Tai Chi robots
The lead ‘dan’ is very realistic – and yep, those stretches are fantastic !
Dave Snowden at University of Surrey, 9th Feb
Too excited to type so
Live streaming link and details
From Induction to Abduction: a new approach to research and productive enquiry
Dave Snowden,
Founder & Chief Scientific Officer Cognitive Edge Pte LtdThis seminar will provide a summary of both the theory and practice of a new approach to research based on the large scale capture of self-interpreted micro-narrative. The approach has been described as the first technique for distributed ethnography and has been developed over the past decade with project based funding from the US, UK and Singapore Governments in the context of risk assessment, horizon scanning, cultural mapping and weak signal detection. It allows the linkage of research with knowledge management and impact based measurement. Current projects involve measuring the impact of development projects in Africa, narrative based knowledge management for the US Army in Afghanistan and cultural mapping of various inner city communities within the UK.
The theoretical origins lie in the application of complex adaptive systems theory to social systems together with new understanding about the nature of human decision making from the cognitive sciences. The seminar will summarise the theory, but will also use a series of projects to combine theory with practice. One of the goals is to create learning systems that work on continuous capture of material in the field as it happens linked with a capacity for feedback loops and sophisticated representations that allow people to learn by doing, building on the micro-narratives of day to day experience. Narrative forms of knowledge lie between the experiential and the symbolic, allowing complex interactions and interventions in multiple social situations.
The seminar will appeal to anyone working in social science research, experimental philosophy, ethnography and management science
Dave Snowden has been one of the leading figures in the movement towards integration of humanistic approaches to knowledge management with appropriate technology and process design. Well known for his work on the role of narrative and sense-making, he is an entertaining speaker and a formidable realist, and one of the few thought leaders who can bring together the academic and practitioner perspectives into a single, comprehensible purview. He is the Founder of the Cynefin Centre for Organizational Complexity which focuses on the development of the theory and practice of social complexity.
For a n introduction to Dave’s work visit: http://www.cognitive-edge.com/
Martial artist or martial mouse?
Being a better martial artist means dealing with any fear, not just some of it !!
I’m mentally preparing for a fight at the end of Feb, haven’t done a competition fight for a year now and still feeling quite – exposed, but I’m ok about doing it actually – oh yes, bring on an army of lions ! Its frustrating to be courageous about some things and then others – run for cover ! Its like Taegeuk Yuk Jang – still four months later and I am still doing wrong movements. I have never had this much trouble with a poomsae before – I can practise at home – fine, go out and within half an hour, do it wrong again. Its not lack of motivation, definitely lack of practice though (she says answering her own question)
But also – being in public – oh, there’s people all around me, some are doing it better than me, the less experienced ones behind are probably looking at me thinking what on earth is she doing , and so on and on – yep, know where that particular set of monkey thinking ends up. Why am I so damn scared of screwing up – and why now again. I am not like this all the time but sometimes I am definitely like this in other areas of my life too. The experience of fear is a series of different conflicts as previously blogged which appear to overwhelm other areas of the brain as a reaction to these conflicts. Decided to look back at aikido:
“The martial art of aikido offers a useful metaphor for shifting our way of thinking and acting in conflict situation… Attacks are neutralized without injury. Life is protected and nurtured.When we experience this unique approach working effectively on a physical level , we are much more able to let go of solidified beliefs and inappropriate patterns of reaction in the rest of our lives…
…Aikido literally translated means “the way of blending energy”. In this light, all of life, including a physical attack, is energy with which to dance. Attacks are considered just another of the endless gifts of life to be used creatively and harmoniously….The attacker may not always do the expected and may indeed change the form of attack at any time. Choosing to dance with energy of the attacker allows one to be flexible enough to respond to the new form. The ability to dance keeps one from getting stuck on a particular strategy for resolution” (1)
Different series of techniques are described – this makes sense on a conceptual level too – learning by doing again – to learn new patterns we have to do them. Doing them once is not enough. Daily practice and more daily practice, its like a poomsae in itself. When you are in white water you can’t choose which part of the water to face or not face, to flow with or try and flow against, any more than I can opt out of the different bits of Yuk Jang that are not going so well. Or anything else. You have to do it physically and then you learn – thinking, observing, talking about, is not enough. I am going to find my way somehow !
1. Crum T (1987) Conflict does not equal Contest, pp40-42, The Magic of Conflict, Touchstone Publications.
Learning by doing: Ushahidi
Ushahidi and FrontlineSMS are such an inspiration and example. They get things done. Ushahidi describe experiences with co-ordinating software development in one of the blog posts:
One of the things we know about software developers contributing to open source projects is that they don’t have a lot of time. Everyone has their day jobs, their personal projects, their families…in other words life. We like to support a relaxed, but structured atmosphere where there’s things that need to get done but no pressure on any one volunteer dev.
As a group, they tend to like ’sprints’ where several developers gather to get as much done as possible in only a few hours. Events like Crisis Camps, Where Camps and Dev Camps are really helpful in that they facilitate spaces where developers can come together to brainstorm and get things done.
However, the one barrier to entry many of them find is that they aren’t comfortable with the language that the rest of the community wants to use, or that the platform is built in.
They describe a modular approach – why does this work ? Because its open – which makes it so much more attractive to developers – if you have a limited amount of time but want to volunteer and contribute, you can find a way much more easily regardless of your programming specific experiences – there are many different streams with which developers can become involved.
I’m sure this has encouraged many people across the world to go and get involved with Crisis Camps, just looking at the latest Projects wiki page shows an incredible range of different technologies.
The great thing is just being interested and having a few hours available is enough. If you can turn up in person that is fantastic, if you can’t – its becoming easier to join in remotely too. One of the projects Crisis Camp London is now looking at is the Simple Tasks Anyone Can do. This week:
Saturday 6th Feb:
Large Common Room, London House
Goodenough College
Mecklenburgh Square
WC1N 2AB London
United Kingdom
Register or follow #CrisisCampLdn for more information
ok so I’m no longer freaked out by online social networks, again
Well at least temporarily! Tried tiptoeing back in but suddenly seemed to have ended up with blades under my feet and suddenly there goes January.
Twitter
I have been using Twitter more in the past three weeks than I have in the last eighteen or so months. And its been mostly brilliant. I originally had a twitter account in 2006/7 I think and in my louder days, did a lot more with it and the last few weeks have been a bit like that. Its been so helpful albeit chaotic at times for all the CrisisCamp London and other Haiti related activities – there is no way that I could have connected and at times connected quickly and conveniently without it. The hashtag and searches have also been invaluable.
It was unsettling initially – a bit like when I started cck09 and decided to add my blog with a cck09 category (it felt like I had invaded my own blog). In fact cck09 was unsettling throughout – suddenly it feels like you are out there and public and – open – which takes adjusting to when you are living more quietly – but I didn’t give up and still trying to go with it for now, see what continues to happen. The combination of that and martial arts has definitely helped with some situations that I might have walked away from a year ago. I don’t exactly know what it has to do with learning as such, but the connecting may be helpful so that is motivating – if one connection produces something – great, if it doesn’t – maybe the next one will..and so on.
