potentially precarious

The network of relations are not all pulling together, sometimes they pull apart. The pushing and pulling on the strings that bind make for a precarious existence.
For txt messaging at Youthline, how useful is it that a sibling organisation, lifeline also uses txt, email and Internet postings? In part Lifeline's use provides credibility as a larger and more conservative organisation takes on practice that was innovative. Concurrently, this has been made possible through winning the contested funding. Its amazing that charitable organisations can work cooperatively when the processes shaping them encourage competition.
The Gods seem to be smiling on Youthline today; it is the Coca-Cola Christmas in the park tonight and it is not raining. This pulls on all the resources (people) Youthline can muster as its largest fundraising event. That the rain holds off contributes significantly to Youthline's wellbeing. The ability to raise charitable donations is to a large extent subject to the benevolence of God/s and/or the fickleness of Auckland's early summer weather.
There is the huge goodwill of volunteers, and also of paid employees (well beyond financial remuneration). What is it that creates the circumstances of giving the gift of time? (Titmuss wrote of this regarding the gift relationship; from human blood to social policy. What creates such philanthropy? What creates such philanthropy in NZ today? A whole new chapter to consider. A whole new thesis I suspect!).
There is also a funding war keeping the cost of txting down.
People dont use what doesnt work.
"People will use technology if it helps them, if it makes their lives better"
Stephen Downes said this regarding the 45-page guide to the evaluation of e-learning. The same might well be said of the use of txt, Internet postings, and email for counselling.
The philosopher in me struggles with such pragmatism, but here it is:
There is no pleasing everyone. Whats used, is used, to the extent that it is useful.
Sounds profound.
Might need to revisit this when the Oyster Bay wears off....
Circular arguments, and the profanity associated with such pragmatism, might not look so good in the morning :)

Pragmatism and fragility. hmmm.

Blogging the PhD

I was prompted today to consider the purpose of blogging while reading Biella's healthhacker blog triggered by a google alert on a particular writer, Anne Marie Mol. (I have her as an alert because she uses ant, shares a health focus, writes well of 'the performative turn' and utilised a creative writing style of a split screen between her own thinking and how this is informed by literature- a performance in its own 'write'.)

The reasons i blog; here they are, the unexpurgated version, Dec 2007:

1. my thoroughly modern supervisor suggested it
2. it helps me think! (writing creates my thinking, its not an after the fact activity)
3. being in the public domain forces me to be consider carefully; accuracy, acknowledgments, palatability- the approachability of what I write to a wider audience.
4. it links me to others who share similar methodology, or processes of study, or content; whether they know it or not.
5. provides for dialogue; real or imagined. Included here are my supervisor, other students (local and international, some I meet, most I never will), with colleagues, family, with myself.
6. provides a chronology of my own thinking and doing. (My methodology informed by ant follows Latour; he suggests 4 notebooks, one of which i have substituted with this blog- a chronology to keep track on the research process)
7. provides me a medium that hyperlinks to relevant resources; del.icio.us clouds that link me to other people's delicious use. And the bubbl.us software-
8. I am not limited to text or prose. i hyperlink, mindmap, use visual, auditary. The blog provides both actual and potential space for trials of creative writing.
9. its a playful forum, in many ways a forgiving forum, as i put it in take it off, move it around, wordsmith for impact.
10. Blogging allows for a work in progress to be shared, commented upon, revisited, reworked.
11. I stay writing, not as much by volume as i read, but time spent writing about what i read, or what i think, or can apply, to my areas of study, could be close to 50:50.
12. I 'perform' differently in this medium. The writing is less formal, less starchy.
13. I am shaped in doing this, and in this there is overlap with what i am studying- in (re)shaping practice, what is practice doing back. The exploring of how i am shaped in doing this provides for insights into how the medium shapes the message in counselling through use of txt, email and Internet postings. There is a walk the talk type quality. Havent started txting the PhD, yet ;)


