Arnold S. posted an article on Foreign Perspectives - Mar 15, 2010, 4:28 am
I’m almost at the end of something of a marathon of assignments and will be back to just doing the normal course work in about 10 days time. I’ve been accelerating my path through the deg...
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Arnold S. posted an article on Foreign Perspectives - Mar 4, 2010, 3:40 am
We go to our local library twice a week for the kids Kumon class and it’s quite noticeable how different the mix of people in it are. On Tuesday afternoons, the place is packed with school chil...
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Arnold S. posted an article on Foreign Perspectives - Mar 3, 2010, 3:26 am
There’s only one in fact and he’s the caretaker so to make a start on balancing things up they’re having a Dad’s reading week at the moment. It turns out that it’s not q...
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Arnold S. posted an article on Foreign Perspectives - Feb 25, 2010, 3:49 am
Now that I’ve sort-of decided on what courses I’ll be doing over the next couple of years it’s more or less a matter of waiting ’til the registration period opens and signing u...
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Arnold S. posted an article on Foreign Perspectives - Feb 24, 2010, 5:35 am
Due to a peculiar combination of circumstances, I find myself doing four courses simultaneously at the moment which doesn’t seem like an overly good idea on the face of it. However, whilst I...
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Arnold S. posted an article on Foreign Perspectives - Feb 16, 2010, 3:17 am
Although I’ve just got the second human biology assignment back that’s enough to get me over the pass mark. Well, apart from the exam that is. Since I don’t now need to submit any m...
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Arnold S. posted an article on Foreign Perspectives - Feb 2, 2010, 1:10 am
A seed ascends around the turntable. No related posts.
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Arnold S. posted an article on Foreign Perspectives - Feb 1, 2010, 3:24 am
“Ok, I’m high IQ and easily bored” is how a recent comment on one of the Open University forums begain and it pretty much immediately sparked off something of a war which is still ru...
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Arnold S. posted an article on Foreign Perspectives - Jan 28, 2010, 7:37 am
We’re all used to the price of computers and electronic items generally dropping in price over the years but it happens to some surprising items outside that arena too. One major example I spot...
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Arnold S. posted an article on Foreign Perspectives - Jan 27, 2010, 12:31 pm
One of the problems in doing three separate Open University courses at once is that the timetables they run to are completely independent of one another. Thus I find myself looking at the prospect of...
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Arnold S. posted an article on Foreign Perspectives - Jan 22, 2010, 3:33 am
Thanks to the Reader I find that I’m getting much more time to read the text books than I ever had previously. It might be only 10 minutes whilst wandering around a supermarket, 20 minutes waiti...
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Arnold S. posted an article on Foreign Perspectives - Jan 21, 2010, 7:33 am
Andrew, the second son of my granny, was born in Killinchy on September 18th 1920. and almost made it to 90, dying just a few days ago on January 16th. Growing up in the depression obviously limit...
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Arnold S. posted an article on Foreign Perspectives - Jan 14, 2010, 1:14 pm
It’s been almost a month since I started using the ebook reader so I’m really getting settled into using it now. Although it’s “only” got 1/2 GB of memory that’s p...
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Arnold S. posted an article on Foreign Perspectives - Jan 14, 2010, 5:04 am
We’re all getting older and, thanks to the baby boom generation, there are more and more products to deal with that on the shelves these days and increasing number of medical treatments too. Bu...
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Arnold S. posted an article on Foreign Perspectives - Jan 13, 2010, 5:05 am
Moving to Linux would be very easy were it not for the hassles of getting your emails transferred over. However, at least it’s not the showstopper that it was just a few years ago. Your first i...
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Arnold S. posted an article on Foreign Perspectives - Jan 8, 2010, 3:20 am
Well, not quite a week as I really only started it on Wednesday but it’s enough to begin to get a feel for it I think. The first thing that struck me about it was that it’s a course that ...
