Amy's E-learning and Digital Cultures site

Digital resident vs vistor – a current proposal of revision to the original digital native concept:

http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/3171/3049

Category intersection between economic and digital poverty like to large with a high correlation between the two, of which even visitor status may be misplaced.

Although now we are not tackling age discrimination and assumptions, these new analogies surface different inequalities of access.

MOOCs – queer heterotopias for education

http://www.interalia.org.pl/index_pdf.php?lang=pl&klucz=&produkt=1260885645-910

http://lelandbobbe.com/blog/category/half-drag/

An interesting thought for the day…

Man was made in God’s likeness ≡ God was made in Man’s likeness

Mother Earth emerged. It formed but was not created. Organic development and evolution. An ecosystem. Every entity in a relationship with every other, everything in balance.

Father/God = power, prescription
Mother/Earth = flat structure, equal importance, organic

Can the same distinction be attributed to the MOOC paradigm: xMOOC vs cMOOC – prescription vs natural flow.

Irony in the prescription of interdisciplinary thinking, both for the individual and institution, as by having to actively contrive the thinking between discipline areas goes against the grain of the notion itself.

Should the right to access provisions such as education be competency based, irrespective of species? Is the right to education currently human-only? If so, what happens if a dog is created with human-like competences…

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21788238

It’s my belief that we are on a continuum between male and female. There are people who are hardwired male and there are people who are hardwired female, but most of us are on that continuum and I believe myself probably to be about 70% male, 30% female.

- Richard O’Brien

Education addressing the need of the individual to explore themselves as human rather than an external imposition driven by capital need.

Collaboration – working together for individual benefit

Cooperation – working together for the benefit of the whole

And insecurity of the man. Future vision a carbon copy of current practice just with different tools – oppressive in its closed-mindedness.

True vision – exploring feminist ideals through open-mindedness of engagement.

Using an existing referent to explain a new limits the explanation to the existing parameters of the first entity and what is known. Looking at the internet through the eyes of only that which has been previously experienced, denies the new entity a chance to add value and ‘new’ to our pool of reference.

Looking at education purely through the guise of the current construct, i.e. a physical co-location of 30 people and an activity/content facilitator at the front, causes anything new to be compared to what is known, and thus discrimination to occur; traditional/physical = good, new/online = bad. Whereas if education were taken one step back from, it would be seen that the two are not so different and that opportunities can blossom through appreciation of both.

Perhaps it is our ability to see the differences that causes the discrimination… education is everywhere and we can learn from everything, but our ability to identify the different colours could be hindering us from experiencing more: colourblind/mode-indifference could be a channel to greater clarity of sight.

A pen is like a pencil in as much as it is like a paintbrush or quill – there are similarities and you can better understand these shared properties if a referent is known, yet there are also differences between them that can not be explained as succinctly (if at all) through the terms of the latter referent. A pen is not a type of pencil or visa versa . A pen is a pen; a pencil is a pencil; they share some but not all properties.

If we take the notion of ‘writing’ and blinker our vision to only view the ‘pen’ as the implement for delivery, we deny ourselves the richness of writing experience through different mediums: pencil, paintbrush, chalk, computer wordprocesser… Are these any less ‘writing implements’? No, they are different but used for different effect and function.

Who are we to say what you can or can’t write with.

The internet is underground infrastructure for a world of thematic districts. But where there is a lot more than just busking and movement downstairs – there’s a physically safe but anonymous-to-higher-ground space where people can interact.

So people make their map, chose a colour with which to join the station dots they are interested in and move between stations to reach different thematic districts, moving to the next floor if you wish to meet in person – upstairs also has a transport system of a bus network to move between districts above land. Justin Bieber would be an interesting hybrid of station and district as well as mover between others…

… No, no, it’s more than that and different in its lack of difference to upstairs.

