Showing posts with label vconnecting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label vconnecting. 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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Thursday, September 7, 2017

Blackbird.

Stop.

NO REALLY.

 STOP.

An instant.

Can you hear the beauty?


That song?


"What are we/they ACTUALLY doing? That's what matters." Peter Goodyear.

I sat down this morning with my friends and colleagues, early.

Early enough to REALLY appreciate the coffee.

Somewhere, PEOPLE had decided on PLATFORM POLICY which was stressing out my friend.

WE DIDn't FUCKING EXIST (on their platform).

That was causing problems.

Because despite the digital policy evidence to the contrary,

WE DO EXIST.

 REALLY.

For a moment, I am brought back to listening to Bonnie Stewart's keynote at the ALT conference.

In the light of recent discussions, in the light of the morning coffee, I am feeling that I need to come back, to walk slowly with Bonnie's keynote, to listen to it with new ears.



Years and years of Inuit oral culture.

I think for a moment of that story that Bonnie refers to:

Sir John Franklin, a Western explorer, undoubtedly well-financed, attempts to "force passage."  

His ship sinks into an oblivion.

SIR was remembered by Inuit oral histories but lost to Western science for 168 years.




Bonnie, in the light of her experience attempting to "teach" the Inuit asks us to think critically about our use of educational technology, of education (which is a technique, a technology) and challenges the "NORMAL".

Where is the space for those without voices?

How can we learn from those whose voices are SILENCE?

How can we learn from those whose science are STORIES?

I think of this as a parent of children who use SILENCE as a weapon.

ANONYMOUS

The day before in the VConnecting session with Sian Bayne, Peter Alston and others, we had spoken about anonymity.



How do we situate our practice in a world governed by platform capitalism?

I wondered.


I wondered.


Wendy took her time, a napkin, a pen, Twitter and amplified and extended the WONDERING.





So there I was after coffee with my friend Leisha.

We were brought together to talk of connecting students in France and the UK.

Being just the two of us, we took our time.

Documents, led to photos, to videos, to VConnecting, to a research survey which stopped me in my tracks. (NB TRACKS - WHOSE TRACKS?)

I had written about being stopped in those tracks here:

"Survey and Surveillance".

I had wondered.

"How can I position myself as a researcher with friends and colleagues?"

I had lined up a conversation with my friend Maritta Riekki to talk about this tomorrow.

I have always had a problematic relationship with research and researcher identities.

I had noticed my colleagues' intake of breath on the mention that I was working towards a thesis.

"Who does he think he is?"

"What am I?"

"Who do I think I am?" IN DEED.

IN DEED.

Quite naturally during our conversation, we moved from a submission to a conference, from informal conversation to agreement that we would capture our conversation, to agreement that we work together on reflective practice and extend our conversations within our local community.

What REALLY counts is the TIME we spend giving attention to OUR COMMUNITIES.

I underline the words: OUR COMMUNITIES.

I remembered a post of Maha Bali: Keynoting and Impostering ,talking of the conflicting feelings which concern the words:

 OUR COMMUNITIES.

 In the light(darkness?) of:

  • WESTERN COLONISATION, 
  • MERCHANT CAPITALISM
  • SLAVERY CAPITALISM
  • PLATFORM CAPITALISM, 
  • NEOLIBERAL MONETISATION of ACADEMIA
  • NORMED ATTITUDES to GENDER/SEXUALITY/ETHNIC orgins.
  • GLOBAL WARMING

What constitutes  OUR COMMUNITIES?

Who do we spend our time with?

Who do we really give our attention to?

Who do we ignore?

Do we extract resources data and privilege from from subjects, THEIR COMMUNITIES?

 Do we protect ourselves in WALLED COMMUNITIES?

 Do we protect our power behind PERMISSIONS TO EDIT/CODE/MODERATE?

 So that we may add value to our brand in OUR REPUTATION ECONOMY?

 I hear a blackbird singing.

Who is the TROLL/TERRORIST/IM-MIGRANT/EXPERT/TEACHER/LEARNER/FRIEND?

What constitutes OUR COMMUNITIES?

COINCIDENCE?

It so happens that at noon, I had a VConnecting session.



