Sticky Notes

Many a poignant blogging retort has been lost to the machine driven exercise of communicating with others in a less-than sticky web 2.0 cipher laden conversation space.

Blogging for me is two fingers most of the time. One finger on the keypad and the other middle finger making rude salutes.

I do commiserate however with Nancy White as she struggles to get words in edge ways via my comments field. To thwart the discontent personally, I've taken to the precaution of coining "flow" on the blogging run via wordpad. Saves on the swearing and dissapointment.

I also take Nancy's comments very seriously.

".....If we can't figure out how to constructively interact, our chances of learning decrease. What would happen if Edna put a pause on all the challenging discussions and started an open one. Just to see if the patterns changed? "

Constructive conversation befits those able to say something. If EDNA chose to have an open conversation then I do believe the less-than constructive elements might well have nothing to say.

The patterns of behaviour exhibited by contributors may well change. There may well be a greater depth to the conversation and the saccarin-sweet congratulatory and debilitating "mentors" could go back to bean counting.

If the conversation isnt opened up a little then I'm just going to be dissapointed cause' there sure is a lot more to learn this side of the Moodle.

Nancy White : Leigh Blackall

As WP would have it the use of too many <> tends too cut your post off and renders you mute.....perhaps that's not so bad but it is frustrating. I found the same thing with Edublogs hence back to Blogger.

I tried giving some feedback via LearnOnline to Nancy White's comments so here goes in this space in reply.

> On the more optimistic side, there is a ton of productive interaction happening in many corners of the net, on many platforms. It just doesn’t get the press, nor does it twinge into our emotions so strongly <

Nancy White gives us ( what would otherwise be confused with as complaint ) a positive and a way forward in all this confusion with regards to EDNA groups.

Perhaps the EDNA groups is in effect dead in as much as we are able to diversley connect worldwide via our online spaces and places we so liberally sprinkle across the net anyway.

I do feel however that we need to somehow convince the newbies and the forum gurus that bunching comment in threads is like making a quilt in the safety of a basement, devoid of the light of day and as patternless as military parade before all out carnage.

Humans are indeed funny creatures Nancy and I instinctively feel that the EDNA groups with all it's good has been poisoned beyond the moderation duty of a select few public servants.
We need to encourage those who construct and defent these forts to build their own networked, open digital identity and do away with controlling the flow of others. Hmmmmm.....thats sounds about right really if I do say so myself.

Merry Xmas and a happy and safe transition into the NEW Year.

All in the spirit of entertaining positive possibility - even if we do occasionally become a little cynical and jaded.

SL : Sex, Skin and Content

Secondlife, like a host of other virtual web wide engines, offers its inductees a tantalizing range of possibilities beyond the sweat and grunts of basic humanity. With the swipe of your global credit identity you can become whomever you wish to be.

In fact, come to think of it, maybe that's why the bank Manager refused my recent application for a personal loan ...... perhaps.

On reflection, we can kill off our characters in SIMS and blow away a billion ro-bots in the library of Halo so why would would educators looking for online spaces and places of educational merit avoid the ethereal promise of Second Life ?

Recent criticisms both in the media and in the ranks of the education profession that I sometimes posit to keep include reference to the perception that SL is a shallow paddle pool of hyper-modernity, an evil sex based skin-and-no-content dumpster, a hollow composite of i-reality interspaced with the ugly renditions of personable pyschosis.

Those defending their presence in SL may also like to consider the mess they left back here in First Life before they shut themselves up and paid their web provider and landlord three months credit in advance. Sunbaking on the balcony and exercises bikes may just get you through health wise. We here in FL welcome a dinner with you sometime, provided you dont have other priorities to massage.

For others it would seem SL is their home - first - then the world that their bodies may frequent within comes next complete with the interspaced and odd need driven desire to emulate procreation coming soon after the need to down cold coffee, fresh pizza and ....heaven forbid......talk with real life humans.

