A different connectivity; not better not worse. CCK08

Am glad I am doing this open access course,I had been worried it might be a distraction to the phd but actually there is overlap.
I am studying change and innovation with emergent technologies in what was a young people's telephone counselling agency (but which is now much more than that, with advent of txt messaging, bebo, facebook, Internet message board postings...).
Learnings:
1. Learning requires trust.
Not wanting to re-experience public humiliation (memories of getting it wrong at school) my own clutziness, and that described by others, in using something new and so big and so open...makes me aware that public learning requires trust :)
Thousands can see me as i stuff up a gmap etc
2. Learning requires engagement. Might feel alone, but my sense of others is expanded with gmap and with a sudden increase in my blog traffic on feedjit. While such visitors havent said hi (yet), i'm sure they will :)
3. My own engagement via the readings:
The first reading by Barry Wellman titled Little Boxes, Glocalization, and Networked Individualism. This one readily links to my earlier understandings of community when i did a Masters thesis on community care. Gemeinschaft refers to a community whose members are bound together by common values and intimate relationships.And here the metaphor of the little boxes seems to sit well. I can connect it to prior knowledge and expand it a bit. Networked learning that is not localised but glocalised.

We are now experiencing another transition, from place-to-place to person-to-person connectivity.

I like the way he writes this, the shared values are still relevant but they are network linked rather than geographically bound. This is also relevant to my phd studies...
4. Relevance to my current studies follows:
4a. coming from actor-network theory (ANT), the work of actors (human and non human such as my mac, the Internet...) can be considered for connected learning. While the conversation doesn't tend to go there- an ANT informed understanding requires consideration for the pixels, the platforms, the broadband access...And this CCK08 endeavour could not occur without it.
4b. The community counselling agency I work with for my studies is undergoing radical reform as it comes to terms with movement from place2place to person2person. Change that challenge ways of doing counselling. While landline to landline was its history, it is increasingly from mobile phones and the mediums used span verbal ph and txt or Internet message board, and is now also expanding into bebo, facebook, msn...
4c. High speed place-to-place communication replaced with high speed person-to-person
communication supports

dispersal and role-fragmentation of workgroups

with a shift to a personalized, wireless world affording networked individualism, with people switching between ties and networks. People remain connected, but as individuals rather than being rooted in the home bases of work unit and household. Individuals switch rapidly between their social networks. Each person separately operates his networks to obtain information, collaboration, orders, support, sociability, and a sense of belonging.

There can be concurrent 'cycling' through different windows of social connections with concurrent conversations occurring.
So a different connectivity is generated, and staying with ANT, I'm struggling not to criticize this, it simply is done and done because on some level/s it works.
Partial involvements do or dont serve counselling well? More a matter of understanding what occurs better. Work relations do become more dispersed. Not just the work between people, but between people and their work. Counselors are no longer located by time and place, but the process of counselling can be taken up by anyone with IT access in the building; and is encouraged with a colour alert countdown on the response time to txt messages.
Participants in virtual organizations (such as this one we are in now, or the one of a telephone counselling agency) are described in the article as linking people in temporary networks to deal with tasks. Participants inherently have multiple loyalties and partial commitments. (But this is true of life also, just the spatial and temporal alterations make it more obvious in a networked or virtual world.)

Often, the sociophysical context is ignored, as when people talk loudly on their mobile phones in public. They are not being anti-social: the very fact of their conversation means they are socially connected. Rather, people’s awareness and behavior are in private cyberspace even though their bodies are in public space.

And its also true that the sociophysical is oftentimes assumed private, the txt artefacts I study frequently presume privacy which a respondent reasonably often says is not available to them. Not wanting to be heard is a frequent response to being invited to call and chat in 'real' time. The assumed privacy of a digital medium (txt) concerns me, both in the ethics of what i study and in terms of the naivity of those using the service.

Shifting from face-to-face contact to disembodied email contact is a possible means of obtaining autonomy: Isolation is achieved without effort.

I think this is said a little too glibly. It does take effort, perhaps not consciously, but choice occurs and there are different ways of acting in the interaction. To have anonymity is a form of work important to the callers of the telephone counselling agency I work with. Autonomy is also important here, in txting the rate of response or even responding at all, allows a maintenance of self- of being able to 'say' what might not otherwise feel possible.

Will networked individualism deconstruct holistic individual identities? A
person would become the sum of her roles, and need to present multiple personas to the world. This compartmentalization of personal life—within the household, at work, and in communities — may create insecure milieus where people do not fully know each other.

There seems a negative undercurrent in the statement, but we have always had compartmentalised lives, I am not the same person at work as at home, or even at work amongst friends vs others... the life I live is multiple.
Annmarie Mol talks of the body multiple where arteriosclerosis is performed differently and in dispersed ways. I think virtual lives lived are no different. Sherry Turkle talks of the cycling through windows on life on the screen. Practice generates multiplicity. The real world is messier than commonly assumed, (refer to John Law, After method, mess in social science research). This is usually denied in euro-western traditions of understanding. Political ontology is at play where certain realities are given more and less credence.

A decade of research has dispelled fears that computer-mediated communication would destroy community and hinder work.

But it still gets aired frequently. Not everyone's at the same level or on the same page.

Are online relationships as good as face-to-face relationships where people can see, hear, smell and touch someone, usually in a social context? Probably not, but the question has an utopian assumption that if people were not online, they would be engaged in stimulating community, household, or personal activities. In reality, online relationships often fill empty spots in people’s lives

And in terms of counselling, the same arguments were put forth about telephone counselling in the 1970s...

Does the Internet increase, decrease or supplement other forms of
interaction? The evidence is mixed. At work, those who use email a lot also see each
other a lot.

For counselling, seems willingness to txt in is providing a doorway to counselling f2f

The comparison with face-to-face relationships is always a rigged game in which online relationships can never be quite equal? Or would it be wiser to ask if online interaction is developing its own strengths and creating its own norms and dynamics?

Yup seems the 'gold std.' But there are strengths in online, theres extended reach, anywhere, anytime, there's anonymity (wouldnt occur otherwise), and there's the positive affirmation in the pocket stuff (just as cell phones could be used for bullying, they can also be repositories of affirmations)

So there's stuff here aplenty. The PhD is not being neglected, there's connections to be made.

If your dropping in, say hi, helps me know I'm not alone in this :)
Let me know your blogsite and I'll reciprocate in kind :)

Connectivism & Connective Knowledge CCK08

Hi , I'm ailsa. And I am starting a world wide course with Stephen Downes and George Siemens and a few thousand others, on colletive knowledge construction. I have done this in part because this is the first of a kind; a huge www linked course. Worth a look for how it works in days of big course teachings :)
I'm intrigued by the audacity, the bodacious intent.
And I might learn how to think, and to trust, on a grander scale, here's hoping!
The tag is to be identifiable CCK08 makes this linkable.

Studying change; thriving on the happenstance of smoke and mirrors

Part of the joys in researching are the times when the really interesting stuff comes up.
Its not when there's a formal interview happening, so there's no ipod recording it, no notes taken. Seems it happens when the researcher is out of the room. Reminds me of a great little film, kitchen stories.
There are tantalizing snippets left on a whiteboard where the agenda covered seems to indicate an area of interest to me, but which i know nothing of; not why its there or how or whta it means... And where conversations rush in with we thought of.... but the 'we' is never clarified so i dont know who or where/when. Seems its all done with mirrors and smoke.

And then there's happenstance.

"I'm glad to see you, i/we have been thinking about ... instant chat messaging, msn, we had looked at ... but its not... and also at skype but its... and ..."

aaargh i've already forgotten why it cant and why this is better, but it is, and young people are using msn and...

"and looking at skype with icam and coz its similar to f2f and i think a charge but others ...could you look at .... would you be interested in ...and ... developing guide material for this..."

Being a researcher creates its own interference.
And I'm studying change, but its not in an interview and its sudden and out of left field...
the stuff of change seems to unfold around me, not when its being recorded in a formal research moment, but in the day to day stuff. I'm dropping off something and get called over,
"i wanted to tell you about, ask you..."

Theres stuff happening, and I trip over it or into it by happenstance, and am then looped in.
My sense is that it's spur of the moment, I'm here, your available, and its your interest area, what do you think and can you....

Might also be relevant with what Johansson, F. (2006) describes in The Medici effect. What elephants and epidemics can teach us about innovation. He talks of making innovation happen by going intersection hunting, creating opportunities for intersection or combination effects.
I suspect in studying change, its also about spotting those intersection crashes as they occur.

