2007 July | Lloyd Forster

July 4, 2007

Panic in Babylon

One of the most important figures in the history of reggae music is Lee “Scratch” Perry. As a songwriter, a performer and especially a producer, Perry has been at the forefront of reggae music since the late 50’s ska movement. Practically the inventor of both dubs reggae (he produced one of the earliest all-dub albums, Blackboard Jungle, in 1974) and the “scratch” turntable effect used by DJ’s (his production of Charlie Ace’s “Cow Theory Skank” in 1973 became the first recording to use the “scratch” effect), Perry’s studio innovations have influenced not only reggae but also rock, punk, pop and dance music. Yet, at 70 years old, Perry, with his new album “Panic In Babylon” (Narnack) to be released in August 2006, proves to be more relevant than ever.

How about listening to a track from his latest album (on the right)

Filed by lforster at 5:30 pm under African Caribbean & African Achievement, General miscellaneous
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July 2, 2007

Science summer school starts tommorow

Science summer school starts tommorow! Still a lotta last minute things to do. Pupil lists, lunchs, directions all done but you know trying to get 100 pupils from 6 schools to a location, to arrive a given time……

As for me I am looking forward to0 it all. I need to get my trusty sony camera sorted out with charged batteries and memory cards with space!

Filed by lforster at 1:55 am under Metropolitan University Link, science
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My experience of facebook so far.

It has been quite straight foreward.I think the idea is quite simple. You invite some one or you get invited and through their profiles you might develop links with their friends or get back in touch with people who you might have lost contact with. It is a great networking tool.

Going from ‘friend’ to ’friends’ profiles, you can go nthrough a lot of contact. I think facebaook uses the concept of social proofing.This means all the people are linked through being friends with someone on the facebook. A sort of friend of a friend or through a friend of a friend.

I think facebook should be treated with caution in respect of privacy because it is open to be read by a lot of starngers. This is no problem if you are sensible with it but in a recent article I read the author was describing the bluring that has taken place between public and private life on these social networks. Anyway its all good I say

Myspace seems to be the dominant social networking utility.

Filed by lforster at 1:49 am under Transformation teachers Course, Uncategorized
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July 1, 2007

Reflection of a Transformation

The question is what does it mean to transform a teacher or anyone as far as new technologies goes? I think it is quite a difficult thing to do. This is because somehow there needs to be a vision of where all this technology is leading. I am not myself fully sure where it is all going but when I look at virtual worlds such second life then I think that is a possible destination. When I look back at the internet say around 1998, 7 years are the creation of the world wide web most people had no idea of how the internet wasgoing to transform life. Today life without the internet is almost inconcieveable to anyone younger than 15. What is truly scary is that the skills need to equip the next generation for a truly connected world is barely within the grasp of us who should be teaching these skills. In some ways it is a shame that social software such as blogging, facebook, myspace has not truly caught on yet. this is because these tools and others yet to be developed are the way the world is moving.

Filed by lforster at 5:13 pm under Teaching and Learning, Transformation teachers Course
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Mushroom growing experiment: 12/5/07 to 1 /7/07

In addition to developing the garden, I also tried my hand at growing mushrooms. I got the spores from Homebase. I planted them on the 12 May 2007. After 14 days the soil was interwoven with very thin threads called mycellae. I always wondered how mushroom got to be the juicy things that are eaten. from the pictures I can see that they emerge as small tubes, these tubes I think become wider and turn into the dome of the mushroom. We shall see.