If people are co-locating according to theme and can reach their district via different transport methods, surely the theme is ground 0 and transport method is irrelevant, it is still the same theme and thus community. You don’t have to know everyone in the community to feel a part of it. The district is a spectrum of engagement around the common topic, whereby communication from one member may reach an unknown member due to connections between them of others in the district, e.g. a super cute Justin Bieber fan-made video of his latest song, uploaded to YouTube, shared on social media platforms, and seen by loads of others in the spectrum, but which could also be spoken about at a sleepover which initiates the development of a response video!

So if this is the case, and themes bring people together, maybe themes or communities sit above the communication infrastructure. Maybe communities are like switchboards:

But this flips everything on its head – usually it is the individual who is seen to be making the connections, not the theme or community itself.

It is a natural human instinct to anthropomorphise the non-living and be anthropomorphic of the non-living’s capabilities based on this property.

But maybe we need to revise our view of the world – there are other species and other elements more than just humanity. Without water we are nothing, but we view water in relation to us. We are but a very small element in a vast ecosystem – perhaps if we realised that and vocalised it more explicitly, the fear of the ‘virtual’ would be forgotten.

Micro-ethnographic study of the Justin Bieber twitter community, utilising the twitter hashtag #edcjb for communication of process and study delivery.

Of course words are a limiting form of expression

1. when you lose them you must use more to find them or express the concept sought
2. they are a flat mode of delivery
3. a vocabulary is finite to aid communication with others not able to think what you are thinking, with parameters set by language
4. they are associated with known concepts and ideas

I have been stumped for the last few days, trying to think how best to articulate ‘community’ given the new online sphere and the traditional view of community brought into question – when it hit me – words are great for expressing the known and problematic for the new. New thoughts require new words or new takes on the existing.

(ironically, with this tool in hand, suddenly words became more useful!)

Our notion of community is based on the tangible – physical co-location or even virtual spaces – although what the internet highlights all too readily is the manifestation of one ‘community’ in multiple space – e.g. Justin Bieber Twitter, Facebook, Blogs, society meet-ups – despite the obvious connection.

Yet it is possible to still feel part of a community even if no longer active within in, or never having been directly involved – perception of association.

Take for example a housewife involved in a single 4chan campaign but unable to spend any time online these days because her children’s needs have changed – she may still feel connected to that group as its values still appeal to her, yet should her lack of physical activity on the site perturb her from feeling part of the community?

It’s one of the biggest reasons for alumni faculties for organisations or groups – retaining that connection and thus sense of community, even if never participating in ‘alumni’ activities.

Association becomes even more important (and interesting) when you think about those who feel part of a given community, e.g. parents at the school gates, only by association to someone assigned to that community, e.g. the friend who always walks her dog at 4pm and bumps into others at the gates even though she herself does not have a child at the school to pick up but is so frequently there others feel she is part of that ‘community’.

Community will mean different things to different people – to those within and those looking from outside – and there is no way of imposing meaningful in-group/out-group divides. It is down to perception of belonging.

Association to the theme is also incredibly important.

Mums at the school gates may meet for coffee – same people, different environment, same community.
Fans of Justin Bieber may express themselves on different social platforms but it is their connection to theme JB which is the glue that brings them together.

So a community is an intangible association with others that can manifest in tangible ways, but is also fluid enough to allow community to continue even if the association itself is altered.

I would quite like one word for this… come to think about it, is it unity? hummm….

Online communities, much like the people within them, come in many shapes and sizes. They also appear for different reasons and to fulfil different purposes.

—-

[F] Take facebook as a first example. This was an online site that filled a need for functionality to keep tabs on an ever expanding social network, especially whilst at University. The community was there before but exploded through new functionality.

[N] Forums and notice board facilities for niche groups, e.g. specialist bike part trading or stamp collectors, were also pre-existing of the internet but a loci of focus raises awareness that there are lots of others in that niche and sped up inter-group communication.

[T] Twitter on the other hand is very different – they created a new need (to use the quick-comms facility) and now have a bustling user base of millions.