So Whats different about doing this by blog rather than doing it in a notebook, using paper or a word doc?
a. Its still as public as i choose to let it be.
b. There is no doodling here, the medium and my artistic ability dont gel in the satisfying way of strokes on a page being pleasing aesthetically or soothing or whatever else my doodling suggests.
c. i dont have the satisfaction of crossing out, pushing the pen into a page, screwing up the page as a cathartic exercise. Moving to the delete bin doesnt quite do this.
d. I dont/didnt share as much in written hard copy formats. What i would have shared is so much more formal; i would feel compelled to have it at least halfway right, to be substantive, to look like chapters, essays. To look like a promising academic. The hard copy written format i find/found a slower more pensive engagement.

If you are visiting my site because of this posting linking to your own research purposes, or interest in blogging for academic purposes, please do leave me a post to let me know. Do you have similar reasons? what would you add? I will turn off the antispam number recognition thingy for a week (or as long as i can bear it) to make it easier (dont tell the spammers).

the strength of weak ties

"Strength does not come from concentration, purity and unity, but
from dissemination, heterogeneity and the careful plaiting of weak ties."

(Latour, 1997).
Plaiting the weak ties is the metaphor used in making a more durable entity: "...resistance, obduracy and sturdiness is more easily achieved through netting, lacing, weaving, twisting, of ties that are weak by themselves, and that each tie, no matter how strong, is itself woven out of still weaker threads..."
In applications of communications and computer technologies for counselling, there appears to be some strengthening of the weak ties; another actor is enrolled. Lifeline has launched txt messaging, and using an Internet based website for postings through a web page targeting young people with depression. This seems to add a little more substance to a 'novel' practice, the larger and arguably more conservative organisation seems to add a veneer of respectability to a method of counselling considered suspect by others.
I really want to follow this lead... it is a new endeavour for lifeline, being launched 3/12/07. Youthline's text service began December 2004 and Internet postings much earlier with the launch of the Urge website. One aspect argued by the CEO OF Youthline in an October 2007 press release was about not reinventing the texting wheel. The competitive funding model to my mind, continues to put services up against each other. The potential is that threads unravel.

A further musing installment on the question: what is occurring as counselors (re)shape their practice; and what is practice doing back?

Beam me up Scotty

I am just waiting for the newspaper competition of fill in the thought bubble: Tell me again why I should spend less time with the people I love and more time with strangers?
etiquette involved in martyrdom and suffering seems superfluous to many. The use of phone booths could be subject to an ant informed analysis, predating Dr Who and the TARDIS, the need to have a booth compensated for the vulnerability of the technology and the quality of the connection. Arguably such factors helped to create the expectation that calls occur privately. Current advances in audibility and portability may be aiding and abetting the publicly displayed intimacies that others find surprizing if not offensive.

Ubiquitous cell phone as common as muck

The worlds population reached 6,634,294,193 yesterday (at least according to International Programs Center of the US Census Bureau)
And cell phone subscriptions reached half this number...
Perhaps minus one
Please note, saturation of the worlds population with cell phones is not 50%; many of us have more cell phones than we know what to do with!
I confess to having more cell phones in my family than people (its useful to have a spare for people from o/s, or for when one goes down, gets washed, dies (cell phone I meant).
My last poll in a large lecture class showed all but one student had a cell phone, many had more than one, several confessed to living in households where the numbers were in excess of the people. I am not alone.
NZ Prime Minister Helen Clarke confessed she has 3, and arguably has found texting a useful diversion during Monarchy and Heads of State addresses. Nice to know she is multi-talented, and up with the play. I like this in a PM.
I can wonder if she was receiving the aussie updates on polling or playing that cute duck game with the traintrack you have to construct...
I like problem solving if not hand eye coordination in a PM too.
Sadly she cant remember; this is a less positive attribute in a PM :(
I wonder when she's going to get her own Bebo page so i can add her to my list of friends :)

