During the wiki weeks I thought I would first take a look at the approach I was grappling most with - social critical and reading Shor's education is politics article - I found it very interesting due to the many parallels with this modules approach....

It seems our tutors are quite the libertines and problem posers! - and it all lies in the chat.......

here are the connections I could relate to:

' a Freirean pedagogy tries to develop a student centred dialogue'

Some values describing the 'Freirean pedagogy':

Participatory - learning process interactive and co-operative so that students do a lot of discussing and writing instead of listening to teacher talk

Situated - course material situated in student thought begining from their words and understanding of material

Critical - discussion encourages self reflection, how we know what we know, and quality of learning process -(why do we do what we do - what personal filters or biais or previous experience guides the way we are (holistically or at any one point in time), choices we make or how we act, react and interact - a lot of interpersonal, communication, rapport and building relatonship skills in the work place also covers this - for a commercial gain however rather than a socially driven libertine reason!)

Democratic - classroom discourse is mutually constructed between teacher and student - students have equal speaking rights in the dialog

Dialogic - basic format of class is dialog around problems posed by student and teacher. Teacher initiates process and guides it into deeper phases. Teacher invites students to take ownership of learning

Desocialisation - dialog desocialises students from passivity in classroom and challenges their learned authority-dependence and desocialises teacher from domineering teacher-talk socialised into - instead they are problem posers and dialogue leaders

.........

Affective - problem posing and dialogic method includes a range of emotions from humour to compassion to indignation - and we have seen many of these emotions already within our own discourse

Shor, I. (1993). Education is politics: Paulo Freire's critical pedagogy. In Paulo Freire: a critical encounter. P. McLaren and P. Leonard (Eds.). (London, Routledge): pp. 25-35

It all started with rats in space but led to the emergence of natural born cyborgs, at least in Clark's eyes (2003).

I have just finished reading his article 'Cyborgs Unplugged' where a Cyborg, acronym for Cybernetic Organism or Cybernetically Controlled Organism, is described as being an 'entity' which captures the 'notion of human-machine merging' or 'human-machine symbiosis'.

Clark's perspective is that these sort of man-machine link ups exist already without the need for puncture, surgery and implants and that they evolve with such a natural form of integration that most happen invisibly and beneath our level of conscious awareness.

This has generated a little debate on our discussion board about machines which can find cars in car-parks and 'man' and 'specticles' working together to 'extend the brain' - it certainly leads to an interesting perspective and one which I feel we seem more attune with 'socially' or in 'everyday digital life' than 'educationally' at present.

Clark already mentions 'Amazon' (or similar services) and how it tracks an individual's reading habits... 'other people who bought the same book you are looking at have also bought the following.....'

and 'Ebay' like services which track an individual's purchasing habits..... 'you might also be interested in......' or 'do you want to see what other things the seller is selling...'

IPODs and mobile phones allow you to take photos, download personalised music and video choices and transfer treasured possesions like this via blue tooth technology (which I have not quite mastered yet but my kids have!) between friends.

We also see this man-machine integration with FACEBOOK.

Have you noticed the flags for 'mutual friends'? The ones you have 'in common' with those you have listed as friends. Or have you noticed the adverts appearing when you log in? I have skiing as an interest in my profile and I get skiing holidays advertised...... ummmmmm!

At work, the portal I log into recognises my login as staff not student and I get access to information students don't see whilst they get access to information on the courses/modules they are registered on and the faculty they reside in. We all get information on our own library borrowing accounts and records.

I can set up alerts on databases to help me keep track of new material published on areas that interest me or subscribe to RSS feeds to help me keep track of new posts to blogs or websites of interest.

Also cookies on machines also act in the same way I guess, shortening processes or recognising you when you login and therefore you do not have to remember your login .......

As Clark says....

'The more closely the smart world becomes tailored to an individual's specific needs, habits and preferences the harder it will become to tell where a person stops and this tailor-made, co-evolving smart world begins.'

This too, I think will be invisible... not so much for others to see, but how we see ourselves..........

A member of our discussion board recently flagged that they do not like changing computer - as the keyboard and set ups are often different. I don't like it because my cookies are not present or my favourites to hand (unless you use delicious). These are 'intimate' feelings and highlight perhaps the 'functioning of the smart world in intimate harmony with the biological brain' that Clark (2003) is talking about?

Bringing it back educationally - spotted the following.... although this appendage is not terribly invisible......... :~) 'Robodoc'

Clark, A. (2003) Natural born cyborgs: minds, technologies and the future of human intelligence, Oxford: OUP chapter 1, 'Cyborgs unplugged' pp.13-34.

Robodoc. http://www.pbs.org/kcet/wiredscience/ [accessed November 2008]

Atmospheric, emotive and deeply personal...

I have attached a transcript of a discussion our group had last week on the metaphor of stepping stones and pebbles - 'kidnapping them' in particular (courtesy of Tracy) in relation to E-portfolios. Several of our group related to this thread and added their own stories which enriched the whole experience. This experience deepened when we explored pebble pad, e-portfolio technology, with its related imagery and simplicity. I also came across the video below from Youtube this evening and have added it due to its imagery of streams, stones, stepping stones and reflections.

Finally, the discussion file attached demonstrates the connective power of collective thought  and what can happen when multiplicity and serendipity meet, resulting in a link to another discussion thread 'seemingly relevant' to the fluidity of the web, 'web of flow' and Tracey's story of kidnapping pebbles........ Which leaves me wondering and questioning where the role of conversation resides if learning is truly social. Is there a place for it as artefact in an e-portfolio?

[You do not have permission to access this file]

In previous posts - see communities and collaboration or individualism and isolation, I have explored a possible assignment topic for this module.

Another has just occured to me, having particularly enjoyed our week looking at E-portfolios and following the discussion and emotive connections associated with something so deeply personal as 'reflection'.

In many discussions, not just this week's, the role of social learning has been considered and debated. If learning is indeed truly social, this has left me wondering where 'conversation' belongs in an elearning context; and how  technology could facilitate the integration of this type of learning, - discussion board posts and threads,  personal discussions/reflections in weblogs and e-porfolios.  Is there a missing link?