Linked In
I have not found Linkedin to be particularly useful in the past – I have had an account for several years but was never completely sure why – other than feeling that I needed to have one because everyone else seemed to. However I found at least three business related uses for it in the last three weeks – two connected to CrisisCamp activity – connecting with some wonderful people who helped in putting the word out about the events in London. Another one related to helping with trying to find some office space.
I simply could not have done these again as quickly or conveniently with either email or something else and I’ve connected with both new people as well as reconnecting with a couple of people that I hadn’t contacted for some time and even in a couple of sentences its really nice catching up ! Again it doesn’t matter about the outcome of these to some extent, if say – no-one showed up as a result or nothing came up, that is not much of a failure, its important to try and connect to help, if you know you are in a position where you can spend some moments doing this.
We were chatting today about online social networking, at work and looking at some of the features of LinkedIn and things like Google social search too. I am still trying to work out what is important about time-scales of relationships/connections – how it would be more or less valuable to have a connection actually defined – or whether to just find and connect when appropriate.
Still committed to finding and exploring open-source alternatives for all of these too, feel inspired by some of the speed of the CrisisCommons initiatives is astounding – with developers producing magic in minutes – a wonderful way of working. Breathing in, breathing out !
Image courtesy of http://www.freephotos.com/index.php?photoid=18108&action=viewphoto
More CrisisCommons wonderfulness – a wiki training video
Rushing so will just quickly add this – but there have been a few discussions over last couple of weeks about everyone getting involved with wiki. Dragan of CrisisCampToronto & Heather Leson have recorded a fantastic video on how to use the CrisisCommons wiki – this is soooooo helpful – and just produced this week in seconds. Its so exciting and I’m sure will be incredibly valuable for anyone new to wikis and mediawiki!!!
Lots of CrisisCamps this weekend – I’m going back up to London one in a few hours. Lots of activity on twitter – you can follow there e.g. #crisiscampldn , #crisiscampTO . The London one is running for the next 5/6 weeks and I’m guessing the other countries are too.
All info and project updates – there has been huge activity not just in the projects but around the co-ordination and communication too this week.
Teaching and learning in martial arts (2)
Have been travelling with work and also was unwell enough to not attend training sessions over last fortnight. It was disappointing and discouraging because I had been training really hard over Christmas and early New Year now felt that had gone a few steps back. Explained to my instructors who were both fab, one of whom advised working on flexibility rather than aerobic because at my age (Oh how that sounds !) the aerobic would return more quickly. So I have done that when I physically felt up to it. Its lovely that a few kind words from someone taking the time can make such a difference to how you approach ‘difficulties’.
In the meantime I am trying to catch up with a month’s worth of martial arts blogs. Crimson Phoenix on Martial Arts passion has looked at the role of teaching
“The more experienced we get, the more teaching responsiblity is asked of us. During this time, I learned a lot about teaching and being a teacher. Teaching forces you to examine your own techniques more closely, but it also tests your knowledge. Not only do you have to be able to explain how to do technique “X,” but you have to be able to tell your students what the technique can be used for, why we do it like this, and a hundred or so other questions that might come up in the process – all in terms they can understand. While beginners do not need an in depth explanation, the higher up in rank they get, they need to deepen their understanding, a responsibility that falls on the shoulders of the teacher.” (1)
Also via Dojo Rat, the empty hands, worn shoes blog from Japan with an interesting post about learning how to learn
“It seems he has made rapid progress through several forms in a fairly short time. In short, he learned long ago “how to learn”, in terms of physical motions. The arts may be completely different, but his years of ballet trained him to watch a teacher’s motions carefully and immediately be able to reproduce those motions with his own body.
Look at almost any (adult) beginners’ class. People are eager and enthusiastic but are, in general, very slow learners. They don’t get it and they are not even aware that they don’t get it. Even the simplest commands – move your left arm, open your right hand – cause much difficulty and must be repeated again and again. “No, the other left hand” and all that. Now look at an experienced martial artist (or dancer or whatever). The sense of body is already developed. He or she can watch the instructor and reproduce motions in the mirror image. When learning a new motion or a new form, they are instantly aware of whether a palm is facing up or down, or the exact position of the bent thumb, and are constantly checking and adjusting the height of the fist on the hip or the angle of the bent knee. They can also look at other students and adjust their own postures and motions – whether drawing from proper or improper examples.
This kind of body awareness and attention to detail (and the instructor) are the product of years of training and are what lead some people to make better progress than others.” (2)
A lot of my personal martial arts movements are based on watching the instructor or a more senior member of the class demonstrating a movement which we then attempt to reproduce. By doing this, we look at spatial awareness (especially when doing back kicks of any kind – I think it is only in the last few months after a period of trying to concentrate more intensely; that I am doing things like turning my head right round before kicking and as a result, they are still only tiny improvements, but they are improvements in accuracy). I also try and do this when looking at poomsae on YouTube – lots of pausing and replaying. You can learn from so many different people – watching the different styles and working out what you do that is either similar or different.
What I am trying to understand better is what makes it suddenly click. The neuroscientific concepts introduced in connectivism look at patterns of connections within the brain – so what is that ‘aha’ moment and which neurons are forming which patterns. I don’t think it is just a product of observing because things like balance and accuracy are related to your physical strength – so at what point does your hand suddenly form a better fist or your leg becomes more comfortable moving into a sidekick. When is it that the combination between neurons moving in the brain and muscles, joints etc in the body all combine in a confident, strong movement? Also the impact of diet and nutrition producing those physiological combinations.*
Could I learn this without the input of an instructor? I don’t think so, there is so much in terms of improving confidence, calmness, someone suggesting a better way of moving. I would also feel less connected culturally and spiritually – although discovering martial arts blogs over the last year or so has hugely widened my reading and motivation to understand more about both of these as well.
Training this Saturday will be an experience in understanding what I’ve remembered and what I’ve forgotten. I do think some of that is psychological as well as physiological patterns – when I have previously had an extended absence from formal training – how do I feel about returning, my confidence in my ability to both regain fitness, strength, co-ordination, balance, speed. It makes more sense, as my instructor advised, to look at flexibility – that should help more with each of these because I will hopefully move a little more freely. Time to go and practise the plank again !
* At this moment I am not writing very technically about physiological and neuroscientific concepts but intend to do so in more depth as and when in the future.
1. Crimson Phoenix (2009) Teaching and being a Teacher, Martial Arts Passion blog, Available at: http://martialartspassion.blogspot.com/2010/01/teaching-and-being-teacher.html
2. 2009, Learning how to Learn, Empty Hands Worn Shoes blog, Available at: http://emptyhandswornshoes.blogspot.com/2009/12/learning-how-to-learn.html
Crisis Camp London, taking little steps to connect and share
I was there for the morning yesterday and joined a group looking at communication and co-ordination with other camps, partly because I had previously connected with a couple of people from another camp, having an overview of the week and also familiar / comfortable with the tools. I cannot believe how amazingly well the other camps have worked together all week – just incredible.
From talking with people yesterday who were joining crisis camp session and never done anything like this before, or didn’t feel like they had a good overview of how things were unfolding in Haiti – navigating multiple wiki edits, twitter accounts (especially those who have never used twitter), rss feeds, google and other groups – is a lot to take in.
