This one...

This one or that one?

This one or that one?

[...]

One.

[...]

This one or that one?

[...]

One.

[...]

One.

FOOLNOTES 

Urge to compose.

Know not why.

Images come then go.

"This one or that one?"

Impossible to choose.

"This one or that one?"

Words delete more than I write.

"This one or that one?"

Words translate less than I mean.

FOOTNOTES

I imagine these footnotes prosaic.

"Align left!"

"Damn it!"

"Align left!"

They will not.

So here we are.

Swaying airily on an axis.

Far below, wasted words lie.

[...]

One.

We go early to the stables, we take out the pony from his box, we get the brushes and start grooming.





The grooming can go on for as much as twenty minutes which is quite a lot of time when one considers that the class will only last one hour.

Then the class lasts for one hour.

At least three times during the class I hear the following instruction:

"Pat your pony now." 

"Pat your pony now."

"Pat you pony now."

If I am thinking about pony grooming...

it's perhaps that Jim Groom left a comment on Alan Levine's recent blog post entitled:

"Open is the porch light being on (and more)"  

or

it's perhaps because we took one of our daughters riding yesterday (while the other one played with the dog).

or

it's perhaps because I have just read an article in the New Yorker entitled:

"The limits of friendship."

I recommend those interested in online learning communities to read those two articles.

If you don't know Jim Groom or Alan Levine...well where the hell have you been?

(sorry this is not respectful for the majority of the world's population who have better things to do than mess around online).

(afterthought - if you are not online you will not be reading this so for all the others... where the hell have you been?)

I have been thinking about the limits of online "communities" and asking a number of questions:

• How big is an effective online learning community?
• How Massive can an effective open online learning course be?
• Is "open" always a helpful term to use when one talks of education?
• Is inclusiveness something we need to worry about?
• If inclusiveness is something we need to worry about - to what extent?

Thinking makes my brain hurt.

Like Paul Valéry, I prefer messing around and writing and then thinking.

#rhizo16 #clmooc #digiwrimo @dogtrax @telliowkuwp @taniatorikova pic.twitter.com/nBb0TjE9XV

— Simon Ensor (@sensor63) March 11, 2016

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.

@jimgroom it's true... it does lack tyranny.

— dave cormier (@davecormier) February 24, 2016

Oh not that one again...

That's it - Jim Groom IS Bono.  

Is Dave Cormier the Edge?

ONE-Bono-Joey-bloody-Ramone-punk-edupunk-Jim Groom-ONE

ONE-Community-Rhizomatic Learning-Dave Cormier-The Edge-Of reasONE

As Alan Levine says in his post these things get tribal....

There are devices online which may accelerate these tribal feeling while not being that effective for conversation - Twitter chats come to mind.  

We are always on the verge of breakdown if we feel obliged to keep up with the stream. 

It is overwhelming if we try to be everywhere at the same time.

I have tried. It's madness.

Much better look for one or two key moments and share them.

I often do this better with pictures than with words like for this #moocmooc chat example.

Some people who become part of these tribes worry about not being open enough. 

  

They worry about their thang not being inclusive.  

Well I think they worry too much.

Are we Bono? 

Will we perform and share our life stories with millions and make them feel special when our eyes meet on through the big screen? 

I suppose that is the dream of rock-star educators that we will be ONE with them.

We will lift our smartphones up in unison and sing along to biochemistry lectures...for credit.

I am reminded of conversations with Terry Elliott about attention.

We have spent much precious time together with a small group of people creating. 

There are moments of grace which mark us for life.

Here is just one example: Dawn augurs well. 

Nothing can replace quiet, attentive, contemplation.

Nothing can replace close friendship and fellowship.

If we don't want to live in the shallows we need to dig deep and spend time with those who touch us.

That time that we spend creating with our hearts may touch others.

This is open.

Anyone can read it.

Such means of distribution of a personal message were unheard of before the internet.

How many years did Bono spend alone or with a small group of friends writing one?

How many hours did he spend in his bedroom weeping the death of his mother?

Sharing tears and  joy and solitude may touch others.

I sit here with my daughter on the sofa.

We are alone...

We are all one.

Better read then dead.

"They don't bloody read anything these days."

We are clearly not alone in Clermont Ferrand. 

Here is some throwaway data:

Reading for Pleasure

Teacher guided question to students: 

"What do you read?"

Student guarded answers to teacher: 

"I don't read. I don't like reading."

"I read l'Equipe (sports newspaper.)"

"I don't really like reading much."

"I never read."

"I never read."

"Ad infinitum."

Weird Student answer to teacher [2% of class]:

"I like Science Fiction."

"I love Harry Potter."

"I like Manga."

Outlandishly weird student answer to teacher [probably an Alien]:

"I like Wittgenstein."

Reading for Academic Purposes.

Student remark to teacher:

"I don't understand why I got a bad grade."

