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.

omg tisnf

oh my gosh/God, this is so not fair/not funny
But it is, ROFL
While I pick myself up from rolling on the floor and b4 i wet my pants (ROFLWP)
Have a look at the not so funny need for a mobile plan thats less costly.

I have actually known people who couldn't afford to pay their rent because their cell phone plans, yes plans, were costing too much.
Tgfpp= thank God for prepay.
While I'm on this topic, I also note that ok isn't short enough, k?
I get the need to be economical with a text maybe costing 20cents a message,
160 characters max for a single message, so why use 1 when you could have used 2?

Animoto: digital narrative made easy

A great audiovisual piece of freeware called animoto and I spent most of this wet bleak day fooling around.
Courtesy of Ewan MacIntosh i found animoto, its a bit of an instant digital narrative type of thing.
I found it easiest using photos and pictures uploaded onto flikr first and then onto their upload board.
(Expand the use of pics if needed by doing the Flikr advanced search for creative commons photos, attribution required).
The site then provides an option of music they provide (some free, some on payment) or advice re creative commons music or authors own mp3 file... to accompany.

The 30 sec short clip that can be produced is free, downloadable to youtube and then to one's own blog...
I'm thinking I could use these as a week by week intro to a lecture, or as a reminder of what was covered in the previous lecture...

There are some annoying aspects such as the random actions on slides, but i guess this is made up for with the 'creativity for dummies' ease of use.

Here Ive used graphics from the early part of the course I teach on communication skills (content included getting out of one's comfort zone, developing self awareness, invoking a moral curiosity, the need for communications in a health team to be by design, non-verbal communications, empathy and the work of John Heron, which included a look at unskilled, degenerative and misguided counselling). I suspect this little snippet tries to do too much and i still have to work on the headless one but still...it is my first ever youtube upload :)
The stand alone video wouldnt make sense if you hadn't attended the lecture, but the potential is for grounding aspects of the learning invoked by the visuals ...

Next step, injecting some creativity in the course;
maybe extra course credit for submitting work that exemplifies empathy....

suckered in a textually mediated reality

I am murderously inclined having been suckered by trolling scum soliciting in outsourced thinking. Buying or selling; I'd rather deal to their body parts.

Thanks to Qmass for the reference: Frank, A. (2004). After methods, the story: From incongruity to truth in qualitative research. Qualitative health research, 14(3), 430-440.

Arthur Frank writes of the need to convince the reader of the body on the floor.
For the reader to recognize the problems faced as their own problems, such recognition makes the story compelling. The reader has to feel that his or her fate is somehow affected by the fate of those reported on. Generating a sense of entwined fates is the prerequisite - not simply a prerequisite- of good storytelling. The audience has to care what happens to the characters.
Offering an articulate imagination: Seeking not to explain but to deepen complexity, giving complexity an articulate form and making ordinary people vivid.

The textually mediated reality Frank describes is one I am familiar with, reality is that which is written of, audited; where artefact is mistaken for substance. Today I was suckered by a blog troll.

7 memes to writing a thesis proposal

1. Decide to do it and keep doing it
2. Develop alliances between self, topic, research, supervisor. Then there's the negotiation with friends/family. And the coherence between self, research question, research methodology. This is the work, pulling this together and keeping these together.
3. Learn to juggle; some might call this the first exercise in time management.
4. Establish a means to take control of the reading and the writing. Read about the topic, the research method possibilities, the writings of your supervisor, the writing suggested by your supervisor...as well as how to write, including how to structure a proposal especially for your institution. I have found endnote to be the second most useful piece of software on the planet (after word). My use of it means as i read articles, texts, newspaper items etc... these are entered into my library , and written about in the notes section, and a copy of the article is attached as an image in the image section.
5. Chicken and egg / Ideas and writing. I suspect its only other people who have ideas then write them up. I write into my ideas.
6. Establish the trajectory. If you have an inkling that what you want to study is too big, it probably is. What is the question, argument (or thesis), being studied, how are you going to get there, why's it so important, and so what? Convince the reader that your study going to make a difference. My institution required this in 400 words or less. Wisdom from cj was, "so where's the cure for cancer?" Barbara Grant said "learn to kill your darlings". David Seedhouse's advice was "say it once and say it well". Get it peer reviewed- other students, friends, family ... their asking questions means it could be clearer.
7. Write it and rewrite it and know it will still change. There is no perfect research proposal. Latour says a good thesis is a finished one. This is equally true of a thesis proposal. Invisible work is not wasted, it is the substance on which a finished product lies; a symphony is only good once the learning, the practices and the coming together, have occurred.
   Thesis proposals only look easy afterwards. In academia most of our earlier work was about handing in finished product, now's the time to get used to handing over work in progress. A thesis proposal is still only a work in progress. Feel free to polish it , wordsmith it, but know that it's not the end. It's a map, it's not the world. Even if it feels like the world at the time.

