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 :)

useless technology, new and improved...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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