Teacher response to student:

"Did you read the instructions?"

Student answer to teacher:

"But it's all in English."

Teacher retort to student:

"But this IS an ENGLISH class."

Student reply:

"....mgrammggrrr........[mumbles something.]" 

Student goes off.

Teacher sighs.

Student writing for Academic Purposes.

Teacher question to student: 

"Did you write this yourself?"

Student response to teacher:

"Yes of course. I used Google translate."

Teacher comment to student:

"Ah, yes that is why you translated 'collant' with 'sticky'....

 The girl is not wearing stickies. They are tights."

Student response to teacher:

"Oh! But it took me a lot of time to type that."

Teacher response to student:

"....mmggrmmgrrr[mumbles something]"

Teacher goes off.

Student goes off.

Student writing for pleasure.

[No data.]

Remarks on data.

OK, so this data is clearly not representative of all groups of students everywhere and all that.

These are French undergraduate sport science students (except the Alien who was a maths student)in Clermont Ferrand [in France not very near Paris].

I am sure that we can find small pockets of geek participatory fan fiction fanatics somewhere hidden in the campus. 

I haven't come across this rare species to date.

It could be a research project.

Atlantic Data

I thought I had better go and find some more data. 

I thought the Pew Research Centre might provide me with some cool data.

I found an article in the Atlantic entitled "The Decline of the American Book Lover."

I recommend it. 

It is a cool read.

It has cool data.

Transatlantic Data

I thought about this with my colleague after reading or should I say listening to Terry Elliott in Kentucky raging.

Here is a link to his rage:

"Rage, rage, rage, beat, beat, beat, Soar..."

I love repetitive RAGE.

You can rage with him on hypothes.is

I added some David Bowie rage.

He is all the rage again now he is dead. (note cool graphic effect - very The Next Day):

"People are so fucking dumb. Nobody reads anymore, nobody goes out and looks and explores the society and culture they were brought up in. People have attention spans of five seconds and as much depth as a glass of water." David Bowie

I recommend you go and rage with David and Terry. 

They do it so well.

Books. Who needs them?

We were doing video projects the other day. 

One of the girls came in to show me a couple of videos that she had made to publicise a night-club.

She was really proud of her work. 

She had done both of them following the practice she had had in English class in video making.

Maybe we should give up crying over books or at least books with writing.

Do people cry about scrolls?

Do people cry about parchment?

I suppose they might.

It is sad.

I must not lack empathy for their predicament.

They might beat me with their scroll [and hidden truncheon].

That would hurt.

Better read then dead.

I thought of all the books that I had read.

I thought of all the books that I cherish.

I thought of all the books we took to the second hand shop.

I found another David Bowie raging quote (note cool graphic effect - which makes it illegible):

"I'm a real self-educated kind of guy. I read voraciously. Every book I ever bought, I have. I can't throw it away. It's physically impossible to leave my hand! Some of them are in warehouses. I've got a library that I keep the ones I really really like. I look around my library some nights and I do these terrible things to myself--I count up the books and think, how long I might have to live and think, 'F@#%k, I can't read two-thirds of these books.' It overwhelms me with sadness." --David Bowie, quoted in the Daily Beast in a 2002 interview with Bob Guccione, Jr. David Bowie

Not having a large library like David Bowie makes me less overwhelmed with sadness.

I am sad that David Bowie died.

I shall not need a warehouse.

That is my fate.

God Bless the Kindle.

What they eye doesn't see...

Inference.

There is only one way to build an Airbus, there is no poetic licence allowed.

Engineers all over Europe use a 'simplified English' specially conceived for the aeronautic industry which removes every possible ambiguity from their minds and hands.

Forget a rivet and the results are potentially catastrophic. There is no space for interpretation, no leeway for inference.

One word means one thing.

I was reminded of this while reflecting on a post of Kevin Hodgson entitled: "A single word can change a story. (perhaps)."  In it, he talks of a writing experiment based on the #25wordstory format.

The story is here:

She tucked that ornament away for another year. Put the memory in a box, out of view. Sat down, silent. #25wordstory

— KevinHodgson (@dogtrax) December 9, 2015

His stated aim was:

"to infer another story, behind the ornament being put away, and also, to shorten each sentence to make the story more and more compact by the end."

It wasn't the story in itself which caught my eye at first. It was the folllowing sentence:

"And what, I wondered, would happen to that story — still so very short — if I changed that last word to something else."

Kevin goes on to experiment with the addition of the word: 'Laughed' or the alternative 'Cried.'



Words play off against each other like notes of music, I remark later.

It was not this that I really read.

I was already elsewhere.

I was impatient.

I had seen the climbing frame, dropped all bags and rushed off to explore.

That story had become a playground.

Interpretations.

How many interpretations were possible from Kevin's story I wondered?

