Showing posts with label power. Show all posts
Showing posts with label power. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 2, 2018

Missing links...

It's difficult to see from this photo.

You'll have to take my word for it.

I was attending a conference, the Unicollaboration conference in Krakow.

On the photo we can see Maha Bali, one of the keynote speakers who was over in Cairo.

She spotted me, a rather small head, sitting towards the back of the lecture theatre.

"Come to the front," she said.

"So that I can see a familiar face."  

I gave her a big wave and moved forward.

"Oh hi Simon!" she beamed...as only Maha can beam.

I wonder an instant.

What sense can we make of a "keynote", a conference "paper" when we know nothing of the people?

What sense can we make of a "keynote" slide, or an academic paper, when we know nothing of the people?

What is the exchange that we are engaged in?

I met Francesca and Steve, keynoters both, in Krakow and we quite naturally hugged.

How is this possible?

I had never actually "met them" before.

To be honest, I have never "actually met" Maha before either even if we have been in conversation for four years...

I had been following a small part of their extensive academic output over the past few years.

I had read their words and felt drawn to them, they became a part of my intellectual world...they became important "references."

In conferences past, I might have eyed them from afar, seen them surrounded by those closer and felt quite apart...excluded from conversations which I feared were way over my head.

I might have eyed them critically.

Missing links...

 Well, being somewhat resident online has enabled me to make many important connections.

I have been able to learn from, participate in, contribute to, many conversations over the past few years.

I have wandered around behind my "icon" avatar, my twitter pseudonym, @sensor63 and become partially recognisable in some haunts to which I have become accustomed to.

I have written and created in a way that comes naturally to me.

It is not a genre that I have had to be drilled in.

It is a personal genre which, only the other day I learnt from Wendy Taleo has a recognisable form, that some might call "lyrical essay"...whatever.

I am whatever you call me...for better and for worse.

Missing links....

So there we were with


  • my friend Teresa Mackinnon, 
  • Shannon:Sauro, who I had met in Krakow a couple of years back 
  • Steven Thorne
  • Maha Bali in Cairo
  • Parisa (That's Paris with an a) over in Japan.
Teresa and I have been working together for seven years.
We met online.
We have been back and forwards between our respective countries.
Teresa is an incredibly important linking node in my learning and academic development.
It is no exaggeration to say that I was in Krakow thanks to her.

Teresa was holding the laptop.


I would never have been able to greet Steve, Francesca and Shannon, without  being active online.

I would never have been able to meet Steve, Francesca, Parisa, and so many more if it hadn't been for Maha and Virtually Connecting.

I went back to find the blog post referencing Eurocall 2017.

I find its title ironic retrospectively.

This stream is not online at present.

I add the photo as a reminder.



There is nothing virtual about this moment: Teresa holding the laptop, the beaming smiles of the participants.

There is e(nergy)motion...captured.


Missing links...

I am sorry that I hadn't got to know the human that is Steven Thorne before I started reading his articles, looking at his slides shared.

During the keynote, a couple of friends saw one of the slides from his "set" that I had tweeted out.





They responded to the density of the language and the concepts written on the slides.

They felt quite apart...excluded even.


At this point I add:


“A little learning is a dangerous thing.
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian Spring;
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
and drinking largely sobers us again.”

― Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism

 And I leave it here in suspense to see how it might resonate with this stream.


I remember feeling excluded by such language when I had been a university undergraduate.

I brought up these comments with Steve and Shannon during the Virtually Connecting Hangout.

"Well of course," Shannon said "You can't really appreciate the meaning of the keynote if you only have the slides. You need to have Steve who is communicating with all his energy"  
(or words to that effect)

 At this point in the conversation, Steve announces to the world: "Yeah, and I am not wearing any pants."  (framed by the screen)

“A little learning is a dangerous thing."

Shannon, rightly, questioned the interest of tweeting out slides without comment to contextualise. 

She is right that if one sees just one slide one might react negatively, and critically, or totally miss the meaning intended.

Missing links....

During the keynote, Maha was messaging us to try to work out what was going on with the keynote, as it was running late.

It maybe stressful to be waiting around to participate with others when there is an absence of information as to what is going on.