After all - it can all be delivered and one never needs leave their physical home. Both the practice of pro-creation and the pizza.

Personally I have no objection to anyone battling their realer-than-real first life addictions, taking to simulation to test the waters of their gloss in the safety of corporate exclusivity. In fact the whole merit of Secondlife may actually be ( heaven forbid that we admit it ) the educational promiscuity and evil kink that we so often pretend is absent from imparting curriculum and pedagogy in First Life.

I'm curious however as to why SL is so damn quiet. Where is all the killing and racism and disease and plagues ? Where can I visit a drought, visit a hospital filled with writhing burnt bodies struggling to remain afloat ? Dogs with fleas ?

Letters from the CSA demanding payments ? Gardens that die if you forget to water them ? Have we no domain for thinking beyond this morbid, boring world that our bodies frequent when it came to considering architecture in SL ? Buildings ?

Universities with seats and rows and all the other bullshit we struggled so hard to escape as we played composite value in web 2.0.?

Lets get beyond the niceties and chit-chat of who owns what and who's controlling who. It's a known fact that the web 3.0 engine of today is not owned by anyone particular entity other than the US military. The simulations of today will be the killings of tomorrow.

Your CPU may be the real issue.Mybe it's time to gear yourself up. Perhaps it's time to get more bandwidth and forget the hard-drive.

Strange .....I havent yet seen any student have their mouths taped shut in SL yet. Nor have I been able to convince my employers that posables are the best thing since sliced virtual bread.

Oh......Just because I dont identify myself doesn't mean I'm not present in SL.

You may well be sitting on me.

Christmas Number Crunching

image : ofesite

I live in the 711th apartment in my street.

We are in the 7 th building and I will be living in this location throughout 2007.

Given that I'll be turning 37 early next year it would be fair to reason that my numerical affiliation resonates with the number seven. Upon reflection, this will be the seventh major relationship I have been in since I turned seventeen.

This will also be the seventh abode that I hath dwelt in Sydney, Australia.

I think I'd better give up at that point otherwise my language will digress and I'll be trying to fight off the 666's. Oh for fecks sake.........somebody reckons I'm a 'two' which reads as ;

".........The keyword in your nature is peacemaker. You are extremely sensitive, perceptive and a bit shy. These qualities are both your strengths and your weaknesses, for while you posses enormous sensitivity to your feelings and those of others, the same sensitivity can cause you to hold back and repress your considerable talents. Sensitivity and perceptiveness are among your many fine qualities.

Because you intuitively know what people want or feel, you can be extremely diplomatic and tactful. You are also patient and cooperative. You work well with groups, and somehow find a way of creating harmony among diverse opinions.

You enjoy music and poetry, and require a harmonious environment.

You have an eye for beauty, and a fine sense of balance and rhythm, you have healing capabilities, especially in such fields as massage, acupuncture, physical therapy and counseling. However, your sensitivity can also be your downfall. Your extremely delicate ego bruises easily, and you can make too much of someone else's thoughtless remarks or criticisms.

Because you are easily hurt, you may tend to withhold your own thoughts and contributions to the matter at hand. This can cause you considerable resentment and anger. Too often, you run from confrontation to avoid a battle. When you employ your considerable inner strength, that will give you the courage to use your own personal power when it is needed.

You are a sensitive and passionate lover; your perceptiveness makes you aware of your partners needs and desires, which you are able to fulfill with almost magical delicacy. However when you feel you have been mistreated or jilted you can react with devastating power, sometimes using personal criticisms vindictively.

Your awareness, diplomatic skills and organizational talents give you the ability to bring off difficult tasks. You willingly step out of the limelight to facilitate the success of your endeavor. In truth, you are often the power behind the throne. However, you often do not receive the credit you deserve for the fine work you've done, or your role is underestimated, and your accomplishments overlooked. Rather than brood over your losses, you need to confront those who make less of your contributions, and stand up for your accomplishments.

