Conviviality Corners

Steam Age IT re revisited.

2011-12-17T02:57:00.000-08:00

In 2010 I was was reading the article “Is IT Becoming Extinct” by Miguel Guhlin

http://www.edsupport.cc/mguhlin/archives/2008/03/entry_6863.htm

The topic of In-house IT systems and the development of utility computing has been interesting. I like to chime in from my personal experience and reading of various sources, one being a book by Eric Larsen, in “Devil in the White City”. He describes a time when electrical service was new. There was a big debate about AC or DC electricity.

Many of the institutions in the early days of electricity had their own power generating plants. They employed many people who saw the switch to utility electricity as a great threat and passed around a lot of scare stories about how horrible it was and all the hazards.

Of course, the switch happened and not many institutions employ big groups of technical specialists to generate a private source of electricity. The naysayers lost all credibility and the whole specialization evolved.

Same thing with IT, utility computing is here. In spite of all the horror stories and manipulations of the tech elite, there is less and less reason to have a big group of specialists to operate expensive and clunky private networks.

As a teacher using a computer mediated approach over the last 10 years, I found myself “working around” IT a lot of the time. Many of the tech folks didn’t believe that computers should be used for the purpose of education even though they worked for educational institutions.

Nor did they think that teachers were capable of using technology and they reinforced that opinion by constantly undermining any effort teachers made to develop the necessary skills.

The cultural clashes between corporate IT and administration didn’t help either. Lots of energy was spent on those epic battles and teachers and students were a very minor consideration for all the espoused values of “Students are #1″ in every educational institutions mission and vision statement. The struggle for control and authority have resulted in most of the failures of education related technology innovation.

In-house, corporate IT is like the steam powered DC generating plants of 100 ago. Pretty much done. It is going to take a little while for the change but probably not as long as it took to switch to AC electricity. One of the benefits is that education is being transformed. Technology will accommodate education rather than the other way around.

I know lots of teachers who just gave up on computers and the web and felt that they would never be able to develop the necessary skills. It was just so draining always having to get IT to open a port or set up file system or authorize access to a resource. So they stuck to Outlook, MS Word, Internet Explorer, the “approved tools”.

Happy to say that web based tools and cloud computing has made it incredibly easy for teachers to support learning in the digital era. All the alarmist rhetoric about identity theft, cyber-bullying, online predators etc. is being recognized as the last gasps of a system in transition, a struggle for control and authority. I would encourage all teachers to take another look.

Dec, 2011: I just keep updating this post and watching the trend.
Today reading an article about utility computing see how attitudes have changed in just 3 years.

And for startup companies, the decision to not build is a no brainer. Connectivity to the cloud is the real issue for these companies. “If I was starting a greenfield company, the data center would be the size of my bathroom; there wouldn’t necessarily even be a server, maybe a series of switches and all my backoffice apps, my sales force automation, my storage would be handled in the cloud,” said Dave Nichols, CIO Services Leader for Ernst & Young, the global IT consultancy

In the last year I have been teaching IT courses for pre-service teachers and instead of having them buy a couple of $100 textbooks I have them buy $250 netbooks. The class proceeds with a combination of wireless routers and everybody learns how to use ICT and social media on their own devices. The not only learn how to use the netbook but they start constructing their own personal learning networks from amongst their class mates. The idea is that when they are finished their training and are out on the job, they will have a group to communicate with, on a channel the are familiar with using their own device that they know how to operate. As we approach a state of ubiquitous connection and persistent proximity, BYOD is more important and storage in the cloud is just another part of that sort of independence.

Keynote address at the University of Guadalajara

2011-12-04T23:09:00.001-08:00

Narration and paper to follow.

Sweet Blogger iPhone app

2011-09-08T22:13:00.001-07:00

With lake pics

Never rains, pours

2011-09-07T14:55:00.000-07:00

Had to turn down an invitation to address the International Leadership Association because I am presenting at APRENDRED-IV

Two excellent looking conferences, each on topics of great interest to me. If only one, or both, was actually in SL.

MOOCs in Virtual Worlds

2011-09-06T10:06:00.000-07:00

Getting set up for a couple of MOOCs this fall. Change.MOOC.ca and CMC11
I'm on the roster for week 8 of CMC11.

I've been participating in these fabulous learning experiences for a few years now starting with the earliest instances but mostly with Connectivism08. Each one has been an excellent learning experience no matter what level of attention I was able to pay. It is an amazing way to get to meet with people with similar interests and to participate in all sorts of activities.

In many past MOOC's a group would meet in Second Life. Some participants were experienced in SL but many took the opportunity to learn and explore a virtual environment and evaluate it as a part of their personal learning environment and as one that they would like to investigate for use for various education related purposes.

I am offering the use of my space in SL as a meeting place to discuss the weekly topics and as a starting point for further exploration of SL, networking, maybe a little dancing etc.

If you are familiar with SL, the meeting space is at

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Madhupak/11/25/65

If you are not familiar with SL you can start here to get set up and there are usually many welcoming avatars to help you get oriented.

2011-08-07T08:50:00.000-07:00

VOICE IT

2011-06-14T00:09:00.000-07:00

Much has happened but I haven't been recording adventures here so much. Recently got involved with a major research project in MB. The project is sponsored by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council, in one of their divisions called Communities and Universities Research Alliance. The project title is Vital Outcome Indicators for Community Engagement for Children and Youth. So SSHRC-CURA VOICE. The project is a long term project to try to determine the indicators for success for northern youth. It is a participatory action research project with contributors from a number of communities and sectors throughout MB.

My participation so far is to work with the Knowledge Mobilization group to set up and organize a broad spectrum of social media. Such as Twitter and Facebook. We are starting out using a Wikispaces wiki to coordinate information, one of the long term requirements of the project specifications is that Knowledge mobilization occur through the use of a wiki. Right up my alley!

We have had a launch meeting via the new Cisco systems tele-presence suite located at Brandon University, University College of the North in Thompson and The Pas, U of W and U of M in Winnipeg.

Prior to the launch meeting the KM group met under the direction of Dr. Robin Enns and Dr. Karen Rempel to begin the process of setting up a web based communications system. Applications used include Skype, Mindmeister, Zotero and Ushahiti.

One of the over-riding concerns for this project is to be respectful of the Ownership, Control, Access and Possession (OCAP)

of information generated by First Nations people. The basic precepts of participatory action research require that all participants be equivalent and that the distinctions between the researcher and the subjects be eliminated.

The bones of the VOICE-IT wiki are emerging. This wiki is to support the work of the KM group but may also serve as a model that could be used to coordinate activities and to aggregate information through out the project.

A workshop is scheduled for June 28-28 at Elkhorn Resort to provide background information about the PAR approach.

Getting pwned by 3rd party, peer-reviewed resources.

2010-12-22T10:17:00.000-08:00

Someone passed along a link to an interesting article about the new approach to scholarly publishing. Reading the article turned out to be an interesting exercise in critical thinking about the veracity, validity and reliability of web based scholarly resources.

The article Research intelligence - Rip it up and start again was published in the Times Higher Education newsletter. http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=414579

I was reading right along and nodding my head until the part about Elsevier publishing being an exemplar of the new approach. I recalled that last year Elsevier got caught publishing at least 6 fake journals, mostly in support of pharmaceutical companies and their fraudulent process. http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/55679/

Then I started trying to figure out who publishes the Times Higher Education so I looked at their ownership which is Charterhouse. I wanted to figure out if there was a connection between Charterhouse and Elsevier and sure enough. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/charterhouse-swots-up-on-reeds-business-820727.html

So this article is actually marketing or at least an attempt to repair the tattered reputation of Elsevier.

The web makes it easy to manufacture and disseminate crap, but it also makes it easy for individuals to get down a few layers and check the veracity of stories themselves. Unfortunately, the money grubbing publishers realized that few people will go to this minimal amount of effort to check things out.

Are people Keeping Their Distance from a Creepy Treehouse? #PLENK

2010-11-04T08:15:00.000-07:00

Suifaijohnmak Weblog asks the question "Why are people staying away from the forum?" This is the #PLENK Moodle forum that is being used to support a MOOC, a massively online open course. John details some possible reasons in his post and a number of commenters add excellent insights.

I find this quite interesting as well and it seems that somehow this particular MOOC has triggered the creepy treehouse effect.
Stein offers a number of definitions for this phenomena but this one seems apt.

n. Any institutionally-created, operated, or controlled environment in which participants are lured in either by mimicking pre-existing open or naturally formed environments, or by force, through a system of punishments or rewards.

Such institutional environments are often seen as more artificial in their construction and usage, and typically compete with pre-existing systems, environments, or applications. creepy treehouses also have an aspect of closed-ness, where activity within is hidden from the outside world, and may not be easily transferred from the environment by the participants.

Other courses of in this series had a spirit of co-learning with the course moderators. This time around it seems as though it is part of their day job and the whole process has become institutionalized. I get the sense that participants are regarded as subjects of an experiment rather than connected individuals.
It is not that the course originators were not straight forward with their intentions, they stated their intentions from the start and had everyone agree to the letter of consent. This is part of NRC research and a number of people, including myself have expressed their intention of conducting research into various aspects of the experience.

My specific research interest is to test a theory that I developed as part of my dissertation research.
http://gradworks.umi.com/33/71/3371263.html

The abstract is below.

This analysis began with inquiries into the substantive area of distance education using the classic grounded theory method. Analysis revealed a pattern of problem-solving behavior, from which the theory "Keeping Your Distance " emerged.

The theory is an integrated set of concepts referring to the conscious and unconscious strategies that people use to regulate distance , physical and representative, in their everyday lives. Strategies are used to control physical, emotional, and psychological realities and to conserve personal energy in interactions with individuals and/or institutions.

Keeping Your Distance is presented in terms of a conditions/consequences/covariance theoretical model adapted from Glaser's (1978) Theoretical Sensitivity . Conditions evoke a system of strategic response patterns which result in consequences. Responses and their consequences change conditions and result in additional adjustments, made on an ongoing basis. For all social interactions, people use a personalized algorithm of engagement that mitigates conditions and consequences and preserves optimal distance.

Keeping Your Distance provides a theoretical starting point for considerations of the changing notions of distance. In part, these changes have been brought about by developments in the fields of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and online social networking.

This emerging, multivariate, conceptual theory may be of interest to scholar-practitioners examining distance education, psycho-social processes, and critical pedagogy. Elements of this theory may be of use to higher education policymakers charged with instructional design, institutional advancement, and marketing.

Keywords: "Keeping your distance," Distance Education, Grounded Theory method, Critical Pedagogy

I find a bit of irony in the understanding that this is an institutionalized MOOC about Personal Learning Environments, something that struck me as contradiction in terms. It seems as though an effort is being made to deconstruct the personal in PLE and figure out a way to put it in a bottle for marketing purposes.

I understand that organizing a massive online course like this will require institutional supports and infrastructure but it will be valuable to determine the breaking point, the point where many experienced users of PLE's got the sense that this was no longer personal and they were not really participants but were having their bar presses counted.

Take Your avatar on Safari with #PLENK in SL: Exploring other Grids

2010-11-03T00:14:00.000-07:00

The #PLENK in SL cohort met on Tuesday in Conviviality Corners for a brief meeting to discuss a variety of topics. We have ordinarily been meeting immediately after the Elluminate sessions but we wanted to try another time to see if that worked better.
The main topic of discussion was the importance of online virtual worlds for a personal learning environment. While no clear consensus was reached in the discussion most of the members agreed that virtual worlds held great potential as critical elements of a PLE.

We decided to explore some virtual environments other than Second Life. The owners of Second Life have recently sparked concerns within the education community by removing the substantial subsidies that were previously available for educational institutions. This has lead to an increased interest in other virtual worlds. James OReily calls it Hyper Grid Hopping.

Emerging as popular alternatives are Open Sim options like ReactionGrid and Joykadia Grid. While these newer grids do not have some of the attractive features of the new SL Viewer 2, they are much more reasonably priced and flexible with regard to ownership and transferability of property.

The PLENK in SL cohort agreed that it could be productive to explore the new grids as a group. It was decided that Thurs, Nov 4, 2:30 PM SLT, all interested would be welcome to join a safari to ReactionGrid. See world clock for your time zone.

To join the safari participants will need to download a third party viewer. It should be noted that a viewer is like a web browser in that it is an application that gives access to a virtual environment. Many web browsers exist like IE, Firefox, Chrome and Opera, to name a few. Similarly, a number of virtual world viewers exist such as Hippo Open Sim Viewer and Imprudence

With one of these viewers installed, participants can join other grids to set up accounts in a process very similar to Second Life. You should join the new grids if for no other reason than to stake your claim to your avatar name. Some entrepreneurial types have been registering popular SL names and then trying to sell them to SL immigrants to other grids.

Members of the PLENK in SL group will be available on Skype to provide logistical support for anyone wanting to join the adventure. The easiest way to join the PLENK in SL Skype conversation is to add ggatin as a contact on Skype and I will add your contact to the running conversation at PLENK in SL Skype Chat.

While this may seem complex, I encourage people to explore this very interesting activity. I suspect that in the not too distant future it will be common for everyone to have an avatar that they will use to navigate numerous online virtual worlds for commerce, for entertainment and for education. My avatar will be able to go shopping in the virtual Amazon bookstore, picking virtual volumes off the shelf and placing them in a virtual shopping cart,and paying at a virtual checkout. The same avatar will then proceed to Home Depot and shop for home renovation materials with the help of virtual hardware clerks. My purchases will be shipped to my real world address. My avatar my then join the ongoing discussion in the virtual coffeehouse or log into an online class. My online identity which now is pretty much my email address, becomes a 3D representation of me in the online world.

Replacing the CAGE: Do PLE's help overcome the Hidden Curriculum? #PLENK

2010-10-28T13:08:00.000-07:00

Take off on one of my favorite Bruce Cockburn songs, Pacing the Cage. I think the song is pretty personal but I think of people who are confined in other types of cages. Bruce has championed First Nations issues in Canada for many years.

A major construct in critical pedagogy is the hidden curriculum
The idea is that different people experience the same education curriculum differently depending on their race, gender, socioeconomic status, their social strata, their CAGE. (class, age, gender, ethnicity) Julie McMullin (2009) Understanding Social Inequality is a good starting point to understand the situation in Canada although the themes are similar worldwide.

Most people, particularly those from the privileged groups have very little insight into this disparity. Lots of sociology projects seek to deconstruct colonialism and/or study whiteness. Lund and Carr, (2007) have an excellent set of exercises that I have put together for a seminar in Second Life.

The potential exists for web based learning to avoid some of the major abuses resulting from the hidden curriculum. As long as a new inequality isn't based on your access to high speed Internet. This week MTS released a report that it would cost 7 billion to restructure internet access to ensure that all Canadians have equal access. Can you detect the rent-seeking behavior here?

In economics, rent seeking occurs when an individual, organization or firm seeks to earn income by capturing economic rent through manipulation or exploitation of the economic or political environment, rather than by earning profits through economic transactions and the production of added wealth.

Guess who lives in many of the rural and remote communities in Canada, those that have been disadvantaged for ever. If First Nations people are going to prosper in the information age, they need access to the information flow. Make sure that the hidden curriculum doesn't include the unspoke direction to "fire up your high speed internet access" if it isn't universally available.

Lund, D. E., & Carr, P. (2007). The great white North? Exploring whiteness, privilege and identity in education. Sense Publishers.

McMullin, J. (2009). Understanding Social Inequality: Intersections of Class, Age, Gender, Ethnicity, and Race in Canada (p. 408). Oxford University Press, USA.

Pedagogy of Propinquity Reprise #PLENK2010

2010-10-15T09:53:00.000-07:00

I dug this out of my archives. Sorry about the large font. I use Embed Article which is great but I have to figure out how to adjust.

Source: ggatincritped.blogspot.com

Putting Salt in the Oats #PLENK2010

2010-10-13T08:11:00.000-07:00

I was reading the blog of a friend and fellow #PLENK2010 participant where she was discussing the concept of motivation and cleverly introduced the old wisdom about leading a horse to water.
While it is true that you can't make them drink, a number of old tricks are available to make them thirsty.

I often think about this when planning teaching activities. If you give learners every imaginable resource to make learning happen, they often still will not drink it up. I've even observed at times when teaching, that I get the attention, set the hook, watch people get engaged in the process and then they pull back. It is as if to say " I don't really want to get too enthusiastic about this, school is not cool" One of the strategies I usually try is to lay back and let the learners approach the material in their own ways while providing hints and clues that might whet the appetite.

I worked for a while consulting on a voc/tech project in Romania. The project involved trades apprenticeships and the apprenticeship culture was a bit different from Canada. There was a saying in Romania that you had to steal your job. That is, you could be an apprentice and work on the job but the supervising journeyman would not willingly teach you anything. The journeyman understood that if he taught an apprentice something their relative worth shifted and the boss might make unfavorable choices come layoff time. So they would give the apprentices just enough information so they could do the grunt work and they would actively hide their actions as they performed the more skilled parts of their performance. You never saw a more highly motivated group of apprentices, and their attention to the slightest clues was remarkable.

Maybe our concern with providing the best possible learning conditions is counter-intuitive, just like many other things in human nature. Better to incrementally increase the challenge in learning as game theories propose. Might be a problem for all the people who have been pail fed by the current educaitonal system.

Steam Aged Education #PLENK2010

2010-10-06T13:39:00.000-07:00

The #PLENK2010 session today was about learning theories and employed a few allusions to the age of steam power. I like the analogies to the history of technology. Like the examples from the development of the printing press, examples of societal responses to steam technology can be instructive respecting the response to information and communication technology. Many institutional education activities are throwbacks or hold outs from an earlier era. Remnants of the industrial era that preceded this information era. Still people try to squeeze current experiences with learning into an older industrial model.

A while ago I read an article “Is IT Becoming Extinct” by Miguel Guhlin

http://www.edsupport.cc/mguhlin/archives/2008/03/entry_6863.htm

The topic of In-house IT systems and the development of utility computing has been interesting. I like to chime in from my personal experience and reading of various sources, one being a book by Eric Larsen, in “Devil in the White City”. He describes a time when electrical service was new. There was a big debate about AC or DC electricity.

Many of the institutions in the early days of electricity had their own power generating plants. They employed many people who saw the switch to utility electricity as a great threat and passed around a lot of scare stories about how horrible it was and all the hazards.

Of course, the switch happened and not many institutions employ big groups of technical specialists to generate a private source of electricity. The naysayers lost all credibility and the whole specialization evolved.

Same thing with IT, utility computing is here. In spite of all the horror stories and manipulations of the tech elite, there is less and less reason to have a big group of specialists to operate expensive and clunky private networks.

As a teacher using a computer mediated approach over the last 10 years, I found myself “working around” IT a lot of the time. Many of the tech folks didn’t believe that computers should be used for the purpose of education even though they worked for educational institutions.

Nor did they think that teachers were capable of using technology and they reinforced that opinion by constantly undermining any effort teachers made to develop the necessary skills.

The cultural clashes between corporate IT and administration didn’t help either. Lots of energy was spent on those epic battles and teachers and students were a very minor consideration for all the espoused values of “Students are #1″ in every educational institutions mission and vision statement. The struggle for control and authority have resulted in most of the failures of education related technology innovation.

In-house, corporate IT is like the steam powered DC generating plants of 100 ago. Pretty much done. It is going to take a little while for the change but probably not as long as it took to switch to AC electricity. One of the benefits is that education is being transformed. Technology will accommodate education rather than the other way around.

I know lots of teachers who just gave up on computers and the web and felt that they would never be able to develop the necessary skills. It was just so draining always having to get IT to open a port or set up file system or authorize access to a resource. So they stuck to Outlook, MS Word, Internet Explorer, the “approved tools”.

Happy to say that web based tools and cloud computing has made it incredibly easy for teachers to support learning in the digital era. All the alarmist rhetoric about identity theft, cyber-bullying, online predators etc. is being recognized as the last gasps of a system in transition, a struggle for control and authority.

Lots of the discussion about theories of learning support of the older institutional models and theories or education and they serve to entrench the hegemony of the system. For example the theory of Minimally Invasive Education doesn't get a lot of play in education circles because it disrupts some pretty deeply entrenched notions of the necessity of teachers, curriculum, and education system structure generally.

It is important to be able to sort out the the theories that are truly useful for learning and separate them from the theories that are more useful for supporting the status quo of Steam age Education.

The LMS is like Temple Grandin's Machine #PLENK2010

2010-09-24T13:17:00.000-07:00

Just watched Temple Grandin the fantastically inspirational story of a woman with autism who used her special sensitivities to promote humane treatment of cattle in abattoirs and stockyards.
She couldn't stand to be held or touched by humans. She said "New things scared me". She was really impressed when she first saw a cattle squeeze, a device with a head gate and a lever operated device that immobilizes cattle so you can treat them or work with them with out risk to cowpersons or cattle. When she asked what the gate did for the cattle she was told that it "gentles them". She was so impressed that she built her own squeeze that she could get into and squeeze herself to get gentle. She went on to have a great career and still teaches apparently at a University in Colorado.

Grandin, Temple. (1992) Calming Effects of Deep Touch Pressure in Patients with Autistic Disorder, College Students, and Animals JOURNAL OF CHILD AND ADOLESCENT PSYCHOPHARMACOLOGY
Volume 2, Number 1, 1992 Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., Publishers http://www.grandin.com/inc/squeeze.html

When we were talking about LMS in the #PLENK session in SL after the Elliminate session today, it struck me that many people like the comforting self-imposed squeeze of the LMS. Maybe they feel it gentles them. No LMS for me, I much prefer the wild wooly west of the open range.

Reference Management Systems #PLENK2010 My fav, Zotero!!

2010-09-23T12:39:00.000-07:00

Zotero is my all time favorite and it is the one reason I continue to use the Firefox browser, otherwise I now use Chrome for everything else.

Years ago, doing my MA, I used EndNote and got completely fed up with constant and expensive updates and a crappy user experience. I used Zotero exclusively for my doctoral program and subsequent writing.
I also now use the Zotero on line groups functions to coordinate resources for various classes that I teach. Each participant can add resources to a shared collection of references and synchronize the group resources in their own Zotero account. I use it for the MEd ICT classes I teach and for the various Grounded Theory Method study groups in which I participate. Check out and join this one if you like. Critical Pedagogy in a Digital World.

Academic social networking and sharing. I use to use Delicious for this but now I mostly use Zotero, I can add tags in Zotero but I can also use the 2 click function to create a citation in perfect APA format or many others. I can even use customized formats required by specific journals or publications.

I've explored Mendeley as well, mostly because I wanted something that wasn't browser specific. I am a little more nervous about the proprietariness of it. I get the feeling that someday there will be a large fee and that they will hold my data hostage.

So I received the news with great joy when Zotero announced yesterday that the extension of an Andrew W. Mellon grant had made possible the development of Zotero Everywhere, which means it is no longer exclusively a Firefox add on. It will have a standalone desktop version and a web version with an enhanced social networking function.

Dan Cohen is one of the principal developers of Zotero and blogs at Digital Humanities.
Great blog and the development of Zotero is a great story of the success of an socially responsible application that supports digital humans! My buddy and partner on a few projects, Susan Stillman, is also a big Zotero enthusiast for a couple of reasons. Her son Dan Stillman works on the Zotero project and we sometimes get the inside scoop on things and we have a go-to guy for any questions or concerns.

The Zotero story is inspirational. When Dan announced the new Zotero on Ustream yesterday and I watched it on the wall in Second Life. I think I noticed a little tear of joy in Telmea Story's eye.

My ICT Mindmeister for #PLENK2010

2010-09-23T00:33:00.001-07:00

I like mindmaps, I make a new one for each class I teach or for an article or book that I want to analyze. I used CMAPTools for a while but now I like MindMeister.

Invited guests can collaboratively edit the map in real time. I often do so in conjunction with a Skype conference conversation.

Click and drag the map around, click the + signs to open the nodes. Click the arrow icons on the nodes to go to a web page. Click on the full screen button to get the full effect. Just get in there and click!!

"Chance Favors the Connected Mind" #PLENK2010 in Sl Week Two

2010-09-22T19:27:00.000-07:00

Check out this TED talk from Steven Johnson author of one of my favorite books, Everything Bad is Good for You. The talk is called Where Do Good Ideas Come From? He starts of with a picture of a 19th Century Coffeehouse where he said that many ideas fundamental to our intellectual history arose. He says that a coffee house is where "ideas go to have sex." He says we should connect ideas rather than protect them. Under the right circumstances two people with half an idea each, get together and the whole is greater than the sum. "Chance favors the connected mind"

We connected again today for PLENK2010.

So broadcasting Elluminate with Ustream didn't work out so well for the session. Multiple issues were apparent and I obviously need much more practice with the Ustream application.

So here is what I was trying. I was broadcasting my desktop on my Ustream channel. I had the #PLENK2010 Elluminate session open on my desktop. I had the url for my Ustream broadcast loaded as a texture on the media board in SL. I wasn't able to figure out how to display the UStream as a full screen so everyone in SL saw the whole web page, chrome, ads and all. Tonito consulted with someone who suggested that we alter the repeats per face menu in the texture tab for the display board prim. It worked to change the size of the display but didn't help to make the Ustream text chat any clearer. Plus no Elluminate audio was available. So pretty much a wash. Plus after a while the lag seemed to build up tremendously. Learning, learning, learning....

Looking for a new plan for displaying the Elluminate. Or looking for other ideas, generally. One suggestion was to invite one or more of the moderators to present in SL and invite others to attend. I thought it was a good idea and it might work at some point. Stephen, George, are you up for a visit to SL?

