the plot thickens

I had been reading Ken Alder (2007) Focus: Thick issues.
And this reminded me again of Sherry Turkle's Evocative objects, things we think with.
I keep thinking I should add a fanfiction site for Sherry Turkle but it has yet to happen, I would need more time.

Here's another thicker story:
In my childhood, we never had a wooden spoon. I had heard of these, they were after all a common entity, ubiquitous even had the word been known. But not in my family home.
My eldest sister and her friendly neighbour buried each and every one they came across. Or to be more exact, which came across them.
Or so I was told when I asked how come we didn't have one.
I know what wooden spoons are for, they are for burying in the garden.
Apparently they were also for hitting unruly children; stirring pots of jam, porridge, whatever.
I was never hit with one. They were all buried.
I have never owned a wooden spoon either. I had learned to live without this weapon. However, I have a spurtle. It's short, it's a Scottish variation; after all porridge is (arguably) nicer lumpless.
The shorter handle lends itself less to hitting.
And it's short length suits the modern size of saucepans, and the 'modern' cook who infrequently makes jam.
Has economics altered the ubiquity of wooden spoons?
Has birth control?
For myself, its also the less violent norms in domesticity.
A 'good' story provokes more questions, or so I am told.
A humble research approach doesn't tell others how their world is.
It suggests it might also be otherwise.

In providing a functionalist description of objects, Alder reminds me that this denies the incredible capacity for people to repurpose their tools. He says

"to reduce an object to its [stated] function involves more than a failure of attention: it is a slur on the human ability to repurpose the material world and on the power of things to reshape the contours of human experience."

As much as we think we shape our tools, they also shape us; there is push and pull.

Do you have a story? Write it with a backlink to here, I would be interested in 'hearing' it as I practice writing thicker stories.
:)
ailsa

Feeling contained; text messaging and I just dnt want it 2 b real

Talking therapies assume that being able to talk about how one is feeling is therapeutic.
Its an assumption worth talking about.
What are the necessary or sufficient conditions for this to be beneficial?

If I text, is this enough?
Is text a bandaid?
Deep wounds get infected and the bandaid is a superficial fix on something that needed a whole lot more...
Or is the text more like a lance? A way in- and out preventing a worsening of the condition...
The following txt message suggests its a way to contain what's going on.

talkn out loud makes it real, i dnt wnt it 2 b real

Suggesting: I dont want to hurt
I dont want to fall apart
I dont want to acknowledge whats going on for me
I want it to go away...and i also know its (t)here.

Texting, in this instance, allows for control over how much reality gets experienced. What could be overwhelming is contained.
In this instance, the scenario involved the death of someone very close to the person texting in. and seemed to provide a way of containing and of letting go.
I am reminded of being 8 and finding my sister who had died.
As children we worked out that we would make it easier on the grownups letting them know we knew what was going on, so they would not have to talk to us.
Talking about it with Mum or Dad would have made them cry and that would have been even more overwhelming.
I wish a youth telephone counselling agency had been around then, and I wish texting had been available.

The medium of texting provides a contained/constrained/constructed practical way of relating:
Contains in terms of being held gently.
Constrained in the sense that control is emphasised; that its not overwhelming.
And constructed, carefully, at my own pace, in the medium of my choosing.

Some wisdom from Australian cartoonist, Leunig, on holding on and letting go:

Holding on and letting go seems a recurring theme at the moment; i am rewriting, reediting, and not letting go of, a conference paper I need to complete by 5.00 today...
My supervisor has an inkling I will be like this when the thesis is being handed in also :)

passion and reason; burden and blessings in connectivism; a feminist critique CCK08

Connectivism as a theory of learning values networks as a place of learning. However, what is valued within the network? How might a network be differentiated from a group? In an opinion piece, Stephen Downes argues his difference saying:

The point where group identity becomes more of a burden than a blessing?
So where is that dividing line? Where functional and healthy becomes dysfunctional, obviously. Somewhere between (most) football teams and the Symbionese Liberation Army. Somewhere between family bonding and wiping out your neighbours with machetes.

In my books, that line is the line between reason and emotion.
To put it most simply, groups are based on passion while networks are based on reason. Groups meet our need to belong and to survive, while networks meet our need to connect and learn and to know. In a group, passion drowns out reason, in a network, reason drowns out passion.

I'm feeling othered.
It's like revisiting a world where reason is praised and emotions devalued.
Pre Carol Gilligan, Simone de Beauvoir, Susan leigh Star, or Donna Haraway.
Feminism never had a hand in this construction of reality.
Being of the other sex, and feeling invisible, I suggest that reason can be as threatening as emotions to any aggragation be it named group or network. The division is at best, unhelpful and at worst, damaging.

Unhelpful because its a label for explaining after the effect, what was wrong.
Its damaging because it perpetuates a myth that reason is a better attribute than passion.