On a more serious note, the use of cell phones is fast becoming a very normal practice. The rate of change as people debate the etiquette, the good, the bad, demonstrates how change is negotiated.
My description of cell phone use for counselling seemed to cause consternation amongst the group of psychotherapists I conversed with at a recent social event. Shock horror, I still have social outings... but there seemed to be furtive glancing about, as if a sudden need for crosses, holy water, garlic or stakes. I went looking for the chardonnay.
After all i might need a glass to put out my smoking paw...

only in hindsight

It looks so easy to birth a gadget at least according to Wired magazine. (Gads, why did i have a child ...)
But the ease of conception is true only with hindsight, a more realistic rendition of change is described by Czarniawska & Joerges (in Weick & Quinn, 1999, p. 362)

First there were losses, then there was a plan of change, and then there was an implementation, which led to unexpected results.

So where are the losses, the blood on the floor, the relationships won & lost. And what of the unexpected results...
The retrospective application suggests there was but one route to an end. Not immaculate conception, but according to this representation, a well planned conception. I wonder what really happened?
Too-ing and fro-ing, reshaping, contamination, adaptation, translation...
Reality is much messier outside of biblical Genesis stories.
Fascinating; the performance of a clean story.
No smut, no blood on the floor,so what is the story's pulling power?
Do we like to simplify to pretend that its easy? Does this make it more likely that we might enroll others? Does tidiness have this attraction? Are we that gormless?
Give me a decent plot any day and a decent analysis.

When social science tries to deal with things that are complex, diffuse, and messy, the answer John Law argues, is that it tends to make a mess of it. Simple clear descriptions do not work well when the stuff itself is incoherent. The attempt to be clear, increases the mess.

For further reading, see After method. Mess in social science research by John Law.
The story in Wired is superficial, so much so that it might aptly be considered a work of fiction, but still fiction too is a performance in its own right.
I find it so hard to humbly accept that the actors might know what is going on.
I am struggling with letting go of critical analysis.
But i guess no one asked the writer... the editor...the reader...
However, as a reader, I'm not persuaded; the simplistic rendering has made a mess of it.

Drowning in description

I lost the plot.
And revisited Bruno Latour

Professor — So… I take it that you are a bit lost?
Student — Well, yes. I am finding it difficult, I have to say, to apply Actor Network Theory to my case study in organisations.
Professor — No wonder— it isn’t applicable to anything!
Student — But we were taught… I mean… it seems like hot stuff around here. Are you saying it’s really useless?
...
Professor — [ANT's] a theory, and a strong one I think, but about how to study things, or rather how not to study them. Or rather how to let the actors have some room to express themselves.

So, no more discourse analysis.
Except...
I'm a slow learner.
The discourse analysis was a means to considering how txt is shaped by the cell phone. That being invisible to each other requires questions of identity and of clarification. That the first letter is default capitalised, that there are 160 characters incl blanks so messages are constrained.
(so why do people write txt as short as poss? They rarely use 160, seems the average would be between 50-70)
Back to following the actors....

Professor — ... I would abstain from frameworks altogether. Just describe the state of affairs at hand.
Student — ‘Just describe’. Sorry to ask: but is this not terribly naïve? ...
P — Because you think description is easy? ...I have, myself, always found this incredibly demanding.... we go, we listen, we learn, we practice, we become competent, we change our views. Very simple really: it’s called field work. Good field work always produces a lot of new descriptions.
S — But I have lots of descriptions already! I’m drowning in them. That’s just my problem. That’s why I’m lost and that’s why I thought it would be useful to come to you. Can’t ANT help me with this mass of data? I need a framework!
P —‘My Kingdom for a frame!’. Very moving; I think I understand your desperation. But no, ANT is pretty useless for that. Its main tenet is that actors themselves make everything, including their own frames, their own theories, their own contexts, their own metaphysics, even their own ontologies… So the direction to follow would be more descriptions, I am afraid... if your description needs an explanation, it’s not a good description, that’s all. Only bad descriptions need an explanation. It’s quite simple really....I have never seen a good description in need of an explanation. But I have read countless numbers of bad descriptions to which nothing was added by a massive addition of ‘explanations’! And ANT did not help…