After the PLENK session proper we had a great discussion in SL of some of the days topics from Martin Weller's Elluminate presentation and the ensuing discussion. ( Although I was so busy piddling around with the tech I didn't focus on Martin much. I went back through the recording) We made a few more plans for PLENK2010 in SL. In the picture you see Tonito, 2B Writer, Sean, Sutah, and Telmea. I'd forgotten I had this Mystitools, DynaTable and chairs in my inventory. As each avatar sits, a new chair is created for the next avatar. According to the specs you can add 250 Avatars!!

Topics that we reviewed included the notion that George Siemen' mention, ie) Public intellectuals and the responsibility of publicly educated people to make their views known and to model critical public discourse. Blogging is the new salon where people meet to discuss and debate important intellectual issues. That is a bit of a problem when people rely on the forums in the Moodle. No matter how accessible the Moodle is, eventually it belongs to someone else and your ideas are going to get locked away. If you post in a Moodle forum you should also provide a link to your own blog, wiki or podcast where you can develop your ideas more firmly and have them available for posterity or at least for future learning experiences.

The other idea we discussed was a thread from the Elluminate chat. Some one said that nobody wants a 1/4 hp electric drill with a 3/8 keyless chuck. They want a hole. The professors at the University of Drills are the only ones who are interested in the History of Drills or the Critical Theory of Orifices. An argument for learning and education to be anchored firmly in authentic experience.

I talked to Fleep Tuque of Chilbo where the PLENK2010 in SL group is meeting. Fleep as usual is so supportive and thinks it is a good idea to add materials from PLENK to the Connectivism Reading Room. I'll see if I can figure what is required.

#PLENK2010 in SL and UStream

2010-09-18T22:07:00.000-07:00

More complicated fun!
Things are coming together for the cohort of people who use Second Life as an important part of their personal learning environments.
Sean Fitzgerald has started a new wiki to coordinate things a bit. http://plenk2010insl.wikispaces.com/

We met for a while tonight in Conviviality Corners and tried imagining a few things. One proposal was to incorporate a in-world RSS feed aggregator for the feeds of the PLENK SL cohort or anyone blogging about virtual environments in a PLE ( as a PLE). We could post Stephen's master list of feeds if he is okay with that and if we can find the proper code.

I was playing around with an idea that avatars could gather to participate in the PLENK Elluminate sessions. Kind of like getting together in the bar to watch a football game.

I'm pretty sure it can be done with UStream and the in-world shared media. I tried it out tonight. After downloading the Desktop Producer version of UStream I started a UStream broadcast. I think grabbed the url for the UStream feed and put it on a shared media panel in Second Life. I then opened an Elluminate demo session on my desktop and switched UStream to screen capture mode. I was able to view the Elluminate session on the wall in Conviviality Corners. I will have to play around a little more to see if people can participate in the Elluminate chat from within SL and whether the audio will work properly but it looks promising.

#PLENK2010 in SL

2010-09-11T10:35:00.000-07:00

Just getting set up to participate in this MOOC (Massively Orasimatastical Online Course) with 800+ other folks from around the world. The course is about personal learning environments and networks and knowledge.
An increasingly important part of my ple is the virtual world of Second Life. I have offered to help organize a cohort of people who want to use SL in various ways to participate in this course.

I have already had a few meetings with other PLENK attendees in SL and we have established an SL group to support the inworld cohort. Search for it by name PLENK2010 in SL

A similar course to this CCK 08 also used SL and a wonderful Connectivism Reading room remains in world with an archive of documents, podcasts and Elluminate recordings.

I hope we will be able to do the same for this course. Things have also changed in SL since 2008, media sharing is available and the VOIP system works very well so it will be interesting to compare and contrast the experience this time with 08.

I intend to use this blog as a main organization point for my PLENK activities. It is one that I have used for many other courses, seminars etc and as a general reflection and thinking out loud spot. Love to respond to comments.

Machinima, film-making in virtual worlds

2010-08-26T00:52:00.000-07:00

I've been spending a little more time in Second Life and attending more functions. There are so many interesting things going on. Today I attended a seminar on machinima, at the Caledon Oxbridge Lecture hall http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Caledon%20Oxbridge/73/137/29

Machinima is defined as "animated filmmaking within a real-time virtual 3-D environment".

Machinima is recorded in real-time, and real people can act and control the camera. Essentially you use a screen capture tool such as FRAPS or Jing (Camtasia) to record and edit the real time activities in a virtual environment such as SL or an online game. You then use the tools to edit sound and video. With careful planning, artistry, and some reasonable easily acquired skills the end product is very good. This lovely piece by Bryn Oh is an excellent example. World Expo Shanghai-No Love

Make sure you watch it in the full screen player.

Click To Play

Not Perishing...

2010-07-25T00:38:00.000-07:00

Much as I love blogging it is time for me to work toward a book. Just such an endeavor is underway. I've developed a proposal to send to Jossey Bass. I hope they like it because I like them since they included me in the JB Online learning conference last year. It was a great experience. They also seem to have some pretty good author supports and information. http://www.josseybass.com/WileyCDA/Section/id-290030.html
The book idea emerged from a syllabus I am writing for a Fielding course which may be offered starting Jan 2011. It would be great if I just happened to have a book ready to go about that time. We will see. Fortunately, I have bits and pieces already written in various blog posts so it is partly a question of collecting and polishing for a at least a couple of chapters.
Sue is also keen and will be able to contribute to a couple of the chapters directly and to the whole project overall.

Tappers and Listeners Great sensitizing concept

2010-06-26T22:45:00.000-07:00

I've been reading an interesting book on stickyness of information. (bought the ebook on my iTouch)
The book is Make to Stick: Why some ideas Survive and others die by Chip and Dan Heath. Early in the book they reference Elizabeth Newtons 1990, PhD dissertation, Overconfidence in communication of intent, heard and unheard melodies. In an experimental situation subjects were asked to tap out a simple and familiar song for others to guess. They were asked to estimate how many of the songs that the others would guess and they estimated 50%. The actual rate of correct guessing was 1 in 40. The tappers could not believe that the listeners did so poorly, they thought they did a great job. The book goes on to describe the implications of this for leadership communication skills especially when linked with the "Curse of Knowledge" phenomenon, the notion that the more you know about something the less likely you are to be able to make your messages clear about the topic.

So the take away is this. We think we are communicating way better than we actually are.

Lots of interesting social psychology on the concept of overconfidence much of it nicely summarized in an article by Dunning, Heath and Suls (2004).They have an excellent section on the implications of overconfidence for the field of education. One of the issues for education they describe is that we have a system of bulk upload mass education that exacerbates this problem. The system is good at transmitting a message but is not so good for long term retention of information or transfer to application.

All very interesting and it sparks lots of interesting ideas for me.

As I have been trying to put all this together for myself, a side issue has appeared Where is Elizabeth Newton? I want to read her actual dissertation for myself but I can't find it anywhere. Doesn't seem to have been published elsewhere. Is she still being held hostage by her PhD committee? I see that the Heath's of Made to Stick are faculty in Newtons school and I am very pleased that they have given her a citation in their book but it seems a little odd that she has such a low profile. I'll have to keep digging although I'm unlikely to be willing to pay the Stanford fee to read the dissertation if is even available. None of the databases I use has access to the Stanford collection or am I doing it wrong.

Dunning, D., Heath, C., & Suls, J. M. (2004). Flawed Self-Assessment. Society, 5(3), 69-106.

Heath, C., & Heath, D. (2007). Made to stick:Why some ideas survive and others die. New York: Random House.

Newton, L., 1990. Overconfidence in the communication of intent: Heard and unheard melodies. unpublished doctoral dissertation, Stanford University, Stanford, CA

Update

2010-06-26T21:22:00.000-07:00

Long time no see.
Activity report since last post.
Applied for various positions and worked toward developing a consulting agency. I guess I am a white collar farmer or a Wifi Homesteader as Clark Aldrich describes:

More and more people are trying to untangle themselves from toxic institutions, from box stores to, in some cases, schools, and taking control of their own lives.

I've picked up some work teaching for Northcentral University as a mentor for their online masters and doctoral programs. Most of my work for them has been mentoring for a series of research methodology classes for doctoral candidates who are preparing to begin the dissertation process. It has been an excellent experience as I have had to re-familiarize myself with many of research fundamental. I was recently approved by NCU to mentor classes relating to eLearning in their Masters of Arts in Education program.

I was approached to instruct a class for Assiniboine Community College through their Continuing Studies program. The course was a trades qualification program for a group of Hutterian Brethren who wanted to challenge the Inter-provincial journey-person exams. The biggest attraction for me was that the course was taught using the Hutterian Broadband Network. Thirty Hutterite colonies in Manitoba are linked with their own broadband network which includes a comprehensive videoconferencing system. I mostly taught from the studio at Green Acres Colony near Wawanesa, MB but the class participants were members of 12 different colonies located all across southern Manitoba. It was a great bunch of people and the experience was very rewarding. I will be writing an article with an analysis of their system and the possibility it presents for rural economic development.

The ICT class that I teach for Brandon University MEd program was offered this spring and I had 9 excellent participants. These are all teachers and administrators located across rural Mb and we conducted the class entirely using web-based tools. I have yet to meet any of the participants face to face. I will be writing this experience up in a separate article for publication.

Most recently I was contracted to deliver an ICT class for the Brandon University Northern Teacher Education Program (BUNTEP). This was essentially the same ICT class that I teach to the masters group but with some of the critical analysis elements trimmed out (i.e.) No APA format final paper.

Now I will get a chance to do some writing and put together some things for another MA in Ed program that I hope will start up this fall.

Always something to do on the homestead.

Organizational Shadow in Ed Tech

2009-11-22T21:38:00.000-08:00

I've been taken with the concept of organizational shadow recently after reading a 1991 article by Bowles. From the abstract...

Organization Shadow is understood as facts which organizations wish to deny about themselves, due to the threat posed to self-image and self-understanding and, more generally, the need to be viewed in a favorable light by others. The Shadow is repressed, and, as unconscious content, is projected onto others, often those who are incapable of resisting it.

Interesting to watch the dynamics of this playing out. A 2008 book by Collins Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology recently received a controversial review by Jenna McWilliams.

I think she pegged it right when she pointed out the "damning by faint praise" offered in the book to the notion of self-directed education supported by new web-based affordances. The old guard of the existing educational establishment is not going to give up power and control that easily. They have too much to loose. They have convinced themselves that they are a last bastion and that the education system for all of its, presumably known and lovable, it preferable to the crazy chaos of self-directed learning.

I listened to a recent interview with McWilliams on CBC Sparks where Norah Young interviewed Jenna by Skype and then posted the interview as a podcast. For me it was the media being the message and predisposed me to suspect that she had put her finger on a nasty sore spot on Collins. Collins responded to the review: http://blog.acm.org/elearn/2009/11/allan_collins_on_jenna_mcwilli.html

Bowles, M. (1991). Organizational shadow. Organization Studies, 12(3), 387-404. doi: 10.1177/017084069101200303

Collins, A., & Halverson, R. (2009). Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology: The Digital Revolution and Schooling in America. The TEC Series. New York: Teachers College Press.

The New Panopticon

2009-06-18T07:54:00.000-07:00

Haven't spent much time here for a while as I prepared for the final oral review of my dissertation. That is done, now to tweak the dissertation and send it off to the publisher.

One of the dimensions of my dissertation research was to generate a theory of basic patterns of social behavior. The patterns that I observed led me to formulate a theory which I called "Keeping Your Distance".

Here is the abstract.

This analysis began with inquiries into the substantive area of distance education using the classic grounded theory method. Analysis revealed a pattern of problem solving behavior, from which the theory “Keeping Your Distance” emerged.

The theory is an integrated set of concepts referring to the conscious and unconscious strategies that people use to regulate distance, physical and representative, in their everyday lives. Strategies are used to control physical, emotional, and psychological realities and to conserve personal energy in interactions with individuals and/or institutions.

Keeping Your Distance is presented in terms of a conditions/consequences/covariance theoretical model adapted from Glaser (1978), Theoretical Sensitivity. Conditions evoke a system of strategic response patterns which result in consequences. Responses and their consequences change conditions and result in additional adjustments, made on an ongoing basis. For all social interactions, people use a personalized algorithm of engagement that mitigates conditions and consequences and preserves optimal distance.

Keeping Your Distance provides a theoretical starting point for considerations of the changing notions of distance. In part, these changes have been brought about by developments in the fields of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and online social networking.

This emerging, multivariate, conceptual theory may be of interest to scholar-practitioners examining distance education, psycho-social processes and critical pedagogy. Elements of this theory may be of use to higher education policy makers charged with instructional design, institutional advancement and marketing.

My dissertation research grew out of an interest in various aspects of distance or distributed education. One of the reservations that people have about distance education is that is perceived as distant, as in alienating and devoid of human contact. This may have been the case in the early days of technology, however as ICT technology has advanced the opportunity for people to manage their distance from institutions is seen as a good thing. As it turns out, it looks like people may prefer to keep their distance.

I read an article this morning about The Digital Evolution of Surveillance

Ash, K. (2009, June 17). The digital evolution of video surveillance. Education Week: Digital Directions-Trends and Advice for K-12 Technology Leaders. Retrieved June 18, 2009, from http://www.edweek.org/dd/articles/2009/06/17/04videosurveillance.h02.html.

This article and many others discuss the great effort and money that place-based education institutions expend on the illusion of security and safety. However, the more I read about the draconian measures that many institutions adopt, the more I am reminded of Foucault's discussion of Panopticon.

Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison (1st ed.). New York: Pantheon Books.

Foucault discussed education specifically and observed the relationships between power, control, conformity and education. Sad to think that this is the direction that institutional education is moving; toward environments of more oppressive control.
The theory of Keeping Your Distance suggests that people will avoid institutions that try to restrict autonomy in this fashion. If institutions want to support learning, as opposed to education then they will consider ways that people can acquire learning with out exposing themselves to the risks and oppression associated with institutions that put such a premium on surveillance and control.

It all depends on how you ask the questions

2009-05-21T09:20:00.001-07:00

Just reading a report of a research study done by the EKOS group for the Council of Ministers of Education, Canada. The whole thing seems to be framed from industrial education perspective and doesn't even consider some very viable alternatives for PSE.

EKOS. (2009). An examination of barriers to pursuing PSE and potential solutions. Final Report, Council of Ministers of Education, Canada. Retrieved May 20, 2009, from http://www.cmec.ca/Publications/Lists/Publications/Attachments/196/EKOS-FINAL-16-03-09-An-exam-of-barriers-EN.pdf.

Long involved study, interviewing high school students and their parents about their future plans for education. The study was framed in the context or identifying barriers to participation in PSE and purported to look for solutions that would reduce barriers.

Looks like a wonderful study but it is loaded with preconceptions. These are apparent in the use of language through-out the research and report.
Two phrases stand out for me. "pursuing" and "go to...."

This study explores who is not pursuing PSE and the reasons why. Key issues explored in the
discussions include: the obstacles that are faced by students and how these obstacles interact with
one another; what roles are played by key players in helping students make these decisions; the
factors influencing post high school plans; barriers to PSE; the perceived importance of these
barriers and the interaction among barriers; and the impact of finances, academics, information
and motivation on plans for after high school. The importance of: the level of information about
PSE (e.g., its costs and benefits); availability of financial aid; information on financing PSE; selfidentifying
as being or not being a potential PSE student; career plans; specific post high school
plans (both in short versus long-term plans.

All this implies that you can only participate in PSE by leaving your present location and going to another spot for education. No mention of the possibility of having PSE come to you.

The researchers asked, in their written questionnaire and their focus group questions.

Did you think in grade 8 that you would be going to PSE? In grade 9 or 10? Did you ever think
about it at all? What were you thinking that you’d be going to? What kind of school (university,
college, trade school, etc)? (p.40)

Did you think that your son or daughter would go to PSE? (p. 48)

The discussion of alternatives to PSE seemed to be limited to "not going". No discussion of PSE coming to your choice of learning location.

Oh, and the other thing that came out fairly strongly is the general disgust that high school students have for the current process of education.

Can't get H1N1 from your computer

2009-04-30T13:29:00.000-07:00

Not saying I want to live in a purely virtual world. I just want to have a choice about it. If there are exchanges where real world interactions add no value ( bank teller) or the value of the interaction is not over weighed by the risks involved, (club on the wrong side of town). I will use the ABM and watch the music video.

It is a toss up whether most physical interactions for education or work really add any value to the transaction or out weigh the risks. A pandemic flu out break may make that calculation in favor of virtual interactions.

Couldn't happen you say? AIG couldn't go broke, GM will never go bankrupt, US will never elect a black man president.
Too many black swans and to much at risk not being prepared.

Ed institutions need to do all they can to take their operations virtual to ensure that the service that they provide to society is not lost. While that happens, many of the problem aspects of industrial education may be sufficiently disrupted to bring about meaningful change.

Sacred, Secret and Cover Stories

2009-04-27T11:43:00.001-07:00

Came across this interesting concept as a result of a the Twitter stream during the #tlt2009 conference that I watched via Ustream today at http://www.tlt2009.ca/

I tracked down some of the resources for the concepts relating to the notion of different teacher narratives.

Clandinin, J., & Connelly, M. (1996). Teachers' professional knowledge landscapes: Teachers stories-stories of teachers-school stories-stories of schools. Educational Researcher, 25(3), 24-30. doi: 10.3102/0013189X025003024.

Classrooms are, for the most part, safe places, generally free from scrutiny, where teachers are free to live stories of practice. These lived stories are essentially secret ones. Furthermore,when these secret lived stories are told, they are, for the most part, told to other teachers in other secret places. When teachers move out of their classrooms into the out-of-classroom place on the landscape, they often live and tell cover stories, stories in which they portray themselves as experts, certain characters whose teacher stories fit within the acceptable range of the story of school being lived in the school. Cover stories enable teachers whose teacher stories are marginalized by whatever the current
story of school is to continue to practice and to sustain their teacher stories. We do not wish to imply that either secret stories or cover stories are necessarily good or bad.

Campbell, E., Campbell, A., & Groundwater-Smith, S. (2007). An ethical approach to practitioner research (p. 198).

Develops the idea is that teacher narratives are based on three different versions of events,

The Sacred story is theory driven views of practice shared by practitioners, policy makers and theoreticians. This is the story of events that would be provided in curriculum materials and constitutes the canon or the officially approved version of knowledge.

The secret story is the lived experience of classroom practice told to other teachers.

Cover stories=stories in which practitioners agree or collude with a version of events and portray themselves as 'experts', sometimes to protect their professional behavior or the participants in the story.

All this struck me a necessary background for understanding some important issues for critical pedagogy. Leads to the rhetorical question; Why is it necessary to construct different stories?

Of course the answer is obvious because no one has the true version of events although institutions try to claim it, reinforce it and enforce compliance with it. Teachers (or many other people in similar situations) may see the truth differently and may attempt to transmit their version.This could get them in deep trouble so they have to be very careful and on occasion construct a cover story that shows how their secret story and the sacred story are the same.

This may explain part of the reluctance that teachers have for having their classroom activities recorded in podcasts, vlogs etc. They are open to scrutiny by administration, parents, society at large. When it is just the students in the classroom there is a large degree of deniability but when others may be observing there is a large degree of distrust and discomfort.

Reminded me of the precepts of Action Science and the notions of espoused theory and theory in use. Also Glaser's notion of the different kinds of data that can be collected from interviews; baseline,properline,interpreted,and vague.

Don Tapscott in Wikinomics, developed the idea of information asymmetry where the 'experts' wield power because they have some sort of information advantage that they carefully control and maintain by manipulating the facts and limiting access to information resources. The Internet has made the construction of multiple versions of the truth problematic, because it is very simple for individuals to get different perspectives on events and to question the different versions of the truth being presented. This is great for consumers of information but puts greater demands on the constructors of knowledge. If there is too much variation between the sacred, secret and cover versions credibility is lost.

Why newspapers are failing

2009-04-24T12:18:00.000-07:00

Watched this presentation by Linda McQauig.

Starts with Mark Twain quote about those who don't read newspapers are uninformed, people who read newspapers are misinformed.

Some excellent points that should be repeated. Newspapers are complaining that they are failing because nobody reads the news anymore. But as McQuaig points out they aren't really reporting news, just broadcasting the narrative of the corporate elite. Corporations are blind to their own blindness. If they really want to sell newspapers they would report on newsworthy items. Like:

-Eqos study of Canadian opinion and the gap between what ordinary people want and what the corporate elite want. Elite want small government, less regulation and deeper economic and military integration with the US but 48% of Canadians want exactly the opposite. That's news but it hasn't been reported in corporate media.

-capitalism is collapsing but corporate elite still wants to blame workers for the collapse eg. the auto industry.

-half of all Canadians support an early withdrawal from Afghanistan. That is news that doesn't get reported. Doesn't fit a corporate agenda.

-the story of the Nato bombing mission that mistakenly killed a bunch of people at an Afghani wedding that killed 36 people and injuring the bride. Now that is a big news story with a large human interest element. Given the Canadian involvement with NATO there should be lots of interest. But the G and M buried it deep on page 21. If the newspaper agenda is to sell papers as they claim, that should have been splashed over front pages for days.

-Canadian Civil Assistance plan. Allows US troops to cross into Canada. Interesting to Canadians but it was never announced to Canadians. They would be under the ultimate control of the US Commander in Chief. Didn't hit the front pages because the corporate elites think that deeper economic and military integration with the US whereas most Canadians want the opposite.

So the idea that newspapers have a grievance because people don't want to read newspapers is disingenuous. They don't really want to sell papers by reporting actual news, but their version of the news that furthers the corporate political agenda.

University as Marriage Market

2009-04-22T10:03:00.000-07:00

Found myself quoted in a Christian Science Monitor article about David Wiley at Brigham Young University.

The premise is that most traditional face to face institutions of higher learning are becoming increasingly irrelevant and are facing extinction in their present form. Wiley suggests in another article that

Every college and university needs to adapt, he says, or they won't survive. But BYU, he notes, might be a special case. Students will likely still flock there for the two extra benefits the school offers: a religious education and the chance to meet and marry an LDS Church member.

This led me to speculate on a feature of industrial education that you don't see directly referenced in the university marketing literature but nonetheless seems to be a very important factor in choosing to attend an elite, face-to-face university. That is that you will have an opportunity to participate in a marriage market with people of your own (or higher)socio-economic status, your class, religion. A common pronouncement of the defenders of face-to-face education is that it allows you to build lifelong networks and this maybe true but it is becoming more likely that your networks will need to be beyond a limited geographic sphere.

Similarly, you might want to try another way to meet your mate. One of my favorite writers ( and no-holds-barred critical thinker) these days, Joe Bageant talks about the great American hologram the "feast of bullshit and spectacle: the great American media mind warp",a collective illusion carefully manufactured and maintained.

One aspect of this is the Disney illusion of "one true love' someday my prince will come, your destined mate. But it really doesn't happen that way.
More likely parents want their offspring to go to university to meet a nice girl or boy with good genes, finances and prospects. That may well be a major benefit, however it has nothing to do with education. Given that many institutions of higher learning operated with public funds it appears these funds are being directed towards activities that don't have much to do with higher learning.

It might not even be the best way to select a mate if divorce statistics are considered. It might even be better to use an online dating service for mate selection although theses services may be to new to be able to make any judgments about the relative longevity of marriages that began as online relationships.

So far from the spontaneous process of finding your one true love and "just knowing that he/she was the ONE" is an illusion. People are much more calculating in their choice although they don't admit it to themselves or others.

Checking out this article.

Chiappori, P., Iyigun, M., & Weiss, Y. (2006, November). Investment in schooling and the marriage market. Discussion paper, . Retrieved April 22, 2009, from http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=947518.

Tuition commission report

2009-04-05T12:34:00.000-07:00

Just read this report

Levin, B. (2009). Commission on tuition fees and accessibility to post-secondary education in Manitoba. Government, Manitoba: Manitoba Advanced Education and Literacy. Retrieved April 5, 2009, from http://www.postsecondarycommission.mb.ca/pdfs/commision_final_report_en.pdf.

Looking for any mentions of online learning or distributed education policy. Conspicuously absent!

The entire report seems to be predicated on the unchallenged assumption that higher education can only be accomplished face to face in a major urban center. This assumption is being very successfully challenged in many jurisdictions world-wide and online learning is steadily improving to the point where it may be superior to bricks and mortar education for many purposes.

There is talk of increasing access by providing better, housing, daycare, better access to student loans, minimum wage increases etc but nothing about online eduction.

The forced relocation of Manitoba people to major urban centers for higher education has disproportionate costs for those in rural communities that aren't factored into this report. Rural communities are deprived of social and economic contributors. Hard to coach a the local hockey team or serve on the local board if you no longer live in the community. Similarly, people who move to a major urban center are deprived of their family and community social supports.

Increasing access to online higher education will take some improvement to the online education infrastructure including improvements to rural broad band access. But this is being done for other public initiatives such as Telehealth where an increasing number of medical support services are being delivered by various online mechanisms.

Increased rural broadband would improve not only access to higher education but would also support rural economic activity generally. As the world moves into the much touted information economy age more people are earning their living online. Potentially, this is just as possible from your desk in rural Manitoba as it is from anywhere.

Not even mentioning online learning in this report indicates a very specific agenda has been chosen, one that supports the status quo industrial education system that exists in Manitoba.

Online learning prevents on-campus assaults

2009-03-28T21:22:00.000-07:00

Everyday you hear about some horror being perpetuated on a university or college campus. Rape, murder, assaults of all types, people intimidated and scared spit-less to make that long trip across the quad to the your next night class. It is a natural pressure point for every psychotic kook with a weapon. Herding that many of societies finest into one place makes a fantastic hunting ground for human predators.

These guys get off on the extra weird sense of power they have over people, institutions and society. They get a big kick out of tweaking the absurd theatre that that passes for security. They also may realize that a crime committed in the specialized jurisdiction of a university campus is more likely to get swept under the carpet and finally ignored, often with the victims being blamed in a hundred disingenuous ways.