It was, amongst others with the morning's keynote speaker: Peter Goodyear.

I went back and noted some words.
And some other words:

And some ideas:
And some pictures which echoed conversations with Leisha.
It was perhaps a coincidence that a question came to the fore:

 "How do you, as a researcher, present yourself to "'practitioners"?"

This came from my conversation with Leisha about how our colleagues perceived the words:

"RESEARCH" "RESEARCHER".

We decided that the power differentials inherent in the terms made the colleagues defensive.

I mentioned to Leisha that I myself had been aggressively defensive to what I considered appropriation of my work for the benefits of "researchers" and their CV's.

I remember "What are you?"

I remember feeling excluded and belittled by academic language.

I remember a conversation with a student who talks of academics deliberately marking rank with "academic language"

I remember Bonnie talk of IQ tests, Bell Curves, and how they are culturally biased.

Innuits: "What is this dahlia?" "What is a blackbird?"

What might we learn from Inuits about orality - history, knowledge, song?

The conclusion that I am coming to is the following:

We must walk the walk, taking time to treat people right, to respect our differences.

Science may give us massive data sets, neutral objectivity.

Does Google do no evil? (ERR?)

Can we trust Facebook at face value? (NOPE)

Do researchers have the right to do wrong to the anonymous?

The darkness that binds us.

Life reminds us that however distant we are from others' reality there are universal facts.

We are born, we move, we die and then we know no more.

We spoke of that with Leisha, we have a duty to revise the old odysseys with our learners.

"Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none."

 William Shakespeare.

All of this entails: care, love, humility, trust, time, attention, craft, artisanship.

I am reminded of a little girl who used to play in the sand-pit with me as a child.

She used to play with the Inuit in the snow, as her parents were missionaries.

She opened her eyes to the reality of life dying in the street in India.

KNOWLEDGE may BLIND more than it allows us to see.

I wrote about her story.

It was called "Blinkers and Socks."

I have a difficult relationship with my missionary past - Nagasaki Mon Amour.

I am reminded of the writing of my friend, Paul Prinsloo.

Who consitutes OUR COMMUNITIES my friends?

I hear a blackbird sing.

Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life
You were only waiting for the moment to arise

Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these sunken eyes and learn to see
All your life,
You were only waiting for the moment to be free

Black bird fly, black bird fly
Into the light of the dark black night

Black bird fly, black bird fly
Into the light of the dark black night

Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to arise
You were only waiting for this moment to arise
You were only waiting for this moment to arise


What/Who is on your "to do list" today?

 "What are we/they ACTUALLY doing? That's what matters." Peter Goodyear.














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Wednesday, August 23, 2017

This event is brought to you by...




A post event reflection.

Structured unpredictably...

A gif of dynamic systems.

"If one has to start anywhere..."

"Will this animation move when published." He wonders.

"Will it just become static on the net?"

"Whatever."

I keep trying to figure out where this should start.

Narrative(s) attempt(s) fail unmanageable reality.

It will have to do.

Such universal failings are, after all, what connect us.

Darkness that binds us.

"How do I express this with ever-changing feeling?"

"Oh damn it."

This is absurd.

“Writing has nothing to do with meaning. It has to do with landsurveying and cartography, including the mapping of countries yet to come.”  

Gilles Deleuze

"Fuck IT."

"Fuck Google."

It's all we have.

A fragile agency... 

"A speckulation?"

"I'd like to thank my mother, my father."

"I'd like to thank (GOD?)... er those who missed attempting to kill my grandfather in the war."

This is brought to you by...

A dog barking?

I hurriedly pulled on a pair of boxer shorts and a tshirt.

Modesty saved.

This is brought to you by...

FEDEX

"Do you have ID?" 

I went back for my passport and signed off the parcel slip.

This is brought to you by...

The cable for my laptop.

At two o'clock in the morning attempting hamfistedly...

 "Why do we say that?"

I type a blog post on a smartphone...

I lose the contents of the post three times.

(INSERT: I fall upon a post of Maha talking about the difficulties of dealing without her laptop in the US because of a ban, I think of her while writing this now.)

This is brought to you by...

What was lost.

Sleep. 

A laptop with POWER.

This is brought to you by...

A caring community.

This is brought to you by...