Using twitter hashtags and the searches has been a good way, but things like following the project leaders on twitter does not necessarily give a quick overview, they have their own stuff to do and personal twitter may not be best place to look. Some thoughts from London earlier on yesterday:
This was a feeling shared by others in different camps e.g. on the Crisis Commons blog
We are in the midst of completing a second round of whirlwind CrisisCamps, where hundreds have poured blood, sweat and tears into the creation & development of the Drupal website & wiki, the development of tons of awesome projects, and planned, organized and ran what will soon be around 20 CrisisCamps. In short, we’ve done awesome, but have inflicted a good bit of pain on ourselves along the way. Most of our communications have been real-time, either by tweet, chat or the hated teleconferences. While all these have been productive, and largely necessary in what we’ve formed, its time to move to a different approach. We need to start communicating largely by listservs (well, google groups), and augment this with the irc chatroom and smaller, targeted telecons.
After a good bit of bludgeoning by Brian Behlendorf and Danese Cooper, two people in the open source world very much worth listening to, I finally see the light. Their reasoning was that in order to continue to integrate people, there must be a record of what transpired. We need persistent communications which are searchable.
I’d really recommend reading the rest of that post – this seems to be such a strength of how the crisis camps have developed – everyone just gets involved, learns along the way and not just communicates to their camp but shares with others, in real time and later on in the day / night.
I noticed that during yesterday the projects now have hashtags too which is great e.g.
#ccppl Person Finder Mobile
#cchhcf Hospital Capacity
#cchswr Haitian Workforce Retention
#cctweak Tweak the Tweet
#ccrssa UN RSS Challenge
#ccm4c Mobile for Crisis
#cchv Haitian Voices
#cctimeline Haitian Timeline
Each Crisis camp has their own tag too. This makes it a lot easier, because you can just add these in and get updates, in addition to the new google groups set up e.g Co-ordinators, Projects, Website
If this had been done in private sector and some aspects of public, an answer could have been to throw lots of money, technology at it – but if you have proprietary code and people who are not comfortable with an open way of working and not comfortable with giving a try – it would end up with projects never ever getting off the ground.
Its a fast pace at times, but its totally do-able, whatever your experience. I was looking for something related to the wiki – earlier this week so I just jumped into the IRC chat room, I had never met anyone there before so just pretty much said that – “hi, I’m not sure who to speak to but I am trying to find a way of doing……”
Within a few minutes, a very kind person had provided a contact to speak with – and that contact very kindly responded too. Little steps. It can feel intimidating but taking one little step, being prepared to feel a bit stupid – is really all that is required regardless of experience – in any area – someone with very specific experience is not going to feel any more confident venturing into an unknown room or area.
Ditto with the wiki, sometimes its useful if you have something and unsure how or where to share it, on an open wiki, you can just stick it up anywhere – you are unsure if someone will find it useful and move it or do something with it, it doesn’t matter if not – but if you don’t then you definitely don’t know ! What might not be relevant to Haiti might be useful for a different one. This week I have definitely been learning is that sharing in a chaotic/complex (think its somewhere in both) situation is so important – something that all the different people working with different technologies to support Haiti have done consistently without the need to draw attention to individual efforts – but to getting the right information to the right people and places.
Why do this?
Angela from London who spent a lot of her life in Haiti gave us a brief, moving overview at the beginning of the day – because Haitians are very giving and they would do it for you.
If you have technical skills, great – pitch in. If you don’t there are still tons of ways to get involved either in crisis commons and other micro-volunteering. If you can’t get to a session physically – all kinds of options for doing remotely, e.g.
CrisisCamp Got @google Android phone? Can’t get to a CrisisCamp? We Need app testers for Person Finder Mobile Project http://bit.ly/4JFcuV #cchaiti
CrisisCamp London are now gearing up for a big one on 30th January:
What we need for 30 Jan London SEO skills * facilitators & project managers * Volunteer coordination skills * Relief Web project team would like to meet / call / chat to relief workers to get feedback * Snacks & drinks inc coffee & teas * extension cords / 4 way gangs * gaffer tape * Please read Wiki commons London pages as homework before next event * it is really cool, sociable, fun, and a great place to come if you’re currently not employed or need to learn new skills or meet top people… blog & talk, bring friends! Lots of less techie stuff needed as well as solid coding skills, this is not a geek fest! >> Such as communications, project management, video, blogging
Crisis Camp – London – if you’re free pop along tomorrow
Saturday 23 January 2010, 10:00am - 5:00pm, more details below
Or if you can’t and would like to think about virtually attending please feel free to get in touch, or better still add to the wiki
The London Knowledge Lab is hosting a series of CrisisCamp workshops in January and February. The first of these events will be on this Saturday, 23 Jan 2010, from 10:00 to 17:00.
A CrisisCamp is an individual event with an overall purpose to create specific tools for a specific problem. Before a CrisisCamp, organizers reach out to responder organizations – governments, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and others – seeking requests for technological supports. We organize into teams to support those requests. We also develop around things that are just good ideas. What we create is open-source – meaning that it’s free for anyone to use, the labor has been donated, and the user community is encouraged to take it and build on it … to make it work for them. The London Crisis Camp will join the other Crisis Camps in building vital tools for Haiti.
For further details, see the crisiscommons wiki :
http://wiki.crisiscommons.org/wiki/Crisis_Camp_London
Twitter Hashtag: #crisiscampldn
Hope to see you there !
Financial decision making – fraud, theft, madness
Yves Smith has an interesting post and an entertaining discussion recently (I am not saying that my views are the same as Yves, the poster referred to or the contributors to the discussion) on how we need a new word to describe the behaviour / traits of those who appear to have significantly contributed to the global economic mess that the majority of the world is still living with and not able to invest their way out of.
I’ve decided to return to look in more detail at risk – well actually I decided about 15 months ago when I bought Against the Gods, but didn’t get round to opening until today. I previously looked at uncertainty and risk, rational decision making 1, 2 last year, also neuroeconomics – having also tried to understand more about decision making towards the end of the year – for me personally, somehow I cannot find enough connections whilst looking at economic decisions where I have very little emotional interest I guess and personal decision making – so it seemed like the perfect time to revisit risk, to try and reframe my understanding. I’m only a few pages in but already hooked.
“The capacity to manage risk and with it the appetite to take risk and make forward-looking choices are key elements of the energy that drives the economic system forward” (1)
In this series of clips including this gem, when talking about statements you can hear such as – the market is going to give you 11% in the long run.
“The markets aren’t going to give you 11%, the markets are going to give you what someone will pay for what we own. And you really really don’t know what its going to be, its a very important distinction…..We can’t manage our returns but we can manage risk”
Leaving fraud and theft temporarily aside, madness – can we continue on a micro level managing risk and on a macro level, financial investors managing multiple risks – what is the alternative if we don’t take financial risks..
“The common basis of conflict, and we may say of the existence of wants at all, is the limitation in the means of gratifying some impulse or need. When some means of satisfaction is limited in amount so that we have to plan its use and plan to increase its supply, then it enters into the field of conduct and we have a want. The most common and fundamental conflicts are between claims for our own time and energy, and after these upon some limited material agency or means employed as an aid in satisfying ourselves. Our personal powers are, of course, limited absolutely, and limited in fact still further, conditionally, by the tendency of exertion to become disagreeable, giving rise to a “want” to avoid it. The confusion to be avoided is that between a want, proper, as related to consciously planned action, the weighing of alternatives, and such things as supposed needs or metaphysical explanations of the immediate fact.” (2)
Its interesting to think about it actually in martial arts terms – not over-exerting and finding the way of least resistance. How valuable is it too us to exert, over-exert or not exert on a physical level, how is that tied up with our emotions and therefore how does that all take place in our brains. In our society today with technology everywhere, do we risk more than ever as a resulting of our continually diminishing patience and increased population and increased growth. Will explore in more depth soon.