More work on what makes for a functional network is required.
The dividing line might do better to consider the different voice, and to consider as Haraway states:

I do not know of any other time in history when there was greater need for political unity to confront effectively the dominations of 'race', 'gender', 'sexuality', and 'class'. I also do not know of any other time when the kind of unity we might help build could have been possible. None of 'us' have any longer the symbolic or material capability of dictating the shape of reality to any of'them'. Or at least 'we' cannot claim innocence from practicing such dominations.

I concede this was posted in an emotional response to the first reading I have undertaken for the week. And to place this in context, I had read the posting in terms of my wondering "what are the necessary conditions for a networked connectivist theory of learning?" Reading the post,that group feeling, leaves me afraid. More reading may help dispel the sense of my feeling excluded.

CCK08 short paper, connectivism, what is it, where is it and can i get some?

This short paper is used to clarify my position on connectivism. In doing this, I choose to ‘connect’ my current threads of learning. I approach connectivism through actor-network theory. The paper then explores whether connectivism provides a new theory of learning and how it connects with prior knowledge in terms of my own learning experiences. This leads to consideration of what further questions, for me, need to be addressed.

I come to this course already connected; to people, my work, my family, and my doctoral undertakings. Such social orientations provide me with relationships that influence my beliefs and my thinking. In relating I am introduced to ideas, as well as challenges to the current ideas I might hold. I am also connected to my laptop, without her, I could not be networked. She extends my reach in terms of hearing and ‘speaking’ with others. In this sense, a network for learning is established. This is congruent with the core premise espoused by George Siemens(2006); learning is a network phenomenon, influenced (aided) by socialization and technology. The social and technological as part of the network is also central to actor-network theory (Latour,1999). Playfully, I name myself cyborg as a learner in the 21st century and embark on telling a sociotechnical story.

Sociotechnical stories allow for an understanding of events that weave together the social and the technical or material aspects. The connective learning approach, situated as it is, within a world more connected than ever before through the Internet, lends itself to such an analysis. This also provides me with an opportunity for weaving together two fields that seem to readily sit by each other, connectivism as a theory of learning emerging in a networked world, and actor-network theory being a means of informing discussion of what occurs within networks and how such networks are configured.

Such stories are not innocent; they provide scope for seeing not only how things are, but also how things might be otherwise.

Our stories are not simple innocent descriptions. They can make a difference, introduce changes, or alternatively bring aid and comfort to the existing performances of technological reality while it could have been otherwise. Technologies could have been enacted in other ways – imagined and enacted. (Law & Singleton, 2000, p.769.)

The story too could be otherwise. It will be otherwise when told by others or at different times, even by the same author. This is also a part of connectivism, knowledge is not located as an isolated event, its created in connections, culturally and temporally bound. In undertaking this networked course, I am situated within a connected learning opportunity. The size of my course is the world, spread across this world are something like 2000 people interested in exploring the topic of connectivism, and connective knowledge, as an emergent learning theory. They could not do this without some material means through which to connect. The material semiotics therefore includes the laptops to connect to the connectivism wiki and moodle and emails and elluminate discussions. Some have also chosen to extend this through use of their own blogs, and wiki, some also move into 2nd life. Others choose to connect through mobile phones utilising twitter, as well as the access afforded to wiki, blogs, moodle etc. The technologies and means of access form part of the structure of the network.

“Semiotics of materiality suggests that objects, materials, information, people and (one might add) the divisions between big and small or global and local, are all relational effects” (Law, 1999).

I could not be part of the course without the technology affording me access. In connecting with others the means is part of the message; social networking media extends the reach of others as well as my own, providing the means of connecting. However, the material semiotics of the network, are not the network. While they provide means, what is connected, matters. So people are connected. But it is how they connect that becomes a crucial component to connectivism as a theory of learning. For what then might be the necessary and sufficient conditions for connectivism to be considered a theory of learning?

First, I have to connect. This may or may not be through the media afforded by emergent technologies. These are not sufficient or necessary. What is essential is the connecting for learning. In doing this, I bring myself, my thoughts my abilities and I ‘meet’ with others who similarly bring themselves for the purpose of exchanging thoughts, beliefs, and ideas, even feelings. In this exchange, there needs to be movement for learning to have occurred. I need to be able to let go of ideas, or to reconsider ideas in terms of what they may be connected, how prior thinking may then be altered, accommodated or rejected. During this course, I am reminded that such ‘others’ need not be present; their ideas are what I connect with. Provocatively, Lisa Lane raises the spectre of a network of dead people (Lane, 2008) into my lived experience on connectivism and learning. I am also provoked to consider if the theory of learning is new in the blog post ‘Is connectivism shiny’ (tschofen, 2008) and while I had not been exposed to this authors previous readings, I am aware that I don’t think it is new. My own experience of learning can be traced through who I have listened to; dead and alive. My connections are not all new, some are to people I know such as Stanley Freilick who I meet with on a terrestrial weekly, if not daily basis. However, enrollment in a connectivist learning course creates opportunity for new discussions to occur, and these are not restricted to an Internet forum, but occur in front of colleagues generating further discussions. Such an approach might be considered viral, and this has been explored in the CCK08moodle threads. The approach also has similarities with neuronal physiology; with firing of nodes and catalytic sequalae evolve. Such thinking is not new, the interconnections are identified and applied to learning in Dave Cormier's article titled Rhizomatic Education: Community as Curriculum. The bringing together, and naming, and exploring the application, particularly with consideration for technologies now available within education, is.

