Elgg in a weekend (kind of)

I am not writing this post as a way of sharing good practice, its a way – just going to explain exactly what we did. Elgg is without a doubt one of the most rewarding, quickest and easiest projects I have been involved with in the last few years.

My no1 recommendation if you are working with technologies in learning and want to find out more about Elgg, go visit All things Elgg , Elgg & Social Learning . As previously blogged, Jane is an Elgg guru, not to mention a wonderful human being!

Last April, I had an email from our Head of Computing (the academic department) asking to chat about possibilities of setting up a social network for a leadership program that the university was running for staff, including the Exec board (our vice chancellor was also a member of the program) . They had received the go ahead from the board and it was being sponsored by change management program leader in HR. The Head of Computing had initiated this being aware of technology infrastructure at the university as well as being a member.

As part of the leadership program which consisted of approx 100 staff, they met for coffee mornings and training sessions. They wanted an online network so that they could connect as needed outside of face to face meetings, because they recognised that they couldn’t currently do this in a convenient way, with many travelling to conferences and meetings. They didn’t want to start a formal project which would need to be managed by IT because they recognised that the internal IT Services did not have the resource to support it and it needed to be live by early June and demo-able before then.

Following some brief discussion we had narrowed it down to Elgg or Ning, then with the wisdom and expertise of Jane Hart, he decided to opt for Elgg. This was mainly due to the need for sharing documents as part of the network requirements. Jane has a fantastic comparison chart at  Social Media in Learning, we used this to check against our requirements. We had to move extremely quickly on this because of its high profile. One of the immediate issues was that Elgg was open source – could we support this also with open source hosting as well?

After a discussion with my team who advised that any support that I provided to this network would need to be done in my own time due to being one person short in the team. We discussed the possibility of seeing if there was interest from a PhD student studying in the department as an alternative option but in the end opted for an Elgg specialist web hosting provider who help with installation but you pay for the domain & web hosting. I can’t remember exact figures but I think we paid approx $20 for setup and now paying $9.99 per month for hosting.

We got messed around initially by a web hosting provider so switched to one that provided better customer service – they responded to all of questions really quickly and turned everything around within 24 hours.The Head of Computing left me to handle this side of it, I think I oversold my capabilities – so it was done in spare time, but it wasn’t complex to get going. If we hadn’t need to move so quickly we might have been able to be more patient but it simply wasn’t an option, I was asked to provide regular updates. In summary I had to

• fill in two boxes I think in order to search for our chosen web domain name – to check it hadn’t been registered already and click on ok.
• fill in a form to pay by credit card (we didn’t go through institutional procurement due to timescales)
• within 48 hours had details back from Web hosting advising of location of install, ftp, http details and logins etc

Then we got going. We decided to play around a bit – I wasted some time by playing with themes (for fun!) and then having to take off plugins and reinstall but we started the above process on the Friday, I spent approx a day of a weekend and we had a ’shell’ in place by Monday morning with blog entries, documents uploaded and I can’t remember what else but hopefully you get the idea. Your core applications included within your basic Elgg set up are a theme, blogs, status updates, groups & discussions, bookmarks, profiles and I can’t remember what else. You can add to this by installing plugins.

What’s a plugin ?
Basically a little extra piece of web code packed up as a group of files – a widget or application which can add something to your community – you choose it, download it, upload it into your community and enable it (make it live by clicking on a button).

You do need to be able to use an ftp application to upload the plugin files, if you go to C4lpt or MasterNewMedia , or Mashable, or wherever,  you can find recommendations. I already had wise ftp at home and purchased smartftp for work laptop. You can use ftp through explorer or if you know how to code it, through a command prompt too. I wanted something with an easier interface because I knew that was a question I might get asked.

Choosing plugins is great – you can go window shopping on Elgg – there are hundreds to choose from now – all developed & tested by the community and all free -  themes, languages, analytics, maps, calendars, walls, dashboards, twitter, ident.ca, facebook, video, audio, radio, friends, bulk registration – you name it, its probably there ! We installed a whole bunch of them and a new theme.

Domain
We had originally called it the 100 but after a quick demo with our HR lead and a colleague from Marketing – they liked it so much that they thought it was viable enough to start thinking about extending beyond this network so renamed to a different domain. Unfortunately this meant we had to do a completely new reinstall. Some of the files and permissions proved too problematic to map across easily without doing lots of extra work, so we just started again from scratch but this time, it took a grand total of 2.5 hours once we had the new domain (72 hrs usually but I think we had within 48). We didn’t have a budget for video so I did some explanatory guides – screenshots etc (and I think was going to do some quick Jing videos but can’t remember if did or not) Also used my blog on the site as a how-to with each new entry being a how-to for using something on the site.

Internal IT Services
I would recommend if you don’t already know someone within IT services, to go across your campus and start talking with them, find out who in the IT Services has been using blogs, wikis, social networks, tell them about your idea and informally ask their opinion. It will help if you know something about web coding and web servers, but if you don’t, try and use the correct technical terminology (or bring a tech friend) to describe your idea which will help them become more familiar with your idea quickly. They will also be aware of the project & programme management of IT at the university and will understand the issues that you face. If you mention that you think you can manage the project without needing to draw on their resources – explain that you have thought about as many of the risks, security & technical implications possible. Do some homework on this before the discussion. If you mention that it is an experiment or pilot that may be helpful too.

It will help if you have the Head of Computing as initiator and also that its being supported by the leadership of the university, but that will not be the case for all programmes. If you work in e-learning / learning technologies and do not have much connection with the training programmes within your HR, I would also recommend meeting them and asking if you can support / advise them with anything too, they may welcome you with open arms. It can also open up possibilities for discussions at a more strategic level.

We did have one issue where we had to involve IT Services. With the auto-emails – you can subscribe to updates via email in Elgg, for some reason they were coming through to non Surrey accounts but not Surrey ones. Jane Hart via Twitter was extremely helpful and offered some great suggestions for diagnosing the issue. I spoke to a friendly contact within IT Services and asked them to check to see why they weren’t appearing, we thought it was firewall related but it didn’t appear immediately obvious. I can’t remember what it was but something related to the exchange servers.

Outcome
We met the June deadline which was a coffee morning where it was introduced (don’t know specific details, wasn’t there). I’m not sure where they are at with it now but the last time I spoke with them over the summer they had over fifty users on there. So with no budget, very strict timescales and the attention of the university board we managed to get something out there in a nice looking shape, introduced the terms open source and online social networking to the leadership of the university and I hope they continue their interest. Before I left, I was asked to present a kind of lessons learnt to the Marketing team and that led to a really interesting discussion on the present and future of collaboration at the university. They were going to monitor the use of Elgg not just to see how the leadership programme used it but whether it sparked off any more overall interest in collaborating using non-traditional technologies in general across the university. I hope it does! I will definitely use Elgg again in the future.

Rediscovering taekwondo – heading into the water

Due to health & travel have not been at a training session for nearly a month, looking forward to reconnecting this Wednesday.

Just went to look for information about new poomsae to learn. Found out that it represents water – Taegeuk Yuk Jang

“Water always flows downward and, in time, can wear away the hardest granite. We learn that we can overcome every difficulty if we go forward with self-confidence and persistence. Like water, this form is gentle yet destructive. It teaches that man, when faced with a challenge, can overcome it by persistence and unwavering belief.”

Suddenly I can see a  cold, crystal clear Scottish loch

 

If I was going to build a TEKL what would I need to think about?

<grins>

Confession – ever since George Siemens posted about Technologically Externalized Knowledge and Learning, I kind of lost focus on the core weekly topics that studying for cck09 and started to think about this. Time to throw myself back into chaos, no longer have anything to lose, sanity went years ago. I have so little to offer the learning network for cck09 in terms of educational ’stuff’ so will fling everything mobile at it and see where it goes.