1. Bernstein P (1996) Against the gods – the remarkable story of risk,p3, John Wiley and Sons, More details at http://www.peterbernstein.com/peters_books_against.htm
2. Knight F, (1921) Risk, Uncertainty and Profit, Library of Economics and Liberty, available at:http://econlib.org/library/Knight/knRUPCover.html
A free, open MBA opens eyes and minds
Emeka Okafor has reflected on an article in American Scholar about elite education, reviewing ”the future of Africa’s productive capacity where the elite adopt a redistributive rather than productive approach to wealth. This is further accentuated by a preference for non-manufacturing MBA’s” (1)
The article in question which reviewed 20 years in teaching English at Yale:
“There’s a reason elite schools speak of training leaders, not thinkers—holders of power, not its critics. An independent mind is independent of all allegiances, and elite schools, which get a large percentage of their budget from alumni giving, are strongly invested in fostering institutional loyalty. As another friend, a third-generation Yalie, says, the purpose of Yale College is to manufacture Yale alumni. Of course, for the system to work, those alumni need money. At Yale, the long-term drift of students away from majors in the humanities and basic sciences toward more practical ones like computer science and economics has been abetted by administrative indifference…
…students who get into elite schools are precisely the ones who have best learned to work within the system, so it’s almost impossible for them to see outside it, to see that it’s even there….
…The most elite schools have become places of a narrow and suffocating normalcy. Everyone feels pressure to maintain the kind of appearance—and effect—that go with achievement. (Dress for success, medicate for success.) I know from long experience as an adviser that not every Yale student is appropriate and well-adjusted, which is exactly why it worries me that so many of them act that way.” (2)
As explored previously and on the homemade MBA series – there are MBA programs available in multiple formats and just as with every other educational program there are also elite MBA programs run at universities and business schools which are considered to be the top places in the world to study.
I wonder if the lecturers just hear the same things over and over again from the students, the initial naivete and passion, bursts of creativity which then explode in the face of economic confusion and corporate practices. Does every student on the program think they can really make a difference in business then …what?
MBA programs have been running for over 100 years, in various formats, shorter programs for executives and…what?
Why is there poverty, why is there unemployment, if you’ve got business acumen and economic knowledge that may be more extensive than others? How many people can say hand on heart that they have made a significant contribution to improving business and economics as a result of their MBA and what do they mean if they really believe they have (Economic Nobel Prize winners seem to spring to mind).
You should be at the very minimum a capable manager (whatever one of those is..peter principles anyone) and if you are completing an MBA program then not applying it back to your industry – do you forget, or is it not possible to share? If you have spent several years of studying without being in a culture of sharing, how easy is it to apply? If your company has connected thinking initiatives, internal and external networking initiatives – where exactly is all the thinking going ?
Is it the MBA, the format, the people studying one, the people aspiring to study for one? Its not about nice sentiments, its about changing education and the workplace for the better – working hard is not – nice. Is it that without a truly open and free format, without sharing and participating in the ongoing dialogue with many people with many issues in many countries, whatever your thinking, whatever deep questioning and complex problems you encounter and attempt to solve, it just becomes a little bit too – normal.
How about applying it back to the business world from the first day you study, creating connections with a global community that you can grow exponentially:
“Open source better prepares students for the business world by exposing them to real-world problems and encouraging learning through the completion of real tasks. Open source amplifies a “hands-on” approach to learning by connecting students to a community of users in an effort to solve problems.
Open-source developers don’t rely on textbooks; they rely on the knowledge base of other developers with whom they connect through community forums, building off one another’s ideas to create a solution that is eventually shared with all. To this extent, open source better prepares students for future job experiences and allows them to complete, while they’re still in school, work that’s being used by the global open-source community.” (3)
Not easy, possibly a bit scary, but then so are the world’s economic issues. Going open gives you an instant evaluation of risk, can you afford to or can you afford not to?
1. Okafor E (2009) An Elite Education is not enough, nor is an MBA, Africa Unchained blog, available at:
http://africaunchained.blogspot.com/2009/12/elite-education-is-not-enough-nor-is.html
2. Deresiewicz W (2008) The Disadvantages of an Elite Education, Exhortation Summer 2008, The American Scholar.org, available at: http://www.theamericanscholar.org/the-disadvantages-of-an-elite-education/
3. Whitehurst J (2009) Open Source: Narrowing the Divide between Education, Business, and Community, EDUCAUSE Review, vol. 44, no. 1 (January/February 2009): 70–71, available at http://www.educause.edu/EDUCAUSE+Review/EDUCAUSEReviewMagazineVolume44/OpenSourceNarrowingtheDividebe/163586
Openness – going commando
Well perhaps not that far – but – enough! If someone asks me to use a technology which is not open, I am going to fight it, as best as I can.
I haven’t thought it all through yet, but I’m going to do a number of things this year related to how I discuss and use technology, including
- Being Ning free by the end of 2010. I like Ning, I have used it a lot in the last 3 or so years but its not open. I have recently joined two but I just can’t do it any more.. I am also going to find ways of reducing my involvement in current ones to zero as soon as possible.
- I am going to set up at some point, hopefully around April my own open hosted environment and complete an Elgg installation, if not before then. When I did have my own website, I paid for LAMP hosting and wrote all the web page coding myself. I did manage to install an open source wiki on there too. So even though there will be a learning curve, I should be able to cope. I am also going to document it so that I hope it will encourage others who find it intimidating to think about doing.
- Not just Ning ! I am not going to join any more collaborative initiatives which are not open source and reduce involvement to zero in other ones currently involved with as soon as humanly possible – I’m also looking at all forms of web based communication and seeing how I can become more open incl open source micro-blogging.
- Need to rethink this blog too, explore ways of blogging more openly. If by the end of the year I end up talking to no-one, so be it, a risk I am happy to take and yes, I am serious, I can go train in martial arts more times a week should that happen.
Why? I can’t find reasons not to – what does free mean if people can’t connect, what is the point of being in roles where I am advising on technology if there are compromises, how to live with yourself knowing that there are people who could connect if only you spent a bit more time thinking about it and trying something. Its not to say that there are no good things in alternative non-open and free options, its just not my path anymore.
I get it, it is convenient, comfortable – how easy is it – the human need to be comfortable – well martial arts strengthens resolve to move away continually from what is comfortable, doesn’t have to be huge actions – but if you are comfortable then you are learning nothing. If I am learning nothing then I can’t pass anything onto anyone else. For me this means to learn that however experienced I am, there is a responsibility to share that experience, you never know when the tiniest thing can help someone else. It doesn’t mean that you have to be really uncomfortable and torturing yourself, or get excessively tired – just using your best energies when you can, to explore and understand more, be free
“There are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talk about in the great outside world of wanting and achieving. The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, (unglamourous) ways every day.” (1)
1. Foster Wallace D (2007) The Most Precious Freedom, iJourney.org, available at http://www.ijourney.org/index.php?tid=500
Information, architecture, visualization
Hi Kate and welcome to the blogosphere !
