Make do.

I have just read +Alan Levine 's blog on Connected Courses "All about the do." and there is much here that I absolutely agree with.



I particularly agree with my being in a "creative dimension" of my own.

This is of course no news to me (or to my poor family and friends, who have to ask questions like: 'What the hell is he up to now?' - Generally met with a grin and a shrug of my shoulders.)

What is news is that other people recognise me being in another creative dimension and that appears welcomed.

Thank you Alan for the flower. I take it as a flower. If it is not a flower, it is too late to change anything now.

I shall make do.

I would however like to be able to do more than receive flowers from Alan, nice that that is.

Once we have sent each other flowers on #rhizo14, #clmooc, #ccourses, studied with Gardner and become terribly learned, made new friends, come up with the odd wacky digital artefact for #ds106 for life, there comes, for me at least, a killer question:

So what?

Are we connecting to get fodder before returning to our disconnected rabbit holes?
Are we connecting to continue with the flower arranging, digital masterpieces, studying?
Are we connecting to justify the expenditure of a foundation's investment in a project?
Are we researching so as to become terribly senior as academics?


Constraints and opportunities

Leading change from below is I believe the only way to transform education. 

Often, people leading change in their institutions are marginal and lack resources.
Often moral support is essential to keep people plodding on. 
Often such people could benefit from technical/pedagogical support.(example Alan can fix a hangout date please? - That is not just an example :-).
Such support is generously offered and received...

Doing it

We learn much from watching people developing, through their blogging, from their sharing of vulnerability. We learn less from what we might consider 'best practices', which might appear unattainable practices for our context.

I teach 22 hours per week with my colleague over 400 students to learn a foreign language 2 hours per week, I am developing CLAVIER, I am working with over 20 colleagues in 11 different countries, there are more than 1000 students connecting a little or a lot.

We are making it. We are making it happen.


We could do with:

1) financial support - so as to have a little more time to do research/to to professional development
2) some technical support - to develop a platform similar to Connected Courses site in some respects
3) time to share our experiences, to include more people/institutions

Everything that we do is connected to one aim.

Transforming education.

What about a #ccourses nursery to nurture associated connected courses?

No response?

I shall make do

Blogging is a little hobby I have.


 

Artful...as in Dodger.

A giant of a boy threw himself at what he considered to be the easiest route to the try-line.

The easiest route was...myself.

He took the wrong route.

He stopped short...

The bigger they are...the harder they fall and all.

I enjoyed tackling.

"Bravo that boy, very brave!"

I smirked, I admit to being not a little proud of that tackle.

Refereeing the match was a talent-scouting house-master who went by the name of Dracula.

A few months later, I was in Dracula's study.

"Tell me, Simon, what are your ambitions?"

"I would like to play rugby for England."

"Yes, yes... but what else?"

"Would you like to be head-boy for example?"

"No, I think it is ridiculous that older boys have power over younger ones, I think the idea that monitors are the only ones who are allowed to wear brown shoes is...ridiculous."

I liked the word ridiculous, particularly the stress on 'dic' and the  two last syllables, I liked the way the tongue moved to say it.


I embodied disdain. 

From that moment, I was marked as a nuisance, an annoyance, one not to be trusted.

Not even brown shoes would buy me, good heavens.

His final words when I finally escaped his clutches were:

"We shall miss Simon's way of... er making his position...er his disagreement...clear."

Prostitution Ring

"Are you prepared to prostitute yourself for this agency?"

I was a little surprised at the up-frontness of the interview question.

I figured that that was how they must speak in Public Relations.

"Of course."

I said it, convincingly enough for them to move onto the next question.

"Would you like to drive a BMW? All our executives get to drive BMW's."

I wasn't too sure about the BMW.

The serial car-incidents flashed before mine eyes.

• My father's Austin - Gate post.
• The vinyard's Citroen Van - Dangerously close to tumbling down a valley near Beziers.
• The boss's Morris - Ran out of petrol in rush hour in Oxford Street.
• The boss's Citroen - Break-down in Camden
• The boss's Transit Van - Scratched before exiting car-dealers.
• The boss's Taxi - Abandonned while driving itself in Drive.
• The four driving tests - FAILED.

I reckoned that the BMW could probably wait.

Coffee-mourning

I was invited at the weekend for a coffee.

I thought that that was a little suspicious.

It appears one always gets offered a cup of bloody coffee when they give you the sack.

"Thank you for giving me the sack, that way I will not have to put up with any more of your stupid jokes and I will be entitled to unemployment benefit, as otherwise I would have had to have  resigned."

Those were the words that I remember spitting, or words to that effect.


Trust me. It's Official.

As we are talking about TRUST this week here in Connected Courses, I feel the need to come clean.

I love working in a team for a cause that I can embrace, fully.

I enjoy being in a band of imagined villains, pirates, outlaws.

I am terribly uncomfortable with badges, labels, official sort of stuff...

Unless of course it is part of a piratical plan.

If that's the deal, "Ahoy mates!"

The Academy won't save us. 

Oscar might come in handy.

I am brought back to a book of one of my favourite authors Joe Simpson - him of Touching the Void.
He never really comes to terms with the idea that one day he will not be a marginal climber on the dole.

I am, I suppose, like my friend Terry Elliott, an outsider.

I reread his article this evening: Iconoclasty 101: Outsiders in Academe for reassurance.


The Academy won't save us!

I want to enable us to have a space where it is difficult to distinguish facilitators from facilitators.

I want to us to have all sorts of biographies, all sorts of photos of unknown urchins with whom we may connect.

Artful then?

I am not sure how possible it is for me to be other than....

Dodger...

Pulling here, pulling there and giving a broad grin to a band of fellow urchins.

For Mia, Howard, Claudia et al.