A Slack backchannel.

"I am sorry, my laptop has died on me, I won't be able to set up the session for Eurocall tomorrow."

This is brought to you by....

A response from Helen DeWaard over in Ontario.

At virtually no notice, Helen really backs me up for Virtually Connecting at Eurocall.

She will share her? Google's?  our? POWER to allow? to enable?  us to hang out in Southhampton.

"What about Saturday?"

Ken Bauer, over in Mexico silently interrupts a meeting at his daughter's high school to offer help.

On Saturday, he will be up for 5:00 am in the morning.

This is brought to you by....

Friendship, fellowship, faith, love, hope....a belief in something bigger than each one of us.

This is brought to you by....

Teresa Mackinnon  she offered to be an onsite buddy at Eurocall.

This is brought to you by...

Steve Wheeler  who mentored me on his blog...like so many others.

This is brought to you by....

Rhizomatic learning...Dave Cormier...

"A rhizome has no beginning or end; it is always in the middle, between things, interbeing, intermezzo."

This is brought to you by...

Rhizo14

"Will it ever end?"

"No...nooo!"

Martina Emke started it. 

She kept bringing up rhizomes.

We hadn't even gone live yet.

"A rhizome has no beginning or end; it is always in the middle, between things, interbeing, intermezzo."

I met Maha Bali, Apostolos Koutropoulos, so that's a sort of start to this story here.

"A rhizome has no beginning or end; it is always in the middle, between things, interbeing, intermezzo."

Rhizo15












"A rhizome has no beginning or end; it is always in the middle, between things, interbeing, intermezzo."

(I tire of fighting with html formating. It's small. It's small. )

 "Fuck it."

 This is brought to you by....

A common language...

POWER embodied? disembodied? 

POWER to order chaos? to give semblance of order to chaos? to command? to touch?

POWER to include? to exclude? 

This is brought to you by....

A language.

"An Open Educational Resource" offered AK.

This is brought to you by...

A keynote recording.

"Will it be available openly?" I asked.

"Well what's the point of putting it on a website if it is not available openly?" Martina responded.

"Academic publishing etc....?" I countered?

But will it be accessible?

Will the language be accessible?

This is brought to you by....

My interest in language learning.

It led me to reflect.

The more I reflected, the more I was led to experts.

This is brought to you by...


I fell upon a conversation which spoke to me.

This was accessible.

A recognisable conversation between recognisable humans. 

Humans. Speaking English.

This is brought to you by....

An ex-student and reluctant academic.

I remembered being a student at university.

I remembered struggling with what seemed to me to be densely alien gibberish.

"Why can't they just speak bloody English?" I remember complaining intolerantly.

"Why do they need all these barbaric terms?" I remember thinking.

I think of attitudes to scientists.

"Britain has had enough of experts," says Gove.

This is brought to you by...

Reading articles by Steven Thorne and other experts on the complex reality of language learning.

This is brought to you by....

Combining blogging with reflective practice.

Towards complexity-informed language teaching in higher education.

To what extent is it possible to adopt “complexity-informed perspectives” (Mercer, 2013) for language teaching in higher education? Considering the classroom as a complex adaptive system (Larsen-Freeman, 1997; Ellis & Larsen-Freeman, 2009), we use mixed methods adapted from Nexus Analysis (Scollon & Scollon, 2004) to explore evolving ecologies of learning (Van Lier, 2010) in a French university language centre’s English classes for non-specialist undergraduate and postgraduate students. Using qualitative and quantitative survey, pedagogical programs, capture of interactions: photo, video, and learner portfolios, we trace discourses in place and interaction orders. We study teacher and learner reflection, narratives and interview to highlight divergent perceptions of affordances. We observe how network-connected technology offers the potential to modify pedagogical practices and assessment in the classroom, to better respect learner diversity and to “situate learning” (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Gee, 2004) in diverse contexts, to facilitate observation and analysis of learners and learning activities. We attempt to identify “core components of the system - hubs where the effect of change is more likely to spread throughout the system” both of the learner and the institution (Mercer, 2013).  If research may enable us to identify “general principles which language educators can use to guide their actions” (Tudor, 2003), analysis of individual stories illustrates the complex, unpredictable, emergent nature of learning. What strategies might teachers adopt to facilitate dramatic progress in learning? In an institutional context ordered by program outcomes, marking grids, and time constraints, learners may be more concerned with gaming the system for credit rather than actually learning a language. Teachers’ “historical bodies” (Scollon and Scollon, 2004): experiences, beliefs, attitudes, competences,  and time and or financial constraints may enable or limit their desire or means to adapt practices. Going forward, we consider it essential to develop connected, reflective communities of exploratory practice (Allwright, 2003) including learners, teachers and researchers to work towards manageable pedagogical solutions and the recognition of diverse perspectives, competences and roles.

