E-LEARNING OCCUPATIONAL HAZZARD

AUDIO EARPHONES GOOD AND BAD FOR LEARNING

Earphones are great to listen to your favourite music or replay your ipod downloads of academic materials. It gives you a sense of privacy. You feel whether you are shut of from the outside world while replaying it. Allthough academe is constantly concerned about route learning practices like repeating the same facts over and over again without individual interpretation, live recordings cannot be compared with this problem. It is because your brain integrates multiple associations in the listening process of recordings. It simultaneuosly remembers subconcious knowledge that you were holistically exposed to. It integrates past learning experiences since your birth. The way the individual mind reacts to sound differs totally from silent reading or learning. The ear and the inner mind are interconnected to store personal as well as interpersonal impressions. Each individual mind experiences or interprets it independently. For example, it is recommended that students replay recordings of lectures the moment they are awakening after a good night's sleep while their minds are clear and calm and not perturbed by external stimuli. It is believed that the brain absorbs more new knowledge early in the morning. Some students will differ from this statement because they may prefer to replay it at random.

It is a proven method of learning. However, we have to make students aware of the dangers of hearing damage as well. As educators and scientists we prepare the leaders of tomorrow. But we do not want you to be ignorant about hearing loss. Soldiers, pilots, machine operators and various industrial workers are trained to wear ear protection according to Occupational and Health Safety (OHS) regulations. Likewise you must know that you need only destroy 25 % to 30 % of your hair cells and hearing loss will occur ( Life. 2006/7). Life Healthcare also warns that listening to loud back play at 80% capacity on your ipod or MP3 player for more than 90 minutes per day may also destroy the tiny hair cells in your inner ear canal.

The unfortunate part is that you only realise it after 10 years! Then it is too late to recover from this occupational hazard. Subsequently we want to urge you to play your lectures on ipods and MP3’s at a safe level and only for short periods as well. We do not want to train a highly educated but deaf society...You can ask any deaf person how difficult it is to lead a normal life within a world of hearing…
Compiled by Kallie de Beer.

BLOG INFO FOR NEW LECTURERS

Dear All

Thank you for comments and interest in my Blog. Please distinguish between my personal and informal and my formal publications. In the case of new part time lecturers who want to read more about induction sessions and academical facts on Open Distance E-Learning (ODeL), they have to scroll down or search in my former Blog-publications for that. In other words they must search backwards according to the dates. When opening the first publication on induction material or ODeL, the rest of the picture will become clear how to find the rest.

Induction materials for newly appointed part time lecturers since 1994 up to 2006 at the regional learning centres of our university have been compiled for your convenience. It contains all the back up reading before entering into your part time job as a part time academic practitioner. Please note that you still have to read the latest guideline handouts of the Director for Teaching and Learning in order to prepare you for the rest of your academic work. My compilation on the Blog is only to orientate you about the Higher Eduaction nomenclature that you need how to interpretate the academic situation. It may totally differ from your full time profession.

My motto is that qualified persons who want to teach and share their practical experiences on a part time basis are actually doing community development. As part time academe they prepare part time students on a co-operative way of learning and teaching because both lecturer and student (read part time learner) are both exposed to real world situations. However, I am convinced that part time academe at the main campus can also benefit from my compilations.

FAMOUS DE BEERS IN ENGLAND

Surfing through the internet for other De Beers on the globe, I came accros the name of this very interesting historian and philosopher in London at:
http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=23279403

Esmond de Beer was born in Dunedin on 15 September 1895 into the great mercantile family of Hallensteins. In 1910 the de Beer family moved to London when his father, Isidore, was appointed to run the Hallensteins London office.

His two elder sisters, Mary and Dora, moved permanently to London after the death of their mother, Emily, in Dunedin in 1930 and Isidore in London in 1934. They set up house with de Beer first at 11 Sussex Place and then from 1964 at 31 Brompton Square. They lived together harmoniously and mutually supportively until both sisters died within a month of each other in the early nineteen-eighties. His elder brother, Bendix, was killed in action in Belgium in 1917. Charles Brasch, New Zealand poet and long-time editor of Landfall, was a cousin and close friend.

De Beer developed an early passion for books and reading and was exposed to rare and beautiful books from an early age. At Mill Hill School, North London, he won prizes for French, German, General knowledge and Essay. Throughout his life, his relationship with his immediate and extended family remained remarkably close. In 1914 de Beer went up to New College, Oxford, and spent two years studying history under his mentor and exemplar, Sir Charles Firth, Regius Professor of Modern History. In 1916 he joined the army and received a temporary commission in the Indian Army. After being awarded a B.A. War Degree from Oxford, he continued his studies at University College, London, and the Institute of Historical Research. He was awarded a M.A. in 1923 and then moved to Oxford to become Sir Charles's voluntary assistant. In 1929 he began work on the first complete edition of the diary of John Evelyn.After the death of his sisters, de Beer decided that the great house at Brompton Square must be given up and its treasures were dispersed, most of them to Dunedin. In 1982 he moved to a flat in St. John's Wood but he found the activities of daily life increasingly difficult to manage. In 1984 he moved to Stoke House, a residential home for the elderly in Buckinghamshire. He was by then virtually blind and deaf and suffering from Parkinson's disease. He died on 3 October 1990.