Out of Left Field

The dream comes again, but this time

there's a space for me, and the powerman

listens.

I hide my nakedness and offer

the one I fear for

as champion.

I am afraid

I am required.

technorati tags:poem, dream

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Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest

If you like

• the bar scene in the original Star Wars,
• the tragic musical monster of Phantom of the Opera,
  
• Jedidiah, the Gyro Captain in Road Warior,
• Johnny Depp channelling Keith Richards,
• Orlando Bloom's cheekbones,
  
• Keira Knightley's feistiness,
• a fantastical plot,
• lots of explosions, and
  
• nasty villians,

and you don't require

• characters with depth, and
  
• a meaningful plot,

then this movie is for you.

technorati tags:Pirates, Dead_Man's_Chest

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The New Social-izing

The online culture is socially-driven, but it's a different kind of socializing. In some ways it's a million Speaker's Corners, where some have megaphones of varying amplifications, and some speak (write, record&play) in a soundless chamber.

The aggregate is beginning to have power, even though many individuals may not. Chris Anderson, in the large megaphone he is editor in chief of, Wired, writes about People Power and says -

Now we have armies of amateurs, happy to work for free. Call it the Age of Peer Production. From Amazon.com to MySpace to craigslist, the most successful Web companies are building business models based on user-generated content. This is perhaps the most dramatic manifestation of the second-generation Web. The tools of production, from blogging to video-sharing, are fully democratized, and the engine for growth is the spare cycles, talent, and capacity of regular folks, who are, in aggregate, creating a distributed labor force of unprecedented scale.

Wired 14.07: People Power

Yup. This is how we people amuse ourselves, writing into the void for the pleasure of writing to find out what we think. Is it work? School and business have taught us that writing is work, and there are certainly skills and mind-work required (I believe) but is writing about what we want to write about really work? Or is it the equivalent of the social chatting for pleasure rather than the formalized, constricted, purposeful 'social' interaction of  meetings or political interactions?

Previous industrial ages were built on the backs of individuals, too, but in those days labor was just that: labor. Workers were paid for their time, whether on a factory floor or in a cubicle. Today’s peer-production machine runs in a mostly nonmonetary economy.

Wired 14.07: People Power

We like to express ourselves in writing as well as in speaking.

This isn’t amateurs versus professionals; it’s each benefiting the other. Companies aren’t just exploiting free labor; they’re also creating the tools that give voice to millions. And that rowdy rabble isn’t replacing the firm; it’s providing the energy that drives a new sort of company, one that understands that talent exists outside Hollywood, that credentials matter less than passion, and that each of us has knowledge that’s valuable to someone, somewhere.

Wired 14.07: People Power

Yup, even if we don't write/talk strongly enough to be heard individually, we can make enough noise together to talk back to the powers-that-be in a way they can choose to hear. And that's something, I guess.

technorati tags:peer_production, Wired, Chris_Anderson

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Popular Culture: Crazy & The Devil Wears Prada

Here's my current favorite song/video - "Crazy" by Gnarls Barkley - the link is to YouTube and begins playing immediately.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgKUnhCANTY

I enjoy the visuals & the lyrics as well as the music itself.

_______________________________________________________

The Devil Wears Prada - no spoilers

• Anne Hathaway is good at doe-eyed naif-ness
• The boyfriend is mostly one note.
• Stanley Tucci is believable and likeable
• The romance plot is standard, as is the business plot
• The clothes are fairly restrained (for the fashion business setting) and beautiful

BUT

• Meryle Streep is beyond amazing!

I totally enjoyed the experience of watching it.

technorati tags:Crazy, Gnarls_Barkley, Meryl_Streep, Devil_Wears_Prada

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Long time, No Write

My life is distributed in blogs. I have two main blogs, one that is a space to be kind of a PD person, making suggestions about how to operate on the web and informing people about what I have gleaned from my Bloglines collection. Another overlapping one is more academic in nature, aimed at teachers who are interested both in scholarship and in educational technology. Plus I belong to a couple of communities that have blogs, and there's a course blog. Then there's this long=neglected one.

Since last I wrote here, I have retired from college and started teaching occasional courses at university. And today, I just pulled myself out of a contract that I am just not suited for. I feel badly, but I hope I've learned that if my intuition says I won't like something, I should listen. 'Cause my intuition knew, but I used my willpower against my intuition, and that was dumb. As I've now proven to myself, and probably to others.

So here I am, feeling better, slightly poorer, but still in a wonderful place in the universe! Which blog do I use to proclain my psychic news? I think it might become this one.

Plagiarism - in the web world

Found someone plagiarising text for a school-assigned website. When I googled, the student's text was found on at least five other sites. The student used someone else's text word-for-word, but so had others outside the school environment!

