures dropped dramatically over Christmas and the New Year, but it is now picking up again - on Wednesday last 2,809 views occurred.

1,000,000 must be next - a real landmark to celebrate no doubt!

Today at the Blood Platelet Clinic

2012-01-26T23:24:00.000Z

In October 2010 last I signed up for the Irish Blood Transfusion Service's platelet donation programme (I blogged about that here). Today I hit the 50 donation mark for which the IBTS has an award of a gold drop (in the shape of a blood drop). I already have both the silver and gold pelican pins which I got many years ago for (I think) 15 and 25 donations respectively.

Image link to GiveBlood.ie.

In addition to hitting the 50 donation mark, I also join a select club in my family. Both my Dad Joe, and brother Joe are the proud holders of gold drops for 50 donations. They did it the hard way - mostly donating at mobile clinics, while I have easier access to permanent clinics in Dublin. Also - as platelet donations take a long time (I was in the clinic for nearly two hours today), each donation counts as two due to the time and the amount they can take. So I was fast-tracked to 50 so-to-speak. Nevertheless I'm glad to do this - it is a very pleasant experience, the staff at the clinic are wonderful and I think I'll keep going back for more.

Why not consider donating - check out the IBTS Give Platelets page for more information.

I made good use of my time in the clinic by watching two lectures on Justice by Professor Michael Sandel of Harvard University on my iPad. I watched Episode 2 of a free series of lectures - this one was about putting a price tag on life and how to measure pleasure. Well worth checking out - and FREE too!

Failed effort to find my Great-Grandfather's World War I service record

2012-01-24T22:52:00.000Z

My Mum's paternal grandfather, James Burns, served in the British Army in the First Word War. We know he joined up at the outbreak of the war and that he survived all the horrors of battle - though he was wounded in the head with shrapnel. We do not know what regiment he served in, or what battles (if any) he fought in. Neither do we know his number or if he won any medals. In fact we know very little about his service record.

I used Ancestry.co.uk to try to find him myself, but with no luck. James Burns was a very common name - I did find one report showing the details of 35 (Yes - thirty-five) men whose names were James Burns that were killed in the war. Horrific.

At the end of last year I engaged the very helpful folks at http://www.fourteeneighteen.co.uk to do a professional search for me. But alas - they could not find him either despite their exhaustive searches. An extract from their report for me is as follows:

The Royal Irish Rifles at the Battle of the Somme
(1st July, 1916) - Image link to Wikipedia.

The absence of a service record means one of the following:

His record was destroyed or lost (by far the greatest probability)
He carried on to serve in 1921 or later
He served in one of the Guards or Household Cavalry regiments (unlikely)
He did not serve in the army
He served under a different name.

Many records were indeed lost due to fires and the recycling of paper due to paper shortages. There is also the possibility that name he used when joining up was different from that which he used normally. His name used in the 1911 was "James Burns" - see census return here. The census form states that he "Cannot read". Somewhere along the line "Burns"changed to "Byrne" which is my Mum's maiden name.

It is believed that James Burns died in an asylum in 1925.

I'm not sure what I'll do next - but I will not give the search for his service record.

Losing a Pet

2012-01-23T22:25:00.001Z

When I was a small boy, about 5 or 6 years old, I had my own dog. His name was Dino (after the family pet in The Flintstones), and he was a terrier. He was the only pet I ever could call my own, and I loved him dearly. Growing up on a farm was an ideal place to have a dog - I played with him all the time.

It happened so quickly. Dino and I were walking along the road near our farm - as we had done many times before.

A lorry passed us by.

In a split second - Dino was dead and I saw it happen. This was the saddest day in my young life and I cried for days not understanding that we couldn't play together any more.

Yesterday, our cat Harley that we had for just four months, died on the road outside our house.

Girls - I think I know how you feel.

How did you spend your time here on Earth?

2012-01-22T13:46:00.001Z

I now have my Harley-Davidson Heritage Softail nine years - it was in mid-January 2003 that I bought the special Centenary Edition with some of the proceeds of my redundancy payment from SmartForce. Yesterday the clock passed the 40,000 mile mark. In recent time I have questioned whether it I should continue to keep it. While it costs very little to run and it's fully paid for - in times of recession it is a luxury to be going in and out of work on a Harley. Thankfully - such thoughts only last seconds and I remind myself about the great experiences I have had and what owning a Harley means. Check out the following ad for the Harley-Davidson V-ROD to see what I mean - "It's time to ride".

Copied from American Iron Magazine (May 2004)

Book Review - "Revolution: A Photographic History of Revolutionary Ireland 1913-1923" by Pádraig Óg Ó Ruairc

2012-01-21T17:05:00.002Z

Picture books are quick to read though I don't think I have ever read one cover to cover before. Pádraig Óg Ó Ruairc has put together a fantastic collections of photographs in Revolution: A Photographic History of Revolutionary Ireland 1913-1923. Not quite coffee table stuff, but an excellent book to dip in and out of from time-to-time.

Image link to Amazon.

As several centenaries are coming up (1913 Lockout, 1916 Rising, 1919-1921 War of Independence, and the 1922-1923 Civil War) over the next few years, I'm sure there will be many more books on this dramatic period of Irish history. Many of the iconic photos from this period are present - Pearse surrendering, de Valera under arrest, and artillery at the Four Courts. However, it is the many photographs of people who died in the conflict that make this book. Photos of RIC men, IRA volunteers, British Army, and Black & Tans who were killed in the conflicts show that it was at sometimes a vicious time. Probably the most macabre ones are the series of photos (p151) of Thomas Whelan and Paddy Moran joking with their guards just before they were hanged in Mountjoy Jail on 14th March 1921 (Ó Ruairc annoyingly uses the word "hung" instead of the more correct "hanged" on several occasions).

Lots and lots of gems to see - I think my favourite is the one of Arthur Griffith, Éamon de Valera, and Michael Collins at the 1921 All-Ireland Final in Croke Park. Sad to think that both Collins and Griffith would be dead within two years and that de Valera would go on to greater things in Irish politics.

Business Systems Analysis

2012-01-20T11:10:00.000Z

I have just finished a two day class with 16 students for the course HETAC Certificate in Business Analysis. There are three modules on the course and I deliver the Business Systems Analysis module. NCI delivers the course on behalf of the Business Analysts Association of Ireland - a new course starts next week.

This is one of my favourite modules to teach - I have lost count of how many times I have delivered it (I'm guessing about 15-16 times). The students are all working in many different types of organizations - in the past we have had students from the Gardaí, banks, civil service, consultancy firms, software companies, and leading edge organizations like PayPal. They are always a great mix - many are already practising Business Analysts, or working in a role that involves business analysis activities. They have always been a joy to work with and the over 300 students who have gone through the course make teaching a pleasure for me.

It should also be said that the class is a good one for sales of my book. Almost all students who have taken the course since the book was published have bought it, and many past-students from previous classes have also bought it too. The book has sold about 400 copies, and I suspect that the 300 mentioned above account for the most part of this (A BIG THANK YOU TO YOU ALL!). Nevertheless, it has sold outside this group and from time to time I see it "Out of Stock" or "Only 1 left in stock" on Amazon. This is nothing to get too excited about as I am told by my publisher that they only ever keep 2-3 books of this type in stock. As I write, my book is ranked 654,810 on the Amazon best sellers list. At its rate of sale it will be out of print in about three years! Proceeds of the book are donated to the NCI Foundation office - I don't have exact figures, but I estimate that it has raised over €1,500 for the Foundation.

At last - I have an iPad

2012-01-18T21:59:00.001Z

Short post (I'm bragging again!) - I bought a second hand nearly new 16GB WiFi only iPad today and have just started setting it up. I'm so excited to add the iPad to my digital life - lots of apps and "stuff" to load. I even had to add "iPad" to my dictionary so that it would not show as a spelling error.

Image link to the Mobile Beat site.

According to this report - the iPad has "88% of global tablet web traffic". Here's hoping that I can add to that!

One of the main things I want to do is use this device at work and for educational purposes. One of my first ports of call is "The Inside Lane" - a blog by Nigel Lane with several resources for iPads in education. I'll be looking for more, but today I am an iPad newbie. After set up and sync, my iPad (I love saying that already!) looks like my iPhone (I've loved saying that for a few years now) - same apps and layout. I'm looking forward to setting it up and connecting to WiFi. No doubt I'll write more about this!

Analytics and Education

2012-01-17T09:26:00.000Z

I recently posted about Google Analytics and quite coincidentally I just read today an article by Marc Parry of The Chronicle of Higher Education about analytics being used in education: Colleges Mine Data to Tailor Students' Experience. As I am learning more and more about analytics I am fascinated at the areas to which it can be applied - from sport, to finance, to pharmaceuticals, and even to making cement. In the past educators have tried to link performance with data culled from Learning Management Systems (LMSs) - but now analytics is taking things to a new level.

Parry writes that "colleges are converting the student experience into numbers to crunch in the name of improving education". Analytics are being used to pair students up to help each other, form groups for study, help applicants choose the right college and the right course, show early warning signs of student disengagement, and even to predict grades. There are ethical and privacy considerations to consider too - in the future tools like Facebook may replace LMSs.

I like the idea of using educational data to predict student performance. Every college has masses of data stored in Student Management Systems for many years now. The Central Applications Office (CAO) also has masses of data on Leaving Certificate performance. Combined with demographic data a clear picture could be drawn on the profile of successful and unsuccessful students. Think of this in the hands of a career guidance teacher who could help a student with a certain set of grades in particular subjects by showing how previous students with similar records have performed in their college courses of choice. Not 100% accurate, but an indicator nonetheless.

Image link to The Chronicle of Higher Education.

As Parry states: "No one quite knows where education's analytics revolution will lead, but it's a safe bet that today's experiments will seem crude compared with what's coming".

Book Review: "Steve Jobs" by Walter Isaacson

2012-01-16T22:34:00.000Z

Steve Jobs was a hero to many people - he had legions of fans of Apple die-hards who hung on every word he said. His products are in many homes and business throughout the world (about 10 in my house). Walter Isaacson has written a super biography based on Jobs, though it could be argued that it is also a history of technology and Apple the company since the 1970s.

Image link to
Simon & Schuster.

If you lived through the decades from the 1970s to today, and have been involved in technology - a lot of this story is familiar. Apple vs Microsoft, the Macintosh, open vs closed systems, the iPod/iPhone/iPad, the hoopla - but Isaacson adds a narrative that is entwined with Jobs' life that is fascinating, brilliant, historical, and delivers a "warts and all" account of Steve Jobs.

Steve Jobs never got to read this book and I'm certain that his first reaction to it would be "This is shit" as he said about many things. Isaacson recounts all the rudeness, anger, stubborness, ignorance of rules, pettiness, as well as the more well-known obvious brilliance, creativity, and success that he had. He sure did cram a lot into his life, and will be remembered for many years to come. While there is no doubt that he was the dominant figure in Apple, he was certainly not a nice person. Isaacson does judge Jobs, though on page 565 he does state that "The nasty edge to his personality was not necessary", and on page 564, he calls him an "asshole". There is a quote on page 517 from eSarcasm.com who called him a "techno-dictator" - this is the description I liked best.

I like to learn something new from a biography and there is certainly a lot here for anyone interested in how one of the most successful companies ever was built up by Jobs (and thousands of other Apple employees). I did not know he was a nasty piece of work, and I am certain that he could have achieved much the same without being such a bollix.

Google Analytics

2012-01-12T17:22:00.000Z

Google are making a pitch for a big presence in the Analytics space. They already offering free courses, certified partnerships, and free tools (see http://www.google.com/analytics). They also have a paid Google Analytics Premium service.

Google are looking to use analytics to do things like improve customer retention and customer service. You can also use it to check what browsers visitors to your site are using. To get their point across, Google have made a very funny video that anyone who has shopped on-line will "feel the frustration" with. Check it out - it's just two minutes long:

I am reading and investigating more about analytics in preparation for developing new courses in NCI on Business Intelligence and Analytics. It's a fast growing area with a definite skills gap - a gap we hope to reduce in NCI.

How To... Calculate Mean and Standard Deviation in Excel 2010

2012-01-11T20:28:00.001Z

My first YouTube video of 2012 is a simple one - it shows how to calculate a simple mean (average) and standard deviation. These are quite easy to do (if you know how) - so this video shows some basic use of the Excel AVERAGE and STDEV functions. I spotted another video doing the same in Excel 2003 in preparation for a Student's t test, and thought it might make a nice simple video for my channel. I'm not good at statistics, but am considering some basic stats videos for the channel.

Yet another newspaper article saying technology will change education

2012-01-10T21:36:00.002Z

Last Friday's Irish Times featured an article by Ian Campbell - Moving to transform the educational environment with the latest technology. Campbell writes that "THE ROLE of technology in the classroom will be a hot topic for the Government in 2012", and he quotes liberally from Steven Duggan who is a former teacher and is now worldwide education strategy manager for Microsoft. Duggan declares that the classroom is “Like teaching a blacksmith skills in the age of the car...it’s 100 years out of date".

Image link to Lee Hughes's blog.

Every now and again somebody pops up with the idea that technology can transform education. Duggan claims that "the quality of an education system will never exceed the quality of the teaching". Partly true I agree, but he neglects the student's own ability to learn with this statement. What about on-the-job learning, mentoring, coaching, and going to the library as well as using virtual learning environments. Duggan's statement is 100 years out of date - I exaggerate not!

Duggan does make an interesting comment about class size (presumably in second-level education): "In terms of educational performance, we see that most successful countries focus on professional development over classroom size. The classes may be bigger but, if pupils have the best teachers in front of them, it doesn’t matter". I like this focus on professional development - we could learn a lot from this in Ireland.

People need to get a grip - please, no more articles about how technology will change education. It already has changed education for over 40 years! My French teacher in Roscrea (John Shanahan) used a tape deck and photographic slides to teach us French - not a blackboard or computer in sight. This was in 1972. Computer-Based Training (CBT) has been around since the 1980s (I know - because I worked as a CBT developer in 1989). We are still struggling with the best way to use it.

Super resource for Educators - Irish Teacher Blogs

2012-01-09T10:53:00.000Z

Irish Teacher Blogs is an aggregate blog that pulls together posts from a number of Irish educators - "Eugene's Blog" has recently been added! There are about 50 blogs listed - many I was already familiar with, but I was really surprised that there are so many people blogging about education in Ireland. I'm sure there are many more not yet listed - so keep an eye out as more are added to the ITB list.

There are quite a lot of educators from all levels in Irish education blogging - ranging from Damien Quinn's excellent Seomra Ranga (which provides resources for primary teachers), to Nigel Lane's The Inside Lane (which is an excellent resources for iPad/iPhone users), to Catherine Cronin's Blog (she writes about technology in third-level).

The only problem is... keeping up with everybody's blog posts! So the ITB aggregate blog is a really cool way to at a glance see who is posting about what. Well worth checking out.

Some Old Family Photos

2012-01-07T11:49:00.000Z

Last evening Roma and I attended a surprise 70th birthday party at The Dropping Well in Milltown for my Mum's cousin Brendan Byrne. Happy Birthday Brendan! It was great to see so many cousins from my Mum's side of the family - the Byrnes. I had a great time talking to her cousins Madeline and Eileen about my grandparents and family history. Madeline gave me some photos for my Mum - I made copies and want to share some here.

The first photo is reproduced from a much smaller brownish style photo that a graphics artist has touched up. It features my Mum Phil as a very young girl - that's her at the bottom right. I'm guessing she is about 2 years of age which would out this photo taken in about 1936. I'm told that the photo was taken in a field near Hazelhatch on the Kildare-Dublin county border where the family lived at the time. The man behind Mum is her Dad - Paddy Byrne, and the lady to his right is his sister Eileen. The other girl is Mum's cousin Madeline (mentioned above), and the boy is her brother Seán.

This next picture is one of my Mum Phil which I have never seen before - it looks like she is playing scales on the piano! Even though she encouraged all of us to play the piano (and forced us to take lessons - lots of them!), she never learned herself beyond the basics.

I don't know where this photo was taken, though as it came from Madeline I'm guessing it is late 1960s. Doesn't she look well!