I just revisited cj's advice on data collecting, its succinct:

stay broad, eschew structures

back to following the actors...

help, not waving, drowning: Discourse analysis of SMS

I am not strong on discourse analysis.
I spent one summer trying to read Foucault and this convinced me two summers doing this would be unwise.
Please help. seriously.
This is not my intended methodology, but it may prove useful. If you are experienced in discourse or even curious regarding the application to an intriguing application, please play with me here. Beginning with a toe in the water rather than full immersion because i don't like drowning, here is my tentative discourse analysis of a series of txt messages in counselling. (Feel free to push me in deeper if needed, or tell me to get out of the water....)
This series of interactions are from one side of a txting counselling scenario.
(The stream of txt was never seen, it is based in reality rather than actual reflection of reality. To do any type of data collection wherein one does not have the consent of the authors of the text is not ethically defensible. To do discourse analysis on a reported composite of a text is also methodologically dubious. This is a work of fiction).

1. "I just want to disappear"
2. "I cant talk"
3. "what diff email"
4. "r you a counsellor"

Discourse analysis
line 1, an opening, a cry for help, a reaching out.
Txted to a 'netherworld" an unknown entity. The txter doesnt know the person who will receive it, Maybe the anonymity helps. A confirmation of no one responding might confirm the sense of disappearing. There seems an ambivalence, will i disappear, am i disappearing, do people notice me. There is also an 'i want to' do i hurt so much i just want to vanish, i just want it to end?
(Did you notice that, I switched from 3rd person to first, not only do i project in, i begin to imagine myself in...)

line 2, a response to an invitation to talk further. The counsellor has responded (affirming the person for making contact, acknowledging their distress or difficulty, and inviting the person to use a ph line to talk about it). Line 2 rejects using a phone. "I cant" without punctuation. Punctuation is extra difficult on a cell. Plus it may or may not be known by the sender. Or may not be important to the sender, it takes extra time and it doesn't significantly alter the message. But the message in its brevity remains ambiguous. I cant talk because its too distressing (I cant talk because I have no money on my phone? I cant talk because others will hear? ...)
The use of capitals for I, is probably auto generated on the cell phone.

line 3, responding to the counsellor suggesting other options, seeking clarification on those options. The txt is truncated, a word is shortened and syntax condensed presenting an incomplete sentence. The meaning is sufficiently clear regarding a clarification request. There is another quality though, the person sending the message is engaged in concrete specific concerns. The concern though becomes about the equipment, how do i , rather than this is what i am distressed about. My sense is not that there is no difference in that 'i' cant talk regardless of the medium. But a seeking of clarification, i may not want to verbalise it because its distressing. 'i' might be able to enter into an email dialogue if 'i' can see a reason.

line 4, in the invisible space of txting whose on the other end seems to need checking, asking. Just as with internet cartoon where noone knows your a dog, in txting too no one knows whose there. sex is indeterminate, age is indeterminate, role is indeterminate. If I can enter into conversation via txt with you, is it because you are a counsellor and this seems ok so far and i might generalise from this counsellors therefore seem safe. Or is it a question of if i take the next step will i see you. Interesting some words truncate some dont. The use of the cell phone and the ease of some words versus others?

Please, I am really happy to receive input on this naive analysis and will now go (internet) surfing to reduce my naivity.