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Arnold S. posted an article on Foreign Perspectives - Dec 16, 2009, 3:37 am
Now that I’ve come across the overall results for ED209 I’m finding that they’re quite fascinating reading. For a start, despite everyone knowing about one of the questions in advan...
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Arnold S. posted an article on Foreign Perspectives - Dec 15, 2009, 5:36 pm
The exam result wasn’t supposed to be in until Friday but the scary message “course result” was there this evening. Somehow, no matter how confident you are, course results are alway...
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Arnold S. posted an article on Foreign Perspectives - Dec 9, 2009, 3:29 am
We’ve been trying to get a new roof on the kitchen extension since way back in April but finally we seem close to having it done. What took so long was that for reasons which completely escape ...
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Arnold S. posted an article on Foreign Perspectives - Dec 8, 2009, 2:52 am
Leaving aside the religious approach, supposing that someday it becomes possible for people to live forever, would you actually want to? In principle I would have always said that my answer would sure...
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Arnold S. posted an article on Foreign Perspectives - Dec 7, 2009, 6:52 am
When you’re trying to run a life in two different countries like we are at the moment there’s something of a nightmare in terms of administration load that can backup really fast. This mo...
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Arnold S. posted an article on Foreign Perspectives - Dec 4, 2009, 3:32 am
It hardly seems any time at all since we were packing up last January and making a start to moving back to the UK and now Christmas is only a matter of weeks away. As usual, we’ve not yet reall...
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Arnold S. posted an article on Foreign Perspectives - Dec 3, 2009, 1:58 pm
Most people are still in search of their ideal holiday spot I’m sure. But what is “ideal” anyway? Obviously it should take into account your interests and those of the group which y...
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Arnold S. posted an article on Foreign Perspectives - Dec 3, 2009, 3:15 am
You probably associate binoculars almost exclusively with birdwatching and indeed there are loads of people running around with “bird watching binoculars”. What you probably don’t c...
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Arnold S. posted an article on Foreign Perspectives - Dec 2, 2009, 3:21 am
It’s hard to believe that Hogmanay is just around the corner. Obviously for such a popular event much of the accommodation has already been booked months ago but there’s still a chance of ...
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Arnold S. posted an article on Foreign Perspectives - Dec 1, 2009, 2:50 am
Although they can be annoying, it does seem to be a good sign that the people trying to sell you credit cards are back in the shopping centres again and those annoying teatime calls trying to do the s...
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Arnold S. posted an article on Foreign Perspectives - Nov 9, 2009, 3:25 am
Compared to the Child Development course, the Human Biology one is moving along at what almost seems like a snails pace in comparison which probably is indicative of how over the top the workload was ...
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Arnold S. posted an article on Foreign Perspectives - Nov 6, 2009, 2:59 am
Whilst I’m getting into the swing of the human biology course, the cardiovascular diseases one is something else together. In principle, the human biology course as a level 2, 30 point course s...
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Arnold S. posted an article on Foreign Perspectives - Nov 5, 2009, 3:03 am
The Vanessa George affair showed the major weakness of the CRB system ie that you’ll get an “all clear” if you haven’t been caught yet. However, the various schools are requir...
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Arnold S. posted an article on Foreign Perspectives - Nov 4, 2009, 3:18 am
I’ve been weaning everyone off Windows over the past year so we’re getting into the first multi-computer upgrade of Ubuntu. One of the problems seems to be that an Ubuntu upgrade seems to...
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Arnold S. posted an article on Foreign Perspectives - Nov 3, 2009, 3:21 am
When John started school this year he only went to noon which wasn’t too bad as it gave us a sensible break before needing to go back for James at 2.30pm. However, they changed that to a 1.30pm...
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Arnold S. posted an article on Foreign Perspectives - Nov 2, 2009, 3:00 am
If it weren’t for the OU appearing to be about to drop all their science summer schools and consequently their named science degrees, the choices for 2010 would be very easy. First I’d be ...
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Arnold S. posted an article on Foreign Perspectives - Oct 31, 2009, 4:13 am
Thanks to the Child Development exam last week and the revision for it over the previous month, I only got around to signing up for Understanding cardiovascular diseases (SK121) a matter of days ago b...