Finally - this last photo is one I have seen many times before as it was in our family album for many years. There's no doubt that this was taken about 1968/1969. From left: my brothers Joe and Brian, my Mum, my sister Kayo, and me.

With a cardigan and short trousers, I am clearly making an early fashion statement. Thank goodness I later got braces to fix those teeth!

Photos like these are rare and precious, and I learn a lot from them. In addition to bringing back fond memories, I am fascinated that photos such as the one above with my Mum as a young girl with her Dad are now posted in a blog over 75 years after it was taken. Nowadays digital photos are much more of an almost daily commodity, with millions being posted on the Internet every day.

Is 99.9% "Good Enough"?

2012-01-06T16:31:00.000Z

While doing some research on the concept of "Good Enough Video" today, I came across a video which asks the question - "Is 99.9% Good Enough"? The video is not on YouTube and I can't embed it in this post - so click here to see a full preview of the video. In the first example it gives, if 99.9% is "good enough" - 470 entries in the New Webster Dictionary would be misspelled. Here are some other examples (USA figures from www.sixsigmaspc.com):

Image link to cheezburger.com.

3,000 newborns accidentally falling from the hands of nurses or doctors each year
4,000 incorrect drug prescriptions per year
400 letters per hour which never arrive at their destination

Yikes! Like many others I'm sure, 99.9% sounded OK to me. While 100% is theoretically possible to achieve, the Six Sigma quality standard measures the top quality as 99.9997%, which is the equivalent of 3.4 defects per million opportunities (DPMO). If this was applied to the above three instances, the figures would look like:

10newborns accidentally falling from the hands of nurses or doctors each year
13 incorrect drug prescriptions per year
1letter per hour which never arrives at its destination

That's better!

As the video states (quoting from Thomas Fuller) "Good is not good - where better is required". So the next time somebody says to you that something is "good enough" - think again.

45 Ways to Promote Your YouTube Videos!

2012-01-05T17:42:00.001Z

Fabrizio Van Marciano writing in Magnet4Marketing summarizes nicely 45 Ways To Promote Your YouTube Videos. Van Marciano shares with us "45 positive ways in which to promote your YouTube channel and in theory get more people viewing your videos". Some of these I am doing already for my own channel, but others are very interesting too.

Image link to the Home Jobs web site.

I'll not list the 45 ways here - but some are worth considering. The first few "ways" can be summarized by embedding and linking to your YouTube channel at every opportunity (web sites, presentations, emails, Twitter, Facebook, etc). Van Marciaino also suggest advertising your channel and even putting the URL on your business card. You can also buy targeted YouTube views and channel subscribers! He also suggests blogging about the channel and creating a Facebook fan page.

These 45 ways are listed on the Magnet4Marketing web site for on-line marketing and blogging tips. More and more companies are now using YouTube channels to promote their products and services. Even SkillSoft (who I worked for from 1989 to 2002) have got in on the act by creating a SkillSoft Channel. Guys - you really need to read Van Marciano's 45 ways to get the view numbers up :-)).

How To... Create a Stacked Chart in Excel 2010

2012-01-03T21:53:00.001Z

Just before Christmas I created my final video of 2011 to add to my Learn with Dr Eugene O'Loughlin YouTube channel. In one of my Project Management classes we learn about Resource Allocation as part of Human Resources Project Management. A simple way to display how resources such as people, are allocated over time is to use a stacked chart created using Excel. In this video I show how to create a stacked chart in Excel using a fictitious project team of four different types of people. Stacked charts are easy to draw, so I have embellished this video by showing how to change the chart type after the original is drawn.

Book Review - "Galileo's Daughter" by Dava Sobel

2012-01-02T11:30:00.000Z

My first book to read on my new Amazon Kindle was about Galileo Galilei and his daughter Sr Marie Celeste. While the book is dominated by Galileo himself - his scientific discoveries, and troubles with the Church, a great part of the book features correspondence from Marie Celeste to her father (no letters survive from Galileo to his daughter).

Image link to OpenLibrary.org.

This is a very enjoyable book. For those very knowledgeable about Galileo himself there is probably very little more to learn about him. His discoveries and achievements in life are described, but from about the middle of the book on it comes alive with Marie Celeste's letters. Much of the letter's contents are about trivial matters - eg, cooking, fixing shirt collars, and about growing vegetables. She also prays a lot for her father and it is clear that she loved him a lot and followed his life closely from behind the confines of the walls of the enclosed order of Poor Clares nuns' convent. She also pleads for money and help a lot - the life of a nun in the first part of the 17th century was indeed a very tough one. Plague features a lot outside the convent walls. Dava Sobel weaves a web of life from the surviving letters - she has the skill of the historian and well as an eye for a good story. Marie Celeste is the true hero of this story and Sobel brings her to life.

My experience of reading with the Kindle was good. I read a lot on the plane. The text is easy to read - very clear. However, the ebook does not have any graphics as the paper has - I don't see why this is the case as the Kindle can show graphics. I also found the format of the book was littered with errors - new lines starting in the middle of a sentence happened a lot. There are also asterisks displayed from time-to-time - possibly referring to a footnote (which is not visible) or to the extensive bibliography at the end of the book. The Kindle may be more suited in its current format to fiction rather than non-fiction. I'll judge this more when I get more books.

Overall - a recommended read. But due to the many errors on the Kindle version I think the paper copy might be a better option.

2011 in Review

2012-01-01T15:19:00.001Z

It's January 1st and time to look back on 2011 - a strange year for everyone. Here's some thoughts:

YouTube

I like numbers and statistics - I have been absorbed with my YouTube Channel all year and watched it grow. According to Google Analytics it was viewed 490,001 times in 2011 (including 676 on Christmas Day!) and 543 new subscribers were added to the channel. At current rate of progress - I expect the total number of views (currently at 696,762) to pass 1,000,000 and the total number of subscribers (currently at 746) to pass 1,000 by mid-2012. For me the YouTube channel is the most worthwhile thing I have done in 2011.

My Blog

In 2011 I wrote 262 blog posts - 46 more than in 2010. During the year I also moved the blog to www.eugeneoloughlin.com and I continue to enjoy writing on anything that takes my fancy. My main topics are about Education and YouTube - but I also wrote about politics, family, some reviews, sport, plagiarism, travelling, broadband woes, my Harley-Davidson, and Preston North End.

Lucky Moment

This has to be the day just before Christmas when I was not killed crossing the road by a car. In what would have been an accident that would have been entirely my own fault, I did not look right and almost paid the price. Thankfully the driver of the car was far more alert than I was and he evaded me quite smartly.

Biggest mistake

In what seemed like a good idea at the time, in 2007 we signed up and paid a deposit on an apartment in Spain. Almost four years had passed when out of the blue we got notification last February that the apartment was ready and that we had to pay the balance. I found out this week that 27 of the 32 apartments in our block are either owned by the banks or the developer (Polaris World). Only about 900 of the original 3,000 apartments planned for the resort have been built. The place is like a ghost estate - the "town centre" is also deserted. Though we could not get out of the contract to buy the apartment - I feel that finally signing and paying for this POS will be seen by me as a huge mistake for many years to come.

Funniest moment

I find jokes and funny stories hard to remember - but one moment stands out. Last September my daughters "acquired" a cat - they called him "Harley" in an effort to get me to like him. At every opportunity the girls try to show me how cute he is. One Sunday afternoon I was watching football on TV and the cat was curled up in front of the fire. My daughter Claire came in and immediately said to the cat "Look at you watching football with your Daddy!". I burst out laughing.

Travel

In the summer I rode my Harley to Murcia - 2,420 miles (3,895 kilometres). I loved this trip and want to do some more. Owning an apartment in Spain (see above) will most likely mean that we will use it a lot - I may not ride that far again in the summer as it is so hot. As in two previous trips to Europe on the bike, part of my trip was through Normandy - I would really like to spend more time there. Anyway - the trip last summer was memorable, and reminded me that I am still young at heart and able for more.

Family

The saddest events of 2011 for me were the death of my aunt Breda Quinn (who is also my Godmother) and my cousin Janet Edwards - in both cases after long illnesses. May the Lord have mercy on their souls. During the year we celebrated my Dad Joe's 80th birthday, Roma's and my sister Kathleen's 50th birthdays, and our own 25th wedding anniversary.

Technology

Finally - 2011 was a year in which technology became even more ingrained in our lives. I ended the year with the fantastic Amazon Kindle. Throughout the year I spent a lot of time on-line managing my Blog, YouTube channel, and my www.thereshouldbealaw.org site. It was also a year in which I went to battle with Eircom and overcame some broadband woes. Steve Jobs died. Twitter became a revolutionary tool possibly more powerful that bullets and bombs in the Arab Spring. Apart from the Kindle I acquired no new gadgets in 2011. My computer at work in now in its sixth year, I have my iPhone 3GS for almost two years, and my home computer is three years old.

2011 is dead, long live 2012.

Book Review - Enigma: A New Life of Charles Stewart Parnell

2011-12-27T18:22:00.000Z

Paul Bew has written a very enjoyable biography of C.S. Parnell. I had not read any books about Parnell before, but of course knew a lot about him from learning about Irish history. This is an easy to read book and provides a lot of insight into his short life (he died aged just 45 in 1891). His most effective period was from 1882-1890 - a testament to his lasting legacy and contribution to Irish history that he achieved so much in so short a time.

Image link to Amazon.co.uk.

Parnell was a man of mixed abilities and character - take this extract from page 115 "his personal traits and idiosyncrasies became more noticeable: the legendary frigidity of demeanour, the impenetrable reserve, the lofty detachment, the strange sphinx-like silences, the inexplicable absences, the hint of steel - all these being to some extent offset by an engaging charm enlivened with occasional flashes of warmth and even whimsy, and his behaviour as a whole being marked by a general air of eccentricity".

The affair with Kitty O'Shea is not sensationalized. Such an affair would not cause the split and his downfall these days, but it was unfortunate that he is remembered as much for this affair as he is for his politics.

At the end of the book there is a reprint of the essay "A Counterfactual Chief? If Parnell had lived till 1918", written in 2010 by Patrick Maume. To me this adds nothing to reading about the life of Parnell. Speculating what would have happened if he had lived longer is just that - speculation. Even Bew himself states in a note at the end "Perhaps all this speculation is beside the point". He is right.

Apart from the reprinted essay at the end, this is a very good book on an icon of Irish history and is certainly recommended by me.

Christmas 2011

2011-12-26T16:29:00.000Z

It's St Stephen's Day - and Christmas 2011 is over. I love Christmas Day! We had a very early start (0700) to open pressies. Santa brought me an Amazon Kindle! I also have Walter Isaacson's book on Steve Jobs in paperback - lots of interesting reading ahead.

With my new Kindle (and new jumper!)
showing page 244 of my own book.
An Introduction to Business Systems Analysis.

So far I love the Kindle - it's the 3G/WiFi/Keyboard version that I have. I find it very easy to use, and crucially - very easy to read from. I downloaded some free books at first - Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen), The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, and the Bible. I also copied over some free eBooks that I have gathered over the years, eg "Knowing Knowledge" by George Siemens. Plus I have also copied over a few PDF files that I have had for some time (which I have not paid for). My intention is not to read these again, but I really like the idea that I have a searchable copy of these texts at all times.

My first purchase from Amazon was Dava Sobel's Galileo's Daughter - which I plan to read while travelling to Spain tomorrow for a few days. This will be the first time that I will not bring any paper books or newspapers with me when travelling - I want to see how I get on with the Kindle.

As a piece of technology the Kindle is so far for me a wonderful gadget. Amazon pay for the 3G connection, so you don't need a sim card to use it. With WiFi - the connection is really quick, my purchase of the Dava Sobel book above was downloaded to the Kindle automatically in seconds! It holds up to 3,500 books - so I expect to keep adding to this over the next few years. Imagine having your own library in your pocket? I will no doubt blog about this in the near future - but I'm certain that the Kindle, and other such devices, have the potential to revolutionalize knowledge by having access to libraries of books and documents at our finger tips. This could also be the beginning of the end for book stores who are likely to go in the same direction towards extinction as is happening to travel agents and record shops.

Students are way ahead of us?

2011-12-24T15:44:00.000Z

While at the ICEP Conference last week, Professor Sally Brown played us a YouTube video when she proposed that students are way ahead of us teachers/lecturers. It was in the context of a discussion on the use of technology in education. Though not exclusively about technology, she did point out that students can be way ahead of their teachers in many ways - the following ad for New Zealand's lotto nicely confirms this point. Enjoy!

YouTube for Teachers

2011-12-23T12:16:00.002Z

YouTube for Teachers was officially launched last week. This is an effort by YouTube to "to help teachers use educational YouTube videos to educate, engage and inspire their students". Many schools block the main YouTube website, but youtube.com/teachers is a sub-domain that can be set by network administrators to be viewable by students. I had expected that ads and comments be removed, but that does not seem to be the case.

Image link to the
Khan Academy.

There are some excellent Maths videos from the Khan Academy - every Maths teacher in the world should use these both to learn how to use the material to teach the material themselves, and of course to recommend to students that they use them for learning and revision. As I write this post, a staggering 92,138,529 lessons have been delivered by the Khan Academy. Want to learn about simple equations in algebra? Check out this video which not only shows you how, but is explained and illustrated very well. This is a great resource for teachers because they can use the same examples and perhaps improve their own teaching.

I sense that this could be a breakthrough in the teaching and learning of Maths. We constantly hear about poor maths standards in school leavers, while industry is crying out for graduates with better maths skills (see Skills shortages can be addressed in the Irish Times). We also hear that not all maths teachers have a qualification in maths - in fact according to this recent Press Release from Minister Seán Sherlock which quotes a survey that "shows that out of a total of 3,311 teachers teaching maths in 422 schools, 2,198 teachers (66.4%) are fully qualified to do so". My point is that some of the best teachers in the world are putting excellent maths video on YouTube - so why not use this fantastic resource in the classroom? Teachers should have nothing to fear - I don't see the day that a class will consist entirely of watching videos. Students will always need the guiding hand of a good teacher. By embracing YouTube for Teachers, I am convinced that maths standards will improve greatly.

How To... Draw a Basic Scatter Diagram in Excel 2010

2011-12-20T17:25:00.000Z

One of the shortest videos I have created for the Learn with Dr Eugene O'Loughlin channel is about creating a scatter diagram in Excel 2010 (see below). Creating a scatter diagram is really easy to do, and it is a useful diagram if you want a simple visual look at a comparison of two variables. In this video I use data comparing on-line course ratings against age. This is based in part on an example from the book Managing Information Technology Projects (Schwalbe, 2011), which I use in my Project Management classes.

For my PhD thesis (1988), I produced many scatter diagrams for data analysis such as multi-variate analysis. Unlike Excel 2010 where a diagram can be created with a few clicks from a mouse, back in 1988 I had to write a FORTRAN programme to read the data file. I then had to send the result for batch processing overnight, and pick up a printout of the diagram the next day. Practically stone age stuff!

ICEP 2011

2011-12-17T11:45:00.000Z

The International Conference on Engaging Pedagogy (ICEP 2011) was held in NCI yesterday and I was able to attend most of the proceedings. The conference "is an annual event that brings together researchers and practitioners in the field of third-level teaching in order to discuss means and methods of improving student engagement (from ICEP About page)".

The opening address "Effecting Change to improve the Learning Experience", was delivered by Professor Sally Brown. She gave us both an entertaining and informative talk - she even started at the end! She displayed her Conclusion slide first and then went back to the beginning. While she was stating the obvious that if we keep on doing the same thing every day that nothing will get better, she still held the audience's attention with her wit and informed experiences. She advised us to consider changing the way we assess students, use technology, engage with students, and to embrace change.

I missed the first break-out session (which I was supposed to chair), due to attending some presentations by some 4th year students. But I was back for the afternoon breakout session - I attended the following three presentations:

The Use of Mind Maps as an Assessment Tool by Robbie O’Connor (Tallaght IT)
Motivating Student Learning by Mark Dowling (Griffith College)
Embedding Universal Design in the Curriculum by Margaret Kinsella (Blanchardstown IT)

Robbie O'Connor was excellent and showed us how he uses mind maps in assessing student work on an environmental engineering course. Mark Dowling was candid about how some strategies for engaging students did not work very well. While Margaret Kinsella both entertained and informed when talking about designing educational material to suit everyone - including disabled people.