I thought of Periscoping the session so that Maha could follow the proceedings.

Then, I thought better of it.

I thought it wouldn't be right to livestream an event without asking the people beforehand.

We spoke of this during the Vconnecting session.

Shannon said she was relieved that I hadn't Periscoped the session.

Missing links....

So, I remember sharing with others following the #unicollab2018 Twitter stream a couple of talks from #OER17. One had been a talk of Catherine Cronin.

In other tweets from #unicollab2018, I could note convergences of online communities, #clmooc, #digped, #alt, #rhizo14 etc.

These convergences I started to find in Krakow, over and over again.

I felt that my various identity strands were coming together and meeting.

I feel that there is a space of action which is emerging.

Missing links...

So, here I am, with all of these links, dots, spaces, places, questions connecting.

I know that I have work to do here.

This is a start.

I am gradually mapping out acts.

(acte manqué...)
I leave it in suspense to return to.

 Missing links....

 So I thought about live-streaming at #OER18.

What is stopping conferences like #unicollab from doing more live-streaming, from having a more hybrid conference?

So I thought I had better investigate.

How have I learnt for the past decade or so?

Well, I go and speak with those who are in the know....

"Learning is about making the right connections...." 
Downes.



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Wednesday, February 14, 2018

A seat at the table?


"If you are not at the table, you are on the menu."

 A seating plan.

 There's Christ in the centre, surrounded by his disciples.

Who is to his left? Who is to his right?

 Whose table are they dining at?

Is that important?

 I wonder who is in charge of the seating plan?

I suppose that once a marginal dissident Palestinian preacher is appropriated by the established church, and miscellanious defenders of faith, the seating plan becomes an important issue.

 Who will get to share the bread?

 Sometimes, people are easier to invite to dinner when they are dead.

Surveillance.



Before Google, (who does no evil), before Apple (who pays no tax), before Facebook (who brings the internet to the poor), before Twitter (and its civic service), before the NSA and GCHQ...

GOD.

Some of us have a long history of dealing with surveillance.

The (dis)advantage of divine surveillance is that we can do little more than pray for benevolence.

We are at God's mercy.

We must have faith.

All of us.

We may have some choice of intermediaries.

They may not have your best interests at heart.

Shouldn't we pretty much all be equal at communion?


"And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed it, and brake it, and gave it to the disciples, and said, Take, eat; this is my body."

I borrow a photo from a Catholic Herald article entitled:

"Why it makes no sense for non-catholics to receive communion. Here's why."

I wonder who is in charge of the seating plan?

Mammon.

 Before Google, (who does no evil), before Apple (who pays no tax), before Facebook (who brings the internet to the poor), before Twitter (and its civic service), before the NSA and GCHQ...

We were (left) alone.

We love to be connected.

We are useless at resisting temptation.



Apples are sold seductively.

We are willing to believe snakes who speak.

They surely mean no evil.

Open your homes to them.

Surely, we are mistaken.

We are their bread, their bodies, their things.

We are on their menus, being eaten, bit by bit.

Who will defend us?

The (dis)advantage of divine surveillance is that we can do little more than pray for benevolence.

 Defenders of the faith.

Let us pray.

Here is humble Abe, engraved in stone, magnified in scale and marble.



"Government of the people by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth."

Abraham Lincoln.

Abraham Lincoln has values, faith and forboding.

He is eternal (dead).

I wonder who is in charge of the seating plan in the winter White House?


A seat at the table.

 I was listening to the first #engagemooc hangout and suddenly, quite unexpectedly the word "table" jumped out at me.




"We need to give people access to the table."

7:41 PM Simon Ensor​ Hmmm. Tables of power. What about upending that table?


"And they come to Jerusalem: and Jesus went into the temple, and began to cast out them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves;"

 I suppose, I am hypersensitive to this idea of tables.

 I think about sitting at a vast table as a member of the university's board.

 I was able to vote, to speak even.

 I learnt that decisions were made, not at the table, but in the closed rooms by those who really held the power.

 My place at the table was to acquiesce.

 I was a representative of the diversity allowed by statute.

I remember discovering the university's gastronomic restaurant.

I was never invited to such a table usually.