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Arnold S. posted an article on Foreign Perspectives - Oct 27, 2009, 6:31 am
Throughout the course everyone seemed to be saying that there was “an awful lot of course” in ED209 but I found that I really didn’t notice that so much until the time came for revis...
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Arnold S. posted an article on Foreign Perspectives - Oct 26, 2009, 6:19 am
One of the advantages of the Open University is that you can do any of the level one courses without any prior knowledge. Surprisingly perhaps there are a whole heap of essentially medical courses wit...
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Arnold S. posted an article on Foreign Perspectives - Oct 26, 2009, 4:01 am
According to the Open University it’s 16 hours a week for a 60 pointer and 8 hours for a 30 points but those hours include not only the actual course work but also things like course administrat...
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Arnold S. posted an article on Foreign Perspectives - Oct 22, 2009, 5:41 pm
Although I just finished the Child Development (ED209) on Wednesday and I’m currently doing Human Biology (SK277) which started in early October, it’s actually time for me to be thinking a...
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Arnold S. posted an article on Foreign Perspectives - Oct 20, 2009, 8:30 am
This time tomorrow I’ll be having my very first look at the exam paper. Today it’s time for last minute skimming over of the material that I didn’t quite get around to learning prop...
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Arnold S. posted an article on Foreign Perspectives - Oct 18, 2009, 3:38 am
As usual, the last few days before an exam are a peculiar mix of panic cramming and looking forwards to the courses coming up. The ED209 exam is a little peculiar in that of the three questions on th...
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Arnold S. posted an article on Foreign Perspectives - Oct 16, 2009, 2:44 am
Understanding minds is the shortest chapter in the Erica Cox notes at just over three pages vs six pages for most of the preceeding chapters which certainly sounds good in terms of being able to learn...
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Arnold S. posted an article on Foreign Perspectives - Oct 15, 2009, 2:38 am
Although executive functions in childhood: development and disorder is probably one of the more complex chapters, the notes on it are amongst the shortest. Executive function refers to those activitie...
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Arnold S. posted an article on Foreign Perspectives - Oct 14, 2009, 2:34 am
The development of children’s understanding of grammar kicks off with a run-through of the definitions of some linguistic terminology before moving on to look at the development of spoken langua...
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Arnold S. posted an article on Foreign Perspectives - Oct 13, 2009, 2:43 am
First words covers quite literally the first words as grammar is considered by a separate chapter. This might sound a little odd at first but considering that children only deal with isolated words to...
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Arnold S. posted an article on Foreign Perspectives - Oct 12, 2009, 2:37 am
Early category representation and concepts is a dreadful chapter as it’s all over the place but here goes… We tend to group items into categories which eventually leads to developing conc...
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Arnold S. posted an article on Foreign Perspectives - Oct 11, 2009, 3:18 am
The Open University has a very neat little facility on its student pages called Qualification Planner which is probably one of the most time wasting things that you can play with on their site. After...
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Arnold S. posted an article on Foreign Perspectives - Oct 10, 2009, 3:16 am
Young consumers seems a rather short chapter in terms of actual content if you go by the Erika Cox notes. It’s the third of the identity chapters that I plan to go over for the revision and link...
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Arnold S. posted an article on Foreign Perspectives - Oct 9, 2009, 2:58 am
National identities in children and young people is quite a well structured chapter with relatively few theorists mentioned so, in principle, an easier one to revise than most. The chapter starts off...
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Arnold S. posted an article on Foreign Perspectives - Oct 8, 2009, 3:02 am
Up to now I’ve stuck with one course per year in my time with the Open University which has given that time something of a pottering along feel to it all. However, I managed to let myself get t...
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Arnold S. posted an article on Foreign Perspectives - Oct 7, 2009, 2:17 am
... between social experience and gender conceptions ie more social experience leads to lower gender stereotyping thus girls don’t do it as much as boys due to their generally greater social ex...
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