The Boolean Journal article

I wrote an article explaining my research for the University College Cork (UCC) post graduate journal, known as The Boolean. This second volume of the journal was launched in October 2011 and is named after George Boole - the first Professor of Mathematics in UCC and the inventor of Boolean logic. As that venerable source of information, Wikipedia states: "Boolean logic is the basis of modern digital computer logic. Boole is regarded in hindsight as a founder of the field of computer science".

This is a link to the article -

http://publish.ucc.ie/boolean/2011/00/OHanlon/37/en

Please have a look and tell me what you think.

Newspaper & Periodical History Forum of Ireland 2011

I have just returned from the fourth annual conference of the Newspaper & Periodical History Forum of Ireland, which took place on 18 & 19 November 2011 in the National Library of Ireland in Dublin.

The conference title was 'Writing the Press into History' and speakers from Europe and North America presented papers on their own areas of research. Attendees included press historians, working journalists and editors as well as academics and researchers from many different disciplines. I really enjoyed the conference and benefited enormously from it by hearing of what others are doing in the world of newspapers and by discussing my own research with them.

Well done to the organisers for creating such a unique and successful conference. This is a link to the forum:

http://www.newspapersperiodicals.org/index.html

UCC Doctoral Showcase 2011

The UCC Doctoral Showcase took place on 21 June 2011. The showcase is a relatively new concept whereby PhD students explain their research to a public, non-specialist audience. I applied to take part in it and was chosen to go through to the final on 21 June 2011.

There were three categories in the showcase:

- the poster competition, where students presented their research on a poster.

- the three minute thesis, where students presented their research in a three minute presentation, using whatever props they thought was necessary and only one powerpoint slide.

- the ten minute thesis, where students presented their research in a ten minute presentation, using props and as many powerpoint slides as they wanted.

As a first year PhD student I could apply for the poster competition or the three minute thesis. I decided to apply for the three minute thesis. Three judges evaluated the entrants and they awarded a first and second prize in each category. I was not successful on this occasion, but will keep practicing my presentation skills. I think it's a valuable skill to be able to describe your research (or anything for that matter) in a succinct and clear manner.

The Showcase brochure.

Twitter

This is a worlde of my blog as it stands at the minute. Yes you read that right. I only heard about Wordle for the first time today and think it is a very effective tool to give you a snapshot of the frequency of words appearing in any given space. I just pasted the URL of this blog into the create box on the Wordle site and it gave me a picture of the most commonly used words in my blog.

The word Twitter seems to be the most prominent word there at the minute - I suppose I have written a good deal about the uses of Twitter in my research. I will be writing a small bit more over the next while. So keep checking the blog for updates.

AFIS annual conference - Lille May 2011

I have just returned from the annual conference for the Association for Franco-Irish Studies (AFIS). It was held in Université de Charles de Gaule- Lille 3, or just Lille 3 for short.

The theme of the conference was 'Les irlandais en France et les français en irlande' or 'The Irish in France and the French in Ireland'. There were three keynote speeches, one by the French journalist, Sorj Chalandon, who reported from Northern Ireland for the French newspaper Libération during the the late 1970s until the 2000s. Professor Marianne Elliott, Director of the Institute of Irish Studies at the University of Liverpool, delivered a keynote speech on the experience of Wolfe Tone trying to enlist help in France for an Irish rebellion. Professor Jane Conroy from NUIG also delivered a keynote speech on a French visitor to Ireland in the late 18th century.

There was a very wide range of topics covered by the participants who presented 20 minute papers. I presented a paper on Simone Téry - a French journalist who was reporting from Ireland in the 1920s for the French press.

So much preparation must have gone into the organisation of the conference. Well done to AFIS and Lille 3 for organising such a great conference. This is a link to the conference on the Lille 3 homepage:

http://evenements.univ-lille3.fr/colloque-irlandais-francais/en/

Getting answers on Twitter

I sent out my first question into the vast universe of Twitterland and had no idea if I would get an answer, or if I would, when?

Firstly, I did not know how to ask a question. Who would even receive my question, I wondered? I found out by trial and error that my followers would receive the question. I also found out that if I used someones name using the '@' symbol, they would also receive the question.

In total I received three answers to my questions on Twitter. All of the answers were relevant. They gave me the titles of three books that they thought could help me to understand Ireland's history from 1900-22.