Other theory relevant:
Sproull and Kiesler (1991) regarding emails say "people talk with other people but they do so alone". This too explains the need for checking out who is the person at the end of the txt receiving "my' message. In addition,they write of the conventions for communicating being weak - This may be reflected in the question of are you a counsellor- who are you, what are you, as well as other conventions of social practices such as grammar being weaker.
Constance, Sproull and Kiesler (1996) Reflect on the kindness of strangers and the strength of weak ties.
Turkle (I think, but i cant find this so maybe it is more Sproull and Kiesler) talk of the projection onto messages. In the absence of more cues- tone, body language and the amount of information exchanged, there is a tendency to read more into a message- project more onto the message- than is actually there.
Bloch (2002) said email is used for creating and sustaining relationships. and also
showed email not just about language but is also about negotiating identity in a way not done in a classroom. Suggests in a counseling scenario there is also the use for negotiating identity, who am I, who are you, can we work together.
Rich Ling, Telenor R&D (2005) on discourse analysis of sms in Norway: note that its cheap, relatively unobtrusive (can be done silently), they describe sms as an "odd duck": the size of the screen limits readability, the 160 character limitation of screen, the lack of traditional of keyboard. They also discuss the differences Male to Female with female being more attentive to emotion, to flourishes of writing (punctuation), longer messages male average 5.54 vs female average 6.94, females also use more salutations. I wonder if use by women is greater as women, at least stereotypically maintain connection, relationships. Its also cheaper to sms than a ph call, and maybe women have less discretionary income. These writers also identify the liklihood of first letter capitalisation because of a default mechanism.

do u txt b4 sex?

am i the only parent of a teenager distressed about txt for a condom?
I am seriously concerned, not because condoms will be mailed out, but because two days later, or however long the post takes, is just not going to do it. Please, if a condoms needed, the mail service aint going to be of much help till its too late. Whats needed has got to be a sub 60 minute courier service!
condom alarm
Might take even longer if it has to cross the Tasman, but I found this also and although it targets a different group, on the end of a cell no one knows who you are. I do remember passion, and I dont remember it patiently waiting for mail.
nzaf.org

Things that go bump

BUMP!

And then
something went BUMP!
How that bump made us jump!


I am musing about the right word/s to use. I want to demonstrate a second rendition of the network I am studying, the first was just a whose who, I am now finding that its not enough- the people who connect are only one facet of whats going on. And dare i say it for a counselling modality, they may not be the most important part!!!! So back to looking at whats going on, and i thought I'd place it here, but even imposing a title gets problematic.
As Latour himself says the actor network theory and the hyphen are all problematic.
One step at a time: The actors. The language assumes masculinity and actresses doesnt make it any better. Actants then. yuk. sounds like a chemical reagent.
Things that go bump...are not always human.
Latour is critical of the word Network and despite thinking i knew what hhe was on about, I still fell into this one. Just mapping those i connected with and how they were connected with others gave me a bit of the picture, but it was more about who was important to me in what I'm studying. Not the purpose of the study. Mapping the network in this way was not effective. To put it crudely; its not a sewer sytem. And this 'network' doesnt just flow one way.
So more words:
Typology: lists with out substance.
Topographic: a topographic map characterized by large-scale detail and quantitative representation of relief, usually using contour lines. But its static
Chorography: a systematic, detailed description and analysis of a region or regions. OK, slightly better but it doesnt encompass the alive nature, or the influence of one's self in the analysis.

Two words describe it better, but connotations need clarifying, and the rationale for long words is that short ones dont quite do it:
Ontology: the connotations in health tend to be about disease development and particularly cancer development. However, here is a word that describes the push and pull, and the 'alive' state of a network. From my online thesaurus:
1. A systematic account of Existence.
2. (From philosophy) An explicit formal specification of how to represent the objects, concepts and other entities that are assumed to exist in some area of interest and the relationships that hold among them.

Choreography:
1. the art of composing ballets/dances and planning and arranging the movements, steps, and patterns of dancers.
2. the arrangement or manipulation of actions leading up to an event.