Yesterday was my first acute awareness of an intersection collision
:)
I'm feeling bumped into, small dent, and am bumping back
And again I am thankful that I have a methodology (ANT) that gives space to my own interference.

silence; do not confuse it with any kind of absence

From Cartographies of Silence by Adrienne Rich

The technology of silence
The rituals, etiquette

the blurring of terms
silence not absence

of words or music or even
raw sounds

Silence can be a plan
rigorously executed

the blueprint of a life

It is a presence
it has a history a form

Do not confuse it
with any kind of absence

So begins Susan Leigh Star and Geoffrey Bowker writing on
Enacting silence: Residual categories as a challenge for ethics, information systems, and communication
Ethics and Information Technology, Volume 9, Number 4 / December, 2007

I am reminded that silence does not mean absence.
That a story of process is often silenced when up against the story of results.
And that messiness is often overly simplified.
And that master narratives oftentimes reflect dominance.

Where do i start; How to do data analysis in a PhD informed by ANT

Where to begin?
Latour suggests:
"Where should we start? As always, it is best to begin in the middle of things..."
And I'm left thinking, yeah right, but which one?
Theres the middle of the actors, who or what is most connected.
There's the focal point of the agency - its called the hub - but recent changes through computer mediated communications means there is no spatial requirement any longer.
There's the Christmas present of a PDA from which the new modes of communicating evolved, but which now has the status of an ornament; a reminder of Christmas past.
There's my own position as a participant observer. Centre of my own unvivers :)
There's the CEO ....
Get the picture? The middle is contestable, but I have to begin somewhere.
Blogging defers the moment of choice. whats in whats out...at least latour suggests that ANT is not for the faint hearted or for those who see such things easily, so I'm reassurred I must be on the right track because I'm bewildered (and if sociology begins in wonder then bewilderment must be an asset !)

For several moments I considered a chronological stance instead, but whose?
There's the beginning of my research...
The beginning of my research where I am negotiating my topic?
When I am negotiating entry into the site of research?
My earliest involvement with the agency?
The beginnings of interviews? As a participant observer there was no clear delineation.
Maybe I could take it from when data gathering was first officially sanctioned by one ethics committee or by two?
And anyway, ethics isn't a moment in time, or if it is, shouldn't be. So this wont do either.

But begin I must for without beginning, I cannot end, and following another priceless piece of advice from Latour: a good thesis is a finished one :)

In media research, Latour suggests a newspaper, the ink on the page ... traces left by some writer suggests some group is being made or unmade.
So I choose to follow in kind and begin with txt.

But the first txts received by the agency seems to have gone the same way as the first ph calls. No one knows. No institutional memory, no written accounts.
Unlike the first successful bi-directional transmission of clear speech by Bell and Watson made on 10 March 1876 when Bell spoke into his device, “Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you.” and Watson answered.
But history seems often like this; the accounts of the history of the phone are not as clear as the account would suggest.
And nor are the txt messages I have as artefacts from this Youth counselling agency.

There was no myth making, no historical record kept.
So I look at what has been gathered from when the computerised records were established Nov 07.
50% of the first 30 or so texts were wrong numbers seeking the iou service from vodafone :)
The other 50% seem to be tests run by Youthliners learning to work with the system, "I'm a pirate and I need help."
;)

And then it begins*...
"Hi wat is this service"

"Thankz but no...cant now evry1 just g0t h0me.s0ry 2 shy ...

"Yea ok. So um is it norml 2 feel guilty if i dnt hurt myslf enough?

(*not verbatim, nil risk to individual anonymity)

There appears a cautious curiosity, a reason established for texting over any other means, and a serious question posed.
Txt language is used. The sentences are short. The medium seems to not only truncate the words with novel spelling but also with spelling that would have been no more difficult in terms of key strokes had it been correctly spelt. There's a creativity in the spelling that seems to be for creativity sake. It is no easier to write thankz than thanks.
There's also a truncating of the conversation, the issue is pushed forward, 3 sentences and into it. Or at least that's the appearance, for there are no other cues by which to assess the authenticity of a message. The text gets taken on face validity.
I could write more in the theme of a discourse analysis, there is the use of an s vs a z, that there are salutations and punctuation that may suggest gender. What of an 0 replacing o but only some of the time. But it is not my intent to take a discourse analysis.
It is also not my intent to take a critical social theory approach. There is no evidence that texting was done because it was cheaper, nor more likely by a female as they have less discretionary income or more likely to use salutations... such supposition remains just that.
My research is informed by ANT, and as such I am eschewing such structural analysis instead, I follow the actors...

woops, thats going to be difficult - the service provides anonymity. The ethical considerations include doing no harm and that includes to a fragile community service.
Back to bewildered, and wondering.
I'm sure John Law promised a method for seeing the fuller better bigger wider brighter picture.
Currently mine is more piecemeal, a jig saw with gaps
:(
Where are the hidden masses? Well and truly hidden.
The txters have anonymity and will not be traced, while I have invited participation by advertising in open spaces a willingness for involvement has yet to occur.
The techno peoples seem similarly elusive. They variously do not respond to emails, or in observed practice have a busyness that precludes interruptions, and when captured seem genuinely surprised that their role is one that should be in the eye of research of a counselling agency.
It takes work to convince these participants to participate.

I cannot trace all the connections in a lineal connected way, it will stop and start. A rounder fuller picture will be provided, but more in line with Annemarie Mol's study of athersclerosis in the body multiple.

Another snippet of Latour's wisdom: pack lightly for this journey, and expect delays.
mmmm. This delay is about getting from a to b when sometimes the path is missing (yet still be true to an ANT analysis).
The trace of a txters voice is evident: text artefacts point to being '2 shy'.
Instead of tracing these actors, I trace their voice through tracings...

Early adopter wants to meet like minded other

My partner told me he is an early adopter.
I laughed.
He attempted to convince me....he had a mac in the mid 80's, he belonged to a local internet group of like minded others....obviously he was at the forefront of technologies.
I laughed.
I'm surprised I still have a partner.
He has never learnt how to use the dishwasher, programme the clock on the microwave or use any function on the oven. All digitally enhanced technologies.

At least one of us is selectively deluded methinks.
The language of change theory continues to be uncritically accepted, but being an 'early adopter' is neither permanent nor a pervasive trait.

Nor is being a laggard :)
He managed to load and turn on the dryer yesterday.
The sun is shining and I'm still laughing :)

Teacher wanted; dead or alive?

Bruno Latour cites Dewey,

“Observations of consequences are at least as subject to error and illusion as is perception of natural objects.”

(p. 29).
Latour then focuses on the word consequences.

"Whatever has been planned, there are always unwanted consequences for a reason that has nothing to do with the quality of the research or with the precision of the plan, but with the very nature of action. It is never the case that you first know and then act,(if you are wise?) you first act tentatively and then begin to know a bit more before attempting again. It is this groping in the dark that is so difficult to map, especially when it is done by millions of people over the life of millions of others."

He spoke of this with regard to Thinking of the State.
But its also relevant to any implementation of change; the planned and implemented 'dream of reason' is not what occurs.
There are unintended consequences.
Though how these 'consequences' are perceived are also subject to bias. So with acknowledgment that this is a personal reflection its still worth thinking about the unintended consequences of what is wrought within a digitalised world...

Seems changes embraced have similarity with what went before, we 'surf on what went before'. The changes we accept seem to be changes that extend the possibilities of what was already occurring rather than radical alteration of form- or is it?.
When I am no longer geographically locked down,I have other freedoms; no longer bound to a geographical space has a trickle on effect; not just anywhere but also anytime.
My reach as a person extends.

There are also changes that are arguably less desirable. If my range extends, I 'cover more ground' the numbers of students taught by one lecturer can dramatically increase. The course content if taught once and embedded in a digital form can be made available to those present and not, by those present or not.

What are the consequences?
Teaching and learning becomes a provocation to thinking. Yup, happy with this so far.
By people unavailable physically, temporally. Still ok... having doubts; if I leave my teaching institution my online course with ppt, audiofiles of each lecture are whose property?
By a digital trace of someone who once taught... mmmmm, seriously less happy.
The 'lecturer' no longer needs a pulse. Uh oh.

Guess this blog is no different, with Dewey being post humously cited for bytes of wisdom.
And I guess I learn not only from the writings of dead people but also from the artefacts left on film or video. And there are a lot of dead French men with huge influence in academia...such power, knowledge, reach...

Online platforms for teaching and learning such as blackboard and moodle are increasingly entrenched in higher ed institutions of learning.
Whether this is seen as embedded, entrenched or a graveyard of teaching performances is not just a matter of perspective; realities are being made and unmade.

This was just a musing on what's required to teach and seems having a pulse no longer seems so important.