How might our reading of the same words produce different meanings?

What were the constraints in his text as written and how were they engineered?

I tapped on Audiocopy and did a series of recordings.




The first recording seems to reveal the intimacy of Kevin's writing. There is an apparent melancholy, and age to the person, or at least a depth of nostalgia. She is apparently alone, there is ritual in her actions, there is a precious fragility in the ornament.

The story recalls to me my mother, at Christmas, alone, tucking away little brass angels from a candle blown angel wheel.

The story, short that it is, opens up possibilities for me of identification, for imagination.




Three minutes later, the tone has changed.

The reader is apparently unsympathetic to the woman and her ritual.

There is mockery in that voice. The story suddenly seems less intimate, more critical. Perhaps we can imagine that it is part of a larger comic collection of incidents.  What was once preciously hidden is open to ridicule. I am beginning to add ornament to the recording in the way of a photo.



The photo has become a black box.  If the mockery has disappeared, the voice appears as neutral narrator. I no longer feel that the box is open. The story is a series of words, there is no depth.




Suddenly the ornament, 'that ornament' has become disassociated from the memory.

She has 'tucked that ornament away' in a drawer? What now is 'the memory'? Why is not in the same place as the ornament? The change of stress on the words has changed the story, I feel less drawn to the question of why the woman might laugh.

What on earth is 'the memory'? How might one put a 'memory' in a box? What is she trying to forget?




Poetic licence - I ignore the punctuation, which in no way suggests that there are two people speaking, to invent another person in the scene. The woman is no longer alone with a narrator, she is being bossed around by a Monty Pythonesque civil servant: 'Put the memory in a box out of view.'

She is rescued by a more neutral, even sympathetic narrator.

Suddenly I feel empathy for the woman, how on earth did she get into a relationship with that prat?




Whimsy...it sounds like we're hearing the Wind in the Willows or some Jeeves story. Now I am getting irritated by that narrator imposing a reading onto a text which it didn't deserve. On top of that, what on earth has the image uploaded to Soundcloud got to do with the story or the tone of the story?

Laziness, I mutter to myself.


Here we are back to breath, back to melancholy, back to sadness.

All is as it was...until a last, sinister, laugh.

What has she done? What was that ornament? Who has she murdered?

We have gone from melacholy to macabre with a laugh.

Memory box.

I am finding it hard to remember these different emotions, different characters, so I stitch the readings together in iMovie, find the only video footage that I have which I feel is indistinct enough give space enough to these different voices and publish on Youtube.

Music box.

I then wonder how might music affect the atmosphere, the tone, the meaning of a single reading.  I drop a sound file into Garageband. I go and run my fingers over Thumbjam, choose what I feel is appropriate instrument and assemble voice with music.




Cello perhaps? Bassoon? I am not sure, but the music appears to open up the text to a new theatrical dimension. What has the writing become now? I feel that I want to know the other movements to which this piece is part.  There is darkness in this assemblage....





A string ensemble... a change of atmosphere, a change of decor, of epoque perhaps, baroque maybe? Suddenly, the woman and her box appear as a period piece, crinolines, candle light, and consumption...



Goodness, where on earth are we now? Electro, echo, reverb, what has the writing become now? Are the words backgrounded? Are the words just beats in a strange dance? There is an underlying rythym to those words...

Rhythm (from Greek ῥυθμός, rhythmos, "any regular recurring motion, symmetry" (Liddell and Scott 1996)) generally means a "movement marked by the regulated succession of strong and weak elements, or of opposite or different conditions" (Anon. 1971, 2537).

Ritual becomes mechanistic, I only care for motion, any person appears lost to machine.

I almost want to erase the words so that they become sampled beats.

I suddenly remember Stromae.

There is nothing precious in that box, however you look at it.

It is that emptiness which moves us.

Alors on dance.

Box sets..

I find a box.

I find a collage box in Accapella.

Am I enriching the story?

Am I changing the story?

Has the story become something else? I am not altogether sure.

I insert it here for reflection.

I save the video from Accapella to my camera roll and see how I can change it again with PicPlayPost. The story become secondary perhaps to collage. Are we less concerned now by the meaning and more concerned by the graphic effect? What has become of the words? I don't know. I insert it here for reflection.

It feels like that I have finished with the ornament. I have put it in a box, to move on...

We need words as boxes for resonance.

Writing is closer to music than I imagined.

That sounds right.

I make it a mental note.

What of laughed?

A final thought occurs to me.

What of that word that Kevin added?

What of 'laughed'?

I laugh.

There is nothing in the box.

Faced with emptiness we might as well laugh.

"A single word is a powerful anchor of emotion." @dogtrax #digiwrimo https://t.co/HyhsGPoLeD

— Simon Ensor (@sensor63) December 10, 2015

Whose ornament are we?

Who is laughing now?

[END]

Walking out loud...

