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...

Year Zero...

Don't forget to wipe the board.

Wipe the slate clean.

Hide the answer book.

We don't want any cheating.







"We will burn the old grass and the new will grow."

Pol Pot.

Initiation.

The newbies must experience the same confusion as their forebears.

Is this initiation to a sect?

Yes this is...a new term...year zero.

The term begins...

What do your students see of the activities of others?

Do they get to build on the learning of others?

What traces do they leave for those who follow?

Graffiti on the desk?

Scribbles in the borrowed text book?

A broken chair?

Low-life learning.

Of course, we can never wipe the slate clean. not even Pol Pot managed that...

In the corridors of (informal?) learning students sketch schemes, caricatures, myths, share short-cuts through the maze.

They become (perhaps) thereby empowered by their peers.

Dumb and dumber.

I spoke to a student last week.

She smiled.

She feigned understanding or to avoid embarassment by busying herself statically on her chair.

She understood nothing.

She was Moldavian.

She spoke Roumanian and had only ever learnt French and Russian at school.

I felt ridiculous.

Dense and denser.

I remember the lectures at university.

Either I was dense or the lecture was...to the extent that it may as well have been in a foreign language.

There was no pause for breath, there was no time to take legible notes. The graffiti was no help.

We feigned participation by scribbling on a page of A4.

I gave up going to those lectures.

Nobody had ever stopped the teacher to suggest that his lectures were, to us mere mortals, gibberish.

What means did the teacher have of knowing, before the end of year, that nobody understood?

Nobody had ever stopped the teacher to ask a question; they wouldn't have known where to start.

Logic and logical 

It reminds me of a story of my father who was asked to teach logic at theological college.

He knew nothing of logic so he borrowed the notes of the departed logic teacher.

He read the notes religiously, praying that nobody would stop him to ask a question....

He recounted his story with a gleam in his eye. He had an acute sense of ridicule...he found the story hilarious.

Learning and culture.

Teachers group together by affinity, they cross each other in corridors sometimes with only a nod. From time to time, they disappear to their clubs...er conferences.  They go to meet those with whom they will discuss the progress of the research and advance learning.

Fortunately for their careers, a few years back...some guys introduced the printing press.

The act of reading and writing became something less esoteric, wider literacy became something desirable to the wider community.

It empowered a new guild: The Academic.

New ideas might be spread and discussed right around the continent...even further afield.

These were modern times.

I sometimes have the impression that we don't give enough thought to literacy.

I sometimes have the impression that we don't give enough thought to FAQ's.

I sometimes have the impression that we don't give enough thought to Market Research.

I sometimes have the impression that we don't give enough thought to Smart Portable Devices.


I sometimes just want to laugh.

I remember my father. He makes me smile...still.

It is important to maintain a sense of humour. It is perhaps this the most important lesson to learn.

INTERMISSION

An Italian Class...

And now...

And now a few questions.

What traces of your students do you keep and cherish?

Do you maintain relationships that you work so hard to establish with your students? Why?

What students frequently asked questions do you keep? What do you do with them?

What student suggestions, student advice, student stories do you keep? What do you do with them?

What connections do you enable between generations of students and other interesting people?

What do you do to enable learners find interesting documents, ideas, people?

What people do you invite to help you enable your students to learn?

What do you do to enable progress from year to year?

How do you evaluate progress from year to year? With standardised tests?

What literacies are appropriate to develop today? Why?

What sort of learning environment do you thrive in?

a) A blank cell
b) In a place with a group of people with whom you feel you can identify
c) In a country in which they speak an alien language.
d) In a classroom in which one teacher speaks about things which don't interest you.
e) Other..

What the hell is digital writing anyway?

So "Digital Writing Month" #digiwrimo has been going on for two days now officially and I find myself spending a fair amount of my time writing by hand.

I spent Sunday afternoon writing with a pen that I found hidden in one of my bags, scanning existing typed and drawn artefacts from files on my shelves and printing them out on paper.




All of this 'hybrid activity' stems from a question that I have been asking: "What the hell is digital writing anyway?"

I can see evidence of this in a serious of tweets that I sent, or retweeted.