Tickling my fancy; assessment matters in higher ed

On an interview recently i was asked about how I invisaged assessment for an entry uni course for 1200 studnets and an anticipated 2.8 staff. I have read assessment matters by the Shre people (not that i mentioned this though it was full of clever ideas regarding peer teaching/learning/assessing. And i fully agree with the premise that if you really want learning to happen, teach it...and then i found this on Alan Levine's site (cogdogblog) and i so wish i had been this creative:

A SYDNEY girls’ school (Presbytarian Girl's College)is redefining the concept of cheating by allowing students to “phone a friend” and use the internet and i-Pods during exams.

Being a survivor of a Presbytarian upbringing this really tickled my fancy.
In my response I had claimed knowledge is not individually created and for form to follow function, so should not be individually assessed; that web2.0 supports group process and makes this visible also. I really enjoy the ingenious approach this Presbytarian Girl's College bring to education. It works for me. When i get stuck I talk to a friend, phone a friend, text a friend or treat google as my friend, but i guess its also about discernment, who might know and who might be a valid source of info. Being able to access and to discern rather than being a repository of fact. I like this.

sustaining change in the hinterland

I have been (re)reading John Law(2004) After method; Mess in social science research.
He argues for a reconstruction/deconstruction of current research methods. In doing this he also identifies how in science

"statements do not idly freewheel in mid-air, or drop from heaven. They come from somewhere....but without support from other statements or inscriptions of an appropriate provenance they do not go very far. So we might put it this way; if a statement is to last it needs to draw on- and perhaps contribute to- an appropriate hinterland. "

He then elaborates further describing elements in this hinterland:
A part of the hinterland of a statement is other related statements. Is it consistent with these? Do they tend to support it? If the answer is yes' then they tend to add to its authority...or toare there inscriptions that endorse or support such as might be emboddied in figures etc to which such statements might be compared and where such a relationship between ideas or inscriptions tend to reinforce one another. When this is the case the authority of a statement increases. Where this is not the case the statement is likely to enter the limbo of the might have beens.

I was thinking he could have been explaining the acceptance or not of ideas more widely.
He might have extended this to change generally.
It got me thinking of Freud (Ok, maybe i need to get out more...and I am pretty sure Law would be surprised by such an outcome for his work also). However, Freud initially accepted the stories of his clients of sexual abuse and it was only after the disparaging reception in a hinterland of disbelief and impossibility that his views changed and he developed theory relating to 'hysterical women'.

Maybe it takes a readiness in the hinterland for an idea to take hold and grow, its very difficult to sustain when there is no support for it. Similarly sustaining a new practice needs scaffolding of support...

There's the moment in the youtube video of web 2.0 where a nest is being built and it seems any sustained change is like this, it requires attachment and stability provided by other like minded or ready minded.
As Leadbetter says in his video, ideas take life when they are shared (what he doesnt say is that only when the sharing occurs in a ready hinterland where it can get a purchase on others- or on other things).
"Its like building a birdsnest where everyone leaves their piece" 'cept the material semiotics of what the bird, the birds partner, the twigs, trees, technologies, wind, rain, storm or sunshine, airplanes, food sources, local industry... are doing also need to be included. Hence an argument for taking an ANT approach to get a better understanding and a possibility for deliberately effecting change.

indefinite obects; elusive objects; or studying candyfloss in the rain

Law talks of how a 'committment to visible singularity' is a limitation on (orthodox) research. When what is observed shapeshifts, the singular entity metaphor becomes visible because it does not fit the data seen. And instead of blaming sloppy research or researchers or research methods, they argue for seeing practice as multiple rather than definite and accepting that in these realities, the object of study too may be multiple. Whats visible, definite vs whats invisible or multiple, or fractional with partial overlaps might then be studied.
That this is not a shoddy piece of research nor a failure to get to grips with something definite, nor an inconsistent or incoherent description from research participants, but is instead the nature of what is the object of study.
While this does remind me of Lewis Carrol and the hunting of the snark, it is also my experience of trying to be definite about counselling in my study of how it is altered by use of different mediums. (small aaarghh here, what on earth am i doing trying to get a handle on an indefinite object and then what do i think I am doing when said indefinite object is altered in different mediums, by multiple different players. The AAARGHH just got bigger or the snarks are closing in on me and I'm on the wrong side the a counselling relationship).
I am a little more settled with Mol's and de Laat's story of the bushpump, where its very success is dependent on it being a fluid object. But at least they had something tangible to point to, a concrete object with ongoing alterations. The indefinite communication skill set called counselling is considerably less definite.
I feel like I'm studying candyfloss, I can point to it, taste it, but i wouldnt want to study it outside on a wet day. New Zealanders, esp from the Westcoast, know greywackey, a stone that crumbles if handled too much and dissolves down to a silt like mud when left in water.
Standard research method does not seem to do justice to a nebulous entity. Certain kinds of reality are imposed. Politics of what is/isnt accepted, investigated, valued, othered.
Certain realities are reconfigured when forced into the written text.

Watch this space; a doc thess preprd 2 test boundrz usin txt

reality is multiple

There is a tension between multiplicity and singularity.
In my research this singular:multiple tension is evident in considering the practice of counselling. It's called counselling when its face2face, f2multiple faces, verbal but not f2f, nonverbal and not f2f, synchronised or non-synchronised.
In order for counselling to occur, at least two people are required. The practice occurs in relationship.
One initiates the conversation, and one makes themselves available to hear the story of the other. If counselling is to be enacted, it is crafted from the story of the one and the communication skill embedded with the other.
In this agency, responses from those who 'do counselling' suggest a singular entity, a set of skills or processes that fit together. The skill set of listening, affirming, being client-centred, a strengths based approach. A single reality. Definite and singular.

What then of differences? Obviously not every story is the same, nor every skill set. How is listening shown when the conversation is non verbal? What is meant by being client-centred, does this extend to intervening when the counsellor identifies saftey trumps autonomy? There are hen examples of contradictions. Differences in counselling when the story differs, when the actors differ, when the actors might include non-human actors such as mobile phones, computer screens...

The inconsistency with what is counselling is altered. How then is difference contained?

Mol suggests the need to work with multiple possible truths. What counts as best depends on circumstance. And points to Wittgenstein on how rules do not make their own applications. Rather than an actual inconsistency, the scenario is described in terms of apparent inconsistency. In respecting autonomy but acting on a person's safety expressing concern by contacting emergency services despite the client asking you not to, gets described as "if they were in their right mind, less tunnel visioned, less distressed, less drunk, less depressed, they would appreciate it ... they are telling us for a reason...at least they will know that we take their safety seriously..."
The implication is that what is best, desirable, advised as best practice, depends on the circumstances. Thus inconsistency gets explained away. Such storytelling of practice help to sustain the singular version of a cohesive practice. Such an analysis would suggest that concern for inconsistencies is one of perspective. However this does not do enough to explain how the same actor tells of their own practice.

When the counsellor says:
"no difference, phone, text, health.
then 15 minutes later says
"I am aware of doing it differently, role of psychodrama. Everyone does it differently, brings different backgrounds.
I am the triage(insert name), phone counsellor (insert name), text/email (insert name )counsellor.
Such an example supports what Law describes as poorly coordinated realities. Or what Mol points to in distributed practice. Contradictions evolve in enactment, working out what to do. In shifting between medium there's a sense that some things change and some stay the same, and even described as the same and different. Law picks up on the implications brought about by this same and different discourse.
He identifies how the contradiction provides opportunity to work out best options where there are contradictions, in the less than perfect world of health practice the work involved requires adaptation. In addition, this requires an ability to make judgments. The craft of counselling growing out of past experience, conversations and reading.

At the site of this study, the past experience in counselling was predominantly to use the medium of choice of the target group, telephone counselling. With a shift to the target group using mobile phones, an attempt to provide a portal to counselling by text was also initiated. The standard for counselling comparisons is frequently made. A need for judgments being contingent led to policy development. A guide for judgments when the situations were contingent on the type of 'call' or on the medium being used. The decisions required are even more complex. As expressed by one counsellor:
"I worry of how young the caller might be, could be 10-11 not teens, and I might be affirming sexual activity and stuff and assuming [they're] old enough and sending a mesage that might be colluding with activity that might not be appropriate for the age....on verbal if they sounded young we would probably find a way of asking that. Definitely makes [me] text cautious. If i have a 10 yr old saying my boyfriend wants to have sex with me, that's very different than an 18 yr old."
The type of response is contingent, shaped by the realities experienced in the moment. In texting a cautious response is then given based on how little is known, this counsellor describes herself as not being able to work with instinct or intuition on a txt platform. Nor having enough knowledge to do more than affirm that the situation sounds difficult and inviting the person to phone up.

What this reflects is that difference is produced with difference assemblages, there is an overlap but it is not the same, there are some things that stay the same, such as affirming, but there is also difference, call us. A move away from being client centred, or a reinterpretation of what it means to be client-centred.