[B] Blogs are a new twist on an old diary entry, whereby others interested in certain themes raised could stumble upon a fellow blogger and follow their musings.

—-

Quickly thinking about these, they are not as clear cut as they initially appear…

—-

[T][B][F] I would say I am part of the twitter/blogging/facebook communities – I engage with these online mediums. I am part of these user bases.

[T][F] I am connected with lots of other people/organisations, but I would not say I felt a sense of belonging to any online communities within these sites, just to the sites themselves.

[T] The communities I feel a part of trigger my twitter followings – clusters of organisations – rather than feeling my community is on twitter, I use twitter to strengthen my communities.

[N] When I visit forums, I always feel there is a greater sense of belonging, although I do not ‘belong’ to any forum-based communities.

—-

I feel more of a sense of belonging to the internet as a community than the sub-sets within it. I feel like a global citizen more than a resident of the Newington (Edinburgh) community.

However, I also have very few non-internet based hobbies and have always enjoyed my own company. I have never felt a need to be surrounded by others to feel a sense of belonging but have always found it easier to be part of larger communities, e.g. a school, mixing between smaller local groups than to be fully committed to one group completely.

—-

This makes me think personality type could play a role in online communities – not just in the type of communities involved in but also in the perception of community itself.

Often when trying to understand an online phenomenon, looking to the non-online version (if applicable) is a useful tool to start with for comparative purposes later of how the entity has changed in its online guise.

“Online communities” – topic of exploration this week

Task: Find an online community and study it.

Instinctively, I felt I knew what a community was – a network of support, usually coupled with a sense of belonging, of like-minded or similarly experienced people e.g. a sports society or local mother and toddler group.

However, despite using all three terms synonymously in my definition, I had absolutely no idea what made a group or a society or a community what it was and whether there was any distinction between them – a useful definition for choosing an ‘online community’ to analyse.

So I went browsing on the internet to find out what ‘community’ meant…

A body of people or things viewed collectively. – OED (#1)

This seemed to give very little further insight, so I continued my quest…

Community usually refers to a social unit larger than a small village that shares common values. – Wikipedia, “Community”

Two interesting elements here: size and values.

Although I had expected a sense of belonging, the notion of values underpinning a community seems more applicable to certain communities than others. Feminist communities have a very clear values base of equality and respect, with magnetism to such collectives if you share their principle beliefs. However, Geocaching – whereby you hide a box and tell others of its GPS coordinates – seems less ‘values’ orientated and more around a shared interest in active games (although an appreciation for the outdoors could be indirectly linked).

Size was the next thing that struck me – how large is a small village? And when does a unit become too large to be called a community?

Micro- > Meso- > Macro-level analysis

According to social science analysis levels, communities fall within meso-level scales – a fairly large category spanning from a clan/tribe up to a city or state. Using such benchmarks, this formula would make a community between 100 individuals – 10 million in size.

So let’s compare this to some typical online communities: 4chan = 110,000 active users currently (*tick*); Hash House Harriers Edinburgh = 120 members (*tick*); @JustinBieber, twitter account = 35 million…

Errr… that’s enormous… over 6 times larger than the whole population of Scotland :S

So Bieber fever hits Macro-level. Bieber is more akin to a ‘nation’ than a community – Twitter king of a country between the size of Kenya and Sudan.

But has this helped at all better understand what a community is? No.

Size has done nothing but further cloud understanding – a red herring of the non-online world when applied online.

This made me think of the MSc Digital Education Manifesto:

The best online courses are born digital.

Could the same be true for definitions?

Could the constant referral to the non-digital be clouding judgement of a truly new form online?

There may be a common etymological root, but they are not necessarily the same thing.

Interestingly, this seems to be precisely what has happened…

An online facility, such as an electronic bulletin board, forum, or chat room, where users can share information or discuss topics of mutual interest. – OED (#8)

I might be back to where I started but it was definitely worth the (virtual) journey!