Campus administrators have gone to extraordinary lengths to deal with this issue. They have created policies, and then policies on their policies. They have supported research into violence against women and minorities on campus and generally blame society itself for poor socialization techniques. They studied the campus sports teams, hazing practices and implicit messages that get transmitted through fraternities and the myriad of anti-social institutions that are taken for granted on campus.They spend oodles of time and effort to promote the control of guns in society. They talk and talk and talk about sensitizing men to gender issues. One other tactic that some administrators have used to reduce the impression that campuses are risky places is to lie about the incidents of sexual assault.

All the while they carefully ignore the one technique that might actually work. Computer and Internet mediated online learning is proving to be a viable alternative to the old institutional model of higher ed. Internet applications have become cheaper, more sophisticated and better than the old way. You don't have to trudge across town, find a parking spot, find the lecture theatre, look for a chair furthest away from the person coughing with her mouth wide open spewing every imaginable germ. All this for 50 minutes of some guy reading his powerpoint and passing out mountains of useless handouts. 60 minutes to get there, 50 minutes of lecture, 60 minutes home. The supposed collegiality of face to face learning is a carefully tended illusion. Some times you get to campus and the lecture theatre is full and you get to sit in overflow parking watching the lecture on CCTV. Could have had a V-8. At home.

Nope, to study online, you boot up your computer in the quiet of your home office after the kids have gone to bed. Look at the course outline and all the course materials on the wiki, watch the recorded video lectures of podcasts, pause it rewind it, fast-forward it, chat in an online IM system where your questions are considered and answered by faculty, TA and fellow students. That two hours you spend in transit for an on-campus course is spent much more comfortably in the company of spouse and family or even working on course assignments. When YOU feel you are done for the night you shut down the computer and carry on.

I've been looking for evidence that people have put this together. Online learning is hugely safer than on-campus learning. Why don't the local University Women's Centers promote online learning for this purpose and demand that more programs and courses be offered this way. There is enough baseline data that suggests that on-campus assault is a significant problem and that the large expenditures dedicated to the current methods for ameliorating the problem are money in the wind.

Maybe it's because everybody is still stuck in the factory model of learning.

I know that my research methodology for this post was pretty basic. Mostly a google search and the perusal of a number of University and College web sites.

The only two treatments of anything remotely related to this issue discussed Online learning for the empowerment of women and the use of online learning for Islamic women who observe purdah.

Moore, M. G., & Anderson, W. G. (2003). Handbook of Distance Education (1st ed.). Lawrence Erlbaum.

Olakulein, F., & Olugbenga, D. (2006). Distance education as a women empowerment strategy in Africa. Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education, 7(1). Retrieved March 27, 2009, from http://tojde.anadolu.edu.tr/tojde21/articles/felix.htm.

I think one of the main reasons is that higher education is a huge industry in its present form. It has nothing to do with pedagogy, it has everything to do with the economics of status quo. It has become a bit of a sheltered workshop for faculty, administration and support staff. It is a huge economic engine for communities with everybody from the lawyer on the senate to the landlord renting suites taking a slice. It is a grand finishing school/marriage market/party venue for all the immature children of an entitled class. A good part of all this on the public dime.

Politicians, policy makers, administration are all carefully tuned to the hum of the of the industrial education machine. They refuse to fast track online learning because the main concern is bums in seats, FTEs, good union jobs and grateful voters. Looks like Women's Centers buy into the same taken-for-grantedness that real learning only happens in a face-to-face setting. They haven't figured out that an online student is still your student even though they don't regularly get the pleasure of smelling the sneakers in a huge impersonal lecture hall.

Feeling a horrible flu coming on. Going to bed satisfied that my computer friends and online classmates can't catch it from me.

Teachers have trouble learning

2009-03-20T13:30:00.000-07:00

Article from the Chronicle of Higher Education

Bass, R., & Eynon, B. (2009). A plan to develop and spread better college teaching practices. The Wired Campus. Retrieved March 20, 2009,

Always baffles me to hear that we need to rely on the pedagogical skills of professional educators to steer us through the rapidly emerging world of web based resources for learning organized around communities of practice.

Then we are told that the same educators need more time, support, R and D, resources to learn how to teach using new modalities.

no tradition of connecting the edge to the center, no established practices that enable us to turn the individual breakthrough into something more than idiosyncratic

It is going to be tough if the community of professional educators has this much difficulty acquiring basic technological literacies.

Anyone...? Anyone...? Institutional Malpractice

2009-03-11T10:05:00.000-07:00

Came across this video on Silvia Straka's excellent post on her blog.

All too realistic and the the only thing missing was an image of the yellowed notes the lecturer wrote the first semester he taught the class 10 years ago.

Oh… and maybe a few smudged up overhead sheets and the stack of unread hand-outs left behind on the lecture hall floor.

I know that there are lots of passionate, engaging lecturers and speakers of all sorts but they maybe in the minority. Any value in terms of content from this type of presentation could be easily delivered in a half a dozen different ways, video, podcast. At least that way students could review the material when they were ready to learn, or at least awake. They could pause for reflection, rewind to review, and use a social network to engage with the subject matter. And they wouldn't have to put up with the smell of the guy who came to class hung-over.

Everyday, thousands of people spend millions of dollars to drag themselves to a campus to participate in this sort of ritualized behavior. Just think of the carbon footprint.

To insist that students drag them selves into a lecture hall to sit for 50 minutes of this sort of mind numbing presentation is abusive and constitutes institutional malpractice.

Still in a lot of institutions this passes as the ideal of teaching and learning, predicated on the hegemonic assumption that the institution owns knowledge and can inject it into the minds of students. After a while there will be test or a quiz to test the student acquisition of knowledge, a dip-stick pushed into the mind of students to check the level. And then the assignment of a grade that permits the student to advance to the next stage of injection.

Gift Economies

2009-03-08T20:03:00.000-07:00

Gift Economies have been around for a while.

Most often the gift is not monetary but reputation/karma enhancing. I read Cory Doctorow's Book Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom when it was syndicated on his website. You can download it for free at this link. A highly recommended read.

He described a society that used Whuffies to recognize a persons reputational status in a post-scarcity economy to encourage the production of useful and creative stuff.

Came across a great instance of a gift economy on Twitter today. Its called Twollar

So you want to recognize someone for the value that they have freely offered to your Twitter community you send them Twollars by creating an entry like "Give 10 Twollars to @ggatin for telling me about gift economies" Twollars picks up the code and registers exchanges in their system.

The idea is that corporations will provide sponsorship so that Twollars will be translated in to charitable giving for worthy projects like drilling water wells in 3rd world countries.

I love it. Anything to break out of the corporate mindset, that everything of worth can only be measured black ink in by the bottom right hand corner of a spreadsheet.

So here is the deal. I will send a Twollar to any Tweeter who comments on this post. Heck of a deal. I have no idea how much this will cost me, I guess I should figure out how to the check the stats on this blog. Entirely likely that I will get off pretty cheap. Still trying to figure out the rate of exchange between Twollars and Whuffies.

Self-Styled Edublogger

2009-03-02T21:01:00.000-08:00

Another great blog entry and good discussion from Terry Anderson.

A couple of references in the article and comments to "self-styled edubloggers" got me thinkin' harder than Queeks Draw .

From the article:

self styled EduBloggers or even that subset who consider themselves to be EduPunk

And Scott Leslie's comment:

what I find constantly amazing is when I come across another self-styled edublogger with whom I share absolutely NO points of connection.

I'm not sure if the term is being used in a pejorative sense and I don't want to poke anybody in the eye here but is there any kind of edublogger other than self-styled? Is there a certificate or license or graduate degree that would designate someone as being other than "self-styled"... Official edublogger or something like that? As the article goes on to point out the qualification to be an edublogger is pretty loose and informal.

There are people like Downes and Anderson who really do get me cogitating on a regular basis but even as I read them I try to remember my catechism of critical thinking.

I recognize that I also have a tendency to look for people who's views and attitudes are similar to mine but I also recognize that that tendency can be very self-limiting. If my network of practice just confirms what I already think I know for sure it's not much use to me.

There is an other issue for me about that Clarence Fisher alluded to in a recent entry on his blog Remote Access He was taking issue with the notion of "ed tech" and points out that the prefix "ed" or "edu" may be loosing its usefulness. Others took up the notion in the comments.

I write in a blog and often I write about topics of education and critical pedagogy as I try to learn more about those topics. The blog is more for my personal learning than a broadcast medium.

So I'm promising myself to start looking for and read material from people who have views and outlooks that may be dissimilar from mine. Started already!

Sharon Elin contributed a comment on Andersons blog post supporting the use of Twitter and microblogging.
I agree with her that it is a great new format and getting better all the time. I posted my first twitter post in Apr of 2006 but didn't really get into it until Jan 2008. Watching it evolve over the last year has been very interesting.

I'm still trying to work out my personal Twitter following policy but I find I look for a few things in a Twitter buddy.
When I look at a persons Twitter account first page I look for the frequency of posts and the recency. Somebody who hasn't posted for a month might not be appealing similarly someone who posts 100 times a day can be a pain. I look at the display page, I think it shows your last 20 Twits. I look for value, pictures, links, interesting comments.
I then look at profile. Is there a link to a blog that gives me some personal information? I find my preference is for those who are straight up, use their real name and are using a blog for personal development.

I block spammers, web entrepreneurs, new media gurus, porno sites, hookers, real estate agents and personal injury lawyers or anybody telling me how to make my fortune from Twitter.
Note to future self: look at this post in a while and see if this has changed.

Don't just say no

2009-02-27T10:40:00.000-08:00

Just reading

Johnson, L., Levine, A., & Smith, R. (n.d.). The 2009 Horizon Report. Austin Texas: The New Media Consortium. Retrieved February 27, 2009, from http://wp.nmc.org/horizon2009/.

The latest Horizon Report. In the critical challenges section they mention:

There is a growing need for formal instruction in key new skills, including information literacy, visual literacy, and technological literacy. The skills involved in writing and research have changed from those required even a few years ago. Students need to be technologically adept, to be able to collaborate with peers all over the world, to understand basic content and media design, and to understand the relationship be- tween apparent function and underlying code in the applications they use daily.

Just as important for faculty and admin to be technologically adept. Using Word docs and email attachments doesn’t quite do it.

Also in-house, institutional IT needs to get up to speed on many of the new ways of using web based tech for learning. New slogan: “Don’t just say no!”

Edupunk and Colonization of Web 2.0

2009-02-24T14:11:00.000-08:00

Great debate/discussion going on between Jim Groom and Gardner Campbell in a series of videos posted on YouTube called EDUPUNK Battle Royal. Jerry Bayne on behalf of Educause is the referee/moderator.

One of the issues is the corporatization of education by major learning management companies who have been very aggressive (piratical?) about claiming many Web 2.0 features that have been developed by innovators and DIY ers.

The punk movement may not be the best metaphor for the counter-culture ethos arising in the face of the coporatizing of education. However, it works for the time being. As was pointed out in the video, the punk movement actually turned out to be the biggest corporate sponsored scam of all. Still the idea of resistance is there and to those that object to the punk meme, I think a true punker would say f**k em if they can't take a metaphor.

A couple of great images raised in this video. The notion of the big LMS companies corporate agenda to take over education is colonization. Certainly fits. They are like the Company of Adventurers moving in to Canada at "the pleasure of their majesties" and squeezing the last bit of juice out of a whole continent and leaving a devastated indigenous population and a servant class of colonialists.

Also love Grooms image of a LMS being a "florescent lighted space for learning". Really captures the dismal blandly uniform experience that passes for online education in many instances.

My ICT for Teachers course was constructed and conducted entirely using Web 2.0 tools. The object of the course was to increase teacher literacy with web based tools so what better way to do it. I think the course may be regarded with great suspicion by the institution. They use Moodle which means at least that they don't get involved with the type of hostage taking that Blackboard or WEBCT imposes on institutions. Still the institution is more interested in saving money and control than empowering learners with the possibilities of web based learning tools.

Personal Learning Networks, aka Skunk works

2009-02-21T19:54:00.000-08:00

Picked up this great notion from a new Twitter connection Jim NacLennan. He described the steps necessary to make a skunkworks project a success. A wiki project being like a skunk works project. Old reference to a Lockheed Martin work strategy for secret projects undertaken with ad hoc resources.

Thought that went together well with the idea of personal learning networks. People put things together using whatever is at hand, whatever works.

It also brings together the notion of bricolage.

"Levi-Strauss used the idea of bricolage to contrast the analytic methodology of Western science with what he called a "science of the concrete" in primitive societies.11 The bricoleur scientist does not move abstractly and hierarchically from axiom to theorem to corollary. Bricoleurs construct theories by arranging and rearranging, by negotiating and renegotiating with a set of well-known materials." (Turkle and Papert, 1992)

I consider myself a bricoleur, putting things together out of bits and pieces using unconventional means. This certainly fits as part of the pedagogy of propinquity and also reflects a useful mindset for making sense out of the vast amount of resources on the Internet.

Gotta be true, I read it in the paper the other day

2009-02-19T11:16:00.000-08:00

Responded to a post on elearnspace http://www.elearnspace.org/blog/2009/02/19/the-death-of-news/

It would be nice to believe that we could be better informed if I has some guidance from the experts in the news media. The people who are trained to be skeptical about the facts, present an objective view and have a system of editorial oversight to ensure that we "just get the facts, ma'am."

However it is more and more apparent that the corporatist news media has made a science out of deceiving their viewer.

This recent article brings the argument together quite well. Although there is no shortage of evidence to suggest that academics and the editors of peer-reviewed journals might be just as likely to manipulate "findings" to support an agenda.

Stocking, S. H., & Holstein, L. (2009). Manufacturing doubt: Journalists' roles and the construction of ignorance in a scientific controversy. Public Understanding of Science, 18(1), 23-42. doi: 10.1177/0963662507079373.

Quote from the article"

Most research in mass communication has instead found journalism to be profoundly conservative in support of existing power structures and the status quo (Shah, 1994; Hallin, 1986; Gitlin, 1980; Gans, 1980).

In the article (p.23) there is also a nice concept map of Smithson's Taxonomy of Ignorance.
Michael Smithson,1989,Ignorance and uncertainty:Emerging paradigms., New York: Springer-Verlag.

Cf. earlier blog post on Agnotology and a companion mindmap.

An article that may be a victim of its own conclusions

2009-01-29T22:28:00.000-08:00

This article stimulated a little discussion today. Is Technology Producing A Decline In Critical Thinking And Analysis? http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090128092341.htm

Clay Burell took the time to address most of the issues in the article, debunk most of it. http://education.change.org/blog/view/snark_attack_ucla_research_dissing_technology_bombs

I had to chuckle a bit at the authority they were breathlessly quoting, Patricia
Greenfield, UCLA distinguished professor psychology... and the assertion that ".... Greenfield has been using films in her class since the 70's." You can almost see the 16 mm projector, the yellowed notes and the cracked overhead transparencies.

I was reminded of the excellent book by Steven Johnson, "Everything Bad is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture is Actually Making Us Smarter".

This is an excerpt from this interesting and popular book about the changes our culture is experiencing as a result of the emergence of ICT. This story challenges the assumption that reading text is the best way to learn. The premise is that video games were popularized before books and now books are being introduced to support learning. This is how the teachers, parents and cultural authorities might react.

"Reading books chronically under-stimulates the senses. Unlike the longstanding tradition of game-playing- which engages the child in a vivid, three-dimensional world filled with moving images and musical sounds-capes, navigated and controlled with complex muscular movements-books are simply a barren string of words on the page. Only a small portion of the brain devoted to processing written language is activated during reading, while games engage the full range of the sensory and motor cortices.

Books are also tragically isolating. While games for many years engaged the young in complex social relationships with their peers, building and exploring worlds together, books force the child to sequester him or herself in a quiet space, shut off from interaction with other children. These new "libraries" that have arisen in recent years to facilitate reading activities are a frightening sight: dozens of young children, normally so vivacious and socially interactive, sitting alone in cubicles reading silently, oblivious to their peers.

Many children enjoy reading books, of course, and no doubt some of the flights of fancy conveyed by reading have their escapist merits. But for a sizable percentage of the population, books are downright discriminatory. The reading craze of recent years cruelly taunts the 10 million Americans who suffer from dyslexia-a condition that didn't even exist until printed text came along to stigmatize its sufferers.

But perhaps the most dangerous property of these books is the fact that they follow a fixed linear path. You can't control the narratives in any fashion- you simply sit back and have the story dictated to you. For those raised on interactive narratives, this property may seem astonishing. Why would anyone want to embark on an adventure utterly choreographed by another person? But today's generation embarks on such adventures millions of times a day. This risks instilling a general passivity in our children, making them feel as though they are powerless to change their circumstances. Reading is not an active participatory process; it's a submissive one. The book readers of the younger generation are learning to "follow the plot" instead of learning to lead."

Johnson, S. (2006). Everything Bad is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture is Actually Making Us Smarter. The Berkley Publishing Group., pp19-20

Some very interesting points that may provoke us to review the overwhelming dependence of the education system on printed text.

I suspect once again the book publishing and print media dinosaurs are feeling the heat and have a fear mongering campaign going to freak out all the moms and pops who don't understand the new era of technology enhanced living that their kids live and breathe.

Alternative Scholarly Publication models

2009-01-28T15:48:00.000-08:00

Stephen Downes posted link to this major study.

Houghton, J., Rasmunssen, B., Sheehan, P., Oppenheim, C., Morris, A., Creaser, C., et al. (2009). Economic implications of alternative scholarly publication models: Exploring the costs and benefits (p. 286). JISC Report, Victoria, AU and : Victoria University and Loughborough University. Retrieved January 27, 2009, from http://jisc.ac.uk/publications/publications/economicpublishingmodelsfinalreport.aspx.

I've been reading with interest. The three models they discuss are traditional print, proprietary electronic formats, and open access self archiving repositories.

The conclusions of the authors is that there would be significant efficiencies using the open access self-archiving repositories. On the order of 1/2 - 1/3 of the cost. These savings could be directed towards greater research and discovery as opposed to sustaining and enriching a publishing industry that is more interested in making a buck that advancing knowledge. They speculate that the savings would be immediate and would be more than adequate to cover transitions costs even if the publishing industry was resistant and there were costs to figure out a work around in the short and medium term. The publishing industry will no doubt engage in more rent seeking behavior to maintain hegemony over academic publishing. One of the appeals will more than likely be to a claim to greater quality of traditional peer-review process. This argument is not justified give the evidence that it is just as easy to fiddle the peer-review process.

What I am looking for in the report is evidence that the analysts considered the enormous potential of the semantic web in their calculation of the benefits of open access, self archiving publications. If open access self archiving academic publications can incorporate semantic features even greater efficiencies will be realized. One of the major costs of traditional academic publication is the cost of finding researching and accessing source materials. As one who has spent hours navigating the complexities of various proprietary online data bases, setting up specialized document readers and generally jumping through arbitrary hoops to get access to documents and journal article, open access is a relief. The time that a researcher spends on research is much more productively spent reading reflecting rather than cursing the locked paygate or arcane registration process.

Also very persuasive are the arguments of the author who suggest that establish and emerging scholars, especially those from poor countries and third world economies. If big pharma won't develop the drugs necessary to combat third world diseases because they don't have a big enough payday, the world should make it possible for other scientists and researchers to use resources to solve some of their own problems. Never know when some resistant strain of a third world disease finds its way into our cornflakes.

What part of education can be reclaimed from institutions

2009-01-16T13:35:00.000-08:00

Excellent article in Educause Review by David Staley on the development of new forms of education that take on the task that Universities have traditionally performed in an industrial education setting.

"Why do universities exist? What function do they fulfill that cannot be fulfilled by some other organization or mechanism? Asking this question allows us to explore the larger implications raised by wikinomics: Will a new form of organization emerge that will perform the same or similar tasks as the university? Will a new form of organization emerge that will fulfill certain functions not currently being performed by universities? Will a new form of organization emerge that will be better and more efficient at providing the services traditionally offered by the university?"

Better question might be, What parts of the natural social function of teaching, learning and knowledge production have universities performed because we didn't have a better way to do it at the time? Now that we have mechanisms that make communication and dissemination of knowledge simple, easy and cheap, what functions can society reclaim from universities? How much of what universities stake claim to is necessary or rent-seeking?

Interesting analogy put forward in the article about MMRPG's.

“There is the theme-park approach and the sandbox approach. . . . Most games are like Disneyland . . . which is a carefully constructed experience where you stand in line to be entertained. We focus on the sandbox approach where people can decide what they want to do in that particular sandbox, and we very much emphasize and support that kind of emergent behavior.”

Article asks the question are universities, theme parks or sandboxes. I agree with the tone of the argument that they should be more like sandboxes. Second Life is a MMRPG that allows for user-generated content from the get go. You learn how to use the tools then you use them to create content. When the tools don't do what you want you learn how to make new tools. It has to be the same for higher ed.

Love this description of a wikiversity.

The wiki-ized university

* is a “platform,”
* is permeable (no formal admissions process),
* consists of voluntary and self-organizing associations of teachers and students,
* consists of a self-organizing and intellectually fluid curriculum,
* does not offer tenure to professors (professors’ longevity is determined by the community),
* is governed by protocols based on community values and mores rather than on administrative rules and fiats,
* does not grant diplomas or certificates, (reputation not certificate)
* encourages play (and even failure),
* is governed by “intellectual barter” and makes all knowledge created therein free to anyone,
* is managed by administrators who “bubble up” from among the members of the community,
* is managed by administrators who maintain the platform as “choice architects” and lead via cultivation and care, not command and control, and
* has a fluid temporal structure: there are no “semesters”; teaching and learning are ongoing activities.

How people will be rewarded for activity in this environment. They figure it might happen for love but this type of enterprise would take a lot of involvement and people gotta eat. Don't want to leave it to the dilettante elites who are basically in charge of the current systems and are labouring hard to protect their status quo through rent-seeking behavior.

It will be interesting to see how this rolls.
Staley, D. (2009). Managing the platform: Higher education and the logic of wikinomics. Educause Review, 44(1), 36-47. Retrieved January 16, 2009, from http://connect.educause.edu/Library/EDUCAUSE+Review/ManagingthePlatformHigher/47934?time=1232136200.

Rent Seeking Behavior

2009-01-12T15:02:00.000-08:00

Been reading a few things relating to this concept. Rent here is understood not as referring earnings from a lease arrangement but as in the Adam Smith economic theory where economic activity yielded income in the form of profit, wages or rents. Rents were profits that accrued as a result of economic or political manipulations that resulted in monopoly advantage but do not add productivity. Rent seeking behavior So lobbyists who use political clout to have a wildlife refuge opened up for oil exploration might be seen as engaging in rent seeking behavior.

A little bit of this is okay but if it is pervasive enough society looses out. A recent book (Boldrin and Levine, 2008) has a different take on issues of copyright and intellectual property and debunks the notion that society needs IP rights because otherwise innovation and creativity are stifled. They describe the historical scenario from the introduction of the steam engine where James Watt had the patent on the essential component. He didn't develop the technology at a very quick pace and spent more time fighting legal battles against those who had taken the steam engine idea and were trying to refine and develop it. The consequence was that it wasn't until his patents ran out that steam technology became a universal social good.

Rent seeking behavior persists in higher ed. A recent NYTimes article described new practices at MIT where the traditional lecture format of the industrial ed model is being replaced with interactive web-based practices. They report increased attendance and reduced failure rate. The new system tracks and assigns grades based on attendance so it if there is any value in the f2f educational encounter you would expect there to be a relationship between attendance and outcomes. It still is predicated on bums in seats mentality. Interesting comment in the article "Younger professors tend to be more enthusiastic about TEAL than veterans who have been perfecting their lectures for decades." I can visualize the yellowed notes and disintegrating, masking-tape-patched, overhead transparencies.

Educational institutions or teacher associations that resist more efficient and economical practices in education by lobbying for legislation or regulation of elearning are rent seeking. I think technological foot-dragging may constitute rent-seeking behavior.

I live in part of the world where education is highly subsidized from the public purse but most higher ed only occurs in the major urban centers. Part of the reason/excuse offered is that f2f is superior so there is justification in forcing everyone to migrate away from rural areas. It is becoming apparent that f2f may not be that superior after all and that, in fact, technology mediated education has significant advantages. If this is the case it means that institutional practices that follow the industrial education model are educational malpractice.

It certainly constitutes a form of rent-seeking behavior. There have been initiatives to provide access to to rural and remote areas in this province but these have been severely limited in scope and functionality.

Private education can do it. The Hutterian Broadband Network distributes education through their own videoconferencing network. You can get a degree from Athabasca University studying in a technology mediated learning environment (long way to avoid saying "online"). The University of Phoenix is being accredited for many professional programs in Canada.

Essentially the publicly funded urban institutions subtly sabotage any effort that would result in fewer bums in seats. So rural centers loose their best and brightest and the urban centers get more congested. Classic hegemonic scenario and certainly a worthy topic for a little applied critical pedagogy.

Boldrin, M., & Levine, D. (2008). Against Intellectual Monopoly. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Retrieved January 12, 2009, from http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/againstfinal.htm.

Rimer, S. (2009, January 12). At M.I.T., Large Lectures Are Going the Way of the Blackboard . New York Times. Retrieved January 13, 2009, from http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/13/us/13physics.html?_r=3&hp=&pagewanted=all.

Entrenching the Google=Stupid meme

2009-01-04T10:01:00.000-08:00

Picked this up from a reTweet by Stony River. StonyRiver RT @mwesch "Is Stupid Making us Google?" James Bowman explores cultural (not just tech) trends impacting higher ed http://tinyurl.com/53thvk

Lots of people getting mileage out of the Google=stupid meme. Here is another but with some interesting applications of critical theory.