7 memes for (successful) PhD / thesis writing

Borrowing heavily on the writing of Irene Goodman (author of 7 steps for highly successful authors) as well as ideas from thesis authors I have known and have read...rather than from any personal experience of completion :)
and therefore with very limited credibility but with a lot of interest in completion and therefore reading about such things...

1. Dont give up.
Bruno Latour in Aramis also identifies this critical factor in the making of a project, to hold it together, one must not stop holding it together.
2. Write.
Got nothing to write about?...Put readings (which you write about in the notes section) into the endnote library, blog about writing it, rearrange the data collected- might be construed as data analysis if the words aren't too scary... make writing enjoyable, an hour of journal reading and entering same into endnote while at a cafe is one of my strategies for making writing pleasurable,
I also practice the writing style of authors I enjoy or who have the profound ideas... seems to help new understandings flow. However, this is the opposite to Irene Goodman's advice, hers is to find your authentic voice and stick with it. I'm not there, yet.
3. Schedule the thesis into your life. Mine takes up a lot of my life. Apparently highly effective authors are disciplined writers and will treat the writing as their work. Enjoyable or not, they will write. They will also have a life.
For some it works same time every day.
For others its the reading when the kids are awake (as its easier to pick up and put down) and writing when they are asleep.
I settle for what feels like all the time outside of the day job and sometimes inside of the day job. It actually isnt this. But its an omnipresence that I am happy with. If I didnt like it, this would be a serious problem.
4. Plan.
I have a few.
There is what I tell myself is pure fabrication that I write for the annual review.
Then there's the one that I am comfortable with, based in what Sherry Turkle calls a triumph of tinkering. Citing Claude Levi-Strauss on bricolage, she describes an arranging and rearranging "Bricoleurs approach problem solving by entering into a relationship with their work materials that has far more the flavor of a conversation than a monologue".
Where the writing of a composition comes first and then the plan; a softer style of bottom up rather than top down.
I do plan to finish, i have semi inflexible dates in my head, this years for data collecting, but its also got some writing, and some rewriting. Next year is for writing also, but its an analysis focus, in the absence of funding the year after is the end point as it will be the writing and the rewiriting. Tinkering and polishing. There is still an end insight I have heard stories of those who might polish and edit down to the blank page. I do not intend to be one of the,m. I am aware that I can get lost in wordsmithing and I take heart from Latour, "a good thesis is a finished one".
5. Want it.
Other factors in your life may have to move around this one, which comes first? The thesis or the job? The personal fitness or the thesis? The social life or the thesis? What do you still want at the end of the thesis? My family. I know my bottom line.
6. Stay with, and work, what works for you.
Supervisor, methodology, friends, subject and even the technology. Having the advantage of actor network theory is a convoluted double take, I can look out there with it, and i can also look in here with it; this is a retake on the first suggested strategy; it takes work to make it coalesce.
7. Here to there
Write to your audience. Terry Evans (co-author with Carey Denholm of Doctorates Downunder : keys to successful doctoral study in Australia and New Zealand. Camberwell, Victoria, ACER Press, 2006.) told me its an incredibly selfish undertaking writing for oneself, one's supervisor and one's markers. 3 readers guaranteed. They want to know that you can take it (and them) from here to there. New knowledge. coherently.

If you are/were writing a thesis what would be your 7 memes?

memes (a virus for the www?)
Memes; the word rhymes with dreams and is short for mimemes, from the word mimetic. Infectious ideas; a micropersuasion, spread from person to person.