Have just started to create on a wikimap on Mindmeister, want to move onto Deepa Mehta at some point, but not content with managing to delete my concept map after spending (nearly 12) hours creating it last week there – don’t ask, have now managed I think, idiotically, to actually delete my whole self from Deepa Mehta so awaiting reinstatement ! Have added a tiny bit on there about textiles – but its not my thing / an area I know much about and what I do is from a brief period in Turkey when had partnership in a clothes shop one summer & brief conversations with someone who used to import cotton to UK. There’s a ton of stuff which could be added, especially under wearable computing & touch – lickable education anyone ?

If I was going to organise a TEKL creation dinner party – aside from educators – would want fashion designers, interaction designers, engineers, neuroscientists etc Or within education – just build a prototype and see ! Maybe it is more than one device or device & accessories depending on your viewpoint I guess.

So a TEKL is

“a physical, wearable device that captures our physical and virtual interactions and assist us in recognizing and forming knowledge connections based on our past interactions, our social network, and our current work or personal interest needs…As we go through the day, TEKL merrily records, matches, monitors, and recommends our learning and knowledge needs. When we go to bed, TEKL process our conversations (verbal – after all, everything is recorded), our email, our work habits, and our information seeking activities. Then, when we wake up, we receive a learning and knowledge status report, providing us with intelligent and relevant information as well as recommendations for greater personal efficiency and critical sources of information. The is a daily personal knowledge and learning GPS that provides direction and progress.” (1)

So many things to consider – there are wearable devices now but how to navigate through frequencies, fabrics, fibers and the invisible as well as visible. I wonder if it will be made with a wristband, watches , earpieces, rings – so many choices but how will they all connect?

Do they need to be connected all the time or could each one be accessed using different networks, protocols. Maybe it could just be like a little thimble (albeit 21st century one) with a skin sitting on one of our fingers which just remotely accesses everything as needed.

Haven’t mentioned glasses or lenses but I guess with ongoing augmented reality development, like the toolkit, research and projects at University of Washington and many others. No giant goggles please!

What about headpieces – would prefer design along the lines of Skullcandy as opposed to Darth Vader – something with a softer interface into the brain. Speaking of which, have not included anything on the brain on the wikimap yet – but having watched this amazing video last night, have a better idea about possibilities.

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1. Siemens G, (2009), Technologically Externalized Knowledge and Learning, Connectivism blog, available at:
http://www.connectivism.ca/?p=181

 

Battling seemingly endless negativity – assumptions about behaviour

This came up in discussions today but I frequently come across it at work and in my own communications too. I don’t know if anyone else finds this but one of the things that is really bugging me not just in cck09, in my job, but seemingly everywhere with interactions online – is that when you do or say anything – communicate using whichever technology and tools, there are massive assumptions made about not just what we say, why we are saying it, what method of communication we are using etc etc Sometimes its great, you can work really well together because these assumptions are positive and you just get on and do stuff.

I would be the first to admit to being over-sensitive at times and can find the online world a minefield. (Actually I think that is a good trait for my current and recent roles) I am completely convinced that I am not the only person who feels this way. Sometimes so many misunderstandings that you then spend, well goodness only knows how much time it takes to clear up because you maybe choose the wrong tool to say the wrong thing in the wrong level of detail with the wrong context at the wrong time. And it all gets messier and messier. Its one of the things that is putting me off using Google Wave at the moment, I feel like I have enough chaos using the tools I already do and no immediate urge to make it any more chaotic. I don’t want to spend time explaining comments and context which have fired off at that moment.

NB I am not saying that in cck09 I have had lots of misunderstandings with people and by writing this sentence I am making the point – again

This is why the work and technologies of Cognitive Edge’s Sensemaker and their network are going to be so valuable. Their methods do not involve intense heated, long conflict between individuals or groups but look at the wider picture. I attended part of the training this week in London (next part – Feb) Have an inkling now about complexity, but hope to spend a lot more time investigating further. I am not going to embarrass myself by outlining in detail what I have understood or not, prefer to explore more first. With Sensemaker, video below, you are gathering fragments and exploring patterns based on those fragments – i.e. a long detailed exchange between two people as a whole artefact is of less significance than series of fragments that can be pulled from both that exchange and other people’s conversations.

I would not call myself a practitioner (still feel like a novice at this point), but following a conversation with my manager earlier this week and with the two workshop organisers, decided to test the water a little – not as a formal introduction of the method as such. Mostly over coffee break, looking at examples of conversations or experiences with technology that really inspired/irritated or made easier/difficult. Areas that often come up – sharing, storage, privacy, access, errors & accuracy, technology taking over – promoting silo working, wasted time – speed of communication being both good and bad; and moving more towards the conversational – inability to control replies, encountering selfishness and resistance to change, subjective views, perception of ability to share knowledge.

When talking with people about online collaboration or in my previous role about using technologies in learning, research – similar areas also appear in conversation. Endless amounts of textual content being processed by individuals cause all kinds of mayhem in communication as we try to make sense of what we are seeing. Some technologies have yet to be really ‘magic’ as far I have noticed with the web and that is one area that I consider myself experienced.

Is it all negative ? No ! Its great to connect – that bit is really magical – just like phones – still talking with people all over the world is still mind-blowingly amazing ! I would just appreciate it if we didn’t find ourselves being propelled into using technologies with unrealistic expectations about the good / bad of human relationships and be more cautious. Not necessarily use them less, but look at how they’ve been designed, pause and think about what can realistically be achieved using them.

I am still trying to make sense of the value of conflict – it was very interesting to gain more insight into this at Cognitive Edge but I don’t want to put anything more in writing until I get round to reading The Magic of Conflict which has been sitting on the bookshelf next to me for several weeks now. As individuals the volume and variety of information means that as individuals we can’t possibly do this without creating more problems for ourselves. We need technologies that can make sense and now!

Clever Decision Making – when to be safe and when to be brave

Have been part of the Women in Technology community since Poole, but have been unable to get to any events for over a year, wonderful to join go back. I attended a very valuable, inspiring Women in Technology session on Tuesday evening about Clever Decision Making.  The keynote was from Julia Thrul who is a very smart, funny, down-to-earth lady. The panel were excellent and the men present also (some do attend).

Julia took us on a great whistlestop tour of decision making, with many references to tools, good articles and books in her presentation . It was interesting to be part of such a thoughtful audience in these times, a lot of shared pain in the room, people making decisions about other people including in some cases, making redundancies, people who feel that they were not considered valuable enough to be consulted in decisions. Julia mentioned about good communication – such as being aware of how your mood can influence your decision and communicating that to any others present in a meeting.

A great takeaway is that if you communicate how you make decisions, others will be more likely to come to you to ask for your input re decisions, also

• What type of decision maker are you, you are not the same as others making decisions around you
• Decisions – judging by results or feedback (what happens when neither of these are apparent, how does that affect your next decision)
• Asking right questions, different questions, don’t assume you need to know what is going on
• Body language is significant – cues, tone of voice, what people really mean, online this is now more difficult
• Awareness of what influences you – find your tools and methods that help you

She mentioned many great tools but one nice one is to just put into boxes the pros and cons of acting but also the pros and cons of not acting. One of the panelists, I think it was Paul also mentioned that when you choose not to make a decision, you are also making a decision.

Lots to go and look at further – I do sometimes write things down when making decisions, but probably not enough, writing them would be a good way of slowing down too. Some more for my learning map.

Pedagogy of the Privileged – openMBA, no I mean free and open

Firstly – the Schumpeter column examined the pedagogy of the privileged recently, looking for signs of business school activity in the light of the global economic crises, which have been reading and thinking about for the last week.