We know about peer-to-peer with music and movies, we wink at image re-use, and cut-and-paste is leading to more and more plagiarism. Is intelligent, meaningful, and well-designed content, irrelevant of its sources, the way of the future?

In this new communicative space with its ease of reproduction, what rules are appropriate? And what is the relevance of a source when cropping and altering have been applied?

Keeping Up and Choices

Spent the day reviewing Stephen Downes emails, catching up.

There is so much, and developments are exploding possibilities.

I can't try everything; I have to chose what to play with. Stay with a limited JotSpot, or shift to Drupal? Be serious about using Backpack to plan, or let it drift away? I have chosen to commit to Furl, and it's working for me. FLickr, to a limited degree too. I should start looking at the urls posted by others who have matching urls to what I've chosen - using the social web.

I need to learn more about trackback, and use the Creative Commons.

Never enough time!

No Change

Nothing has changed;
everything has not changed.

Did I not get what I wanted, or
did I not get what I wouldn't have wanted?

Is that rationalization,
the self comforting herself?

And if so, is it self-deception, or
merely constructing a different ending?



Cassandra: Blind and Mourning from http://homepage.mac.com/cparada/GML/Cassandra.html

An MIT Survey on Blogging!

Doesn't take long.

Credo

My Class Wiki

See the new banner one of the students made

Stress - Good or Just Stressed

Why do I find it so hard to plan? I suspect that trying to plan a multi-threaded experience with all the threads in place from the beginning could be the problem.

I'm planning a course with many learning filaments woven into a complex cord that I hope leads students out of a labyrinth into an open space where they can see their own path.

Poetry may be possible again, after so many years.

Solo Images

Solo Images, originally uploaded by Semiotic Explorer.

Or to show you a larger size, as I set up another small tutorial ...

In the Halls of Academe

What are we selling our young? Who are we selling our young to? Is this subliminal seduction with multiple repetions of an act (a suggested act?) at the edges of consciousness - what we almost ignore?

Language and the Web

So I'm noticing this difference in the way my students freewrite. Freewriting is an exercise developed by Peter Elbow where you write without pausing for a timed period, not stopping to think or correct, just steadily writing. It's an exercise aimed at getting in touch with our internal flow of words, (with reference to Vygotsky).

My students not only don't have to be nagged to keep going; they have told me they like it!!!!! Very different from my experience using free writing with students 3 years ago. Plus I have noticed that none of them handed in papers that were shorter than the required 15 pages, and many, if not most, were longer! Another surprise.

After thinking and discussing it with my students, I have come to the conclusion that this is the generation that has been using web writing for social purposes, like they do for talking. They are already in touch with their inner flow of language!!!! Their connection with written language is vitally different in a significant way.

And now this Wired article with someone in Wales noticing a variation of the same thing!

This shift isn't the end of teaching writing. No more than talking precludes learning how to present. There is still much for students to learn if they want to write academic papers or business reports.

When is a Sick Day Not a Sick Day?

So - two days at home, one afternoon nap, two after dinner work sessions, as well as all day, both days. What is a sick day currently?

And why the wool? A metaphor for learning GoLive. How does one learn a complex tool? Where does one start? What thread do I pull out the allows me to follow it into the creativity I seek?

All day, and almost nothing accomplished! Ahrggg!

Gladwell's blink

Only someone who loves reading could have drawn this

I just finished reading Gladwell's blink today. What he says makes total sense to me. It's the scientific, academic information that backs up something I've been (sort of) aware of since I figured out how to write multiple choice tests in high school. I can't remember how I figured it out, but I do remember knowing that I should go with my first (instinctive?) choice, rather than thinking about it. If I thought about my answers, I got lower marks than if I just "guessed," so I "guessed." I remember feeling guilty because my friend Barb, who studied harder, I thought, and often helped me review, sometimes got lower marks. She tried too hard.

I remember reading somewhere, years ago, that if runners ran full out, and at 3/4s effort, that they often ran faster at 3/4s. Same thing, I guess.

And I really like how Gladwell writes, with information embedded in narratives, and descriptions of the people involved as researchers or as examples. He humanizes knowledge.

I was a bit disappointed that he didn't mention Michael Polyani, because I think some of the research, especially the stuff about "implicit" knowledge, was rooted in Polyani's thought.

And it is relevant to teaching. The rules about how to make an improv work were interesting, and I often think that teaching is a lot like performing an improv, and "mindreading" the student's faces to see how it's going over (or rather "in"). The part about Rip and the red and blue team, reminded me of how the rules can be used by people not in the classroom to actually diminish a teacher's skills and abilities. Some people prefer power to understanding and success.

William Stafford's "The Way It Is"

Using Picasa

The frustration of learning relieved by beauty

This picture by Mondrian was uploaded using Picasa2 and Hello.

PRACTICE

Here is a photo I took and, using Flickr, posted here!