I was really amazed when I received these answers. I have changed my opinion of Twitter now that I can see that people can communicate in a positive way on it.

Personalising Twitter

So, without too much difficulty my new Twitter account was set up. As I said earlier, it was a relatively easy process. I have listed below some of the steps I followed to personalise my account.

First of all, I decided that I would use this new Twitter account, not for personal, but purely for research purposes. I wanted to create a profile for myself on the internet, so that others would know of my PhD research.

I began with the 'profile' section and I added a short biography that, as simply as possible, describes my research. I then added a link to this blog, so that visitors to my Twitter account could see what I am writing on the blog. I also plan to add a link on this blog to my Twitter account, if that is possible, to create another connection. For a number of weeks I didn't have any photo in the photo section of my profile, and the default symbol of the 'egg' came up instead. I decided that a personal picture would add to my profile, so I added an unusual picture so as to grab the attention of Twitter users (it's pictured at the top of this post)

Who to Follow?

I searched websites that I use frequently in my research to see if they have a Twitter account. This included media organisations, such as newspapers and magazines and radio and television stations. I also decided to follow local, national and international libraries - so that I could be kept up to date with any new developments in my research area. I am also following universities and colleges to see what's happening in terms of research trends in my area.

45 - that is the number of people and organisations that I am following at the moment. They are mainly based in Ireland and others are in the UK, USA and France.

When I signed up to 'follow' a particular Twitter account, I was advised of similar users and urged to 'follow' them too. In some cases I did, and sometimes I decided not to, as it was not necessary, because the user that I signed up with initially was sufficient to keep me up to date in that area.

Who's Following me?

At this stage there are some 8 people following me. I have not figured out how they found me, or why some of them are following me. Some have similar research interests to me, so I can understand that they would 'follow' me, but some are in no way related the area that I am studying.

First Tweeets

The first tweet I sent out was very short. I was letting people know that the Toastmasters conference was taking place. It has nothing to do with my research, but I am a member of the organisation and wanted to help get the message out there and promote them.

I'm in the middle of researching a French journalist who visited Ireland in the early 1920's. I need to be able to understand what was happening at that time to fully appreciate what she wrote at that time. So my second tweet asked the question: 'What is the best book on Irish history 1900-1922?' I included the hash tag Twitterstorians on my tweet, so that I could catch the attention of historians on Twitter.

My third tweet asked the same question, but this time I used the @ symbol to send my tweet to specific people.

In my next post I will examine the responses that I got to my tweets.

Benefits of Twitter

This little graphic called 'The Four Stages of Getting Twitter' perfectly explains how Twitter works. I found it on a website and couldn't resist using it here to illustrate the stages you have to go through to understand how Twitter works.

Before I attended the research skills module in college, I never thought of Twitter as a research tool. If I'm being honest, I had a very negative attitude towards the micro blogging site. I think my negative attitude was formed by the mindless comments that people used to write on it. For me Twitter's birth was when people would tweet complete rubbish on their account; things like, I'm drinking a cup of tea, or I'm leaving my house now.

Well, for the benefit of the research skills module and my own research, I have tried to look at Twitter with an open mind and forget what I had thought up until now.

From what I have seen so far, Twitter is being used by all kinds of people and organisations. I have seen mega corporations, small and medium sized companies, non profit organisations and individuals use it. They use it to ask for help, to ask questions, to keep up to date with what ever is going on in the world. Some people do not tweet (send out any messages) but instead use it to keep up to date with the their chosen field, be it media current affairs, the price of gold or even .

I think Twitter is similar to an email account, except that people can see your inbox.

Setting up my Twitter account

It was surprisingly easy to open a Twitter account. I was surprised because some online sites can be very difficult to sign up with. I did use Google to search for forums and blogs to help me with any questions I had about the early stages of setting up the account. For example, I was totally new to Twitter, so I did not even know what any of the terminology meant. And there seems to be a lot of new terminology to get used to, things like - tweet, retweet, followers, following, mentions etc.

My next blog post will show how I personalised my Twitter account and used Twitter to communicate with like minded others and ask for advice to do with my research.

Digital research & referencing tools - help or hindrance?

For the next 10 or so blog posts I will be discussing whether or not digital research tools can help me with my PhD research.