Can a person be a community…

And when do fans become community, become religion…

Can a website be a community…

Or is it a collective activity that makes it so…

Does community require engagement to be self-beneficial…

And must you self define as belonging to the entity for an external to deem the collective a community…

Or can community be assigned without knowledge of the participants…

Must engagement be sustained in order to apply and classification predicated on the snapshot or can retrospective assignment be given, despite no current activity…

And can you be part of the community without being observable?

Whilst the world makes noise being busy, a silent community shares peacefully…

http://www.littletravelingbooks.com/

I met one once but chose not to participate that time – when I went back, it was gone.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/bigscreen/tv/episode/b01qxmwp/

Today it struck me… I am a spy gone native, a spy who fell in love with the target.

I started the MSc Digital Education (among other reasons) as a way of improving my understanding and representation of a cohort I had never been but worked on behalf of every day. The was not new to me, I had been a student sabbatical officer of a large diverse student body and so the ability to infer the needs of a group to which I did not necessarily define was fairly intuitive. But these were only and could only be inferences – I did not actually know what it was like to be a distance learner. So I signed up, applied and got in! I knew I was going to really enjoy the course and was really excited to see more of what it was like over the other side of the fence.

But I fell hard – I didn’t just enjoy the course I <3 loved <3 the course!!! I had not realised just how hard I would fall for fully online education methods (although I had an inkling, and had always had an interest in online developments) to the point where I question if I could ever go back to a fully on-campus traditional experience. Now, fortunately for me, this is not the fifth Bourne film, so I do not need to jump off buildings to escape the University from knowing how much I like the course – they are supportive of the relationship – but the readings this week made me view my ‘representational research project’ in a more ethnographic light. I had essentially gone in to a new community to find out how it worked and what it was like to better inform future developments, but had become so immersed in the experience that I have ended up self-identifying as one of the community – the target! Is this true online ethnography? Well, let’s see where block 2 takes me, but shhhhhhhh *it’s a secret!*

http://m.guardian.co.uk/science/2013/feb/17/race-to-create-insect-cyborgs

Do we need invasive surgery to ultimately control the actions of a rat or insect when we can make something fully robotic already?

In a world full of colour, the vibrancy of the visual, it has never been more important to strengthen our visual foundation. Yet with cuts in arts funding omnipresent and national curricula predisposed to regarding visual appreciation as something done in an hour of Art per week, can it really be said that we have full sight of creating a society for the future, as the world becomes more visually stimulating that ever before.

We shop with our eyes.
We eat with our eyes.
We do most things with the visual these days… but we do we support future eyes to grow?

Whilst reading Taylor earlier this week, I was transported back to an olfactory memory during the 90s – a truly revolting BBC Red Nose Day Scratch ‘n’ Sniff book, where every box smelled like the same nauseating and artificial death pit, despite being associated with different environments/things on the corresponding tv show (I think ‘soap’ was the only one that didn’t make me want to burn the book, even though this too could have had deathly consequences!)

For me, this is a pretty vivid memory. I even remember large, brightly coloured boxes with numbers inside flashing on the screen to signify scratching the numbered box in the book. This is definitely a thing that happened. I promise!

However, after a good 30 minutes of searching on Google and only one reference to the event in a forum post, I began to question my own memory. How could no one have taken a picture and uploaded it to Flickr?!

Catching up with Spalter & Van Dam (2008) and Merchant (2007) threw a new perspective on the situation. These articles highlighted how sceptical we are as a culture of visual artefacts – digital pictures can be enhanced and ‘photo-shopped’ to deliver the desired outcome, even if that were not the original image, and it is difficult to know if/when this augmentation has occurred without author reference to the development.

The other side of this opinion is that we have become equally distrusting of anything that has not been digitally captured. Unless someone takes a picture of a unicorn in their front room, it is unlikely anyone will believe them when they recount the event. Likewise, no one would have believed the lady put the cat in the bin if it hadn’t been caught on camera.