The final part of the conference was an "Armchair Session" (sadly, with no armchairs!), which was led by Professor Phil Race. The theme was "Capturing the Voice of Irish Educators" where he set us various tasks to ask questions about the things that challenged us as educators - his slides from his presentation (which includes our feedback) are available here. Our discussions varied from "what can we do when we get silence after asking a question?" to "how can we overcome a reliance on the likes of Wikipedia?".

Overall - a very interesting conference and it was also great to meet both old and new faces too.

End of Another Semester

2011-12-15T21:01:00.003Z

Today marked the end of Semester I for me in NCI. I had no classes today but spent the day attending mid-year project presentations from our final year students. This was a hectic, but enjoyable day. Students were required to present on the progress of their final year project. Lots of interesting material which I enjoyed listening too. Now the hard part - marking the presentatons!

Semester I is over! Image from the
In the Direction of our Dreams Blog.

At the start of each semester, I always look down the line to the next 14 weeks thinking that it is sooooooo long! However, time flies - essays and projects have to be marked, and classes have to be delivered. I have enjoyed this semester more than most. I had first year, third year, and fourth year modules - plus an executive education module to deliver. My subjects were:

Introduction to Business
Project Management
Business Process Engineering
Business Systems Analysis

Before the Christmas break (we get Christmas Eve to the 2nd January off) - I have a lot of continuous assessment to mark. Exams take place in January.

I know some students check out this blog occasionally - so I'd like to congratulate all students on their work in semester I.

Semester II awaits!

Christmas Carol Service in Blackrock

2011-12-13T22:45:00.001Z

This evening I was part of the St John the Baptist Church choir that sang at the parish Christmas Carol Service. Also participating was a traditional Irish music group and a children's choir from the local school. The service was held in the parish church and a reasonable crowd showed up for the evenings prayers and entertainment. Does this count as a gig?

We had three carols to sing on our own - "Coventry Carol", "O Little One Sweet", and "Still, Still, Still". We also joined in on other carols like "Joy to the World" and " O Come All Ye Fatihful". I have to say that I am enjoying the singing in the choir - there were three men (incuding myself) and ten women singing. We certainly belted out the carols!

I still find the parts (bass in my case) hard to get right. Even though I practice a bit on the piano at home, I do get many notes wrong. So I sing out loud the bits I know, and sing low for the bits I don't know so well. If all else fails I sing along with the melody!

We have Christmas masses coming up - so that will be a mix of traditional hymns and Christmas carols. I'm doing the vigil mass on Christmas Eve, and the main 12.00 mass on Christmas Day. I'll be so holy that God has to let me into Heaven!

I have been a member of the choir for just three months and they are a great bunch to sing with - we even went for a drink after the service to Tonic in Blackrock. I have a long way to go before I get all the hynns and carols right - I mustn't have been listening at mass over all the years, everthing seems that I have never heard them before. I'll keep this up for a while - something to do on a Monday evening (choir practice), and the auld religion bit won't do me any harm either.

The 10 Worst Songs of the 1970s Pictures - Rolling Stone

2011-12-11T22:34:00.000Z

Following on from yesterdays's post about the top 10 photos of 2011, I naturally decided to beat that post with a look at a reader's poll in Rolling Stone magazine - The 10 Worst Songs of the 1970s. Since all my teenage years were spent in the 1970s, I actually remember most of these rubbish songs as I listened to David Hamilton on BBC Radio 1 almost every day. For children of that fabulous decade - the 1970s, here's the top 10 worst songs:

Rick Dees - 'Disco Duck'
Starland Vocal Band - 'Afternoon Delight'
Paul Anka - '(You're) Having My Baby'
Debby Boone - 'You Light Up My Life'
The Captain and Tennille - 'Muskrat Love'
Rupert Holmes - 'Escape (The Pina Colada Song)'
Terry Jacks - 'Seasons In The Sun'
Bo Donaldson and the Heywoods - 'Billy Don't Be A Hero'
Morris Albert - 'Feelings'
Minnie Riperton - 'Loving You'

I don't remember "Disco Duck" which was a one-hit-wonder for a Memphis DJ - perhaps it was only a minor hit on this side of the Atlantic. The Captain and Tennille's "Muskrat Love" is the other one I don't recall. "Billy Don't Be A Hero" was a hit for Paper Lace over here. So - if I had to pick a favourite from this list, it would have to be The Pina Colada song by a mile. Here it is for for all you 1970s lovers (with Rupert Holmes looking very like Kenny Everett!):

The National Geographic Magazine's Top 10 Photos of 2011

2011-12-10T12:50:00.000Z

I am a big fan of the National Geographic and have been reading and learning from it since the 1960's. As a boy I used to put their maps on my bedroom wall and pour over them, as well as reading articles on everything scientific and geographical over the years. I also love the photographs - you can pick up any National Geographic magazine and wonder at the quality and brilliance of some of the photos.

Photo by Joel Sartore - "Rift in Paradise".
Image link to Top 10 Photographs of 2011
on National Geographic.

The National Geographic magazine's top 10 photos are now available on-line. As usual there are some stunning photos shown - my favourite is the one with the lion in the tree. I wish I could take photos like this - I'm sure hours of practice and patience went into setting up this shot. Also certain in the digital age that perhaps several photos were taken of which this one was selected - perhaps it was even uploaded to the Internet on the spot. Imagine that in the recent past that the photographer would have had to go back to a studio to develop the film and wait to see the end result!

It's a great credit to the National Geographic that they are still in existence and continue to be popular despite the digital age when anybody can shoot almost professional photos with basic digital cameras. Many of their photos are available as free wallpapers for your desktop, and are certainly worth browsing. A fantastic learning resource.

Students use smartphones to study more, and more efficiently

2011-12-08T13:30:00.000Z

StudyBlue is a website that is designed to help students study better, principally by allowing students to make on-line flashcards with photos and audio for mobile devices. According to StudyBlue author Scott D, "It turns out that students who make flashcards on smartphones or study their flashcards on mobile devices are getting a ton of benefits from their mobile study sessions by taking advantage of the opportunity to study everywhere they go".

Image link to StudyBlue.com
(click link for better view).

According to StudyBlue, students with smartphones are:

twice as likely to study between 6 and 8.00 am
almost three times as likely to track their progress
study 40 more minutes each week by studying everywhere they go

StudyBlue have prepared an Infographic to illustrate their findings which are based on a study of nearly one million users from the Autumn 2011 semester - so it is bang up-to-date. I also like the bit at the bottom of the infographic that shows the percentage of students who "often" use their smartphones before going to sleep (46%), waiting in a queue (55%), and commuting (74%).

StudyBlue also has a section for Teachers. I have registered as a user and will investigate using this for a class in the future. So far it seems easy to use and already has features that should be in VLEs like Moodle.

How To... Use the COUNTIF statement in Excel 2010

2011-12-07T13:04:00.001Z

My YouTube Partner Channel is now renamed Learn with Dr Eugene O'Loughlin. YouTube have changed the layouts, and I have edited my channel to suit. Gone is the (very basic) banner graphic which I drew myself from the top - I may replace this with something better in the future. For YouTube Partners there are some good Analytics (formerly called "Insight") - while they don't really tell me much more than what I was able to determine before - they are certainly more user-friendly to use. The number of views today stands at 660,015. Last week the channel had 17,971 views, and the number of subscribers continues to grow (now at 699). I'm hoping that YouTube's new structure for education channels will help drive more traffic to the channel.

My lastest video added this week is about how to use a COUNTIF function in Excel. This is a function that I actually use myself quite a bit, it is easy to learn about, and is very useful. At 3 minutes 41 seconds it is also one of my shortest videos. This one was recorded using Camstudio's free screencasting tool. Have a look and see what you think:

"Software is like magic: all you need is ability"

2011-12-05T09:00:00.003Z

Last week I commented about an anonymous Irish Times article "Kids use PCs at home yet write by hand at school. It's antediluvian" in which I agreed that there is not enough technology education in our schools. This debate gains further ground from John Naughton writing in today's Guardian newspaper "Programming should take pride of place in our schools". Naughton writes that if "we don't change the way ICT is thought about and taught, we're shutting the door on our children's futures". Here-here!

Image link to The Guardian.

For anyone passionate about technology and education - Naughton's article is a "must-read". While the article is about UK schools, it can easily be translated for schools all over the world. Naughton sees learning the likes of Microsoft Office as merely "office skills" - and that what's missing is "any appreciation of the real significance of introducing children to programming". In the UK and Ireland, our schools and colleges are constantly criticized for not producing graduates with the skills needed by industry. Despite this, talented young people like Shawn Fanning (Napster) and Mark Zuckerburg (Facebook) innovated with little more than a laptop and programming ability. We should teach at least some basic programming in our schools. Not just as an option in Transition Year - but as a full subject for Junior and Leaving Certificates. It would be better and more useful than some of our exiting subjects. I left secondary school in 1978, and since the mid 1980s I have used computers almost every day. Not once since 1978 have I had a conversation in Irish longer than a cúpla focal.

Naughton's final paragraph is telling:

That's why software is like magic: all you need is ability. And some children, for reasons that are totally and wonderfully mysterious, have an extraordinary aptitude for programming – just as some have a musical, mathematical or artistic gift. If the government excludes computer science from the national curriculum then it will be effectively slamming the door to the future.

Technology as a main subject for secondary school students WILL HAPPEN - it's just a matter of when.

New Restaurant - Le Plancha in Blackrock

2011-12-04T18:33:00.001Z

We decided to try the recently opened new restaurant in Blackrock - Le Plancha. It is located beside the Wishing Well Pub and replaces Papa's Mediterranean Restaurant which finally closed after a few years of being open and shut intermittently. Le Plancha "is a modern Irish restaurant with a style of cuisine using influences from the Iberian Peninsula & France". Certainly different from a lot of the run-of-mill restaurants we now have in Ireland.

Photo from LePlancha.ie.

The menu is short, but excellent. Fish, beef, duck, and chicken - but with delicious sounding sauces and vegetable mixes. For a starter I had a smoked duck salad - very tasty. After this I went for baked halibut with a wonderful mix of mushrooms, peas, and pickled onions on an olive oil mash. I was not disappointed - this was really good. I even had a desert of chocolate brownie with smashing Bailey's ice-cream. All-in-all - an excellent meal which I felt was good value at €78 for the two of us (including drinks).

Despite the Recession - businesses are still opening up. Just take a look at bizstartup.ie to see that many entrepreneurs are still dipping their toes into new business ventures. It must take a lot of guts to start a new business these days - especially in the restaurant business. We met the owner, the lovely Eimear, who looked after us well. We had a chat about Facebook and Twitter and their roles in promoting businesses - hopefully I convinced her of the benefits that social networking tools can have for her in her new venture. Good luck to Eimear and all at Le Plancha, and many thanks for a lovely evening out.

Le Plancha is not on Twitter yet, but they can be found on Facebook.

Ballingate House Upper

2011-12-03T19:04:00.001Z

Out of the blue I recently received an email from CM who was researching his family, and who had discovered one of my very early posts on this blog: Ballingate House Upper - Where I Grew Up. This house stood on the spot where my Mum and Dad's house now stands. CM Googled "Ballingate" and found my Blog post - it turns out that CM's Grandfather was born in this house.

Photo used with permission (courtesy of CM).

CM sent me an old photograph of the house - I had never seen any pictures of it before. My Grand Uncle Pat Hurley bought the house (and surrounding farm) for £1,200 in 1942. Ballingate House Upper was demolished in two parts. According to my Dad, during World War II (possibly 1944) the roof was removed to avoid paying rates, and an auction was held to sell all the slates and timber from the house. This auction realized more than the £1,200 it cost to buy the farm - a nice piece of business despite the fact that a fine house was ruined. Dad bought the farm from Uncle Pat in 1959 - by then the house was a ruin and it was demolished to make way for our family house in 1960. The rubble from the house was piled beside the avenue leading to our farm for many years.

Image link to BuildingsOfIreland.ie.

I visited Mum and Dad today and showed them the photo above - it did not take Dad long to figure out what building was in the photo. While he remembers the house well, not everything was as he thought. Ballingate House Upper is shown in the mid 19th century ordinance survey map to the left. The house is the square shape at the north east end of the buildings shown - we had some good fun today walking around the existing house and the remaining buildings trying to figure out the aspect of the house in the photo. We are certain that the photo was taken from a south-west angle.

Once again the power of the Internet is making the world smaller. A simple blog post has prompted CM (who lives in France) to check out his family history and an old photo can now be shared for all to see. I know CM now plans to visit Ballingate before Christmas.

The only Irish channel on YouTube's Directory for Lifelong Learning!

2011-12-02T14:25:00.000Z

YouTube is getting its act together as far as Education Channels are concerned (must be the Google influence?). In the past few days I have been getting YouTube Partner updates telling me about new features and more Insight into who is viewing my Learn with YouTube channel.

Click image to enlarge.

YouTube have set up a Lifelong Learning section in the Education category. There are 103 channels listed today at EDU › Channels Directory for Lifelong Learning, and guess what? My channel is one of the 103! YouTube have changed the name from Learn with YouTube to Learn with Dr Eugene O'Loughlin, so I have some work to do to in changing my Channel header and title. So far, this is the only channel listed from Ireland. I'm sure more will be added to this directory over time, but it's cool to be one of the first 100.

My channel is at #72 for "Most Viewed" - a long way behind #1 which is the National Geographic Channel which has over 10 million views. I am also near the bottom at #99 for number of subscribers, also a long way behind the National Geographic which has over half a million subscribers. Given that these are figures for the whole world (not just Ireland) I am giving myself a small pat on the back today!

"Kids use PCs at home yet write by hand at school. It's antediluvian"

2011-12-01T13:47:00.003Z

Last Tuesday's Irish Times features an article on Kids use PCs at home yet write by hand at school. It's antediluvian. It is a column "designed to give a voice to those within the education system who wish to speak out anonymously". I don't know who wrote the article, but he/she certainly speaks for a lot of parents and for those in education.

Image link to Edutopia.org.

In the article a parent writes about their son who spends a lot of time on his computer at home, and very little time on a computer at school where most work is still done by hand. The argument is that this is no preparation for working life and that this is "so absurd when you consider what most people’s working lives are like nowadays: everything is based around a computer. Everything we write is typed into one program or another".

Parents are hearing all the time that there are jobs in IT - indeed yesterday I was at a stand in NCI's Open Day at which this years school 6th years attended, and I told any prospective student who asked about computing that there are jobs in IT. Some were wondering how much knowledge of computers did they need to do a Computer Science course.

So are students prepared for College/work? Almost all students who come to the College now are digitally literate. This means that they can use a computer to do based things like send/receive email, look up stuff on the web, and create a Facebook page. They do not yet know about programming, computer architecture, electronics, operating systems, and software engineering. Many schools have ECDL programmes as part of Transition Year - but by the time students have finished the leaving certificate two years later they will have forgotten most of what they have learned (especially if they don't use any of what they have learned). ECDL and Facebook is not enough for the real world.

So I agree with the anonymous Irish Times writer that technology should be a more important part of education. The trouble is that it costs a lot of money - not everybody can afford a laptop, and the Department of Education certainly can't afford it. To spend more would mean sacrificing something else. Dare I say that the money spent on educating students to learn Irish (which many cannot speak after 14 years in our education system) would be better spent on technology?

Social media pioneer says technology will transform education

2011-11-30T22:35:00.004Z

Well what do you know - somebody important says that "technology will transform education", this is according to Mark Schaefer writing in BusinessGrow.com. LinkedIn Co-Founder Reid Hoffman sticks his neck out and tells us that technology will replace the “factory model of education” and goes on to declare that "Technology opens up the educational echo chamber by introducing the possibility of learning from a variety of experts and perspectives. It creates an opportunity for global dialogue, expanded connectivity, and the possibility of learning from the best teachers, wherever they may be”.

WTF is an "educational echo chamber"?

