unexpected ed adventures

Twitter as an Indian Train
I’m not so sure that Connectivism requires technology and perhaps it can work in other contexts.  That we have a certain amount of interrelatedness (being part of a network) may be enough on its own.  It may be that we can learn through any  f2f or online interconnectedness.  A lot of interesting learning for example I suspect occurs on a train travelling through India.  And while I have been to India, I didn’t travel on a train and these ideas of mine are thus a bit third hand.

Indian trains rarely travel on time and are usually very late. They are crowded and confusing affairs for a westerner.  But for Indians they are a huge source of learning through connectedness.  When a train stops in an Indian village, everyone comes to meet the train.  They talk and gossip with those on the train and in the process learn what is happening with friends and relatives (and probably everyone else) who is on the train or along that particular train line.  The train is the source of news but also the carrier of news.  A particular type of learning (or better described as piecing together the jigsaw of multiple conversations to understand new information).  A contextualising occurs so that new intelligences are formed from many disparate pieces of information.  I am reminded of ideas of the mind as a hologram, that within every cell of the brain, the whole mind resides (which we might extrapolate to within every individual, the knowledge of the network resides).  For those on the Indian train, one doesn’t have to hear every piece of information to know everything that goes on.  There is a process akin to inference or the mathematical principle of induction, or  where a greater whole of knowledge can be deduced from the sum of the parts.  Thus a great deal of learning occurs.

I think Twitter has created a process like an Indian Train.  There are many conversations that occur, often trivial, but which help us learn a greater whole – at least that’s how I use it.  There are those I learn directly from; but can also read into their tweets what is being learnt from (and by) those that they follow.  And thus without having to follow every link or thread I feel my learning is much greater.  Twitter can also work as a filter in that I follow people who, if something new is important enough, they will usually mention it.  I don’t feel I have to follow all the great learning gurus, though I follow some. If one of the important ones I don’t follow says or does something of importance, I’m usually going to find out through the network.

Twitter as information control
Information also (potentially) moves much faster on Twitter than via any other medium and it is interesting to see political commentators and emergency departments using it to disseminate news faster than traditional media.  I also notice that some mainstream and financial media are using Twitter.  Historically those who have control of the quickest form of information transfer, can potentially gain access to the most wealth and power.  Twitter as a business model, might be worth a lot more than we think.

Twitter and esp
I wonder if before all this if information transferal didn’t require such modern means as trains and Twitter.  And perhaps there was not even need for learning by association as Downes suggests,  for learning to occur.  In Australia it is well known that when an Aboriginal person dies, everyone else in the tribe will know, regardless of their location or physical proximity to that person.  As another example, Aboriginal elder Wanjuk Marika in his biography (Life Story, published by University of Queensland Press) describes how later in life he developed the ability to go into an unfamiliar landscape and from it learn and “know” the myths and stories of the place and its people, even if the former tribe of the area no longer existed.  And a third example - Laurens van der Post in Lost World of the Kalahari describes how all the people of the Kalahari tribe, again despite their location, immediately know when a hunting party has tracked and killed one of the much sought after Elan antelopes, their favourite food (and something of a symbolic totem).  I suspect we have lost such abilities of psychic knowing through technology – it’s easier to use a phone than remain in the semi conscious altered state that facilitates such knowing.  But perhaps we can get a glimpse of immediate learning and network knowledge through the speed of new applications like Twitter.

As an afterthought about psychic learning or ESP, I remember as a psychology student having access to the opportunity to one of the few university psychology departments in the world ( think at the time there were only 65 of them worldwide – definitely not a research priority!) which included formal study of Parapsychology as part of the curriculum.  (This was at the University of Tasmania under a brilliant teacher Dr Jurgen Keil ).  Huge research was done (I think during the 1930s) meta-analysing already established large collections of ESP events.  From memory (and I’d be happy to be corrected), one of the conclusions was that ESP events more readily occurred when an incident occurs that potentially (or actually) endangers someone to whom we are related (more commonly received by women curiously enough).  A further conclusion can then be made that learning via ESP more readily occurs because it has survival value for the tribe – if we can learn that someone close to us is endangered, we might be able to act to help save them.  However if a technology can bypass this need (or make it easier) then there is no need for ESP.  Thus over the millenia this ability has faded into the background of consciousness.

So perhaps technologies like SMS and Twitter can awaken us to this dormant form of learning?  Perhaps networked learning and intelligence exists a-priory after all and it’s my hope that the stratospheric rise in relatedness enabled by technology might mediate it’s revival to our modern consciousness.

While it may seem like semantics I feel it would be useful to draw out what might be meant by each term, partly to help develop my own understanding of connectivism, but also to explain why I think the term relatedness is equally useful when describing our online experience.