This is a fragment of a doodle, a much larger doodle.

 After a week of emotion, connection, experience, I had many ideas buzzing. I had to get it all down on paper. This is one of what will be a series of posts which I shall attempt to write to make sense of this larger doodle.

I have a great deal of thinking to do.

I have a great deal of working through, of walking through to do...

It was a week of walking out loud, which started with a need to get out of the classroom box.

After the flood of emotions resulting from the Paris attacks, by the time I got to Thursday, I felt exhausted.

I am pretty sure that this line of Maxime's post "L'homme libre" had made a click in my head.

"Fermez vos ordinateurs, allez courir, allez rire, serrez vos proches dans vos bras, envoyez un message d'amour."
("Close your computers, go and run, go and laugh, hold those close to you in your arms, send a message of love.")

I suggest to the group who had arrived for a class that we go outside, that we feel the sun on our backs, the wind on a our skin, that we should walk and speak together.

They were a little surprised at the idea, but they agreed, packed up their bags and we left for a rambling tour of the campus plateau.





We spoke together in little groups, sometimes coming together to look at the surrounding landscape, a flower, a landmark on the horizon. We shared photos of where we were from, we spoke of the time that we spent in classroom boxes. We visited regions through the eyes of others, through the words of others unknown to us. We spoke of imaginary friends...

On coming back to the classroom, we sat down and each wrote or drew his impressions of the time that we had spent together.

This week we are to collect our fragments together to reflect our different experiences of walking out loud.

Distant connections?

I met Tanya Lau from Australia during Rhizo14, we have worked and played together intermittently since then.

It is difficult for me now to disconnect my trail through the various hashtag communities that I have journeyed. At one stage, I don't remember when, Tanya introduced me to her friend Bruno Winck. Over a series of tweeted conversations, and to cut a Storifed version of the circumstances of our meeting short, we met last Friday, in the flesh.

It is this which is surreal, really: here was a person who I knew little of a month ago, who perhaps a few months before I had suggested meeting (because I learnt he lived in the same region as I) for a walk, now standing in this same classroom in which I am writing now.

This is a fragment of a photo, a much bigger photo.

All of this resulted from a spark of inspiration, a reversal of a position and the acceptance of an invitation from the faciliators of #digiwrimo to contribute a piece.  I had thought (as often) that I would really not have the time to participate in #digiwrimo, like I had thought that I wouldn't have the time to participate in #rhizo14, #clmooc, #ccourses, #rhizo15...

So here I was actively participating in #digiwrimo and Bruno suggests that I involve some of my students with #wolweek.

What the hell was #wolweek I asked?

A few days later, not really knowing what might happen, I managed to get a group of students to blog every day for a week.

They had pretty much never blogged before...

Not only did they blog, but one or two of them also started making connections with people participating in #wolweek...

This is the moment when lessons learnt from Laura Gibbs during #ccourses came to the fore.

I curated all the student blogs into Inoreader. 

So there he was, Bruno Winck, standing in my classroom.

Very quickly he had gathered students around him and they were listening to him explain networking on Twitter, innovation,  MOOCs...

As he spoke, I was myself beginning to learn a little about him, this person who had appeared from a Twitter stream....

We went for a meal afterwards, our conversation flowed from one theme to another, pretty much uninterrupted, apart from by the four courses of the meal.

We left the restaurant to walk a little way up Ceyrat gorge, one of my favourite local promenades.

It is the background image to my Twitter profile. 

Conversation continued upstream and downstream.

On getting back home, the following morning I found no other means to try to make sense of it all than to doodle.

As I was scrolling through my photos over the past couple years, I was struck by the diversity of people met, experiences had, places visited, connections made.

I see that this connected world maybe digitally connected but it is physically enacted, emotionally embodied...

I thought back to Maxime's lines:

"Fermez vos ordinateurs, allez courir, allez rire, serrez vos proches dans vos bras, envoyez un message d'amour."

Pride.

Pride is not a word that I use often.











I was proud of the students today...

I was evaluating their research projects which they were presenting without notes to read.

It was not easy for them.

They, for the most part, overcame their fear.

It was a start, it was more than a start.

They were courageous.

I learnt from them.
They made me think.
They made me want to know more.
I listened to them for six hours.
The day went by in a flash.

I was proud of the students today...

I asked them to share their work, their reflection on their learning with others.

I explained to them that it might be of help to others.

They seemed to understand the message.

I was proud of the students today...

I challenged a group of them to share their learning in a blog.

Some of them really have to struggle to write their thoughts in English.

They have had so little practice, for the most part, to write for others...

They have had so little practice, for the most part, to receive the encouragement of others...

I was proud of the students today...

I showed one of them a blog post in French by one of their peers written on Saturday the 14th November.

It was entitled: Ce matin.

http://thsismystory.blogspot.fr/2015/11/ce-matin.html

I had told them, how it had moved me, how it had moved others, how it had moved others to write.