9 big class learnings (2008)

To give some context: I teach students communication skills, this runs for 12 weeks and involves 772 students in a Health faculty. This group is split into 4 lecture groups, each receiving one 2 hour lecture per week, and a one hour tutorial (in group sixe of approx 30)

1. Some things take no longer in a big class than a small one;
the lesson learned is be selective.
Favourite task for checking everyone's 'on the same page' regarding concepts crucial to the course and taught within the first couple of weeks. This one came from a MOE literacy cluster. On a word doc make 3 columns, in the first column put the title 'words' , in the second column put a title 'definitions', in the 3rd column again title it 'words'. Then put about 5 words crucial to your topic in the first column, leaving a few lines between. In class give out one of these between 2, have the pairs select to be a or b. Then instruct the a's to define these words, writing their understandings in the 2nd column. Then fold the paper vertically so the partner b cannot see the first column. Their task is to discern what concept was being defined. Provides an opportunity for peer teaching, 2 way, understanding as well as clarity of meanings...

2. Solicited written feedback is richer; I used Stephen Brookfields 5 questions critical incident questionaire. My experience is students like shaping courses.

3. Do the big delivery stuff, but also do the talk with the people next to you.
Tasks in pairs help engage people with the content. My experience is that trust is made on the smaller scale. Speaking out seems easier when the classes engender speaking...

4. Use the big impact of the big venue. I recommend in your face imagery, loud noise dramatics, use of voice; not as gimmicks but integral to content. Helps to use photos over clip art.
My favourites this year include:
The use of strong graphics, red white black...stats that were damning, use of visual images supporting these. (Lessons learned online from death by ppt by Alexei Kapterev, presentation zen, Seth Godin, youtube- how not to make a ppt presentation by Don McMillan...) I have had to rethink my ppts but they are so much better. The medium carries the message, the power of strong visuals wins over lines of writing on a screen.
Use of graphs; my favourite was on how empathy commonly decreases with each year of education that appeared to be drawn insitu. (Inspired from TEDtalks Hans Rosling)
The use of loud noise during a creative visualisation demonstrated the application of CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy) as a prompt to consider what goes on in thinking, emotions, behaviours and physiology. And therefore led into a discussion of what might be changed.
The mexican wave affirmed that big classes are better at some things :)
a demonstration piece of verbal and non verbal communications ( I really do need visual imagery of classes, some creative editing and a promotion panel... )

5. Make learning an easy choice. A lesson learned in health promotion. I am not suggesting all learning should be easy or fun, but it helps. The ppts are online, as is a podcast. Talk the content. I think students come because its about engagement.
(the online ppts have fewer graphics to keep the file size down)

6. I tell stories. Transforming knowledge by demonstrating application, and modeling the critique of these, engaging students with questions of the good the bad and the ugly.

7. Plan but also stay flexible. What you want and what you get resource wise will always be less than promised and less than ideal.

8. Stay idealistic. I invest in seeing what's possible and adapt to what's possible.
Stephen Downes site Oldaily is great for updates.

9. Post the great ideas, either blog them under big class teaching or post to del.icio.us that way others share too :)

Here be dragons

Such dragons are begat by Wilma White in Kaiaua New Zealand. I have several of this dragons siblings...

In trying to map the invisible, one risks destroying the positive aspects of invisibility – should the map simply be marked, “here be dragons?” Star and Strauss (1999)