I remember my feelings about a conference where those in power were all grouped at the top table.

There was an unnanounced seating plan for those in the know.

I was at a table, not THE TABLE.

I wonder who is in charge of the seating plan?

I had a voice, apparently not a voice that counted.

I wrote about this experience in two previous articles:

What are you?

R.E.S.P.E.C.T.

When we sit at their academic tables, are we still on their menu?

The conference closes with the round table.

The knowers are known.

I wasn't invited.

I left the delegates to their tables and went and ate with a homeless person in a Macdonalds.

I back reference a blog post of Kay Oddone entitled:

"But it’s not just taking a seat. It’s feeling confident and competent and comfortable enough to join in with the conversation that is happening at that table. And knowing, when the talking stops, and the faces turn expectedly, how to share one’s opinion in a way that

makes it able to be heard."

I note a strong emphasis on the importance of "higher education" in #engagemooc which is not supported by the examples of community learning in the videos brought to the table in topic one.


  • The Highlander centre.
  • The Antigonish movement
  • Black Community Education in Jim Crow South.


I wonder who is in charge of the seating plan?

Table research

 I thought perhaps, I should research tables.

 Perhaps, I had misunderstood what was meant by "access to tables."

I TOO.
I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.

Tomorrow,
I’ll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody’ll dare
Say to me,
“Eat in the kitchen,"
Then.

Besides,
They’ll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed—

I, too, am America.
Langston Hughes, 1902 - 1967

 The poem, I discover in an article entitled "What Langston Hughes powerful poem I, Too, tells us about America's past and present", is engraved in stone at the entrance of the National Museum of African American History on the National Mall.

Does "access to the table" mean acceptance as an American?

 Is the table American citizenship?

 What is it about being engraved in stone?

 I, too, am European.


Pre Brexit, I find myself in limbo in France as a British citizen applying for French nationality. Whatever happened to European ideals? I find an article from 2013 entitled:

 "The European Dream Is Based On An 'Equals Around The Table' Metaphor."

 "In between the trade talks European leaders came to see that they had something in common besides the name of the table at which they sat."
On this foundation I propose that ‘equals around a table’ should be the governing analogy and the founding myth behind any new narrative or ‘European Dream’. The slogan of the European Union is ‘united in diversity’ and in the words of Hannah Arendt in The Human Condition:
To live together in the world means essentially that the world of things is between those who have it in common, as a table is located between those who sit around it: the world like every in-between, relates and separates men at the same time.
A ‘table’-metaphor further has a strong mythology in the European context. Jesus sat around a table, predicted his demise and forgave his traitors depicted on ‘The Last Supper’. King Arthur and his ‘Knights of the Round Table’ is a common legend of valour, righteousness and equality. Martin Luther King Jr. might not be European, but his ‘I have a dream’ speech has resonated strongly with many Europeans over the last 50 years. He too talked about ‘the table of brotherhood’ as the central meeting place in his dream about equality and racial justice. Even the idea of a European continent in the very physical and geological sense rests on the idea of a tableau – or table.
Boardroom tables.
I find an exciting article entitled: 
"Dutch photographer Jacqueline Hassink has been inside some of the most important and cloistered rooms in the world. But these aren't science labs or political offices—they're the opulent boardrooms of Europe's largest companies, which Hassink photographed as part of a project called The Table of Power."

I find the language intriguing: "the inner sanctum". 
I search a definition.
"The most sacred place in a temple or church.
A private or secret place to which few other people are admitted.
‘he walked into the inner sanctum of the editor's office."

I suppose that the most sacred place is that closest to GOD.

 Were they talking about "access to tables" such as these in #engagemooc?

 I immediately remember a cartoon version of Orwell's Animal Farm.

 The horse and the sheep are looking in through the window as the pigs dine.



"No question now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which."


George Orwell, Animal Farm

While billionaires toast their tax breaks, people go hungry.

I find a documentary entitled:

A place at the table.

"As of 2012, about 50 million Americans were food insecure. This was approximately 1 in 6 of the overall population, with the proportion of children facing food insecurity even higher at about 1 in 4."





Clean energy...