We apparently distrust the visual evidence we receive, whilst being incapable of believing anything without it.

On a smellier note, the inability to find a picture of the Red Nose Day S’n'S booklet left me questioning my own knowledge base – without evidence to support the case, the memory becomes as believable as the unicorn – a fragment of my imagination, shared by another 90s engage-er on a solitary forum. Without a picture, it could just be coincidence!

[N.B. this RND event was way before the mobile phone became commonplace, cameras were not instagram apps, and cassette tapes required intervention of pencils or tiny fingers to wind up pre-play!]

Yet these two views are of the same coin – we are now a society more empowered to question. We do not believe everything we hear – on the contrary, we are actively encouraged to question what we do. Information is everywhere, but it is saturation and skills required to source the media-untampered facts. Memories are susceptible to damage, decay, planting, gap filling, general misinterpretation upon recall and thus often of limited value (in some cases) without strong evidence bases of neutral form, e.g. video, pictures, dna traces!

More information makes us question more, even ourselves. I’m not saying I now retract my Scratch ‘n’ Sniff memory, but a few digital pieces of the puzzle would be helpful to try and piece back together the little faith I had!

Every time I see the word ‘literacy’, I think of the ability to engage with and make meaning of the written, text-based, alphabetised language. To be literate in other mediums seems to be not literate but instead something else – fluency of another form. Language in its emergent nature has sedimented this lexeme in our vocabulary with the association of text-only. Is it possible to reclaim the word and broaden its meaning for other purposes without removing the historical trace? Do we need to burn all the dictionaries (or at least the section LIE-LISP) to give the word a new lease of life?

It’s quite astounding how limiting words can be but how fundamental they are today to our way of thinking.

http://www.moneyweek.com/blog/the-future-of-education-62500

In light of Taylor, this article made me smile – $40,000 per annum fees for an immersive educational experience, which one could argue is how education /should/ be, i.e. akin to traditional community learning. Is this the /true/ cost of education?!

http://iowareview.uiowa.edu/TIRW/TIRW_Archive/tirweb/feature/grigar/fallowfield/fallow_field1.html
- Fallow Field, Grigar (2004)

Does prescription more readily yield stagnation than dynamism in ‘hyperlinked’ fiction? Stopping to click disrupts flow and immersion.

Stiegler’s work draws attention to the degree to which theorizing about technology is often polarized between anxiety and euphoria. His response is to refuse to distance technology from life; and to suggest that human individuation and technology have always had a transductive relationship. Our sense of transliteracy is informed by such a relationship.

MOOCs are to education what images are to written communication – a beautiful tool to widen reach and understanding.

It is often said that a picture can say a thousand words, and many have recently joked why use pictures at all! Words, whilst blessed with the ability to conjure vivid imagery and concepts in the minds of reader, are limited by their own accessible promise – if the reader does not know the meaning of the word, the meaning is lost and the words fall short. They are elitist in their accessibility. An image, in contrast, can be enjoyed by all, irrespective of the viewer’s lexical repertoire.

So why not just use images?

Although images enrich understanding, they too are subject to interpretation – the author of the communication may deem a single image the sole component necessary to convey the intended meaning, yet this will be subject to prior understanding of the context (if context at all is made explicit). Take for example the image above – the potential educational metaphor is less apparent when buried within a piles of holiday pictures or on a fishing website! If only images were used, they would require additional information in their profile to be fully appreciated in the intended manner.

Balance is important.

Kress (2005) makes a important point of change, especially in the nature of communication – the build on, chapter by chapter original book format > the hyperlinked, read what you need, dynamism of digital texts. Text has become more accessible. Pictures, format, tone, length… all contribute to improved engagement.