You need security and comfort, quiet settings, and the company of loved ones. You are a perfectionist when it comes to your home and work environment. You have excellent taste, which is obvious in your private surroundings. You are a fine companion and posses a good sense of humor. Friends seek you for calming and peaceful company. You are a safe haven or other sensitive people who recognize your compassion and understanding. When you have found your niche in life, you have all the talents and intelligence for great success. Seek out work that allows your sensitive nature to flourish. Be the glue that binds others together.

Counseling, teaching and healing are the areas that offer you success and satisfaction. You are also uniquely suited for a career in music, architecture, advertising, agricultural design, fashion, repairing watches and other fine machinery. Politics and law allow using your considerable talents in negotiation and problem solving............"

Commiserations for the CogDogs.

Keitai

image : keitai

A while ago I somehow got entangled in a little stoush with this talented outfit over who knew what about the internal politic of an organisational nightmare I'd rather not mention.

Within Stephanie's blogroll I came across the JanChipchase site which contains a post which best sums up mobility and it's social accord without the usual melodramatic educational bunfight.

What happens when people share an object that is inherently designed for personal use?

What a damn fine posit.

• e-learning as a shared mobile and networked learning experience
• mobile phones as an artefact of the always-on-classroom
• the pervasive mobile marketeer

Apart from visiting my father in hospital, moving house and getting prepared to see the FLNZ's groups in New Zealand with Jane as well as get prepared for the Parrngurr trip I've been trying to re-organise the mobile section of my Bloglines and re-position TAFE NSW work back into it's own server.

I'll be pointing to it from now on rather than life-balancing it. Lets hope one day I find an employer that will allow me to do both.

Most likely that will not be here in Australia.

Teaching Generation Zed

Graham Wegner's blog is rejecting my comments so bugger it......it can go here.

Hi Graham,

Like Darren I havent really paid much attentuion to numbers and figures and who interprets what where. I've looked at my AwStats for my alexanderhayes.com site and notice that my Flickr images have tripled in three months.

I've also noted that the idiot that keeps sending me spam related to penile erectional dysfunction has backed off probably because they have realised I've got two kids and far too many girlfriends - nah - kidding - just the one's enough and a great woman at that.

Seriously, and as I've stated before....just the very act of you blogging and speaking your mind has inspired me and is of great importance to me. I do hope you'll make some time to consider coming to Hong Kong to discuss these points and in the mean time remebering that most of what we say will be obsolete within three months however having said it means that it will remain in peoples conciousness for ever.

Imagine if we hadnt said anything ( in our blogs ) and won the prize ?

I suspect that Edublogs awards are not the prize at all.............. rather what we live right here (hear) and now online !

:-)

It would seem that educational settings in Australia have still not rid themselves of the "smackaroony" brigade from yesteryear particularly when you can entertain yourself with what this loony got up to with a bunch of school kids in what is otherwise a progressive learning environment.

In fact, musing on my experiences of high school I recall being caned three times on each hand and one large clout to the back of my head for hiding a pencil sharpner that would have otherwise been attached to the desk at the front of the room. My fingers bled, my anger rose and every door in B-block was superglued shut in protest the following morning.

I'm not alone in the ways in which the world has changed since computers first raised their shiny heads in educational settings.

A colleague recounts three favourites of his schooling staff;

a. The knuckles- a rap over the head with his knuckles
b. The Oxford drop - The pupil was asked to hold his head 10 cms above the desk. A large Oxford hardback was then dropped on head............... double whammy!!!!
c. Excalabour sword prop rubbbed over nape of neck

Recounting what we got up to at high school it's no wonder we chose critical discourse units as soon as we hit university and upon graduation from teaching studies moved into the likes of criminal justice and social web building just for kicks.

Oh well........we must ensure that things progress and that the tensions that exist in our childrens educational settings best befit the world they are moving into.

WikiVersity : Just What is Flexible Learning ?