Expanding on the usefulness of a theory of learning called connectivism, it is worth considering how the quality of such learning may be measured. As already outlined, new thinking is provoked. New means to shared ways of communicating are deliberately practiced and overtly explored as I bend my blog amusingspace.blogspot.com to new purpose. Minutes of fame quickly dissipate within a fast paced connected learning environment, but evidenced by clustermaps and delicious, my being connecting by others increased. My stated intent on the introduction thread was to apply my knowledge of actor-network theory within this course, this is both extending my thinking and knowledge of the theory as well as expanding my connections with other educators who have knowledge of the approach. In addition, there are new skills acquired. I discovered wordle, eluminate, and hyperlinking within prose. Nonetheless not all the learning is positive, some is challenging. Some students I connect with seem more intent on self if not group distraction and destruction. And not all the learning is straight forward; in moodle threads differentiation between concepts of computation, collectivism and connectivism created a chasm of ‘isms’ to fall into, and required Stephen Downes’ Professorial assistance to get back out. The role of teacher as facilitator, and role model, is sustained.

My current understanding of connectivism is that it’s not new. What is new is its naming and its affordance as a learning theory. I believe it provides a demonstrable and accurate portrayal of how learning occurs, as such it is an effective theory for it illuminates aspects of what is important and from this, deliberate consideration can be given to how learning might be extended. My question remains; what are the necessary and sufficient conditions and how does this extend my own thinking, my own connections, and my connections with others.

References
Lane, L. (2008). Networks of dead people. Retrieved 25 September, 2008, from http://lisahistory.edublogs.org/2008/09/25/networks-of-dead-people/
Latour, B. (1999). On recalling ANT. In J. Law & J. Hassard (Eds.), Actor network theory and after (pp. 15-25). Oxford: Blackwell.
Law, J. (1999). Materialities, spatialities, globalities [Electronic Version] from http://www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/sociology/papers/Law-Hetherington-Materialities-
Spatialities-Globalities.pdf
Law, J., & Singleton, V. (2000). Performing technology's stories. On social constructivism, performance, and performativity. Technology and Culture, 41, 765-775.
Siemens, G. (2006). Connectivism: Learning Theory or Pastime of the Self-Amused?
tschofen. (2008). Is connectivism shiny? Retrieved 27 September, 2008, from http://tschofen.wordpress.com/2008/09/27/cck08-is-connectivism-shiny/


Note to self;
hyperlinks lost on moving word doc to blog (aargh)
However; its not for credit, I dont need to dot the i's cross the t's or get a 'grade'
:)

And next q is how to sustain the links...and or put a word doc into the bog
But for now I have a life to get back to...

Dear diary: Life gets in the way of learning; i need my head read

My mum has been in and out and in and out; and in and out and in and out; and in and out and in and out of hospital. That's accurate. This many times in the last 5 weeks. She has a cigarette induced lack of oxygenation, plus a disinterest in whats happening that adds up to a significant amount of being confused. But at the beginning of this week she almost died.
She has been having significant nose bleeds.
Really significant ones.
This is horrible.

Annenarie Mol is right, the experience of health and of healthcare is multiple.
Mum thinks she's fine, she wants to be at home.
The hospital is happy to discharge her, afterall, she wants to go home and in NZ at least there is no compulsion to provide care.
My experience of this part of my world is different again. I know she is not well, she asks me where my other daughter is. I only have one. She is hypoxic and also in acute nicotene withdrawal again, she is grumpy. So am I.

And to further quote annemarie mol;

Here you will not find sentences such as; we cannot imagine what it must be like to have a chronic disease. Such sentences are nasty! They do not state explicitly the author and reader are in good health , but they imply it all the same. This is not what i am after. On the contrary i want to avoid unmarked normality. To presume that you and i are healthy would go against the soul of what i seek to say. Within the logic of choice 'disease' is a strange exception, it has nothing to do with 'us', while the logic of care starts out from the fleshiness and fragility of life. I hold that dear. Indeed in articulating the logic of care i seek to contribute to theoretical repertoires that no longer marginalise, but face disease, As part of this it is good to underline that 'patient' and 'philosopher' are by no means mutually exclusive categories. 'I' am not immortal or immune to disease. And your normality , dear reader, is not presupposed here either.... i kindly invite you in to imagine yourself involved in the situations described."