In recent years there has been an explosion in the amount of tools available to do coursework or research online. I am talking about referencing and archiving tools such as Zotero, Evernote & Endnote. I'm also talking about micromedia and social media outlets and sites such as blogs, Twitter and Facebook - where virtual scholarly communities can come together to share information and maybe even help each other and find solutions to common challenges.

I will also examine what has been discovered through empirical studies carried out to judge the effectiveness of digital research tools and also the use of social media sites to aid research.

Franco-Irish Literary Festival 2011

The 2011 Franco-Irish Literary Festival took place in various locations in Dublin on the 8th, 9th and 10th of April 2011. It is an annual event that brings together all sorts of creative people such as writers, poets, film makers and their audience to discuss a specific theme.

The theme of this year's festival was generations. The organisers invited writers from Ireland, France and elsewhere, who have covered an aspect of the theme in their work, be it poetry, novels, plays, films or whatever, to discuss how they treated the theme with a panel of their peers. As usual there were some big names invited to speak at the festival and it was great to hear them live and to have an opportunity to ask them questions.



Two of the speakers on Saturday 9 April were particularly interesting.

The first was Eric Fottorino who was introduced as having been a 'grand reporter' for the French newspaper Le Monde. He spoke about his own family background which he has written about in his book Questions à mon père . The book deals with the fact that he was not raised by his biological father (who was a Moroccan Jew) and that he only met him in later life. As the title suggests, the book is a series of questions that Fottorino put to his biological father and the answers he received. He asked him what it means to be a Jew and his father replied that to be a Jew means to be scared or worried, avoir peur in French.

I thought about this for a minute and remembered that when I heard the French writer, Azouz Begag, speaking in University College Cork on the previous day, he said that for him, to be a Muslim in France today also means to be scared or worried. I suppose fear or worry means different things to different people, but it is interesting that the both of them feel fearful, even though they are very different. Could it have something to do with the fact that they both come from minority groups in France, I don't know, but I just thought it was interesting that two such different people would use the same language to describe their place in French society.

Secondly, Virginie Linhart who is a French documentary film maker spoke about growing up with two parents who wanted nothing more than to spread Maoism throughout France and the world. Both parents played a big part in what has become known as Mai '68, when students and factory workers all over France went on strike to demanded major cultural and societal change. Her parents got jobs in factories to organise the workers and spread the Maoist gospel. Her dad worked in a Renault factory, while her mother worked in an industrial meat factory.

Virginie Linhart said that she recently made a documentary featuring the children of many of the leaders of Mai '68. She found it difficult to sell the documentary to television stations, she said, and was told that audiences are not very interested in those events anymore. She said that the children of the strike leaders, who are adults now, are not involved in politics of any kind. To explain their volte-face, she likened their rejection of all things political to the children of alcoholics, who abstain from alcohol because they see what effect it had on their parents. Her parents went on to work as a sociologist and biophysicist, seemingly leaving their Maoist beliefs far behind them.

I really enjoyed the festival and I hope to attend again next year.



The 1st photo shows Geneviève Brisac, the moderator and then Caitriona O'Reilly and Carlo Gébler.

The 2nd photo shows Eric Fottorino, Julia Franck, the moderator and Véronique Ovaldé and Siobhan Parkinson.

The 3rd photo shows Virginie Linhart together with the two moderators.

'Taking Risks' - Azouz Begag in UCC

The French writer, sociologist and sometimes politician, Azouz Begag was in University College Cork on Friday 8 April 2011. He was invited to Cork to launch France, Ireland and Rebellion, Proceedings of the 5th AFIS Conference, (2011), a book based on conference papers from the AFIS (Association of Franco Irish Studies) conference that was held in 2009.

In the morning, Mr Begag read excerpts from some of his work and later delivered a lecture on immigration. He said that this was his third visit to Ireland and his first to Cork. He began by saying that when he thinks of Ireland he thinks of his father, who had travelled from Algeria to France in search of work. He said that the Irish (like the Algerians) who travelled abroad to look for work went with the myth that they would return home in their luggage and that this gave them strength to travel and sustained them when outside of Ireland or Algeria.