Oh Paris (A Poem) #digiwrimo #paris pic.twitter.com/1hczgOv0tY

— KevinHodgson (@dogtrax) November 14, 2015

I showed it to one student.

He looked at it.

I didn't see him after.

A while later he sent me a tweet.

It was short and to the point.

@sensor63 done

— Maxime Otmani (@MaximeOtmani) November 16, 2015

I read his post, in French, and I was moved once more.

It was entitled: L'homme libre.

http://maxmyfourseasons.blogspot.fr/2015/11/lhomme-libre.html

I went back and went through the other blog posts in my RSS reader.

I gathered them together in a collection here.

View my Flipboard Magazine.

I don't know if there will be more.

I don't know if others will have the courage.

It is a start.

It is more than a start.

I was proud of the students this morning...

That I can say that gives me hope.

These people have things to say.

We must listen more often.

What the hell is going on?

The problem is that it doesn't look like working.

The problem is that it perturbs peoples' ideas of what learning looks like.

The problem is that it isn't linear.




The problem is that it demands learning new skills.

The problem is that it is not controllable.

The problem is that it does not have predictable outcomes.

This is learning.

This is me reflecting on learning process.

This is the outcome of a process which is a process....

Where the hell is this going next?

I am excited to find out.

New people, new encounters, new applications, new experiments, new risks, new adventures...

After a crazy week of connecting, of dialogue, of experiment, of pushing things and myself and probably the students to the edge, I returned to Storify my apparently chaotic work (even to me - and that's saying something).

We need to order, to reflect, to summarise, to digest, to learn....

This is an example of learning out loud...

Thank you all for your part in my learning.

Impermanence

We are embraced by sound, light, shadow, relationships, emotion,  memory.

We stretch out, we point, we cry, we crawl, we walk, we run, we embrace, we walk, we crawl, we stop.







We surround ourselves with objects: clothes, furnishings, company, weapons, words...

All is in movement, all is in movement.

We stop, we observe, we make connections, we note, we keep for ourselves, we keep for others...

What is monumental, what is iconic, what is sacred, what is mysterious, we worship.

We celebrate our exploits, our kills, our scrapes, our epics.

I am reminded of Mes Emmerdes and a living monument that is Charles Aznavour:

We aspire to meaning, to leaving a mark of our passing.

We are as leaves to the wind, ephemeral, dependent, soon to fall, soon to be raked up. I suddenly remember those Feuilles Mortes of Jacques Prévert.

Those feuilles mortes...

We are constantly looking to beauty to remind us of the height of our summer. 

Those relics, which we embellish as the days shorten.

We are transfixed by those burnished images, fearing to look past a fixed mirror...

Can that really be us now?

What appears permanent, we hold onto desperately, a buoy in an ocean of alienation...

We stretch out, we stretch our for sure footing and to leave a mark, however futile, of our passing.

If I come to write all of this now, it is because I have some dirty secrets...

Behind these lines are the words of others, always the words of others....

Here are pages and pages of the words of others...

There was the writing of Kate Bowles.

I didn't search out her writing alone.  

I followed the traces of someone I trust:

Traces https://t.co/W0HRtwx1Nw pic.twitter.com/76dvNktEjl

— Sean Michael Morris (@slamteacher) November 5, 2015

I have been immersed in the conversations of fellow travellers...

I did not discover Walter Ong alone, nor the recorded conversations of Socrates.

I did not start independently to reflect on the nature of books, on the nature of social media alone....

I have been overhearing the conversations of others, and I have reflected...

What is the nature of this writing...this digital writing?

I fell upon an article in a Facebook stream, shared by another that I trust, it reflected on the 'Decay of Twitter', so young and yet prematurely mourned.
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/11/conversation-smoosh-twitter-decay/412867/

We are voracious culture vultures, swallowing icons, likes, kisses, quotes, beauty, terror, horror...

Such is our hunger for distraction.. from our own impermanence.

We erect statues: 

Shakespeare, Leonardo, Gandhi, Callas, Churchill, Monroe...

We protect their higlighted 'memories'.

We prefer to see the objects of our worship thus:

Better dead young
The Lonesome genius.
The rebel with a cause.
The martyr with a stirring soundbite.

Our reality is less statuesque.

What is the nature of our worship of books?

We carefully prop up their memory with convenient authorship, with defenders of the faith...

NO PLAGIARISM HERE.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2002/04/on-plagiarism/302469/

https://www.ted.com/talks/kirby_ferguson_embrace_the_remix?language=en


Shakespeare.
Dylan.
Elliott.

We hold onto our myths, our stately lines as ships wreck...

We throw up our arms in ephemeral empathy before sinking into drunken stupour.

We find another icon, another golden calf to help in our distraction.