This is brought to you by....

A growing feeling of becoming part of academic communities.

Thanks to people that I can share common VALUES with.

Despite past feelings of disgust for everything academia.

"What are you?" He scowled.

This is brought to you by...

Something greater than the sum of its parts.

"What is it that brings us to work together here in these spaces?" Wonders Apostolos.

 Words emerge chaotically.

This is brought to you by...

Virtually connecting, really connecting people who really desire to connect.





This is brought to you by...

An accessibly human American researcher, Steven Thorne packing an hour long keynote into 45 seconds, responding in dynamic whispers so as not to disturb adjacent partner/sponsor event...

"THIS EVENT IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY...."

speaking volumes about social issues in conversation with Parisa Mehran, an Iranian researcher refused a visa to attend Eurocall.

"SHHH!"


This is brought to you by....

Questions from Joe Dale and Teresa Mackinnon to Steven Thorne about how to connect theory to pedagogical practice.

Questions of how to be a teacher in a complex age of change.
("Was there ever an age that was not one of change?")

Questions of how to enable the work of researchers to be accessible.

Questions of what constitutes citizenship in a connected world.

Questions of identity, of language, of meaning, of POWER.

Questions of frontiers, of who defines our boundaries, our bodies, our movement....our lives.

"Teachers have never been so necessary." Steven Thorne.

"Accessibly human, caring, experts have never been so necessary." I think to myself.

"Working together across artificial frontiers has never been so necessary." I conclude.

"On est ensemble dans cette merde. On a chacun sa responsabilité." He thinks in French.

"Working outside the box, inside the box...tricky...hmm" I contemplate.


Postscript.

This is brought to you by....

Vialogues...



A desire to go back and listen again so as to better act.




Thank you to

Helen, Ken, Maha, Autumm, Vconnecting, Eurocall, Teresa, Kate, Joe, AK, Parisa, Dave, Steve, Steve, Francesca, Uncle Tom Cobley et al. (and er... Google)



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Thursday, April 6, 2017

Non-adjoining rooms.

Where were they all?

I was beginning to feel distinctly alone.

I looked at the link in the mail.

I looked at the link in the hangout.

They were not the same.

The others were in another room altogether.




I sent a tweet to Martin Weller over in London with the new link.

I sent a mail to the others.

Martin arrived,

 "The others are waiting in a different room;" he said.

"We don't have much time." he said.

I quickly went to find Mark in the other room and called him over from Oakland.

Dinah arrived from her library from somewhere in Ghana.

Graham Steele arrived from somewhere in Glasgow.

By the time everyone was together, we didn't have much time.

I fluffed through the introductions.

Darn.

Open in transit.

I got a tweet from Nadine.

Could she join too?

Nadine arrived in transit at a London airport.

Lucy Crompton-Reid, Lisa Taner, Maren Deepwell, Martin Weller gave us their generally positive impression from OER17.

All of them remarked on a growing internationalisation of the voices and the participants at the conference.

That was all very positive.

Then, Martin briefly mentioned a session from the first day:

Perspectives on Open Education in a World of Brexit & Trump [1559]
Type: Discussion
Authors: Maha Bali, Lorna Campbell, James Luke, and Martin Weller

I asked them their impressions about Brexit from their perspective.

As representative for Wikimedia, Lucy couldn't really get involved in the politics of it but she noted with Maren and Martin a generalised feeling of dismay.

Martin said something to the effect that it was too complex a question for the time they had.

Indeed, they didn't have much time, they had to leave to the afternoon sessions.




We continued an "after-conversation" with Nadine, Mark, and Dinah who was typing in the chat.