“THIS has been a year of sackcloth and ashes for the world’s business schools. Critics have accused them of churning out jargon-spewing economic vandals. Many professors have accepted at least some of the blame for the global catastrophe. Deans have drawn up blueprints for reform.

The result? Precious little. Business schools have introduced a few new courses. Students at Harvard Business School (HBS) have introduced a voluntary pledge “to serve the greater good” among other worthy goals, which about half of this year’s graduates embraced. But for the most part it is business schooling as usual. The giants of management education have laboured mightily to bring forth a molehill.
That is too bad. You do not have to accept the idea that the business schools were “agents of the apocalypse” to believe that they need to change their ways, at least a little, in the light of recent events. Most of the people at the heart of the crisis—from Dick Fuld at Lehman Brothers to John Thain at Merrill Lynch to Andy Hornby at HBOS—had MBAs after their name (Mr Hornby graduated top of his class at HBS). In recent years about 40% of the graduates of America’s best business schools ended up on Wall Street, where they assiduously applied the techniques that they had spent a small fortune learning. You cannot both claim that your mission is “to educate leaders who make a difference in the world”, as HBS does, and then wash your hands of your alumni when the difference they make is malign.” (1)

Suggestions made in the article include more evaluation of history, more serious critique of management techniques, more focus on ethics and this may be a misinterpretation on my part but a look at accountability of professors who develop & promote these management theories. Will look at MBA in more depth below.

Secondly and great timing, Dave Pollard has a good article that explains the current economic state very well. The bailout for dummies thing has bothered me a lot, its helpful to get a detailed explanation. In spite of many articles, books, heated discussions, visualizations online – these provide some explanation of what happened but – I think if you ask someone who has never studied any kind of economics, what that means in terms of what has happened in the last year, they would find it difficult to explain the terminology, the meaning of multiple indices movements and how that has affected corporate and government decision making.

Thirdly, the FT interview with George Soros about the institute he is setting up for new economic thinking. I haven’t watched the lectures in that series yet. He is financing the institute and the interview is too brief to really provide any details at this point. I maybe jumping the gun but I wonder if we need it – will it be successful as an alternative presumably to a university economics department, a business school and an MBA – which is what the rest of this post is about. I’m not sure if we need MBAs – at least in their current format – it seems an example of where corporate learning is making up for some kind of deficit in earlier education of young people, maybe it would be more useful to society if key areas could be learnt before entering a corporate environment.

You can study for an MBA by reading a book, as explored in a earlier post .

Overall with e.g. the Global MBA, the business schools need to satisfy a range of criteria including accreditation, number of years program has run, number of graduates. The top 1 of 100 (Wharton) shows a 119% increase in salary after achieving an MBA. Nottingham in at 100 also show a 62% increase in salary after MBA. Salaries range from approx $90,000 to $170,000 although this is across all countries so unless in a global position would need to look at average salaries in the individual countries to get an indication of how this scores. For those working in global positions in firms, these would be adjusted as per the country your contract is primarily based in anyway, I guess (?)

So as per the Economist article, the motivation to study includes the prospect of large increases as salary as a result. As with other areas of education there is an elite group of MBA provision where achievement of qualification through these reputable providers will also massively improve job prospects for working in a top corporation. There is an accreditation process provided by the Association of MBAs, who accredit “MBA, DBA and MBM programmes at 161 business schools in 72 countries.” (2). Based on a quick skim down the page, just over a fifth of these are offered as open programmes. There is no indication that any of these are offered freely in addition to prospective students that pay as per CCK08 and 09 programmes which have adopted a kind of freemium model in their provision. Some of those offer bursaries – however I have not checked each individual provider as yet.

It may be that the seeds have already sunk too deep prior to studying so however well an MBA course is structured & taught, I can’t imagine there are too many that decide that working for a large successful corporation is a bad idea  - sure I’ll think very carefully about whatever ethics you and your machines throw at me…but I do need to eat after this and I do need to prove to myself that it was worth it.

I may say it in jest but I self funded my Cert TEFL, 50% company, 50% self funded CIPD Cert in Training Practice and self funded my CIW Master Designer qualification and yes I did expect a return on investment in terms of job prospects as a result. So why wouldn’t anyone else?

What is worth it?

Unpacking the Harvard Business School’s MBA full required curriculum includes

• Basics of corporate finance and analysis
• Financial reporting and control
• Leadership and Organisational behaviour
• Marketing
• Technology and Operations Management
• Business, Government and the International Economy
• Strategy
• The Entrepreneurial Manager
• Finance II
• Leadership and Corporate Accountability

It also includes Field-Based learning (sounds great in principle, but if you are encouraging students to look at ethics, it may be very challenging to apply that to what they may encounter in a Wall Street environment) and immersion experiences. What would it mean to a prospective employer to have a candidate with an MBA from Harvard or Oxford or other top international business schools – how much does that really weight, in spite of anything an employer might say when questioned about it? What is the importance of joining the alumni of a highly reputable business school – back to its not just what you know…

An issue that I explored when starting this blog was around understanding of economic issues. If you are employed in a large corporate and say for example even completing personal independence checks regularly, or if you are not client-facing – holding conversations with those who are consulting businesses about e.g business recovery – these will be more meaningful the more that is understood about the operations of both management and finance. How much does an MBA help with that – or how much does the facilitation of an MBA programme allow these gaps to remain because people feel uncomfortable in front of their peers regarding their understanding of economics at a basic level. Or the gaps are simply to big to be addressed in detail so use of technology is brought in to help – but doesn’t address their fundamental understanding.

It is ok in this life to not understand economics, even those who do may have had a hard time explaining what exactly they do – about economics in the light of these economic crises. We are unable to visualize and unable to understand how the micro-economic and macro-economic decisions affect each other – at the moment. So if MBAs continue to run as privileged programmes there may be huge – really huge gaps in understanding of complex micro-economic activities in both developed and less developed economies. Technology may not provide the answers that we think we need.

How about a free, openMBA program, not a book – they cost money too, even if you could get that book on a phone, it is far from ideal. I have not looked at  CCK08 in detail but as a participant on CCK09,  it does not seem to be a huge jump to open up an MBA program, run as a freemium model and open it to anyone – of any age. Personally I think it would be great if anyone joined who is still at school – what better way to understand any deficiencies in education as preparation for future work, not to mention making it accessible to those who cannot afford a typical MBA.

What better way to understand micro-economic and macro-economic decision making than having people who try and study but face bandwidth, connectivity challenges or pressures of having to complete other activities in order to help their families and friends stay healthy – so have to decide upon their level of participation making these kinds of decisions – and informing the rest of a learning network as a result?

How well would businesses view such a qualification or study – accreditation is never easy but not impossible? Getting calibre of maybe lecturers / knowledge provided in the form of podcasts, papers available freely – again maybe not easy (not least because they may not own the copyright to their own work) but some might welcome the opportunity.

It would be interesting to discuss the feasibility of such an option further…

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1. The pedagogy of the privileged, Schumpeter, The Economist, September 26th, 2009, available at: http://www.economist.com/research/articlesBySubject/displaystory.cfm?subjectid=14391731&story_id=14493183
2. Association of MBAs Accreditation, available at http://www.mbaworld.com/

 

Dao/Tao and way

I have not caught up at all with martial arts blogs, have been skimming some and storing them for future reading, but wanted to look further at the Tao/Dao, having read through some Alan Watts books and saw a post from Cook Ding’s Kitchen about a pragmatic view of the Dao, where the article mentioned refers to the Dao as

“The word “Dao” (also written as “Tao”) means road, path, or way (a way to follow, a way of thought, a method, or a principle). The Dao is seen as the everlasting principle at the origin of the universe. It permeates and transcends all beings; it is at the origin of all transformations. This belief system, originating in ancient China, is considered to the foremost, indigenous philosophical thought of China and is called Daoism. Fundamentally, the name Daoism refers to one central universal principle: “Everything in the universe is connected to the motion of continuous change.”