I had read his book about his life growing up in a shanty town in Lyon and his book about being the Minister for Equal Opportunities in Dominique de Villepin's goverment. In Un Mouton dans la baignoire , Begag describes how stressful political life can be and how a rift grew between him and Nicolas Sarkozy over something that was said and misinterpreted. He has written fiction and non-fiction and he said that he was inspired to become a writer when he realised that his father couldn't sign his own name.

The power of LANGUAGE
From listening to Mr Begag speaking in Cork, I learned that he sees language as a valuable weapon in life. Immigrants can use it like a passport to help them to advance themselves in the country in which they're living. He said that verlan, the slang that many young people use in France is more of handicap to them than anything else. It acts like a barrier that locks them up and keeps them segregated from the mainstream.

I called this post Taking risks, because Mr Begag said that he likes it when people who are learning a foreign language take risks with language and try to speak the foreign language even if they are not very very good at it. It shows that they have courage and are willing to take risks, and don't mind looking foolish, as we invariably feel when we try to communicate in a language that isn't our mother tongue.

The picture shows Mr Begag reading from his book Le Gone du Chaba in the O'Rahilly Building in UCC. The book deals with his life growing up in a shanty town in the outskirts of Lyon. He describes the deprivation that he and his poor family experienced and his integration into the French society through the education system. He said that the book is still very relevant today, 24 years after it was published, because of the profound sociological lessons to be learned from it.

ADEFFI Post Graduate Symposium in UCC

The ADEFFI (l'Association des Études françaises et francophones en Irlande)
Post Graduate Symposium took place in University College Cork on Saturday 2 April 2011. It provided post graduate students from universities and colleges in Ireland who are involved in the area of French studies to come together and present their work before their peers.

I was one of the co organisers of the symposium and I also presented a paper on the day. My paper dealt with the friendship between the journalist, painter and poet AE, or George Russell to give him his real name and Simone Téry (one of the French journalists whose work I am examining as part of my PhD). Ten post graduate students, including students from University College Cork, Trinity College Dublin, two students from universities in the UK and a student from a French university presented papers on the day. The wide range of topics covered included Beckett, Baudelaire, Nerval, Perec, Rwanda's genocide in the 1990s and French involvement in Rhodesia's push for independence in the 1980s.

The picture at the top of the post is of some of the symposium participants in the UCC campus.

Journalism Conference - Belfast

The charity Co-operation Ireland http://www.cooperationireland.org/organises an annual student journalism conference. This year it was held in the Linen Hall Library in Belfast and I decided to attend because as my PhD thesis deals with the subject of journalism, I thought I could learn something. The title of this year's conference was 'Reporting Civil Action - What is the Media's Role?'. Liam Clarke, Political Editor at The Belfast Telegraph and Kevin Connolly, the BBC Foreign Correspondent, were the main speakers at the conference.

Liam Clarke

Liam Clarke spoke first. He said that he had no formal training in journalism and that he started off his journalistic career by writing in local left wing papers. 'It's not a journalists job to be responsible', he said. He also said that it's not a journalists' job to bring harmony. Up until now I would have thought that it was and that they had a responsibility to be careful and not to cause situations to boil over and create any sort of instability, but the more I think about it, a journalist should only be concerned with telling the truth. They should not be hiding any unpalatable things that they find or should not be covering up for others, whether they be politicians or others. Although when you consider that Clarke was mainly reporting from Northern Ireland during his career, does that also remain the case. The fact that in the past Northern Ireland must have seemed like a tinder box, journalists must have felt pressure from themselves and others to try and bring harmony to the situation and to be responsible in their reporting. That raises the question of the journalist's objectivity.

Kevin Connolly

Kevin Connolly is a BBC Foreign Correspondent. He is currently reporting from Libya where a popular uprising against the dictator who has been in power for the last 42 years threatens to boil over into a civil war. He has also reported from Northern Ireland and other interesting locations in the past.

Connolly said that revolutions come in bunches - sort of like bananas. That analogy goes some way to explain the domino of revolutions that is sweeping across the Arab world at the moment. He said that in the 1960s there were lots of revolutions and similar outpourings of emotion. We only have to think of Northern Ireland and the civil rights marches, the USA and the civil rights movement and of course the events of Mai '68 in France when students and factory workers took to the streets to demand fundamental changes in how the country was run. Connolly says that the revolutions sweeping across the Arab world now are different, however. What differentiates them is that we are living in the information age. We now have mobile phones, Facebook and Twitter to help us organise people and bring about change.

