"It is good to love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is well done.”
"It's the greenest spring that I can ever remember. It's just incredible right now. It's stunning. You walk outside when it's sunny and it's like O-M-G! W-T-F! And then there are no words...."
When I share, sometimes others help me to do the thinking which makes my brain hurt much less.
It's more fun thinking together around a campfire.
Back now down to earth..
I was working with a group of five students last week...the others were busy or asleep.
I wondered how many people I may have touched over sixteen years of teaching.
I calculated that it may be 4000 students.
We believe that personal attention is what counts most.
We believe that meaningful moments have great power when networked.
We capture moments in our learning spaces to share openly with others.
We speak together in little groups, we sing, we dance...
Our space is open to others to come to join in.
We invite learners to share our time with us.
Meaningful moments captured may touch others...
We were sitting in those six comfortable chairs that we have in our learning space.
We believe that to have meaningful personal conversations, you must be a small number.
The problem is that we don't only have six students.
We have forty four students with two teachers.
So we need "open" resources and meaningful activities for the thirty two other students that we are not speaking with at a particular moment.
There are times when a video or written instructions or a blog post or having one teacher speak or one artist perform in front of four hundred or 80 thousand students in the Stade de France is absolutely appropriate - Bono does that masterfully.
If that is the case the video or the written instruction or the performance needs to be open to the people - it needs to attract them and it needs to speak to them in some way. (in the meantime one teacher can speak with one person)
In the case of Bono, we feel like he is speaking to us, he is singing for us, his voice, his words, his humanity touches us.
He is also helped by having a large team of technicians, artists and the Edge, Larry, and the other one who never speaks but plays bass.
The large screens and the light show blow Bono up to gigantically megalomaniac proportions.
The Edge becomes Bono's play thing.
We become Bono's play thing as we become putty in his hands:
"Bonjour Paris, Je vous aime Paris, Je pleur pour Paris, Voici ma chambre, Voici ma mère qui est disparue comme ceux au Bataclan"
We are in communion with Bono and the Edge and Larry and the one who plays the bass and doesn't say much and the thousands of other people who hold up their smartphones in the dark and we are one.
God, it feels good for once to feel as one.
How many MOOCs enable us to feel as one?
Alan Levine talks of #ds106, #CLMOOC, #moocmooc and dat #rhizothang.
They may become for some people like Woodstock or U2 in Paris and go on for ever in their imaginations.
I am beginning to question the appropriateness of the term 'elite' to talk of 'popular' 'participants' in this 'networked society'.
Maha talks of the creation of an 'elite of marginals':
"In a cMOOC we are not all created equal. We are all writing in English. We are all expressing ourselves publicly. Two things not all people in the world are able or comfortable to do. Once you cross these two hurdles, you are faced with this: although we can all speak equally (to an extent) we are not listened to equally. Some people will have their blogposts retweeted more often. Some will receive more comments. Some will be constantly thanked and referred to by course participants and facilitators. And this will never be everybody. It will only be a few. A few, possibly, with a certain personality. Those become the elites of the marginals."
Does the attention attracted in terms of retweets, comments etc result in the creation of an elite?
Personality of an individual - does that enable him to access an 'elite', to be identified as elite?
Certainly people who consider themselves, who recognise themselves to be members of an old-established elite might be upset that they no longer capture the attention of the crowd, or of those with real power...
They are becoming irrelevant.
JUST DANCE!
Can't dance?
OK write any crap you like.
If you write crap make it VIOLENT!
If you write crap make it SEXY!
If you write crap make it CATCHY!
WAR PAYS!
People don't want nuanced argument.
give them EMOTION give them DREAMS give them DRAMA
YOU ARE IMPORTANT! (ha ha ha)
If retweets, or comments constitute currency, surely the attention generated by an academic is marginal compared to Rihanna.
Is a digital academic a marginal Rihanna, a marginal terrorist?
Who cares about reading your argument when others can make millions dance...die?