We take the moral high ground with fervour, I am not one of those, I am not one of those, those trolls.

We are above it all...

No we are not.

We are it all.

SMOOSHPIT. Reveals hidden complex ties and shakes up mythical order based on separation between orality/literacy? https://t.co/FDjtswvpdJ

— Simon Ensor (@sensor63) November 6, 2015

SMOOSH a word invented in an article already referenced

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/11/conversation-smoosh-twitter-decay/412867/

Discussions with friends...an article concerning Hyperobjects...

http://www.digitalwritingmonth.com/2015/11/05/online-texts-as-hyperobjects/

"Text is hypertext with broken links." Discuss. #digiwrimo @kwhamon

— Simon Ensor (@sensor63) November 6, 2015

A question: What is the nature of digital writing?

"Text is hypertext with broken links." Discuss. #digiwrimo @kwhamon

— Simon Ensor (@sensor63) November 6, 2015

An article here "Behind the image: Effortless - Essena O'Neill.

http://impedagogy.com/wp/blog/2015/11/06/behind-the-image-effortless-essena-oneill/


Followed by a discussion.

A reflection on loyalty and on the interest of memes...

A laugh which attracted my attention to some words...

"This is not a whole lot better".

A concern of a friend concerning the nature of reality and social media.

A meme.

An article from the Atlantic:

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/11/conversation-smoosh-twitter-decay/412867/

Twitter is in decay...we are in decay....

We are becoming ever more aware of the lies, the more or less savoury social ties behind our images, our icons...our cvs...

We stretch out for ship wrecks...for certificates of conformity, or quality.

"Text is hypertext with broken links." Discuss. #digiwrimo @kwhamon

— Simon Ensor (@sensor63) November 6, 2015

We are becoming ever more aware of the lies behind our fixed images, our fixed borders, our icons, our words...

It is not comforting.

#digiwrimo = smooshpit [oral-literate hybrid splace] ? @bonstewart pic.twitter.com/6AWhQRpd0b

— Simon Ensor (@sensor63) November 6, 2015

Everything is in movement, everything is in movement.

We try to hide our sorrow.

Smooshpits. I worry that social media isn't real. #digiwrimo https://t.co/WW4kbiO6OA

— Simon Ensor (@sensor63) November 6, 2015

We try to put on a brave face on things...

But we our books are falling apart at the seams.

Navigating our reassuring 'reality' is becoming increasingly difficult.

@dogtrax @sensor63 I think connections always there in print texts, but made explicit in eTexts, unavoidable. #DigiWriMo

— Keith Hamon (@kwhamon) November 7, 2015

Our sacred texts are brought down to earth.

@sensor63 Shakespeare said he held a mirror up to the world, but your meme shows us he held it up to himself. REALITY--WHAT A CONCEPT!

— Terry Elliott (@telliowkuwp) November 7, 2015

There is no magic button.

A #digiwrimo meme, an activity suggested by @telliowkuwp pic.twitter.com/yDnK7j9S6P

— KevinHodgson (@dogtrax) November 4, 2015

However frantically we pour out our dismay.




There remains beauty in our digital decay...

We are humbled one and all the same...with the tools which become heavy in our hands.

So heavy in our hands.

Road trip

This road was the picture which appeared on my first post: 'To boldy go'.

I didn't know then if it would be the last.  

A few years on now, the road keeps rolling.  

The destination is no clearer but rather than bemourn uncertain outcomes, I am reveling in the adventure.

This is how I view learning, teaching, living.  

I am reveling in the adventure.

When times are hard, I think of all the people that I have met who have shared a smile, a beer, a laugh, a story, a song and they are the ones that keep me going...

Every day, I drive the same route, in the same car, struggle to find a parking space, and think to myself: "I wonder what's going to happen next."

Invariably, if you are patient, if you are lucky, things do happen to keep you going...

In the classroom yesterday, there were a number of students who were sharing what they had learnt, or at least stuff which appealed to them:  sailing, rugby refereeing, mental preparation, Ellen de Generes, the Walking Dead, a football match, others were actually (to my astonishment) choosing to in speak English to each other.  

Others were busy preparing their work on a gap year project which was due for the following week. 

In the background there was a group of students gathered around a guitar who were singing covers of Daft Punk, perhaps John Lennon...I don't remember.

There was also an ex-student, Julien Diot, who had studied with me 6 years before- who was taking a break from his globe-trotting, before going off to Costa Rica, to help the other students with their gap year projects.

There are so may stories...

Julien shares stories here: http://worldtour-outdoorexperience.com

There is one photo of his which resonates with me, it is a collage of photos of people who gave him a place to stay in New Zealand.  

It is a testimony to the generosity of people.

People's generosity keeps you going...

At about 11:30, I wandered over to listen to what the students, Etienne with a guitar and Loic had prepared for their 'learn and share' session, I was expecting another cover version of a song. 