Is Flexible Learning just an Aussie term for online learning or does it have a wider resonant value internationally ?

Leigh Blackall has invited me today to consider what scenarios exist online that I can point to , particularly those of digital story value that could contribute to this discussion and creation of content and links - well mate - here's a begining ...... digitales courtesy of Robyn Jay.

I'll be back to add things as I can amongst all else thats going down at the moment including a hospitalised father. Priorities, priorities.......

Annotable Podcast Solution/s

It's amazing just how far the information web has come now that we channel surf less and stumbleupon more information that's of interest and of importance. It's of more importance though, how much our peers and colleagues influence the way we web-wander.

Dot Waterhouse remided me of something I'd heard of at some drunken educational podcast gathering this year which pretty much answers what we were rambling on about over at FLNW with Rose Grozdanic and Marg O'Connel.

Annotable podcasts.

It's amazing how one small snippet of information buried too deeply in the recesses of the informational crevasse could have changed the conversation so markedly - if only we could have hauled it up for greater scrutiny.

The greater context of the conversation is probably best framed as;

Stephen Downes Konrad Glokowski Teemu Leinonen Barbara Dieu Stewart Cheifet Sean FitzGerald Steven Parker Alexander Hayes Jo Kay Leigh Blackall Rose Grozdanic Michael Coghlan John Eyles Bronwyn Hegarty Dawn Coburn Marg O'Connell Mark Northover Stanley Frielick Russell Butson Artichoke

Lets hope the BBC release the web 2.0 free for all web version for us all to share.

Suspect not.

Exploit Best-of-breed Niches

Your so popular. We all love you.

You inspire us. We think your amazing especially when........your being authentic.

The YOU is getting bigger and we are getting richer because of it.. We are growing bigger than MySpace into YourSpace. Mark my words............the YOU is the next big thing. Afterall, we can all let go of our frightened selves now that we've solved the Iraq war and buried our souls into web distractions such as sex saturated SecondLife.

I'm left scrambling for some sense of virtues after digesting what SMH chowing down on Time says .

More dribble ..........

- "It's about the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes," said Grossman, Time's technology writer and book critic.-

Dont believe me ?

Why not punch in a few serious virtuous acronyms yourself and see what transpires.

You.

Another speck in the eye of the billion headed media beast.

More Mud Cakes That Stick

Ok......I've refrained enough dont you think ?

I've given it time and I've taken time out from what is otherwise a powerful and beautiful community of knowledge now infiltrated with a few idiots with little to say and much to vent.

I was wondering whether it was me that was provoking such heated discussion about mlearning and elearning and so on but it would seem not. The same filth that is sticking to the conversation threads of EDNA threatens now to tear the very fabric open to the world and perhaps it 's about time to throw away the keys so to speak.

Ive let myself be human enough to say.....

".....As the conversation trickles into a stagnant quagmire about the value of keeping idiots entertained in EDNA groups I've sown the following into what would otherwise appear to be a shit-slinging flame war between self confessed lurkers, stalkers and egotists intent on raising hell for moderators and sniggering slyly behind their own locked down competively advantaged privately codified snipe sites......"

I've self moderated the above into what I've composed below and interspaced this as part of the EDNA Networks thread.

> Can you imagine what this ( unticking the locked key) would mean not just in terms of equitable access to publicly funded conversation but to the very infrastructure of knowledge sharing and "management" ?

By unticking the closed box in Moodle perhaps and throwing away the keys we may rid the shallow and self congratulatory or egotistical elements of online interaction which can threaten to destabalise an online community and we would have a widely distributed and self monitoring and self moderated community of conversation which drills deeply into the core issues and strengths of whatever the topic are.

Or ....perhaps but unticking the closed feature we may in fact be destabilising an otherwise cogent and positive conversation due to the nature of the client group involved........picture an online group with privacy concerns ie. refugees who face persecution or justice groups with a younger population who are only begining their journey into online identity.