In my research interviews I have data that has left me in a conundrum.
What gets told, what gets told in a de-identified way, what will be less important with the passing of time, what might be portrayed to different audiences...
I am reminded by cj that research is an inherently political act.
The article by Susan Leigh Star and Anselm Strauss (1999)titled Layers of Silence, Arenas of Voice: The Ecology of Visible and Invisible Work, provides an excellent synopsis of such dilemma: There is both good and bad invisible work. Positive invisibility requires discretion. Within the the visible-invisible matrix it is impossible to define anything as inherently visible or invisible; similarly, it is impossible a priori to say that either are absolutely good or bad, desirable or undesirable.
These authors are not recommending “more visibility” in any simplistic form, but cite Grudin’s (1988) and Robinson’s (1993b) criteria of equity as an evaluation precept. This discusion of “good invisibility” and “bad invisibility,” is traced to questions of discretion, autonomy, and power over one’s resources. They identify the relation between invisible and visible work as a complex matrix, relational, with an ecology of its own. For every gain in granularity of description, there may be increased risk of surveillance. In the name of legitimacy and achieving public openness, an increased burden of accounting and tracking may be incurred. The phenomenon is one of tradeoffs and balances, not absolutes and clear boundaries.
Some suggestions they make include:
In managing the balance of visible and invisible work, it may be important for
processes to become visible for a time, or remain invisible for a time. It may be of value to consider time release (it may be possible with the passing of time that the issues are deemed less important or a forgivable 'passing phase') 'Stuff' may fade decay over time.
A metaphorical curtain might be drawn. Deidentification of data being one part of this.
Having the analysis consider tradeoffs and balances because increasing the visibility of work processes has pluses and minuses.

I can move forward now.
The dragons can rest easy for the time being.

They meant no harm

They meant no harm
by ah (2007)

There's nothing left
no loopholes,
no gaps.
Sewn up so tight.
Dot the i's, cross the t's.
are you sure there's a comma after an 'and'?
A part of me died;
sacrificed to the ethical lie:
'First do no harm', they said.
'First do no good',
I sigh

In Sparrow, Mary Doria Russell describes her desire to write looking back, distanced by both time and place. I too would like this perspective but am caught in the moment. She writes, looking back "they meant no harm."

Being 'in the moment' I can only hope to enjoy the selective amnesia where one day I may be able to say; 'it was all for the best', or 'i learnt so much from it'...
Being 'in the moment', I want so much more more than this, I want it written "there is goodness here".

I am blessed with two ethical panels having the focus of my doctoral research application.
I do not feel twice blessed.
I feel twice vulnerable.
Powell and Smith (2006) reviewed the literature on ethical guidelines for research with children: a review of current research ethics documentation in New Zealand. Their discussion confirms my misgivings.
In all the rhetoric of concern for the voice of young people, the capacity for consent is denied, though a capacity for assent is identified as desirable.
In being risk aversive, the risk is also that young people are denied the right to shape services that suit them.

They cite "Like many other minority groups, children lack power and have often
been silenced, unheard, unprotected, and viewed as “unpeople” (John, 2003).

The summary of their findings indicate an increase in the consideration of ethical issues, but that existing documentation is inconsistent and inadequate in attending to specific child-related issues. Suggestions are made to enhance children’s participation in research and demonstrate a respect for their participation rights.

Sounds good. However, practice is that ethics tends to be considered as a one off event rather than a sustained process. Frightening is that the use of ethics committees for the big tick (or not) further feeds into this one off event where thoughtfulness can then be abdicated. Furthermore, the interest shown by ethics committee deliberations may be less about risk to participants, less again about risks to participants before or after the study, and more about the risk aversion or minimisation, to the institution through which the study is conducted.


Judith Bessant (2007) published in the Australian Journal of Political Science, 39(2), 387-404 takes off the kid gloves on this; there are mixed messages about youth participation and democratic practices. Lots of rhetoric about rights and consultation, but little about shifting the power base.
My glass only feels half full today.

Hymn to her, God save us from people who have our best interests at heart

Its an opinion piece.

Internet addiction appears to be a common disorder that merits inclusion in DSM-V.
J. J. Block writes in the American Journal of Psychiatry (March, 2008): Conceptually, the diagnosis is a compulsive-impulsive spectrum disorder that involves online and/or offline computer usage (1, 2) and consists of at least three subtypes: ex-cessive gaming, sexual preoccupations, and e-mail/text messaging (3). All of the var-iants share the following four components: 1) excessive use, often associated with a loss of sense of time or a neglect of basic drives, 2) withdrawal, including feelings of anger, tension, and/or depression when the computer is inaccessible, 3) tolerance, including the need for better computer equipment, more software, or more hours of use, and 4) negative repercussions, including arguments, lying, poor achievement, social isolation,
and fatigue.