Image by Campbell taken from Morten Flate Paulsen's
book "Online Education".

Back in 1999, Cisco CEO John Chambers (no relation to the echo chamber?) is quoted as saying that "The next big killer application on the Internet is going to be education. Education over the Internet is going to be so big it is going to make e-mail usage look like a rounding error". e-Learning sales people loved this, and I heard it quoted many times myself in my last years with SmartForce. When I joined the then CBT Systems in 1989 a rallying cry to us all that technology was about to change education - the real pioneers of learning technology were people like Bill and TG of CBT Systems who did it with 5¼ inch floppy disks!

Reid Hoffman - you are about 22 years too late with your new ideas!

Reputations - Gandhi

2011-11-28T23:06:00.001Z

This evening's lecture in the Trinity College Reputations series was about Mohandas K Gandhi, and was delivered by Dr Mridu Rai of the History Department. From the outset she set out to tear Gandhiji's reputation apart.

Image link to IndianChild.com.

At first, Dr Rai told us that there was a lot of myth about Gandhi. Among many arguments she presented:

He was effectively a "racist" because he only worked as a lawyer in South Africa for Indians, and had "no time" for the "blacks"
He was a snob (not her words) as he only worked for middle class Indians, and only a latterly acted for lower class Indians under pressure
He repeatedly "sold out" lower class Indians in India in favour of the rich and the British - preferring instead to "compromise"
His tactics of "non-cooperation" and "passive resistance" were efforts to provoke violence responses from the British - not what a non-violent protagonist should be advocating
All his ideas were ignored by Indian politicians - so much so that he was pretty much an outcast for the last years of his life in the sense that Indian politicians like Nehru were "fed up" of him
She even told us that his speeches were incomprehensible in his last years as he had lost all this teeth

The lecture made for uncomfortable listening for those like me who have long held Gandhiji in awe. I have read Louis Fisher's excellent biography of Gandhi (see my short review on Amazon here), and have always believed that he was a noble and righteous man with the independence of India by passive resistance being an achievable goal. Dr Rai dissected his life with the expertise of the historian, and while we might disagree over the ultimate reputation of Gandhi - she presented a well thought out account of his life with the passion of the historian.

Nostalgia moment - Lisbon 15th November 1995

2011-11-26T18:00:00.000Z

Experimenting with Roma's new camera on the night before she left for South Africa I got a photo of myself wearing my Ireland jersey - it was also the night of Ireland's brilliant 4-0 win over Estonia in the Euro 2012 play-offs. I bought the jersey in 1995, and like to wear it when Ireland are playing (even if just watching the match on telly).

Come on you boys in green!

This photo reminds me of the night of 15th November 1995 when Ireland took on Portugal in the last game of the group stages of the Euro 1996 in the Stadium of Light in Lisbon - the only "away" international I have ever been to. I travelled with my brother Brian and we had a great time - my memories include drinking pints at 7 o'clock in the morning at Dublin airport, the rain, Brian's almost all day hilarious haggling with a persistent Brazilian selling "gold" rings, and the dancing girls at a Musgrave's bash after the game which we crashed.

Alas - the game which Ireland had to win to qualify, was not what we had hoped. We later lost a play-off to Holland. From FAI History Chapter 33:

The fans played their part and travelled in numbers as an estimated 25,000 crowded into the Stadium of Light in Lisbon on a night when the rain poured down incessantly. Ireland had to work to the limit to restrain a marvellous Portugal who made nonsense of the conditions by playing wonderful, compelling football.

Ireland succeeded in defying them for an hour but then Rui Costa conjured up a beautiful opening goal with a chip that floated over the top of the defence and dipped into the net off the underside of the crossbar. Ireland were ineffective in attack, unable to muster a revival as Portugal won emphatically 3-0.

Label Cloud

2011-11-24T22:48:00.000Z

A new feature on my blog is a "Label Cloud" - it is just to the left of this post. The list of words in this label cloud is made up of tags from labels that I can add to each blog post. So for example, I can tag any post about YouTube with the label "YouTube" - this will then appear in the label cloud. Searching will become easier and I can categorize posts more easily - just click on a word and all posts tagged with that word will be displayed. Words at the top are larger because more posts are tagged with these labels. I have tagged my most recent 100 posts, so the list to the left reflects this - I will over time revisit old posts and tag them too. I have to remember that when I write a new post to tag it too - this one will be tagged with "cloud".

While I like this idea, the cloud that Blogger provides is very boring - just see for yourself the square paragraph of text that makes up my cloud. Wordle.net allows you to create a cloud - you just provide a list of words and it will do the rest. Below is the same list created by Wordle that as of today makes up my label cloud to the left - much more interesting I think you'll agree:

Created by Wordle.

So come on Blogger - you can do better. Or better still - come on Wordle and make a gadget for Blogger!

How To... Use If Statements in Excel 2010

2011-11-23T16:57:00.001Z

IF...THEN...ELSE - always fascinated me since I first learned about IF statements back in the 1980's when I first learned programming. Logic is central to IF statements - that's why I like them. I always had fun writing them and testing then to see if they worked.

IF statements can be used in Excel as conditional statements. My latest video show Excel users how to write a basic IF statement. The syntax is quite simple:

IF(logical_test, "value_if_true", "value_if_false")

In the video I use the example of using an IF statement to check if a student score is a pass or a fail - the IF statement for this is as follows (assuming a pass mark of 40%):

IF(B2>=40, "Pass", "Fail")

where "B2" is the cell where the mark is located on the Excel spreadsheet. In this statement you are testing to see IF a value (the contents of cell B2) is greater than or equal to 40 - if this is True, then the word "Pass" is displayed. If this is not True, then the word "Fail" is displayed. So for example, if the value in cell B2 is 60, then this is greater than or equal to 40 - therefore the statement is True, while a value of 30 is not greater than or equal to 40 - therefore the statement is false. Check out the video on YouTube and see what you think:

Reputations - Marie Antoinette

2011-11-22T22:55:00.001Z

This week in the Reputations series of lectures by the Trinity History Department was about Marie Antoinette by Dr Linda Kiernan - this was a really good lecture! Very informative, and full of interesting insights into what people (particularly the French of the late 1700s) thought of her. She was a much maligned woman, and was seriously the victim of a vicious campaign against her by the revolutionaries that ultimately succeeded in getting her to the guillotine. A sympathetic view, but not the complete view as presented by Dr Kiernan.

Image link to Wikipedia.

I particularly enjoyed Dr Kiernan's analysis of the image of Marie Antoinette. Her presentation and illustration of the many pamphlets that were distributed about Marie Antoinette were both entertaining and informative. Also - with 52 slides for her lecture, Dr Kiernan also went to come effort to provide us with as much material as possible. The analysis was deep and thoughtful - her role as a Hapsburg and as a French Queen was critically analysed. This left us in no doubt that Marie Antoinette was both a simple (devoted to family) and a complex character (trying, but failing to be a Hapsburg at a French court).

I have always felt some sympathy for her - for example, she never said "Let them eat cake". She was also portrayed as as a foreigner, lesbian, abuser of her son, frivolous, having undue influence on the King, a whore, among many other things - many untrue. Her trial was a joke, but her execution inevitable.

Much of Marie Antoinette's problems were due to her being a woman in a man's world. Traditionally, the King's mistresses were singled out as the cause of problems at court, but as Louis XVI had no mistresses - Marie Antoinette was singled out to blame. She stood no chance.

However, Marie Antoinette and the King were hopeless and useless - they did nothing to revert the tide of public opinion against them. They were extravagant, without any real sense of the misery their subjects lived in. They were true cuckoos in cloud-cuckooland. "Spin" had not yet been invented - they certainly could have done with a PJ Mara or Alastair Campbell at court!

My YouTube Channel - more views than either the Open University or Trinity College

2011-11-21T23:22:00.000Z

Last Wednesday (November 16th) - my Learn with YouTube hit a new landmark figure. For the first time the viewing figures crept over 3,000 views in one day. As I've written many times before, it is very gratifying to me that so many people find my learning videos so useful - the Channel is going from strength to strength.

Image link to Scoop.it.

YouTube provides detailed analytics for the channel and its individual videos. As I write this post the channel has 621,911 views. YouTube also attempt to show most viewed channels and videos in each category. I classify all mine as "Education" videos, but the Education Most Viewed list does not show channels like mine - it concentrates instead on Colleges and Universities. At the top of the list with a staggering 97 million views is the Khan Academy. So I checked out where my channel would fit on this list.

Guess what - I would be at #78 in the top YouTube 100 Education channels in the world! I do realize that if this list included all channels classified as "Education" that I would be way further down the list as channels similar to mine would inevitably get higher on the list. However, I would be ahead of The Open University Channel on 612,506 views, and behind St Petersburg College (Florida) on 632,807 views. No Irish College or University makes the top 100 - my view count is about 3.5 times that of Trinity College (176,681 views).

Sure aren't I great all together? It's fun to compare figures and see where my piece of the learning world fits in with the big boys.

Graduations at NCI

2011-11-19T12:48:00.001Z

Yesterday was Graduation Day at the National College of Ireland - a real highlight of the academic year for me. Many students graduating have been in my classroom over the years - my especial congratulations go out to the B.A. (Hons) in Technology Management, the B.A. in Management of Technology in Business, and the Certificate in Business Analysis classes. Well done to you all. Lots of smiling faces of graduates who were the best dressed I have ever seen them over four years! It got me thinking of my own last graduation day in July 1988 in Trinity. As academics attending the NCI ceremony, we get to wear the same gown used for our graduations - in my case the colourful Trinity PhD scarlet and gold gown. So I had my photo taken and compare it below with a photo taken 23 years ago. The gown is the same, but the rest has changed quite a bit!

My own Graduation Day (with my Dad),
14th July, 1988

At the NCI Graduation Day,
18th November, 2011

The NCI ceremony was held in the National Convention Centre, and it was my first time in this magnificent building. At least this will be a fine legacy of the building boom years in Ireland that we can leave with pride to future generations.

Roma in South Africa

2011-11-17T22:50:00.001Z

Right now - Roma is in Capetown on the Niall Mellon Township Trust Building Blitz 2011. She arrived there on Saturday and started work at 0700 on Sunday morning. I have spoken to her twice since she started on the Blitz - she sounds exhausted, but very happy. The Trust has a Facebook Page - check it out for photos and good wishes coming from people back home here in Ireland.

The Blitz have some folks uploading photos to the Trust Facebook page - Roma is on the Grey Team, but no sign of her yet on the photo album despite my efforts through comments to get more photos of her team. Maybe tomorrow? If so I will link to on this blog.

We are surviving at home without Roma. This evening for dinner we had three sausages and some chicken that had to be cooked. Since she is away we didn't cook any vegetables ;-). We had only one potato left, so we supplemented it with a bag of chips from Aldo's in Cabinteely. Harley (the cat) has hidden his food from us, and the goldfish in the fish tank is looking more appetizing by the day! Tomorrow I think we'll get a Chinese takeaway from Fu Moon.

Social Media Presence Infographic

2011-11-15T16:13:00.001Z

Yesterday I delivered a Guest Lecture to some fourth year students here in the College - something I have rarely done during my career as a Lecturer. I think this may only be the second or third time at most that I have been asked to do a guest lecture in NCI - many thanks to @pj_wall for inviting me into his class.

The lecture was basically about my own experience and presence on the World Wide Web. I tried my best not to be in a "look at me and aren't I great" mode. Perhaps my lecture would help to inspire students to think about their web presence and develop it to the best of their abilities. For the lecture I prepared one slide (always a good idea not to have too many slides) showing the following infographic:

This shows how my Blog, YouTube Channel, Twitter, Facebook, and Linkedin communicate with one another - for example: when I publish a blog post, Blogger automatically sends out a tweet through Twitter, updates my Facebook page, and adds to my Linkedin page. One post, four updates to give me activity on several sites. Gmail helps me to manage everything as each social network tool automatically sends me an email if someone comments on my blog, retweets one of my tweets, likes something on Facebook, or comments on Linkedin.

Also above I for the first time showed off my new website (which has taken me two years to get going) - www.thereshouldbealaw.ie! It is hosted on Tumblr and has its own Twitter account (@thereshudbalaw), and Gmail account. I'll blog about this at a later date.

All of the above takes up quite a bit of time, but thanks to automatic feeds, I don't have to visit each site on a regular basis. My blog and YouTube channel takes up most time. I rarely post directly onto Twitter, Facebook, and Linkedin - preferring instead for Blogger to do the work for me.

Reputations - William of Orange

2011-11-15T09:37:00.002Z

Last evening the Reputations II series of lectures from the Department of History in Trinity College continued after a two week break with a lecture on William of Orange presented by Dr Robert Armstrong. This was a fascinating lecture with the theme of William as a European Statesman - there were many facts and interpretations of William that I had not known before. I was hooked on every word wonderfully presented by Dr Armstrong.

William of Orange.
Image link to Leibnitiana.

William of Orange (or William III) is mostly known to us Irish as the Protestant King who won the "Cogadh an Da Ri" (War of the two Kings) over the Catholic King James II. He was the victor at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690 and is remembered particularly in Northern Ireland by the Loyalist community there. He is not particularly remembered in any other country.

However, as Dr Armstrong told us, William was not really interested in Ireland (he only stayed here for a few months). Instead, he cared about England's position in Europe and the prevention of French dominance. He succeeded in keeping the Netherlands independent, though at a high territorial cost, from the French. When he invaded England in 1688, he may not have intended to become King. He was known to be religiously tolerant, but was also a private and cold person. He was almost constantly at war during his adult life, but was not an especially outstanding commander. His main aim in life seemed to be "Stop the French" and Louis XIV.

Overall - this was a memorable lecture on a leading European character who had a huge influence on Irish history.

This Blog is Five Years Old Today!

2011-11-13T11:11:00.000Z

On 13th November 2006 I created this blog with a short My First Post. I posted my second post the day after with a note about my Harley-Davidson motorcycle, but did not post again until four months later on 11th March 2007. In fact during the first year of this blog's existence I only posted FIVE times in total. It was really only in early 2008 that I started to post regularly, with seven posts in February and 124 for the year. These days I can't imagine such a low level of activity. Nowadays I average over 20 posts a month - not quite every day, but fairly regularly nonetheless. I rarely post more than once a day, though I sometimes write more than one post in a day and hold some back to publish on another day.

Image link to Rosy ~ Posy Blog.

This is the 717th published post on this blog, and the 234th this year. Simply put - I love blogging! I may even be addicted to blogging - according to this site, I am 80% addicted!

80%

Over the past five years I have posted about many things - family, sport, education, politics, travel, holidays, books, films, motorbikes, YouTube, and many more subjects. I don't have a particular theme, and I don't blog as part of my job. In fact I rarely blog during working hours since I was once wrongly accused by a student of writing a blog post instead of answering that student's email during the day. Nowadays during work hours I usually either publish a post that I have previously written, or write about education matters (which is part of my job).

Below are some statistics from Blogger's Stats Overview of my blog which only goes back to going back to May 2009. Currently there is an average of about 100-120 hits per day according to Statcounter.com (as you can see Blogger has a higher count). I am very curious as to why the most popular post of all is my How To... Draw a Polar Diagram in Excel - nearly three times more than the next post. I cannot explain this - perhaps it is search engines that are responsible. I regularly post about videos I have uploaded to YouTube, but this one is low down in YouTube View Counts (4,753 views since December 2008). In fact it is only the 28th most popular video on my Learn with YouTube channel. I have seen it linked to on other sites, but can't explain its popularity.

Many of my blog posts, especially from 2008 and 2009, have not been read at all (0 views), or have just a few views. Most traffic sources are from Twitter, Facebook, and Google. Most searches that lead to the blog are searches for variations on my name. Ireland, the United States, and the UK dominate page views by countries. It will be interesting to see in another five years if anything changes!

Classic Motorcycles Show at Leopardstown

2011-11-12T17:51:00.001Z

Today I went up to Leopardstown Racecourse to see the IVVMCC Annual Classic Motorcycle Show. There was quite a big crowd there with of course a lot of bikers attending. There were also some families with small children. But what a disappointment the Show was!

Honda CD175.