Some that I found interesting both recently and more further back…
- hyperlinks and information in the new-ish Journal of Information Architecture
“as we began digitizing our information sources and adding hyperlinks, the information slipped the bounds of physical constraint and started reassembling itself into other structures, many all at once. Still, our minds try to make spatial sense of it, and use spatial memory to organize and keep track of it all, interchangeably making use of semantic relevance and spatial positioning to process our contextual experience.” 1
- Where am I? from Derek Powazek on Alistapart
“Good navigation tells a story, and good stories have a beginning, middle, and end. Navigation also has three parts, which are used to communicate to the user about their past, present, and future.” 2
I guess when people think of web architecture, not internet, they think Google-made fabric…speaking of Google goggles and the future of information search…
- Aaron Rester Web Designer as Information Cartographer and discussion
“The rise of the social web demands that if we are to help shape meaningful online experiences for our users, we must rethink our traditional role as builders of digital monuments and turn our attention to the close observation of the spaces that our users are producing around us” 3
Where does observation lead us – do open spaces just mean open for exploitation or open for conversation? And just what exactly is open?
1. Hinton A, (2009), The Machineries of Context – New Architectures for a New Dimension, Spring Issue, Journal of Information Architecture, REG-IA, available at: http://journalofia.org/volume1/issue1/04-hinton/jofia-0101-04-hinton.pdf
2. Rester A (2008), Mapping Memory, Web Designer as Information Cartographer, Alistapart.com, available at: http://www.alistapart.com/articles/mappingmemory/
3. Powazek D (2006), Where am I? , Alistapart.com, available at: http://www.alistapart.com/articles/whereami/
tech talking to tech – trying to pull together possible SMS strands
This is complicated because so many different areas to think about. Also, this is only at thinking rather than doing – have looked at some options out there and trying to see what would be worth exploring. Am using the word ‘research’ very lightly i.e. to find out something. The overall constraint is cost – unless it is free or very low cost, it is probable that an NGO could not afford to do this – use SMS to take part in discussions.
With the NGO that I am hoping to send an outline to, it is a free and open source SMS application which means that providing the NGO has access to a laptop and phone or GSM modem, they can install and use as an SMS application to communicate with their members.
SMS recap (see original post for more detail)
“Once you press send on your phone, an SMS message flies off to an SMS center which sends it onto its intended recipient. If the recipient is unavailable it will be temporarily stored in the center and re-sent later. On its journey it may have to go through gateways which allow different SMS centers to talk to each other.The storage capability means unlike the web, you don’t have to be connected in order to receive it, which in bandwidth-challenged environments is a communication / conversation enabler. So if you are in a rural area as soon as you come back in range, you can pick it up, without having to connect to anything, it will connect to you.
Sending SMS using a modem or using your phone/blackberry as a modem, an SMS message follows the same journey off to another phone, except that you can send lots of messages in one go or one message to lots of people (although you will not be able to send lots of messages per minute with a phone acting as a modem).
A very good matrix has been compiled by Katrin Verclas at Mobile Active. You can send SMS messages to email inboxes, send SMS messages to talk to web databases using SQL and HTTP queries such as POST**. You can also use SMS with a script of some kind to allow an SMS message to display as a microblog post on a web page, e.g. DIY options on a microblogging thread. There are tools appearing that will allow you to post to more than one microblog.
Now there is a new concept with a web server sitting on your mobile phone, as previously posted . With the webserver on your phone, it has a messaging inbox where you can access all the SMS messages on your phone and you can also send them. Not available on older phone models and relies on web connectivity to view on the web.”
I checked back at Nokia’s mobile web server (Raccoon) project and as previously mentioned they are developing new protocol – but what to do in the meantime. Have also discovered that coding for PythonS60 not an option because the majority of the phones are not S60, so coding something in Python that would sit as an app on the phone still may be an option, but needs further investigation.
Keywords
The current version of the software does allow use of keywords to do things like autoforward messages and use of external commands such as http requests. Use of keywords may help with potentially searching discussions so that you get content via SMS on the relevant topics to you.
Not really looking at direct email & RSS to and from a phone via SMS like Peekfeed or similar. As per previous posts, it would appear to need SMS to communicate with the web and most web-based discussions now use RSS, so this would mean getting SMS and RSS to communicate in both directions.
RSS
There is currently a community available as a Ning community where the discussions are taking place. You can subscribe to an RSS feed for the latest updates and each individual discussion topic. Looking beyond this community, there are services on the web where you can convert the webpage with updates into an RSS feed – two I briefly tried out were Feed43 and RSSpect which seem to work ok.
So, how to get an RSS feed to someone’s phone via SMS? Pingie is not currently available. TxtTools may be an option. I haven’t looked in detail but there were quite a few providing this kind of service. What about multiple feeds – because if you are going to be taking part in several discussions, then you may like to look at aggregation. For aggregation of feeds there are options such as Yahoo Pipes, Feedity and Friendfeed. I have not found any documentation or experimented so far to see if they offer sending RSS alerts via SMS, couldn’t find so far.
Stephen Downes released grsshopper which I really want to look at because its open source so you know the code will be clean quality, but due to having a lack of webserver at the moment (when I did my CIW several years ago, I did install an Apache server on my laptop, but there’s no way with my current one), so in order to evaluate, would need to grab some server space somewhere, which may be an option with the NGO. As above, the NGO’s software does allow use of keywords which then instruct the software to perform actions.
RSS and Twitter or SMS and Twitter
Twitter has SMS updates both to and from, no longer free though. One immediate thought springs to mind – if you are taking part in discussions – what about the other 20 characters (160-140=!), especially when trying to reduce cost and also make messages as meaningful as possible in the language of your choice or possibly converting from your language to another using symbols.
You could set up a group account on twitter which people could send and receive updates from. You could also pick up the RSS feed from the updates to the group as well and go through a conversion process as above. This NGO has already tried a way using twittermail – where you set up an account and using the NGO’’s software, set up an email ‘keyword’ and send the message to the twittermail address.
Elgg
Elgg is also opensource. Elgg has RSS feeds that you can subscribe to for blog posts, discussions. It has groups as a feature. The NGO community is currently using Ning – where visually, discussions may be easier to find. However if your primary means of communication is not going to be using the web version of discussions, but via SMS, this is not as relevant or useful. Was very excited to discover that they have looked into developing a way of interfacing with SMS and officially, so have contacted them for more information. But if it is coming soon or even available now, that looks like a real possibility, because the grouping feature within Elgg would allow multiple NGOs to organise their own areas of relevance but still have the whole community content available for searching, distributing and discussion.
Sooo.. is that enough to put together an outline – haven’t really covered the thinking behind discussions themselves in much detail….but there are possibilities – the RSS & Twitter definitely need investigating further because if each update is fed as an SMS, this will not be free, so this has to be evaluated against the benefit of taking part in the discussions. So far have not found a free option. However there are potentially open source options – gRSShopper, Elgg. Python is also open source…Will that make discussions accessible and in effect open ? This has to be looked at in terms of the respective contexts and environment for each potential participant. In a sense there is one route – i.e. they can’t choose whether SMS or not, unless they want to go direct to web access on the phone, but the majority of devices and users will simply not be an option. So what does that mean, are they open?
