Category: Thought grazing

Some of the blogposts from the Cardiff u3a Thought grazing site are duplicated here.

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Spring-clean your minds!

Well, Christmas lethargy has almost passed. One hopes the cold and snow has gone for this year too. Now’s the time for a little spring-cleaning! That’s what we’re doing in our house at the moment and it occurred to me that’s what needed with our minds sometimes. We carry around so many thoughts and ideas that it’s difficult to focus on what is actually the most important. What is it that actually needs to get done? What is it that needs to be written on our blogs, or what that we have written needs to be posted.

An excellent example of latent thinking and writing surfaced over the weekend in Kelly Page‘s “Social ways of working in Higher Education“. In a tweet, Kelly mentioned that she’d written this post a year ago but hadn’t been sure whether to post it, or not. How often is that so true. How many other ideas and thoughts are getting cobwebs collecting around them that are crying out to see the light of day. How many others just need to be swept away, to allow others to emerge and grow?

So that’s the theme of the next Thought grazing Social Media Cafe (#tgsmc) to be held on Wednesday afternoon, 29th February, from 2.00pm at Costa Coffee in Park Place. Come and do a bit of thought spring cleaning as well as have a good chat and cup of coffee (and a cake), or two.

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“Social Ways of Working in Higher Education” by Dr Kelly Page

I really enjoyed reading this post from Kelly Page (+Kelly Page – Google+ @drkellypage – twitter) . When the message is so strong and the actions that need to be undertaken so clear, the analysis and recommendations need to be clearly stated. Kelly manages this, so well. I wish I’d written it, because there’s not a word in this post that I would disagree with.

Yes, it’s hard to see how it can be achieved sometimes because there’s a load of cultural change that needs to occur in parallel, work practices need to change too, against a background of scarcity of time and resources to embrace change and often little support too for the innovator. However, universities should not believe themselves to be detached from the revolutions in communication technologies and popular engagement that are sweeping the world. It is surely better to lead than be led.