For a start, there were not many vintage bikes on show. There were plenty of stalls selling all kinds of parts and bits n' bobs for bikes. A more accurate title for the event might have been the "Annual Bike Bits in a Box Jumble Sale". None of the old parts interested me - mostly because I didn't know what this bar, or that pipe, or the other lump of iron was for. Of courses there were enthusiasts there who were drooling over all the bits, but sadly - not me. There were a few old bikes - but I'd say no more than 20 in total. There was even a guy selling country and western CDs!

I was tempted to enter a draw for a Harley-Davidson Sportster - but tickets at €50 each was a bit rich for me. The most interesting items by far for me were two Honda CD175s, one red and one blue, for sale at one of the stalls. I took a photo - the red one is just like the same bike my brother Joe and I had back in the late 1970s (see photo to left! - that's me leaning on the bike!). So this was quite a nostalgic moment for me - our red CD175 was stolen from Trinity College on 8th December 1981. The bike above brought back some memories. I asked about it and the guys on the stand think it was a 1978 model - they wanted €400 for it. It is not working and would take quite a bit of rebuild and repair to get it going. As someone who has almost no mechanical knowledge, I thought about buying it for about 2 seconds and decided not to. As you can see it is in pretty poor shape, even though it is 33 years old.

Clever Clogs (again)!

2011-11-09T23:06:00.003Z

This evening Roma and I went to a Table Quiz in aid of Tightrope Productions - a drama production company based in Dún Laoghaire. Our daughter Vicki is a member of the company. The quiz was held in the Baker's Corner pub and was attended by mostly young people.

Image link to 1stForToys.co.uk.

We found the quiz quite hard - there were just the two of us in our team - I felt like Johnnie No-Mates! In the end between us we scored 57 out of 100 points, but it was enough to WIN! We were in the lead for most of the quiz, closely followed by another team (of six adults). We were ahead by 1 point going into the final round, but won by 3 points in the end. First prize was €40, which we did not accept - preferring that it be added to the fund-raising for the evening. We had a very enjoyable evening - I even won the raffle in which first prize was a €30 voucher for Diffney's Menswear!

57/100 is actually a very low score to win a quiz. Three weeks ago at the Killiney Lions Club quiz night (in which I prepared the questions and was also quizmaster) - a score of 86/100 was the winning score. So I won't get carried away with this victory. Nevertheless, it is exciting to be leading a quiz and winning in the end. In February of 2010 I was also part of a winning team in another Killiney Lions Club quiz night with a score of 82/100 - so we are on a roll!

Recent business closures in my area

2011-11-08T23:25:00.001Z

Yesterday TGI Friday's on Newtownpark Avenue in Blackrock (South Dublin) closed - this is directly across the road from our estate. It used to be The Playwright pub, which was a very popular pub when we moved here in 1996. A few years ago during The Boom it was purchased for over €8 million and redeveloped as TGIs. In the beginning it was extremely popular - especially with families. I can remember waiting up to an hour for a table with a radio controlled buzzer to be called to a free table. The food was nice and very American - but over priced. Nevertheless we went there on many occasions as it was very handy to our house. In the last few years there was no bother getting a table (I wonder where the buzzers have been?). Large sections of the restaurant were closed off, and the number of staff greatly reduced. Food quality suffered too as the company tried desperately to stay in business with special offers (eg a pint for €2), and even introduced pool tables recently. It couldn't last and sadly is now no more.

View Larger Map

TGI Fridays in one of several businesses to shut this year close to my house in the Google map above. To the right the Centra is closed, and a small barber shop too is gone. To the left is TGIs, and not visible is Papa's restaurant which closed earlier this year. This gloom of closed and empty shops is I'm told repeated all over the country. It's almost impossible to find any areas with small businesses and shops that don't have empty premises. Some will stay closed for many years, while others may re-open under a new name (Centra above traded as Blackrock Fair for a few months before it finally closed a few weeks ago).

A flicker of light is that a new restaurant is about to open in the old Papa's premises. It is undergoing renovations right now and will open as "Blackrock's New Dining Experience" soon under the name of Le Plancha. I wish whoever is brave enough to do this very well, and I'll be sure to support this new venture. In the midst of all the doom and gloom, there is hope.

Birthday Dinner

2011-11-06T17:28:00.000Z

Last evening the O'Loughlin clan gathered to celebrate my sister Kathleen's 50th birthday at the Sha-Roe Bistro in Clonegal, Co Carlow. The evening started in Osbournes Pub where we managed a pint before dinner. This is a very quaint and picturesque pub with a wood stove in the centre of the bar - well worth checking out as it is also beside the starting point for the Wicklow Way. We proceeded to Sha-Roe next door.

The Birthday Girl!

As you can see - the birthday girl looked very glamorous (as did the rest of the family). We all very much enjoyed the evening and I think it was a special one for her too. Plenty of banter and chat - we even sang some songs after dinner!

The Sha-Roe Bistro is a gem - it was my first time ever to eat here, it is a top class restaurant. Its chef, Henry Stone, is Georgina Campbell's Chef of the Year for 2011. I anticipated a fine meal and I was not disappointed. We had a table to ourselves (nine of us) beside the kitchen a little removed from the main restaurant - this was just as well for the packed diners in the other room as we were quite boisterous.

The food was simply perfect - I had a to-die-for seafood "bouillabaisse" as a starter. Rich and tasty - clearly a lot of effort went into making this. Several of us had perfect rib-eye steak for main course, while others had the delicious venison. Everybody at the table enjoyed every bite - it was quite simply a divine dining experience. I will certainly be back - recommended.

So - "Happy Birthday" to Kayo for another year!

Seven Reasons Why Educators Should Blog

2011-11-05T15:10:00.001Z

Steve Wheeler is a blogger who I sometimes check out - he is Associate Professor of Learning Technology at Plymouth University. Recently I checked out his post - Learning with 'e's: Seven reasons teachers should blog. He writes that from his "personal experience blogging is one of the most beneficial professional development activities I have ever engaged with. I learn more from blogging than I do from almost any other activity I participate in". I too learn a lot from blogging - here are Professor Wheeler's seven reasons why teachers should blog:

Blogging causes you to reflect
Blogging can crystalise your thinking
Blogging can open up new audiences
Blogging can create personal momentum
Blogging can give you valuable feedback
Blogging can be creative
Blogging can raise your game

A comment from Doug Woods on the blog in reaction
to above also adds:

8. Blogging is fun

Image link to
Open Gardens Blog.

Each of the above points is developed further, but point #3 is my favourite. Prof Wheeler writes "You can become a teacher within an infinitely larger classroom, and as you blog on subjects you think are interesting, you will discover that there are plenty of other education professionals 'out there' who are also interested. I don't know how many educators read this blog - there are an average of 80-100 unique visits per day, I hope that some are involved in education. As Prof Wheeler puts it, they can perhaps "learn something new from you".

There are also reasons for educators not to blog. Peter Corliss in a comment on Prof Wheeler's blog points out concerns about issues such as "privacy", IT "policies", "bad-mouthing", "exposing flaws", and "embarrassment". I agree that these are serious issues that are putting up barriers to more widespread blogging.

Two of my academic colleagues at NCI are bloggers - check out Dr Leo Casey and Prof Jimmy Hill. It would be great if others did so too :-).

Solidarity with the Greeks

2011-11-04T11:20:00.000Z

Lots of opinion and comment in the news and media this morning about the Greeks - most shed this beautiful country in a poor light, with the open thinking now being that Greece could drag both the euro and Europe into crisis. In Germany - Bild says that Greece and Papandreou are "zerstört" (destroyed), while our own Examiner newspaper uses words like "debacle" and "drama".

Panathanaikos FC
Image link to Wikipedia.

Me - I like Greece. I admired their Euro 2004 team for the way they won the European Championship without multi-millionaire celebrity stars. I have been to Athens three times and loved it, and I have also holidayed in Crete. In all cases the people were very friendly and helpful. The restaurants and bars were always excellent value, and good quality to boot. I even got to like Ouzo when I was there!

While in Athens I bought a Panathanaikos FC t-shirt - it has an interesting logo with a shamrock. I'm sure I'm not the only Irish person to buy one of their shirts.

Today, as the ordinary Greek people are going though a very tough time, not all of their own making, I am wearing my Panathanaikos FC t-shirt as a sign of solidarity and support for the ordinary Greek people who have to pay for the sins and mistakes of others.

NCI's 60th Anniversary Ceremony

2011-11-03T23:03:00.000Z

This evening I attended the 60th Anniversary celebrations for the National College of Ireland (NCI). The College first started in February 1951 and is still going strong 60 years later. There were about 200 people at the event which was held in the Atrium of the College. It was great to catch up with colleagues - both present and retired. Little bit of name-dropping, I also chatted with Norma Smurfit and Nora Owen - two very nice ladies.

The speeches did go on a bit - there were eight in total. However, it was good to hear about times past in the College and to experience a little bit of nostalgia as two former Presidents - Joyce O'Conner and Paul Mooney spoke about what NCI means to them. A nice touch too was some speeches from former and current students.

Overall - a very enjoyable evening. Congratulations to all involved in NCI - here's to the next 60 years!

Kayo Five-O

2011-11-01T09:50:00.000Z

It's my sister Kathleen's birthday today - welcome to the over 50's club Kayo! From now on you will have to start listening to those over 50 ads on the radio - but don't worry, I think that when they say "over 50" they really mean "over 60"?

Kayo's party piece for many years was a version of "Singing in the Rain" when she got us all to put hands, knees, and everything else together. Great fun!

Here's the scene from the film of the same name starring Gene Kelly in one of cinema's classic moments. This is for you Kayo - have a great day...

The World at Seven Billion: What's your number?

2011-10-31T22:42:00.000Z

Today the world's population reached seven billion - it's astonishing that so many people could exist on one planet at the same time. At the time I was born in 1959, the world population was just under three billion - so it has more than doubled in my lifetime. There's obviously a lot of sex going on!

The BBC have an interesting site where you can calculate where you fit in this population growth. Just enter your date of birth and it will do the rest - here's my data:

Screen shot from BBC's The World at Seven Billion.

So - I was the 2,997,910,172nd person alive on earth when I was born. Also incredible is the number of 76,613,447,508 which is my number since history began. The site also tells me that the average life expectancy of a male in Ireland is 77.3 years - so I have 25 years left (better make the most of it!). Interestingly, the world population grew by 265 people while I was on the BBC site.

What's your number?

President Higgins

2011-10-29T10:34:00.003+01:00

Congratulations to Michael D. Higgins on winning the Presidential Election with a huge vote, he won by 19,000 in my own Dun Laoghaire constituency. Even though I voted #1 for David Norris as promised, I think that Michael D will be an excellent President of Ireland. It must be the easiest job in Ireland, with a nice house to go with it. But he will command respect from all Irish people and will be a true Irishman when representing our country.

What a shitty election campaign - Michael D alone escaped the personal skeleton digging that went on. It might be easy to blame the Media (they do bear some blame), though each candidate must accept that they were not perfect. I'm certain that Michael D will serve just one term - so we'll all get the same circus again in 7 years. Message for Fine Gael - start choosing now who you want to run and build them up as a potential President over the next 7 years. Michael D has effectively been canvassing since 2004.

Niall O'Loughlin (no relation) has some super caricatures of Michael D - see here for more.

Image link to Niall O'Loughlin's Blog.

How To... Create a Basic KPI Dashboard in Excel 2010

2011-10-28T08:59:00.001+01:00

With increasing amounts of data now being processed and the concept of "Big Data" taking over Business Intelligence and Analytics - it is important to be able to use tools to visualize large amount of data. Since many people use Excel for Data Analysis - it makes sense for people to be able to use what they are familiar with to analyse their data.

Last week I saw a neat Excel Spreadsheet that had traffic light icons (red, amber, and green) beside some of the figures on the sheet. They were being used as a KPI Dashboard - KPI stands for Key Performance Indicator. The traffic lights were being used as a status for each number to provide a visualization of the data. If you see a lot of green lights you get a sense that overall performance is good, but a lot of red lights indicate poor performance.

It turns out that this type of KPI dashboard is really easy to create using the Excel Conditional Formatting function. For example, just tell Excel that any percentage value over 90% should show a green light, any value between 80%-89% should show an amber light, and any value less than 80% should show a red light. This will result in a series of traffic lights whose colour will depend on the values shown. Check out my latest YouTube video to learn "How To... Create a Basic KPI Dashboard in Excel 2010":

Facebook for Business

2011-10-27T19:02:00.002+01:00

Last evening I attended a lecture by Ciarán Quilty of Facebook who gave us an interesting talk on "Facebook for Business". This was part of NCI's 60th Anniversary Lecture Series. A large crowd attended and I was also glad to see quite a lot of students in the crowd. Clearly there was a lot of interest in anything to do with Facebook, and how it can be used for business.

Image link to woosamedia.

Facebook is essentially being used in the main for advertising and marketing. At least this is what Facebook themselves are saying. Other companies are using Facebook and building Apps for it so that e-Business can take place. Ciarán gave us some impressive figures - 800,000,000 Facebook users worldwide, 0 users in China. We also had examples of how some companies are using Facebook to drive business - a good example was a flower shop that promoted its business through "Likes" and networking. The marketing map has certainly changed with the arrival of Facebook in this space. Nearly every Dublin Bus that I see carrying advertising has the Facebook (and Twitter) logo displayed prominently.

Fabric Cards by Vivienne.

I nice touch at the event, hosted by my colleague Desmond Gibney, was the introduction of a start-up Irish company after the lecture who told us about their experience with Facebook. Cards by Vivienne was set up by a former lecturer in NCI Vivienne Maher. It's a good example of how a start-up can piggyback on the free services of Facebook. It's a slow start and takes a long time to build up.

Why not drop by Cards By Vivienne and give her a "Like" - she is just 6 "Likes" away from her first 100!

Reputations - Elizabeth I

2011-10-25T08:31:00.005+01:00

Last evening's lecture in the extra-mural series of lectures by the Dept of History in Trinity was delivered by Professor Ciarán Brady. The subject was the reputation of Queen Elizabeth I.

Elizabeth I.
Image link to Wikipedia.

Prof Brady must be the most enthusiastic lecturer I have ever heard. He absolutely loves his subject and is extremely knowledgeable about Elizabeth, the Tudors, and the mid to late 16th century. In what was a very entertaining lecture, and the best so far in the series, Prof Brady discussed first the reason why Elizabeth never married. This was a combination of her not wanting to marry a Catholic, get involved in Europe's wars, and not wanting to offend the local aristocracy. He told us that he cannot get inside her mind, but he believes these to be the main reasons why she defied everyone's wishes that she should marry.

Prof Brady also discussed Elizabeth as a politician and her difficulties being a woman in a man's world. Her principle predicament was not having the elements at Court that her father Henry VIII had in gathering intelligence to keep her informed of what was going on. Instead she turned to hunting and setting up a series of favourites to keep her informed.

A lively discussion followed during which I asked why she was not married off at an early age by her siblings. Apparently this was because her family were afraid of her producing offspring and the best way to manage her was to keep her barren.

A two week break now before the next lecture. This is an excellent series with lectures by some of the country's most foremost historians - well worth the €100 fee.

Irish Computer Lecturer is a YouTube hit

2011-10-24T08:52:00.004+01:00

That's me!

My Learn with YouTube Channel banner.

The Marketing Department in NCI issued a News Release about my Learn with YouTube channel on Friday - it was picked up by the Silicon Republic News site, and fed to many other sites (eg see here, here, and here). The news release was prepared earlier this week, but I did not know it was going to be released on Friday. I first noticed that something was up when I started to get a lot of emails from YouTube Service telling me that I had a new subscriber to the channel - in fact I got 37 new subscribers on Friday, mostly from Ireland. I now have a total of 570 subscribers, and 551,598 views as I write.

In the overall scheme of things - 584 subscribers and 555,013 views is very small compared to other channels and videos, but I still get a thrill every time I see the numbers go up. Monday last (17th October) was the highest ever daily viewing figures when 2,757 people tuned in to learn from my videos. In contrast I had one class on the same Monday with 28 students, and another with 18 students.