This essayist re-interprets that same principle as “… an elegant, universal framework that loosely connects numerous components to a total flow of macro and micro cycles of continuous change.” Everything about Daoism is connected to this perspective.” (1)

Way as a term is explored further in another analysis of the Dao

“Now for some interesting differences between dao and ‘way’. Chinese language lacks pluralization, i.e., not simply has no plurals, but has no grammatical role for plurals. (Otherwise it would merely be that all nouns are like “deer” and “fish” in English, with identical singular and plural forms.) Nouns refer in a collective way. They pick out parts of the “universe of discourse.” So dao is more like ‘ways’ or ‘way-stuff’ or “the way-part of those things we can talk about” than it is like ‘a way.’ Dao has a semantic part-whole structure, like an expanse. What we think of as one way would be one part or component of dao. Ancient Chinese referred to the multiple parts of dao by simple modification, e.g., my-dao, Sage-King’s-dao, natural-dao, past-time’s-dao and so forth. This feature explains spatial metaphors like “humans are in dao like fish are in water.” Dao is a little like the water-expanse constituting the multiple streams leading to a goal.)”(2)

This seems to lead on from yesterday – it is not just about understanding way, but understanding journey too. Continual change means that we are in continual motion within our environment which in turn is in motion with other environments. Maybe that’s why studying, living martial arts is helpful because you learn about physical alignment and balance, when we  have developed motion sickness – maybe that’s what attention deficit is – cognitive motion sickness. Or maybe I’m just babbling.

A journey is not something we get up and take ourselves along, we are already on it – started to explore this a little in moving beyond patterns earlier this year, we are in an undefined, open environment and space but our understanding and ability to move within it is based on our perception of movement, our environment and spaces may be unsuitable for others with their short or long-term contexts, it may not be as easy for them to move within our definitions and perceptions so we should always try and demonstrate hospitality/warmth, kindness, sincerity when moving with others in spaces?

If we get it wrong, learn from those movements – develop muscles to provide greater strength when in similar situations in the future. And be calm or increasingly calmer and use relaxed movement. My examiner at recent grading told me that he had written at every stage of the assessment – relax, relax, relax – it is not easy personally to demonstrate strength of movement – I am over-exerting. I really want to explore biofeedback and things like Alexander Technique in the future, they may also help. I like the idea of the Five Animal Frolics set as defined by Mike Garafola too, time to tame the wild ones !

“The exercise set is considered to be Daoyin, or what is now calledQigong (Chi Kung). In this context, the word “Dao” means to guide, lead, show the way, slowly, inch by inch. The word “Yin” means to pull out, draw out, or stretch. So Daoyin are mind-body exercises that show us how to draw out the potential for diseases and restore an integrated or balanced state of well-being in body and mind.”(3)

More to add into concept map which I think at least is 10 or so iterations away from being anywhere close.

Next attempt will be one map for physical, one for mental. If that leads to excessive knots, then will maybe start with martial arts and attempt to branch outwards.

And if that doesn’t work, will travel a little further, then start writing once I have stopped thinking about what I am doing.

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1. M.E.H (2004) Playing with the Dao: A “Pragmatic” Strategic View, Jade Dragon Online, available at:
http://www.jadedragon.com/tao_heal/meh4041.html

2. Hanson C (1996) An Analysis of Dao, Chad Hansen’s Chinese Philosophy Pages, available at: http://www.hku.hk/philodep/ch/Dao.html

3. Garofalo M (2009) Five Animal Frolics, Cloud Hands: Mind / Body Movement Arts available at: http://mpgtaijiquan.blogspot.com/2009/09/five-animal-frolics.html

Understanding yourself and your environment better

I saw a post from Ikigai today “I understand (but not really)” that kind of unlocked something for me, where he talks about karate and his understanding of Japanese language and how someone might understand something

“This brings me to an interesting concept that I encountered on the blog of Charles Goodin Sensei (An extremely reputable martial arts historian and writer). In it he asked his karate friend and senior Pat Nakata about saying “I understand” in Japanese.Goodin Sensei was under the impression that there was one way to convey the concept of understanding, and that was with “wakarimasu”. Nakata Sensei informed him (and us) that there are actually two main methods instead of one.

The term “shirimasu” indicates a level of understanding that is shallow, or surface level. For example, if someone explains a series of directions to you and asks you if you understand, you might say “shirimasu”, because you do understand what they have said, but have done nothing in particular to internalize that information. Goodin Sensei’s “wakarimasu” also conveys understanding, but on a deeper level. If someone gave you directions and you spent years following those directions, exploring every facet of them, you might be able to say “wakarimasu”.”

This seemed to explain where I think I am at with learning about connectivism and martial arts. As much fun as it is to head off into the sunset without a map or satnav, I’m tired of meandering for now (must be age kicking in!) and I didn’t feel that my initial ‘map’ was sufficient. I wanted to create cck09+ concept map – because it is a theory (and practice now?) of learning, I am trying to put together a map to help navigate my whole learning journey for the next few years of my life. It includes self-development through learning, living, breathing martial arts as well as other areas of development which I am currently researching informally. The martial arts learning is taking me into looking at history of Eastern thinking, which then takes me further into trying to understand conflict.

I have found the exploration of self-learning as a single human and networked learning as many humans fascinating whilst taking part in cck09. I am finding challenging the concept of the learning that I complete in a dojo – some might call it 19th century but it is thousands of years of learning that way – so understanding how networked learning fits into what might be called a traditional teaching structure is great to explore (will do on here at some point).

This is just some early scribbling and it doesn’t actually make sense but decide to post as part of demonstrating thought processing. Nowhere near getting to learning itself, just kind of loosely stuck on bottom at the moment.

This video helped. I am completely unfamiliar with Chinese health and found this explanation of the history of Nei Jing really useful for looking at alternative ways of describing self-development, the relationships between a human & their environment:

Learning new ways – incredible stories of overcoming difficulties

Leila’s lovely comment the other day reminded me of these stories. I remember Anna, a student at Surrey who recounted her experiences of being virtually disabled:

“A while ago everything was just amazing in SL at least for me with my lovely MUVEnation family and great friends everywhere in SL. I was working in Surrey Island, studying in MUVEnation, having conferences in Idaho and showing off in Emerge runway.But all these things went down with a simple problem: “slow internet speed”.

Actually everything wasn’t that simple. I had to physically move within 3 counties, move my house twice, and face the fact that where I am standing right now there is not internet higher than 512 which is not even reliable…It’s just funny, how a simple thing can destroy whatever you work for it so hard, isn’t it….Three days ago, for a second I felt 0.01% of what disable people feel in their everyday life when I couldn’t move myself because of the low internet connection. It was awful.” (2)

Anna has faced numerous challenges during her time at Surrey but each time has come through each one, really fighting for what she wants to achieve in her life. I was also talking to someone last night who said that she simply could not do anything without her laptop. I think its really important to understand more about how important it is to us that we feel connected as a social phenomenon and if we are without a physical means, how do we learn to connect in alternative ways or learn to manage how and when to prioritise our activities for when connectivity is mixed. Can we express ourselves in different ways if we are unable to write / read etc

I feel embarrassed that I am not fighting tomorrow having succumbed to the elements, my indomitable spirit appears to have moved to a warmer climate without me. Still having now missed two fights, will hopefully get one in before 2010 if an opportunity arises, otherwise its full steam ahead with regular training too. I have heard stories from my instructor about health research completed for the NHS in relation to tai-chi, qi-gong and how people came in wheelchairs but 18 months later were completing all the movements on their feet. There seems to be a growing body of research relating to martial arts and its psychological and physiological benefits. I would like to share some links to some stories I found about amazing people who have learnt, re-learnt, changed their behaviour & mobility in spite of what they were facing both physiologically and psychologically, an inspiration to anyone:

1.