While billionaire Elon Musk sends surplus Tesla sports cars to Mars, kids are digging cobalt in the Congo for its batteries with their bare hands.


"But the film is a saddening bore

'Cause I wrote it ten times or more

It's about to be writ again."



David Bowie Life on Mars

Are we wanting to replace one exploitative elite with another?

The Captain's table.

 I find importance advice from the Reader's Digest, (Goodness a relic):

"How to get invited to the captain's table on your cruise holiday."

 This is important as:

"The captain's table is the best place to eat, and to be seen at during your cruise. But there is a fair bit of mystery about how you can be invited to dine with the captain. As with many cruising enigmas, there is more than one way to get to dine at the top table."

 Thank Goodness!

Google has saved me from social exclusion.

 A seat at the table.

 Google works in mysterious ways (but does no evil) I find a brilliant community art experiment "The Community Meal" in an article entitled "A seat at the table".

Surely we need to enable our own diverse tables to emerge rather than attempt to be the token invitee in their boredroom?

"The metaphor of the table evokes images of folks coming together to break bread, to discuss personal and political issues, and to cultivate an atmosphere of community. For artists Seitu Jones and Theaster Gates, the table is more than a metaphor; it’s also a medium. In the Twin Cities, their tables are provoking dialogue about systemic reform, in local foodways and cultural institutions. Can these conversations actually effect change? Or is the change the conversation itself?"

 "With the support of Public Art Saint Paul, Jones staged Create: The Community Meal, a half-mile-long luncheon in the middle of Victoria Street. A host of community partners helped to grow, cook, and choreograph the meal that took 400 volunteers to realize."

I wonder who is in charge of the seating plan?

This scheme contrasts with patriotic British street parties which have long been usurped by royalty and the establishment as demonstrations of civic engagement.

 "Do we have to eat the jelly mum?"


A dinner party.

 I discover another art installation entitled "The Dinner Party"

 "The Dinner Party is an installation artwork by feminist artist Judy Chicago. Widely regarded as the first epic feminist artwork, it functions as a symbolic history of women in Western civilization. There are 39 elaborate place settings arranged along a triangular table for 39 mythical and historical famous women. Sacajawea, Sojourner Truth, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Empress Theodora of Byzantium, Virginia Woolf, Susan B. Anthony, and Georgia O'Keeffe are among the guests."

Should you be accepting invites to their tables or consider designing your own?

I find inspiration in a community project entitled:

A seat at the table.

It is accompanied by a hashtag: #seatatourtable

"A Seat at the Table is a borrowed phrase from Langston Hughes’ iconic poem, I, Too, am America. Words from this poem are carved on the walls of the museum’s history galleries.
At A Seat at the Table audiences are empowered to take their rightful seat at the table over a family-style meal, following critical conversations for social justice, featuring guest speakers whose work and commentary seeks progress for all people of color. Audiences take the lead in sharing critical thinking, problem-solving, and strategies towards a more equitable society.
The program acts as a social justice conversation exploring issues of contemporary importance linked to systemic racism, social inequity, and the black community. This program amplifies an important pillar of the museum’s mission to explore:
  • the American experience through the African American lens
  • what it means to be an American
  • and share how American values such as resilience, optimism, and agency are reflected in the African American community’s past, present, and future"

Should you be accepting invites to their tables or consider designing your own?



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Wednesday, April 5, 2017

Re: resources.

I dropped into a discussion at #OER17 on the politics of open which Autumm Caines @autumm was kindly live streaming (OER).








I didn't catch very much but it sort of confirmed how I have been thinking recently about my own teaching, education and the nature of open.

I wanted to note a few ideas down here while they are fresh.

The mass of "resources" on the net have attracted teachers and sometimes distracted teachers from what essentially were their own most important qualities.

As an English as a foreign language teacher, what is most missing in our practice is NOT documentary resources, videos, articles, but people with whom the learners (and teachers) can identify and communicate with in English.

People are NOT resources.

Teresa Mackinnon, who I met thanks to Steve Wheeler's blog (OER), and with whom I have worked for the past six years had a conversation with Sue Beckingham I noted this morning:


And posted this photo



Chris Gilliard said it the other day:


Jim Luke said it today:



Maha Bali's keynote (thanks OER) ended with an image of people in her learning network.