Bowman, J. (2008). Is Stupid Making Us Google? The New Atlantis, 21(Summer), 75-80. Retrieved January 4, 2009, from http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/is-stupid-making-us-google.

This article is a review and discussion of Mark Bauerlein's his new book, The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future.

Talking about the changes to intelligence as a consequence of technology. The Flynn effect that suggests that scores on intelligence tests have been increasing and that the notion of reading has changed. Also that the nature of intelligence has changed. Well Duh! The measures of intelligence that are being used have long been suspect for their support of cultural dominance and hegemony.

There is a challenge to the idea of "great literature" although it looks like the author of this article sees critical analysis as an abdication of the "guardians of Culture" ie professors and academics.

Snip from the article ".....Most of his fellow professors have no interest in the “great” works of the Western tradition—indeed, they reject the very idea of “greatness”—except to “deconstruct” it, along with the works to which it has been attributed, showing how their unexamined political assumptions have tended to reinforce the patriarchal, imperialist, racist, and homophobic foundation on which traditional societies have been built. Only now, in the work of our most advanced theorists, have these assumptions finally been brought to light and exposed for what they are."

The article also criticizes the over-emphasis of the socialization function over learning (through developed reading skills) of the industrial education model.

Bowman references Johnson, S. (2006). Everything Bad is Good for You. New York : T. and supports the sentiment expressed in this quote.

....No one has ever taught them that books can be read for pleasure or enlightenment—or for any other purpose than to be exposed as the coded rationalization for the illegitimate powers of the ruling classes that they really are. Why would you willingly read a single line of literature if that is all you supposed it to consist of?

Over all this article is furthering the Google=Stupid meme and may be trying to prop up some hegemonic values of old media and the control structures of knowledge production and dissemination.

Household chores in the Noosphere

2009-01-03T09:48:00.000-08:00

Dishes and laundry must be done, toilets cleaned, garbage taken out. It is what it takes to make a contribution in a household. Same thing in communities, somebody has to let their name stand for president of the committee, has to do the fund raising and the phone out.

The world of information is the same. There are mundane chores to do.

Web 2.0 is a two way deal. It is not enough for me to go to the web for info but I have to be willing to think, reflect and respond in kind so that the energy keeps moving.

Doesn't have to be much, a social bookmark in Delicious, a Tweet on Twitter, an email note to a friend who may be interested, or a blog entry. Make a contribution how ever small and pass it on.

I think it is also pretty important that this work not be left to the academics and public intellectuals although their contribution is valuable. Regular folks have a voice and ideally ideas will be judged on merit rather than an arbitrary authority or a credential. It is likely that academics will be skilled at critical thinking, analysis and reflective argument but this should not be a limitation for non-academics. We all need to pull our weight in the noosphere to the best of our ability.

Wikipedia is a convivial tool

2008-12-24T10:34:00.000-08:00

Illich talked about convivial tools that supported his ideal of returning learning to its natural function dissintermediated from the control of the radical monopoly of the industrial education complex.

Looks like Wikipedia may be able to play an important role in this process. One indicator is that the Landes Bioscience journal is requiring that publication submissions be accompanied by a submission to Wikipedia.
http://www.landesbioscience.com/journals/rnabiology/guidelines

I'm still trying to find a complete rationale for this from the journal but this article describes it in part. I can see this as an effort to ensure that new knowledge is disseminated and subjected to critical scrutiny above and beyond the traditional (and tarnished) peer-review process.

This seems to support the notion as put forward in a number of places that "Information is now validated at the point of consumption, not creation." (eLearnspace, 2008)It makes it evermore important that people develop and use critical thinking skills rather than rely on authority now matter how unimpeachable the source.

Giggling a little over an article about the Catholic church trying to whitewash its treatment of Galileo 400 years later. I love this quote, "Had Galileo been tortured, Nicolini would have reported it to his king. While instruments of torture may have been present during Galileo’s recantation (this was the custom of the legal system in Europe at that time), they definitely were not used." Kinna like the US doesn't use torture, what do they call it? Oh yeah "tactical questioning"

Generating Ideas

2008-12-20T09:38:00.000-08:00

This entry is partly inspired by a presentation by Anni DeStefano to the virtual cluster on Dec 20, 2008. Three articles were introduced for advanced readings.

Deegan, M., & Hill, M. (1991). Doctoral dissertations as liminal journeys of the self: Betwixt and between in graduate sociology programs. Teaching Sociology, 19(3), 322-332.

Hampel, R. (2008). In search of new frontiers: How Scholars generate ideas. Chronicle of Higher Education, 72. Retrieved December 20, 2008, from http://www.lexisnexis.com.ezproxy.fielding.edu/us/lnacademic/search/homesubmitForm.do.

Kamler, B., & Thomson, P. The failure of dissertation advice books: Toward alternative pedagogies for doctoral writing . Educational Researcher, 37(8), 507-514. doi: 10.3102/0013189X08327390.

I read the Kamler article when my copy of Educational Researcher arrived and had a few conversations with others regarding this particular article. The article references a book that I purchased on the advice of Sue Gordon.

Rudestam, K., & Newton Rae. (2001). Surviving your dissertation: A comprehensive guide to content and process (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.

I was impressed by the mention of Grounded Theory dissertations.

Generally I agree with the authors position that the preponderance of advice books is not particularly helpful.
Anna referenced p 508 "doctoral writing is best understood as text work/identity work(italics in the original. By this we mean that texts and identities are formed together, in, and through writing. The practices of doctoral writing simultaneously produce not only a dissertation
but also a doctoral scholar."

I also loved the Hampel article especially the reference to . ... psychologist Abraham Maslow, who began keeping journals primarily to let posterity have "everything unfinished, all that is ¼ or ½ done ... it will save all of my forgotten insights, beautiful ones that are lost because I have too many of them to work them all out or even to classify & save efficiently." At age 57, he fretted that "much of my work will die with me."

I can help but think that Maslow would have been a big fan of blogging because most of my blog entries represent ideas in various stages of development. I keep going back and adding materials as I come across them and trying to integrate concepts.

Anna referenced the notion of rite of passage that is part of the dissertation process and mentioned in the Deegan and Hill (p.74) .....Balancing originality and conformity.....The passage is risky...but an opportunity do something grand. Liminal.

P 325. No place for the immature personality.. (Transformative)

Power of writing... professional writers are lodged in the privileged world of publications. Anna mentioned the proliferation of web based tool blogs, wikis and the way that this might have changed this observation. Knowledge construction and dissemination have changed dramatically and the power structures have changed. Web-based tools support the aims of critical pedagogy in these regards.

Topic of collaborating and drawing on fellow students. Fielding supports student input. "Only one student may serve in the official capacity of Student Reader on your committee, and their name will appear on the title page of your dissertation. You may wish to ask other students to review your work informally (and you may wish to do the same
for their dissertations), but their names will not appear on the dissertation. You may acknowledge the assistance and encouragement of your fellow students in your Acknowledgments page of the dissertation"

Recognizing the institutional concerns regarding the use of new media to accomplish academic tasks. Institutions are subject to accreditation processes that make it important to consider the ramifications of adopting new approaches to scholarship such as a wiki-dissertation. The institution is bound to ensure that the credibility of the degree granted is sound for the sake of alumni, currently enrolled doctoral candidates and potential enrollments at the institution.
At the same time institutions that wish to remain relevant must continue to re-evaluate policy and procedure to ensure that diversity and creativity are encouraged and supported in all aspects of learning and contributing to the community of scholars.

Ontology, Folksonomy and Grounded Theory

2008-12-16T10:12:00.000-08:00

So grinding through a few concepts here. Established that GTM can be used in support of critical pedagogy as long as you steer clear of the impulse to use GTM as an elite process. Evetts, Mieg, and Felt,(2006)

One of the mechanisms of the elite scientific process is the definition of terms, vocabulary and ontology. Lamp and Milton,(2007) talk about the relationship between GTM and the process used to generate ontologies.

Glaser was concerned that GT not become an exclusively academic exercise serving only the proprietary interests of a particular discipline. Of course, Glaser is fairly proprietary about GTM and is certainly representative of an academic elite.

Ontologies can be compared and contrasted to Folksonomies. Wikipedia discusses this. "Folksonomy has little to do with taxonomy—the latter refers to an ontological, hierarchical way of categorizing, while folksonomy establishes categories (each tag is a category) that are theoretically "equal" to each other"

Great quote from Clay Shirky "It is a rich irony that the word "ontology", which has to do with making clear and explicit statements about entities in a particular domain, has so many conflicting definitions."

Here is the tie back to critical pedagogy. I suspect that Illich would see folksonomies as tools for conviviality in that they support the reclaiming of the learning function outside of an academic environment.

Signed up this morning for an web app called Knoodl. This is a service dedicated to the generation of ontologies or vocabularies as they describe them. They make much use of communities and wikis. After I figure it out I'm going to try to create an ontology for KYD and maybe for GTM generally using some of the ideas from Lamp and Milton.

Evetts, J., Mieg, H., & Felt, U. (2006). Professionalization, scientific expertise, and elitism – a sociological perspective. In Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance (pp. 105-127). Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.

Lamp, J., & Milton, S. (2007). Grounded theory as foundations for methods in applied ontology. In Proceedings of QualIT. New Zealand: Victoria University of Wellington. Retrieved December 16, 2008, from http://lamp.infosys.deakin.edu.au/journals/index.php?page=categories.

Critical Theory and GT

2008-12-10T22:29:00.000-08:00

Reading Barry Gibsons excellent chapter (Gibson, 2008) has helped me bring together some ideas and to envision an application of the theory that has emerged from my dissertation research. Critical theory also reminds me to reflect on my position in society and the influence that has had on my theory of human social behavior.

Gibson explains the connection between two important critical theorists, Theodor Adorno and Pierre Bourdieu and their influence on the development of the Grounded Theory Method originated by Glaser and Strauss.

Critical theory promotes social analysis to expose hegemony and the destructive influence of capitalism on social relationships with a view to emancipation of people. Gibson proposes that Glaser and Strauss sought to bridge an embarrassing gap between the theoretical and empirical traditions in sociology. The challenge was to study society from a position within society. Adorno's position was that sociology was a product of the tensions of capital, labour and reinforced the domination in society.

Day later I come across a blog entry on Stephens Web, quoting George Seimans talking about education and power. Looking for article referenced by George. George quotes Evetts, Mieg, and Felt (2006) who "suggest that expertise has as a significant sociological component. Power, authority, and validity all play a role. Focus on accountability, audits, and performance targets are now heavily intertwined with professionalism. Structures of control - such as education - are not solely about knowledge and the interaction of learners with academics. Education is a system based in a sociological context. Or, more bluntly, there is 'no fundamental difference between the pursuit of knowledge and that of power.'"

So education which can serve as a force for emancipation can also become part of the structure of domination. As mentioned in a previous post, industrial education is more about social control and enforcing conformity than empowering learning, or developing knowledge for the benefit of humanity.

Knowledge creators have also evolved a hegemonic apparatus for the systematic extraction and abstraction of knowledge. Mieg, (2006) describes the various levels of expertise in trans-disciplinary projects. Came across some more info about knowledge generation as a professional project and the role that ontology plays in the control of the production of kwowledge. Contrast formal ontology with folksonomie as in the sort of native learning systems that people put together. Illich would have loved Delicious as a tool for conviviality.

Evetts, J., Mieg, H., & Felt, U. (2006). Professionalization, scientific expertise, and elitism – a sociological perspective. In Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance (pp. 105-127). Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.

Gibson, B. (2008). Accommodating Critical Theory. In Sage Handbook of Grounded Theory (pp. 436-453). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications Inc.

Glaser, B., & Strauss, A. (1967). The Discovery of Grounded Theory . New York: Aldine de Grutyer.

Mieg, H. (2006). System experts and decision making experts in trans-disciplinary projects. International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, 7(3), 341-351. Retrieved December 11, 2008, from http://www.emeraldinsight.com.ezproxy.fielding.edu/Insight/ViewContentServlet?contentType=Article&Filename=Published/EmeraldFullTextArticle/Articles/2490070307.html.

Authority and Ideological Transparency in a Digital World

2008-12-07T09:26:00.000-08:00

From the article Viadero, D. (2008). Project Probes Digital Media's Effect on Ethics. Education Week. Retrieved December 7, 2008, from http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2008/11/19/13gardner_ep.h28.html?utm_source=fb&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=mrss.

Article included this video clip of Howard Gardner talking about Project Goodplay, a research project from Harvard Graduate School of Education looking at the effect of digital media on the ethical development of youth. Gardener is concerned about the changing definition of "good worker" and "good citizen".

Education, Social Media, and Ethics: Howard Gardner, Harvard Graduate School of Education from Education Week on Vimeo.

States that ethical standards evolved to manage participation in groups of up to 150 and that we are not prepared, from an evolutionary standpoint, to participate online communities comprised of thousands of people. I'll have to read the original article to see his reference for that "science".

He uses the phrase "young people these days" and if I was doing formal analysis I would probably code such phrases as "status quo defense".

Throughout Gardner refers to the fact that authority is earned because social models were seen as serving the public interest rather than self-interest. He points out that this is now gone and people, especially those with access to channels of information (outside of the traditional mainstream media or academic industrial complex one would assume)no longer automatically credit authority and are much more able to see through ideological agendas. Gardner has a brief rant about Wikipedia and bemoans the superficial nature of online media where students once revered THE TEXT BOOK and THE TEACHER they now look elsewhere for information.

Of course Howard may be a victim of his own conclusions. While his theory of Multiple Intelligences, his position at Harvard and his reputation are the standards of credibility and authority for all matters educational, his ideology is a bit transparent as well. He is very much a defender of the status quo in a consumer culture. He seems bitter that people might put as much credence in a Wikipedia article as they would in his "say so". The irony is that while points out that the standards of authority and credibility have been eroded, we should accept his pronouncements as gospel based on those same standards of authority and credibility.

I'm putting this together with other critical pedagogy articles I'm reading especially relating to Ivan Illich and his views on the collapse of the educational/industrial complex and the emergence of a post-industrial society. The impact that this has had on credentialism and the development of learning webs. From Deschooling Society and Tools for Conviviality.

Gardner' defense of the status quo is obvious in the construction of his study. He asks loaded questions. (although I haven't seen the actual questions I wonder if one goes like this "Do you think it is right to steal copyrighted music?"

In Illich's perspective Wikipedia can be seen as a tool of conviviality, those tools that allow us to self-educate and self-actualize. Gardner's disdain for Wikipedia makes a strong statement about his regard for learning the occurs outside of the radical monopoly formed by industrial education.

Interesting connection between Critical pedagogy, liberation theology, US Black Liberation theology and Rev. Wright. I wonder if this connection will have any influence on the way Obama shapes a renewed education policy for US.

Illich, I. (1971), Deschooling society, Harper & Row New York.

Illich, I. (1973), Tools for Conviviality,Heyday Books, retrieved from http://www.altruists.org/f311

One White Crow

2008-12-05T12:48:00.000-08:00

"To upset the conclusion that all crows are black, there is no need to seek demonstration that no crows are black; it is sufficient to produce one white crow; a single one is sufficient." Lenora Piper was William James' One White Crow.

Reading the book Blum , D. (2006). Ghost Hunters: William James and the Search for Scientific Proof of Life After Death. Penguin Press. Retrieved December 5, 2008, from http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/1594200904/ref=sib_dp_pt#reader-link.

Excellent story about William James early studies into paranormal phenomena. He is considered the father of Psychology and he was instrumental in developing many theories of human behavior. This book is a semi-historical account of some of the activities that James initiated with the Society for Psychical Research.

It is interesting to note James willingness to investigate in the true spirit of open minded inquiry in an area where the settled science at the time said that paranormal phenomena were bunk. He was active at a time when scholasticism and the influence of the church on academia were being questioned and rejected.

James also was the author of "Varieties of Religious Experience".

Troublers

2008-11-13T08:09:00.000-08:00

An old saying that I like is that one should --- comfort the afflicted and afflict the comforted.

This may be an admirable ambition but fraught with peril. There are no end of examples of the troubler, JC, Ghandi, MLK etc etc. Every society seems to have an archetype for the troubler, the trickster, the idiot savant, mystic, social change agent, , hippy, yippie, divinely discontent.

There are also no end of examples of the perils.

The troubler may be a personality type or a manifestation of a personality defect, passive aggressive, hostile, dissatisfied, malcontent, attention seeker etc. As with most character traits it seems that troubler is dimensional and the psychic energy of this trait can be directed to greater purpose or sublimated to become manifest as antisocial behavior or more structural as in Tourettes syndrome.

Most democratic processes embrace, enshrine and entrench the role of the troubler, the knave, the fool, the advocate, the minority report. Many political processes require unanimity and guarantee that the minority opinion, much of it from troublers, is considered.

I've been asked to describe my occupation and I'm looking for a polite word that describes my natural inclination to be a troubler. I'm hoping that I have been able to redirect my natural inclination in a positive way, not as trouble maker but as one who examines social structures and attempts to use a critical approach to pedagogy. The person that asks the uncomfortable question, points out the flaw in a system. The field of education is ripe with opportunity for such activity and many troublers have contributed to the overall improvement of this important social institution.

Unfortunately, institutional education has abandoned it's natural purpose in society and is in desperate need of troublers. I'm always drawn to analogies between religion and education. What strikes me is the understanding that religion is the institution that is supposedly facilitates the human need for spirituality. Similarly, education is the institution that is supposed to facilitate teaching and learning. Just as it is possible to be highly religious but not able to connect with natural spiritual power, it is possible to be highly educated but not able to teach or learn, both natural functions of homo sapiens.

Mary Baker Eddy the founder of Christian Science discussed the problem with the institutional church. Although she eventually became a victim of her own conclusions her analogy is still apt in my mind. She described the scenario where a traveler is crossing a desert and has run out of water and is about to perish. He comes across a damp spot in the sand, digs down and discovers water and is saved. In his joy at being saved and in consideration for others who might find themselves in similar dire straights, he erects a cairn of stones around the damp spot to make it more discoverable by others. Over the ages the experience is repeated by others, each adding a little more to the edifice that is being built around the source.

Eventually, the edifice is so large that it actually begins to obscure the source and people begin to parish because they can not slake their thirst on fine cut marble or stained glass and the attendants and priest control the access to the life giving source, manipulating it for their own purposes. The agents of religion have developed many sophisticated ways to capitalize on their control of the structures of churches and religious philosophies, each one intent on convincing the largest number of people that their religion is the one and only true keeper of the source. While claiming to help people realize their spiritual potential, they skim off considerable social benefits for themselves, power, prestige, control and resources.

Ivan Illich described a very similar scenario for education. Humans as a species have a natural need/desire/propensity to teach and learn. We have figured out that there is a life giving and life sustaining potential in socially constructed knowledge and we recognize that it is our own best interest to teach and learn. In modern society it seems clear that we have the same problem as we have with our natural spiritual urges; the very institutions that are supposed to facilitate the natural process of teaching and learning are obscuring the life sustaining features in the interests of control and personal profit.
In Deschooling Society Illich proposed the critical analysis and dismantling of the structures of institutional education that impede learning.
Paulo Freire, also described the fatal flaw in an education system that is more designed to control people than to facilitate the natural teaching and learning function. Freire's analytical process is generally known as critical pedagogy and recommend the continuous examination of the policies, practices and principles of education.
Illich and Friere were troublers in the finest tradition and their perspectives are even more important as we evolve as homo electronicus.

The Authentic Dissertation

2008-10-13T13:06:00.001-07:00

Just received my copy of the new book by Four Arrows, (aka Don Trent Jacobs). The book is about alternative ways of representing knowledge. Don asked me to contribute to a chapter on electronic dissertations. I was very pleased to do so and deeply grateful to be featured in this publication.

Jacobs, D. (2008). The Authentic Dissertation: Alternative Ways of Knowing, Research and Representation. New York: Taylor and Francis .

Four Arrows is the faculty reader on my dissertation committee and is very supportive of my plan to present my doctoral dissertation as a wiki.

I can't say how much this generous sharing of publication credit has impressed me. After seeing many ideas taken without attribution by faculty supervising graduate students this strikes me as a model of a mentoring relationships.

Tell the Raven

2008-10-04T09:42:00.000-07:00

Tell the Raven

Doug Noon's students. Instead of education as a competitive enterprize ala the industrial education model, trying to incorporate traditional values. Participate in the world of stories.

Quote from NYT article
"Education policy in recent years has emphasized individualistic aspects of learning. A focus on accountability and achievement testing, giving priority to “results,” has promoted a view of learning as a competitive enterprise, responsive to incentives and sanctions. But this businesslike vision of schools ignores something of great value that schools also have to offer — membership in a community. Schools are people, too."

Polkinghorne

2008-10-02T01:19:00.000-07:00

John Polkinghorne - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Investigate connection between theoretical understandings of Polkinghorne and De Chardin, and Zukav.

Interesting to note that many of the people examining sub-atomic particle theory were religious or used spiritual references. "Most of nature is more cloud-like than clock-like. "(Good quote for KYD.)
Great YouTube video of Polkinghorne. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHrJzCNG-eI
Talking about investigations of the universe. Good quote "from an engineering perspective the universe is ludicrously over designed if its only purpose was to support the carbon based life form that is us".
Discovered that another of my favorite theorists is Donald Polkinghorne. Doesn't appear to be a relationship.

Don't Go Changing :: Inside Higher Ed :: Higher Education's Source for News, Views and Jobs

2008-09-25T08:06:00.000-07:00

The rhetoric of change. eg Educational leadership and change is the ostensible goal and aim of the program of study in which I am enrolled. There is every indication that just saying it doesn't make it so and often if you have to say it you can't do it" It is like the word change is being held up as a shield against anyone that might be critical of a demonstrated lack of change and reverencing of the status quo.

Don't Go Changing :: Inside Higher Ed :: Higher Education's Source for News, Views and Jobs

Excellent onward links in this article including some that discuss the Transformative focus of education. eg the University of Michigan's Workgroup on Transformative change in educational leadership.

Social Network Analysis

2008-09-24T11:14:00.000-07:00

Listened to Valdis Krebs pres to CCK08 this AM. Interesting concepts but it left me with more questions and a distinct creepy feeling that somebody was pushing an agenda. This guy supposedly did some analysis after Saudi nationals guided commercial airplanes into the World trade center buildings in NY in 2001.

In his presentation today he showed two networks maps and asked us to identify the terrorist network. I correctly identified the map on the right. The other map was as IBM project work group and he was trying make the point ( I think) that it is impossible to distinguish terrorist networks from any other kind of network and that you had to identify specific nodes as having at least some remote link to somebody who knows somebody who may know a terrorist. By the description of degrees of separation in networks offered earlier in the presentation, that would be everybody. He went so far as to talk about those who actively support terrorists and those who passively support terrorism by not reporting suspicious activity. Not much information on what qualified as links between nodes, the directions or strengths of the linkages. If you ever looked a middle eastern news source did you ring the gong?

The guy struck me as a bit of a fear mongering cold warrior operative working out a plausible case for greater scrutiny of networks. There is lots of bucks in fear especially for network analysts that can say just about anything.

Someone suggested that the recent Wall street situation be subjected to Krebs network analysis and the whiff of something started to arise for me. The clench, spidy senses started tingling.

The collapse of Wall St was the result of evildoers and terrorists infiltrating US commerce and bringing the economy to collapse thus furthering the terrorist aim.... Ergo the US is justified in spending $700 billion without oversight or scrutiny to "oppose the evildoers" and "make the world safe for freedom and democracy". It is the American public's sacred duty to shut up, bend over and make the world safe for truth, democracy and the American way.

There maybe evildoers at work but it is an inside job and you can bet they are scrambling their little rat like claws to get out of accepting responsibility for a major hurt that they have inflicted and are trying everything they can to shift blame and get a bailout.

Too blatant an manipulation?

Then of course what do I know.

What strange machine man is. You fill him with bread, wine, fishes, and radishes and out comes sighs, laughter and dreams.

2008-09-17T23:30:00.001-07:00

Reading this very interesting book.

Kurtzweil, R. (1999). The age of spiritual machines: When computers exceed human intelligence. New York: Penguin Groups. Retrieved September 18, 2008, from http://www.kurzweilai.net/brain/frame.html?startThought=Age%20of%20Spiritual%20Machines.

Lovely quote from Nikos Kazantzakis "What a strange machine man is. You fill him with bread, wine, fish and radishes, and out come sighs, laughter and dreams."

Kurtzweil describes the difference between parallel computing and quantum computing. Analogy it is like comparing a firecracker to a hydrogen bomb.

Neat description of quantum mechanics and the action of light striking a mirror. Photons have many possible paths available to them and they take them all at once. Each photon actually bounces off each possible point of the surface, trying out every possible path. Most of these trials cancel out leaving the ones predicted by classical physics. This process is dependent on an observer to resolve ambiguity amongst the particles a process called disambiguation or quantum decoherence.

A bit of a discussion in the CCL08 Elluminate session today about connectivism and knowledge generally. The discussion is abandoning epistemology but is looking at ontologies. Part of the discussion seemed to support a typical positivist longing for objective reality.

Reading Kurtzwiel and listening to the CCK08 discussion put me in mind of two other authors, De Chardin and the Future of man, where he discusses the noosphere, the sphere of collective consciousness that surrounds the earth like the biosphere. When we are born our spirit is drawn from this sphere, we live and improve the spiritual energy and when we die it is returned to the noosphere. Mankind advances the state of the noosphere until it reaches the Omega point or Godhead. (That's the kinna stuff that gets you kicked out of the RC church)

Anyway, Teilhard anticipated the Internet and speculated that the mechanism of the noosphere may be electromagnetic computational machines.