” Obi Wan Canubi Jamie – I joined Goju Ryu after seeing the karate kid wanting to learn how to kick ass. I was ADHD according to my school therapist, just failed 4th grade and angry. After 6 months I had earned my white belt with 2 green stripes, still a beginner in the sense of karate, but so much more. I was no longer seeing the school therapist for ADHD, my grades were As & Bs and I was at peace with myself. Martial Arts is self discovery” (1)

2. Ben Schwenk who has had an amputation is aiming for Paralympics if taekwondo becomes a registered sport.

“Ben Schwenk doesn’t remember a lot about the worst 11 days of his life. After overcoming bone cancer, he underwent 17 surgeries in less than two weeks in 1990, as doctors unsuccessfully tried to halt a relentless staph infection that turned his left knee into the size of a basketball. His leg was amputated above the knee, but a radical operation preserved his calf muscle, quadriceps and hamstring — kept together by a steel plate and eight screws. And it opened the door for an improbable taekwondo career.

The Air Academy High School graduate, competing with a specially designed prosthetic leg, has quickly climbed the ladder in the world’s most practiced martial art, needing only 21 months to attain a blue belt — seven rankings below a black belt. Schwenk, 37, took up taekwondo in 2007 alongside his adopted son, Daniel, hoping the endeavor would atone for his failed bid at disabled skiing and provide discipline for a “big, tough kid” accustomed to bullying others in the foster care system.”

3. There is a story about a boy who lost an arm after an accident but learnt judo and won a championship – there is a detailed account of this story on Aiku-Jitsu. Also seeing the incredible Tetsu Yamazaki in action with one arm

4. These ladies are also amazing – my heroines:

Taekwondo Grannies

“Ji Bok Yeon is an intimidating 75-year-old. You really would cross the street to stay out of Granny’s way.
She joined nine years after being diagnosed with cancer. She beat the disease and has been beating her way through the wooden boards ever since.
“Doctors first saved my life by giving me a 30-month anti-cancer treatment and Taekwondo then gave me a cure,” she said.
” I no longer take anti-cancer medication after my nine-year workout.”

I can’t embed the video unfortunately, but I really recommend watching – just to see how they move – the passion and energy that they put into each movement is incredible and a joy to watch !

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1. Chris, 2009 – The Single Most Important Lesson in Martial Arts: Martial Development, available at http://www.martialdevelopment.com/blog/most-important-martial-arts-lesson/
2. Vartapetiance-Salmasi A (2009) I am virtually disabled, Real Viki’s blog, available at: http://vw4reallearning.wordpress.com/2009/02/15/virtually-disabled/

Back on the streets

(I think!) Back soon in more detail, until then…

Mobile experiences – depends on how much insanity you can tolerate?

I’m still officially out of action in that I do not have a laptop. However after someone telling me that life is what you make it (and also learning experiences which I continue to believe especially through my martial arts experiences – you get out what you put in, inspite of any good or bad moments within the overall experience), I decided to see how much of cck09 I could continue to participate in using phone. I am sure that I will have forgotten this very soon so going to write now.  I also needed to ask myself some serious connectivity questions and ultimately testing some aspect of connectivism about how I understand it – if I don’t try with these circumstances and record both my emotions and experiences with the technology then it will be an opportunity completed wasted. I wish that some part of me could just have happily given up and I’m sure its the effect of martial arts training where you don’t give up, also having a possibly once-in-a-lifetime to take part in this experience is hugely motivating, technology challenges aside. Who knows if I could ever get to communicate with the people that I have been so far and the ideas that been expressed, again.

Eduardo asked me to blog this, I was kind of thinking January but won’t remember it then. Was going to take some mobile screenshots but don’t have the app on my phone right now and need to type this quickly. If anyone would like to see, please let me know and I will do.

This is using a Nokia N82 mobile device and approx 5-10 mins daily access to a pc during Mon-Friday

• Twitter – fine except you only have 140 characters, I can not delete tweets either on mobile or standard version and I could also not find a quick way with Tiny Twitter yesterday (but there might be). So last night, I attempted to do a retweet and unfortunately substituted a zero in place of a O with the resulting link going to a German jobs website (can only imagine where it might have ended up!). When ‘crisis’ hit last week,  I did feel totally de-motivated but after exchanging emails with a lovely person, decided I had to do something and sent out a cck09 thought (can’t remember what) on Twitter with someone coming back to me that I don’t think I had ever spoken to before and that has happened a bit more over last week or so. Really nice – having felt completely disconnected (even though I wasn’t), just simple things like that remind you that your perception of connections is also important and a small gesture from another wonderful human being, puts the concept of being connected into perspective.
• Twitlonger – I actually thought Twitlonger might be a temporary blogging / writing papers alternative, but the login button flashes and disappears.I whinged on twitter on Sunday and got an instant response from them – they are looking into a fix which will be cool.

• Moodle forums – much better than I thought actually. Takes a few attempts to login, sometimes have to reload the page and scroll around  a bit (sometimes it takes a few seconds) in order for the buttons to allow me to type in password. Mobile phones do not really retain ’state’ in the same way that cookie text files do on a pc, often each time phone is switched off they disappear, but the Moodle one has been retained a couple of times. Typing is ok but after a while – I can continue typing for as long as I want but the end of the box appears so I can’t see what I am typing. So end up having to post little series of comments instead of one. This is also interesting because when I am thinking & typing and can see all my comment in one place, I can refer back to what I’ve just written, but in this case I can’t see what I wrote a few seconds ago (and don’t seem to remember it) which as a result – I think, makes my comments less – coherent (perhaps not exactly the right word). But I never expected to be able to get into Moodle so its a yay !
• CCK09 wiki is fine to read too – most wikis are ok for reading (when I say ok, I mean I would prefer on a larger screen – can put on tv-out so read on my tv at home but not great)
• Can’t access Elluminate on this one (haven’t tried on a Java device – don’t know if its an option but if I do get a java device in next few weeks then will try out. Can’t see the whole page for the PLE sessions / speakers this week – I tried scrolling across but all I can see is the S of Speakers and the S of schedules and it won’t scroll any further right. But due to the cck09 hashtag – I can get updates for sessions via Google reader (or any RSS reader for that matter) They have provided audio too which is fantastic ! I would happily pay for this as an extra.
• Blog – can write posts but the buttons for save and submit don’t work, so no good. Mobile wordpress is only on .org
• PDFs / office – not great – in fact mobile PDF reading is ok but involves lots of zooming – as a result it is more difficult to process (for me)
• Google mail and reader – doing most of cck09 reading through this – am happy with – I do a fair amount of moving between offices at the moment so can catch up in moments along the way which couldn’t do with even a netbook. I do need to look at roads when I cross them otherwise once again things may change more drastically but overall – another yay !
• Ning – can read everything  but similar buttons problem – can write comments but submit or post button doesn’t work. Can send messages just not comments.
• Reading generally – my biggest issue with this is screensaver timeout – its 1 minute (I guess its similar on others) – I have actually started doing some writing on paper too for now as a temporary solution (can’t type in notes on phone and look at something else at same time without closing each one and going back in ) so you have to keep pressing a key to keep it lit so you can see what is on the screen. If we are going to be using mobile devices more for these kinds of things, they will need to either add more time to one of their current ‘modes’ or add a reading mode – it is a design flaw as such.
• I could use Utterli and do voice blogs and other voice comments, will think about it after the fight next week.

Speaking of fight – the more I am discovering about the brain, starting to think more about this one – I am aware of effects of some martial arts fighting – similar to boxing in terms of brain injuries – but now that I am only 10 days away from my next fight – I started to think more about my ‘neurons’ which are getting along quite happily I hope at the moment and what happens next week when someone’s foot makes contact with my head (do wear protective headgear) what kind of small explosion does that cause, don’t want to send my neurons and connections into unnecessary chaos, more than enough of that already going on – and not to mention if my feet also make contact with another person’s head (but that may not happen anyway!)

