Sunday, March 20, 2016

Dancing for credit.



Let's face it labels are a stumbling block.

I was never a big fan of labels - particularly for people.

We're for ever putting people into categories and then deciding into which box they will go.

Different boxes are given different values.

When that box is your life-raft we need to worry about who is doing the categorising.

"Women and children to the left, men stay on the ship."  

I have been lurking around the edges of Digital Pedagogy Lab's Cairo event.

Am I a participant?

How shall I be counted?

I watched part of a "keynote".

I noted a tweet:


"Hmm..."

I thought to myself.

"Is the instructor the lord of the dance?"  
"Whatever happened to co-choreography?"

What actually is the "instructor" bringing to the dance?

I thought of street dance and went and found an image.


I got a reply to the tweet from Jesse Stommel.

"Hmm..."

So what is key here is the space where it happens...?



So what are these spaces?

I listened in to the Virtually Connecting hangout in which people were talking about:

 "Digital Natives.." (and their death) based on an article which was being annotated in hypothes.is.





"Aghh..."

I thought.


I took a glance at the hypothes.is stream but felt unmoved to contribute

There were a few parts of the conversation which captured my attention.

Someone talked about innovation - about tech disrupting 'traditional' pedagogy.

I worry about the "disruption discourse" particularly as regards teaching.

What is this "traditional pedagogy" we're talking about and for whom does it require disrupting?


Someone was talking about "open" and the need to "scaffold open".

"How on earth does one scaffold open"? 

I thought.


I don't think that "open" is what you scaffold.

"So what is labelled "open" isn't really open at all."

I thought.

It's a label for something that some people want others to do.

"Is it like free?"

I thought.

"Free movement of capital, ideas, information, workers..."

I am not sure.

Labels mean different things to different people.

People gain different things from labels.

People put prices on labels...on tags.


I can put a price on training/choreography/drilling/education to achieve a tag...

Somebody talked about the need for "credit" - "credit" for their "learning."

The reason for needing "credit" concerned gaining money...to live.

For some people, time is money and it requires spending a lot of time to earn a little money.

Someone left a tweet about time.



Is critical pedagogy a conversation for the privileged?

Is critical digital pedagogy a conversation for the privileged?

I don't know.

I thought of kids.

"Are they digital natives?" 

I thought.

My kids dance.

Are they dancers?

They don't need a choreographer.

They follow dancers on Youtube.

Does that make them digital natives?

Kids dance.

Some kids dance in the open.



Is this "open"?

If their dancing appears on Youtube does that make them "digital natives"?

Why do they need a choreographer?

Do you only need a choreographer when you dance for credit?






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