Enacting is not then a matter of perspective, and includes more than a crafting by the people involved. The non-human actors too have influence. A combination of people, technique or skill, and text and technology evolves. The realities of practice are produced in relationship and these relationships extends beyond the people directly involved to include the technological actors. It also includes unseen actors, invisible actors and invisible work (and power differentials...all of which point to a new posting opportunity).

beware, your imagination leaves digital traces

Artefacts tell a story.
Texting leaves digital traces inside of which imagination, thoughts, preferences can be located.
Artefacts, such as policies, documents, purchasing orders, emails, letters, texts...provide traces. Such tracings don't just substantiate or refute whats said by research participants.
They also provide a way of accessing voice. Whether that voice wants to be heard, or not. In this there are also multiple ethical concerns in making visible what might have appeared invisible.

This then begins a story told using the 'voices' of txt artefacts evidenced in txt counselling.

15% of texters to the Youthline service are requesting/demanding a text option for counselling.
Examples of texts (based on, but not actual) are reflected in the following type of comments:
"Il neva b abl 2 tlk bwt it. S0ri 4 bthrn u"
"k but na thankz.i cant.g0ta h0use fill n same1 c0uld easly hear me..."
"I cant fukn ring ny1 0k !!"
The pressure to provide a text service is clearly evident.

However, as pointed to by Bruno Latour, beware.
The cost of digital tracing needs consideration.
There are costs of privacy, confidentiality and trust evident here.
What's digitally texted stays.
In my own performance of pointing to this here, there is risk.
Does a community get damaged or empowered by having it pointed out that a trace stays?
In the past, counselling was a private affair.
Current costs are not recognised.
Such traces as are left in txting became evident in the Kahui twins murder trial; where you are, the calls connected, the messages texted...remain in the digital trace.
And as expressed by Latour "the inner workings of private spaces are prised open".
Those most likely to use this service, aimed as it is at a young audience, may not know of digital posterity.
For me as a social science researcher, my use of such tracing remains cautious.

Further potential stories from this 'silent' actor of txt artefacts include the trace of a service that changes over time and the variation that occurs in counselling
across a range of actors, and by the same actor distributed across a range of media.

Nonetheless, I am disconcerted. In the trace there is potential for a panoptican surveillance of Foucaudian proportions.

The bottom line

Flores's: "The soft issues are the hard issues. Your problems don't come because you don't know how to calculate entropies or to design plates. They come because you don't know about people. Our best comes out when we have honest discussions. Our worst comes out when we behave like robots or professionals. You all have the delusion that it's your business to sell hardware. But every company of the future is going to be in the business of exquisite care -- which means quick turnaround time and convenience. To deliver exquisite care, you need an organization that coordinates well and listens well. Right now, you are in an organization that has poor quality and slow delivery. You have one big mythology in your favor: Everyone believes that you Europeans are impeccable. But I know you are jerks."

The temperature in the room is rising. The air-conditioning is on arctic blast, but the men are beginning to sweat. "When you get into a situation like this, nothing seems to work," Flores says. "That's when you don't need solutions -- you need transformation. You've already tried everything to stop your losses."

Thanks Arti and cj; I can substitute in education for hardware.
Transformation seems a rational way out.
In my paid job problems are not (just) fiscal, they are also pedagogical; who controls learning and to whose benefit?
In my studies similarly, who controls the means of communications and to whose benefit?
Basically a Latourian or ANT question: whats shaped and how?

A whole lot more listening and working with good intent and with trust and with cooperation, and 'we' might get there together.
At the very least 'we' learn to work together.
Not a bad learning if that was to be the bottom line.

thesis writing for dummies

"The footnote is the poorman's hypertext. it is not fancy...You dont need any software at all. All it takes is a little number, a little asterisk, and smaller type. it's great. You can choose. Do you want to go into the subroutine of the footnote and follow it out and move back, or do you want to skip it?... I was very proud of one of my footnotes that went on for four pages with only three lines at the top."

so cites Tara Brabazon of Nicholson Baker.She takes this further:
"This fickleness is very attractive in our era of tepid textbooks and predictable prose."
Wonder how she would respond to a thesis student who finds theses prose vapid...must go hunting for what she has supervised t see if the playfulness extends to this domain :)

useless technology, new and improved...

"Teachers currently feel as if we are trapped in a Monty Python sketch, We are living the opening scene of The Meaning of Life where, through the 'miracle of birth', the medical administrator remains most impressed by the machine that goes ping rather than the arrival, before his eyes, of new life. Far too many administrators gravitate towards the ping, missing the magic being woven by teachers".Tara Brabazon

In looking at the technological changes that have "changed people's lives" a survey by UK website which.co.uk puts mobile phones top the list. (Nearly a quarter of those surveyed placed it at the top, and 42% of 16-24 year age group.)
2nd place was the laptop, and 3rd place the mp3 player.
Foot spas were named the most useless gadget, I guess they dont ping enough.
I also understand that they are the least appreciated gifts left for the citymission at christmas time.
Bread-maker a close second. Do the maths, how many do you need to make to pay for itself.
Heated hair-straighteners or curlers rated higher than TVs. curious.
And for one person their salad spinner was the gadget that changed their life.
hmm, am tempted to think they needed more ping in their life.

when the proverbial stuff hits the fan, it's mobile and flexible too

There is no inherent goodness in being mobile and flexible.
Avian flu meets such criteria, anywhere, anytime.
Surely the substance of what occurs anywhere anytime has to be considered.

To this end, Digital hemlock by Tara Brabazon, is a provocative read.

In higher ed, a major point of tension is directed use of online teaching platforms.
I love them, there is potentially greater freedom; learning doesnt have to be at a predetermined time or place. But my love is not unconditional, and the conditions are rarely addressed.I take this moment to quickly affirm the conditions I believe and which are legislated imperatives: According to the Universities Act (1961) the purpose of a University is teaching, research and to be the social conscience of society. I take this to mean service, not profit ; and that things of serious importance to society will be attended to, such as social justice and equity.

However, what happens if this plot is lost?
Tara Brabazon notes, Socrates was not sentenced to die by his students, but by the Gods.
Attending to students is not enough.

...And I have just been invited to put in my cv and a vision statement to be able to keep doing what i have been doing for 2 decades;teaching and lecturing in higher ed.
Is this an example of what Brabazon points to with tenured staff fighting for their jobs rather than for social justice and social responsibility?
There seems too much truth in the preface for me to ignore this book.

In an analysis informed by actor-network theory one could consider a technosocial story of change in university life and consider the things that are needed to make an assemblage stable. In this instance, attending to students and to the content or purpose of learning is not enough, the management layer un-peels itself as well as the resources at their discretion, and enroll such actors as they can including online platforms such as blackboard, fewer people, more students...as well as distracting academic staff in having them reapply for their positions... I feel that i am kept running to even be able to stand still.
No conspiracy theories here. Just a technosocial story that helps to account for how things are shaped as well as shaping, and a consideration for knowing that things might also be different.

I live in an uploading country; there's an incredible amount of blogging going on

Godzone (New Zealand) tops a Californian run initiative that tracks how people around the world use the internet. (Reported NZ Herald 29 July 08)
1 in 10 internet users have a blog (thats 3/3 in this household)
1 in 13 New Zealanders have a blog.

Of the 78% of New Zealanders internet who use the internet:
66% have broadband (so why does it cost so much???)
77% of us check our email daily
28% use social networking sites (I note the Herald doesnt break this down but gives the examples of Myspace and facebook; all my friends, family are on Bebo)
13% maintain their own website (this is not rocket science).

The caption with a photo reads "anonymity allows internet users to say things they might not say in person." While this is not discussed in the story, its a really interesting take on what it means to be anonymous. The IPS makes identification more, rather than less likely. The 1:1 relationship with the screen seems to be experienced as an intimate one and seems to lead to indiscretions being revealed as evidenced by anecdotal reports as well as by media headlines of people sacked.
Might be time a new word was coined for this perceived sense of anonymity which is far from actual. A nony mouse?

An education paradigm shift; shift happens

The bullets have slowed somewhat.
Michael Weschs' video (a portal to media literacy) on youtube is a good antidote to despondency (thanks Arti). I have moved out of despondency, and into a parallel universe where resource issues don't matter, and where everyone plays nicely, and where what's taught matters, and who is taught matters, and where learning is not filling the empty vessels with content, and assessment is not checking on the volume of what's put in.
Now I just need to be able to shift between realities at the speed of light, because both realities exist and i seem stuck between the two.
And no one really wants to watch wonderwoman undress when she twirls.
Except the others, people in another space again, who like seeing it all come unstuck...

Growing a PhD; resilience is futile

My resilience has plummetted, and then i found this, and it helps explain how come.
And the resemblance to the koru is remarkable.