However there are lots of great people who have done martial arts for many years and the overall benefits of it – hopefully outweigh this ? Do they? Hmmm

This blog is temporarily out of action

Attempting to resolve some technology challenges so don’t think can realistically post for now

Back in a bit!

Absence of conflict, non-participation and mirror neurons

Ok, going to completely retract my thoughts from Thursday’s post where I said I didn’t care about the differences in conflict between cck08 and cck09. Suddenly I do !

I have just finished watching the wonderful video posted by John about Neuroscience of Emotions.

Some of the multimedia trail that has led me to this (trying to quickly remember / find so will have gaps…)

Various YouTube videos from economic blog posts on this blog earlier this year.

Tools and Our Brain from elearnspace, which led to reading  The Brain That Changes Itself book, giving copies and having conversations with 2 people in my life who I thought might be encouraged by the examples and work done by Norman Doidge, based on conversations I had with them earlier in the year before I learned of its existence.

Lots of scribbling on blog, lots of martial arts training. Discovering martial arts online including blogposts with  amazing Dr Goleman video on the brilliant post about the Traditional Martial Arts Mind on Ikigaiway, Mind Training series on Urban Samurai, Bleeding, Brainwaves and BioFeedback on Martial Development.

A design metaphors blogpost on this blog including the Visual Metaphors for the Brain video. (Note I have seen that there are a number of metaphor posts on the Moodle forum but I am a little behind, hope to go through all of them this week to find out what others are thinking)

CCK09, discovering so many different perspectives, especially recently with John with wonderful blogposts and ideas about metaphors,  including the Building a Circuit Diagram for the brain, and I’ve just started to look at Ulop O Taat’s Taxonomy of Connections

However up until tonight – this all felt like it didn’t make as much sense as I would have liked – I seem to have lots of little scraps of things – I would watch the videos with diagrams of the brain and then within a day forgotten most of the structure I had seen, but the video tonight seems to have provided some kind of link between all of them, I’m not completely sure what but here’s my first guess at one aspect.

Have started to wonder more about the differences in behaviour online as well as emotional reactions in a physical space which we can see. In the section on empathy, Dr Goldin mentions studies that have looked at empathy and imitation – where mirron neurons  ”the observation of an action automatically triggers simulation of that action. Premotor cortical neurons fire during goal-directed actions as well as observation of similar actions.” (1)

I started wondering about mirror neurons after watching the Rumi Dervish video in post last week, I wondered about the practices – they are moving together – are mirror neurons firing during those movements, even though they may not be fully consciously aware of each others presence in the same way that I would be aware of someone who came and sat next to me for example. And if their movements are positively emotional could that be mirrored in others even though they are not taking time to observe each other.

So, we know that we have an absence of visual cues in a lot of communication at the moment. So how do our mirror neurons fire – how do we find empathy with points of view if we can’t “see” them? At what point in a heated conflict do we sometimes suddenly find a connection – would it be language / tone / style ? I don’t know enough about areas of the brain such as the prefrontal cortex and amygdala from a technical side.

I am guessing too but if we are not participating much in an activity then do our mirror neurons also mirror something which results in us also becoming less active ? And the same way if we participate a lot ? So does that mean that if learning networks need to be active, how does the network adjust for inactive nodes – how do we get beyond mirroring inactive nodes ? Or does that just not happen, mirroring doesn’t work like that ?

Premotor cortical

neurons fire during goal-directed actions as well as observation of similar actions.

Lots more to think about, this is still so incredible – viewing ideas, exchanging comments and suddenly going – this makes more sense now, this makes more sense now – seem to be saying that many times a day then suddenly something deeper comes along, apparently randomly and once more you end up in confusion (brilliant confusion). Then how your emotions behave after that – what do you immediately do – both thinking and doing after becoming confused that second. I wish I had written this all down, but I haven’t so have probably forgotten loads already. Still, that gives the opportunity to explore further with others which makes it all worth it !

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1. Goldin P Dr (2008) The Neuroscience of Emotions, Google Eng Talks, available at : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tShDYA3NFVs

33 days – not quite the gentle breeze but better than a month ago

So 33 days ago:

“Whatever actions I do over the next few days, weeks, months, the theme will be that of a gentle wind as opposed to tearing through as a tornado. I am more at peace these days, happier with a quieter life and see the 30 days challenge as a good way to learn more about focusing energy in relationships with others so that they are positive, think they are intricately tied.”

Erm, not entirely gentle then, definitely some tornado elements flying in from time to time. Again it feels like something I have just begun, not something I have finished.  The last two weeks have been exhausting but some of the most incredibly beautiful confusion I have ever experienced – looking at the brain, mind, energy.  A massive thank you to Neil, Urban Samurai for the inspiration and encouragement:

I am deeply grateful to members and the instructors of my club who have put up with many questions and offered so much encouragement – I didn’t tell them what I was doing, but as mentioned in the original challenge, about instructors responding to a new level of commitment – I really noticed this to be true. Also online, so much advice and help, thanks especially to Cindy, Perpetual Beginner for some wonderful training advice, the martial arts blogging community are totally wonderful, you can find magazines, learning advice, advice about Tao, Chi – as well as the many people who are kind enough to explain techniques in detail. I am eternally grateful to every single martial arts blogger, I read your posts and they mean a great deal to me.

Progress then,

Fitness

One of the hardest, but a big improvement on a month ago – I have only increased pressups to 25 overall (it took me a year to get to 10 and if I try and do more, then I simply don’t do them properly, so would rather stick to 25 and breathe properly). Other situps, crunches I have increased up to 40 at the moment, based on instructor advice have added in more stretches and Cindy’s advice too – now have at least one set of lunges and one set of squats too. I haven’t noticed a huge difference in terms of distance or feeling a lot fitter, but I get out and run more easily than I have ever done before – it used to be much more of a fight to just get out of the house / office. I am still also continuing with the 10 flights of stairs including 2nd time after a run (well, you just feel dumb getting in a lift with your running stuff on) whenever I can. A lot more still to do with anaerobic fitness but at least I have elements in my regular routine now.

I am not doing the fight tomorrow – have come down with a cold so feel less guilty for missing it. If I get my act together I will get registered in time for the fight at the end of October and aiming to do a grading next Saturday because that’s the last chance before next year. I also feel with this challenge that I’ve put in the time – I am not perfect but I have improved, so

Practice

Stances – at the moment an improvement on back leg stances which I have worked quite a lot on during my practice outside the regular training. Horse-riding stance – knees are still not pointing out well enough but will continue with this one. Another area to continue working on – is positioning when turning – I still tend to lapse into a half long-stance – its a habit that having got into, will need to keep working on. Overall stances – better.

Blocks – improvements in these too – I discovered during the Korean training session, that I had, I think after Scotland started this kind of weird inner arm block with my arm positioning by my ear at the beginning was just – wrong ! So I’ve now begun to undo that one as well.

Kicks – still working on side-kicks but they have slightly improved in terms of pace and height. Round house is still proving slightly challenging on one leg especially – I swung round yesterday at home and flew up in the air and landed on a open toolbox (don’t recommend trying this) which amazingly I escaped with very little damage. Other kicks are better than before. Kicks are where I’ve noticed the most different.

Still – and this relates to a reaction on the connectivism course this week where according to a comment, someone was surprised by a couple of comments from an instructor in one of the live session. I had exactly the same thing on Wednesday night training. We were doing free sparring and for some reason I was backing off instead of moving to the side.  Yeah, I know, how dumb is that ! My instructor again told me calmly and patiently – move to the side and then finally I think after watching me back off again several times more – raised his voice in the tiniest bit of frustration – and said whatever it was. I don’t even remember – I got a little embarrassed at the tone and volume for all of about one second but was too busy being frustrated with myself.