Also these discussions would be text – voiceSMS is not free either and Ning, Elgg are not voice based discussions – that is a separate thing, that not covered actually….
Based on all the above, is it worth building something different from scratch…
Any thoughts?
btw am still tagging, categorising these posts as cck09 even though course element finished, because that’s where this is growing from.
ConnectiveSMS – people talking to people
This will be followed up tomorrow by a ‘tech talking to tech’ post. To try and come up with a one page outline of what routes to follow is quite difficult so am going to temporarily separate the two because my head is just all over the place right now. If you have read any of my previous blogs about all things mobile then nothing really new here.
Its been really fascinating talking with John and Eduardo on Twitter today about using mobile phones. A very interesting research project on SMS and counselling services, is being carried out by Ailsa Haxell who is looking at actor network theory.
Some early thoughts today were:
- If SMS is your main or only medium of communication, how does your environment, immediate context affect how you participate in a discussion?
- If other people are in your physical environment at that moment, does that also affect how engaged you may be in a discussion (whether or not it is actually going to be possible to do this in web discussions)?
- Age, gender differences – evidence?
- Language / characters used, is this due to emotion, cost, anything else?
Studies which have looked at humans using mobile phones in public spaces have analysed differences in behaviour such as the impact of being in contact with your virtual community whilst physically in a space and what are the implications of this conscious and subconscious activity for both a person and the others physically around them. Is being social in one (e.g. virtual) necessitate being antisocial in another (physical) ?
“A community can easily become an accumulation of privatised (isolated) connectivities. Isolated connectivity becomes a ‘public retreat’. This public retreat allows students to be in close proximity with present others and yet engage in individual activities. For example, it is rather common to find students sitting together in groups in libraries, cafes and open spaces engaged with different things as they ‘shut’ the immediate space or other with headphones, tuned in to their private soundscapes.” (1)
How much does this kind of network switching matter I wonder. Switching is very limiting connective word ? It is not easy to define where one environment or network begins and ends for a human:
“the space of flows is the material organization of simultaneous social interaction at the distance by networking communication with the help of the technological support of telecommunications, interactive communication systems, and fast transportation technologies. The space of flows is not a placeless space, it does have a territorial configuration related to the nodes of the communication networks. But the structure and meaning of the space of flows is not related to any place but to the relationships constructed in and around the network processing the specific flows of communication. The content of the communication flows defines the network, and thus the space of flows, and the territorial basis of each node.
The diffusion of mobile communication technology greatly contributes to the spread of the space of flows and timeless time as the structures of our everyday life. Mobile communication device links in terms of social practice multiple places, which suddenly interact through the people being there and being at the same time in communication with someone somewhere else.” (2)
Same for technology, I simply cannot define where technology and my human self begin and end. But that’s not for this post. SMS as protocol – not open as in source, GSM now cracked though, but is pretty much device neutral – this affects humans less than being in the middle of a phone call which drops, or these days, mobile internet browsing, because they are short messages and if they don’t get through, they queue. There is not an immediate expectation or anticipation. It is different to microblogging in that you do not have a client which pushes notifications of status, so a notion of immediacy is less relevant? However if going to try and link SMS through something like a twitter group, this could then be an issue.
Also the physiological implications – not just the using the device experiences, the environmental ones – if we are hands-free and our head is upward as opposed to staring/typing with head downward – how does that affect our sensations, perceptions and ultimately our response and interest in participating in a discussion.
If our head is up, is our vision more easily distracted and would that produce better, worse or no different thinking. We don’t know if others are going to feel the same and if we spend a lot of time thinking about how to respond to a discussion topic and do not receive any or little back, what can we understand from the context of others? So many things which could be researched as a separate area within themselves:
“Ito argues that “keitai is not so much about a new technical capability or freedom of motion, but about a snug and intimate technosocial tethering, a personal device and communications that are a constant, lightweight, and mundane presence in everyday life.” … Evidence shows that mobile usage leads to networked sociability when one can be either socially atomized or develop stronger personal ties depending on how the technology is used.
Nagamine is concerned that mobile phone may deepen the social problem that many young people “liked to stay in their own inner worlds and shut out communication with others.” But Matsuda observes that cell phones are enabling the formation of a “full-time intimate community” for its users. Habuchi also describes the process of “tele-cocooning” as a possible result from excessive mobile usage when social identities are produced in small, insular social groups. This tendency is confirmed in another study of mobile communication logs”(3)
So with the people talking to other people aspects, what does that mean in terms of communicating in discussions using SMS and how is it possible to be connective in 160 characters? At a really simplistic level, just a connection to the topics being discussed offers potential for people to connect with other people even if their knowledge of each other is little more than a headline being generated – such as one person in one country is doing this with one organisation. If you had access to the internet occasionally and the web forum, you could find this out in a few minutes. How is that different to receiving as a series, possibly a pre-set series (e.g. RSS) of updates about what other people are doing. Will delve further into this tomorrow.
It is interesting to explore the connection with another human or group of humans – if you now have access to an online forum via SMS only, how that may affect understanding of individual identity, group identity – belonging to a specific NGO or possibly wider, belonging to a group of NGOs with something in common. I wonder how that identity becomes apparent and whether it would increase engagement with other members of other NGOs if SMS was an enabler.
1. Guevarra Enriquez J (2009), Tug-o-where: Practising mobilities of learning (t)here, Proceedings ascilite Auckland 2009: Full paper: Enriquez p273, available at: http://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/auckland09/procs/enriquez.pdf
2. Castells M, Fernandez-Ardevol M, Linchian Qiu J, Sey A (2004), The Mobile Communication Society:
Across cultural analysis of available evidence on the social uses of wireless communication technology p825, A research report prepared for the International Workshop on Wireless Communication Policies and Prospects: A Global Perspective, held at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, available at: http://arnic.info/workshop04/MCS.pdf
3. Castells M, Fernandez-Ardevol M, Linchian Qiu J, Sey A (2004), The Mobile Communication Society:
Across cultural analysis of available evidence on the social uses of wireless communication technology p332, A research report prepared for the International Workshop on Wireless Communication Policies and Prospects: A Global Perspective, held at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, available at: http://arnic.info/workshop04/MCS.pdf
Developing an appreciation of different music (updated)
Found a better video, now embedded
I have been meaning to write this post for several weeks now. I am also about to write to a family friend who is very musical and also headmaster of a small school in Austria, I want to try and explain some of the ideas I came across whilst on cck09. So it was interesting to see a tweet from suifaijohnmak last night with the video about incorporating music into various areas of education. Some very unexciting info about me is that
- I was very fortunate when as a small child to have an uncle who was an outstanding music teacher and introduced music in many ways to my sister, brother and myself.
- When I was a primary teacher, I was music curriculum co-ordinator for the school – I had not specialised in music at school beyond GCSE, certainly not uni, but the school had a need and by virtue of my experience I took on the responsibility whilst there. Some of that was teaching recorders and experiencing the joy of trying to encourage the less enthusiastic ones to actually try and use their mouth as opposed to their nose
- I also used music a lot in my main class which was reception age – especially singing – I remember one of the parents coming in on an open day and explaining that when she had asked her son what he was learning he just said – we don’t, we just sing all day. At that age its a great way of getting relaxed, especially first thing when leaving parents and walking into the classroom at the beginning of the day, if you don’t feel like being there (especially at 4 going into full-time school for first time), it can in some cases, help.
