Tabula Rasa
From the Latin for Scraped Tablet, meaning a Clean Slate
Symbolic of the human mind before ideas have been imprinted on it
by the reaction of the senses to the external world of objects.
(Free rendering of definition in Encyclopedia Britannica)
26 September 2019
40 years ago everything in my life changed. Aged 18, my father died, and I started the search to find a university place, and then left home. Everything was suddently up in the air.
The world about me was also changing. The sudden explosion of technology was exciting. Out went the typewriter and clunky rotary dial phone… and in came the first mass produced computers and cell phones. PC's, mobiles, social media, on-demand TV, apps still a long way away.
I got my first ‘computer’ in 1980 - a Sinclair ZX-80, and then a BBC Acorn computer shortly after that. It was regarded in our house as little short of magic even though they barely ‘did’ anything. The coding that was the best part of it. I would spend hours in my bedroom creating lines of code which didn’t actually do very much, but it appealed to my sense of order and creaitvity.
Things have been thrown up in the air several times since then. I have become notorious for it. I love change. Maybe no surprise then that 35 years after my first language degree, after two post graduate diplomas in radio and photo journalism, an MA in Crime Fiction writing and various certificates along the way… here we go again.
Week one of an MA in Creative App Development at Falmouth University. This blog is part of the assessment - the reflective journal. It’s hackneyed to say it - but I am excited and daunted in equal measure. This first week is a total confusion. I will admit I haven’t fully understood what’s going on. Information overload. Excited by the possibilities. Hoping I am not alone in - having little technical experience, any sense of what I am doing, being excited, keen to get to grips with things.
Immediate Goals
Understand what I am doing.
Develop a learning strategy
Get up to speed on the technical side of the course
Start working through the reading.
Outcomes
Amid all this info explosion I need to keep in sight my primary aim for doing this course - and that is to conceptualise and create several Apps.
An app that delivers relaxation and self-help recordings
. An app for teaching contemporary and useful English to Chinese students
. An app for walkers on Snowdon
A Welsh recipe app
A local history/genealogy app
A business start up app/podcast delivery app
So… that’s the plan.