While I feel that I have not paid enough attention to my day job this week, and have not done as much on my doctorate as I want to either, and combining this with my time in CCK08 plummeting and a rewrite for the ascilite conference and the moodle dse forum on hold...I am left wondering about my own normality!
Nonetheless: I did one interview for the PhD, and had a cafe breakfast reading Bruno Latour's Society is technology made durable; some excellent insights growing on the descriptive detail of actants and actant substitutions, and tracing of trajectories of actants, and of translations...
I suspect any 'normal' person would tell me to get a life!

Fairy bread and concept mapping CCK08

Computer generated word play from wordle.net, I took my blog postings for CCK08, and this is what Jonathon Feinberg's software did with them. Similar to delicious clouds, the words most commonly used are biggest. So this representation at least captures what has been most topical for me in discussing connectivism.
There is no meaning in this for what lies next to what, and I justify this as linear connections do not seem to last for long enough in my mind for translation to the page, and the cmaps and bubble map software, while providing a this to that connectability dont seem to capture the accurate and repeated importance of concepts, or the 'messiness' involved.
Clicking on the image shows it in a more easy to read form, (at least all the words increase in size proportionally)
NB the software doesnt deal well to author names so John Law became two separated words, similarly actor-network theory gets sprinkled.
Its the fairy bread approach to concept mapping :)

shape shifting; the effects of computer and communication technologies in counselling

I'm currently editing a paper I have submitted to ASCILITE 2008. The paper looks at how the emergent uses of communication and computer technologies are shaped as well as reshaping a youth counselling agency. The study is still in progress. I would appreciate comments, here's the beginning

Cn I jus txt, coz I don wan 2b heard

When integrating new technologies into practice, we tend to think of ourselves as designers or directors of our own practices. In contrast, this paper considers how technologies may be shaping practices and/or shaping us. In studying change as communication and computer technologies are integrated within a community youth counselling centre, I explore the web of relations where human and non-human actors have influence. The research presented in this paper is informed by actor-network theory (ANT), an approach investigating the material semiotics of what shapes, and is shaped. In this paper, the particular and peculiar effects of mobile phones for text messaging are explored. The effects are not considered in terms of being good or bad. To this author, attempting such normative evaluation is like asking: is talking to strangers good or bad? The answer must be: it depends. Whether the changes that occur are anticipated, desirable, able to be enhanced or moderated requires a fuller understanding of processes involved. Initial findings suggest there are implications for educators considering this medium, whether for providing pastoral care or in integrating text messaging as a medium for learning. The use of a texting medium provides unexpected challenges as well as the opportunities foreseen.

Folding time CCK08

"For while the past has left ineradicable traces within you, the future is already present too. You try to juggle with the future....the logic ... does not unfold in time, it folds time."

While Annemarie Mol was talking of the logic of care, I suspect it is not only care that this is true of. I believe that this is also true of learning.
(And am repeatedly reminded that with health and education the separations are purely institutional, divided silos, but both are about helping people live to the best of their actual and or chosen abilities.)
In Lisa's post the spectre of networking dead people is raised, and I am aware in my study of 'networking' Marshal McLuhan. I am not sure if the medium is the message guru would take kindly to the medium innuendo in this case, however, the great man did have a sense of humour, so maybe.
And in attempting concept maps for CCK08, I was increasingly frustrated by the unidimensional, linear nature of these;

Mol points to this in the logic of choice, where time is linear... whereas in practice
with a logic of care, time twists and turns.
Practice is messy, attempting to make it neat and tidy in a concept map, just might be making a mess of it (refer to John Law, After method; Mess in social science research)
Targets move, when the unexpected occurs it is integrated, there is no logic of arrows. Time is not moment by moment.
And in the immortal words of David Bowie:

time may change me, but I can’t chase time.

In the spirit of raising the past, 1973 brought us this.
Discordance, dissent and clashing of culture create new 'knowledge'.
It is the criss crossings and intersections that matter.(further reading see; Johansson, F. (2006). The Medici effect. What elephants and epidemics can teach us about innovation. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.)

educational iatrogenesis; when you swim with sharks try not to bleed CCK08

I'm in a course with a population the size of a small town.
The capacity to learn from connecting with people in this small town is huge.
The potential for being distracted by time wasters is also apparent.
The potential to be damaged in learning is also as sadly apparent here as it is in any schoolyard with its rocks, stones, sticks and bullies.
Horizontal violence is not ok.
Freedom of speech is a noble thing, but as said by Mills: no one has the right to shout fire in a full theatre when no fire exists. It can be damaging.
Its not ok to let criticism continue unchecked.
Staying silent with bullies, condones the activity.
While masquerading as an activity of free speech the outcome is harm.
If education is for achieving greater freedom, the only person achieving this is the perpetuator of a crime. It is not ok to subvert a learning opportunity set up for a particular purpose involving thousands of people for one's own grandstaging.
At its least harmful its a distraction, at its worst it is educational iatrogenesis; an educational environment that is damaging.
In health iatrogenesis refers to medically induced misadventure and illness. In education I suggest it is misadventure and damage to thinking, to learning, to connecting, to knowledge production.
Education is, or should always be, an ethical undertaking.
It should always be for the creation of greater freedom (ref Colin Lanksheare)and not for less.