As I looked at her image, I thought of other distant images of  "people" that we see, selfies which become resources for branding individuals, selfies taken with famous people which give people status, or people reduced to statistics, to targets, to victims, to labourers, to Uber drivers, to slaves.

I heard Maha (whose name I am sure I pronounce incorrectly) talk of local academics plagiarising "open resources".

Resources give some people POWER.

I wondered about this term "Open Education Resources".

Who says "resources" says power.

 "Power is not an institution, not a structure; neither is it a certain strength we are endowed with; it is the name that one attributes to a complex strategical situation in a particular society."

 Michel Foucault

 Well connected people have power?  

 I wonder an instant what "well" means.

I wonder an instant about "badly" connected people.

I wonder an instant about "sick connected people."

I wonder an instant about "sick well connected people."

I went and looked for connections to resources, collocations with the word "resources":

http://www.freecollocation.com/search?word=resource

ADJ. considerable, enormous, large, major, substantial The library is an enormous resource for historians of medieval France. | important, vital | adequate, sufficient | limited, meagre, scarce | renewable, sustainable, unlimited | finite, limited, non-renewable | available | additional, extra | invaluable, useful, valuable Time is your most valuable resource, especially in examinations. | untapped | natural | material, physical | energy, mineral, oil, water | capital, economic, financial The school has limited financial resources. | human, staff | information, learning, library, teaching The database could be used as a teaching resource in colleges. | national | inner, personal She is someone of considerable personal resources.

VERB + RESOURCE be rich in, have Australia is a country rich in natural resources. We do not have the resources (= the money) to update our computer software. | lack | pool, share We'll get by if we pool our resources. | allocate, distribute, provide | divert, reallocate, redistribute the government's role in diverting resources into social policies | draw on, exploit, manage, mobilize, tap, use to mobilize resources in the community to provide shelter for the homeless We need to manage our resources better. | deplete, use up | squander, waste | conserve
RESOURCE + NOUN centre | allocation, management | depletion | constraints, implications
PHRASES access to resources, the allocation/distribution/provision of resources, the exploitation of resources, a lack of resources, the use of resources We must make the most efficient use of the available resources.


I did a Google Image Search with the word "Resources"

Of course, I selected the appropriate copyright tab - free to use or modify even for commercial uses.




These are open to use.

Google is open to use (for those with internet).





My Google search data is open to use (he coughs).



What was it that Autumm put on the tweet to the link to her live stream?


Raw click data become "resources".

 People become "resources".


So here we are talking of OER from our strategic positions in our particular socieities.

"The university and in a general way, all teaching systems, which appear simply to disseminate knowledge, are made to maintain a certain social class in power; and to exclude the instruments of power of another social class."

 Michel Foucault

 So here we are, many of us threatened by those who would discount our essential human value as essential human "resources" to their essential "education" systems.

 Wouldn't some prefer, open, expertly designed personalisable resources, massive data collection of clicks and social network graphs, and deskilled tutors, or robots, a healthy profit from a stamp placed on a document, passport, badge, chip?

 "Education may well be, as of right, the instrument whereby every individual, in a society like our own, can gain access to any kind of discourse. But we well know that in its distribution, in what it permits and in what it prevents, it follows the well-trodden battle-lines of social conflict. Every educational system is a political means of maintaining or of modifying the appropriation of discourse, with the knowledge and the powers it carries with it."

 Michel Foucault

 Is knowledge now what counts?

 Isn't compliance more useful?

 I think of an artist friend of mine painting canvases live on Facebook with the words: 

 I am a prostitute. https://www.layral.fr/jesuisunepute
"What strikes me is the fact that in our society, art has become something which is related only to objects and not to individuals, or to life. That art is something which is specialized or which is done by experts who are artists. But couldn't everyone's life become a work of art? Why should the lamp or the house be an art object, but not our life?" 

Michel Foucault


The screen shot that I took from Autumm's OER live stream made me feel frankly paranoid.



I went off and remixed it, to make me feel slightly better.


I am suddenly reminded of a tweet I sent earlier in the day.


Those mines on the map of Africa, we are mostly all being mined now.
















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