I guess its just the spin on things that makes it seem a never decreasing circle of despair or potential for new growth. Maybe meditating a few affirmations will help :)
My cup of spirulina is not slime and is half full, not half used.

not engaged, not enrolled; how not to make change happen if you want your actors on board.

From the Hunting of the Snark:

What I tell you three times is true.

I think i just got snarked.
I am apparently scared of innovation.
This is untrue.
What i am afraid of is daleks, deception and snarks.
All for very good reason.
Daleks could be construed as innovative its true, but so are tardis' and these do not scare me.
Innovation is not scarey of itself, IT does not have its own trajectory nor its inherent application of good or evil.
It's a 'depends' type statement.

The different branches of Arithmetic -- Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision.

Some of my very best learning happened when i was 7, the first chapter book I ever read; Alice in Wonderland.
Questioning resource allocation of 2.8 staffing for an entry paper into 3 degrees involving 1400 students makes me
a) scared of innovation
b) a staff member in a liberal centre of education
c) bad at maths
d) subject to derision
This one is almost as good:
Using fewer staff to teach more students over more days in a week is working smarter.

Engaging actor-networks

‘an experience by which both the body and what affects it produces each other. Each of the events (wine, thoughts, vessels, jests) creates an occasion for the others: should we say that the wine made us happy or that we made the wine joyous?'
(Despret 2004, p. 127)

A material semiotic; the wine is not joyous until it enrolls an actor, and on being consumed inscribes practice (at least in as much as there is an inscription effect of disinhibition).
When actors are not presupposed or credited with agency there are some curiousities that can be explored and explained differently, even in jest :)
I am indebted to Nana for this gem.

2b or not 2b; blogging a PhD

I was explaining (my) phd behaviours of picking it up and putting it down and my need to manage this ... there are similarities and differences with earlier study. I worked out that at this (non existent) rate i guesstimated i needed 6 weeks for each chapter, say 10 chapters... and then enlightenment hit me. 60 weeks for completion.
Time to get real.

And last time I skyped with peers undertaking a similar process, Nana named it - a thesis involves enrolling the actors, the theory that supports, the lit review that gets enrolled to provide the scene... the methodology that needs to be shown to be congruent. The politics of whats in whats out; an ontological choreography.
And some very pragmatic enrolling occurs; my own.

Latour talks of how things get made less or more real, it involves work, active engagement.
How does an innovation arise in the mind of inventors. The answer is always to be found in chains of translation,.. always comes from a blending or redistribution of properties previously dispersed.... I was interested in this, and that, and it coalesced here... and in this way. Experienced locally, personally.

The mix i bring, the assemblages i work at, managing my artefacts (literature reviewed ... data collected), managing the technology (always make back ups, never leave the laptop in the car, check the ipod battery...persevere with endnote word interface issues...database searches....skype for international chats with supervisor....other students...enter into web 2 blogging...always check the file attached before hitting send etc etc)

Interest people and things at the same time; recruit actors, human as well as nonhuman. Latour's words here: seduce, modify,transform, develop...

Enroll a supervisor.
That turns academia on its head :)
Keeping them enrolled also takes work :) and chardonnay maybe
They too may allow or forbid alliances...require, constrain, provide....

As Latour says: we have to negotiate.
What kills a project? Everyone and no one; a lack of negotiating.

A story then told of this and this and this and...i am compatable!

so...
10 chapters = a chapter every 6 weeks.
Time to get real.
Enact it, perform it into being.
Enrolling and negotiating the whole way; this and this and this...
Watch this space :)
A chapter by this time in August.

Another Zen moment;
before enlightenment there is chopping wood and peeling potatoes, and after enlightenment...
...there is chopping wood and peeling potatoes

2b or not 2b; further ontologies of practicing being a PhD student

An ontological performance includes the writer as well as what is written.
This is a creative performance.
Not just of the thesis, where what is studied is made more real by the very act of being researched and written into the world.
What is studies cant help but be altered by the act of study.
Who is undertaking the performance is similarly altered.

An actor-network theory (ant) approach is humble.
I have a lot to learn about this.
In my past life as a critical social theorist i expressed judgements.
My big learning in this life as an ant type of being, is dont.
Belatedly, I remember Latour: Always assume people are right...put yourself at the peak of enthusiasm, the apex, the point where things were/are irrestible. (from Aramis)


7 things not to do as a PhD student, and in no particular order:)
Do not hit send on emails late at night.
Do not attach files to said emails without checking them.
Do not say that there is no writing in an area before you google the background of the person you talk to.
Do not neglect family and friends, you will need them when the phd stuff isnt going so well.
Do not have so many windows open on the screen that when your computer asks you if you want to save changes you say no by mistake.
Do not take your studies so seriously that you cannot laugh at your mistakes.
Do not blog yourself into a bog.

Feel free to add to the list, i could do with a laugh.

Oh Lord it's hard to be humble
when you're perfect in every way.
I can't wait to look in the mirror
cause I get better looking each day.
To know me is to love me
I must be a hell of a (wo)man.
Oh Lord it's hard to be humble
but I'm doing the best that I can.

Davis Mac

2b or not 2b; ontologies of practice

What is at stake when a decision between alternative performances is made? The notion of choice in deciding between alternate performances presupposes an actor who actively choses, while potential actors may be inextricably linked up with how they are enacted (Mol, 1999).
Some actors express more choice than others. Some of these are human actors, some not. This post is a playful exploration of the not human actors exercise of choice.

In considering these actors, preference or choice' is linked inextricably to how performance is enacted.

Hmmmm, well some things are easier than others.
I find it easier for example to know my own mind than to presume the thinking/choice/preferences of a sony ericson k700i. I 'll try 'listening' with more intent to how this actor manages his/her/itelf in relationship.
Preference are expressed: there is ease in connecting across certain platforms and not others, seems some of us speak the same language, use the same channels and ome of us don't. The paths of technology linkups being more direct for users linked to this network than to that.
The technology of the organisation is funded, shaped and paid for by this provider vs that.
Costs are assigned by the service provider, the advertised txt number and counselling voice service is free if the txt or call come from one service provider and not from the other.
This inextricably pervades the linkages made and not made by other actors inline.
A pushed and pulled if not a forced choice for the next actors linked in the line.
As a mobile entity I contain and shape the message, there are rukes 'i' follow. Any one message gets 160 characters, x lines, s characters to a line. Exceed this and as a linked in actor you get to send two messages at twice the cost.
The keyboard also forces choice. My construction of a keyboard does not follow the conventions of a qwerty board. 'S' one of the commonest of letters used in English requires tapping thenumber board / keyboard four times. To access E, the commonest letter, takes a double effort; every vowel except the letter A takes additional effort. All actors, inextricably linked, get shaped. Conform or not. The techy actors develop a workaround, use a qwerty keyboard, feed the response through by computer, do a character number check, send twice and it will cost you twice as much....truncate the message.
The reader and writer make accommodations.
Even where the message is small, the truncations remain stable. K as if ok wasnt short enough.
And then there's the whole area of what is conveyed...counselling shaped by the medium. An agency with a history of counselling in a reflective mode, no longer is reflective. Seeing text distorts counselling practices of reflection and of active listening as if verbatim restating what is patently obvious in the txt medium becomes redundant. Obviously repetitive, there are no nuances, no subtle questioning, no intonation to imply an exploration of meaning or to provide emphasis by nuances of spoken speech. The reflective approach comes though as repition and therefore redundant in a medium where what went before stands self evident irrespective of time passing. Other performances evolve, A choreography of push me pull you.

The ontological choreography produces its own stickiness where particular ongoing performances become less or more likely.

2b or not 2b

I claimed too soon my winning of text poetry.
I have competition it seems.
A utopian analysis suggests txting aids language acquisition skills!
Apparently blogging also increases social skills.
Seems i am so well adjusted, i could just purr.

2b or not 2b?
Saturday July 5, 2008The Guardian:

Despite doom-laden prophecies, texting has not been the disaster for language many feared, argues linguistics professor David Crystal. On the contrary, it improves children's writing and spelling...


...
Texters use deviant spellings - and they know they are deviant!
...
...
the need to save time and energy is by no means the whole story of texting.
... one of the most enjoyable things you can do with language is to play with it ...


To celebrate World Poetry day in 2007, T-Mobile tried to find the UK's first "Txt laureate" in a competition for the best romantic poem in SMS. They had 200 entrants, and as with previous competitions the entries were a mixture of unabbreviated and abbreviated texts.

The winner, Ben Ziman-Bright, wrote conventionally:

The wet rustle of rain
can dampen today. Your text
buoys me above oil-rainbow puddles
like a paper boat, so that even
soaked to the skin
I am grinning.