Connectivism as a theory of learning needs to consider the dark side of networks.
Not all communities are good, warm, caring, supportive places.
CCK08 is not either.
A rosy glow is insufficient. Taking off the rose coloured spectacles, connectivism as a learning theory needs to consider the potential for harm as well as for good.
What then might be the necessary and sufficient conditions for connectivism to do more good than harm?
Being Rogerian in my professional background, I try to demonstrate all the qualities needed for setting up an environment whereby personal growth might occur; trust, empathy, unconditional positive regard. As a responsible educator, I am also aware that these attributes do not help when swimming with sharks.
Greater freedom for one but not for all is perpetuated where the learning environment naively and innocently and with the best of intentions condones distraction, name calling, and critique that is false or unsubstantiated.
Sadly, for an experiment in open mindedness the seeds of failure may be embedded.
Does connectivism as a theory of learning depend on chance?
On who is in the scholastic pool?
If its for a particular purpose, as CCK08 is/was intended, then mediating the mix is valid interference.

netWORKING CCK08

This week has seen me doing less in the threads and more in the blogs. There's a depth in the blogs, a thoughtfulness that i am not experiencing in the threads (these feel like a tug of war played with spiders webs....)

The links made by Stephen in the daily, make for easy networking.
I am captured with provocative titles such as I need more blog friends. This gets to the heart of networking, if nodes dont connect, there is no net. And as one other person noted on Heli's blog, this is the actual work of networking, not just a theorising. I also tracked back in her bog a bit, and enjoyed the use of a photo gallery instead of the connector map concept formation which i have found too linear, too constraining- shape and sizes and lack of ability to put things in whether pdfs or pictures... Such a frustration. And am suddenly reminded of John Laws pinboard approach.
And this is what network connectivism learning is about, this fires off that synapse and a new thing happens that then fires into another synaptic space and where there are receptors again something else then happens...

The other blog of importance to me was Shelleys where there seemed an ah hah moment,
I had read through Krebs notes and wasnt in awe (went to his website and was much more impressed). The ppt didnt seem to mention work, it mentioned things like herds of cows and i was thinking rubbish. Takes work for it to be a network, its not the lego in a box, or if it is that's at a trivial level. There are maybe 2000 people in the course but its not a network unless they connect.
So its not connectivist learning unless they are connecting and learning...

The connecting may be quieter, doesnt have to be loud, or visible, but it does have to occur. Susan Leigh Star on invisible work would be a worthwhile tangent to explore on this...Star, S. L., & Strauss, A. (1999 ). Layers of Silence, Arenas of Voice: The Ecology of
Visible and Invisible Work Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 8, 9-30.

While this is interesting, I think actor-network theory has it covered. The only difference is the concepts are being drawn into education by another name. The social is seen more than the technological, but i think this too will come.

The politics of knowledge CCK08

I've been looking at knowledge and am beginning to think its just a (current and temporary) explanation. Its not fact or truth as commonly understood, all such are socially mediated.
And then i did some more thinking...what causes things to happen or change, what changes knowledge?
Its the aggregation of things that make something more or less supported, more or less real.
To think this causes that is a little too simple, or as expressed by Latour(1988)

The belief in causes and effect is always, in some sense, the admiration for a chain of command or the hatred of a mob looking for someone to stone.

Latour, 1988. From an essay on the politics of explanation.
Again, I find connectivism is no different from an ANT analysis on the construction of knowledge.
And with regard to explaining change, I am back to describing the detail of whats happening, whats aggregated, what shifts, what do the actors say of their own actions...

Providing an explanation is, in a nutshell, working at empire-building; the more powerful an explanation, the larger the empire and the stronger the material in which it is built. What we admire in powerful theories we should also admire in freeways, multinational corporations, satellite networks, weapon systems, international banking and data banks.