Connolly mentioned how the death of one man in Tunis who was standing up for his rights against the system helped to change the face of the world. He said that the young man who was trying to provide for himself by selling vegetables without a permit changed his country, his region and the world for ever. Connolly ended by questioning the rise of the so called 'citizen journalism' that we are witnessing in the media at the moment. We have to ask ourselves if these citizen journalists are actually who they say they are and are reporting from where they say they are. Is their reporting accurate? Who are they accountable to? I suppose that this just highlights the point that we must critically evaluate everything we read. We cannot take a journalist's word at face value.

Local journalists

After lunch, two local journalists spoke about their journalistic careers. Firstly, Adrienne McGill from the Newsletter spoke about her work as a business editor. The newspaper was established in 1737 and is loyalist leaning. She said that it's a very varied job because you could be reporting from literally every kind of business that employs people. Secondly, William Scholes, the features editor at the Irish News spoke about his work. Scholes said that he had reported for the newspaper from the Holycross School in Ardoyne, Belfast where they was a standoff in 2001 / 2002 between parents of the children attending the school and some of the locals. I can remember seeing disturbing scenes on the television where young girls were forced to run the gauntlet of abuse, both verbal and physical on their way to school. I still can't understand how something like that could happen in this day and age.

The question and answer session after their presentations was very interesting. I asked them how the formal training they received for their jobs had prepared them for their current jobs. They both gave some funny examples of how their journalistic training helped to prepare them for their jobs. Adrienne mentioned that she interviewed Prince Charles during her training, but that she got caught up in the situation and didn't manage to get any real information from him. She started off by introducing herself to him and of course she wasted valuable time by doing this.

Her advice to the future journalists present at the conference was to just ask your questions and forget about the formal introductions as they can distract you and will take up too much of your valuable time.

I really enjoyed the conference and would like to thank Co-operation Ireland for organising it.

The Irish Times of Saturday 12 March 2011 has an article by their Northern Editor Gerry Moriarty about the conference. Here is a link to the article. http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2011/0312/1224291982266.html

The picture at the top of the post is of Belfast City Hall.

French film director Agnès Varda in UCC

The French film director Agnès Varda visited University College Cork (UCC) today Monday 7 March 2011. She spoke to over 100 of the university's staff and students for about an hour and a half about her life and her movies.

The annual Cork French Film Festival is taking place at the moment and many of Varda's famous films are among the main attractions of the festival. When people hear her name, they instantly associate her with the Nouvelle Vague movement in cinema. She said that she was pleased to have been invited to Cork where three different areas of her work were being recognised: her work as a visual artist, a filmmaker and a photographer. "I don't want to represent French cinema, I want to represent myself", said Varda at the beginning of her talk.

She spoke about her introduction into the whole movie making business. The French theatre and film actor, Jean Vilar, had asked her to take some photographs on a movie set. This work with the camera inspired her and she went on to make her own movie, La Pointe Courte (1954). I've seen this and really liked it. It's a black and white film, set in a French fishing town and follows the lives and loves of some of the locals. It was filmed in Sète on the Mediterranean coast and looks lovely. She said it was very very hot during filming and that it was all done along co-operative lines - everyone was equal and they only had very basic facilities.

Varda mentioned Michel de Montaigne's essays as an inspiration to her in her work. She said that Montaigne created his essays in order to be remembered and that she is doing her film work so that she will be remembered and also that her family will know her. Another inspiration for Varda seems to be paintings. Firstly, she mentioned Rembrandt, who did a lot of self portraits, but she didn't think he was so much painting himself because he loved himself, but he painted himself because he wanted to be remembered and also to show the changes in his appearance over the years.

Another one of Varda's early films - Cléo de 5 à 7 (1962), tells the story of a beautiful young singer who fears death by cancer. Varda said that for this film she was inspired by a famous painting showing a blond nude woman surrounded by a skelatal figure (death). I didn't catch the name of the artist, but she said that his paintings are on show in Munich and Vienna.

A couple of years ago I saw Varda's film Daguerreotypes (1976) where she introduces the audience to the inhabitants of the rue Daguerre, where she lives in Paris. I liked the film.

It was very interesting to hear this legend speaking about herself and her work and I am happy that I went along to hear her.