I turn to Wikipedia for a definition of elite:
"In political and sociological theory, an elite is a small group of people who control a disproportionate amount of wealth or political power. In general, elite means the more powerful group of people. The selected part of a group that is superior to the rest in terms of ability or qualities or has more privilege than the rest."
What constitutes disproportionate power in a network?
Is it those who attract attention of the 'small group of people' who don't need to attract a 'disproportionate' amount of attention?
Is it those who might benefit from any activity within a network who constitute the elite?
Is the size of the 'traditional elites' ever dwindling?
Don't we kid ourselves of our vociferous importance?
HELP! HELP!
Doesn't the market govern education?
Is digital literacy really of importance or the access to the first click?
Viewed from a powerful drone perspective aren't we all just fucking ants?
Oh dear they killed an academic.
Shit they blew up a ruin!
Who benefits most from Gang nam style?
Are digital academics bit part players in a wider play to get people (in Africa) to dance to the same tune?
I hear you ask. Tables, in Latin, didn't you know?
Weren't you paying attention either?
I remember that.
I was just off on Google looking for the vocative case (as one does), and I fell upon Churchill.
Yes that Churchill, the one in the war.
Winston's message to Latin teacher.
I can't remember if I had fallen upon him before. "What?"
His story about Latin.
Winston's story,
I am sure you'll like it, as much as mine and I will have a rest to reflect. [he reflects]
Winston's story.
"You have never done any Latin before, have you?" he said.
" No, sir."
"This is a Latin grammar." He opened it at a well-thumbed page. "
You must learn this," he said, pointing to a number of words in a frame of lines. "
I will come back in half an hour and see what you know."
Behold me then on a gloomy evening, with an aching heart, seated in front of the First Declension.
Mensa - a table Mensa - O table Mensam - a table Mensae - of a table Mensae - to or for a table Mensa - by, with or from a table
What on earth did it mean? Where was the sense in it?
It seemed absolute rigmarole to me.
However, there was one thing I could always do: I could learn by heart.
And I thereupon proceeded, as far as my private sorrows would allow, to memorize the acrostic-looking task which had been set me.
In due course the Master returned.
"Have you learnt it?" he asked.
"I think I can say it, sir," I replied; and I gabbled it off.
He seemed so satisfied with this that I was emboldened to ask a question.
"What does it mean, sir?"
"It means what it says. Mensa, a table.
Mensa is a noun of the First Declension.
There are five declensions.
You have learnt the singular of the First Declension."
"But," I repeated," what does it mean?"
"Mensa means a table," he answered.
"Then why does mensa also mean O table," I enquired, "and what does O table mean?"
"Mensa, O table, is the vocative case," he replied.
"But why O table?" I persisted in genuine curiosity.
"O table – you would use that in addressing a table, in invoking a table."
And then seeing he was not carrying me with him, "You would use it in speaking to a table."
"But I never do," I blurted out in honest amazement.
"If you are impertinent, you will be punished, and punished, let me tell you, very severely," was his conclusive rejoinder.
Thank you Winston.
Nice story. That was a nice rest
So while I left you in the Latin class with Winston, I was off remembering why I wasn't paying attention in Latin.
I was lazy. I was distracted.
I had Latin attention deficit.
It was my watch.
I was looking at my watch.
Well, not exactly my watch.
It was the reflection of light that my watch was making on the ceiling.
I like reflection.
The reflection was lovely, particularly when it blinded the Latin teacher.
So I wasn't really not paying attention.
I was only not paying attention to the table, MENSA! (come on are you not following?).
I am bored with Latin.
I shall look at my smartphone.
SMARTPHONE
Question to self, can Google translate 'smartphone' into Latin?
That is a jolly good question.
Just a moment.
Blimey! The Romans could talk about smartphones before Steve Jobs.
Fancy that, maybe the Romans had attention spans like goldfish too?
So that is my point, now I have a smartphone, a mauris quis felis, I have become like a goldfish from the point of view of attention span.
REFLECTIONS
I am constantly using it to take photos of reflections, to tweet reflections, to read reflections, to tweak reflections, to facebook reflections, to blog reflections.