- I spent a very brief period of time last year at Surrey, looking at possibilities for mobile assessment for music technology degree with Pete Morris. so I am aware of how deep Apple’s claws go into music education especially
- I used to play mostly piano and guitar but own neither – I have moved around many times in the past 14 years. At one point I made an attempt to carry around a guitar but in the end gave it away because I couldn’t even remember how to tune it. Same with piano – I can probably still read most sheet music for it, haven’t looked – but have not touched one or had the urge to in many years. However I think I could probably pick up again if I spent a day playing – enough of it – and if I think of it in terms of connections – enough connections were formed in my brain when I was young enough to probably not have lost that completely.
But what if you have never had that opportunity? Music projects do spring up on the web – like the YouTube symphony orchestra and I feel obliged to mention the iPhone orchestra – but contrary to a lot of opinion, apples are not the only fruit – if you have a device of any kind that can record sound that is a great start. It doesn’t have to involve using an instrument of any kind, tv shows like the Singing Estate, offer inspiration about how adults with no formal music training can explore music together. A pc can be instrument though – there are free tools/software such as virtual keyboards, and probably loads of people now have seen the video of musical escalator in Sweden or wherever it was.
Could you have a Singing Estate online I wonder…I was thinking about this on and off during cck09, there is such a huge world of music out there for exploration and based on my understanding of connectivism, it seems to hit the right buttons in terms of culturally, diversity – because there doesn’t have to be a prescribed format for how to discover sounds and music, in a networked way, you can discover this with others. The networking elements would be discovering your own sound or set of sounds that you like and if inclined, experimenting with others also exploring to try and find ways of performing together.
Putting this together as some kind of musical and sound appreciation – in terms of an educational experience would not be without issues and would take considerable planning. I do not have the time but wanted to scribble down this post more as a thought experiment only.
I just like the idea though – having the opportunity to learn about some formal music development if you want, as little or as much as you want, finding a sound or set of sounds that appeal to you – then going off and finding others connectively to develop your sounds along with theirs. It could be like kind of musical sound dating – I’ve got this kind of guitar sound and now I’m really looking for something a little bit more drum like – how would you find others to connect with to do this? Options for exploring across multiple cultures is endless with the web !
So how would this work? Some thoughts:
- Copyright and music – yeah we know – but this is where learning connectively is a great strength – you do not need to facilitate by replaying music online – you can easily link to sources which others can go and discover however they wish to do.
- Making classical music exploration optional – it would be difficult to learn all the notes, scales in a couple of weeks, especially if you do not have your own offline instrument to practise with in between. You could learn sheet music in a networked way – e.g. writing music the wiki way.
- You could have facilitated live sessions using a virtual classroom – depending on which one you used, you may be able to open up microphone to multiple people. Ideally it would be several live sessions in a week as opposed to a weekly one so that those who want to practise together – have the opportunity to do so.
- The great thing is that you can leave all this open – just provide a list of different tools which people can download – whether they are going fully virtual – such as virtual keyboards, blended – i.e using their voices or an instrument (of course doesn’t have to be a familiar western classical musical one) and using technology to record and playback the sound, mobile – using a phone or similar. However you can use blogs and wikis for this too – provide a list with strengths, weaknesses of these and leave it open to choice for how to experiment.
- You could do the entire experience as a soloist – just learn about different music and play individually, but if I was looking for any type of assessment of this kind of experience – it would be – to develop an appreciation by playing solo, is to have an understanding of how your solo sound – works with other sounds – and leave that open to interpretation – I think.
- It might be fun at the end, to get together with any grouping of people (bands, orchestras, choirs – whatever) formed and either record a performance and publish or perform live in front of others.
Take care of yourself in the colder weather
In the last couple of weeks whilst continuing to try and get back into training, it feels so much harder to move, turn into kicks, turn into blocks – everything feels a little stiff! Too many colder temperatures and suddenly your circulation goes into hibernation.
I tried running this morning, did a run by the Thames – almost slush free yesterday and finally for the first time in several weeks – kind of yelled myself out of bed for a morning run. Partly due to having only been recently reunited with running shoes after several weeks – very happy that finally turned up from the train, because other trainers not good for running ! It was quite slippery – not really any snow left here but still some sheet ice and heavy frost.
So took it fairly cautiously and at one point, turning towards the river , suddenly went up in the air and kind of landed in a crescent shape – but definitely something from martial arts kicked in, because somehow I didn’t land as badly as I could and instantly found myself getting up instantly and running on. I would never have been able to do that a couple of years ago!
I also seemed to be gaining another cold at the beginning of this week but something inside went “I REFUSE to have one” so I rushed out to get some additional forms of cold self-defence. Cold weather and I have never been great friends and have resorted to everything and anything to try and battle – including at one point eating 16 kiwi fruit per day, echinacea, endless vitamin C and all kinds of things. But as of this week have gone back to some basics – and maybe everyone else knows these but just in case, these 2:
- 2 tablespoons of cider vinegar in half a glass of water – currently having first thing and last thing
- 2-3 tablespoons of dark ginger – neat
So to anyone reading this, thank you and very very warm wishes to you and your friends and families over the festive period
Decision Making and Collaboration – reducing the distance
I made a decision yesterday about something, not a particularly big one but it did involve a lot of thinking – so far I’ve lived with that decision about 18 hours without changing my mind again. Guy Browning identifies three types of decision making:
“Proactive decisions are the ones you make to give the impression you’re in full command of your destiny. When things go pear-shaped, because you made the wrong decision, you can then make more decisions about how to get out of the mess. So long as you keep making a continual stream of decisions, people will think you know what you are doing.
Reactive decision makers take the view that change is inevitable so why rush to meet it. By the time change gets to you, the decisions will have been made already so you might as well relax and enjoy it.
Radioactive decisions are big decisions made by other people at a distance and you only realize you’ve been affected by them when its far too late – these kinds of decisions are found a lot in the manufacturing industry, pensions, local government and hospitals” 1
So does collaboration and in particular online collaboration reduce the distance between ideas, reduce the number of decisions to make ? If you ask a question or make a point in any kind of area where work colleagues may be able to see what you have written – what does that actually do or contribute?
One of the areas covered on the Cognitive Edge workshops looks at boundaries between different areas of the Cynefin framework. Recently at work I attempted to look at how the changes within the team and overall project that I worked with might be in relation to the framework, as part of an attempt to explain my understanding of what had been covered. One of our team has described it as eating our own dogfood – are we actually collaborating online in order to explain to others about collaborating online – do we experience the same conflicts and issues as our clients. This could then make it interesting to try and analyse what area of the framework we might identify the project as being – at any one time. Not sure if that makes sense !
So do we need to reduce or merely analyse / identify the distance between boundaries and that is what helps us feel more confident about our decision making? Can we actually do that in a series of different areas using online communication and technologies / tools such as blogs, walls, discussions, wikis? Am I actually capable of writing a blogpost without asking a million questions and forgetting to answer most of them ?