I hope to get some time this coming week to prepare a new video based on creating a KPI dashboard in Excel, which I learned how to do myself last week.

The National Car Test (NCT)

2011-10-22T12:51:00.001+01:00

I took my 2005 Volkswagen Golf for its second NCT this morning (what made me book a time for 8.45 in the morning on a Saturday?). I don't use the Golf that much - especially during the week when I bike it to work. So it doesn't get much abuse. The car was tested straight away - the whole setup at the NCT Centre in Deansgrange was very efficient. The test took just 20 minutes and the Golf passed with flying colours!

Image Link to Portarlington Tyres.

What is it about the NCT that makes the experience a personal one? We all love our cars and maybe feel that they are part of us. I know a lot of people, like me, feel as if it is ourselves that is being tested - not the car. I was nervous and worried about having to get expensive repairs done before a retest. I was able to watch the whole test from the viewing room - I have to say that the mechanics/testers know their jobs very well and seem to be well able to test any type of car. I couldn't help think that it would be a great experience for my 4th year Business Process Management students to watch this and see if this very efficient process can be improved even further (my car had to wait about 5 minutes while the car ahead was cleared from a ramp).

So - I'm sure that the little bit of pride (and relief) that I felt as I was putting the new NCT badge on my windscreen is shared by many. No more worries for the next two years!

Quizmaster

2011-10-21T09:21:00.000+01:00

Last evening I had the pleasure of being the Quiz master for the Killiney Lions Club Quiz Night in the Rochestown Lodge Hotel - the Lions were raising money for the local National Rehabilitation Hospital. We had 13 tables at the quiz - a little down on last year, but nevertheless a good evening was had by all with over €1,000 raised.

The Quiz Master.
Image link to
Freequizzes.co.uk.

The best part for me was that I actually prepared the questions for the quiz - 10 rounds of 10 questions each, 100 in total. It was much harder than I thought, I had to balance hard with easier questions to give everybody a chance. The winning team scored 86 points (out of 100), with second on 82 points. The winners are a team that go to a lot of quizzes, and they told me that the found the quiz very balanced and also a challenging one (they usually score higher). Some teams found the going tough, and I saw one older participant throwing his hands in the air when I asked about the name of the Michael Jackson series of concerts in London that were to be held when he died (Answer: "This is it!").

Writing questions is fun, but also a delicate exercise. The tables ranged from my daughter Vicki's table of 16/17 year old's to tables with retired participants - so I mixed in questions from the Simpsons with Shakespeare. I also discarded questions that upon reflection I felt were too hard and unlikely to be answered except by a small minority. So I changed "In the Beatles song Mean Mr Mustard, what did Mr Mustard keep up his nose?" (Answer: A Ten Bob Note) to "In what film featuring music by The Beatles would you find characters called The Blue Meanies?" (Answer: Yellow Submarine).

Here's the first round of questions - see how you get on (two tables got 10/10 in this round):

Who scored the first point for Dublin in this year's All-Ireland Senior Football Final against Kerry?
Mary Byrne, of X-Factor fame, worked for which supermarket chain at the time of her success on the show?
Who was the U.S. President’s wife who opened an addiction Clinic in California?
What do the letters in the acronym WYSIWYG mean?
What is the name of the pet greyhound in The Simpsons TV cartoon show?
In what county in Ireland would you find a town called Carnew?
What company's logo features on the front of Premiership side Chelsea's shirt?
How many counties are there in Leinster?
Siam is the former name for which country?
Who is the current President of Killiney Lion's Club?

Business Intelligence and Analytics in the Cloud #cloudarena

2011-10-19T20:57:00.000+01:00

Today I attended a half day event at NCI about "Business Intelligence and Analytics in the Cloud" organized by CloudArena. I attended talks by IBM, Fujitsu, Microsoft, and Staff Balance. There was quite a mix of people at the event, including two ex-colleagues from SmartForce with whom I had a great chat.

Image link to Komplett.ie.

I found the event to be more about Cloud Computing than about BI and Analytics. My main purpose for attending was to glean some information from industry to support my initiative in NCI to create new programmes in BI and Analytics. I can't say that I am any the wiser, but it was interesting to see what company's are doing in the Cloud space. We learned about Social Network mining and how organizations like IMRO use cloud computing for in depth data manipulation such as matching over 25,000,000 songs with airplay and royalty payments.

At the Q&A session at the end I asked a question about what skills people in the industry would like experts in BI and Analytics. The stock answer to this seems to be "Understand the business plan and manage the change - Technology is secondary" - and I got this today. When I pushed a bit further I got key skills like visualization and analysis of data.

Overall - an enjoyable afternoon, though a bit long. I enjoyed the networking and each presentation I attended was well done.

Professor Ferdinand von Prondzynski on Quality in Higher Education

2011-10-18T18:22:00.002+01:00

Former DCU President Ferdinand von Prondzynski is a man who speaks common-sense - almost everything I hear from him I always give myself a mental "Here Here". Today he writes in his University Blog about quality in Higher Education.

Ferdinand von Prondzynski.
Image link to Sligo IT.

FvP points out first that it is hard "to identify what quality actually is, how it can be recognised and how it can be measured". According to FvP there is too much emphasis on process because there is no real definition of what quality is. He writes that "because nobody has anything much to say as to what quality is, the temptation is to get out of this dilemma by focusing entirely on process: we cannot say whether what you teach is good quality, but we can ask whether you have followed the 20 prescribed steps when you developed the programme and are counting the answers students have given in the feedback questionnaires". I hear this! As far as I can tell this is the way quality is measured in many institutions. What about teaching quality?

This is my 10th academic year in NCI and to date there has not been a single evaluation of my teaching by anyone other than the handful of students who happen to be in the class on the day student surveys are taken. Mostly this evaluation is meaningless (eg I once got a 100% rating only to discover that there was only one or two respondents!). In fact I am almost horrified to report that only once has one of my colleagues come into any of my classes - and that was just for a few minutes at the beginning of one class. I might think that I deliver good quality lectures, but how do I know that I do? In fact I also have never been at any of my colleague's lectures either! How do I know that they are?

Teaching unions, and many others (including lecturers) will be sceptical about any attempt to measure quality of teaching in higher education. However, I feel that until this happens that the form filling, reporting, and "20 prescribed steps" that we all have to do will always be considered as getting in the way of teaching - it's not part of an overall quality process.

Reputations - John Calvin

2011-10-17T22:50:00.002+01:00

This evening's lecture from the Reputations course in Trinity was about John Calvin (1509-1564) who created a version of Christian theology called Calvinism. The lecture was delivered by Dr Graeme Murdock, who I have to say demonstrates extraordinary enthusiasm for such (in his words) a "dour" character.

Calvin as shown to us by Dr Murdock.
Image link to Calvin Campus Store.

John Calvin is best known as the person on whom Calvinism is based - though he did not set out to found a new religion. He was a workaholic who espoused a moral way of life that in the 16th century was attractive to people who wanted to study the bible and practice their own religion. Catholics at that time were not allowed to read the bible, and the church was corrupt (think the Borgias!). Interestingly he promoted the idea that all Christians were far worse morally that they could ever conceive, and that life was about living according to certain rules of morality. He wrote a book (Institutes of the Christian Religion in 1536) that was well received and was intended to be read alongside the bible - this was a revelation for believers at the time. Calvin did not want his grave to be marked - preferring that in death, as in life, that the body did not matter.

There were 16 people like me at the lecture, including one Calvinist who regaled us of the strictness of the religion when he was growing up. This lecture was one of the most interactive, with comment and questions happening throughout (and not just at the end as in previous lectures). A very enjoyable evening and course so far.

Singing in the Choir

2011-10-16T16:30:00.000+01:00

I finally took part in singing in the church choir in Blackrock this morning. As it was my first time I was a bit nervous - especially meeting the other members of the choir for the first time.

St John the Baptist Church, Blackrock.
Image link to Wikipedia.

Men are scarce in choirs, so I am already considered a valuable asset to the choir. I am now one of three male members of the choir. Basically today I just joined in with the others when I could - many of the hymns were not familiar to me. I was even signing in Latin - Fr Patrick, my Latin teacher in Roscrea, would have been proud of me finally finding a use for his subject. I will not be able to attend any choir practice for the next few weeks as it clashes with my Reputation II classes in Trinity. This is a pity because I could really do with the practice.

Nevertheless, I did enjoy the occasion - and my Mum will be happy too!

GOAL Jersey Day

2011-10-15T22:56:00.000+01:00

A quick note to mention that the final total collected by staff and students of NCI was €300 - a great total raised for water and sanitation facilities for schools in Calcutta in India. I also note that our photo made it onto the GOAL website along with lots of other fund raisers. Irish rugby international Jamie Heaslip is a patron of GOAL, and he shows in the following video what the money we raised will be used for:

I had great fun doing this and hope to push it again next year in the College - a final thanks to all for their generous contributions.

Trinity Fresher's Week 1978

2011-10-12T22:48:00.003+01:00

Today's Irish Times in one of its regular Archive pieces selects the 12th October 1978 as today's recollection from the past. This article from 33 years ago today is about Fresher's Week in Trinity. And of course it was also my first week in Trinity too, and I was surely there on this date.

Fresher's Week in Trinity.
Image link to TCD.ie.

On 12th October 1978 I had just passed my 19th birthday and was entering Trinity for the first time. As I have written elsewhere in this blog I was completely unready for College life and Fresher's week was a huge awakening for me. The Times reports that "Politicians were plying students with drink" - Garret Fitzgerald, Peter Barry, Enda Kenny, and Mary Harney among others were present to try to get us "Freshers" to join political parties. I remember this quite well - there were a lot of politicians around. I wasn't tempted to join a political party to see them, or get the free drink. I was completely overwhelmed by all the stalls, and Clubs and Societies badgering everyone to join up. The only thing I joined was the Gaelic Football Club who had a stall just inside Front Gate. Beside them was the Soccer Club which I had queued up to join, but the guy in front of me said he was a goalkeeper (which I wanted to be) and I thought that since there was only one keeper position I should try something else. Hence the GAA club. I don't really recall why I didn't join anything else - I do remember that it cost 50p to join any club.

Rocky de Valera and The Gravediggers.
Image link to grassisblue1's photostream.

Can you remember your Fresher's Week? How did you feel? What did you join? Did you join loads of things and not bother to show up? Fresher's Week is an important week in the lives of all students, but I was too shy to participate fully. By the time I got to 2nd year I did participate a bit more - I even went to the Fresher's Ball for the one and only time. Rocky de Valera and the Gravediggers were the headline act. The previous year it had been The Boomtown Rats.

Students can find out a lot more about life in College than I ever could - the Internet makes this easy. Trinity now has a full web page devoted to Fresher's Week - something I would have found very useful in 1978.

Good on The Irish Times for reminding me of my own Fresher's Week.

Reputations - Henry "The Navigator"

2011-10-11T13:22:00.001+01:00

The series of extramural lectures on Reputations II: The World's Greatest given by the School of History and Humanities in Trinity, continued last evening with an excellent lecture by Dr David Ditchburn on "Henry the Navigator".

Discoveries Monument in Lisbon.
Image link to GoLisbon.com.

The lecture was as much about Portugal's expansion between 1415 and 1460, as about Henry himself. The most surprising thing for me to discover was that Henry never sailed on any of the expeditions during this period. If fact it is suspected that Henry never even left Portugal! The title "Navigator" was only assigned to him in the 1800s - over 400 years after his death. He certainly supported and benefited enormously from the expeditions.

Dr Ditchburn explored the many reasons why Portugal expanded first in Morocco, and then on to other parts of Africa. There was a strong Crusader influence to the expansion - the Moors had only been kicked out of Portugal not long before the expansion began. Rivalry with Spain was a key influence. There was also a "something to do" motive for Henry's father Joao I's sons to be involved in. Curiosity about what lay beyond the current limits of exploration also played a part, as did overcoming the de-population of Portugal during the Black Death in the previous century. Undoubtedly the lure of gold and booty also attracted adventurers.

Henry certainly did not deserve the title "The Navigator", but as Dr Ditchburn pointed out - it also has a modern context in that Portugal's dictators (Caetano and Salazar) in the 20th century looked to historical characters like Henry to promote him as a global Portuguese hero.

Finally, I found that this lecture was most interesting and it held my attention throughout. This is a tribute to Dr Ditchburn's ability to keep us interested and focused on a fascinating character from history.

Initial Thoughts on 2011 Election for President

2011-10-09T18:15:00.004+01:00

The campaign for the election of our new President has been going on for a while now. While I am very interested in the election, I have not written about it much - other than writing about waist lines! The campaign has so far been very nasty in my view. Gay Mitchell is already painted as a loser, Dana has been ridiculed over her dual US-Ireland citizenship, David Norris has been pilloried mercilessly about letters, Seán Gallagher is being linked with Fianna Fáil, Mary Davis can't deal with being asked about board memberships, Martin McGuinness is continually asked about the IRA, only Michael D seems to be escaping the at time vicious delving into each of the candidates pasts. FFS - Irish Times journalist Colm Keena (a classmate of mine in Trinity) confessed on radio that he used Google to find a story about Dana (Dana became US citizen before 1997 election bid).

The seven Presidential Candidates.
Image link to RTÉ.ie.

I intend to just vote #1 and #2 - but were I to vote all the way from #1 to #7 on the ballot paper, this is how it would go:

#1 - Senator David Norris

I have always voted #1 for David Norris in the Trinity Senate Elections (see my post from 29th March last - "I told David Norris to be Quiet"). If he stands again, I will vote #1 for him again. I see no reason to alter my support for him now. Despite getting a nomination by the skin of his teeth, he has since performed very badly. Gene Kerrigan in today's Sunday Independent called him "a crap candidate". The Trinity electorate is a much easier prospect to handle than the whole of Ireland. He has made mistakes. I would have loved to have seen him in the Áras, but I don't think he will get even close and will be eliminated at the second or third count.

#2 - Martin McGuinness

Martin McGuinness has balls - he needed them during the building of the Peace Process in Northern Ireland, and to work with the Unionists in the Assembly. He does not hide his IRA past, but there have been many failed efforts to link him to murders and robberies. Sure his past is violent, but since the early 1980s this has changed dramatically. I do see some substance in him as a politician and a populist, and I think he is a serious candidate who will easily make it to the second last count - perhaps even the last. My vote here is also tactical (aren't they all?) - as after David Norris is eliminated, I don't want my vote to transfer to any of the other candidates.

#3 - Michael D. Higgins

I don't intend to give more than a #1 or #2 vote - but if I did continue down the ballot paper MDH would be #3. I don't really have anything against him other than he is from the Labour party and that he is 70 years old. I have never voted Labour, and don't intend to start. At 70, I've no doubt he is still capable of doing the job - but he will be 77 at the end of the Presidency. I'm being ageist I know, but 77 is too old - he should retire.

#4 - Gay Mitchell

I sometimes give Fine Gael candidates in elections #3 and lower votes (after I have filled out votes for the Fianna Fáil candidates). So on that basis he would be next. I'm really surprised he is doing so badly in the polls - he has failed to inspire, and the Fine Gael leadership is clearly chickening out of supporting him in fear of being associated with a loser so soon after the General Election. I find him a very dull candidate, and I feel that he would be a dull President.

#5 - Seán Gallagher

I must confess that Gallagher is the candidate I know least about. I've never watched Dragon's Den (I'd prefer WWF to this!) - so I don't see the attraction of him at all. He is doing well in the polls - perhaps because he is not one of the other candidates. He is being linked with Fianna Fáil (from which he retired earlier this year) - I don't see this costing him votes, he might benefit from votes from FF voters (but not me) who have no candidate of their own to vote for. He will do well, but will not make it to the final count. As a Cavan man I'd expect Martin McGuinness to do well with his transfers.

#6 - Mary Davis

I'm sure Mary Davis is a decent person, but what on earth made her think that the Irish people would elect her to the highest office in the land? Sure she did a great job for the Special Olympics - but it takes more than that to become President. She is also tainted by being a serial Board Member on numerous Quangos - and making it sound like she was doing us all a favour. No - she's a lightweight in a race for heavyweights.