It's a tricky decision. It's also a decision about letting go of having "chiefs" and gate-keepers and so on.

Yesterday I spoke with a colleague about the power of simply sharing bookmarks via del.icio.us. the reaction was astounding......I needed to physically step back from the flailing limbs and gesticualtions.

I believe it's about our ability to let go and let the world in to our soul. It's about challenging the social preconditioning that we were imbued with as we graduated from secondary and tertiary institutions that charged us for their own form of socialisation............I learnt more about my own 'schooling' as a tertiary graduate than I ever did within the confines of the faceless museum of electronic interaction out of it.I'm still paying the price for electing to defer my fees and yet without the oppportunity I'd be digging holes and mining souls and siring more foals than was needed.......I've been accused of worse things than that.

In a networked world of social software, by using connections and conversations as our base of core tools, we receive a global education that is sustainable, interoperable and with life-long community building capacity. The competitive advantage of an open conversation is that it lets your network out.

The parochial then becomes paradoxical........your digital identity is your best friend not your worst enemy.....or so it would seem. We are at the crossroads of elearning holding a pack of logins and passwords looking sheepishly into the looking glass of the future.

The decision to open Sloodle is pressing and we must not fear it's affect on our children and learners as they are already immersed in it. <

Your thoughts ?

Should I take a strong dose of green tea and retire to the hammock or would a racous night on the piss on a Friday night be more fruitful ?

Your call.

:-)

Pop : To Multiply

Before the leaves in the IP forecourt turn from brown to poo I'm still seeking ways to entertain the thought that one day we may rid ourselves of needing to continue to be free-basing our learning experiences as public servants in the dumpster filled web 2.0 online alleyway.

I generally find myself here in this corner of my mediated electronic existence.......... inebriated, emotionally bereft or at times seeking solace from a world fill with educational corridor corner cams, Sloodle's and Vox mania.

Propped up on elbows buried under my doona cover here, I reflect on a week ( seems like a month) of afflictions delivered as medical mystery......... fingers aching from email overload and for some reason a swag of invitations to speak candidly of life as a Project Officer.

It is (for me) a time of great emotional upheaval , a time where I contemplate what and how I'll employ the years of art training I so heavily indebted my children with. Should I be mixing my experiential palette or should I be continuing the voxpopping ICT's and burying more conversations in Moodle and cocking my leg to appease the strategic up-managing malaise ?

Looks like I'll need to do both if I'm to pull myself out of this financial mess. And now for some politics on a local front.

Australia seems awash with a conservative media politic, red necked mayhem ( die you red headed fish shop calf of cows cold) and turkey slapping just in time for Christmas. Beazley's no longer a candidate for President it would seem and my own bum crack is recoiling in horror at the thought of learners denied even the slightest hope of building their own PLE's in peace in the new year - and yes by fuck they are adults and able to make their own bloody minds up. I read somewhere that he was too nice - a real no-no if your to get anywhere in politics it would seem.

Speaking of politics, I still cant see any web 2.0 looking VTE solution for learning object creations that are not DEST indebted or have I got that wrong yet again ? Share ? Point ?

Heaven forbid, this week I was even offered a position as a VTE service nazi in power of the TAFE NSW ICT 'yes' and 'no' button . That would have been quite a hoot. In fact I could have even banned 'users' having access to Flickr because after all it's a porn site isn't it ?

To Vox or to Multiply ?

Here at Blogger I have the choice as to whether Google drills my dribble and then recontextualises it and spits it our for my readers to get distracted by it. ..........I still consider it the best option for making something do what you think you created yourself.

Given that everything we've created this year with our adult learners is blogged or felched out over at some wikispace somewhere it would only seem fair that we now contemplate build a MySpace or running with the SixAparts.

After all I read overheard in the ICU waiting room that an American Indian community have gone Hard Rock and are intending buying Manhattan back - burger by burger.

Cant beat them ?