Moving to the side when someone attacks is a core concept and I have been learning this for over a year, so was making a basic mistake that I didn’t need to make. I felt doubly embarrassed afterwards when my instructor came and calmly spoke to me, explaining why it was important – I have heard him and my other instructor / senior Dan members explain this loads of times.  I was quite simply – tired, but that is no excuse if I had been attacked on the street, I can’t tell my attacker, sorry I’m not up for this ! If we hadn’t been free-sparring I’m sure it would at least have been 20 pressups or worse. Maybe our connectivism instructors should issue the same punishments for failing to grasp core concepts in spite of multiple explanations over extended periods of time too. If you have trust and confidence with both instructors, other students and the environment then these are great learning experiences, with positive psychological benefits.

Overall though, this extended practice time has made a difference in training sessions, techniques, balance, control and stamina will continue to work on, but the extra practice makes you walk into a session with increased confidence, which is a great way to start.

Diet

Not much to say on this but my self-discipline overall in the month has improved, still need to fit in more vegetables where possible but balance is a lot better. On the brainpower Wordle, I was surprised that fish, nuts, spinach did not feature as these are all really good, I need to add more of these in too where possible.

Mind Management

Have really worked on this in terms of visualization, meditation and this has made a difference overall. Even when I am feeling weak (quite a bit of that in last week or so), I can still focus better and find some time to just – breathe, move calmly and I have achieved some still meditation too – kind of.

I have increased the amount of reading – I still have a huge amount to do, reading pile is currently enormous but includes Tao of Philosophy, Magic of Conflict, lots of online magazines and many blogposts, articles. I have begun to explore Chi and Tao further especially over the last week, incidentally helped a great deal by Sui Fai John Mak from the connectivism course, also my tkd instructor. I never expected to see myself having a philosophy tag on my blog but as of this week, I have one and I’m really inspired by comments and posts – can’t wait to explore further. I am completely fascinated by these concepts and will continue to explore further in future blogposts.

So I’m sure I must be physically and mentally stronger now. Its not like I was really weak before and now a superwoman, the encouraging thing – especially with trying to improve self-discipline is being able to continue, to not give up in the face of lapses or setbacks. I have often in been going up the 10 flights of stairs – thinking to myself ‘perseverance, self control, indomitable spirit’  a thousand times and willing myself upwards – and it helps.

So where next – continue to improve with all of the above, continue to build in as much time as possible and continue to review progress.

For tomorrow though – a rest. I was listening to the rehab on KissFM and this amazing track came on. Afterwards when Justin Wilkes said what it was, I scampered across the web to find a copy, can’t embed but here it is:

Dervish: Celt Islam

I’m off to dance around the room.

differences between cck08 & 09 – so there’s less conflict, so what

Have just participated in the live session which amazingly my laptop survived throughout. It was nice to hear Stephen talking about his experiences so far. I personally haven’t experienced any more or less conflict with another human so far, than I would have done before joining it. Various people from cck08 talking about different experiences, reactions, noise – I don’t know if this is just too blah blah to say – but we’re trying to understand more about learning. Right now I really don’t care what the differences were.

I haven’t participated in the forum discussions this week, have only looked at for the first time a couple of hours ago. That’s due almost entirely to other commitments – some of which finish this weekend.  However I wanted to be quieter, I can’t quite find a comfortable balance between wanting to contribute and wanting to hear others get involved, so at the moment I am participating less. For some people it might look like I’m participating quite a lot, but having done a lot on the web for a number of years, this is actually quite quiet for me.

People have the complete right to lurk, I’ve done it myself already – is there such a thing as open lurking – is lurking more open than participation ? Lurking is a fantastic way to sense-make, because you see different things that you might otherwise would not have done.

There are so many interesting areas to look at, its so difficult to try and understand how you are thinking and behaving during a learning experience whilst you are looking at that learning experience and comparing it to other learning theories – which is what I’m trying to do – I hope to be able to document this coherently at some point.

Conflict comes into that – that’s one of the reasons I’m doing cck09, to understand conflict in a learning situation with others and what it means. I or anyone else could easily go into the forums tomorrow and say something in a more provocative way – but why ? Why do it or not do it – does it work out better for me, for anyone else if I do or don’t? Does it add any value anywhere to anyone with a higher degree of emotion involved ?

I’m SO interested in this area – connectivism (not just conflict!) that’s why I’ve followed George & Stephen’s work for so many years, trying to understand if there is something really different to how we have learnt, collaborated, but I’ve never given myself the time and space to really look at in depth before. Stephen’s point tonight about collaboration being group based – I think I agree with that, although so much collaboration can also go on in 1:1s, private messaging because you can reach an understanding quicker – at times… There so much that we can try and see if it works within corporate settings or if I do return to educational setting at some point, there too – obviously in that sense, my involvement is less for this.

I’ve decided to spend less time on the  more visual bits and get more technical. There must be loads of disagreement because we all have a billion different contexts, perspectives and some of this is actively & already being done – in the Moodle forums, twitter, Nings, wherever.

It was either George or Stephen tonight who asked about differences from not taking part in say Moodle forums. I would describe it as – when you have joined something like Moodle or it could be Ning or any ‘communal’ area and begun discussions – it is like you begin to walk around in slippers, you feel comfortable enough but when you are outside of this, its like you still have your trainers on – moving around outside and checking out other places, you could always potentially be up to anything.

Emotional connection, flow and human movement

I have been honoured and touched by the comments with John regarding connectivism, emotional connection, Tao and YinYang. I could never have imagined that by joining cck09 that I would be exploring concepts at this level, simply and quietly amazing. I would like to explore this in terms of understanding more about the brain and the mind, but I’m not quite ready to say anything yet, would like to go and think about. Though it reminded me of another group – I never got to visit them whilst I was in Turkey but

“Sufism is primarily concerned with the ‘heart’ that reflects the truth which exists within it, beyond time and in time. The Sufi is the whole human being. He recognises that his reality is beyond time and space and yet he understands that he himself is caught in his body in order to experience the duality of time and space in the world. A person who has attained the state of outer and inner awareness and who has managed to reach a point of balance and centrality….State may not be lasting…
…on the physical level we are constantly striving towards harmony and right action. The inner reality is to do with essence and source. When it comes to the source, there is oneness” (1)

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1. Haeri Fadhlalla Shaykh (1990)  The Elements of Sufism, pp28-33, Element Books

Sense of community – its about people

I’m not entirely sure where my collaboration posts and participation in Connectivism start and finish at the moment, or whether they are mutually exclusive. I did originally plan to write a separate blog but now everything is all running into each other – fantastic ! So this post is about collaboration and martial arts (see below) and anything else that shows up.

I have started to read Stephen Wright’s paper on Psychological Sense of Community where he reviews indices such as Sense of Community Index in relation to education,in particular the McMillan and Chavis sense of community index – they proposed four elements of  sense of community

1. “Membership ( Boundaries,  Emotional safety, A sense of belonging and identification, Personal investment, A common symbol system)
2. Influence (bi-directional in a community)
3. Integration and fulfilment of needs (shared values, interdependence, social trade)
4. Shared emotional connection ( Contact hypothesis, Quality of interaction, Closure to events, Shared valent event hypothesis, Investment, Effect of honor and humiliation on community members, Spiritual bond)” (1)

Its interesting to look at these whilst I am participating in a shared distributed conversation, where I am interacting with people I care about, how easily written words can be perceived in different ways, how to provide the cues that it is positively meant – that kind of thing.