We may have shared information – this could be an idea, a link as part of a reply to something or asking something. This might assist us in our decision making but we are not the only people that need to make decisions – finding ourselves in an online environment of any kind means we bump into millions of others making or trying to make decisions too – so we need to identify our conflict better. Our idea or link can completely throw someone off a track – sometimes this can be in a very good way – someone recently said something to me – that I found so completely alien – that somehow psychologically I felt unable to process it – it was as if I had left it up in the sky circling until I could find a suitable place for it to land. This post relates to that. Of course we process things instantly though:
“Have you ever closed your eyes for fifteen seconds and monitored the thoughts running through your mind. What a breakneck pace ! All that in only fifteen seconds. Given any significant conflict – the conscious mind can easily come up with more in that time. And the subconscious mind could fill volumes. And consider that there are 5,760 of these fifteen-seconds intervals in each and every day!”2
So whilst we are reading or writing something online we slow down considerably whilst our thoughts are whirling away, when someone else reads what we have written and in turn may be writing – how do we manage the conflict and achieve decisions that are helpful beyond individual ones. If we are in agreement with someone, psychologically it might feel like we have reduced a distance, but then there are many other people, possibly not actively contributing – what kind of distance exists between ourselves and them? We can make some operational decisions – if everyone has viewed something like an update or we feel confident that the majority of people have viewed it, the perception is that any resulting decisions should be better for the ‘group’ of people involved.
This doesn’t really take account of how we process though – if it is as above – then we may have read the update with a whole bunch of what-ifs, we may make a tiny decision to ignore those – for any number of reasons. Sometimes we have the opportunity to go back and mention to others that we have received new information so we now disagree – however in the space of us opening an application, opening the relevant page or editing box or whatever space we are typing into – others may also be receiving different information and so it goes on.
Maybe corporate decision making is just little pieces of luck amongst the multitude of potentially disastrous options – for some individuals – if it is perceived that it has worked out well for both employees and any resulting effect for customers or the other way round. And decision makers are always fortunate in that every fifteen seconds there is a new set of circumstances to deal with. However not many companies have one person in them so its 10, 100, 1000, 1000o0 every second. Is there a simple perception that by physically seeing the presence of others in an online space – such as buttons which indicate someone online, we are more secure, more connected – maybe that makes us feel as humans more comfortable so we feel that decisions and collaborative working is better, regardless of the outcome of any of the decisions.
What do I know !
“Responsibility moves at about one tenth of the speed of decision making and as long as you don’t wait around to see the consequences of your decisions, you can generally keep well ahead of responsibility”3
What I haven’t decided is whether online and the perception of speed of how the world communicates, gives decision makers less responsibility or more?
More on this at some point in the future.
1. Browning G (2005), How to make a decision pp124-5, Never Push When it Says Pull, The Guardian, Atlantic Books
2. Crum T (1987), The Magic of Conflict, p29, Touchstone Books, Simon & Schuster
3. Browning G (2005), How to make a decision pp124-5, Never Push When it Says Pull, The Guardian, Atlantic Books
Integrating SMS connectively, learning from each other through discussions
How, don’t know yet ? This is just a bunch of thoughts which I haven’t yet tried to relate to each other. New category feed for this mini-project: http://learn4kicks.wordpress.com/category/connectiveSMS&feed=rss2/feed/
I would like to start looking at this – having asked in a very vague way if there were any ideas about informally connecting rather than what I would describe as mobile education or formal mobile learning which takes place as part of an educational experience – through an institution, part of a course etc
Instead to look at if/how people can use SMS for learning something without thinking about whether they are doing a learning activity or not.
Going to investigate how to find way/s for SMS-only users to engage in web-based discussion – or build a feedback/discussion module which would allow NGOs and their communities to chat?
Initial thoughts are – getting SMS and RSS linked. I started to explore SMS and found some RSS options last year
“Txttools provide plugins that work with virtual learning environments. If you are organising your learning in a more personal way, RSS to SMS applications have been around for a few years, one of the more recent and ridiculously named but also looks easy to use is Pingie With things like MobileWebServer and SMS inboxes, I guess its possible to create a mobile widget that could show these (similar to a Pageflakes flake).”
When I started to look at the coding, it was easier to find RSS to SMS – but this needs to be both ways. This is also an opportunity to explore through twitter which I have been talking about for some time but done nothing about. We know we can send SMS to a twitter account, we can pull off an RSS feed from a twitter account – so maybe setting up a group twitter account. Alternatively posting SMS to multiple places – but there could be cost implications with this, it has to be one SMS cost. Twitter may not be the only option – there may be better ways to display SMS on a web, but I can’t see a design which doesn’t involve use of RSS at the moment – needs more thinking around.
Within something like Ning, you can display feeds so users within the web based community could see the contributions – but actually putting these inside discussions as posts is far more complex.
Another consideration is the sense making for both the SMS only user and a web-based user – from a stream of short messages – are there options for using something like an SMS search – could keywords be identified. You can’t visualize on an SMS only device but you could potentially display multiple SMS on a wall – I can’t find the link at the moment, but remember seeing a photo somewhere of this happening in Asia. There may be options for display on a board or similar to Storybank.
Also interested in how the experience of connecting – not just the texting but the context of what has motivated someone to reach for their phone at that moment etc
Need to go off and see may have changed in the world of SMS lately, such as Nokia creating a new protocol.
This may stray completely away from connectivism and learning into just simply connecting – but that is part of this experience, to try and understand more.
Energy drinks for the office – wrong tool for the wrong activity
Back at the beginning of summer, I stopped drinking both energy and isotonic drinks – first my dentist told me not to and I asked one of my Taekwondo instructors about the effect and he said water was better and even then not much during training sessions – because it all just kind of bubbles around inside when you move.
Somehow in the last 2 months they seem to have been creeping back in again. However I was thinking about it today – this is mad – unless I need to tear around the office like a whippet (do that anyway – have the bruises to prove it where I repeatedly end up on corners of desks and occasionally door handles – impaled by ID cards and worse). I do a fair amount of moving between offices but that is usually fast walking – again I rarely need to move quicker than that – occasionally for travelling across bits of UK for work meetings am running down station platforms but again am not repeatedly doing this in the space of one session.
So what is happening with all that extra inside me – I haven’t noticed improved thinking performance – if I feel more energised, it is tempting to take on more then when you feel less – you have the energy drinks to keep up – it is so obvious and I’m sure everyone else has figured this out, but maybe I am re-figuring it out. I remember many years ago when lets just say I was partying somewhat regularly and decided to have a night off alcohol and drank 5 red bulls instead – I could not shut up, I had a lot to say about nothing at all for hours. But I don’t need to hold meetings and deliver presentations at speed, nor anything else that involves thinking that fast.
I still drink red bull occasionally – I do know someone who used to drink around 4 a day and had a heart attack. Lately I seem to have turned to Relentless, which seems to be about 1.5-2 Red bull in terms of liquid, I’m unsure about ingredients – some thoughts from press on energy drinks – How Safe? or Do they work?
I am moving more away from isotonic drinks in training sessions but again its a question of self-discipline.
its too easy to get one from the machine on the way in and occasionally Red Rooster – which I like the taste of but I can only imagine what it is doing. I don’t think it will make me a better martial artist
So, less energy drinks = moving more slowly = taking on less work = more sanity = yes please ! Also means I can concentrate energy better on the tasks that are priorities both in and out of work.