Ann Marie Mol talks of the network as ontological choreography. And i confess to finding the language distancing. (Makes note to self: sounds academic but doesnt make the work readable).
Meantime, here is a draft on the choregraphed ontology of a txt counseling message :) The confidential nature of counselling meant that this is a 'for instance' type of counselling scenario, a composit of scenarios rather than an individuals experience.

iphone: therefore I am

Time magazine 2007, November 19.Invention of the year
The phone, a mobile phone, not just any phone; the iphone.
Time's stated reasoning:
Its pretty 'surface is depth'
Its touchy-feely
It will make other phones better
Its not a phone: Its a platform
What will come will be better.
A huge indictment on Time magazine to grant magnamity based not on what is, but on what may come! And not for what it is: a phone, but on iphones not being a phone...
Whats left: its pretty and it feels good.
i want one.

whose acting when I'm acting?

Wendy saw the shadow on the floor, looking so draggled, and she was frightfully sorry for Peter. "How awful!" she said...
Fortunately she knew at once what to do. "It must be sewn on," she said, just a little patronisingly.
... and sewed the shadow on to Peter's foot.

"I daresay it will hurt a little," she warned him.
"Oh, I shan't cry," said Peter, who was already of the opinion that he had never cried in his life. And he clenched his teeth and did not cry, and soon his shadow was behaving properly, though still a little creased.

...Peter, boylike, was indifferent to appearances, and he was now jumping about in the wildest glee. Alas, he had already forgotten that he owed his bliss to Wendy. He thought he had attached the shadow himself. "How clever I am!" he crowed rapturously, "oh, the cleverness of me!"
It is humiliating to have to confess this conceit ...

Just like Peter, my dark side gets left behind, and it takes effort to restore my shadow.
Creating the online persona takes active work, whether in 2nd life where self creation is overt, or on a blog space. There is still work in constructing as well as in deleting and hiding the unintended.
So in my blog I have blogs that never see the light of day, but saved as drafts they maintain thoughts, and chronology for me.
The shadow.
The stuff that would be unwise to shout in a lecture room, the stuff that would be stupid to have in a cv.
While tripping through delicious blogs I tripped up on thoughts on the less intentional profile

The unintended profile can publicly display my predilection for what I save, whether its music or websites or articles or my reading (self conscious and belatedly I note the trashy murder mystery is not listed in what I'm reading)....delicious puts some of me out there, but is it a part i want?
I find myself thinking twice (or more) about do i put this in endnote or in delicious... such as revolting articles involving a darker side of text or social media...
The intimate feeling created between myself and my laptop is deceptive, if i choose to hit post, a part of me is in the public domain.
I found myself surprized by the updated bubbl.us mindmapping tool, a work in progress. But a visible one. A widget so I should have known it would remain current...I embedded it in a blog, now i need to be careful about what's in; whats out.
I was surprized by my weather pixie dressing herself with logos in my blog, but i also found myself editing out names of logos that i have a problem with...
So, do I deidentify myself? or create myself deliberately without a shadow?
The foucodian panoptican is fully functioning here.

actor net working

Using bubbl.us, thanks to a link on mindmapping and tracing connections on
mashable.com
A piece of free social software that lets me trace connections. Posting this edition, lets me demonstrate the starting phase of data collecting post ethics, in this research performance. You can move it to centre it, increase by zooming in... My posting it is more to keep a chronology going (as per Latour's suggestion of notebooks for different purposes).

How to do something worthwhile and have fun doing it

Unashamed advertising.
"Needed 400 volunteers for Coca-cola Christmas in the Park!!!"
Youthline is NZ s most recognized help site for young people. Its also best in terms of having a social life while having a social conscience. If you're keen to donate but can't afford it, try donating time...
8th Dec Auckland. Contact •
YOU CAN NOW REGISTER ONLINE AT www.youthline.co.nz
Any queries to xmas@youthline.co.nz or phone Caleb Butcher 09-361- 4167
or
If you still send christmas cards: $10.00 a pack of ten,
cool, blank inside, by leading designers: P Money, Trelise Cooper, Jon Bridges


http://shop.youthline.co.nz/shop/

feeling used

Insidious use of product placement on my blog!
i just noticed the product placement on my weather pixie today, apple logo on her tshirt and carrying, i think, a clamshell apple ibook. Just as well i like apples, but am still feeling mildly used....
If other companies i do not have an affinity for, start dressing her I will have to revisit our friendship.

evidence based practice

And where can i get some?
I am finding it hard to move on.
The day job has a mountain of marking, the family juggling has my mum in hospital after a fall and after a further fal while in hosp, a broken hip. The PhD would benefit from some uninterrupted dedicated thinking and data collecting time.