I like to describe relatedness as an aspect of Eros, which requires I explain what I mean by Eros. Jung referred to Eros as a feminine principle (not so much as eroticism – though that can be a part of it as well). It refers to a preference for feeling, reflection, creativity, spontaneity and relatedness – like a propensity to seek connection with others. Logos on the other hand is a more masculine principle of logic, thinking, discrimination and rationality. Eros and Logos work as opposites or polarities of a continuum and there is a need for balance (and at times mixing) of the two. When one is ignored at the expense of the other then what is ignored tends to force its way into the situation. And what we ignore tends to start “growing in our front yard.” (I have written elsewhere how this rebalancing also occurs with the polarities of introversion and extroversion). In an individual, particularly men, we see this in midlife crises, where compensation for the over emphasis on Logos (as career, ambition, overly goal directed behaviour) emerges as fascinations for younger women, and the consequent relationship challenges that follow. Often it becomes a creative change, literally through an interest in arts, or a more related career change such as becoming a counsellor. Sometimes we see it when in midlife when the man moves to a hobby farm in the country where the Eros is expressed as a kind of procreating with the land through the activities of farming or gardening.

The rebalancing between these polarities also occurs at a collective level and over greater time spans than a lifetime. It could be argued that in western culture we have had hundreds of years of cultural dominance of Logos (and patriarchy) and that we can see the rebalancing of Eros in a number of ways.

Logos itself is not necessarily a bad thing and we have our technological age to thank it for. But as Sir Ken Robinson in his famous Ted talk describes, we may have been “strip mining” our youth for increased logos and rationality at the expense of creativity.

George Siemens in a blog post says it is often suggested that technololgy creates separation (I would suggest that Robert Romanyshyn’s book Technology as Symptom and Dream is a fine example); and argues that his experience suggests that he feels more connected because of technology, through the social media available today. I would suggest that it is not the technology but our necessity of using too much Logos to create it, that leads us away from connectedness to seperateness. This is not usually a conscious process; and what has happened over recent years is an unprecedented (and necessary compensatory) fascination with the emerging social media. Danah boyd attributes this fascination amongst our youth for social networking to a history of increasingly restrictive opportunities of young people to relate or learn how to socialise ( for example increasing the age of legally working to project employment of older people in the depression of the 1930s, or in having a higher than necessary limit on drinking age). The result according to Dana is the explosion of popularity of MSN, MySpace, Facebook and other online fascinations.

I would go further and say that these fascinations for online socialising amongst youth are also the releasing of a compensation from the historical overuse of Logos, towards a new balance of Eros.

From another angle, I have 2 daughters who are fascinated with the new reality TV show So You Think You Can Dance? This show seems to be immensely popular (in the US and Australia) for young people of both sexes, as another compensation towards Eros (this time as physical expression of creativity – with the new dimension of being able to vote for it via SMS). I wonder if Sir Ken is laughing at this re-emergence of dance, which he described as modern education’s lowest priority.

So back to Relatedness and Connectivism. From what I understand of connectivism so far is that we learn because we are connected or related with someone. I experience it (alon with others) as something more as a sociological idea in that the term applies to a situation of our society, while relatedness I think is a better term for our individual experience within contexts of connectivism. Connectivism, rather than being a theory (and I would not want to discount it’s status as such) is perhaps a contemporary phenomena of the collective need for more relatedness, as part of our collective and cultural recovery from excess Logos and patriarchy. We now operate in a context where there is so much more to learn through our relateness with others. And the new technologies are providing the perfect context for this new type of learning to occur.

Having enrolled in the online Connectivism Course with George Siemens and Steven Downes I was wondering if there is anything about these guys being Canadians; and it occurred to me that there might be something of the vision quest related to their intentions (though not necessarily something of which they are consciously aware).  The course is encouraging us to explore what connectivism ( or online connectedness) in education means to us, through a series of blog posts and other online tools that we can explore.

A Vision Quest as I understand it is an native American rite of passage that has crossed into the collective unconscious of many Canadians.  It is where a young man person goes in isolation into the wilderness for a time until they have a realisation of something beyond their normal consciousness.  On occasions young Canadians travelling in Australia have got into serious trouble when spontaneously deciding to start their vision quest by wandering into the outback – a very dangerous (and simultaneously seductive and fascinating) thing to do.  (I’ll be writing more about this in later posts.)

As George said in his introductory video to the course ‘it’s going to be a little bit scary”.  While not looking forward to that bit, I’m certainly looking forward to learning something new about myself and learning in general.

At present I am attempting to collect thoughts on innovation, technology and e-learning and some of the hidden psychological dimensions of our thoughts and efforts in these areas.

Emphasis on resource collection at the expense of collaboration and social dimensions of e-learning may occur in contexts where there is an excess or imbalance of a number of factors. These could include (and are not limited to) excess rationality, overly masculine activities or an overly outward perspective. These activities can occur unintentionally and also have unintentional consequences. The psychological maxim of what we ignore sending roots up and growing in our front yard can apply here.

As an example, e-learning can often happen (or happen better) when social dimensions such as collaboration are included; and we have seen how the prominence and extent of online social networking, as an unwitting consequence of restriction of social dimensions.