Peter Reiser of Sun has just posted a summary about their communities:

“the most important lesson we learned is It’s all about people – adoption – value
This does not mean that architecture, tools and technologies are not important. But you can build the coolest (social) site and community platform and tools – but what if the users don’t use it ?” (2)

They looked at the value and perceived values of the community and they implemented series of widgets and other ideas to show value to people. They found that creation and sustaining of communities requires ongoing facilitation. I didn’t take this mean by formal community facilitators, once members of a community feel at home and a sense of ownership and belonging, they will also facilitate because they perceive this as part of the ongoing value they get from the community as a whole.

They have great figures – over 25,000 users, 500 communities, 5.5 million social activities – within 14 months of SunSpace being set up. It says a lot about levels of engagement, that in the workplace where people can often feel that their level of influence is not as much as they would like, they may be finding it within the communities, which is very inspiring.

1. Wright S (2004) Exploring Psychological Sense of Community in Living-Learning Programs and in the University as a Whole, pp12-14, Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, available at: http://www.wright-house.com/psychology/Stephen_Wright_dissertation.pdf

2. Reiser P (2009) How to build Vibrant Communities, a summary, Reiser 2.0, available at: http://blogs.sun.com/peterreiser/entry/how_to_build_vibrant_communities

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33 days Martial Arts Challenge – well, had a conversation with myself at the weekend which went something like

“hmm, so – we’re going to finish with a green week then aren’t we, aren’t we !!!“

“but, of course”

Gutted ! Only slightly yesterday but still – nasty orange mucking up my nice little rows of green ! On the plus side after the lapse, I did do my longest London lunchtime run (amazing what guilt can do), right up to Westminster bridge then realising that there’s a billion cameras unintentionally pointing in your direction (well Big Ben actually)…never run so fast across a bridge before !

Roll on Saturday !

Slow learning in rapid flow, the yin and yang of cck09

I really enjoy reading Riita Suominen’s connectivism Making Sense of Chaos blog – beautifully described snippets of thoughts – it reminds of the old BBC2 White Spectrum project , slow moments of listening in amongst everything.

“When we normally set out a goal to learn something, there is always an expectation to learn it within a certain period, and to gain a certain level of proficiency. In the case of Tai Chi, you probably set out your goal as learning all the steps, and be able to do it in (say) 3 months time.

What I would like to propose is to set a regular goal, rather than a fixed-and-be-done-with goal. Say you like to learn chi running (a method of running in a low impact way), your slow goal would be “run with this method for 30 minutes everyday” instead of “be able to run a marathon in 3 hours” or “lose 10kg in 5 weeks”. During these training sessions, put your full focus into doing and listening. You work hard, and you listen to how your body react to the work, and then you adjust accordingly. Setting such a slow goal will help you:

1. focus on doing it the right way

2. enjoy the activity and (sometimes) getting lost in the moment

3. do not injure yourself during your work, whether mentally or physically

I think all these points are very worthwhile when learning something, as oppose to becoming only a performer at the end of 3 months. Being a performer has its bad share of habits, but if you truly want to learn something, the only audience to your performance is yourself. The rest of us are only there to enjoy your moment.

So use slow goals. It’ll get you there faster than you think.”
(Lee S (2009) Setting Slow goals, Learning Less Everyday blog )

I have been slow to get thoughts together and enter course-related discussions. As someone who has been known to repeatedly speak without appearing to think, I would like to now say something when I can explain it properly. But I’m not sure that fits with the learning process, especially for cck09, maybe it is useful to experiment with ideas before they are barely formed?

So my concept map is below.

I would like to try and explain many thoughts about how water, waves, motion seem to me, to fit perfectly with everything I understand about connecting, technology and conflict but I do not have the understanding of the scientific & engineering concepts in order to do so – trying to follow the Moodle discussions helps though.

Its slow learning but rapid connection forming at the same time.

Design probably got in the way of thinking in depth, or maybe its insanity kicking in. I would like to look beyond forming networks in straight lines and dots (but need to be a better graphic designer). Structure can exist without rigid visibility?

33 days martial arts challenge

I’ve decided to continue up to next weekend. I feel I would like more time to keep up the intensity – I don’t feel sufficiently disciplined enough yet ! I’ve also decided not to do the fight which would be next Sunday 4th, I need to reclaim a day somewhere and that will be a nice rest day after the challenge. I would also like more time to improve anaerobic fitness in the run up to the fight at end of October.

I am way behind on martial arts blogs reading so hope to catch up this weekend at some point, its been another quite hectic work week. Overall the additional practice when I have done it is helping me improve – slowly and tiny progress at a time, but there are differences. Will do a more in depth review after the challenge. I’ve also been thinking about how, where to continue to progress with this afterwards, as well as improving overall mental and physical fitness.

Mobile networks

I just saw a note from someone on the forums which was to share resources about networks. So attempting to simply gather some about mobile networks in this post. There are many different networks and ways of connecting with mobile devices which makes it different to online networks in that sense. Mobile social networks are also the youngest but fastest growing networks out of all mobile phone usage – I don’t have the stats to hand for it but it appears that large amounts of people under 25 and under 18 are using mobile social networks as alternatives to the more familiar online social networks, again the age range is expanding on this.

Why ? People are using their phones more for their communication, developing countries where they can’t afford computing and infrastructure, the ease of use of sending photos, videos, text made with phones etc

1. Mobile phones. Your mobile phone talks whilst you are not using it, happily chatting away with base stations and GSM towers, ok, well it scans for nearby base stations and GSM towers and lets them know they are in the neighbourhood, e.g. on Eurostar when you emerge from the tunnel or cross any countries’ borders, your phone may pick up the relevant networks before you realise you are in that country. If you are interested in how mobile phone networks work – Peering inside a mobile network , How Cell phones work and there’s also a great diagram in this article about hacking a network. Imagine how you would feel if your mobile conversations were hacked as opposed to email – would it affect you in a different way ?

I don’t know worldwide but in universities, Tim Brown at University of Surrey (who do a massive amount of mobile & satellite network research) and Predrag Rapajic at University of Greenwich. Another new development is a truly open mobile network. At the moment each mobile phone network has carriers for SMS and calls, but recent experimentation shows that it is beginning to happen.

2. SMS – as for calls, same networks used. Just wanted to provide an example of this, with Frontline SMS – their coverage / projects are now in hundreds of countries, and their community develops applications together openly. Their community is also a network ? SMS is being used across all ages, incomes and in politics, healthcare, education..

3. Bluetooth – particular interest to me at the moment because its frequency range is safe for healthcare which means it can be used in hospitals and clinics. Phones can find other phones and their owners can find other owners without ‘meeting’ as such – you can see who is around locally but its not until you ‘pair’ that there is more of human to human connection, before that its device to device and human to device. Bluetooth networks can also be hacked and someone could potentially scan whatever is stored on your phone without you realising it.

4. RFID, NFC – not networks as such but potential to connect to more humans ? Both short range communication in the form of mobile devices, chips and tags being accessed by short range frequencies – starting to be more widely used. Also being used internally inside human beings – Kevin Warwick at University of Reading, UK (who is trying to be a human mobile phone), and Amal Graafstra have both embedded RFID chips inside themselves and there is a communication protocol called bodyNFC. RFID & NFC, RFID & interference,  RFID vs NFC project in Bath, a recent brilliant 2 min video on Nearness from Timo Arnall and Jack Schultz, from last week.

Running late for work so have to stop here, but some of mobile networks resources – in my delicious bookmark tags for mobilenetworks and mobile. Also mobile  blogs I’m not keeping up with but attempt to follow on Pageflakes. Haven’t mentioned mobile web and internet (book called Mobile Internet for Dummies is very good starting place), from the perspective of doing cck09 – interested in do we learn / collaborate differently , because its personal and mobile do we feel differently – I dunno but if anyone interested in having a discussion, will happily join in.