Meantime I have had reason to revisit my ethics application using the NEAF Australain system.
4.2.9 (c) The research aims to benefit the category of children or young people to which this participant belongs
The target group for Youthline is young people aged 14 years to 24 years. The research aims to benefit young people who access Youthline counselling involving text messaging, message board postings or email.
The purpose of the research is to investigate the use of text messaging, message board postings and email for counselling so that there is a better understanding of how these services are received, as well as provided, and to inform the shaping of services to best meet the needs of young people. There is currently no evidence base for practice in the provision of text messaging for counselling. There is no research in the transformation of a telephone counselling agency moving from verbally mediated counselling to include the use of txt and text mediated counselling. There is no research in the transformation from verbal to text mediated services of a telephone counselling agency whose target group is young people. There is local and international research identifying txt as a predominant mode of communications for young people (BBC News, 2004; Joyce & Weibelzahl, 2006; Statistics New Zealand, 2006).
The proposed research is responsive to having services shaped by and for young people. Requiring parental consent for young people has at times hampered research into adolescent health and is described as unethical when it is a barrier to participation, research validity, and improving health outcomes in response to research findings (Dagmer, Sanci, Patton, & Sawyer, 2005; Renzetti & Lee, 1993; Sanci, Sawyer, Weller, Bond, & Patton, 2004). To deny the participation particularly of young people who are estranged from their parents, or who are wary of parental involvement, denies an evidence base for practice that could result in improvements to health care as a result of the research.
There is no other group that the information could be obtained from.

Just sometimes, having an evidence base for practice feels incredibly important.

how (not) to get funding

I didn't get to make a difference, the funding application fell over.
Things I learned:
1. It does help to make the application stand out, TXT gained attention
2. Saying you would do it with or without funding doesn't work.
3. Size matters, Starlings law: the bigger it gets the harder it is to squeeze.
Should have known this; its easier to love puppies, kittens, babies...pheromone quotients are high for fledglings.
3. Philanthropy likes desperation.
4. Decisions on funding endeavours for youth should be made by youth.

Moving on:

Research possibilities in social networked spaces

Research possibilities in social networked spaces is an area i have been thinking about with regard to my own study on texting, internet message board postings and email counselling. In gaining ethical approval and in not wanting to damage an online community in any way, i am looking at self reported experiences rather than actual client experiences. I was beginning to get quite despondent about the research validity and reliability. When research occurs how do we know that everything involved is not contrived, if I want to study handwashing then self reporting is obviously going to give a different measure than observations. The presence or absence of reality was getting torturous. Sherry Turkle and Donna Harraway have convinced me that the borders of reality/unreality are blurred. I began to consider that all research is contrived to some extent, it all leaves a footprint, alters the events.... and then i began to think so the best i can do is virtual research in a virtual world. If i were an ethnographer in 2nd life then i might have observations, but again is it of any value, can it be useful for others in a terrestrial life... Fortunately some reading got me out of this funk. Bruce Mason's article Issues in virtual ethnography reminded me of actor network theory (as if i could forget....but had!) Latour says: follow the actors. So whether they are in this reality or a virtual one doesn't matter ....trace the connecting. Its of no real issue inside of ANT as to whether its a real person- its an actor, just stay with the actor in or out of whats called reality, trace the connecting through cyberspaces.
ANT is described in similar terms to a CSI programme, trace connections, let the evidence speak, doesnt need to be human (or a live human...) to be given voice. So I thought i would check out the soon to be released CSI that traverses 2ndlife:

In my second life

Phoebe, despite feeling chronologically aged in this environment, can now manage to make and stack bricks like a toddler. I dont know if anyone has studied growth and development in secondlife, but i seem to be going through phases i last went through decades ago, learning gross motor movement before fine motor movement... I think I'm now in a stage best described as 'parallel play'. I can even dress myself!
In an extreme makeover Phoebe got the harjuku look she had been dying for:

new media, new literacies, new teaching and learning

More on holding on and letting go.
There are so many questions raised in using social software in education; its huge, grows and evolves daily... so even getting a handle on what it is, poses difficulties.
Sheldon Kopp suggests, even a stone can be a teacher.
And just as surely social software can too.
But its about how and about the purposes and about having a match between the means as well as the ends in education.

In the brilliant discussion that I could only access because of socialsoftware, Sandy McAuley on the edtechtalk new literacies media panel at UPEI Sept 29 suggests any integration of new technologies should consider:
1. What problem is it trying to solve?
2. Whose problem is it?
3. What new problems are going to be created with the solution proposed?

I like the thoughtfulness here, there are no solutions or evangelizing of rightness or wrongness in the use of social software or of Web2.0 in teaching, just a thoughtful regard for whats involved.

In applying this to my research, the integration of txt for mediating counselling, this suggests looking at who wants it and for whom does this generate a problem.
Young people seem to be wanting it, txt seems a preferred means of communicating for this group. This might be cost driven, might be ego protecting, might be something else, but seems young people esp expect to be able to engage in this way and as a first choice.
Whose problem is it? Organisations that work with young people and especially organisations whose service is primarily communicating with young people, youth counseling by a telephone agency is obvious but also teaching and learning places ... Universities who want to notify students might consider greater use of this medium. For example, student support 1st year experience team contact students who haven't met assessment deadlines. (A new funding model with an emphasis on student success makes us more attentive to students not achieving). When its done by mail this tended to add a week to the drawn out process of not having got work in on time and didnt always get to the person anyway. Then it got a bit faster using email; but there seemed an increased likelihood that those most needing of the message were also most likely too be transient and least likely to have fixed abodes or Internet access. T'da the cellphone, these ubiquitous devices are everywhere. Seems every student has (at least) one (need to do a quick survey at my next class).
The problem involves evolving the services. Sometimes this is easy as with the example here, sometimes its about getting others (particularly the 'grown ups' to think txt friendly).

This leads to the next question, what new problems? This area is the unknown, some things we anticipate, some things we don't, and how do we alter as what we are altering alters us... This is the main area of my study. It (IT) alters counselling, can it still be counselling when its the 160 characters or less fitting the face of a cellphone?... Does it alter the people involved, does it assist those already socially avoidant to remain socially avoidant? .... Might it increase the likelihood of prank "ph calls' when the 'caller' is not seen or heard....But it may also decrease these as the traceability is more overt with numbers visible...
Bottomline, is it seen as useful by the target group- whats there experience, their hopes, does their use increase, decrease....Does it assist in making connections with a group who might not otherwise...

Dave Cormier suggests the social software opportunities create alterations in scale. He describes teaching in a room of 20 vs teaching when there is potential to connect with the world; a class with access is different. The boundaries have gone, its no longer me and the students, its the world. He takes this a step further suggesting the production of what is knowledge similarly alters. And that the transparency of learning also increases.
AND So does the transparency in teaching. On blackboard or whatever, what i do becomes highly visible. I'm feeling a Foucaudian panacopia coming on so it must be time to let go ...
Will Richardson idenitifies that maybe schools & learning institutions can't manage this. It is too much the square peg in the round hole... that schools cant change this much, letting go of the control of learning being be too much ...

So back to Leunig,
holding it gently ...
knowing that letting go will be just as important.