Can this blog help me?

What is the value of keeping a blog?

I am writing this post to tease out the question of whether writing this blog will help me in my study for a PhD and beyond. In the post I will be commenting on two journal articles about blogs to help me find some answers. The first article was written by Pedro Hernandez-Ramos in the USA in 2004. The second article was written by Karl Steffens in Europe in 2006. References for both articles are available at the bottom of this post.

Hernandez's article deals with using blogs as a tool to promote reflective practice among student teachers. He writes in a clear, easy to read style. Journals are common tools used in most courses to encourage metacognition (cognition about cognition, or thinking about thinking). They can be limiting insofar as we are writing them for a particular audience (tutor / supervisor) and we basically tell them what they want to hear. He says that blogs are good because we write them for a general audience and therefore what we say is going to be more realistic of what we truly believe.

Hernandez quotes other journal articles throughout his article to backup his belief that blogs are a good basis for the student teachers to reflect on their own learning. For example, he says that Nicholson and Bond (2003) found "electronic discussion boards can play an integral role in the development of preservice teachers". Reflective practice is seen by Hernandez as a vital component of learning. He quotes Levin and Camp (2002) who say that "we believe that the habit of mind is so important that we must try to teach all prospective teachers how to reflect on their practice".

In his study, Hernandez found that 53 out of the 56 student teachers that he surveyed had set up a blog. While a large majority found it to be a good idea, some found the experience to be "time consuming and self-aggrandizing". Hernandez tells us that according to the National Research Council (2001), blogs can be used as a tool to measure writing ability, analytical skill and motivation. In conclusion, Hernandez restates the value of reflective journal writing and says that judging by the outputs of the students, "the tools were successful in promoting reflective writing".

Steffens' article deals with 'self-regulated learners' who learn in 'technology-enhanced learning environments' (TELE). It is the longer of the two articles and is more scientific sounding than Hernandez's.

Steffens' article deals with 'self-regulated learners' who learn in 'technology-enhanced learning environments' (TELE). It is the longer of the two articles and is more scientific sounding than Hernandez's.

Quoting Flavell, 1971, Steffens says that metacognition is the concept most akin to self-regulated learning. He also says that university education is a mix of self-regulated learning and partly teacher/instructor regulated. Two types of intervention programmes to support self-regulated learning exist: interventions without modelling and interventions with modelling. As the names suggest, one of the approaches involves a demonstration by the teacher of how to do something and the other approach doesn't involve any demonstration. Steffens says that both of these approaches have been "successful in improving students' academic achievement and self-regulatory skills in learning.

The TELEPEERS Project, which ran from 1 January 2004 until 1 January 2006 involved nine universities across Europe. The aim of the project was to identify Technology-Enhanced Learning Environments (TELEs) that "seemed to have potential for supporting self-regulated learning". The outcome of the project was that cognitive apprenticeship is the ideal model that should be used to encourage self-regulated learning. This is where "learning and self-regulated strategies are first modelled by an expert who then coaches his students when they try to make use of these skills before he finally gives them the freedom to exercise them whenever they consider this to be appropriate".

Summary - Even though only two years separates these articles, so much has changed in the online world in such a short space of time that some of the findings will no doubt have changed also. Hernandez says that some of the student teachers were daunted by having to publish their thoughts to the world at large. Today, this happens every day when subscribers update their profiles on social media websites such as Facebook or Twitter with all kinds of personal information.

From what I have read in these two articles writing this blog will help me in my study for a PhD. Even though both of the authors admit that they used relatively small numbers of people in their surveys, I still believe in the potential power of blogging to help encourage reflective practice and self-regulated learning.

This is a list of what I think are the pros and cons of keeping a blog.

Pros of blogging
Get your message out there
Engage with others in your field and collaborate online
Improves quality of your writing
Builds motivation and confidence
______________________________________

Cons of blogging
Distracting
Time consuming
Can lead to information overload

Journal Articles:

Hernandez-Ramos, Pedro, 'Web Logs and Online Discussions as Tools to Promote Reflective Practice', The Journal of Interactive Online Learning, 3 (2004), 1-16

Steffens, Karl, 'Self-Regulated Learning in Technology-Enhanced Learning Environments: lessons of a European peer review', European Journal of Education, 41 (2006), 353-379