#7 - Dana Rosemary Scallan

"You bet your boots" Dana is a straight talking bullshitter. Likely to come last in the election she will have the least impact on the electorate. I didn't give her a vote in the 1997 election, and won't this time either. Her type of religious right-wing intolerance has no place on modern Ireland. She's out of her depth in this race and I predict she will poll badly - however, she could do well in getting the "none of the above vote".

Mobile Broadband - a long way to go

2011-10-08T11:34:00.000+01:00

I was tempted during the week to switch from eircom broadband to O2 broadband. O2 had a stand in the Atrium of the College where they were offering "up to" 7MB and 22MB packages for €9.99 a month to students. The offer (supported by HEAnet) is also open to staff of Colleges. I thought this would be a good option for our iPad - we had a prepay option which costs €19.99 for a 30-day pass, so I'd be cutting the cost in half. Good deal!

When I got chatting to the salesperson at the stand he told me that the gear he was selling was also a mobile wireless hot spot and that I could use it for up to five devices - and a 22MB connect to boot! But - there was no long queue to get this bargain. I also put up a question on Twitter and anyone that responded said that O2 service was poor. In the end I decided just to get it for the iPad.

In the Atrium of the College (smack in Dublin City Centre) I ran a speed test on the iPad which showed a connection of 0.6MB - oh dear, what had I done! I went out to the Liffey and stood across from the O2 building on Sir John Rogerson's quay which has aerials on the roof - the signal speed went up to a semi-respectable 1.5MB. When I got home to Blackrock I tried another speed test in the kitchen which showed 0.3MB, it was 0.6MB if I tried at the window at the back of the house (0.2MB at the front window). My eircom connection to my desktop computer shows 3.6MB, while if the iPad is switched to our wireless network, it gets a speed of 3.31MB. The slow speeds over the mobile network are due to no 3G in our area. This is also an area where WiMAX doesn't work either. Are mobile signals avoiding us? We live in a mobile communications black spot. So glad I was not tempted to change everything to O2!

GOAL Jersey Day at NCI

2011-10-08T00:02:00.000+01:00

Today staff and students of the National College of Ireland took part in GOAL's Jersey Day to raise funds for water and sanitation facilities in schools in Kolkata, India.

Donegal, Dublin, Meath, Manchester United,
Wicklow, and Doncaster Rovers at GOAL Jersey Day.

We had lots of GAA jerseys, with my own Wicklow jersey attracting quite a bit of attention (and slagging too!). Dublin, Kerry, Tyrone, Tipperary, Donegal, Meath, Cavan, Kildare - were all represented. There were a few rugby jerseys - Ireland, Munster, and Leinster featuring. Soccer also featured strongly - Manchester United and Liverpool were dominant, but I also saw jerseys from Barcelona, Pachuca (Mexico) Wolves, Middlesborough, Doncaster Rovers, and of course my own Preston North End jersey which I wore in the afternoon.

Lot's of us had fun with our jerseys and of course there was a lot of banter and friendly rivalry. A great splash of colour in the office today - we'll have to do it again next year.

In total we raised €292.66 - thanks to all for their generosity for this worthy cause.

My Tribute to Steve Jobs

2011-10-06T07:53:00.002+01:00

Image link to EveryBodySucksButUs.

The news this morning that Steve Jobs has died from cancer is not unexpected - but very sad nonetheless. I, like a lot of people, admired him for many years. His name, with probably only Bill Gates, was part of computer technology vocabulary - in the 1980s and 1990s he was held in the highest regard long before the iPod, iPhone, and iPad arrived.

A young Steve Jobs with the original Apple Mac.
Phote link from thenextweb.com.

When I first used the Apple Mac, exactly like the one in the photo of a young Jobs to the right, I had no idea that this was just the beginning of many years of innovation in technology. There was nothing else like it - by the time the Apple Mac was launched in 1984 I had not used a PC and the Apple II computer in the Zoology Dept in Trinity stood unused by all - all my computer use was on the DEC 20 mainframe in an old building in Pearse Street. Apple, and Jobs, has a strong influence on me in the mid-80s, but after I was finished in Trinity I have never used a Mac for anything (other than clicking on a few icons in a computer shop).

I don't know when I bought my first iPod - my daughters had them long before me. Right beside me now in my kitchen I can see my iPhone, my wife's iPad and iPod Mini, and my daughter's iPod. Each of the five of us in our family has an iPhone - we joke that we should change our name from O'Loughlin to iLoughlin.

I know that Apple is a huge organization that is bigger than one man, but it is a tribute to him that Jobs is seen as Mr Apple and that the company might not be the same again. It won't be, but it will continue to innovate and produce wonderful services and products.

May he rest in peace in iHeaven.

Reputations - Alexander the Great

2011-10-04T23:51:00.000+01:00

I went back to College yesterday for the first time in over 20 years. I am attending an extramural course in Trinity - this one is called "Reputations II: The World's Greatest". I did feel a little bit nervous walking up to the Jonathan Swift Theatre - Who would be there? Would I recognise anyone? How many would there be in the class? What would the lecturer be like? Would the course be any good?

Alexander "The Great"?
Image link to 1902encyclopedia.com

Extramural courses in Trinity are an excellent idea to give people the chance to hear experts in certain fields lecture about their areas of expertise. For the first class, Dr Shane Wallace, delivered a lecture on Alexander "The Great"? Dr Wallace is a new lecturer in Trinity and is very young - good luck to him in his academic career which has just started. He reminds me of me in my late 20s (but without a job).

The first part of the lecture was a bit tedious - it was basically a chronology of Alexander's life, battles, and conquests. Much of this would be known to anyone with a good general knowledge. But where Dr Wallace, and his lecture, came into its own was in the second part where he explored the epithet of "The Great" which was added to Alexander's name many years after his death. The main thrust of his argument was that "kingship" and "divinity" were the main contributors to the addition of "The Great" to his name. In an excellently researched background, Dr Wallace explored the many myths, legends, and recorded stories about Alexander - compares them to contemporary accounts, and truly asks the question - was Alexander "Great". I believe, on the basis of what Dr Wallace told us, that yes - he was "Great".

I enjoyed my first lecture as a "student" in 20 years. There is no registration, ID cards, or access to the Library with this course. There are eight more "Reputations" to explore - next week it is Henry the Navigator which I am looking forward to.

What Richard Byrne has Learned from 5,000 Blog Posts

2011-10-03T13:26:00.000+01:00

Richard Byrne, a "guy with a computer in western Maine" (@rmbyrne on Twitter) has a fantastic on-line resource for anybody involved in education - Free Technology for Teachers. Lots of goodies and free stuff - his video creation resources are especially good. He is also a serious blogger (he is not my uncle Richard Byrne though!).

Image link to
Free Technology for Teachers.

Yesterday, Richard posted about What I've Learned from 5,000 Blog Posts. First - this is a fantastic publishing rate, all done in under four years. It takes a serious amount of dedication to do this. While some bloggers (like me) rely on personal experiences, family events, elections, etc, for ideas to post about, Richard has a track record of posting about everything educational. His blog is worth checking out - recently he made his 5,000th post and gives us bloggers a few lessons. Here are the headings for what he writes about:

Just ship it
About growing your audience
Dealing with criticism, backlash, and mistakes
Monetization
Balance
Technical skills

I particularly like the "Balance" item - Richard strives to "find balance with the other aspects" of his life finds that if he doesn't "step away from the keyboard" he will "get stagnant and everything suffers". Good advice. This past weekend was very wet in Dublin and I hardly stepped outside the door on Saturday - I spent a lot of time on my computer.

Presidential Election 2011 - It's all about the waistline

2011-10-02T17:40:00.002+01:00

During the General Election last March I had some fun having a go at some of the candidates election posters (see here, here, and here). In the Presidential Election 2011 there are just seven candidates. Seán Gallagher has decided not to use any posters (the spoil sport!), Dana and David Norris have not yet launched their posters. So far, Michael D, Mary Davis, Martin McGuinness, and Gay Mitchell have launched posters. Mary Davis has already had to deny that her posters have been air-brushed - I have to say she looks a lot younger in her poster than on TV.

My first reaction to the four posters so far was how boring they are. The slogans are sh1te, and so far have no influence on how I will vote. However, Mary Davis has set a standard with her Special K look and clearly wants to use her slim figure to her advantage. So this set me thinking, this election is not about letters, terrorism, politics, Eurovision, or Dragon's Den - it's about who has the narrowest waist. What do you think?

The Special K Lady takes an
early lead in the waistline stakes
(image link to Irish Election Literature Blog)

A smiling Martin McGuiness claims "My
waist is so narrow I have to use a narrow
poster to prove it!"

Gay Mitchell denies he has a waist problem,
but won't show his on a poster.

Michael D tells us how narrow his waist is.

Photography Exhibition by Bonnie Cullen

2011-10-01T14:31:00.001+01:00

Last evening I attended an exhibition of photography by Bonnie Cullen. This also coincided with Bonnie's last day working with National College of Ireland. She displayed some super photos of animals, scenery, people and city scenes. I liked the one below so much I bought it - this is an image link to Bonnie's Flickr Photostream.

Photo by Bonnie Cullen.

I'm sure we will hear and see more from Bonnie, and I'd like to wish her well on her travels (especially the one up the aisle to Ian!) over the next year. I very much enjoyed the exhibition and the few jars in The Lagoona afterwards.

Choir Boy!

2011-09-28T09:00:00.001+01:00

Last Monday evening I did something that has been on my mind to do for quite some time - I joined up with a church choir. Dorothy S persuaded me to join her in the St John the Baptist Church Choir in Blackrock where I was made very welcome for practice. Thank goodness I didn't have to do an audition!

Image link to Arthur's Music Clipart.

It has been a long time since I read music (I did up to grade 5 in the piano!). I found it difficult to recognise some of the notes, but was able to participate to some extent. They have me singing bass, and I even had to sing parts for some hymns. They like their Latin Chant, and I only recognized one hymn in the whole practice session. I brought home some sheet music to practice - it will not be easy for me to get into the swing of things. I was the only guy there - I am told there are two more who no doubt will make it easier to get going.

I enjoyed the evening, the ladies of the choir were good fun and did not put me under any pressure. I'm not turned off so far, and it might even do my soul some good and get me into Heaven!

My YouTube Channel - Half a Million Views!

2011-09-27T10:01:00.000+01:00

I have just checked the viewing figures for my Learn with YouTube channel this morning and spotted that it is exactly 500,000 as I write this post! Wow! Thank you to every single person who has viewed my videos - I can safely say that this is one of the most thrilling moments in my education career. To think that what started out as a simple experiment for one of my e-Learning classes has grown to this, is amazing to me. I would need a lecture theatre with room for 1,370 students every day for a year to reach the same number of people through the classroom.

Wow!

Here's Spokesmayne who also got excited when his channel hit 500,000 views - so exited that he recorded a video about it. It pretty much sums up how I feel about this landmark right now...

European Parliament - Spoil Sports!

2011-09-26T18:00:00.001+01:00

Today's Independent newspaper reports that the European Parliament is to vote on a wide range of new laws aimed at bikers and their rides. The article, Bikers out in force against new safety rules, reports on a protest in Dublin by the Motorcyclists' Action Group. Among the proposals are to force all bikers to wear high-visibility jackets, the introduction of an NCT style test for all bikes, and no customization of bikes.

I sometimes wear a high viz vest - the photo to the right was taken near the top of a mountain in Andorra last summer when it was raining and was very cloudy. But mostly I don't. My bike has three headlamps which are on all the time - kinda hard to miss me when they are on. The long-sleeved high viz jacket that is proposed takes away from the leather jacket look, and is definitely uncool (even my sleeveless one which is decorated with Harley-Davidson logos). This new law will create a business opportunity for clothes manufacturers, as well as practically kill the leather jacket and motorclothes industry. Wearing a high-viz jacket will not make me feel safer - that will only happen when idiot drivers in cars and trucks start to pay attention on the road. Dull coloured cars being driven around with no headlights on in the twilight time by idiots are far more dangerous. Despite the noise my bike makes - some idiots don't hear me, despite the three headlights, some idiots don't see me, WTF difference will a high-viz jacket make?

An NCT test is bad news for Harley riders - mine would almost certainly fail a noise test as the exhaust pipes are Screamin' Eagle custom pipes that make a lot of noise. Very few of us keep the factory pipes. I have also customized my bike quite a lot, which both personalizes it and makes it look cooler.

These proposals are no doubt aimed at saving lives - if they save even one life in the whole of Europe, then of course they will be worthwhile. However, I feel that they are being introduced by faceless Eurocrats with nothing else to do besides spoil our fun on bikes - where is Maggie Thatcher when we need her?. I bet none of them ever had something exiting between their legs. My message to them is to "Feck Off"!

Sunday Breakfast in Avoca

2011-09-25T14:08:00.000+01:00

We decided as a family (minus Kate) to head off to Avoca in Kilmacanoge for breakfast this morning. We missed breakfast time by 10 minutes (11.30 is still too early to stop serving breakfast on a Sunday morning!). However, the folks in Avoca had no problems in providing breakfast. I had fancied Eggs Benedict which I had the last time I was there, but they were not available this time - I settled for a BLT bap.

My favourite bread from Avoca.
Image link to Avoca.ie.

Avoca was very busy, though not nearly full. They have plenty of tables and chairs, and lots of delicious food for breakfast and lunch. Avoca is certainly surviving the Recession very well - it's not a cheap place, but people obviously feel that it is value for money. It is excellent for a treat at not too high a price.

It is also popular with people of all types. I saw people reading the paper over a coffee, an older couple having an early lunch (with wine!), and also people with young children and babies. The trouble with small children is that they cry when they bang their heads off a table - but this happened only once so not too much crying to listen to. Overall - a very pleasant breakfast.

YouTube Launches Site Specifically for Teachers

2011-09-23T08:00:00.001+01:00

YouTube is recognising the importance of video in the classroom by launching a new site YouTube for Teachers. I'm not sure what is going to happen to TeacherTube (which has been around for quite a while) or where this new site fits in with the YouTude EDU strategy. An article by Tina Barseghian for the Mind/Shift web site entitled "YouTube Launches Site Specifically for Teachers" also predicts that "a bigger announcement will be made about huge changes that will address many of the concerns teachers have had about using YouTube videos".

Image link to GarrisonSites Blog.

From what I have seen, YouTube are struggling with dealing with a plethora of educational videos. They obviously see the value in using YouTube as a medium for learning - but with various versions of their site for TeacherTube, the new YouTube Teacher, YouTube EDU, plus "Education" and "How To" categories on the regular YouTube site, it is a slightly confusing picture. I'm sure the YouTube folks are working on a plan to simplify their educational landscape.

I can see for myself what my own (modest) efforts at education via YouTube can do. One of the lines from the new YouTube Teacher channel home page that I like is:

Go from teaching 25 students to 25,000! Students all over the world deserve access to quality instruction. By sharing your videos, you can help students around the world.

In the last two weeks alone my own channel (Learn with YouTube) had over 24,000 views by learners. My classroom efforts at College reached just under 100 students. Spot the difference?

Today's Irish Daily Star

2011-09-22T13:21:00.000+01:00

A College Guide 2011 supplement is published in today's Irish Daily Star newspaper and I have a short article entitled "How to make the best of time in college". I know that this supplement may not be available outside the main towns and cities where Ireland's third-level colleges are - so I reproduce the article here:

Click image to enlarge.

This is an abridged version of one of my blog posts from last year - Advice to Eugene on entering College, October 1978.

1978 - soooooooo long ago!

A Cat in the House

2011-09-20T21:03:00.000+01:00

I don't have a name - please help!

I came home this evening to find that my daughter (her name is Claire - I put this here so that the whole world can see it!) had brought a kitten home. She told me that other cats were going to kill it and that she saved its life (I didn't believe her!). She even bought a litter box, food bowl, and some food. Sure - the cat is cute (see photo), but I didn't want a cat in the house.

I grew up on a farm with lots of cats and dogs - plenty of room for them to run around and catch mice (we do have mice in the house). I liked cats. But I don't believe that a small garden and a city dwelling are suitable for either cats or dogs. The two main reasons (there are others) why I don't want a cat are: pee, and poo.