When I first started University, I would come across articles every now and again which were difficult to read. Now, as a fairly competent reader, this was not due to an inability to process the words, but rather to parse the sentences – each verbose section adding nothing but complication to the already tenuous prose. At the time I would think ‘wow, one day, I will understand this difficult concept’ then find another source that said the same thing in half a dozen words, with a simplicity to aid uptake. Who are the former designed for? If your purpose of writing is to communicate, why make it more difficult than is necessary?

The majority of this was status – you wrote in a particular style to impose status in the field. A write of passage (see what I did there!) which acted as an unofficial filtering system for future academics – if you can read and understand it, great you’ll succeed; if not, you’re out.

However, over time through a number of initiatives (including drives to widen access to education and increase numbers entering University) this verbosity is less tolerated – peer reviewed journals (although still stylised and largely inaccessible to the general public) have an appreciation for clarity of expression and new academics are encouraged to get those outwith their field to read their papers prior to submission.

The nature of text has changed – not just the mode of delivery (paper > digital, more images and less text) but the method and tone too. And as a result of these changes, so has the reach of the text – an estimated 2.4 billion use the internet today, which can communicate information to a larger audience than a paper book due to improved speed of information transference.

This made me think more about MOOCs. Their potential is as revolutionary as the Plain English campaign or the internet itself with regards to extending the reach to the general public. Another chip away at higher education elitism. Another way for people to engage with Universities, which in turn improves purpose of an institution – more people connected to actively exchange knowledge with!

MOOCs aren’t perfect and they’ve got a lot to learn but they have potential and that’s exciting!

Networks, my boy, must be two things: one, like a net, they must catch everyone; and two, they must work.
- Prof John Smyth

An app that transforms adult newspapers into child-friendly text and animations has been launched in Japan.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21366825

Is a digital artefact the same artefact if it is republished again at a new time or in a different environment? Is it the same artefact if the original author does not press the re-submit button.

Or is a digital artefact the culmination of thing and context.

Is it even possible to re-use the digital, or does to re-use mean new.

An xMOOC may have multiple instances but each instance is a different entity – it is a different MOOC. The content may be largely the same but the people, the time, the current affairs context will be different, thus rendering every instance essentially different.

A digital copy like creatures of the same species – a ladybird looks like many other ladybirds, until you count the spots.

Although humans are really good at storing information and even better when strengthened by technology, the idea of encoding further information into DNA structures elicits many questions:

- As technological advancements can both inform and be informed by nature, could such discovery help us better understand how information is stored in the brain?

- Could the natural be the new form of the digital? The next step of digital (or digitalised) evolution?

- Will this be the next Bond storyline, where a frightened looking blonde Scandinavian child (running with a stereotype) is protected by every secret service on the planet as their DNA was created as a back-up system for all knowledge known to man, but it went wrong and ‘life’ was accidentally created but although their DNA is equally precious dead-or-alive, the trigger of life is now most sought after…?

Just a thought!

UK scientists demonstrate how DNA could be used to archive digital data, encoding Shakespeare’s sonnets and other information in the “life molecule”.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21145163

An architect in Holland reveals plans to 3D print buildings inspired by the Earth’s landscape.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-2112106

Social networks such as Facebook and on-line gaming are changing people’s view of who they are and their place in the world, says a UK report.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21084945

iPad = digital. Apps = digital. The internet = digital.

A naturally growing buttercup in a school field = not digital. A chair = not digital.

… However, what if that chair has not been hand-carved by a trained carpenter from a locally felled tree and instead is the product of a large factory with automated carving using laser-precision technology. In this instance, the chair itself though tangible in standing is the product of the digital.

And what if it were carved by the carpenter from scratch, unless he was taught through traditional skill transference between generations, it is likely he went to learn the trade – he may have used books, tools and I potentially the internet, both of which are digital to some extent. Is then the chair a product of the digital?

If so, arguably everything could be seen as on the digital spectrum. If not, where is the tipping point? Where does the arbitrary line fall to define when digital/not-digital?