Nadine, travelling from Egypt was already having to travel/work around the laptop ban.

The battle of open.

I shared a story of how I fell upon a Twitter trolling of the Scottish first minister.

I looked at the tweet.

He was calling Nicole Sturgeon a traitor.

And what do we do to traitors he asked?

They hang.

I saw an avatar with an English flag.

I looked at the name.

With horror, I thought to myself: this is someone I know.

I checked.

It was a childhood friend.

I thought of how our lives had taken such different paths.

I, to safe middle-class higher education and ex-expatriation in France.

He, to work in a factory from the age of 16, and premature unemployment.

I, increasingly internationally connected, with a growing intercultural "awareness" of how little I am aware.

He, increasingly internationally connected, locally disconnected, with a growing frustration at intercultural exploitation and a clear awareness of what he has lost.

I fear for the future.

He has no future.

Shrinking privileges

I thought of how a few years earlier I had travelled to London for a conference.

This would now be impossible for me due to current economic constraints.

Privileges are shrinking.

Pressure on people is rising.

Mark spoke of similar experiences with old school friends who were now unemployed Trump supporters.

Platforms which carried such promise a few years earlier are being used to squeeze the life out of people around the world.

Californian dreams.

I remembered a Microsoft ad with images of Woodstock.

I remembered the free iPad I got at a London conference a few years back.

Those were the days...of being a roaming autodidact.

Now I roam mostly virtually.

 Imagined communities.

I remembered the feeling of being European.

I had a British passport but I was European.

I think now of learning to sing the Marseillaise with my daughter.

I have to be French to be European now...for how much longer?

Shall we go back to singing old battle songs.

Aux armes, citoyens
Formez vos bataillons
Marchons, marchons!
Qu'un sang impur
Abreuve nos sillons!
Allons enfants de la Patrie
Le jour de gloire est arrivé!
Contre nous de la tyrannie
L'étendard sanglant est levé
L'étendard sanglant est levé
Entendez-vous dans les campagnes
Mugir ces féroces soldats?
Ils viennent jusque dans vos bras
Égorger vos fils, vos compagnes!
Aux armes, citoyens
Formez vos bataillons
Marchons, marchons!
Qu'un sang impur
Abreuve nos sillons!

There are those who are winners in an increasingly polarised system.

There are those who are now losing and will look for others to blame.

There are those who were always losing and who say to us now:  "This is how it feels guys."

 There are those who will continue to be winners.

They will share their smiling photos from conferences in far away places.

Shall we applaud their openness?

 Making a moocery of us all?

I heard about exciting new ventures at OER17

I am sorry if I am not always able to find cheer.

There are those who are refugees and who are offered a MOOC.

MOONLITE



I know that I should be crediting the photographer.

Who will credit the refugees on the beach?

A MOOC financed with European funding while kids are drowning in the Mediterranean.

What will it be?

Swimming lessons?

I don't go and learn more about the project, I fear upsetting people, knowing one of the authors.

I simply write how my ignorance makes me feel.

I am sorry.

I heard about a Wikimedia scheme to help kids identify fake news.

Are we going to get European funding to help students see what is fake?

I think of my childhood friend and the promises made to him by successive governments.

I wonder what lies I am living?

Do we need bloody hours to work out a simple equation?

People are being screwed.

I heard John Casey talk about educational technology.


What was Alek Tarkowski talking about in an earlier virtually connecting session?

That he wanted to theme OER17 an open learning party or some such?

The party is over.

For many there never was a party...ever.

They paid for our party.

Non-adjoining rooms?

For a few moments sitting in that empty hangout room, I felt panic.

I felt fear that I wouldn't be re-invited to be a virtual buddy.

It was my anxiety to do well which was at the origin of my technical downfall.

I get anxious.

I remembe what it feels to be given your cards.

I remember the boss calling me over for a chat.

I remember how it feels to be excluded.

There are some of us who share hope and happiness.

There are some of us who have only anger and despair to share.

There are some of us who have only anger and despair but no means to share.

I find myself caught between feelings of  hope and despair, between belonging and longing.

Those feelings are in adjoining rooms, perhaps in the same room.

Virtually connecting
























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