The contributers to DSM are just people too (seems often a conservative group with past inclusions including sexual orientation as a mental illness.)
What surprizes me though is the ignorance brought to these deliberations.
In a comparative analysis of landlines with mobiles, the literature reviewed by Amparo Lasen shows "... civilisation advances new kinds of diseases produced by novel agencies brought to bear on man’s body and mind” as reported by the British Medical Journal in 1889. The fear of health risks derived from telephone use also arose in the
early days of its development. Even “strong-minded and able-bodied men” were considered to be susceptible because of the “almost constant strain of the auditory apparatus” in people who uses the telephone very often. The symptoms were nervous excitability, buzzing in the ear, giddiness and neuralgic pains. A certain amount of "moral panic" often follows the introduction of many new technologies. Some of the risks considered are the same in both landline and mobile phones; others are different, following the more feared diseases of each period."
Seems phones have been contributing to our madness ever since their inception.
The fears of inconsiderate behaviour, neglect of 'actual relationships' and social hysteria are not new.
Somethings change, some stay the same.
What truly surprizes me is that it gets published and reported.
Again.

AND SHE WILL ALWAYS CARRY ON
SOMETHING IS LOST
BUT SOMETHING IS FOUND
THEY WILL KEEP ON SPEAKING HER NAME
SOME THINGS CHANGE
SOME STAY THE SAME

Hymn To Her

building a brick mother

The material semiotic of existence for this organisation (Youthline) involves deliberate and significant work.

The metaphor of building the brick mother was how this was shared with me while data collecting. The entity being one that young people know is always there, unconditionally, and with which they associate positively outside of times of crisis.
She is described as a taonga (precious vessel) spanning generations, and being carried through changing mediums.
She is actively nurtured, maintained, shaped, constructed. Her presence supported through 'guerilla marketing' and carried by word of mouth into schools, events, media. Her presence as a Youth oriented organisation aims to be and is, the most well recognised youth support service as identified by young people. Youthline has a name amongst young people for being relevant, purposeful, and involving them.
2005 stats: 19 schools, 447 students; Youthline was most recognised at 79% as support for young people.
Assembling, maintaining, reassembling, all take work. (ref earlier blog on reassembling the social)

Semiotic relational logic/s

A little bit of writing in the style of John Law helps me to explore the language of ANT and to see similarities as well as differences between theorists. If nothing else, it makes my reading of the works of these giants a little more palatable :)

This study displays the ingredients of actor-network theory. There is semiotic relationality (it’s a network whose elements define and shape one another.)
There are artefacts of philosophy and policy, influence of juggernaughts in telecommunications, there is also goodwill of a charitable nature which makes the potential possible, by donating cash and hardware and time. There are actors in the form of mobile phones, a palm pilot, counsellors and counsellees. The heterogeneity can be pointed to (there are different kinds of actors, human and otherwise), and materiality (stuff there is a-plenty, not just 'the social' but contracts, money, technical equipment, text artefacts...)
There is an insistence on process and its precariousness (all elements need to play their part moment by moment or it all comes unstuck; without ongoing funding, without ongoing commitment, without ongoing advertising, without ongoing development of skills, without sunshine...)
There is attention to power as an effect (it is a function of network configuration and in particular the creation of immutable mobiles) (In another article Law cites Bruno Latour - the immutable mobile is a network of elements that holds its shape as it moves), to space and to scale (how it is that networks extend themselves and translate distant actors). Law attests that it is new to actor-network theory to acknowledge an interest in large scale political history. Here I see ontological politics: for without a commitment to voice, this cannot be sustained. Without ongoing goodwill from a major sponsor and such activities as Coca cola in the park the financial costs to Youthline would be too burdensome, without goodwill there is political precariousness.... There is the deliberate making and shaping of 'the brick mother' (tangible knowledge of support services for young people, making Youthline a known entity that's 'always there'.)
(I am glad that my friend Sue pointed me back to Law on material semiotics for I find Latour all to easily denies the political.)
And, crucially, it is a study of how the network works; how it holds together; how it is shaped and shaping; how it configures that which is central and peripheral; in short: how newness and differences in old practices are generated in semiotic relational logic/s. (The 's' is important to me; a logic may presume a singular entity, while I suspect there are many logics occurring simultaneously in the form of concurrent performances as per Annmare Mol's the body multiple.)