Its always an aggregation, nothing as simple as a change agent (implying an individual does it by themselves). There is power and acquiescence, give and take and a reshuffling or resettling of the elements involved whenever a 'new' construction occurs. And not all of this is intended.
Knowledge understood this way becomes a product of heterogenous, historical and contingent factors.
How might I strengthen the validity or truth of a claim? Not by changing its substance, but by increasing the number of its allies, the supports maintaining this, whether human or otherwise (eg reports written, artefacts held in concrete form such as texts, the ease with which links to such knowledge is accessed...).
How to steer a course between fact and fiction? To be able to recognise the supports in place and personally evaluate the strength of such support.
And how to present such ideas to others that they might truly consider the veracity of knowledge I might hold up as evidence of my own research? By making my own positioning clearer; being an articulate reflexive practitioner? To provide a way through being believed too little or too much...

reflexivity goes against this common belief in asking no privilege for the account at hand. When I portray scientific literature as in risk of not being believed and as bracing itself against such an outcome by mustering all possible allies at hand (Latour,1987), I do not require for this account any more than this very process: my own text is in your hands and lives or dies through what you will do to it. In my efforts to forestall certain outcomes and encourage others, I too muster all available allies, all linguistic possibilities (if only, God - or Mammon - willing, I could write in my own mother tongue!).

growing a thesis (PhD)

A thesis at Deakin requires 100,000 words.
I have 25000 & despite 2 weeks of study this has not grown alot and so was feeling despondent. So rather than wallowing, I am writing up what i have been doing:
Despite my best intentions, the lit review grew, weeding it is difficult, killing off the unruly that I previously nurtured is a struggle. And given the subject area, emergent technologies and change, its the stuff of sci fi mightmares; the stuff expands when your not watching it!
Growing a thesis takes more than inserting words into the page, it also involves taking them out.
And it involves peripheral juggling.
Progress also involves keeping it keeping on; relationships sustained, plans made that will make things in the future easier...and ways found through difficult patches. Sometimes the thoughts are clearer, sometimes it is more words.
Today I emailed my pro vice chancellor about study leave, emailed a student colleague who seemed less attached, ICQed another student colleague as well as my supervisor to share some thoughts from Mol that got me out of a writing block, read more of Mol, checked a dse forum on writing that I had contributed to the night before with what i think was an insight for me(the first task set connected to the second task, Checked in a connectivism course I am in- but connecting this to my methodology, confirmed appointments for interviewing research participants...
Looking at it this way, its not so hopeless :)

knowledge as a (gather)thing CCK08

There's a similarity between connectivism, rhizomatic learning and actor-network theory. Each places knowledge within a relational context or network.
The difference with actor network theory is that it
1. emphasises knowledge as a performance involving both human and non-human entities.
2. emphasises the work involved to gather together entities that make certain things more or less substantial.
The difference is the degree to which ANT is prepared to name non human influences as integral.
In doing this course, I needed a computer and/or a cell phone preferably with web access. I am enhanced when connected to my laptop= my reach is extended; my ability to hear and to share across the globe made possible with broadband access and the Internet. I am also able to trust to my outsourced memory contact with artefacts of seminal writings (Latour, Law, Mol, Haraway as well as those of Dave Cormiens, George Siemens, Stephen Downes, Deleuze and Guattari, Gregory Bateson...). I am able to access more- the libraries of the world through other relationships i have, and I get to quickly find relevance by maintaining an endnote library reference system at my fingertips. In addition to these interactions which are substantially non human, I get to talk to others similarly connected with similar accoutrements.
And according to Latour, the more actors involved in such a gathering the more 'it' (knowledge or a particular practice) is stabilised. And becomes harder to ignore, or to go outside of, or to change.
Understanding the relational qualities of what is both shaped and shaping allows for insights into what is needed to make things otherwise...

(And hence my PhD on change with emergent technologies in a Youth counselling centre)

In taking this stance, I disagree with Stephen Downes that knowledge is nothing (elluminate talk), it is far too powerful a 'thing' to be discounted out of hand. But I take him to really be meaning that it is no(one)thing.
Knowledge is a shapeshifter.
And I am cyborg :)

learning surfing; connectivism CCK08

Today's connecting had me combine this with that, and provided me with a soloution to the large class teaching.
One of many to come, I hope.
Large class teaching just needs innovation, optimism and bodaciousness.
Works for Che Fu, Rove and Princess Leia.
Next step hologram the students?
ROFL
For some more serious review, the first link had me prompted me to revisit an educator I enjoyed when i met him a couple of years back, Stephen Brookfield. The post was with regard to imposter theory. Which I dont think he has written of, or at least I couldnt find it, but I did find wikipedia on imposter syndrome insufficient.

Stephen does write of imposter syndrome in Brookfield, Stephen D. (1995). Becoming a critically reflective teacher. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

teachers often feel like impostors (p.227)

He quotes deVries’ (1993, p. 129) summary:

These people have an abiding feeling that they have fooled everyone and are not as competent and intelligent as others think they are. They attribute their success to good luck, compensatory hard work, or superficial factors. Some are incredibly hardworking, always overprepared. However, they are unable to accept that they have intellectual gifts and ability. They live in constant fear that their imposturous existence will be exposed – that they will not be able to measure up to others' expectations and that catastrophe will follow.