Pens are dead. Paper is dead. Handwriting is a relic #digiwrimo https://t.co/yh5atrXjal

— Simon Ensor (@sensor63) October 30, 2015

Does art happen on canvas or screen or in dialogue between artist and audience/viewer/other? #digiwrimo https://t.co/AMonYn75E8

— Simon Ensor (@sensor63) October 31, 2015

Wrote a post for #digiwrimo the old-fashioned way @DigiWriMo : Paper, Ink And Pen Into Pixels - https://t.co/iJfnNRXdLv

— Bryan Murley (@bmurley) November 2, 2015

And tweets that I favourited:

Thanks @kfasimpaur for a gift of breathe (happy6). #sdawpphotovoices #clmooc #digiwrimo pic.twitter.com/N6wIG9MBZR

— Wendy Taleo (@wentale) November 2, 2015

Digital brushstroke vs painted brushstroke. #digiwrimo pic.twitter.com/PDzGVr7chd

— ⓜҽϮ∆Ðⱥ†₳ՊʘʂĦ (@metadatamosh) November 2, 2015

This connects with work that I had been doing earlier in the year with the question of freedom in this post:
"This is freedom." 

It reminds me of Terry Elliott's animated handwriting that I have been seeing...

It then led to me starting to investigate this more systematically.

"What the hell is digital writing anyway?"

I have started a flipboard magazine to look into definitions of 'digital writing' which will benefit from your help here:
View my Flipboard Magazine.


I finally fell upon a new term: "Post-digital" and a very valuable article here entitled "What is Post-digital?" 

I recommend this article to anyone interested in trying to answer my initial question:

"What the hell is digital writing anyway?"

Heyho!

Digiwrimo has been only going on a couple of days but it is throwing me back towards Orality, Socrates, Printing Presses, Typing, and Punk DIY!

Not bad for a couple of days.

Am now off to post office.

Our eyes connected.

“ESTRAGON: In the meantime let us try and converse calmly, since we are incapable of keeping silent.
VLADIMIR: You're right, we're inexhaustible.
ESTRAGON: It's so we won't think.
VLADIMIR: We have that excuse.
ESTRAGON: It's so we won't hear.
VLADIMIR: We have our reasons.
ESTRAGON: All the dead voices.” 

Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

I stood as if in a trance, my gaze fixed upon that lion. 

In all my life, I had never been so close to such a beast.

I was in awe.

We were silent. 

The babbling tourists suddenly backgrounded.

It happened quite unexpectedly.

I felt a shudder go through me.

Our eyes connected.

I couldn't figure what the lion was thinking, nor what they lion might be wanting to say. 

I wasn't at all sure how to address the lion, nor whether to do more than wish it well.

Our eyes connected.

We were as one in our lot.

There was nothing more to say.

"A Domain of my own", "Fedwiki",  "Blog",  "Equity", "Research", "Inequality", "Privilege", "CSS", "Elite", "Font", "Tenure", "Retired academic," "Tinker", "Tailor," "Beggarman," "Thief," "Stanmore", "Stanford", "Colorado Springs", "Agency", "Profession of faith", "Serendipity", "Rhizo14", "DS106", "Clermont Ferrand", "Pied de porc", "Peer Review", "Flower", "Good Golly Miss Molly","Pffft." "DLRN15", "Slack?", "God Save the Queen", "Mine!" "Yours!", "Whateva".

She was following the letters with her pencil.

She vocalised the consonants: D-D-D.
She vocalised  the vowels: O-O-O.
She connected the sounds: D-O-O-G.

She said the word: dog.  

She had said the word: DOG.

There was a look of triumph in her eye.   

Our eyes connected.

We met each other with a knowing look.

She had felt the power. 

She saw the sounds everywhere. 

She vocalised the letters, the consonants, the vowels, the words, everywhere.

We write, we speak, we code, we build, we assemble, we aggregate, we search, we search...

I saw a photo of a family beneath an ancient tree. 

Its roots were stretched deep down in the ground.

They were looking up.

There was a moment of silence.

We gasp.
We laugh.
We babble. 
We weep.

There is nothing more to say.