Another guy I like is Gary Zukav and the dancing Wu Li Masters. Again an comparison of quantum physics and oriental mysticism.

When I started talking about such things as the noosphere of Gaia hypothesis. Downes shouted in big block letters NO NO NO. Put me off a bit but the guy seems to be a bit of a nutter, not quite as cleaver as he thinks he is. Although way way smarter that me for sure. Him and George have been getting their things pulled by Catherine Fitzpatrick who is a very prolific writer and unapologeticly challenges the basic precepts of connectivism. She make a lot of sense and I must admit that she expresses a few of the reservations that I have had about connectivism and the whole CCK08 show. It has a huge number of subscribers and I like the format but it also seems to be a bit of an ego proposition for the organizers, there is sure to be a book or two,

Anyway following some of the discussion on the CCK08 moodle and Twitter and listening to Catherine Fitzpatrick is quite refreshing although many of the other participants seem to be a bit freaked out about the very uncompromising views and opinions. She has a pretty low opinion of academics and theory making institutions and rightly calls into question some of the basic assumptions of connectivisim. One of the main issues for her is the reverence and awe and the start maker machinery and the fact that George and Stephen are apparently managing the flow of conversation inspite of the rhetoric of openness and mutual creativity. I see tonight she responded very sharply to Alec Courous of U of R. She doesn't hesitate to call a spade, a f**king shovel. These guys are so use to fawning and deference and an environment of enforced intellectual orthodoxy that it rattles them. I'm getting a kick out of it I must admit and I'm inspired by Catherine's tenacity. I suspect she would have my guts for garters if I ever tried to dialog.

Students, exam both come up short | Portland Press Herald

2008-09-08T10:54:00.000-07:00

Students, exam both come up short | Portland Press Herald

Who designed the prompt? "Television may have a negative impact on learning? support or refute. Maybe a few preconceived notions at work.
Grade 8's may have passed with flying colours on the essential skill of detecting manipulative BS and giving it it's due respect and attention.

Unfinished Work: From Cyborg to Cognisphere -- Hayles 23 (78): 159 -- Theory, Culture & Society

2008-09-08T10:01:00.000-07:00

Reading this article referenced by Alex Reid of Digital Digs and putting a few things together.
Unfinished Work: From Cyborg to Cognisphere -- Hayles 23 (78): 159 -- Theory, Culture & Society

First I wish I would have found this while the Fielding Critical Pedagogy Class was underway. In theory the conversation should be still going there but I'm afraid it is deader that a doornail.

Second, it is an excellent example of the Pedagogy of Propinquity. The Connectivism course is officially kicking off today and this article falls into my field of view. As I understand connectivism at this point it is advancing a very similar POV as Hayles proposed, that we have entered a post human era in our understanding of our species and that the connections are as important as the individual. Humanity maybe a fairly nebulous concept after-all give the recent experimental work with cloning human organs in pigs for transplant purposes (pig to human that is ;>) )

This has always been a position of some spiritual philosophies, Zen, NDN, etc that we are all a part of a greater and intricately connected whole and that individualism is an illusion. Nodes on a network.

Defining “Creepy Treehouse” | Flexknowlogy

2008-08-21T10:52:00.000-07:00

Still processing this concept. It certainly describes a lot of online education initiatives that I have observed.

The implied pedophilia reference might be a little over the top. Or maybe not.

Description certainly fits ed institutions that use walled gardens and proprietary LMS. Agents of social control. I always thought that the expression "scratch a teacher, find a cop" was a bit harsh too but I think schools might be getting to be more of an extended hostage taking incident than ever.

Defining “Creepy Treehouse” | Flexknowlogy

Somebody has come up with a counter to Creepy treehouse as posted on Stephen's Web.
http://www.edumorphology.com/?p=42

Agnotology: Thought Control In Economics | Adbusters Culturejammer Headquarters

2008-08-18T13:38:00.000-07:00

Thought Control In Economics | Adbusters Culturejammer Headquarters

Higher ed enforces orthodoxy rather that knowledge creation. Of course it is not just higher ed. Great blog post about rewarding corporate success and failure from Ethlite the Pole Dancing Philosopher.

More info relevant to agnotology, the study of the social construction of ignorance.

With a great deal of help from my librarian buddies at ACC, specifically Josh, I was able to get a copy of a wonderful article

Smithson, M. (1985). Toward a Social Theory of Ignorance. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 20:4, 323–346, 20(4), 323-346. doi: 10.1111/j.1468-5914.1985.tb00049.x.

I created a concept map of the article with Mind Meister You should be able to grab the map with your mouse and move it around.

Another article describes the role of the media in manufacturing doubt. Springs from the tobacco industry's efforts to sow the seeds of doubt about the scientific evidence that smoking causes cancer. Marketers have taken this concept far beyond. The field of sociology refers to the Sociological construction of knowledge and the sociological construction of ignorance. Talks about 3 kinds of ignorance and the importance of each:
-a varied and useful tool in the workings of science,
-a purposeful social negotiation by the lay public
-or a strategic tool mobilized in the service of various private interests.
Stocking, S. H., & Holstein, L. (2009). Manufacturing doubt: Journalists' roles and the construction of ignorance in a scientific controversy. Public Understanding of Science, 18(1), 23-42. doi: 10.1177/0963662507079373.

Francis Heylighen - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

2008-08-03T02:37:00.000-07:00

Collective Intelligence.

Francis Heylighen - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "in 1995 Heylighen was the first to propose algorithms that could turn the world-wide web into a self-organizing, learning network that exhibits collective intelligence, i.e. a Global brain."

Rebooting Democracy

2008-08-01T01:12:00.000-07:00

I just started reading a newly released book "Rebooting America: Ideas for redesigning American democracy for an Internet age". It is available as a free ebook or download individual essays from http://rebooting.personaldemocracy.com/.

The book is a series of essays by thinkers about the use of the Internet and social networking for political and humanitarian reform.

Many of the contributing authors are familiar names, Yochai Benkler, Howard Rheingold, Clay Shirky, Dana Boyd and Dave Weinberger are few that I have been following.

Quote from the forward by Ester Dyson:
"In 1816, Thomas Jefferson wrote, “If a nation expects to be ignorant
and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.” Those words have never been more salient or important than they are today. We have pressing public policy problems, adults who should be leaders yet instead lead willfully sheltered lives of comfort and ignorance, a citizenry increasingly active in elections yet alienated from governance, an amazing array of new digital tools and platforms that have the potential to inform and empower us and let us self-organize in astonishing and effective ways. The stage is ready and the sunlight of the Internet is shining on us: It can provide light and energy for a fertile, thousand-flowers-blooming garden, or it can ignite the whole thing into flames and burn it out."

Also came across this article via Howard Rheingolds Smart Mobs site on the use of social networking tools like YouTube to be witness to public sector neglect and abuses of power. http://www.silicon.com/publicsector/0,3800010403,39266049,00.htm?r=1
An argument for the public monitoring the state.

Setting up for Fielding Project in Second Life

2008-07-29T21:08:00.000-07:00

Podcast to be played in SL kiosk.

Informal aspects of everyday learning

2008-07-28T01:40:00.000-07:00

From
Jane's E-Learning Pick of the Day: Questler: "Quests in Questler are mini-blogs of information categorized into 6 types, Query, Observation, Discovery, Research, Media and Story. Each of those types represents an informal aspect to everyday learning."

Got to try to track down the theoretical underpinning of this social networking application but it make sense to me as a heuritsic if nothing else.

The Knowledge is in the Telling

2008-07-18T13:15:00.000-07:00

Excellent resource describing the activities of a scholar-practitioner.
Good distinction between an action researcher and a field researcher, highlighting the usefulness and limitations of analytic induction.

References the dramaturgical approach,- drama as a tool for inquiry- and the importance of iterative story telling.

Also has a description of the use of the narrative vignette device.
The Knowledge is in the Telling
follow the link on the page to the Circle of Inquiry. This heuristic extends the action research cycle and places dissonance, raising questions, looking closely, searching broadly, making sense, taking action in a circular arrangement.

The Rag & Bone Blog � Myopic Books Paperback Chair

2008-07-16T14:09:00.000-07:00

The Rag & Bone Blog � Myopic Books Paperback Chair

MchLuhan was on the money again. Can't find the exact reference but I think he was talking about how the work of the scribe is still around but as an art form rather than as a functional social tool.
I saw this repurposing of books as art in the form of a chair as a manifestation of the same sort of thing. Just like the cave drawings had social meaning and significance but are now regarded as cave art.
Digital text sources make books an anachronistic art for, possibly beautiful but non-functional.

Lawley--Bourdieu Paper

2008-07-10T14:55:00.000-07:00

Applying Bourdieu's theories of the Sociology of Culture to cyber- culture.
References Howard Rheingold "Virtual Community"

Some ideas from the paper.
Study of CMC has been tool oriented approach need a better understanding of the impact of computer technology on human behavior and interaction.
Lawley--Bourdieu Paper

Agnotology

2008-06-25T11:14:00.000-07:00

Agnotology as opposed to epistemology. Cultural creation of ignorance as opposed to cultural creation of knowledge. Whole new field of Sociology for me. Social theories of ignorance. Sparked by an article in the Inside Higher Ed Online newsletter Plenty to Go Around by Scott McLemee Great quote "Poverty fosters ignorance. But affluence, it seems, does it no real harm" The idea that selective ignorance is an important basic social process.
"Any sufficiently rigorous line of agnotological inquiry must, however, recognize that there is more to ignorance than political manipulation or economic malfeasance. It also serves to foster a wide range of social and cognitive goods."

McLemee quotes Michael Smithson's "Social Theories of Ignorance" and the notion of academic specialization as a form of distributed ignorance. Tried to get this article but not available through Fielding Library database.

Led to further exploration and came across and article by Turner and Michael What do We know about the I don't knows" Talking about the construction of Likert scales in questionnaires. The practice of offering a choice of "don't know" is problematic. Responses are often eliminated from analysis when they could represent a broad range of possibilities. Like I'd prefer not to say" or "none of the choices reflects my opinion on this issue" or "ambivalence, political considerations, implicit PC values are embedded in the questions and the respondent is avoiding censure.
Good discussion of the taken-for-grantedness of scientific knowledge. Also a discussion in the context of agnotology.

McLemee, S. (2008). Plenty to Go Around :: . Inside Higher Ed: Intellectual Affairs. Higher ed online newsletter, . Retrieved June 25, 2008, from http://insidehighered.com/views/2008/06/25/mclemee.

Smithson, M. (1985). Toward a Social Theory of Ignorance. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 20:4, 323–346, 20(4), 323-346. doi: 10.1111/j.1468-5914.1985.tb00049.x.

Turner, J., & Michael, M. (1996). What do we know about "don't knows"? Or, contexts of "ignorance" . Social Science Information, 35(1), 15-37. doi: 10.1177/053901896035001002.

Intellectual Capitalism/Cognitive Contributions

2008-06-18T08:45:00.000-07:00

I applaud the efforts of George Seimans and Stephen Downes for setting up a new project relating to Connectivism and Connective Knowledge. I have been a beneficiary of the generous contributions of both of these guys to the collective intelligence of the web.

I also recognize that there is a reputational benefit particularly in academic environments, the world of intellectual capitalism. Publications, residual payments, intellectual authority, attention, popularity, tenure, research funding etc. The rich get richer. I guess we all do it, get students to write exam questions, use student projects as teaching materials in subsequent classes, use student successes and failures to fine tune our academic operations. Glaser (1978) called it Theoretical capitalism and remarked how some professors indoctrinate their students to footnote carefully to secure ideational capital. (p9)

Participating in a few courses/projects where the expectation is that the participants add cognitive content in the spirit of collaboration. The one reservation I have is when that cognitive content is used to develop a course or program or certificate which it then sold. I recognize the need to recover costs of operations etc and the perceived need to monitize web operations. But if participants are forced through a paygate in a walled garden (the typical online university course) and then their production is used to improve, develop or market the course without benefit to the producer the whole activity becomes a form of rent-seeking behavior on the part of the institution. This monopolistic behavior restricts innovation and inhibits contribution.

The project I've been involved with is for Doctoral students in a School of Educational Leadership and Change program. Two tenured faculty have mounted an experimental course called Critical Pedagogy: Recreating Social Movements in Immersive Environments. The idea is to study some of the theorists of emancipatory change in education, Friere, Illich and others of the Liberation Theology genre. The course is being conducted using ICT and is anchored in two particular settings, Open Learn and Second Life. There has been some use of the desktop sharing application, WEBEX and the expectation is that all participants will develop a community of learners. The participants in this project are enrolled in Doctoral studies and participation in this project counts towards the credit requirements for course work. Many of the participants including faculty are not particularly adept with using online tools or practices and most of the interaction has fallen back to the default position of regularly scheduled teleconferences.

The project has been funded by a special grant and as it is with in the structure of an accredited University and as such there are necessary requirements that must be met. The presence of this type structure is apparent but the actual requirements have not been shared with the participants. Given that this is a course in Critical Pedagogy I have been inclined to apply that analysis to this project.

Glaser, B. G. (1978). Theoretical sensitivity. Sociology Press Mill Valley, Calif.

Copyright and Compensation

2008-06-17T14:00:00.000-07:00

How much should a copyright holder be paid for usage. Big issue for the billionaires that run the entertainment industry and who have always made a huge profit on the backs of the creative types.
In Canada this issue has come into focus again with the introduction of bill C-61.
What constitutes fair compensation? Associated Press thinks it has an equitable system. If you want to quote an AP article on your blog it'll cost you $12.95 to quote 5 words on your blog.

You get a big discount if you are an educator. $7.50/5 words. Whoopee.

I don't know what is fair but I can't see that letting industry groups decide will ever translate into fairness.
I know when Banks got into digitizing their processes they figured out a scheme that seems to have worked very well for them. Use to be that cheque processing fees were getting up to around CND $1.20 per transaction. The rationale was that people had to handle all the paper and process the transactions and the wages were to high so they had to keep increasing the transaction fees. When they went to digital transactions they realized that people would not tolerate these exorbitant fees so they cut the fees for handling digital transactions to $.60 per transaction, a fairly common rate that still exists. No paper moves, not human hands touch your transaction and some estimates suggest that it actually costs the banks about $.06 per transaction. They laid off tellers and employees, set up ATM's and the modern bank was created. They have been beavering away reducing the costs of handling transactions even further and no doubt have their costs way below that. As a result Banks have been doing quite well and they seem to have been able to get away with charging what they want. Doesn't seem to matter what Bank you use, they are all about the same. hmmm.

So letting corporations decide what is fair probably won't work out to good for the rest of us. There was a thing called the Tobin Tax that was introduced by a economist that proposed an electronic tax on currency transactions.
I've been watching this issue for a while and participated in the campaign to have Bill-C61 rejected. I read the Globe and Mail article referenced above and it mainly highlights the perception that nothing is clear and nobody seems to be able to clarify things, least of the Minister of Industry who is proposing the Bill. Mostly I have been following the discussion in the education blogosphere and the Michael Geist blog is a major resource.

I know that there has been intense lobbying by the entertainment industry and last election one major candidate who was expected to have this portfolio in a Liberal government received major campaign contributions from pro-copyright outfits prompting big concerns about conflict of interest and interference.

My grasp of all the ramifications of the latest proposed legislation is somewhat limited but as an observer of political processes I find the situation interesting and I can help feeling that the bests interests of the Canadian public are not being served by our elected officials.

Jim Prentice, the Minister of Industry seems like a capable person but with a limited understandings of the concepts of the Internet. His Wikipedia entry was edited to remove any criticism of his handling of this file and replaced by laudatory statements about the Minister great virtues. There appeared to be a Wikipedia edit war until someone used Wikiscanner and checked the IP's of all edits and they were determined to all originate from the Industry Canada servers. Wikipedia locked down the entry and the comments about Prentice's involvement with Bill C-61 and his efforts to edit Wikipedia still stand last I checked. I think it embarrassed his office and led to a widely held perception that neither he nor his Ministry really understood what they were doing. The appearance of members of the Public Service altering a public record on (taxpayer paid) company time was an additional irritant.

As regards the notion of fair return for the use of intellectual property it is also a bit of a boondoggle. It is difficult to determine but it seems likely that the copyright holders are more interested in a "what ever the traffic will bear" approach to pricing. There was an additional flurry of alarm in the blogosphere this week when Wired reported on the Associated Press policy and pricing structure for the use of AP material in blogs. It starts at $12.95 for a 5 WORD quote. (The pay-page has since been taken down)

The question of how to collect for the use of intellectual property in an information economy will have to be addressed. This issue has been around for a while and it reminds me of the so called Tobin Tax issue. This was a proposal to mitigate the damaging effects of currency speculators by imposing a leve on all cross boarder currency transactions. This proposal bogged down because of the impracticality of having all countries agree to the imposition of such a tax and the question of who would be the tax collector and how would the proceeds be distribute.

Similar issues face any coherent approach to setting fair rates for IP and the collection and distribution of compensation. These problems may become fairy short lived when the full effect of the information economy is realized and the impossibility of managing information becomes apparent. So for the time being the copyright lawyers are doing well and that doesn't usually bode well for humans on either side of any debate.

Helder Camara

2008-06-17T00:59:00.000-07:00

Thanks for the links to the Mani Tese speeches.
Camara was obviously trying to "call it as he saw it". I think he accurately detected the influences and manipulations of the multi-national or, more correctly, the supra-national corporate agenda.

And he also pointed out the sick economics of supplying surplus arms and munitions to third world countries, most often to clear inventories so that they could manufacture and sell more expensive and sophisticated arms to the first world.

Making bombs is big business, but you have to have a way to get rid of old stock so you can keep the defense contracts flowing. Best way to use up that inventory is to keep wars going somewhere.

I was interested when Camara taled talking about some of the secret agendas of the corporations with respect to natural resources in Europe, particularly steel and coal. Just watching a You Tube clip of John Buchanan and reading an article in the Guardian about Prescott Bush, GWB's grandpa and the originator of the family fortune. Seems like a lot of people made big bucks from the Nazi slave-labor steel factories in Poland. Of course, making family fortunes from slavery is not a new thing in the US or anywhere in the world.

I guess that is what this project is all about. We now have the means to recreate social movements using social networks where the unspeakable is spoken and the elephants in the room are mentioned by name.

The Catholic church was able to discredit the Liberation Theologists mainly because they were able to control the communications of the faithful and forbid people to discuss issues that threatened the authority structures.

People now have the means to organize and communicate freely. Grassroots organizations like Voice of the Faithful were able to use the Internet to share information, articulate issues and to demand accountability from the Catholic church. This was especially effective dealing with the problem of the cover up of sexual abuse and pedophile priests.

It is critically important for humanity to make sure that our open channel stays open.

Me Cyborg

2008-06-17T00:58:00.001-07:00

I find myself doing more of my work in the cloud, mostly courtesy of Google. All my Gmail messages from when I first started using it in Sept, 2004 are instantly searchable and available anyplace there is an Internet login. I rarely delete anything apart from bacn and the spam is automatically filtered (so none of those wonderful offers from the the guys in Nigeria who wants me to help them move a little money around smile) All my other email accounts bump into to Gmail with POP or IMAP so the only ones missing are the ones that the university's email server loses when it craps out, which is fairly regularly. I use an application called Gspace that allows me to use my Gmail storage capacity like and FTP account for music, pics and stuff. Even so, I am only using 20 % of my total Gmail storage capacity for my main account and they keep bumping it up all the time.

I used Word and Endnote for writing documents and papers for a long time but now it's Google Docs and Zotero. Same deal, nothing is on anyone physical machine so access is available anywhere there is an Internet connect.

I did the redundancy thing for a while but kinna got tired of it. So now I'm working without a net, no belt and suspenders, (or no condoms and birth control) Gotta figure if the Internet ever gets that un-usable it is time to head for the hills anyway.

I am the board treasurer for a local charitable organization and use Google Spreadsheets for all the budget stuff, the monthly reports and statements. Works very well and it is possible to consult with the manager online anytime from a shared document. I hate Powerpoint with a passion but use Google Presentations if I have to read one.

I pay for a little storage for a few things like podcast transcription and web-casting space. I have a paid wiki account for some professional stuff but mostly I use free space. Virus protection is by way of a web-based service that does an excellent job. I used to FTP a bunch of stuff to server accounts but it turned out to not be worth the bother. I do have two IPs and I keep some activities separate.

I figure that Google has server farms all over the world with the best tech and engineering (or better that any commercial service I could get or afford) they stay on top of the vandals and the pirates. I use Firefox which gives me a bit of an edge over most of the annoying pop-ups and malicious Trojans. I try almost every social networking gadget that comes into my view, my latest favorites are Twhirl and Seesmic.

As far as I can tell, (I'm paying darn good money to acquire critical thinking skills) a lot of the hype about the hazards of the internet are fear-based marketing ploys designed to sell me useless stuff that hackers get around in seconds anyway. If anybody really want to do me cyber harm, it is going to happen. There is lot more risk from somebody stealing my credit cards or some waitress or clerk doing the double swipes.

Looks like cloud computing is going to be the norm in the very near future. The cost of online digital storage has collapsed and the ease of use and reliability has increased exponentially. In-house IT is going to go the way of steam-generated, DC electricity. All of the worlds data will be in the cloud and we will just have to tap in to what we need. Even better, we will be able to indulge our natural human capacity for creativity and sharing. That may do more for democracy, world peace and environmental sustainability than a couple of giga trillion bucks worth of bombs and security systems. It is going to make big problems for the political and social structures that are based on authority and control but I'm good with that.

Communicative Action and Liberation Theology

2008-06-17T00:56:00.000-07:00

No need to dust off an old book, there is Jurgen Habermas on YouTube, fergoodnesssakes smile.
Look a little further you will see a whole series of lectures and discussions.

I like this interview in particular because Habermas was asked to reflect on what he thought were his own most important ideas. Communicative action is mentioned in the context of democracy.

He describes Nazi Germany and the "re-education" policies of that regime and he talked about the generational discourse that occurred as a consequence of WWII, how the academic cohort of the time, the many scholars, philosophers and sociologists "made their bones" out of that time of torment.
( My own spin, Habermas doesn't make the implication of an academic Mafia but there are some interesting parallels don't you think?)

Anyway, the result was a rich texture of intellectual activity:some sublime philosophy, some rationalization and justification of evil by intellectuals using "scientific processes" and many academic careers were launched.

We are at a time in history where a similar generational discourse needs to occur and is occurring. Just as those in Habermas's intellectual generation engaged in communicative discourse in the commons to expose evil and try to heal humanity, we now have an opportunity to do the same. (I wonder if Habermas feels that some of that effort was wasted because humanity seems to be doing some of the same things over and over.)

Difference is we now have much broader access to the channels of communication of the public sphere and almost instant access to other minds in the noosphere. Just gotta figure out how that Google search works and how to engage in the dialog by comment on a blog or wiki.

A person can even add comments to the dialog on the Habermas YouTube video.
The comments, and there are many, from the ridiculous to the sublime, the profane to the rapturous, give an idea of the impact of an idea, or a thought. It gives you a chance to add your voice and engage the public sphere, be part of an immersive environment.

The other thing I like about watching this clip on YouTube is the visual dimension, because I never met Habermas or seen him in a lecture. I had no idea that he had a physical deformity and I can just imagine what things must have been like for him as a young person in the era of post Nazi Germany. The Nazis exterminated people with physical deformities, so when I read what he writes it now has a whole other texture of meaning for me. His personal response to evil is not an academic issue, he knows how important it is that everyday people inform themselves and take responsibility for the public discourse.
Makes me think about the famous Martin Neimoller poem.
Interesting also to note that Habermas has engaged in dialog with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. That name is familiar from somewhere.

Black Liberation Theology

2008-06-17T00:54:00.001-07:00

Looking for resources for this unit. I've read and been greatly affected by the writings of Ivan Illich over the years but I didn't know anything about Helder Camara or Sergio Méndez Arceo. After the looking at Camara in the last unit I was curious about Arceo.

I love wandering around in Google and I am starting to be a big believer in the pedagogy of propinquity, defined as, learning that occurs while we are intending to learn something else.

Of course you can get into some fluffy stuff, the search for Sergio Mendez Arceo yielded a very rich selection of YouTube videos of Sergio Mendes and Brazil 66. I thought that it would be interesting to start a new Internet meme like RickRolling with this YouTube video. La la la.. nice, my family are long accustomed to hearing my eclectic circus.

Anyway, not all time was wasted, I came across an interesting article linking the theology of Rev. Jeremiah Wright and many of the authors we are looking at in in Critical Pedagogy.

As a Canadian following the debates leading up to the next US Presidential election I recognize the incredible furor that was raised by the connection between Barak Obama and Rev. Wright, so this article interested me.

Any thoughts on this? Is useful or just some kind of red baiting and fear mongering? How much would the ideas of Liberation theology influence US politics this time around? How much would that freak out the military industrial complex?

Security Theatre

2008-06-17T00:52:00.001-07:00

I didn't even realize this was a topic until I stumbled across an article the other day about all the time and effort that societies put into the illusions of security. TSA is a great example of security theater, it is all a big show to keep everybody fearful, on edge, and accepting of state control and militarism.

Ubiquitous surveillance has rightly generated major concerns world wide. The new high technology that is a great boon to is also being used against humanity in many instances. The response to this is the subject of Cory Doctorow's new eBook Little Brother, freely downloadable.

Another piece of art that I came across was kind of delightful but upon reflection and review is a commentary on Security Theater.
I came across another thing that you might interest you as an artist exploring new forms of expression.

It is a UK band that assembled a music video by setting up and playing in front of various CCTV security cameras and then applying under the provisions of the Access to Information laws for copies of the recordings. They then stitched it all together into a rather nice piece of art, IMHO. Newspaper article describes the project.