It seems the more we try to retrofit our new age definitions, the more we lose sight of the emergent, gradual process of the digital and its interwoven nature with what is “not”.

… potentially the way we communicate : http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21059611

… and the way we search for information: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21032506

The search engine is a funny one – the ambiguous wording and picture of a baby make it difficult to know whether “photos of friends before 2005″ would find pictures that were taken pre-1995 which feature the friend at a younger stage of development but could have been uploaded post-2005 or simply photos which were uploaded during or before 2005, which may not actually be of the person themselves, instead could be of a tagged image of their children.

For some reason, this made me think of Wall-E:

Although not initially intended, downloading Spotify has made me think about Sterne (2006) and question whether there is a difference between the digital and digitalised.

Whilst listening to the recent ‘most popular’ tracks on Spotify, there is vast array of (or arguably all) tracks which feature ‘digitalised elements’, whereby a song has been recorded (which for the purpose of this initially, does not count as digital!) and then digitally manipulated to create a new sound. These are usually quite distinct from those which have been nurtured from a digital birth – Kraftwerk or Electro Swing for example vs. errrm… Britney Spears though even this is likely to have been born digital… maybe earlier Britney numbers!

[Strangely, the process of reflection has shown even a linguistic distinction can be more of a spectrum in reality...]

The point I was hoping to make initially was surrounding the differences – listening to the top 40, everything became a samey blur of similar sound, with little personality, e.g. generic club music, whereas other such as those highlighted above have a distinct personality. Digitalised suggests a manipulation from an original analogue/non-digital source, whereas digital is digital. Simple.

Thinking back to many of the other readings, these refer to a digital culture rather than a digitalised culture. A digitalised culture would suggest digital intervention (welcomed or not) and digital suggests either a born digital identity or emergent transition into the digital. The process of finding examples of modern-day digitalised songs may in itself support the notion of transition, whereby now we are surrounded by the simply digital.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20902355

One man, alone in the wilderness – time to think, without the constraints of our modern-day world, simply walking like our ancestors from Ethiopia to South America… except for the obvious use of twitter and a laptop for blogging!

On one hand, the use of technology could be seen as a distraction; defeating the object of retracing the steps of elders (although it is very unlikely they did it in a one-er!) – whereas, the other would say this is a unique opportunity for others to learn more about our world, a human experience through one man’s eyes, with technology providing an archive of something otherwise only held by a single individual.

As we see in the readings this week (esp. Bell 2001) people learn through stories and this is an excellent one to tell!

… Much like the day I invited a sofa-surfing nomad in for a cup of tea and he told me of his (far less glamorous) 6 year walk against the system… but that’s for another day!

“There are stories to be found everywhere you look, if you look in the right way”

- Reading Rainbow Remixed

There is education to be found everywhere you look, if you look in the right way – why does education have to be constrained by traditional thought that it can only occur in a formal classroom setting, with a teacher sitting at the front. And why is daydreaming in these settings a bad thing – they might be creating an exciting story, which with a little nurturing could be the next creative writing phenomenon! And surely stories are one of the ways education is most powerfully conveyed – people learn well from the experiences of others, humans are vicarious beings!

“You can be the expert by picking up a book” – Reading Rainbow Remixed

Knowledge is all around us – if we can become knowledgeable by immersing ourselves in this, formal education systems much serve a different purpose than simple knowledge transference.

“The uncertainty, the fear of the unknown was driving him, almost to the point of desperation. He felt as if he was going down a dark stairway, missing a step, hurtling into the unknown and having no idea where he would land.”

― Ken Puddicombe, Racing With The Rain

Why is there such a fear associated with an unknown future – surely to know that your unborn child of 10 years’ future will inherit your nose loses some of the excitement of not knowing?!

A whistle Spanish-based language is being revived in the Canary Islands – such calls can be heard up to 2 miles away. Whereas a mobile phone… may not have signal!