The runner-up did not:

O hart tht sorz
My luv adorz
He mAks me liv
He mAks me giv
Myslf 2 him
As my luv porz

(The author of the latter was, incidentally, in her late 60s.)

The length constraint in text-poetry fosters economy of expression in much the same way as other tightly constrained forms of poetry do, such as the haiku or the Welsh englyn. To say a poem must be written within 160 characters at first seems just as pointless as to say that a poem must be written in three lines of five, seven, and five syllables. But put such a discipline into the hands of a master, and the result can be poetic magic. Of course, SMS poetry has some way to go before it can match the haiku tradition; but then, haikus have had a head-start of several hundred years.

There is something about the genre which has no parallel elsewhere. This is nothing to do with the use of texting abbreviations. It is more to do with the way the short lines have an individual force. Reading a text poem, wrote Peter Sansom, who co-judged a Guardian competition in 2002, is "an urgent business ... with a text poem you stay focused as it were in the now of each arriving line." The impact is evident even in one-liners, whose effect relies on the kind of succinctness

Several competitions have focussed on reworking famous lines, titles, or quotations:

txt me ishmael

zen & T @ f m2 cycl mn10nc

The brevity of the SMS genre disallows complex formal patterning - of, say, the kind we might find in a sonnet. It isn't so easy to include more than a couple of images, such as similes, simply because there isn't the space. Writers have nonetheless tried to extend the potential of the medium. The SMS novel, for example, operates on a screen-by-screen basis. ...
In Japan, an author known as Yoshi has had a huge success with his text-messaging novel Deep Love. Readers sent feedback as the story unfolded, and some of their ideas were incorporated into it. He went on to make a film of the novel.
...
Plainly, there are severe limits to the expressive power of the medium, when it is restricted to a screen in this way. So it is not surprising that, very early on, writers dispensed with the 160-character constraint, and engaged in SMS creative writing of any length using hard copy. Immediately there was a problem. By taking the writing away from the mobile phone screen, how could the distinctiveness of the genre be maintained? So the stylistic character of SMS writing changed, and texting abbreviations, previously optional, became obligatory.

...

An extraordinary number of doom-laden prophecies have been made about the supposed linguistic evils unleashed by texting. Sadly, its creative potential has been virtually ignored. But five years of research has at last begun to dispel the myths. The most important finding is that texting does not erode children's ability to read and write. On the contrary, literacy improves. The latest studies (from a team at Coventry University) have found strong positive links between the use of text language and the skills underlying success in standard English in pre-teenage children. The more abbreviations in their messages, the higher they scored on tests of reading and vocabulary. The children who were better at spelling and writing used the most textisms. And the younger they received their first phone, the higher their scores.

Children could not be good at texting if they had not already developed considerable literacy awareness. Before you can write and play with abbreviated forms, you need to have a sense of how the sounds of your language relate to the letters. You need to know that there are such things as alternative spellings. If you are aware that your texting behaviour is different, you must have already intuited that there is such a thing as a standard. If you are using such abbreviations as lol and brb ("be right back"), you must have developed a sensitivity to the communicative needs of your textees.

Some people dislike texting. Some are bemused by it. But it is merely the latest manifestation of the human ability to be linguistically creative and to adapt language to suit the demands of diverse settings. There is no disaster pending. We will not see a new generation of adults growing up unable to write proper English. The language as a whole will not decline. In texting what we are seeing, in a small way, is language in evolution.

· Txtng: The Gr8 Db8 is published this week by OUP. To order a copy for £9.99 with free UK p&p go to guardian.co.uk/bookshop

i txt there4 i am > or <

Whose voice is heard in txting?
Seems like the zen question of a tree falling in the woods; If you dont hear it, did it make a sound?
Young people voice they would 'rather text the whole time cos feels whole lot more comfortable.'
And YL says they need to be relevant and where the young people are.
The policy says Counsellors should encourage texters and emailers to call the youth helpline, engage in face to face counselling or seek support from an appropriate referral. Counsellors are not to engage in in-depth conversation via text. After a maximum of five to six texts the counsellor should dis-engage from the text conversation, letting the caller know that they cannot continue to fully discuss the issue via text and that Youthline would be happy to support the caller more fully over the phone.
There are different performance espoused here.
There are also differences in the enactments.

With investigating textual innovations made possible using digital media Teemu Ikonen discusses the manipulation of text as an integral variable separating digital literature from printed literature.
In poetry in motion, Teemu Ikonen (2003) argues that the distinction between digital and print media is indefinite. He points to Brian Kim Stefans' Dreamlife of letters as an example of the non static text mode provoking meaning.
For counselling too, perhaps there are possibilities where the medium reshapes.
A further playful example in being shaped is described in the UK Guardian, Winning text poems:

2001 winner Hetty Hughes:

txtin iz messin,
mi headn'me englis,
try2rite essays,
they all come out txtis.
gran not plsed w/letters shes getn,
swears i wrote better
b4 comin2uni.
&she's african


2002 winner Emma Passmore:

I left my pictur on th ground wher u walk
so that somday if th sun was jst right
& th rain didnt wash me awa
u might c me out of th corner of yr i & pic me up


Cute and quirky. Hmmm. Meaningful? Arguable.
Emotionally provocative, I think so. A subjective appreciation.

In texting, I'm shaped; constrained, contained, and constructed.
I proclaim myself ^-^ winner 2008


bcomin
a persn
takes f it
makn meanin
i b thinkin

Julian Bleecker provides an example on who is heard informed by Latour and Haraway. Active, worldly participants that communicate meaning are not limited to people. Referring to Pigeons that Blog, he describes a blog effectively updated accepting info via a flock of birds loaded with GPS and environmental sensors for pollutants. The info is sent to and accepted into a google mashup making info available on request.
Whose voice tells the story? Non human actors to non human actors about info human actors cannot see but might want to...
The person who set up the possibilities, wrote the software, the GPS provider, the internet service provider (IPS)....the pigeons... the list goes on and on.
Some human and non-human beings create data, providing a message that may or may not be useful.
The medium/s continue to shape the message/s, and the messenger.

In blogging, the robotic slime that targets my blog for buying/selling things from theses to viagra etc etc, have resulted in my behavioural changes. I adapt to forestall such advances, I rant then electronically set limits. I too am shaped and shaping. the trolling slime will work around such barriers.
I am annoyed that I seem to trust a little less. I become a little more technologically savvy setting up limitations. And I am a little less accessible.
More and less.

I place my thinking here, chronologically saved so i need not monitor time or dates. Outsourcing my memory. I allow spelling errors to be picked up electronically. Arguably, I have deskilled myself. I hesitate to describe myself as domesticated by the machinery I use; instead I accept myself as a hybrid (ref Latour) and choose cyborg (Haraway). Electronically enhanced.


More or less human?
^-^
Different
k.

breaking stuff: I think therefore iphone

This is the stuff of my research, yet another reminder to start publishing, fast.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/4613486a20475.html?source=email

I read the February research from two Canterbury University academics Lee Thompson and Julie Cupples, regarding spatial geography and the use of text messaging by young New Zealanders. They are cited on stuffit as saying:
"They facilitate communication among teenagers rather than destroying it. It doesn't make them avoid people; they use it to meet up"

This too is the dominant approach taken by Youthline, an entry point.
The use of texting on the lifeline lowdown website seems to provide further substance if not authority for a radically new approach. Durability is added in.
In actor-network terms this is about translation of counselling using emergent technologies. The translations I have mapped so far include how counsellors distribute counseling; different performances occur whether its in through a phone or through text or through email. Some things change, some stay the same: the strengths based model of affirming, acknowledging and inviting continue to occur. I am surprised that the skill of demonstrating empathy translates across this medium, and all in 160 characters or less, including gaps. Takes talent, and maybe some optimism. As one interviewee told me, its only 160 characters, so its hard to screw up in such little space. Seems one's glass can be half full or half empty on this. The dystopian and utopian arguments seem to prevail. An actor network approach allows a much wider picture to emerge.

Texting is a preferred medium of this generation and whether it can be more than a doorway is part of my research.
There are multiple aspects sustaining what is/isnt:
It's arguable that texting helps define the generation, a medium of choice with a language demonstrating rejection of authority or a playfulness. The 'thumb' generation.
There has been a pricing war in NZ between two major providers Telecom and Vodafone creating conditions where texting seems the only viable fiancial option for mobile phone use pertaining to young people with limited income.
There's an extension to one's connectivity, a cyborg like addition in becoming extraconnectable. Being available and being able to; an extension of the peer group that's always accessible. The cyborg like quality also adds the dimension of being inaudible, appearing invisible and perhaps, contributing to the sense of invincible.
The 'voices' I have been listening to suggest that texting provides an opening for talking when talking would be hard. An ego protective mechanism. There's also the advantage of responding in one's own time. Without the appearance of awkwardness.
And more recently there's the increasing authenticity, lent substance by more and more applications of texting whether its notification of library pickups, messages about delayed travel plans, or the increasing normalcy for communicating not only the mundane but the worrisome aspects of what it is to be. Lifeline's acceptance contributes acceptability in wider circles.
Meantime significant hidden work occurs to sustain practice. Funding is vulnerable being reliant on goodwill, a generous act of goodwill established the practice with the donated costs of not sending Simpson Grierson seasonal greetings, remarkably sunshine influences text counselling's survival with the intake potential of donations from Christmas in the park being vulnerable, and sustaining minimal costs is depenedant on major marketshare providers being seen as philanthropatic.

