Periodic Fable

This blog used to be called Periodic Fable – which I thought was a very clever name for a blog from a writer who’s also a science graduate. I still think it’s a great name, but it doesn’t cover what I write about, which is e-learning and online communities, with a bit of social media, digital identity and writing thrown in.  So this blog is now called Learning Communities, but the quirkier posts are still categorised under “Periodic Fable“.

I’ve transferred across all my original posts though, dating back to 2003 (I lost the earlier ones on a pre-blog site which no longer exists!). Recently I was looking back to see what I was writing about this time last year – and previous years…

May 2009 – I was worried about Cold Fusion skills dying out

May 2008 – I liked the idea of an online community moderator/designer being called a technology steward

May 2007 – One of my favourite subjects to write about – Culture and technology – examples of assumptions, methods and processes that are carried over to new technologies and contexts when they were appropriate in the old context but not necessarily in the new.  One example is that early trains had carriages with side to side seating in, just like stagecoaches. It wasn’t for some time that the longitudinal layout with a corridor was invented. The stagecoach had to be filled with as much seating as possible in a small space to be economic – but the train is a bigger canvas. I like to point out that we are still doing the same with digital literature (e-book readers for goodness sake!) and e-learning (reproducing corridors, classrooms, staffrooms…) I must write again about this!