Great song and an interesting commentary on Big Brother

Base Christian Communites in Mexico

2008-06-17T00:50:00.000-07:00

Still trying to sort out some of the issues relating to CEB's, Liberation Theology and the politics of Latin America. Latin America was and remains a theater of larger geopolitical issues.

Emge notes that " In attempting to relate these various factors (CEB's Liberation Theology, Freirean pedagogy) it becomes impossible to conceptualize any simple line of cause and effect. What becomes obvious is a complex web of interacting variables." No kidding!

One of the variables in play was the other nominally Christian organizations that were active in the arena and how their perspectives were not sympathetic to Liberation Theology.

An article from the Huffington post mentions the intrigues of various political entities, identified as Christian. In particular, this article references Evangelical Protestant organizations who viewed their main Christian obligation as opposing "Godless communism" rather than emancipation of people.

In Nicaragua in the 1980's the socialist Sandinistas were aligned with those that promoted Liberation Theology, mainly Catholics. They were opposed by the Contras who were supported by the Regan administration personified by Oliver North who espoused an Evangelical Protestant Christianity.

I don't know if the scenario was the same in Mexico at the time but I wonder if there were similar religious dynamics. The Huffington post article is mainly directed towards the present day situation in Venezuela but some of the themes seem familiar. It is interesting to see the some of the antecedents of current events.

Of course there are still the criminal drug cartels to consider. Current events this week in Mexico illustrate their influence.

Emge, D. R. (1988). Base Christian communities: A challenge to the status quo. Annual Meeting of the American Association for Adult and Continuing Education. Tulsa, OK, November 5.

Shaw, R. (2005). What's Really Bothering Pat Robertson About Chavez?, Huffington Post.

Deschooling Society

2008-06-17T00:48:00.000-07:00

Considering that much of society seems to be mistaking the bath water for the baby it might not be too bad of an analogy.

However, using that particular analogy in an argument is problematic. You couldn't argue in support of Illich because then you would be in favor of throwing out babies. It provokes a specific emotional response and inhibits critical thinking.

Sent me rushing to my little blue, although now much coffee stained, "Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking Concepts and Tools." and on to the Wikipedia entry on logical fallacies.

Maybe drawing from a less emotional analogy would be helpful to assess what Illich was saying.
How does the Zen saying go? Don't mistake the finger pointing at the moon for the moon.

Illich was talking about looking away from the pointing finger and looking at the moon directly. Once you have the moon in view, there is no need to keep looking at the finger.

In the case of learning, once I know how to learn there is no need to keep concentrating on the "forms of education" that taught me how to learn.

hmmm...I'll keep noodling at this.

Getting Critical with the LMS

2008-06-17T00:46:00.000-07:00

One of the things I hope we can do over the rest of the time that we are assembled for this KA is to reflect and evaluate the process we have used so far. When I first used Open Learn before it was pretty cutting edge. Since then new web-based social networking tools have developed that are so much simpler to learn and use. These tools also more naturally support the value of a personal commitment to lifelong learning.

For those who are comparatively new to technology mediated learning, I hope that you are not put off by the clunkiness of Open Learn. Although it is using a open access format ( you don't have to pay for a course access key) it is still using a learning management system (LMS) that is designed, more to make management possible rather than making learning possible.

It is convenient for administration to be able to aggregate all student activities but is not very useful for learners. Often with a LMS, such as the Moodle system that is being used here, once you are finished your course all your contribution stays in the LMS and because your subscription for that course has expired, your stuff is inaccessible. I heard somebody refer to that as institutional malpractice.

One of the weblogs that I follow has initiated a series of complementary online activities for the discussion of social networking in education. Here is a link to Graham Attwell's blog, Pontydysgu (Welsh for Bridge to Learning I think, happily the blog is in English). Attwell is proposing an immersive salon cafe approach with a net radio broadcast, an online phone in radio show where you dial in with Skype (the VOIP online phone system) and then a social gathering in Second Life at Emerge Island. http://slurl.com/secondlife/Emerge/178/76/0

A little quote from the promotional blurb... "The educational technology community has embraced social software with a wave of experimental projects and activities. But is it working? The tools are great for encouraging new participatory approaches to learning and for building peer activity and networking. However, is there a dissonance between such approaches to learning and the structures and curricula of our education systems? Does the adoption of social software challenge hierarchies and power? What is the role of teachers and trainers in a era where knowledge is distributed through networks." Sounds like stuff that might interest us here.

Habermas would be tickled pink!! It involves using Skype, Second Life, Blogs etc. All free range social network tools that people are putting together in very creative and imaginative ways. Sounds like stuff that might interest us here. We should try to link up with Attwell and Co. or set up something similar for ourselves.

Again, I hope that the people who are new to web based social environments are not completely discouraged by the experience in Open Learn. There are web-based tools that work a whole lot better. That is one of the primary considerations when choosing technology to support online learning, ease of use. There is a principle that "first use leads to future use". If a persons first experience using technology is negative, there is a tendency to blame yourself, "I just don't get it.... or... I'll never catch on to this stuff..." And also a tendency to be leery of other opportunities for online learning and also a tendency to do a fair bit of negative advertising for the program. If you are finding this painful, take heart, I've been working in DE and using web based tools for a while and I find myself frequently frustrated with the applications. It doesn't have to be this problematic.

DE planners must be very careful to choose applications and pedagogies that are appropriate to the intellectual and technology skill levels of the target group. People love to create and communicate, the learning experience should capitalize on these wonderfully human tendencies.

Unfortunately as Illich and others have observed, education often impedes learning because ed admin puts the needs of the organization first. ( Yeah, I know the vision statements all say "Learner Centered" blah, blah, blah..., that is the espoused theory but the theory-in-use is very different) Now that the cost of organizing web-based communication has dropped to zero, educators are no longer restricted to working within the hierarchically controlled environments of the LMS. Gotta shake off the predilection for authority and control unless you are in Education as a money making proposition. Then you will want as much authority and control as your customers will permit. It is taking more and more marketing to convince people that that is a good or necessary thing.

Castells

2008-06-17T00:43:00.000-07:00

I like this article and this journal. I didn't even mind so much that I had to register to read the article. At least it wasn't behind a paywall.

I was interested when Castells introduced the article as a "set of grounded hypotheses on the interplay between communication and power relationships" What I was hoping for was explanatory theory that is typical of classical Grounded Theory analysis.

Reading the article I found that it was more descriptive than theoretical, and sought to re-frame new social phenomena in old frameworks, specifically using the rhetoric of power relationships and political space. While I think this could be useful and the article does an excellent job of description, the theoretical explanatory power was lacking for me. There is something about web based socially networks that doesn't fit neatly into this framework for analysis.

I think he was on to something with his last statement.

"Thus, as in previous historical periods, the emerging public space, rooted in communication, is not predetermined in its form by any kind of historical fate or technological necessity. It will be the result of the new stage of the oldest struggle in humankind: the struggle to free our minds."
Is it a struggle or a process of human spiritual (not religious) evolution?

Yes, I've read the Rise of the Network Society and I was very impressed at the time, although it is now 12 years old and in the realm of web-based social networking that is like the last ice-age.

I just reread the dedication that Castells wrote in the 2000 edition of that book where he acknowledged that a lot has changed since 1996 and that he was going to stick with his initial theoretical perspective inspite of much world wide academic criticism.

I would suggest that a lot has happened in ICT between 2000 and 2008. It is the speed of change is so problematic for academic analysis of the WWW. It takes at least a year to write and publish a book and have it distributed to the world.

It is a little hard to find unassailable authorities whose theories have the necessary fit, grab, relevance and generalizability as humanity tries to understand how basic social processes are changing so profoundly.

So that was why I was so interested to read something that Castells has written more recently. I was also pleased to be able to read it in a online journal and although I haven't looked to deeply into the journalistic policies of that particular journal; their process of peer review, the make up of their peer review committee etc. I see that Castells is the editor of that Journal so that is interesting.

I will continue to attempt to apply my still forming scholar-practitioner skills to the critical analysis of this particular piece of work.

Complicated Fun and Flow

2008-06-17T00:42:00.001-07:00

Just reading and commenting on Howard Rheingolds blog SmartMobs.
He is outlining the procedure that he and his group are using to set up the Social Media Classroom project. He describes the planning process as "complicated fun".

I like that attitude!!

It really fits with my experience working with social networking tools, which I find amazingly absorbing. Trying to figure out how this tool works, how to make a comment on that wiki, how to create a podcast, videocast, concept map, how to add value to a discussion, how to understand what the heck is going on in some web based social networks, all this is very satisfying to me. Sure, I'll call it fun. Adult play!!

When thinking about motivation in learning I always seem to get back to a concept put forward by U of Chicago Psychologist , Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi.

I cut and pasted the following from the Wikipedia entry.

"Csíkszentmihályi outlines his theory that people are most happy when they are in a state of flow— a state of concentration or complete absorption with the activity at hand and the situation. The idea of flow is identical to the feeling of being in the zone or in the groove. The flow state is an optimal state of intrinsic motivation, where the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing. This is a feeling everyone has at times, characterized by a feeling of great freedom, enjoyment, fulfillment, and skill—and during which temporal concerns (time, food, ego-self, etc.) are typically ignored"

I get a real buzz from reading, thinking, reflecting especially using web based technology and connecting with the web-based collective intelligence that is emerging all around us. Humans have a natural desire to create, contribute, collaborate, cooperate. As Shirky points out modern ICT lets us do that with an ease that we have never known.

I snort a bit when some of my acquaintances talk about American Idol.I don't get it but, each to their, own as the saying goes. It is a bit concerning to discover that more people vote in American Idol than in their local political processes. The American Idol folks have figured out something important about social engagement and they are making a fortune at it.

Anybody got a really good theory that explains that and how we better can leverage it for the larger social good as well as private commercial success?

MacArthur Series

2008-06-17T00:40:00.001-07:00

Reading in the MacArthur Series starting with the section on Civic Engagement and immediately came across many interesting articles that illuminated, for me, some issues that we have been discussing in these forums.

Talk about the matrix of coincidence. Serendipity used to amaze me but I find myself counting on it now.

I liked the article by Howard Rheingold, he seems to be popping up every where I look the last while.

I also was interested in the Marina Umaschi Bers piece.
I was reading her bio and discovered she did her Phd under Turkle and Papert at the MIT Media Lab. Turkle and Papert have reworked the Claude Levi Strauss notion of Bricolage.

"Levi-Strauss used the idea of bricolage to contrast the analytic methodology of Western science with what he called a "science of the concrete" in primitive societies.11 The bricoleur scientist does not move abstractly and hierarchically from axiom to theorem to corollary. Bricoleurs construct theories by arranging and rearranging, by negotiating and renegotiating with a set of well-known materials." (Turkle and Papert, 1992)

As I mentioned in my introductory comments, I consider myself a bricoleur, putting things together out of bits and pieces using unconventional means. This certainly fits as part of the pedagogy of propinquity and also reflects a useful mindset for making sense out of the vast amount of resources on the Internet.

I went on to look at the issues raised by S. Shyam Sundar and his discussion of how technological affordances have affected the credibility of online information. An excellent illustration of this issue is found in the ongoing discussion about the validity, credibility and reliability of Wikipedia. This dialog continues on the Internet and within Wikipedia itself. When anybody can create a Journal and claim authority it is evermore necessary to develop and use critical thinking skills.

These skills must be honed even further because some of our traditional shortcuts for attributing authority and credibility have been undermined by questionable practices and outright fraud. I'm thinking of the process of peer-review in academic journals and how this whole process has been undermined and subverted by practices of tobacco and pharmaceutical corporations.

When such bastions of empirical evidence as the New England Journal of Medicine change their editorial policies to accommodate pharmaceutical corporations, that whole system of intellectual authority and credibility-granting is thrown into question.

No longer can we look to certain institutions to be bastions of truth. The Catholic Church had a doctrine of Imprimatur that said that a literary or similar work had been declared "free of error" in matters of Roman Catholic doctrine. It was an intellectual control mechanism to reduce the chances of the laity being exposed to heresy. This doctrine also made things very difficult for the Liberation Theologists especially those who were considered as adopting the views and attitudes of socialism or communism.

We can no longer grant any institution or individual theorist the unquestioned of authority, the right of Imprimatur. And it is evermore important that scholar practitioners become aware of some of the ways that academic fraud is perpetuated and expose it when ever it occurs.

That puts me back to another of the themes that is emerging for me, the punk philosophy of questioning authority. Edupunk is a very liberating impulse.

I look forward to hearing what others have to say about these articles and others in the MacAurthur series.

Turkle, S., & Papert, S. (1992). Epistemological Pluralism and the Revaluation of the Concrete. Journal of Mathematical Behavior, 11(1), 3-33.
Se

Public Intellectuals

2008-06-17T00:37:00.000-07:00

What exactly is a public intellectual?
I've come across a couple of articles discussing related issues.
The first article Is Google Making Us Stupid by Nicolas Carr writing in the Atlantic.com
One of the suggestion is that ICT is changing the way we read and think and may be changing our neurological structure. The article relates some very interesting illustrations of the effect of new technologies on intellectual practices in the past from Socrates to Nietzsche. It was interesting to read the research referenced in the article that the human brain retains it's plasticity throughout life. Phewf!!...little reason to worry that the Internet is wrecking my brain.

This article Who is a Public Intellectual? from the New York Times by Daniel Drezner tries to add some dimensions to the concept. He addresses in part the availability of the Internet as a channel for communication of ideas.

[T]he growth of online publication venues has stimulated rather than retarded the quality and diversity of public intellectuals.

In both articles it appears the the new affordances of the Internet are clearly becoming an increasingly important part of what it means to be a public intellectual. Ideas are more broadly disseminated, there is far greater opportunity for reflective dialog, and the development of collective intelligence is enhanced.

This is a critical topic especially if we consider ourselves public intellectuals. I find one of the worst and most insidious forms of censorship is self-censorship out of fear. As you ask.." What are we afraid of...?

Thankfully we have the examples of people like Illich and Freire who knew that they were publishing ideas that might be challenging and unpopular but had the courage and persistence to keep saying what they thought.

Whether ideas are in a published book, an academic journal or an online forum, ideas are public. If I try to limit public access to my thoughts and ideas because I have an expectation of profit from my work, that is one thing and we can have that discussion elsewhere.

If I stifle my contribution for fear of what somebody 'might' do with my words or how somebody 'might' misinterpret my ideas, I have erected a system censorship far more crippling than the DHS or the Chinese government could ever envision.

Recreating Cable TV in Second Life

2008-06-17T00:35:00.000-07:00

I was watching a Cable TV presentation on the Second Life Cable Network. The presenter is Robert K Logan and he discusses the topic of Media Ecology and prefaces his remarks by describing his interactions with Marshall McLuhan and Ivan Illich. It is an interesting segment in it's own right but it also struck me that it was a pretty excellent example of the task that is the ostensible focus of our group, namely, recreating social movements in immersive environments.
I'm not much of a TV watcher and I haven't really had a TV hooked up in my home for the last 25 or more years. I don't think I have missed all that much although it makes it hard to have an informed conversation about Oprah or American Idol. Oh well...

One thing I did miss out on was the whole Cable TV, community access TV experience. Again, not a big loss for the most part but I have become aware of some truly inspired Cable TV efforts. These were Cable TV stations that were set up to air non-mainstream content and ideas and emerged as venues for a lot of alternative views and social activism.

I recently watched a You Tube of Harold Channer Cable TV presentation. It is a pretty wild and wooly session with fairly low production values by commercial TV standards but it is good enough for the ideas to come through. Channer also references some of the authors we have been considering in Critical Pedagogy although he is talking more from the perspective of economics.

The presentation pointed out that one of the features of the capitalism system is to eliminate the labour component in the interests of reducing input costs and increasing profit. Corporations have always used technology to to reduce their reliance on human inputs. While this has some very advantageous features for humanity in that it has reduced the need for humans to perform some very dangerous tasks it also has some pretty undesirable effects.

The classic case it that or McDonald's outsourcing of it's pay window operations. In some locations when you place an order at the drive through electronic kiosk, the voice that says "Welcome to MacDonald's, Can I take your order please?" is actually physically located in a low-wage, middle-tech country like Pakistan or China. The exchange is conducted via satellite communications systems and the order-taker processes your order and sends it to the cook-staff terminal where is your order is packaged.

Technology has allowed large corporations to eliminate low wage jobs in one country by paying even lower wages in another country. Beyond the issues of corporate ethics the implications are fairly large even for the corporations. What happens when all the wage jobs are gone, who buys your hamburgers?

Clearly, there will have to be a major reordering of economic systems and Channer referenced the work of Louis O Kelso and the idea of binary economics. Instead of working for wages people are able to work as owners of the means of production, the basis of the employee stock option idea.

The other point that was made in the video was that the existing economic system is based on a scarcity model, the science of economics is all about the management of SCARCE resources. What happens when you have an information economy where there is no scarcity of resources, in fact just the opposite. One response is to create artificial scarcity and that is a tried and true tactic. It is going to be very hard to maintain a facade of scarcity of information.

I thought is was very interesting to see some elements of Cable TV being recreated in Second Life for the purpose of airing views outside of the coverage of mainstream media.

Neutral Voice in Simm City

2008-06-17T00:34:00.000-07:00

My 18 year old daughter is a long time Sims player and she has the latest version. She was showing some or the features and while there has been an attempt to make the language culture neutral, many of the other features are pretty cultural specific and reflect a consumer society.

The Sims economic system is consistent with a Western consumer labour exchange society. The avatars work in jobs, collect wages, pay bills. Their activities are largely typical consumer oriented, go to the mall, buy stuff.
Relationships are maintained in part to maintain your economic position.

I suppose that those types of consumer transactions are pretty cross-cultural.
The life style choices are broad ranging but are limited to an urban experience for the most part. No opportunity to be a pastoralist or a hunter gatherer. But I guess it is Sim City after all and it delivers as promised.

Padre Glyn Jemmot in Costa Chica Mexico

2008-06-17T00:32:00.000-07:00

I was deeply affected by the discussion we had today with Padre Glyn Jemmot and I thank Yolanda and Joyce for making the connection. I appreciate the opportunity to increase my awareness of an instance of social injustice and their effort to focus attention on this community. I think that they have also provided us with a way that we can make real contribution to social justice beyond an personally enriching academic exercise.

I heard Padre Glyn describe the setting of Costa Chica as rural, poor and forgotten. There is not much we can do about the first two conditions but there might be something we can do about the third.

I watched the Padre Glyn video interview on YouTube again and was struck by a comment that he made. He spoke of the "black institutions in the United states that come to beef up their curriculum, their cultural diversity knowledge etc. to teach there. So they come and do the research but nothing comes back and in the research there is no partnership. We talk about folk research where it is ordinary black people from the villages who've never been to Universities who perhaps could not use properly a tape recorder, they're the ones recording their own history. When you have that parity, that partnership...true partnership in the diaspora dialog, I think they'll have something."

I would like to respectfully propose a project whereby we could offer a connection so the people of Costa Chica could have their voices heard and not be forgotten. I don't know if that would help but it seems that to feel that you are forgotten by the world brings on a sense of hopelessness.

Padre Glyn mentioned that the youth of his community just want to get out and that is understandable. I know what it means to have a rural way of life where the choice is to live in poverty or leave and take your chances in a city. I know how vulnerable people in poor rural communities are to abuse if evil people think that nobody cares about it. The indifference of the world to poor rural people is a blight on our collective consciousness. The opposite of love is not hate but indifference.

This is where technology and a commitment to social justice might come to the aid of this community.

Social networks are amazing things and incredibly simple to set up if you have the most basic of technology skills. This is certainly within the technological reach of anyone who can navigate Open Learn or Second Life.

For example, it is the work of minutes to set up a blog in a social networking community like Change.org. It is also the work of minutes to establish a podcast that could be mounted within the Costa Chica blog. There are podcast services like Gcast.com that allow entries to be made from a telephone. These podcasts can then be heard by anyone with an Internet connection and the blog address.

The residents of Costa Chica could phone and record their stories for the world to hear. People who are interested in social justice could distribute the feed and help to focus a bit of world attention. It may be a while before technology catches up with Costa Chica but that doesn't mean that they can't leapfrog over some of the technological limitations. The knowledge that somebody, somewhere might be listening and might care can have an amazing transformative effect on individuals and communities. A little bit of attention costs us nothing. Even a comment on the Pastor Glyn YouTube video takes only a few seconds but lets the world know that someone has noticed and is paying attention.

I am willing to give this a shot.

Canadian Apology for Residential Schools

2008-06-17T00:31:00.001-07:00

I wrote earlier this week about the historic apology that the Canadian government issued to the country for the Indian Residential school experience. I was very glad to see this happen and I hope that it begins a new era of respectful relationships in Canada.

One of the most horrendous effects of the Residential Schools policy was the forced relocation of people from their families and communities. While this was clearly a policy decision, based in part on an agenda of cultural genocide, it was also a feature of educational practice of the time.

In order to offer the industrial model of education, as it was organizationally structured at the time and as it continues to this day, students and teachers were required to physically congregate in specific geographical locations for significant periods of time to be exposed to the intermediated "teaching". This arrangement was an artifact of the organizational realities and applies to all participants in the industrial model of education.

One of the most powerful features of technology mediated communication is the elimination of the necessity to be physically present for learning to occur. If people have the equipment and the necessary bandwidth they can participate in dis-intermediated educational opportunities on their own terms with out having to leave their community context. Furthermore, people can participate in the construction of their own educational experience and they can do that in collaboration with an extraordinary network of resources.

Each individual can become a node and a connection in a network of collective intelligence as has never been possible before. Self-education has always been a viable strategy but web-mediated social networks have taken this into an entirely new dimension. The possibilities for self-determination and emancipation are enormous.

The human race has been severely limited by an economic system based on the control of scarce resources and this has created most of the repressive structures that we all labour under. Two percent of the worlds population controls 90% of it's material wealth and the means of production. However, in an information economy scarcity is no longer and the cost of the means of production for web-based resources is dropping as fast as the usage increases. This has been extremely threatening to the hegemonic institutions of education at all levels.

Institutions have had to resort to some pretty draconian schemes to maintain this positions. One mechanisms is to have society become increasingly reliant on credentials as an measure of the worth of individual intellectual contribution. Credentials are controlled by institutions that have a vested interest in manitaining control over the granting of credentials. They are able to control the conditions of education including an continued reliance on the bricks and mortar model of education as place based, calendar driven.

These institutions have been driven by a the capitalist economic model which is designed to squeeze the maximum amount of money out of any venture. This model is pervasive in society and is increasingly becoming a feature of the Internet. Everybody is trying to figure out how to monetize their contribution. Older mainstream institutions such as the press and entertainment industries have always been able to manipulate conditions in a scarcity economy to make a buck and have into the digital market place and continue their piratical practices.
The issues of intellectual property and copyright have been taken over by the money making machine which has been looking for a way to skim money from every online interaction. They have been very effective at this but the model calls for more, more, more. Stockholder returns must be maximized and people are increasingly being herded through the paygates of the Internet.

The apology of the Canadian government for the Indian Residential schools rang a little hollow with the introduction this week of legislation designed to lock down the internet into a paygate fleecing operation. Instead of figuring out how to increase access to bandwidth and information for the benefit of the population, the government has succumbed to intense lobbying efforts of the American entertainment industry and has introduced legislation that effectively prohibits the sharing of many types of web-based resources. The free and open sharing of online resources is one of the foundations of a distributed education system that would allow Canadian people to participate in their communities and on their terms.

So apologizing for forcing people into one oppressive form of education while imposing another form of oppression that amounts to the same thing is very disheartening.

Edupunk: It's like school, you're not really getting the whole story

2008-06-16T23:53:00.000-07:00

Here is an internet meme that has been growing legs this week. Edupunk is an extension of some of the values of the punk movement which started as a counter-culture reaction to commercialization in rock and roll music but has since developed in to a fairly coherent philosophy. (Interesting to note that rock was considered to be counter-culture to begin with but got co-opted for commercial purposes.)
Some punk stuff is pretty dark anarchist philosophy which is an interesting intellectual tradition in itself.

Most branches of punk promoted the rejection of consumerist values and grew into the culture jamming movement as represented by such things as Adbusters and sites like the Culture Jammer's Encyclopedia at Sniggle.net. I found the Rand piece on the Zapatista Netwar under Hactivism on sniggle. net.

Contemporary Christian rock adopted some punk like values called into question some of the oppressive practices of Christianity.
My hero Bruce Cockburn is sometimes considered a Christian rocker and some of his songs certainly explore punker theme with a Christian perspective.
One of my all time favorite Cockburn songs (one of about 25) is a song from a 1980 album "Humans" called "What about the Bond?" One of the verses and the chorus might give a clue.

"Disfunction,.... Of the institutions
That should give a frame to work in
Got to find our own solutions

Confusion ...Pressure from all sides
Got to head right down the centre
In the love that will abide

What about the the bond?
What about the mystical unity?
What about the bond
Sealed in the loving presence of the Father?"

One aspect of punk is that there is a recognition that the"system" is very resistant to change because things have become ingrained and people have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo even when it is demonstrated to be deleterious to the over all good of humanity. Any effort at change are considered a threat and are forcefully put down. This crosses the spectrum from politics, religion, academia, entertainment, communications etc.
Punker don't necessarily advocate violent over throw of governments but mostly seek to make explicit some of the inconsistencies of society in the belief that people will realize they are being used and adopt more socially responsible attitudes and values. The often do that in a comedic, ironic, shocking, controversial way.

One of the recommendations of the punk genre was DIY or do it yourself. One commentator on Edupunk his week referenced Abbie Hoffman's famous quote about university education from "Steal this Book" Abject Learning also has a number of punk anthem podcasts.
"Too many college radicals are two-timing punks. The only reason you should be in college is to destroy it. If there is stuff that you want to learn though, there is a way to get a college education absolutely free. Simply send away for the schedule of courses at the college of your choice. Make up the schedule you want and audit the classes. In smaller classes this might be a problem, but even then, if the teacher is worth anything at all, he’ll let you stay. In large classes, no one will ever object."

