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Paddy Griffith is a military historian and wargamer whose work I always enjoy reading. The reporting of his famous Operation Sealion game in 1974 was my earliest exposure to wargaming and his writings on tactics in wars from the 1790s to the 1940s have added greatly to my understanding, and to my teaching. I was delighted therefore to get my hands on a copy of his Sprawling Wargames, but after reading it, I wish there was more of it. Continue reading Sprawling Wargames I’ve been reading Ged Martin’s book, Past Futures. Ged used to lecture Early modern history in UCC back when I started as an undergrad. Past Futures is a book I’m going to have to re-read, because it brings out, crisply, several important points about the nature of history which merit careful thought.The title, Past Futures referring to the futures envisaged by actors in the past, which reaches beyond simple counterfactuals, is only one of several ideas in the book Continue reading Past Futures As this term moves on, my Digital History students are (mostly) making progress on their blogs. For the course, an MA option, I decided that the assessment would be based on 10-12 blog postings showing the use of digital tools for history, and discussing readings in the area. We did all of the practical sessions last term, and I let them run wild applying those skills this term. I haven’t graded anything yet, but I am keeping an eye on things, and these are some of the highlights so far Continue reading Digital History Class Harold Jarche is one of the most popular bloggers dealing with social networking, and for good reason – he is insightful. His blog post from yesterday gathers ideas which prompt me to wonder why I haven’t already made twitter a requirement in my courses, and how I can overcome the obstacles to using it in teaching. Continue reading Can I make Twitter a requirement for my students? An interesting question is posed over at Do You SoTL – how do you structure courses to encourage atudents to take responsibilty for their own learning? I think there is no quick fix, and given the pavlovian response of many students to grades, I think one of our tutorial programmes this term (in HI2001) goes some way towards answering the question. Continue reading Collateral learning I found a new, important journal in international affairs called Global Responsibility to Protect which I an strongly recommend no one uses or cites because of it has chosen to buy into a dying model of academic publication. Read on and I’ll explain why I have problems with paying $35 for an article. Continue reading Global Responsibilty to Protect – at a cost I came across a paper yesterday which, among other things, tried to relate Bloom’s Taxonomy to Nonaka’s SECI model, and I didn’t think it quote worked but it took me a bit to work out why, and I had to look at Kolb to figure it out. Continue reading Kolb, Bloom and Nonaka Action research in any form has a funny – or not funny – way of running away on you. I’ve been doing a bit of SOTL work on the wargame design task in my Hi2007 class, and next term I thought I would have a research plan to finish of my Masters in Teaching & Learning using that class. However, next term the Hi2001 tutors and I plan to roll out a new set of tutorials for Hi2001, a class which includes all the Hi2007 students, and which will change how they look on group work. I think I have a solution – read on while I think it aloud Continue reading Expanding SOTL problem I’m looking for some (moderately) radical students to help subvert the top-down model that dominates the Irish university sector. I do a quite a bit of research in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, and I have a couple of things going on which I am keen to open up a bit and get some active inputs. I’m actually looking out for students who might be interested in collaborating on two projects, from offering comments all the way to co-authoring papers. One is on how history teaching in universities differs from culture to culture; the other is my ongoing work on group and team based learning using games in my military history option, HI2007. Cork city is back to it’s eighteenth century state this weekend, with the river reclaiming the old marshes and waterways that made up the city centre. Driving through town in the past few months, I had reflected on how global warming would force us to rethink how we use the buildings in the city, but I had not thought the city would have to come to terms with the new reality so suddenly. Continue reading Back to Dunscombes Marsh |
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Copyright © 2010 Mike Cosgrave - All Rights Reserved |
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