Whats your take on this?
While such services are shaped, what's happening to all those involved?
Meantime my infatuation with mobile technology has left me wanting.
I can afford the iphone but sadly not the ongoing costs.
Bit like my car really, still paying for the gas :(



Youthline - Changing Lives
With thanks to Simpson Grierson at Christmas time and beyond.
In lieu of sending Christmas cards Simpson Grierson continue to support Youthline's work with young people and their families across New Zealand.

communities of practice

Having spent Saturday morning with Etienne Wenger, I can see that there are areas of compatibility and difference with actor-network theory.
This post identifies some relevant to the 'community of practice' I am involved with in my doctoral studies; a youth telephone counselling agency utilising text messaging.

There are compatibilities.
Shaping of people, identity formation happens in relationship.
Maintaining a community of practice takes work.
A community of practice is 'most interesting' when confounded.

There are also substantive differences:
There is no consideration given to non human actors. Semiotic relationality is limited to shaping people and does not consider the influence of non human entities whether technological, or of place.
The theory regarding community of practice is restricted to the learning environment rather than all assemblies that shape. In assembling the social, there is so much more learning that happens in hap hazard ways.

I recall reading of communities of practice when doing my Masters thesis (A Philosophical analysis of community care)and at that time was hit by the rosy glow effusing; a saturation of warmth emanated from such communities, and at the time this was far from my experience of community (where an absence of care seemed to be in ascendance politically, though I acknowledge my analysis is contestable).
Etienne openly acknowledging the validity of earlier critique identifying that communities are not necessarily warm or embracing places.
He also engaged in discussing a dissertation he had recently been involved with where the notion of community of practice for learning was argued as being amoral. This evolved into a discussion of identity formation. How we might be influenced or shaped also occurs in choosing to distance oneself from a community. How free we are to choose being an interesting debate that reminded me of Sartre's philosophical questions. Latour I imagine would respond that the influence needs to be tangible, connections, even if fleeting or via secondary sources still needs to connect, need to be traceable.

More recently I had read Wenger, E., McDermott, R., & Snyder, w. (2002) Cultivating communities of practice. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.
I enjoyed the way they describe how knowledge 'sticks' to practice in unexpected ways (p152). That knowledge can have difficulties crossing boundaries of practice even within an organisation. The tendency for practitioners to stick to their own kind- and the resulting 'stickiness' of knowledge itself, apparently explains why knowledge brokers are so important in organisations that depend on combining knowledge from different domains (p.251).
However, I am not convinced that 'knowledge brokers' are not just another morphing of the notions of change theory where people are seen as holding stable attributions such as being an early adopter etc. They cite a reference on this from Hargadon and Sutton, 1997, Technology Brokering and innovation in a product development firm (Administrative Science Quarterly 42, no 4; 716-749.) The language of innovation from E. M. Rogers is pervasive.
I like how they name knowledge as sticking in unexpected ways. I agree. I'm just not convinced that its because of any inherent stickiness of knowledge. (As with technology, so too with knowledge, neither have their own trajectory.)
I would argue that practices or performances do stick, but there are assemblages that make it more or less likely that these are sustained.

They also describe knowledge as 'leaky' where it flows easily within a practice, even interorganisationally. Again, I think Latour and Law and others, nail this in assembling the social, assemblages make it more or less likely.

The community of practice argument is that boundary crossing can be a scene of deep learning. Radically new insights and developments often arise at the boundaries between communities. Something very creative can take place in the meeting. Extending on the idea put forward that boundaries are learning assets in their own right as argued by Wenger, McDermott and Snyder (p. 153) I suggest this is because the assemblage is altered. Things can always be / always are different.

Precarious assemblages

Technology still doesn't manage its own trajectory and the quality of supposed electronic magic continues to be strained.
I am reminded of symphony in the park one summer where there was a clash of titans; a ballet played out in Auckland's domain with two bulldozers performed as two prima ballerinas.
Such is my experience today as one educational electronic data management system clashes with another electronic management system.
And in addition, one of these systems refuses to play with my mac.
The human actor clashes are nearly as dramatic.
The actors (human as well as non-human) do not want to play with one another today.
it takes a lot of work to make this network work cooperatively.
Today the fragility of such a network is more evident.
Today, my own fragility in such a network feels more immediate.

I had not been so aware previously of the human frailty when playing with technology, but i was forewarned; I just didn't understand that part of the story performed in Aramis. While Latour discussed the death of the nonhuman and yet to come into being, Aramis, the human actors too are fragile.
Norbert as the Professor performing the Aramis research personally demonstrates the precarious and social nature of assemblages.
One can only do what one can only do, no more.

Dancing diggers

technology does not have its own trajectory

Who killed Aramis; everyone and no-one.
She dies because of a lack of love; a lack of commitment.
She was not negotiated.
The gap between technology and the social just collapsed for me.
They are one; the one does not happen without the other.
Technology/social.

In my data collecting of counselling changes with the advent of txt, I am noticing the expectation that txt will do it by itself, and it doesn't.
There is 'a collective drift of good intent'.
Yet service costs are vulnerable.
Support, like all support, inconsistent.
The innovation is ongoing- from mobile phone palmcorder to computer then through YORA...
Negotiations are partial and ongoing.(Arent they always?)
This fragility goes unnoticed.
How does the service adapt to suit the medium, how might the medium alter to suit the service.
Txt counselling; the wrapper or the present; all there is or nothing.
Adapt or perish.
Negotiating a middle ground.


How do I <3 u
let me no. the ways
>1
<160

(^-^)

Education and the fear of freedom

If education were to be for freedom, it would have to be altered in form.

In freeing the oppressed, there is a need to free the oppressors as well as the oppressed. Paulo Freire.

Looking at how change happens through Bruno Latour I am beginning to see some value in attending to freeing the oppressors. There is a need to part people from what is, to unpeel, to detach the current habits or other chains that bind or ruts entrenched. There has to be some problematization, motivating, assembling others, making a new 'network' evolve.

I used to have problems with freeing oppressors; werent they free enough! But a revolution in education is always just around the corner and doesnt quite get here. Even when a mini coup happens, there's always another oppressor to take the place. Making a new 'net' 'work' takes work. The new assemblage seem to want to replicate the channels of the old. fIt requires active work to have change sustained

My action plan:
1. Stop stroking oppressors.
Recognize behaviours I do that could be creating these people.
Misguided flattery sustains oppressive qualities; They believe when told they are good at what they do. Keep them humble, only praise whats worthy of praise and help to reshape what needs reshaping.
2. Humanize learning. It matters that education settings consider thinking, feeling and relating in form as well as in content.

I have one of those major opportunities right now. The sort that aye very uncomfortable and not asked for.
The changes mooted are large, but could end up just the same old same old.

Taking the premise of Biggs constructive alignment a step further, there is opportunity to bring on the revolution;
how does this process, this content, through to this assessment point, align with creating more rather than less of what it is to be human. Not only how might this create more rather than less thinking, but also what is taught of relating and what it is to be more fully human.

Constructivism; creativity and community

I was mulling over a colleagues experience of being told off for talking in an academic staff meeting.
Formal meeting, chaired, minuted. 30 odd people.
And it goes on for 4 hours, two short breaks.
We wouldn't do it to our students, but we do it to each other. Entrapment.
But thats beside the point. its the intellectual stifling thats important; talking constructs knowledge and to do this one at a time in a formal meeting loses the plot.
Formal meetings are not the best way to generate thinking.
I am tooo web 2.0 to shut up and wait. I'm also too human. I talk and I think at the same time.
And then i saw olweekly today and there's an advert for a course for credit or interest in constructivism, free for those with an interest and charge applied for those wanting credit. But i really have to stick to the phd or i will lose the plot.
And then there was also a link to Drapes takes which links to Charles Leadbetter and a great little youtube clip that got me thinking more about how innovation happens;
Its like building a birdsnest where everyone leaves their piece.
We think because 'we' are.
So how do academic institutions get it so wrong; habits of formality constrain creativity.
The idea of an academic community is wrong. There is too much baronial political history for freedom of thoughts to be expressed.
What would I rather? Anarchy?
Just maybe I'm still punk'd.