The success of including social dimensions in e-learning can be much harder to measure and an overly rational approach to the measuring of the uptake of e-learning may hinder recognition of beneficial activity in this area and affect the quality of learning and social activity itself. In addition technology, although providing a myriad of opportunities for social relatedness, may have its own particular “separating” emphasis on our psyche. More to follow.

I have as a friend someone who is a leading Australian online educator. I have been trying to interest him in blogging without success. A typical scenario occurred recently where I was explaining how through commenting on blogs, a sense of community online can be created amongst a group of bloggers. His immediate response was something like “but then it becomes an exclusive club”. End of conversation.

I haven’t agreed with this view – however there may be some aspects of it which are true. Recently I noticed an educator speaking of their “Twitter A-list” of educators online and it made me a little uncomfortable and wondering if my friend’s observation may be true.

2 new terms have recently arisen – Edupunks and Creepy Treehouse. I am partially attracted to the idea of an edupunk; and in my own alternate impulse named this blog in part after the term. That I might rock a few conservative boats in my field pleases me. I also titled my blog “ notanotheredupunk” because the term could be reductive and overly simplistic. It can separate us, perhaps at times unnecessarily, from other educators. I wanted the title to include a little ambiguity to reflect how I feel about this. After choosing the name I felt regret too – I want my blog to be about much more than this issue. In the end it doesn’t matter what I’ve called it – what matters is that I blog and get better at it.

I’m also not too sure about the term Creepy Treehouse, used as shorthand to denote when proprietary software developer attempts to appropriate open environments into their own systems, as if to attract learners to something that intuitively feels creepy, partly because it crosses boundaries into personal spheres. The example used is Blackboard developing a Facebook application (something I’ve never heard of anyone using by the way). What’s far creepier is the way Facebook makes our info available to advertisers and probably anyone willing to pay.

Whilst the term may be useful as shorthand, Creepy Treehouse may also be a term (used by edupunks and others!) to separate themselves from other educators.

Some of our best web 2.0 educators started out on Blackboard as their first e-learning tool. Perhaps a Blackboard/Facebook application could lead some educators new to using web 2.0 tools to more readily. (As for the learners, they tend to be good at smelling a rat; and will probably steer clear of any Creepy Treehouse unless they have to use it). It’s also not unusual for new tools to find a home in a manner completely unintended by their developers – those of us watching Twitter transform from microblogging into a full messaging system could provide ample testimony to this.

So perhaps there is some truth to what my friend says – that we can unwittingly become exclusionary. We need to consciously keep education open. And I’m going to continue the argument with my friend & continue to hassle him to blog, as he potentially has so much to contribute.

Listening recently to radio 3RRR’s computer show with lots of helpful ideas about free software and a healthy open source attitude. They mentioned an article (Not knowing which one, I did a google search and came up with this one as an example of many) stating that the German Government is having trouble with decrypting Skype calls and that this may create potential security risks for governments. A challenge for goverments but helpful for online counselling?

I checked the Skype website and indeed they do provide encryption for chat.

As far as online counselling is concerned this is potentially advantageous from the point of view of ensuring confidentiality. It may be a challenge for those clients seeking anonymity, however there’s always the option to choose an anonymous user name.

The big advantage is that it brings both the telephone and chat mediums into the one environment. It allows easy adaption for new counsellors, the option to easily move between mediums and the potential for saving time in moving chat conversations onto the phone.

And increasingly we are seeing Skype used for educational purposes. Now all we need is a Skype whiteboard.

I was in a session about e-portfolios and standards the other day run by Allison Miller & Owen O’Neill. While listening I kept wondering how much e-portfolios will materialise in education and was experiencing considerable difficulties understanding what they are. I’d heard they were a solution in search of a problem and am also aware they are re-emerging as a training issue. Allison was articulate (and smart) in her talking about e-portfolios as a concept rather than a particular application – however I wonder if something keeps being reduced to a concept if it will become tangible. And can you apply standards to a concept?

Going back to the old days – what did people do before they had a Resume? Presumably people got jobs because of their relatedness to people and or places – with skills being only part of the consideration. Sometimes we can still get a job this way but the Resume has stepped in to cross the gap of modern disconnectedness, and to convey a description of our skills. E-portfolios look like being a modern extension of this. In emphasising e-portfolios do we unwittingly further direct attention away from the social connectedness that used to be so important for underpinning our working life?

To help clear my thinking I decided to attempt a definition:

e-portfolios are the education about and the adoption of online (or mobile) tools that enable skill awareness, skill promotion, institutional transferability and employment mobility.

Perhaps e-portfolios will never then be a “thing” or an application. Rather they are a set of activities and behaviour; but that’s the psychologist in me speaking again – wanting (or have been unhelpfully trained) to understand everything as behaviour.

Thanks to Allison Miller for stimulating the conversation.