Nope...they had actually written a song in English - entitled...Road Trip.

I took a photo of their manuscipt

I then got another student to capture their performance to post to Youtube.

They then did an encore of Get Lucky - captured by another student on another phone. 

At 12:00 I tweeted the following message:

@cogdog @dogtrax et al Some students wrote this song can we get u to sing it too? https://t.co/h3YifazeLF #digiwrimo pic.twitter.com/2nzILeUoKS

— Simon Ensor (@sensor63) November 4, 2015

Three hours later, a tweet arrived from Egypt:

@dogtrax @cogdog difficult to plan people's creativity. you started this @sensor63 :) https://t.co/IRy0L3yYPV

— Maha Abdelmoneim (@Maha4Learning) November 4, 2015

A tweet in appreciation of Maha's singing and Etienne and Loic's lyrics arrived from Maha (another one) in Egypt:

Dedicated to @sensor63 @Maha4Learning #DigiWriMo lyrics postcard @ronald_2008 @WarwickLanguage @tellio pic.twitter.com/VWXxxrIiHQ

— ℳąhą Bąℓi مها بالي (@Bali_Maha) November 4, 2015

Three hours and forty five minutes later, a tweet arrived from the USA:

@sensor63 @NomadWarMachine @dogtrax that kid can play! You want an original version with words or layer on their recording?

— Alan Levine (@cogdog) November 4, 2015

There were a number of conversations going on about the song between people in at least three continents.

One problem of the original tweet was the manuscipt. It wasn't adapted to all the people who might want to contribute but were prevented from doing so by problems of legibility.

@sensor63 @Bali_Maha @WarwickLanguage Bit hard to read the text (old eyes)

— Ronald_2008 (@ronald_2008) November 4, 2015

Not everybody wanted to sing or play guitar, Ronald transformed the song into a poem:

In Australia, Wendy Taleo wrote a poem inspired by the theme of the song:

@EtienneNassiet from @wentale Inspired by your Roadtrip song France-Egypt-Holland-USA-Australia #digiwrimo @cogdog pic.twitter.com/KYnCDRRWwA

— Simon Ensor (@sensor63) November 5, 2015

In the middle of the night, the afternoon, the morning, Alan Levine, perhaps in Arizona shared a new version of Road trip:

The following day, a new grunge version arrived from Bryan Murley over in Illinois. 

Well, here's my take on Road Trip-ping -Caution: Turn down your volume ;) https://t.co/5h77614OWr #DigiWriMo https://t.co/gKIfO0Psf4

— Bryan Murley (@bmurley) November 6, 2015

After a bit of faffing around I worked out how to embed it from Google Drive here:

(I recommend turning up the volume to fully appreciate the effect Bryan :-)

And then a few hours later...Kevin in Massachusetts posted a completely different version with totally remixed music.

Then Bryan came back and shared his grunge on Souncloud, Thanks to you Bryan I have learnt how to embed audio from Google drive :-)

And then Sarah up in Scotland kilted the song out completely differently....

Then a bit later on she blogged about her remix here:

http://www.nomadwarmachine.co.uk/2015/11/07/roadtrip/

I have really no idea where all of this is going. 

There is some talk of a country version, 

This song is going to hit a lot of diff. styles, I think. I had a country version ready, haven't recorded yet. :) https://t.co/aA9dmsbAfF

— Bryan Murley (@bmurley) November 6, 2015

Maha commented: 

Who needs radio w friends like these? #DigiWriMo @sensor63 @bmurley @dogtrax @EtienneNassiet @cogdog @Maha4Learning @ronald_2008 @wentale

— ℳąhą Bąℓi مها بالي (@Bali_Maha) November 7, 2015

Maha is talking about a lyric hack:

@ronald_2008 @sensor63 @bmurley @dogtrax @EtienneNassiet @cogdog @Maha4Learning @wentale actually i was thinking of hacking roadtrip lyrics

— ℳąhą Bąℓi مها بالي (@Bali_Maha) November 7, 2015

This Road Trip is really becoming illustrative of the complexity of Road Trips.

Travellers come together, spend time in conversation, tell stories, sing a few verses, and part going off on different routes, where they will take parts of their learnt songs and stories to new conversations in new places with new people.

I am becoming unable to follow their traces. I am now reliant on others who will be able to tell their part of the story, a part in which I am now absent. I am becoming to think that this will be a fascinating collaborative research project into creative emergence.  

I finally get round to reading Bruno's Road Trip Story here in his blog where he has embedded the image of Etienne and Loic's manuscript,... I in turn am beginning to be inspired by this story of a Road Trip song to write...

