Posted by matthew on Jan 2, 2008 in
dance,
holland,
life We’ve just returned from our trip to Holland for Christmas and Sweden for The Snowball. I think we saw almost everyone we could possibly have hoped to see on this trip, including both Ans and Ko’s families, lots of good friends from Holland, and lots of our European dancing friends. It was a jam packed trip, but we still felt like we had time to relax. Along the way had 3 days of Christmas celebrations, 5 dance parties, stacks of dinners out, and learnt how to play the Nintendo Wii (my shoulder still hurts, but not as much as Lotte’s).
Christmas Eve
Christmas Day
Boxing Day
The Snowball, Stockholm
Posted by matthew on Dec 17, 2007 in
cambridge,
holiday,
holland,
life 
Sinterklaas, Dec 2
Visa celebration, Dec 15
Posted by matthew on Dec 17, 2007 in
education,
research Today I put the finishing touches on a paper outlining the research methodology for the Day Experience Method. The idea of the method is to get a snapshot of people’s everyday lives. It’s a good way to add a new, personal perspective that complements the institutional point of view. It’s based on a few other methods used mainly in different contexts, most notably the ‘Experience Sampling Method’ and ‘Cultural Probes’. The paper in the form of a generic resource kit, allowing someone to take the method and apply it to their own setting with a minimum of effort. We’re making it available under a creative commons license, so help yourself. I’m working on 3 more resource kits of this kind for the Learning Landscape Project. The hope is that people will find them useful, both within and outside Cambridge. I’ve only spoken a couple of times about it in public, and so far lots of people have been in touch with me about the method. On Friday, I’m hosting an informal seminar here at Cambridge for some of them, and meanwhile when I get time (ha ha) I will work on a journal article that has a bit more context. For now, here’s what I have: The Day Experience Method: A Resource Kit.
Posted by matthew on Dec 6, 2007 in
education,
research On the 28th of November I gave an invited presentation at the Open University about the methods we used during the ICT Study last term as part of the Learning Landscape Project, including the Day Experience (or Experience Sampling) method. Quite a few people have been asking for a paper, but so far the video from this session is the best I can do. If you’re interested, go to the Webcast@OU page to view the presentation.
Posted by matthew on Dec 3, 2007 in
education,
melbourne,
technology It’s official now, so I guess I can announce it here. I’m really happy to have been awarded a small ascilite research grant for a proposed project on ‘ICTs in the daily lives of Australian university students’, which follows up on the work Mike Arnold and I started here at Cambridge. It’s a fun project, involving giving students cameras and diaries, and asking them to record their daily lives by answering a few questions 10 times in a day. Best of all it gives me something to plan for when I get back to Melbourne. It’s 9 weeks today until we leave…
Posted by matthew on Nov 23, 2007 in
cambridge,
dance,
holiday,
holland,
life,
travel Okay. I just took a quick look at my photo library to see how far I’ve let my blog slide lately, and came up with the following list of events since my last entry! Yikes. So, I finally got around to uploading photos albums each one — go to the Photos page to see them. If it seems like there has been a lot going on lately, there has. These are just the things we have photos for. There were lots of other important things going on! The biggest and most time consuming was Lotte’s Visa Application, which weighed 1.7 kg and basically took Lotte 3 months of full time work (keep your fingers crossed). We also launched a new weekly live jazz club called The Speakeasy at the on August 27, which has been a great success. I presented at the ALT-C and BERA Conferences in September and at a research symposium called Poke 1.0 this month (no photos, but I’m sure you know what a conference looks like). The cricket season ended well, with Cavendish winning the league with 9 wins and 1 loss. We’ve had lots of new challenges to keep us busy too. Work for me has been quite intense since the start of October, because I have been conducting the second phase of the day experience stuff we started last term. Meanwhile Lotte has got herself two part time jobs: selling soap at Lush, and summarising news articles for important people at the Government News Network. All this, and trying to plan for our wedding next year!
Posted by matthew on Oct 24, 2007 in
dance 
Cambridge Lindy Exchange