I started putting this together with the Illich and Friere material we have been reading this week and there are some interesting parallels.
Was Illich an early punker? I'm thinking that the Catholic church hierarchy thought so and I'm sure some University administrators would agree and didn't think that was a good thing.

I'll have to keep thinking about this and I would be very interested in the views of the others in this group.

Liked the idea of this article as well and it minded me of another YouTube clip ( am I getting boring with the edupunk stuff, the pedagogy of YouTube)

Talking about generational divides.
Favorite quote from the clip.
"They (kidsthesedays) get all this information from MTS and VH1 and that's their history of rock and they, like, it's well, like (sic) (or sic-ish, not an exact transcription) They find out it's like everything else,... it's like school, you're not really getting the whole story"

The Zapatista Social Netwars in Mexico

2008-06-16T23:51:00.000-07:00

Conditions in Mexico in the 70’s led to the rise of a political and social movements that relied heavily on ICT’s and Internet based social networks.

Rand corporation report. The Zapatista”Social Netwar” in Mexico. (eBook)

These are selected quotes from the text with a little commentary. I will provide my relfection and analysis later.
"In January 1994, a guerrilla-like insurgency begun in Chiapas by the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN), and the Mexican government’s response to it, aroused a multitude of civil society activists associated with a variety of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to “swarm”—electronically as well as physically— from the United States, Canada, and elsewhere into Mexico City and Chiapas. There, they linked up with Mexican NGOs to voice solidarity with the EZLN’s demands and to press for nonviolent change.

Thus, what began as a violent insurgency in an isolated region mutated into a nonviolent though no less disruptive “social netwar” that engaged activists from far and wide and had both national and foreign repercussions for Mexico.

This study examines the rise of this netwar, the information-age behaviors that characterize it (e.g., use of the Internet), its effects on the Mexican military, its implications for Mexico’s stability, and its implications for the occurrence of social netwars elsewhere around the world in the future.

Tthis was the first post-communist rebellion in Latin America.

Ruíz and some other priests favored church teachings about helping poor people regain their dignity and rights (termed the “option for the poor”), and some also preached liberation theology (which went beyond the “option for the poor” to allow the “just use” of force by the oppressed). Ruíz would describe Salinas-style neo-liberalism and the poverty it spawned as being “totally contrary to the will of God.”

G: The contrasting tenets of the religious values. option for the poor vs just use. Semantic rationalizations for different responses.

During the 1980s, a whole variety of factors—the economic crisis noted above; the wave of repression inflicted by the governor, the landlords, and their paramilitary forces; the liberationist preachings of Catholic priests; and the difficulties of gaining relief through existing peasant organizations—all led to recruiting and organizing opportunities for the EZLN’s founders.

G: Everybody was ripe for a fight, the army the insurgents and any number of political advisors.

The EZLN began to adopt some of the characteristics of indigenous social organizations. The indigenas disapproved of hierarchical command structures. They wanted flat, decentralized designs that emphasized consultation at the community level. Indeed, their key social concepts are about community and harmony—the community is supposed to be the center of all social activity, and its institutions are supposed to maintain harmony among family members, residents of the village, and the spiritual and material worlds. …In this design, the purpose of power and authority is to serve the community, not to command it—so one who does not know how to serve cannot know how to govern.

G: The struggle had been couched in Marxist terms of class warfare. There was a calculated shift to concern for the concerns of the indigenous peoples. There have been similar conflicts in Canada where First Nations groups have rejected Marxism because it does not recognize ethnicity as a worthy value.

To understand why a social netwar emerged in Mexico—and why an insurgency mutated into a social netwar—the analyst must look at trends outside Mexico involving activist NGOsSuch NGOs, most of which play both service and advocacy roles, are not a new phenomenon. But their numbers, diversity, and strength have increased dramatically around the world since the 1970s. And mainly since the 1980s, they have developed information-age organizational and technological networks for connecting and coordinating with each other. The growth of two specific issue-networks—the human-rights and indigenous-rights networks—is particularly important for explaining the Zapatista netwar.

G: NGOs including church groups most notably the Catholic church represented by certain religious orders the Jesuits, the Dominicans and the Marist were actors (combatants?) in the netwars. NGOs had at least two other major purposes as well, to address human rights and to build infrastructure. The ICT infrastructure that they considered their mandate was useful in the netwar strategies.

Netwar started as traditional insurgency along the traditional Mexican lines and characterized as the War of the Flea, an optimal design for small, lightly armed, irregular forces. It allows insurgents to keep the initiative through surprise attacks by small units, following Mao’s dictum of combining central strategic control with tactical decentralization. .. the intended “war of the flea” in Chiapas soon mutated into a full-fledged netwar that had both armed and social dimensions and became the “war of the swarm”.

G: Interesting vestiges of the influences of various communist and socialist ideologies. Mao, Castro etc.

The fax numbers of Mexican and U.S. officials were often posted in Internet newsgroups and mailing lists…In addition, the activists worked to assure that the insurrection became, and remained, an international media event—swollen by the “CNN effect”—so that the EZLN and its views were portrayed favorably. Indeed, all sides waged public-relations battles to legitimize, delegitimize, and otherwise affect perceptions of each other.

G:Some of the practical tactics that the NGOs used to maintain attention on the scene.

Many NGO activists sensed they were molding a new model of organization and strategy based on networking that was different from Leninist and other traditional approaches to the creation of social movements, conduct what would later be termed “electronic civil disobedience.”The Zapatista movement gained an unprecedented transnational presence on the Net, and that presence endures and grows to this day.

G: Have to confirm the impact that this still has. The document is fairly aged in contemporary terms.

..the socialist rhetoric diminished, and demands for attention to indigenous rights came to the fore… some leftist activists were not comfortable with the EZLN’s elevation of ethnicity as a factor; the Marxist left in particular regards economic class as the key factor, and ethnicity as a divisive rather than unifying factor, in social struggles.

G: See note above re: shift to indigenous focus. It may have been genuine but it was certainly strategic.

Mexican government reduced its military intervention putatively because of the social netwar. In this conflict, “global civil society” proved itself for the first time as a key new actor in relations between states and vis-à-vis other non-state actors. The NGOs were able to accomplish this because of their information operations. In this emergent doctrine (of the EZLN under Marcos), the mobilization of civil society—not the expansion of the insurgent army—became the key strategic element.

G: RAND report is incredulous that the Army pulled back. In their estimation the army could have easily put down the Zapatistas. The netwar only partly explains the pull back.

Social netwar involves a lot of theater. Negotiations on an international public stage observed and reported on by NGO human-rights activists. Bellicose behavior on the part of the Mexican government seems to have a dramatic effect on the Mexican stock market. Activist in NGOs in Mexico feed information through their US counterparts who then feed it back to the Mexican government as the “view that the world has” of Mexico.

G: The real kicker.

Still, even though the Internet is a boon to social activism, and though it harbors a treasure trove of postings, many activists report being wary of much of the information that comes across it on a dayto-day basis. They do not regard it as a panacea or a substitute for key source of information, compared to what they can learn from personal contacts, fact-finding visits, or primary sources not on the Internet. Much of what gets circulated on the Internet is viewed as a voluminous barrage of mixed quality and relevance—often resulting in unreliable, skewed, junk, false, or kooky information, based on rumor, misunderstanding, or posturing. Moreover, there is concern about the Internet being used for “crying wolf” and for manipulation by people with hidden agendas.9 Thus, many activists are selective, looking on the Internet only for reports from those few individuals and organizations they specifically trust.

G: Lots of crap on the net and you never know when you are being gamed.

Digital Zapatismo-create software for use on anonymous offshore servers—“ping engines, spiders, and offshore spam engines”—that will enable them, and any other individual anywhere who wants to join, to conduct what amount to massive, remote-control, standoff, swarming attacks in cyberspace by disrupting the flow of normal business and governance. Military option is still kept evident by both sides as deterrent. The army has more trouble with the NGO social actors than they had with insurgents. Battlespace is in the Chiapas but also in the infosphere.

G:Some of the specifically web based strategies for jamming up the works.

An appropriate principle for neighborly U.S. military relations with the Mexican military may well be “guarded openness,” a deliberately ambivalent concept from the new field of information strategy that means being forthcoming about providing and sharing information in areas of mutual benefit where trust and confidence are high, yet being self-protective in areas where trust and confidence are not adequate From the perspective of guarded openness, what may be needed most in the case of U.S.- Mexico military relations is the construction of a “culture of cooperation”— indeed, a binational “military noosphere—in which the emphasis will be on what ideas and values can be shared and elaborated conjointly, rather than on what U.S. equipment and techniques can be provided.

G: Some of the lessons learned. The military noosphere seems like an obscenity.

The study of the Zapatista Social Netwar has had a wide impact and is a case study for modern information netar. The lessons learned on the part of the US military can be seen in the waging of the netwar in Iraq. The US controls most of the communications channels for the US and consistently looks to “force multipliers” the psychological warfare that maintains civil support for the Iraq war. They have perhaps learned more than the NGOs that were so effective in countering government abuse in Mexico. NGO seem to be having very little effect in influencing the human rights abuses engendered by the US in its theatres of war.

G: Lots of study and effort being put into the counter-netwar strategies. Just in case somebody wants to try it again. The US military's ability to maintain the Irag war and control the message is obviously a graduate course in social netwars.

Ronfeldt, D. F., Arquilla, J., Fuller, G. E., & Fuller, M. (1998). The Zapatista "Social Netwar" in Mexico (p. 168). RAND Publications. Retrieved May 30, 2008, from

Recreating Social Movements in Cooersive Environments

2008-06-16T23:50:00.000-07:00

Doesn't work. New wine in old skins.
I recognize the urge to use a LMS like this but really it is a vestige of the industrial education model where authority and control are the major issues.

This is a direct extension of what Illich and Friere were talking about as far as I can see. I shouldn't relinquish my natural ability to learn and teach just because an institution has said that they can manage my education. The control of the technology of learning can't be just handed over to an elite technology priesthood who tell us what God says and how we should think about our relationship to the cosmos. Oops, ... mixing my metaphors.

IMNSHO, it would be so much easier if we all created our own blogs, and set up our own system and linked to each other with conversations. The sense and actuality of ownership of your own learning is critical.

The time that people have spent trying to figure out some of the clunky features of Open Learn could have been spent much more creatively. The time spent trying figured out how to use Compendium or MSG or Vlog could have been much more creatively spent thinking and writing and conversing using a variety of other tools that are free, work better and where added cognitive content is a contribution to the cognosphere.

Blogging applications are much simpler to learn and use than a content management system such as this and they are more adaptable, versatile and best of all, they are clearly mine. I use my blogs and wikis as my personal life-long learning platform and I love learning and contributing in a free range environment. Working in a walled garden is a buzzkill and I can see that a lot of people in this course have given up or been so turned off it will be a long time before they ever want to look favorably on eLearning again. First use leads to future use. If you have a crappy experience you are not likely to try again. Too bad because I was looking forward to working with all the folks that had signed up. Maybe down the road.

I admire and respect the initiative that Open Learn has taken but I can see that there is a lot of maintenance and upgrading lacking. I know that the effort can't be justified and the world of social software has moved on. Compendium was a great application in its time but there are far superior open, free, mind-mapping tools available that allow synchronous collaborative development.

I am working on a project for a Pan-Canadian eLearning Research agenda, a project as dreary as it sounds. It was introduced as an open collaborative venture but locked in another Moodle controlled by one institution. We started all free and happy but as soon as things got a little contentious the authorities moved in to enforce intellectual conformity. It has become a bit of an echo chamber for some of the dominant voices in the field; not more knowledgeable, just dominant.

One of the bright spots is the concept map created by one of the participants using a free application called Mindmeister. I introduced my students to it in my online grad class and within 5 minutes they had figured it out and were working as a group to add value to a group exercise and having fun while they were doing it. These are people that didn't know what a blog was a month ago.

If anyone here is interested I'd be happy to show how to set one up and work on it collaboratively. It'll take about 15 minutes to get set up and get going and its a hoot.

I've been using blogs for quite a while and they have come along way from when you had to use an html editor and you spent as much time with the interface as you did on the content. I was just looking at my first blog entry from Apri 17, 2002. It is on Blogger and all the content is still all there. That is more than I can say for some of the course contributions I've made in various WEBCT courses or Moodles over the years. The content must still be on some institutional server somewhere but once I quit paying tuition and no longer had a student account I no longer had access.

Anyway I'm going to start migrating content over to my Blogger blog so I can be sure that my learning goes with me when this course is done. I know that my open learn stuff will be available as long as they maintain the server but it looks like that might not continue for ever.

Who taught that guy about Critical Pedagogy anyway?? Guards seize him.

The Pedagogy of Propinquity

2008-06-16T23:48:00.000-07:00

The pedagogy of propinquity means the study of learning that happens along the way to learning other things. The dictionary definition of propinquity is nearness, in space, in time, in relationship. So two things that may not be related take on relationship by simple virtue of their nearness to each other.

There a number of concepts that are consistent with a pedagogy based in propinquity. Serendipitous learning, accidental learning, self-learning, informal learning, tacit learning all describe critical learning processes that occur outside of institutional formalized learning.

Neuropsychology provides some evidence of propinquity as a necessary condition of learning. A distinction made between declarative(explicit learning and memory) and non-declarative memory and learning with the latter being the most important and least understood.

“These nondeclarative or implicit forms of learning and memory are generally characterized as acquired fluency of perceptual and motor performance (e.g.,Roediger, 1990). Nondeclarative memory reveals itself in habits, procedural knowledge, perceptual priming, simple sequence learning, single-discriminant forms of classical and operant conditioning, and path-based route Learning.Such effects suggest that the more information is associated, the more accessible the information may be, even under varied recall conditions."

Learning through propinquity is a major feature of using the Internet. When searching for a specific piece of information even the most refined search returns an incredible number of hits. In the process of narrowing things down you look at a lot of false leads. Though they may be false leads for the initial search they often yield interesting and useful information. There maybe a nescessary mindset that allows people to not see this as frustration but as a potential goldmine of leaning. I think I even read an article a while ago extolling the virtues of goofing off on the web and the incredibly powerful learning that can happen when you least expect it. Kind of a Zen like attention/non attention thing. Like you have to relax to see one of those magic eye puzzles.

One dimension of serendipitous learning that has interested (alarmed) educators for sometime is the concept of learning without teachers. (Tough, 1967) This seminal work described the activities of adults who pursued learning through informal means. The type of learning that Tough investigated was learning that was available through formal channels and delivered by a professional teacher in a educational institution, but where the learners had chosen to study the same subject matter but without enrolling in a formal course. The project tracked the learning strategies that adult self-teachers used.

Ethnographic and anthropological studies have examined the way that learning occurs in communities of practice. The apprenticeship model has been found in all societies at all stages of development from midwives in preliterate cultures to Naval midshipmen on modern ocean going vessels. The studies indicated that most practical learning occurred withing a community of practice and there were definite stages in the learning process. The initial stage was describe as the legitimate peripheral participant, which essentially meant that novice workers were allowed to be in the presence of the oldtimers as they performed their community role as experts. Novices gradually assumed more responsibility for minor parts in the performance before becoming aspiring experts and finally old timers in their own right. (Lave and Wenger,1991)
Another ethnographic study of an occupational learning community determined that the greater part of the practical learning that took place was through the apprenticeship model even though the practitioners were subjected to large amounts of formal training. In fact the formal training was an impediment to actual learning. (Orr, 1996) Tacit learning has been determined to be the critical and predominant required learning, far exceeding explicit knowledge. The knowledge transfer for tacit learning is non-formal by definition all though it can be mediated by social networking and ICT. (Bowles, 2005)

A project in the slums of Calcuta amply illustrated the amazing power of the innate desire to learn. Slum children were given unrestricted access to indestructible computer terminals and were observed to organize themselves and teach themselves the use of the computer, the internet and many other essential skills including English language acquisition. The research extrapolated a theory of Minimally Invasive Teaching and suggested that the more independence you can foster, encourage, and require in the learner the better the learning. (Mitra, 2005)

Ivan Illich reactor-core.org/deschooling

Illich repeatedly uses the term “treatment” to refer to education providing an interesting metaphor where lack of schooling is seen as an illness, a defect that can be corrected with the proper treatment. This goes with other similar euphemisms such as calling sickness care, health care.

Illich lamented the loss of the innate desire to learn and self-educate. He felt that we had become entirely to dependent on schools for learning and that schools had undermined our confidence in our ability to learn. (Illich, 1971)

Illich called for research

“We need research on the possible use of technology to create institutions which serve personal, creative, and autonomous interaction and the emergence of values which cannot be substantially controlled by technocrats. We need counterfoil research to current futurology.”

We know that technology has indeed created the institutions of Illich’s vision, both open and technocratic.

Illich points out the unwanted and unintended consequences of over reliance on institutions . One of these effects is that the poor get further victimized by an intervention that was ostensibly to help them.

“The increasing reliance on institutional care adds a new dimension to their helplessness: psychological impotence, the inability to fend for themselves.”

Illich calls into question the motivation of the so-called helpers and suggests that the institutions are largely self serving with ….

“….the discovery that no amount of dollars can remove the inherent destructiveness of welfare institutions, once the professional hierarchies of these institutions have convinced society that their ministrations are morally necessary.”

Creates an unrealistic metric for comparing the worth of citizens.

“Obligatory schooling inevitably polarizes a society; it also grades the nations of the world according to an international caste system. Countries are rated like castes whose educational dignity is determined by the average years of schooling of its citizens, a rating which is closely related to per capita gross national product, and much more painful.”

Some pretty intrusive solutions have been envisaged to make sure that the poor can benefit from increase spending on education but any equitable system of distribution will benefit rich kids more because they can better profit from improvement.

One suggestion was draconian.

“…preventive concentration camps for predelinquents would be a logical improvement over the school system.”

Other mistaken perceptions that Illich points out .

“Equal educational opportunity is, indeed, both a desirable and a feasible goal, but to equate this with obligatory schooling is to confuse salvation with the Church”

The existing system gives a premium to the credential that institutions grant although the credential is a false indicator of comparative worth. To over come this illusion Illich recommends

“…a law forbidding discrimination in hiring, voting, or admission to centers of learning based on previous attendance at some curriculum.”

Creeping credentialism is even more of a problem and advanced degrees are merely screening tools for employers. There is no reason to require that a flight attendant have a BA. Students start recognizing and gaming the system.

“A second major illusion on which the school system rests is that most learning is the result of teaching... most people acquire most of their knowledge outside school, and school… has become their place of confinement during an increasing part of their lives.”

Teaching and learning are normal human activities and basic social processes. Institutionalizing teach and learning into education has created a lot of anomalies.

“… those using skills which are in demand and do require a human teacher are discouraged from sharing these skills with others. This is done either by teachers who monopolize the licenses or by unions which protect their trade interests.”

Actually becoming a professional teacher may alienate a person from the natural human propensity to teach.

Illich has some prescriptions for better teaching.

* “Matching partners for educational purposes
* helps the pupil to formulate his puzzlement
* The most radical alternative to school would be a network or service which gave each man the same opportunity to share his current concern with others motivated by the same concern.

It looks like we may be moving to an era where the internet provides the means for us to be self-educating sharing our concerns and resources with others and creating our own networks and systems for learning. Learning will return to is more natural form rather than being locked up in educational structures that more and more threaten to inhibit more than support learning. The pedagogy of propinquity describes one of the ways that this might happen. Rather than being stuck following an institutionally mandated, state sanctioned curriculum, people will be able to learn more in the way that nature intends.

Bowles, M. S. (2005). Learning to E-learn Project:Rediscovering the Benefits of Elearning. . Malaysian Online Journal of Instructional Technology, 2(1).

Greene, A., Spellman, B., Dusek, J., Eichenbaum, H., & Levy, W. Relational learning with and without awareness: Transitive inference using nonverbal stimuli in humans.

Gritton , J. (2007). Of Serendipity, free association and aimless browsing: Do they Lead to Serendipitous learning.

Illich, I. (1971). Deschooling society. Harper & Row New York.

Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated Learning Legitimate Peripheral Participation . New York: Cambridge University Press.

Mitra, S., Dangwal, T., Chattergee, S., Jha, S., Bisht, R., & Kapur, P. (2005). Acquisition of Computer Literacy Skills on Shared Public Computers: Children and the "Hole in the Wall" . Australasian Journal of Educational Technology. , 21(3), 407-426.

Orr, J. E. (1996). Talking About Machines: An Ethnography of a Modern Job. Cornell University Press.

Tough, A. (1967). Learning Without a Teacher, Educational Research Series. Totonto, Canada: Ontario Institute of Studies in Education.

Pedagogy of the Hostage

2008-06-16T23:44:00.000-07:00

Just riffing on the Freire, Paulo, Pedagogy of the Oppressed. I found it in Google books.
I read this years ago and I am reviewing the highlights and notes.
I like the way he states the problem in the first chapter about how the oppressor and the oppressed are interdependent. The observation that liberation must happen for both and that it is easy to make the mistake of humanitarianism.
"As long as their ambiguity persists, the oppressed are reluctant to resist, and totally lack confidence in themselves. They have a diffuse, magical belief in the invulnerability and power of the oppressor.[21]The magical force of the landowner’s power holds particular sway in the rural areas. A sociologist friend of mine tells of a group of armed peasants in a Latin American country who recently took over a latifundium. For tactical reasons, they planned to hold the landowner as a hostage. But not one peasant had the courage to guard him; his very presence was terrifying. It is also possible that the act of opposing the boss provoked guilt feelings. In truth, the boss was “inside” them" (Friere, 1968)

Actually, I was thinking that the whole education systems is like a colossal extended hostage-taking incident. 'We are in control!!! everybody get in this room, sit down, shut up and nobody gets hurt. Don't do anything stupid, do exactly as we tell you and we won't have to shoot you.
If we get what we want everybody is going to get out just fine if not...the shooting starts.'

So they capture us in early childhood and hold us hostage for 12, 16, 20 years. Don't make any trouble and you'll get out with your life (certificate, degree, credential, livelihood, $$, status .) But you must do exactly as we tell you otherwise you will be uneducated, poor and despised.
Of course if you are held captive for 20 yrs ( long enough to get yer doctorate) the Stockholm syndrome takes over and you get to join the hostage takers.
Very dramatic of course and if you accused me of hyperbole you wouldn't be the first.

Freire , P. (1968). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. . Retrieved May 14, 2008, from http://marxists.anu.edu.au/subject/education/freire/pedagogy/index.htm

They call it democracy

2008-06-16T23:42:00.000-07:00

One of my all time favorite artists Bruce Cockburn, is a very keen observer with a powerful artistic talent. Mystic, poet, artist, thinker, fantastic guitar player, international observer and activist.
I've been a fan since the early 70's and he writes some of the most beautiful and profound songs. Many express joy, and spirituality but some are pretty gutsy and angry. He writes songs that are anthems for a lot of people interested in making the world a better place and throwing a stick in the spokes of the wheels of the military/industrial complex. He had a big hit a few years ago with a song called "If I had a Rocket Launcher" I was disappointed that he got a lot of fame for an angry song when he has so many other themes but it was a good song.

In the 80's Cockburn spent a lot of time in Central and South America observing and commenting on the situation in Nicaragua at the time. Some very potent songs emerged like the songs on the album " Stealing Fire".

Like "Nicaragua", a beautiful, lovely melody with some great lines. ..

" Breakfast woodsmoke on the breeze --
On the cliff the U.S. Embassy
Frowns out over Managua like Dracula's tower.
The kid who guards Fonseca's tomb
Cradles a beat-up submachine gun --
At age fifteen he's a veteran of four years of war
Proud to pay his dues
He knows who turns the screws
Baby face and old man's eyes"

And "Santego Dawn" is the source of another of my favorite lines. He is talking about how kids in a war zone survive and endure the incredible turmoil. "See them rising like grass through cement." The weak and powerless prevail over the hard and merciless. Nice to believe that is true.

Somebody put together a YouTube with "They Call it Deocracy" and some iconic images of oppression.

"Padded with power here they come
International loan sharks backed by the guns
Of market hungry military profiteers
Whose word is a swamp and whose brow is smeared
With the blood of the poor

Who rob life of its quality
Who render rage a necessity
By turning countries into labour camps
Modern slavers in drag as champions of freedom

Sinister cynical instrument
Who makes the gun into a sacrament --
The only response to the deification
Of tyranny by so-called "developed" nations'
Idolatry of ideology

North South East West
Kill the best and buy the rest
It's just spend a buck to make a buck
You don't really give a flying fuck
About the people in misery

IMF dirty MF
Takes away everything it can get
Always making certain that there's one thing left
Keep them on the hook with insupportable debt

See the paid-off local bottom feeders
Passing themselves off as leaders
Kiss the ladies shake hands with the fellows
Open for business like a cheap bordello

And they call it democracy
And they call it democracy
And they call it democracy
And they call it democracy

See the loaded eyes of the children too
Trying to make the best of it the way kids do
One day you're going to rise from your habitual feast
To find yourself staring down the throat of the beast
They call the revolution

IMF dirty MF
Takes away everything it can get
Always making certain that there's one thing left
Keep them on the hook with insupportable debt"

Habits of Mind for Public Intellectuals

2008-06-16T23:38:00.000-07:00

Anyone on this site

I would suggest that another habit of mind be added for scholar practitioners who want to use critical theory to develop new social movements and that is the habit of creative contribution on the web.

It doesn't have to be much but we have the means to make a contribution in a small or large way, everyday to the big flow of ideas in the world. It is important to make a contribution locally in my physical space but just as important to me is to feel that I have added something good to the noosphere, the world of ideas.