@sensor63 @dogtrax @EtienneNassiet inspired me a fast forward in my last installment :) https://t.co/ZYWXL7Sd4Z #digiwrimo @Bali_Maha

— Bruno Winck (@brunowinck) November 7, 2015

@EtienneNassi makes me think that I need to write about travel as well. Sent @dogtrax a poem I wrote in 1984 from Florence. #digiwrimo

— Simon Ensor (@sensor63) November 8, 2015

I shall look forward to listening to how the other branches of the story mutate.
 There are too many branches for me to collect here. 

I decide to attempt to follow the different routes that this Road Trip is taking.

Bryan comes up with not one but two country versions:

Country #roadtrip - fast. Recorded in @soundtrap if anyone wants to collab. #DigiWriMo https://t.co/rRUwcFnnMV https://t.co/TIqjiRcZ00

— Bryan Murley (@bmurley) 9 Novembre 2015

 

Slow country version of #roadtrip on soundcloud https://t.co/ysk9Zhve14 #DigiWriMo https://t.co/TIqjiRcZ00

— Bryan Murley (@bmurley) 9 Novembre 2015

And then for good measure uploads them to Soundtrap to enable people to record tracks to accompany him.

Soundtrap for fast country #roadtrip #DigiWriMo https://t.co/Emt00ZKlzK https://t.co/TIqjiRcZ00

— Bryan Murley (@bmurley) 9 Novembre 2015

The slow country version #roadtrip on Soundtrap #DigiWriMo https://t.co/l3NngpVYbL https://t.co/TIqjiRcZ00

— Bryan Murley (@bmurley) 9 Novembre 2015

Meanwhile over in Australia Wendy has curated the story of another strand of Road Trip which arose from Maha's aforementioned image in response to Maha's aforementioned singing.

A series of six word stories inspired by two lines of Etienne and Loic's song, written by Wendy, Ronald, Maha, and others have been assembled and are going to be put to music by Laura's music students over in the UK.

Here is the #storify of the #6wordstory for #digiwrimo https://t.co/2vfAQ0xal4 @sensor63 @dogtrax @laura_ritchie

— Wendy Taleo (@wentale) 9 Novembre 2015

Meanwhile, over in Canada, Maureen is contributing to a collaborative story with #digiwrimo and hears Kevin's aforementioned version of Etienne and Loic's song.

She includes the song in part 13 of the story quite unaware of the origin of Kevin's rendition of Road Trip.

I love the writing in the Quill & Ink! #DigiWriMo this story is compelling check out lucky part 13 https://t.co/0QLtpgtvn3 @rljessen

— Maureen Crawford (@jmc3ualberta) 8 Novembre 2015

Meanwhile, somewhere upstairs in a house in Glasgow Scotland, someone is doing a Road Trip song:

@sensor63 @niall_barr I can hear somebody upstaris singing about a roadtrip now ...

— Sarah Honeychurch (@NomadWarMachine) 8 Novembre 2015

The person in question, Niall is the aforementioned Sarah's husband, he comes downstairs:

@sensor63 @niall_barr never! He's just come down and given me Band in a Box so I can make more noise to torment you all :)

— Sarah Honeychurch (@NomadWarMachine) 8 Novembre 2015

He goes upstairs, a tragic crime is committed:

@NomadWarMachine @sensor63 I listened to the recording, realised the people who run when they see me near a karaoke are right, and deleted.

— Niall Barr (@niall_barr) 8 Novembre 2015

Will we ever get to hear the lost Scottish version of Road Trip?

Meanwhile, I am waiting with impatience to hear what Laura's music students will compose, I am waiting to hear if Maha's guitar-playing friend will be heard playing with Bryan in Illinois.

@Bali_Maha @NomadWarMachine @sensor63 @bmurley @EtienneNassiet any excuse to play guitar as always! Not sure what I want me to play though.

— Sherif Osman (@the_sosman) 7 Novembre 2015

I don't how Etienne and Loic will respond to the Road Trip that their song has been taking.

I know that Etienne tweeted this reaction to Maha's interpretation:

@sensor63 @Maha4Learning @dogtrax @cogdog That's just incredible !

— Etienne Nassiet (@EtienneNassiet) November 4, 2015

This is perhaps the most important lesson I have learnt: we don't need to leave the walls of a class room to appreciate the diversity, the creativity, and the generosity of the people around us...around the world.

We don't have to travel to have a Road Trip, to have an adventure.

We do need faith.

There was another tweet I shared yesterday:

To write is to throw yourself into an abyss while telling yourself: I'll be caught no doubt...by meaning #digiwrimo pic.twitter.com/JRlqoGnk2h

— Simon Ensor (@sensor63) November 4, 2015

I think that I would like to remix that quotation:

To write is to throw yourself into an abyss while telling yourself: I'll be caught no doubt...by people who find meaning in this.

There are days when we get lucky...

Thank you Etienne and Loic, Maha, Ronald, Wendy, Alan, Bryan, Kevin, Julien and you all for sharing with us.

It means a lot.