Cyborg is growing on me

My dearest has threatened to weld me to my cell phone. Not to extend me, its to extend him. "Why isn't your cell phone on; i tried to ring you."
Does he really not see the subtext here?
I want you at my beck and call.

Its just as well he hasn't seen this one.
Cyborg; i might be happy to explore as a fantasy, maybe even a reality when i consider my serious deep seated psychological attachment to apple, my laptop. She and me have a pleasant symbiotic relationship.

But i am not ready for this, yet.
Seriously. Attached to one's cell phone.

How do i <3 thee?
Let me no.the ways
No
No way
Not eva

I've been punked; Harajuku babe bites back

Punk'd education; the alternate, raw and angry side, a bit black, seedy, downright dirty, with a sharp edge.

"It was then that it hit these people. Blackboard was never a learning tool."

The controlling influences of education may smooth a means to commodifying fodder fit for an unquestioning workplace; may make the bureaucracy of education run with or without the presence of learners; but i like to think there is something about learning's purpose being greater not less, freedom.
So its effing annoying when the platform is mistaken for the performance.
20th century punk meets 21stcentury harajuku.
A lot of attention to the manifestation but the substance is unsettling, a bit like the harajuku form of loligoth; a semblance/ assembling Victoriana meets goth meets punk meets paedophile dream.
There is edginess and it's disturbing, seductive, and beautiful:

They hang out to be seen, do their make-up, talk to friends, and get photographed. Any Sunday visit to the famous Harajuku “bridge” (it’s not an actual bridge) will show you more tourists snapping shots than actual GothLoli.
Performance on many levels.

Deeply disturbing, just like learning should be.
Really.
Thanks to Stephen Downes for todays provocation.

Consultation: a weasel word. Sucking up education.

weasel word
n.
An equivocal word used to deprive a statement of its force or to evade a direct commitment.
[From the weasel's habit of sucking the contents out of an egg without breaking the shell.]

On feeling somewhat sucked.

Consultation
con·sul·ta·tion (knsl-tshn)
n.
1. The act or process of consulting.
2.
a. A conference at which advice is given or views are exchanged.
b. A meeting between physicians to discuss the diagnosis or treatment of a case.

I have found myself being consulted with recently. (Note to self: add consultant to cv, PBRF audits, promotion package...)


There is an awful lot of obfuscation and obscurification going on, how about just getting back to the capacity to teach students, or not? Skip the weasel words and focus on what counts for education.

Its called consultation yet its substantively a one way delivery of information on what is to be 'delivered' with a timeframe prohibitive of alternatives. Consultation limited to tweaking. In developing communities of practice, I suggest such actions would create a climate of distrust and apathy.

And I find myself thinking blogging may be unsafe.
Only in a liberal centre of education might one really expect that asking questions, challenging rationale, and critically thinking about what happens would be honored. If you work in such a place, please let me know.
Meantime, NZ does recognize weasels as noxious pests and its a Government given mandate to help eradicate their impact.

Turn and face the strain

I've chosen to turn and face the strain even though I'm not clear on what Bowie means on tracing time.
In rereading Aramis; the love of technology the tracing of what is the murder of a good idea/project could be deemed a 'learning opportunity'.
From a counselling perspective it may even be cathartic.

To this end I explore: What does it take to kill a good thing?
Seems timely to look at changes; so I'll turn and face the strain.

According to John law, it's simple: work holding it together stops.
Doing one's own thing quietly could be blamed, not making a fuss could be blamed.
Staying below the radar contributes.

Retrospectively its possible to recognize that a lack of resourcing comes from a lack of actors. As they peel away, the project dies. Its not economics. Its not politics.
Latour points to these excuses as just that, excuses. Excuses for not doing depth sociology, where naming forces becomes shorthand to not probing deeper. The big explanations are used precisely because there is disinterest; because responsibility is being avoided.
I can paraphrase this: Where there is not a will, there is not a way.

People make decisions. People with names. Not politics or fiscal constraints, not context, positions or offices, but people who no longer work collectively to make the thing work. The chain that binds, breaks.

Confessions to a murder are rarely forthcoming.
In the area of technologies Latour suggests there is nothing very solid, just the accumulation of little solidities, little durabilities, little resistances and a project ends up becoming gradually more solid. the converse also happens. The erosion's of actors; people leave, jump ship, those who argue for more of this without realizing the impact is less of that...and so projects become more, and less, real. Reality is polymorphus, shape shifting, changing. Actors come and go. Progressive slippage of interest is traced (retrospectively).

Latour playfully suggests looking for the mice and fairies that turn a pumpkin into a coach. I extend this; who are they that turn a coach into a pumpkin? When the disinterest starts what's done to hold on? Whats allowed, required, or given away, what's not done, undone, neglected, abandoned, what alliances have been prevented, constrained. When does love lost turn to murder, dismembering, annihilation?

A technological project is never realistic or unrealistic; it takes on reality, or loses it, by degrees.
What becomes more or less real depends on the chains...the continued generation of interest, of seduction.

In Aramis, Latour manages the convincing love story that was Mary Shelly's Frankenstein: By the virtues that I once possessed, I demand this from you. Hear my tale....you reject me? Have I not been good?...Did not all the fairies hover over my cradle...If you did not want me, why keep me alive?...If badly conceived why not conceive me again? ....why turn away...

A lack of love kills things, kills projects, is soul destroying; by degrees.
I'm left feeling that

"love lies bleeding in my hand" (Elton John, funeral for a friend)

invisible, inaudible, or in the office

'Children should be seen and not heard'
So long as you don't irritate the grownups of the world you have a right to exist.
Cute your allowed to be, attention seeking, not.
An existence subject to terms.

Seems the little beasty is a different little beasty to different people, or maybe even is a different little beasty dependent on place.

When it's my own, it's a necessary piece of what not to leave home without: keys, wallet, cell phone. An object that extends me, I can travail time and distance to communicate with others.

When it's someone else's and its ringing in a lecture theatre, movie, restaurant its an unwelcome intruder.
Even when its my own and it does this at such times, its still an unwanted intruder. I now owe a packet of biscuits to the group I run for Youthline since the little beasty made its presence known tonight.
When contacted with demands of do this, do that, where are you... it's more like a leash than an object that extends my powers.

In an article by Chris Bigum, (1998). Schools in search of educational problems: Speaking for computers in schools. Educational policy, 12(5), 586-601.
Chris talks of how the computer within schools is experienced as being a very different animal by different people. I would argue that the same can be said of cell phones.
Hijazi-Omari, H., & Ribak, R. (2007) in 'Playing with fire: On the domestication of the mobile phone among Palestinian teenage girls in Israel' also talk of how the cellphone can be an emancipatory object or a leash. Their description focuses on the love interest experience of young women and girls. The cell phone assumes symbolic representation as a ring might have in another culture.
But with added risk and benefits. The title 'Playing with fire' isnt elaborated on, but one sumizes that the risk of having the cellphone found by brothers, fathers, others may be extreme. There is also the tethering of having the sim card read to ensure that the purpose of the gift was not extended. This included one example where the 'girl' was not informed of the number of 'her' cell phone so as to maintain an inscribed use.
The emancipatory quality appeared subsumed by the high level risk involved. But many of the issues are the same ones talked of by Carolyn Marvin (1988), in her book titled "When old technologies were new: Thinking about electric communication in the late nineteenth century."

New Zealand Broadcasting Authority release research on the 6th May indicating 42% of children 6-13 years use a cell phone.
I suspect they also use landlines but thats not news worthy.

PhD distractions.

This is my mum, she doesnt live by herself, she has an 11" toy poodle.
She knows the current PM (it has been the same one for 9 years) and so is deemed capable of making rational choices.
Mum was admitted yesterday after having had two falls this week. On each occasion she spent a night on the floor. With the second fall (yesterday) she sustained a fracture to her radius, left wrist. This is now in a plaster cast. Today their intent was to discharge her home alone, despite knowing she can only get around with difficulty and using a walker.
Seems I was the only person who thought this was irrational.
My mum, a Dr and two nurses couldnt see the problem.
A request to have my view that this was irrational be documented in her notes was resisted by the RN, so I suggested that under the Privacy Act and with my mothers permission I could see the notes and write in it myself. We were then seen by the Duty manager.
A smart person this RN: one look and she could see that a plaster cast and a walker and an elderly woman already identified as prone to falls home alone was not a good idea.
Might have something to do with a junior doctors strike due next week in conjunction with nurse's having totally given away their 'voice'. If i had thought she just needed doctoring we would have gone to a private a&e clinic. It was because I knew she needed nursing care that we went to a hospital.