Keeping it real is sometimes a struggle.

Rethinking knowledge (epistemology); continuing a dialogue between connectivism and a proponent of ANT; CCK08

ruth has a small 't'.
Soren Kierkegaard
(letter T courtesy of Grewlike @ Flikr; Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License)

Connectivism holds knowledge to be transient and a 'connected' act. Rather than treating knowledge as a given, it is produced and held in connection.
Knowledge isnt made, its not like a pot to look at, or to have a shared understanding or appreciation of its value or worth or possible uses. Its not that stable.
Knowledge, as object of fact or process, I suspect is therefore multiple; where this knowledge, transient though it is, is held to be understood as of that time, in a partial way. But more than being perspectives held, this is actually ontological politics at play, reality is held together in different ways and acted on in different ways by those involved. A very ANTy perspecive on learning is made possible with a connectivism approach.
And any so called knowledge only holds together in this way until the connections are changed...so knowledge grows, shifts, gets more or less, dependent on those involved in its shaping.
And to take this further, especially with regard to an ANT informed analysis, is also dependent on the glue holding it. Whether said glue is the degree of trust or faith ... between the peoples involved or the power wielded or not... or the non human actors such as the form of technologies binding the connections. Whether this were to involve slate or paper and pen, books, through to the internet. There are non human actors who help shape said connections and which may store artefacts of the connected knowledge or which help create said knowledge by making the movement of ideas more and less possible. The emphasis on shaping allows the impact of those involved (human and otherwise) to be considered and allows for greater conscious awareness of the transience of what has historically been referred to as knowledge (as object). This theory, connectivism, shifts the emphasis of knowledge as process.

if that;then this

Stephen Downes in half an hour posts on the difference between constructionist and other 'cognitive approaches' of learning in a comparison with connectivism. He uses an example of an expert chess player who does not know play by memorized moves but by discerning subtleties in a shifting pattern.
In the online chat on CKK08 for us terrestrially time bound southern hemisphereans, the constructionist approach was described by George Seimens as not being symbolic or syntax based, meaning is not made in symbolic ways, but is more fluid, distributed.

Maybe very fast or intuitive constructionism would be like this?
Or is this pixie dust?
I could sit with rapid cycling constructionism as a form of relational learning so am still not convinced that connectivism is different to constructionist theory informed by an ANT (actor-network theory) analysis demonstrating what occurs in a global networked learning environment.

Does constructionist learning have to be as concrete as George and Stephen make it appear?
I am beginning to wonder if i am thick or in over my head.

But i contend google is my friend :) she is not to account for making me stupid.
(ref Nicholas Carr)
I am as stupid now as when i would flick through journal articles skimming for relevance. My surfing through blogs or online articles is no different. I read whats important to me. If what i read is contributing to my/or others stupidity, I would content it has more to do with PBRF pressure on academics that foster quantity over quality of research outputs. Trivial but easy to measure, and multiple reinventions of the same content thinly disguised as different pieces of research...

hopeful monsters

I said 'I think they might also be what are called "hopeful monsters".'
She said ' What are hopeful monsters?'
I said ' They are things born perhaps slightly before their time; when it's not known if the environment is quite ready for them." Nicolas Mosley, Hopeful Monsters, p.71

So begins John Laws' book A sociology of monsters.
It has me thinking of hopeful monsters I have born as well as ones I have been close to.
They are hungry beasts filled with anguish.

17 years ago I go gave birth to a megalomaniac, and she has persevered with me in adjusting to her from demanding infant terrible to beautiful young lady. Happy Birthday!

Other monsters birthed included a radical rewriting of a part of a curriculum related to the learning of mental health nursing. Might have been cutting edge; there was blood on the floor.

And monsters I am close to; the birthing of a new papers for 1200 students at a time.
I'm currently in an online course CCK08 which is for thousands so maybe I will learn how, or at least not go in to the planned one quite so innocently.

Plus am invited to help YL write guideline for moving into instant messaging as a means for counseling.

Today I begin reading Law's (1991) A sociology of monsters; Essays on power, technology and domination.

What connectivism and ANT may have in common (CCK08)

OK some rudiments of understanding first, and these are based on a limited reading of what George Siemens and Stephen Downes have put out there.
Connectivism is a theory of learning.
One that values highly the means of the learning.
Seems that knowledge is created and constructed in connection with others.
(Constuctivism methinks, so what makes connectivism different???)

"learning is a network phenomenon, influenced (aided) by socialization and technology"
“To 'know' something is to be organized in a certain way, to exhibit patterns of connectivity. To 'learn' is to acquire certain patterns” (Downes, 2005, Section O, ¶ 2).