However, we are keeping the cat (it's still a kitten - maybe about six weeks old). My two daughters are so enthused with the creature that it's hard to be hard-hearted, and I really don't want to be a spoil sport. I'll see how it goes. It's just a kitten, so there will be toilet accidents. The kitten needs a name - Claire suggested "Marilyn", in an effort to gain my approval. Cute and all as the kitten is - it does not come close to Marilyn Monroe!

We need a name for the cat - all suggestions welcome.

How To... Make a YouTube Ready Video With PowerPoint 2010

2011-09-19T10:06:00.000+01:00

Since starting to create videos for upload to my Learn with YouTube channel, I have used various tools to create the videos. They are mostly made with Camstudio and Windows Movie Maker. Recently I have begun to use the audio recording options that PowerPoint offers. I simply create my presentation slides as normal, and then record the voice-over for each slide one at a time. When finished I save the presentation as a Windows Media Video (.WMV) which can then be uploaded to YouTube. The .WMV file size is quite large, but that doesn't really matter any more. My most recent video below is about how to do this: "How To... Make a YouTube Ready Video With PowerPoint 2010":

This actually took a bit longer to make. With Camstudio for example, I record the video in one take from start to finish. If I make a mistake I record it again. Usually I'm happy with the video as long as I don't make a major mistake. But when I was recording one slide at a time in PowerPoint, I found myself recording each slide over and over as I tried to get the recording a little bit better each time. I don't do this when recording the whole video in one shot. Some slides I must have recorded them more than 10 times before I was happy.

I'm feeling a little bit of excitement building as the view count for the channel edges close to half a million views. Last Thursday the view count for a single day went over 2,000 for the first time. At the current rate (484,571 views as I write this post) - I should pass the half a million mark before the end of the month!

It's Showtime (Tight Rope Productions)

2011-09-17T21:51:00.000+01:00

Image link to Pavilion Theatre

On Friday evening we went to see my daughter Vicki perform in an evening of music and drama at The Pavilion Theatre in Dún Laoghaire. Tightrope Productions provides "young people between the age of 16-20 in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown area with an opportunity to develop knowledge and skills of performance and express their own creativity in a safe environment"

The evening was a mixture of songs and dance from musicals such as Guys & Dolls, Blood Brothers, and Miss Saigon. All very enjoyable, and of course I spent the evening watching out for Vicki as she sang and danced her way through the performance with a huge smile on her face. (Proud Dad!). It was her "debut" with Tightrope and I'm sure she will come back for more next year. It was great to see her and all the other young people on stage gain in confidence as the show went on. There were some very powerful performances with superb voices to be heard. Some of these kids will have a future on the stage if they keep this up.

One small gripe - several teenagers in the audience could not control themselves (there was a line of boys in the row in front of me who giggled and chatted their way through most of the performance) and disturbed the enjoyment of the evening for some people.

Running to school! How do we maintain this enthusiasm?

2011-09-15T13:35:00.001+01:00

This morning on my way to work at about 8.30 I saw a young primary school girl running in the direction of her school. There were lots of other kids about walking, so I'm certain that she was not running because she was late. I was impressed by her determined enthusiasm as she ran - I'd say she was about 10 years old.

Image link to The Creativity Queen website.

Can every day be like this? Wouldn't be wonderful if students of all levels of education ran to school or to college? I don't know why the girl this morning was running - perhaps she wanted to meet her friends before class. Perhaps her teacher had arranged a pre-class session with her. Perhaps she wanted to be early for school. Perhaps she wanted to learn. Perhaps school is a great place to be!

While I do not expect 3rd level students to run all the way to College, wouldn't it be great if all were as enthusiastic about going to class just like the girl on my way into work this morning? How can we motivate students to do this? How can we motivate students to want this? We are in the first week of Semester 1 here in NCI, and all the classes are full - enthusiasm everywhere (though I haven't seen anyone running to class!). Sadly, this enthusiasm will wear off as we go into the long 13-week semester and Winter sets in.

As an educator myself, I was delighted to see such enthusiasm from the primary school girl this morning. Long may she want to go to school!

GOAL Jersey Day - 7th October

2011-09-14T22:48:00.001+01:00

I've done something at the College today that I have not done before - I have launched a charity event in the hope of raising funds for GOAL's appeal for donations to help with water and sanitation programmes for schools. The idea is a simple one - wear your favourite sports jersey to work and donate €2 to GOAL for the privilege of doing so. GOAL Jersey Day is on 7th October next. Lots of schools and work places do this - I think it's a first for NCI?

Image link to Goal.ie.

It started out as a simple mention by me in a conversation "GOAL Jersey Day - that sounds like a good idea, we should do this" - but then I had to follow up. I contacted GOAL and they were obviously very willing for NCI to participate in the event - they are sending out posters and collection boxes. While the number of staff in NCI is quite small (just over 100), the Student's Union are also involved. With a bit of luck we should collect a handsome sum for GOAL.

I plan to wear two jerseys on the day (that will cost me €4!) - in the morning I will wear my Wicklow GAA jersey, and switch to my Preston North End jersey for the afternoon. I'm hoping that as many staff as possible with wear their jersey on the day - those that don't will still be pushed for a donation. This should also add a dash of colour around the place, and should also reveal the inner passions of my colleagues for their favourite teams!

Silver Wedding Anniversary - 13th September, 1986

2011-09-13T10:20:00.002+01:00

Today is the 25th anniversary of my marriage to Roma Bourke on 13th September 1986. It is a day I will never forget and 25 years later it still has a special place in my heart.

One of the things about my wedding day is that I remember it almost minute by minute. I've no idea or record of what I was doing on 13th Sept 1985, but it's easy to remember something big in your life like a wedding. First, a wedding album chronicles the day very well. Secondly, we probably have more photos from friends and family from this day than any other in our lives - so it is much easier to remind ourselves what happened on that day.

We were married in St Patrick's Church in Newport, Co Mayo. The Reception was in a marquee on the lawn of Roma's parents house in Rosmindle, we spent our first night of wedded bliss in Newport House, and honeymooned in Poreč in what was then Yugoslavia (now Croatia).

We missed it on the day, but just before the wedding ceremony Roma's cousin Anne-Elizabeth had a request for us on the Val Joyce show on RTÉ Radio 1 which she recorded. To hear this message (22 secs) click on the "Play" button on the toolbar below:

One of the sad things about the day is you just have to look at our wedding group photograph to see that so many of our friends and family have passed away in the 25 years since - we remember them too on this day.

Problem-Solving Techniques #19: GoogleStorming

2011-09-12T13:22:00.001+01:00

Here is one of the easiest and quickest problem-solving technique that anybody can do - GoogleStorming. It is a variation on Brainstorming, but you use Google instead of a team of people, to brainstorm some ideas. The idea of it seems to have been developed by Joyce Wycoff in an article for the Innovation Network - a copy of the article can be found here - (see page 6). Wycoff writes: "You're sitting at your desk chewing on something that has been troubling you for weeks. You need a new idea but do not know where to look. You need something fast, something easy, something you can do yourself without calling a lot of other folks together. What's the answer? Googlestorming!".

The idea of GoogleStorming is a simple one - here it is in simple steps:

Pick an object at random
Google it
Click on one of the top five links returned in the Google search
"Wander" through what you have found for new ideas
See if what you find can stimulate your mind to come up with a new perspective to help you solve your problem

As Wycoff puts it "Googlestorming is a way of wandering without leaving your desk". I made a YouTube video which describes this technique and it also shows an example of using GoogleStorming for helping to solve the problem of sustaining change using a paper clip!

I now have 51 videos on the channel and have added quite a few over the past few weeks. These new videos still have very low viewing stats, but I hope that this will build up over time. I also noted a spike in overall viewing figures last week when about 1,900 views occurred on Wednesday 7th September - my highest ever daily figure! I'm closing in on the half a million mark - at the current rate of viewing, this should happen sometime in the next 3-4 weeks.

The Heritage Golf and Spa Resort

2011-09-11T17:13:00.001+01:00

Roma and I decided to treat ourselves to a night away in The Heritage Golf and Spa Resort in Killenard, Co Laois this weekend in honour of our up-coming 25th Wedding Anniversary. It's a lovely hotel, but perhaps not quite deserving the five stars that are displayed prominently throughout. We had lunch in the Slieve Bloom bar on arrival after which we set off for a round of golf. We came prepared for bad weather and we were expecting heavy showers and rain from about mid-afternoon. At least that's what Met Eireann predicted on Thursday evening's News - they got it wrong (again). Because rain was coming (or so we thought) we decided to have a go at the Par 3 course instead of the main course. Apart from one very brief shower - no more rain. We did get a nice rainbow after the shower...

We had dinner in the nearby Sols Orien's, which was delicious - but portions were way too big. We stopped for a quick jar in The Thatch pub where two guys called "Rough and Ready" were singing songs - they were good, but way too loud for me.

Overall - The Heritage, which belongs to NAMA, is a very comfortable place to stay. The food was delicious and the staff were very friendly and helpful. The Par 3 golf course could do with some signs (like pointing to where it is, and to where the first tee is!). Recommended.

The Girl Effect: The Clock is Ticking

2011-09-07T22:30:00.000+01:00

I'm not a girl - this is mainly because I was born a boy. Today I came across a website called the Girl Effect - the folks behind this are promoting the "unique potential of 600 million adolescent girls to end poverty for themselves and the world". The first thing is that the Girl Effect website is very cool - interesting use of graphics and large fonts. The videos are very powerful and inspiring - see below for an example:

There are other inspiring videos of young girls trying to make a difference in countries like India, Ethiopia, and Bangladesh. Check it out yourself - it's not just about girls.

Web 2.0 - making a difference.

Problem-Solving Techniques #18: The Circle of Opportunity

2011-09-06T12:41:00.004+01:00

There are many different ways to solve a problem. Walter Michalski, in his book Six Sigma Navigator, lists and describes 222 problem-solving techniques. One of these is The Circle of Opportunity which is a great tool for generating new ideas based on random associations between words or characteristics of a problem. It is very easy to use - a flip chart and marker is all you need. In the following video I go through how to use this tool and use an example from Michalski's book.

Roma's 50th Birthday Bash

2011-09-04T15:21:00.001+01:00

We had a big celebration in our house last evening for Roma's 50th birthday (actual birthday was 30th August). She also used the occasion as a fund-raiser for The Niall Mellon Township Trust as she is off to South Africa again in November for the Building Blitz. She had asked for people to donate to the Trust instead of bringing presents and thanks to to all her family, neighbours, and friends she raised well over €1,000 from the evening. Incredible generosity from all.

We decided early on that we would get caterers in to do all the food - we settled on a hog roast from the wonderful people at Tao Hog Roast. Riaan and his colleagues arrived at about 11 o'clock in the morning to set up in our garden and we had a pig cooking on a spit all afternoon and into the evening - ready for about 9 o'clock.

The birthday girl with Riann of Tao Hog Roast.

This both a fun and delicious way to cater for a large party. We had the smell of cooking in our garden all afternoon and evening, and everybody thought that the meat was just fantastic. Tao also provided spuds cooked in the spit, and fresh Greek salad. They also do all the plates, knives, and forks - and even take away all the dirty plates! The Tao guys are very professional and very friendly - thoroughly recommended!

Before.

After!

First cousins

2011-09-03T12:31:00.000+01:00

I have 22 first cousins on my Dad's side of the family. Coincidentally of the 22 plus my two brothers, one sister, and me there are 13 boys and 13 girls. Last evening in Gleesons of Booterstown, 11 of us met for a get-together, a (very small) bite to eat, and a few jars. Lots of family chat of course, but also a very relaxed evening, the last time most of us met was at a funeral. There is an 18 year spread in our ages from the oldest (me) to the youngest (Anna O'L, who organized the evening).

It's important to keep in contact with family. The O'Loughlin's are a small family - my grandfather PJ O'Loughlin was an only child, and only one of my grandmother Kathleen (Hurley) O'Loughlin's siblings had children. My Dad has just one first cousin. Our O'Loughlin parents grew up in the parish of Tomacork just outside Carnew in Co Wicklow. The family home is at the exact centre of the Google map below:

View Larger Map

It gives a sense of identity and a common linkage that is important to keep alive. Though no O'Loughlins live in Tomacork any more (my Mum and Dad live about three miles away), we had plenty of chat last night about Tomacork and Carnew. Many of my cousins had seen the "Who Do You Think You Are" programme about Graham Norton that was on TV recently. Norton's father was from Carnew, and a lot of the programme was based in Carnew. Hence the interest and chat last evening about our own ancestry.

Good to see all the cousins again - I hope that we meet in similar relaxed surroundings again.

Six Reasons Why Kids Should Know How to Blog

2011-09-01T21:57:00.000+01:00

I've been reading an article posted by Jenny Luca for the "Mind/Shift: How we will learn" web site about Six Reasons Why Kids Should Know How to Blog. She writes that "kids need to have an understanding of what it means to be a responsible digital citizen". Here are her six reasons:

Creating positive digital footprints
Communicating with digital tools
Transparency for parents and family
New ways of thinking about web tools
Effective digital citizenship
Pride in their work

Standing out for me are two of the above reasons. First - a positive digital footprint. Luca makes the point that soon "it will be the norm for these students to be Googled when they begin to look for jobs". Do you really want that picture your friend took on their camera phone of you picking your nose on-line? Everybody has a "personal brand" that is now more visible than before. A blog can help to make your brand more positive. Secondly, by engaging in "effective digital citizenship", young people can create a digital collection of their work (an ePortfolio) - it makes sense and is important to their future lives. Somewhere in the USA right now there is a teenager on Facebook who will in the future become President of the United States - what is she/he posting right now?

Image link to BlogHackz.com.

Many schools use blogs in many innovative ways to enhance student learning - for example see the excellent book by Will Richardson - (Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms). So I am all in favour of young people taking up blogging - Richardson is his book points out that most people make more of an effort to write carefully as it is a form of publishing. People will even check for grammar and typos, and will also think carefully before they write. Richardson also points out that in education - teachers should blog as well as students to "show students that it is something of value and too model appropriate ways of doing it (blogging)".

I love blogging!

The Leather's Echo

2011-08-29T19:46:00.001+01:00

I have got my own copy of the late Jim Brophy's history of Wicklow GAA 1884-1984 - The Leather's Echo. I have posted about this book before (here) as the book had several references to my Grandfather PJ O'Loughlin when I had borrowed a copy from Jim Brophy's son-in-law Leo Casey. That post attracted comments from two of Jim's daughters who wrote...

Great to see mention of my dad's book in a blog.

He would have been proud to see that it still has an impact 24 years later.

Maire Ni Bhroithe (Brophy)

...and...

I was googling something and this came up. I too am a daughter and its great to see him remembered.

Mairead Askew (nee Brophy)

I had given up of ever getting a copy of my own - I Googled and checked in 2nd hand bookshops with no luck. I got the book from a man called Peter in Kidderminster in England who was about to throw it out. It had belonged to his mother who was Irish - someone else had given it to her as they thought she might be interested in it (she wasn't!). Before he threw it out, he decided to Google it and up popped my blog post above. He emailed me and offered the book to me for free - he would not take any money for it (I made a donation to the RNLI on his behalf). What a wonderful thing the Internet is in that a man can seek out somebody who would want an old book like this.

The copy I have is in excellent condition and is almost certainly a signed copy from the book launch. Seven of the eleven signatures are by the members of the Wicklow County GAA History Committee (Jim Brophy, Liam Kane, Jimmy Dunne, Peter Keogh, Johnny Kelly, Tommy Coleman, and Jack Napier). Also signing was Jack (Seán) Boothman who later became President of the GAA. I'm sure the signed copy is worth a bit more than an unsigned one - though perhaps only in Wicklow. I'll never sell it anyway.

I'm certain that my Grandfather would have poured over the tremendous detail and stories in this book - no doubt he would have known many of the people featured. He would have been 79 years of age in 1984 when the book was published had he lived. It is probable that Jim Brophy would have known my Grandfather and I'm sure that he would have provided interesting information to him for his book. My Grandfather is dead for over 46 years - perhaps Jim Brophy was even at his funeral in June 1965. I have previously written about my memories of him here.