If I see at all, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants...

where do you go to my lovely

Or the secret life of cell phones.
Consumerism related to cell phone acquisition involves many of us having more cell phones than people in our families. The spare, or two, in the drawer for just in case...leads me to discussing some of the invisible work involved as change happens. There is strategic invisibility in not acknowledging built in obsolescence. Manufacturers do not want their product to last forever or they wouldn't stay in business. The mobile phone becomes a fashion accessory with a life expectancy of approx 1.5 years but what happens to the old one?

Star and Strauss (1999) in Layers of silence, arena of voice: The ecology of visible and invisible work talk of the complex matrix that develops between visible and invisible, a relational ecology where illuminating one corner throws shadow on another. A phenomenon of tradeoffs and balances.
That a cell phone can now do this... hides the discard mountains of landfills.
(As well as other practices which in hindsight may be deemed quaint, when you call someone do you tell them who is calling or assume the technology has filled the gap?)
In an ANT exploration of networks it is possible for work that is visible to be shown as well as providing space where tensions can also be acknowledged.
With reference to John Laws pinboard approach to an ANT analysis I must go add to my whats invisible, where the known world ends, and
'here be dragons'...

The ontological politics of voice

Reading for a PhD is an iterative process (the big words come thick and fast, my earlier reading let them slide past while I hoped that familiarity would one day lead to enlightenment. And repeated revisiting, rereading and reading the readings others have made of books i have read, does make understanding easier). Helen Verran pulls on the writing of Annemarie Mol, reminding me of Mol's intent of exploring the ontological politics of medicine.
And I am back to wondering: what am I doing?
I suspect half way through data collect is not the time for doubt, but it feels to me that there is no better time than this. My research does not follow a straight tangent regardless of the texts or the ethics application that suggest that this is so.
While exploring the actor network of a voluntary youth telephone counselling agency undergoing change with use of text, internet and message boards, I begin to appreciate that I am involved in a study that explores the ontological politics of voice.

Ever had txt with a kiwi?

Seems Kiwis are well connected.
Not only is the 'bird' variety reputed to be highly promiscuous at 20.4 partners;
as a species we kiwis are sending 640 million texts a month.
In a country estimated as having 4,262,361, people.
as at Thursday, 20 March 2008 at 7:50:06 p.m.
that sounds like a lot of txt going on.
Vodafone has announced it has stopped archiving texts and Telecom says it will follow suit. My guess is those having txt didn't even know they were watched.
2006 census stats:
Almost 2.6 million NZers had personal use of a mobile phone. In the 15–24 year age group, 90.6 percent had personal use of a mobile phone. (data doesnt indicate txt capable).

If the technology works, it will be used .... for porn, activism and cute cats

Of porn, cute cats and activism,; the measures of successful web 2.0 at Ethan Zuckerman writes of successful digital media.

I’d offer the hypothesis that any sufficiently advanced read/write technology will get used for two purposes: pornography and activism.

Text messaging by this premise is working.

As far as the Porn goes, "its a weak test for the success of participatory media - it’s like tapping a mike and asking, “Is it on?” If you’re not getting porn in your system, it doesn’t work.

I was naive when it came to the stories of txt counsellors, no they don't do the smiley face thing, and definitely no winking. The people who make calls just to get a sexual gratification find such inducements too enticing. So no-one gets the softening touch. And so txt counselling is shaped. Whats possible vs what could be misconstrued albeit by (thankfully) a very few. The work that goes into shaping a txt could be conceived as the missing the work, whats taken out.

Activism is a stronger test - if activists are using your tools, it’s a pretty good indication that your tools are useful and usable.

Its the method of choice when the young person has no voice, or is scared of their own voice- hearing yourself saying your not coping can be a trauma in itself. Txting seems to make the personal aspect less threatening. I hear young people who text saying, there's stuff i say in txt that i wouldnt dream of saying outloud or 'to the person' (!). There is some sort of a cognitive dissonance thing going on here.
And then there is the cute cat syndrome.
As stated:
Web 1.0 was invented to allow physicists to share research papers.
Web 2.0 was created to allow people to share pictures of cute cats.
They are a little harder to fit into the 160characters of the txt SMS, but so far I have received cute bears, so i am pretty sure it is ony because i dont have enough friends that i have yet to experience a cat in this realm...