Still not clearer.
So I am going to guess: Knowledge and learning are not static, there is continual learning/unlearning/reshaping at play. This occurs in connection with others and through channels that are deeply important. Here's where I think this is ANT. The others are not only human, the nonhuman others include technologies such as computers, IPS servers...the Internet. The local situated context of learning of the past has moved on.

To return to George, where learning is about making meaning, then this needs to take into account the means used and the context, because the context is now global.

This seems less a theory for understanding causality, but one for illuminating process. That connectivity via Internet has profound impact, yet to be recognised.

Knowledge not individually located but distributed; ok, still resides in indivisduals or in books, artefacts...but is not produced 'locally' the context is radically expanded, but is still produced in connection. Ok
But like communications what's written or saved as audio or blogged, wiki'd etc etc is not anything until it is shared in connection.

Still seems to be learning using a constructivist understanding that acknowledges an ANT mode in the practice.

If so whats important?
That non human actors have influence. That this influence is important, and not necessarily neutral. That inscribed in non human actors are ways of working that make certain things more and less likely. That in the making of new ways of working, we tend to surf on what has gone before and maybe this needs to be altered. That the grooves that form now or in the near past tend to make it harder to shift out of whats always been and maybe we need to.

Is it a theory?
Depends.
Could actor-network theory have explored this as a means to understanding new changes in education? I think so, but it doesn't sound quite so sexy as connectivism.

Tools change people. We adapt based on new affordances.

I agree, but this still would encompass a constructivist theory made relevant when informed by an ANT analysis.
Whats new; an emphasis on how knowledge, in practice, changes.
To this end, I would encourage further exploration in understanding change differently. I'd encourage looking at Bruno Latour and John Law as the work of actors(human and otherwise) create performances. Or Annmarie Mol as she describes ontologies of practice.

Bemused

Its so grounding when I see the people i hold way up there (person iconization?) having technological difficulties, they have to seduce the technology to do whats required, just like me. Its all in the way i hold my tongue or prayers to the alter of the godesses of loose connections or to the gremlins in the machine...
Anyway, i was happy to see a resend on the daily newsletter, proves the human connection.
I havent managed to make it into a moodle discussion though, i can watch but not post. Seems i am in a rebus strip of fill in the details and confirm it on the email but the email doesnt arrive and no confirmation gets made, so i start again.... but four times is enough already. I'll take my ball and play here.

Seems i could get blown away in a discussion of is connectivism a theory or not. Not the point.
I agree with George Siemens on the

The pipe is more important than the content within the pipe.

But then I also agree with Marshal McLuhan who said the medium is the message.
If its a theory then there's baggage that is often associated with such labels, such as its capacity to predict. However, a theory can also be useful in as much as it illuminates...

“Does it end in conclusions which, when they are referred back to ordinary life experiences, render them more significant, more luminous to us, or make our dealings with them more fruitful? Or does it terminate in rendering experiences more opaque than they were before?” John Dewey

For the moment, I will accept it as a path to enlightenment :)

I agree with a sentiment that the subject matter would lend itself to a conversation which wasnt, and the critique of the critique is fairly defended- the past being a foreign country, it is unfair to lodge criticism out of context.

“The tools we use to think, change the ways in which we think.” (Turkle,2004, p.1)

Seems to me this is similar to

“To 'know' something is to be organized in a certain way, to exhibit patterns of connectivity. To 'learn' is to acquire certain patterns”

(Downes, 2005, Section O, ¶ 2).
But with Stephen Downes, this takes it a bit further as it touches on patterns formed, or as Chris Bigum and Leonie Rowan argue,

As patterns are laid down, grooves formed, a kind of template is created which also limits, proscribes, what can come next.

(Bigum & Rowan, 2004, p.223) In this there is a political ontology that can be considered, for the tools are not value neutral and what is done with them creates grooves, patterns of thinking, patterns of doing. And computers in schools become a subject to be taken rather than a tool to connect, expand...

And then George Siemens where he says;

Too many educators fail to understand how technology is changing society. While hype words of web 2.0, blogs, wikis, and podcasts are easy to ignore, the change agents driving these tools are not.

The notion of change agent is problematic for me, change theory just does not do it,a networked understanding would do it better. People act in relationships, such relationships are with other people and with things. The things are change agents also. (And hence i am studying change using networked understandings...)
And he comes to this with reference to the printing press. But what of seeing these non human actors as part of the network rather than as a channel networking others?

George Siemens concludes

that educators are reflecting on how learning has changed and the accompanying implications to how we design the spaces and structures of learning today.

What i would suggest is that form and function should follow. The analysis of it being theory or not, is less relevant for me than what purpose might it serve. Does it illuminate to look at learning differently- YES.
And I would argue further, to study what is networked, would be best served by an approach that focuses on the actors in said network (actor-network theory) and the work (or performances) involved.

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 :)