It feels a little like shooting in the dark, contributing to a forum or a newsgroup or commenting on a blog or wiki or even twittering, but someone somewhere is reading, thinking, processing, using the habits of mind and creating something new. I don't know the specific person or the specific place but I know it it happening. I also know I won't necessarily get credit for it but thankfully the habit of creativity is catching on.

There are many blessed individuals, in whom society has a invested a great deal, who insists on being paid for their ideas, respect my copyright, buy my book, give me a grade, subscribe to my journal, sit in my class, give me tenure, a research grant, reputation, respect, worship etc and then I will share with you.

I was reminded of Kahlil Gibran a few days ago. It was in a snarky comment about cheezy sentimental, emo-poster, made for Hallmark mushy minded-70's pap. I remembered that I use to read The Prophet in the 70', and 80's and I also realized that I still subscribe to some of the ideas Gibran articulated so poetically. I particularly love his piece on Giving and it connects with how I see you should contribute on the web. Not because you can expect some return but because it is what you do. All Gibran's works are online here.

We make the road by walking

2008-06-16T23:37:00.000-07:00

Amy mentioned Walter Ong and I was intrigued. Googled him while we were talking and found the full text (on the Fielding Library eBrary database) of Ong's seminal work on Orality and Literacy: Technologizing the Word. It really fits with some things I've been reading. Claude Levi-Strauss, The Savage Mind and Marshall McLuhans work on the Gutenberg Galaxy both referenced by Ong. He also referenced a work by Julian Jaynes that I read in the 70's and I am starting to hear more an more again. So stuff starts coming together.

I also connected this work to one of the most recent books I have been analyzing, Clay Shirky's "Here Comes Everybody" The Power of Organizing without Organizations"
He talks about the time when the printing press was being developed and the occupation of scribe that basically disappeared. The printing press was such an empowering thing because it brought down the various costs of production for the printed word. The first big thing was the Bible and Luther's Proclamation. Now many people could own the Bible and even take it with them. They weren't limited to having the Bible read and interpreted to them, they could read it themselves. Very empowering. Luther's proclamations similarly cause an enormous upheaval but wouldn't have if printed media hadn't been available and the scribes, who were Church functionaries, were responsible for recording and distributing the ideas.
Shirkey also talks about one Bishop at the time who authored a long defense of the scribe profession but then had it printed on a press for distribution.
Scribing didn't die off completely but became an art form which is where Shirky reads from McLuhan.
Humans are social creature and are designed to work in groups.
Mostly Shirkey is talking about how the costs of organizing limited organizations in the types of tasks they took on, running a railroad, managing a corporation etc. One of the most costly in terms of energy expended was organized communication, and the task had to justify the expenditure. Now that the cost of communication has dropped to near zero people can organize to do lots of stuff that was never considered important enough to be taken on by traditional organizations. This has enabled humans to engage in group activity on a scale never possible before and we are doing it.

Back to Walter Ong.
Ong talks about oral cultures and the secondary orality of technology enhanced communication.
"It is 'primary' by contrast with the 'secondary orality' of present-day high-technology culture, in which a new orality is sustained by telephone, radio, television, and other electronic devices that depend for their existence and functioning on writing and print. " (Ong 1982)

The new generation of web based tools is now supporting the rediscovery of orality with enriched multimedia and oral culture. Much of the earlier activity on web-based social networks was heavily dependent on text. Listservs and Bulletin Boards were exclusively text and many required a degree of technological sophistication to use.

The advent of wikis simplified the process somewhat and many more people began developing private online spaces and communication channels. These still required the ability to write some HTML code. Even the first web logs required the ability to cut and paste code using an HTML editor. The development of the WYSIWYG editor opened the online experience to many who did not have the skill to manipulate HTML. The inclusion of static images and photographs soon followed and added another dimension to private online channels.
The automation of many of the functions of blogs lead to a wide adoption and they became a very popular form of self-expression and communication. Now web based photo sharing services like Flickr and video sharing services like YouTube have become very prominent.
One modern set of web-based tools that promise to revive orality in a comparatively pure form is the podcast. These are digital audio recordings that are uploaded to the web for listeners to download to personal digital media players, commonly known as MP3 players. The term podcast gets its origins from the very popular Apple Computer device the iPod. Podcasting is ubiquitous and used for many purposes. It usually connotes a spoken word component and many universities now make entire series of lectures available on a podcast. ITunes is the Apple Computers service that manages podcast for Apple and ITunes University has developed with many lectures from many disciplines freely available for anyone with a device and an internet connection. Many students find this very useful for reviewing lectures and studying. It is very helpful for professors because students can review the lecture, pausing and rewinding over the sections that they want to review. If the student still has questions they can approach the professor for specific personal assistance.
Although the podcast is information received through an auditor channel and the experience is oral, it is still missing the essential elements that might be transmitted in a face to face setting. The podcast is certainly dependent on text, a highly specialized text of computer code that lies behind every feature of the web. The relationship between text and oral performance in this instance does not bears any of the same characteristics of the relationship between an oral performance and the printed text, such as the script of a play or even a musical score. In the case of computer languages there is no correspondence between a particular section of the computer 'text' and the performance.

Haraway

Reflection on the “Mind/Artificial Intelligence” example of the shift in Informatics of Domination, Haraway.

Must admit that Haraway was a tough read for me. Scanning didn't work and I couldn't get into the flow of her writing and my understanding of the discipline of feminism is woefully inadequate. Theresa Senfts notes were quite helpful.
Reflection upon an example of this shift in the ‘Informatics of Domination’?
One example that Haraway gave as evidence of a shift in the informatics of domination was the shift from 'mind' to 'artificial intelligence'.

Wikipedia tells me that informatics "includes the science of information, the practice of information processing, and the engineering of information systems. Informatics studies the structure, behavior, and interactions of natural and artificial systems that store, process and communicate information. It also develops its own conceptual and theoretical foundations. Since computers, individuals and organizations all process information, informatics has computational, cognitive and social aspects, including study of the social impact of information technologies."

I suspect that the point that Haraway was making was that the study of the social impact of information technology must include the ways in which IT can be used to control and persecute people.

Cyborg/borganism
The mind is a construct that explains the functioning human consciousness; thinking, learning, remembering, appreciating, and communicating. The human mind has always been evolving especially with the development of language and language tools.
Ong quoted Julian Jaynes work. The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the bicameral mind. Jaynes thesis was that early man had a bicameral mind, maybe represented by the left and right hemispheres of the modern human brain. Each mind performed discrete functions and one mind was tuned to hear an external conversation attributed as the “voices of the gods”. Essentially your brain functioned in two contexts, as a set of processes given over to the functioning of the individual and a set of processes to keep each individual tuned to the collective mind. Individual consciousness was an a consequence of adaptation to allow that allowed for higher order development of the self reflective, functional brain. Jaynes suggested that the development of consciousness led to atrophy of the collective brain although there are vestigial elements remain represented by such things as premonition, pre-cognition, déjà vu, mystical revelations etc. These vestigial elements are more often seen as anomalies or outright psychiatric disorders. There is evidence that the collective mind still exists although humanity's ability to perceive it has diminished. The tone of Jaynes suggests that something essential to humanity was lost in the shift to individual consciousness.

Many spiritual perspectives talk about the illusion of individuality, and recommend practices and meditations designed to attune the individual to the collective mind usually represented as deity or the “mind of God. They talk about separateness and the sense of being alone in the universe is put forward as a dread affliction that can be remedied by spiritual connection.

The illusion of individuality pervades western intellectual tradition and all learning seen as primarily an individual function with occasional references to setting, context, peer groups, all collective units. The language of the OECD document is shot through with references to learning and cognitive development as individual enterprises, multiple intelligences refers to social intelligence as an element of the individual but not the collective consciousness. We know that we is greater than me and that there is a synergy available when learning in a group context. The work of Lave and Wenger with respect to communities of practice indicates that there can be a communal body of knowledge that is more that simply the sum of all knowledge of the individuals in the group. There is something about learning in groups that has a potentiating effect for learning and may be a necessary condition. Yet all of our effort is directed toward individual accomplishments, concern with individual intellect not group intelligence. Most teachers still view collaboration as cheating.

Computer connected to the WWW is the most obvious. Anders Sandberg calls cyborgs borganisms. Part of the fascination and horror of the cyborganism is the sublimation of individuality. Being subsumed by a collective has always triggered bad associations especially in some cultures that have had horrible experiences with some tragic perversions of religious cults, socialism or communism. Similarly in the the corporate American has sold a lot of soap by promoting a view of any collective activity as suspicious. The myth of the rugged individual is still a dominant theme. Technology and the WWW have made it possible to freely and easily participate in collective knowledge and meaning making without having to surrender your physical being or private identity. People start talking stupid you just move along.

Me, borganism

In thinking about the topic posted for today to list the hybrids that exist within me I find that my cyber existence and my meat space existence are merging. There has been a shift from mind to AI as Haraway puts it although I don't know if I experience this as a domination as much as a liberation.

I created a mind-map and posted to the shared map space. In the map I tried to visualize the ways that I have incorporated technology into my being. I thought about the everyday technology that I use, the virtual space that I occupy and the mid-range technology that I use between the two.

For example I can use my cell phone to call my mother or I can use it to call my podcasting service Gcast and record a podcast that appears on my web site. I can use my digital camera to record the visit of a new infant family member. I can print that to hard copy, display it on my screen saver or upload it to Flickr to share with the world. I love the outdoors and wilderness trecking. When canoing wilderness rivers, there are no street signs or anybody to ask for directions. I am skilled in the use of a compass and topographic maps but I love my GPS. So I take a canoe trip, take lots of digital pictures and post them to my Flicker site along with a description, and a push pin on a Google map. I enter the coordinates on Google Maps from the record in the hand-held GPS unit that I used to navigate the river. I'm just fooling around but the coordinates that I enter into Google maps are now part of the collective intelligence about that little piece of the world that I thought was so lovely. I added a piece to the hive mind, I made a contribution. As Skirkey points out , humans were designed to do that and it must be why I get such a kick out of it. There is no commercial pay off for the minutes or hours I spend.

The people in my computer are every bit as real as the people I interact with F2F. There are some real advantages to the cyber connection.

* Much broader circle of contacts
* exposure to larger set of ideas
* much broader choice of communities and interests
* diversity of ideas
* lack of barriers and interferences that operate in real time meat space.

Sandberg, A. We, Borg. . Retrieved May 8, 2008, from

Here Comes Walter Ong and Everybody.

2008-06-16T23:35:00.000-07:00

Anyone on this site

Amy mentioned Walter Ong and I was intrigued. Googled him while we were talking and found the full text (on the Fielding Library eBrary database) of Ong's seminal work on Orality and Literacy: Technologizing the Word. It really fits with some things I've been reading. Claude Levi-Strauss, The Savage Mind and Marshall McLuhans work on the Gutenberg Galaxy both referenced by Ong. He also referenced a work by Julian Jaynes that I read in the 70's and I am starting to hear more an more again. So stuff starts coming together.

I also connected this work to one of the most recent books I have been analyzing, Clay Shirky's "Here Comes Everybody" The Power of Organizing without Organizations"
He talks about the time when the printing press was being developed and the occupation of scribe that basically disappeared. The printing press was such an empowering thing because it brought down the various costs of production for the printed word. The first big thing was the Bible and Luther's Proclamation. Now many people could own the Bible and even take it with them. They weren't limited to having the Bible read and interpreted to them, they could read it themselves. Very empowering. Luther's proclamations similarly cause an enormous upheaval but wouldn't have if printed media hadn't been available and the scribes, who were Church functionaries, were responsible for recording and distributing the ideas.
Shirkey also talks about one Bishop at the time who authored a long defense of the scribe profession but then had it printed on a press for distribution.
Scribing didn't die off completely but became an art form which is where Shirky reads from McLuhan.
Humans are social creatures and are designed to work in groups.
Mostly Shirkey is talking about how the costs of organizing limited organizations in the types of tasks they took on, running a railroad, managing a corporation etc. One of the most costly in terms of energy expended was organized communication, and the task had to justify the expenditure. Now that the cost of communication has dropped to near zero people can organize to do lots of stuff that was never considered important enough to be taken on by traditional organizations. This has enabled humans to engage in group activity on a scale never possible before and we are doing it.

Back to Walter Ong.
Ong talks about oral cultures and the secondary orality of technology enhanced communication.
"It is 'primary' by contrast with the 'secondary orality' of present-day high-technology culture, in which a new orality is sustained by telephone, radio, television, and other electronic devices that depend for their existence and functioning on writing and print. " (Ong 1982)

Later up date. I was reading Corrie Bergeron (aka SkyDaddy) and he was talking about kennings
You might dimly recall from some grade school literature unit that the Medieval Norse (aka Vikings) wrote these long, bloody poems called "sagas." (It would also be accurate to describe them as "bloody long" poems.) The sagas made great use of a literary device called kennings. A kenning is a metaphorical set-phrase such as "sea-steed" (sailing ship) and "swan-road" (ocean). But the kennings were not just general poetic riddles; they had very specific cultural connotations - baggage, if you will. So a kenning that refers to a shipwreck doesn't refer to just any shipwreck, but the shipwreck that tragically took the life of the young man who was fleeing his father's undeserved wrath and and and... they packed a lot of meaning and emotion, these kennings. You can think of them as a sort of cultural zip file. The listeners (sagas were originally an oral tradition) "got" the deeper references because they were literate in the context of their culture.

I like the idea of a cultural zip file. If you have the same program you can decode the message, otherwise you only get gibberish or at best a distorted version of the original message. That maybe okay too because you are making your own meaning of it.

The new generation of web based tools is now supporting the rediscovery of orality with enriched multimedia and oral culture. Much of the earlier activity on web-based social networks was heavily dependent on text. Listservs and Bulletin Boards were exclusively text and many required a degree of technological sophistication to use.

The advent of wikis simplified the process somewhat and many more people began developing private online spaces and communication channels. These still required the ability to write some HTML code. Even the first web logs required the ability to cut and paste code using an HTML editor. The development of the WYSIWYG editor opened the online experience to many who did not have the skill to manipulate HTML. The inclusion of static images and photographs soon followed and added another dimension to private online channels.
The automation of many of the functions of blogs lead to a wide adoption and they became a very popular form of self-expression and communication. Now web based photo sharing services like Flickr and video sharing services like YouTube have become very prominent.
One modern set of web-based tools that promise to revive orality in a comparatively pure form is the podcast. These are digital audio recordings that are uploaded to the web for listeners to download to personal digital media players, commonly known as MP3 players. The term podcast gets its origins from the very popular Apple Computer device the iPod. Podcasting is ubiquitous and used for many purposes. It usually connotes a spoken word component and many universities now make entire series of lectures available on a podcast. ITunes is the Apple Computers service that manages podcast for Apple and ITunes University has developed with many lectures from many disciplines freely available for anyone with a device and an internet connection. Many students find this very useful for reviewing lectures and studying. It is very helpful for professors because students can review the lecture, pausing and rewinding over the sections that they want to review. If the student still has questions they can approach the professor for specific personal assistance.
Although the podcast is information received through an auditor channel and the experience is oral, it is still missing the essential elements that might be transmitted in a face to face setting. The podcast is certainly dependent on text, a highly specialized text of computer code that lies behind every feature of the web. The relationship between text and oral performance in this instance does not bears any of the same characteristics of the relationship between an oral performance and the printed text, such as the script of a play or even a musical score. In the case of computer languages there is no correspondence between a particular section of the computer 'text' and the performance.

Haraway

Reflection on the “Mind/Artificial Intelligence” example of the shift in Informatics of Domination, Haraway.

Must admit that Haraway was a tough read for me. Scanning didn't work and I couldn't get into the flow of her writing and my understanding of the discipline of feminism is woefully inadequate. Theresa Senfts notes were quite helpful.
Reflection upon an example of this shift in the ‘Informatics of Domination’?
One example that Haraway gave as evidence of a shift in the informatics of domination was the shift from 'mind' to 'artificial intelligence'.

Wikipedia tells me that informatics "includes the science of information, the practice of information processing, and the engineering of information systems. Informatics studies the structure, behavior, and interactions of natural and artificial systems that store, process and communicate information. It also develops its own conceptual and theoretical foundations. Since computers, individuals and organizations all process information, informatics has computational, cognitive and social aspects, including study of the social impact of information technologies."

I suspect that the point that Haraway was making was that the study of the social impact of information technology must include the ways in which IT can be used to control and persecute people.

Cyborg/borganism
The mind is a construct that explains the functioning human consciousness; thinking, learning, remembering, appreciating, and communicating. The human mind has always been evolving especially with the development of language and language tools.
Ong quoted Julian Jaynes work. The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the bicameral mind. Jaynes thesis was that early man had a bicameral mind, maybe represented by the left and right hemispheres of the modern human brain. Each mind performed discrete functions and one mind was tuned to hear an external conversation attributed as the “voices of the gods”. Essentially your brain functioned in two contexts, as a set of processes given over to the functioning of the individual and a set of processes to keep each individual tuned to the collective mind. Individual consciousness was an a consequence of adaptation to allow that allowed for higher order development of the self reflective, functional brain. Jaynes suggested that the development of consciousness led to atrophy of the collective brain although there are vestigial elements remain represented by such things as premonition, pre-cognition, déjà vu, mystical revelations etc. These vestigial elements are more often seen as anomalies or outright psychiatric disorders. There is evidence that the collective mind still exists although humanity's ability to perceive it has diminished. The tone of Jaynes suggests that something essential to humanity was lost in the shift to individual consciousness.

Many spiritual perspectives talk about the illusion of individuality, and recommend practices and meditations designed to attune the individual to the collective mind usually represented as deity or the “mind of God. They talk about separateness and the sense of being alone in the universe is put forward as a dread affliction that can be remedied by spiritual connection.

The illusion of individuality pervades western intellectual tradition and all learning seen as primarily an individual function with occasional references to setting, context, peer groups, all collective units. The language of the OECD document is shot through with references to learning and cognitive development as individual enterprises, multiple intelligences refers to social intelligence as an element of the individual but not the collective consciousness. We know that we is greater than me and that there is a synergy available when learning in a group context. The work of Lave and Wenger with respect to communities of practice indicates that there can be a communal body of knowledge that is more that simply the sum of all knowledge of the individuals in the group. There is something about learning in groups that has a potentiating effect for learning and may be a necessary condition. Yet all of our effort is directed toward individual accomplishments, concern with individual intellect not group intelligence. Most teachers still view collaboration as cheating.

Computer connected to the WWW is the most obvious. Anders Sandberg calls cyborgs borganisms. Part of the fascination and horror of the cyborganism is the sublimation of individuality. Being subsumed by a collective has always triggered bad associations especially in some cultures that have had horrible experiences with some tragic perversions of religious cults, socialism or communism. Similarly in the the corporate American has sold a lot of soap by promoting a view of any collective activity as suspicious. The myth of the rugged individual is still a dominant theme. Technology and the WWW have made it possible to freely and easily participate in collective knowledge and meaning making without having to surrender your physical being or private identity. People start talking stupid you just move along.

Me, borganism

In thinking about the topic posted for today to list the hybrids that exist within me I find that my cyber existence and my meat space existence are merging. There has been a shift from mind to AI as Haraway puts it although I don't know if I experience this as a domination as much as a liberation.

I created a mind-map and posted to the shared map space. In the map I tried to visualize the ways that I have incorporated technology into my being. I thought about the everyday technology that I use, the virtual space that I occupy and the mid-range technology that I use between the two.

For example I can use my cell phone to call my mother or I can use it to call my podcasting service Gcast and record a podcast that appears on my web site. I can use my digital camera to record the visit of a new infant family member. I can print that to hard copy, display it on my screen saver or upload it to Flickr to share with the world. I love the outdoors and wilderness trecking. When canoing wilderness rivers, there are no street signs or anybody to ask for directions. I am skilled in the use of a compass and topographic maps but I love my GPS. So I take a canoe trip, take lots of digital pictures and post them to my Flicker site along with a description, and a push pin on a Google map. I enter the coordinates on Google Maps from the record in the hand-held GPS unit that I used to navigate the river. I'm just fooling around but the coordinates that I enter into Google maps are now part of the collective intelligence about that little piece of the world that I thought was so lovely. I added a piece to the hive mind, I made a contribution. As Skirkey points out , humans were designed to do that and it must be why I get such a kick out of it. There is no commercial pay off for the minutes or hours I spend.

The people in my computer are every bit as real as the people I interact with F2F. There are some real advantages to the cyber connection.

* Much broader circle of contacts
* exposure to larger set of ideas
* much broader choice of communities and interests
* diversity of ideas
* lack of barriers and interferences that operate in real time meat space.

Sandberg, A. We, Borg. . Retrieved May 8, 2008, from

Open Learn Creates a vacuum with its lips

2008-06-16T22:27:00.000-07:00

Starting this blog to migrate my course content from Open Learn. Enrolled in a project/course for Fielding Studies called Critical Pedagogy: Recreating Social Movements in Immersive Environments.

Open Learn is a LMS very similar to Moodle but seems to be a very old version that is not being maintained or upgraded. I'm not sure why the course was mounted in Open Learn unless it was seen to typify an immersive enviironment. Not very immersive or conducive to collaboration. For example the learning journal has no interactive "Reply" function so there is no way to interact.

There is and associated mind mapping program called Compendium and it is okay although the upload to Open Learn is very problematic. There is a vlog function but it likewise is almost impossible to use. I won't actually say that it sucks but next best thing.

The idea was to have a collaborative co-created course but so far there has been little collaboration or co-creation. So far there has been very little feedback from the faculty who are organizing this project, one faculty has not bothered to set up an Open Learn account.

While the course is very interesting it seems like most of the curriculum materials were adapted from a face to face undergrad course. I has gotten somewhat better and if appears that one faculty actually wrote an original article expressly for the course. Otherwise mostly recycled stuff.

I'm not sure what curriculum planning process was used or what criteria were used for course development. I understand that the course is experimental with special Fielding funding. As it is being developed as a core course of some kind there may be accreditation requirements that mandate a LMS. Rather than buy one or set up a Moodle on Fielding servers the choice appears to have been to use Open learn as a host.

Open Learn is a bit creepy because there are only 8 or 9 Fielding participants but 50 people enrolled in the course over all. Many of these people appear to work for Open Learn and are enrolled in a couple of research units. None of them have any personal information listed in their accounts nor do they contribute to the discussion. Just a bunch of lurkers. Are we the ants in the jar?? As I said it is weird. I emailed the one guy who seemed to have a web presence to ask him what the deal was between Fielding and Open Learn. He replied but forwarded my request to some other functionary and I haven't heard again.
I've been taking the course seriously and doing all the readings and trying to add value and engage the other participants. There have been a few good conversations but kinna lame over all.

It is so weird to have no online feedback from the faculty. They have delegated most of the technical and interactive functions to a research assistant who is pretty new to LMS and web based social networking. The RA dutifully comments on each entry in the assignment postings but not much from the faculty, the occasional perfunctory remark.
Many of the other participants seem barely engaged, very fearful of the technology, which makes Open learn such a bad choice. If you have a miserable experience with technology your first time out you're less likely to try it again.

The work load has also been very heavy with multiple readings and complex assignments. Some of the readings have been current but most of it seems to be from the mid 90's again reinforcing the feeling that we are working off an old undergrad course offering. The assignments have a bit of the character of busy work however.

Anyway, learning is what you make it and I have learned a lot. Some of the resources are old favorites of mine although they may be getting a bit shelf worn, Friere and Illich I read 5 years ago in my MA program. I think it is new stuff to many of the participants. I am trying to maintain the self-guided learning attitude that is my preferred learning style and I think is consistent with higher adult learning.

I am consciously calling my fellow participants that instead of students although the faculty and RA use the term students. They say it kinna like your grade 8 teacher too, very annoying. Classic authoritarian top-down hierarchical model from F2F overlaid on a out dated and clunky LMS.

We were introduced to a guest speaker the other day. The students were asked to identify themselves to the quest speaker, a priest from Mexico, and then the faculty were introduced. It was fairly clear who the important folks were and it wasn't the lowly students. So weird to get that feeling in a course for a Doctoral program from an institution that prides it self on its adult ed philosophy. Late career professionals paying big bucks in tuition made to answer a roll call.

Of course I'm doing my usual thing, looking at this and saying WTF. Everybody is putting their heads down, shutting their mouths, not causing any trouble, don't rock the boat, make no waves, just do the time and collect the credit and don't cause any fuss. I have gingerly checked out some of the other students and there is a great deal of confusion and outright fear. I have occasionally pointed out what I thought was an inconsistency and seem to have triggered a defensive response from the RA and one faculty member in particular.

The ostensible topic is Critical Pedagogy: Recreating Social Movements in Immersive environments. The "social movements" that are being recreated are mostly the Liberation Theology efforts in Latin America. We haven't done much recreating so far.

I think the Immersive environment is supposed to be Second Life and we have all set up accounts and avatars and done a little prancing around but I don't know if anybody gets it yet. We have had 6 synchronous sessions with everybody sending their avatars into a virtual lecture room and then sitting around. We then listen to a teleconference, we don't even use the speaking function with in Second Life. There really hasn't been much effort to ensure that all the class participants know how to engage in this type of setting. And there isn't much course time allotted for exploration, with hours of reading and writing assignments people just don't have the time.

One thing that galls me a bit is that I know that participant contributions are being used as data for the research project and somebody is going to get a publication out of this. I don't think any of the contributors will be acknowledged. I think the RA is being paid and will likely be on the publication. We are data sources only. This is also very weird for an institution that promotes participative research.

At the same time all of our "cognitive content" is being gathered and will likely fill out the curriculum with the next offering of the course.