The final set of course texts (Levy 2007a, Levy 2007b and Land 2006) explicating the need for silence and sanctuary in one’s life (my first prezi summarising the key ideas) has provided a lot of food for thought and, what is interesting, that provision turned out to be very well-timed.

First, after the frenetic ten weeks of an intense course, it brought a perfect closure, tying up all the dangling loose ends and allowing one to distance oneself from the experience by encouraging to take ‘time off’ in order to reflect on the ‘what’, ‘how’ and ‘why’ of e-learning (and learning in general), digital literacies and presence. For me, the texts had a particularly soothing effect on how I perceive my participation in the course and in online spaces. As documented here on the blog, I have focused solely on my individual learning process, without trying much to engage with others, which I had very mixed feelings about, ranging from anxiety and guilt through occasional indifference to enjoyment I derived from being undistracted and independent . Although I’ve perhaps taken my solitary habits too far, the texts have helped me understand that one does not always have to be in the centre of things, that sometimes it’s good to take a step aside, that solitude is justifiable and beneficial as it might provide time for reflection, deep thinking and thus unleash creativity. I think, without sounding too pompous, I can confirm that within the limits of my mental faculties, I have experienced little epiphanies and sparks of ‘divine inspiration’ while engaging with the course content, leading to a deeper understanding of the discussed phenomena. I’m especially thankful for the fact that I could learn about threshold concepts and liminal spaces, something that Land (2006) links to in his paper about dromology. I’ve got a feeling that the elements of that massive jigsaw puzzle I faced back in January are starting to fall into places – it’s rewarding to discover their interrelatedness, a telling sign of deeper thinking (?) With all respect to my colleagues and tutors as I am sure that the discussion forums are teeming with great ideas and links to excellent resources, sometimes I think I haven’t lost much. I might have less but sometimes ‘less’ is better. Maybe by sticking to my own comfort zone, I have prevented myself from getting bogged down in making sense of frenetic buzziness of discussion forums and let myself hear my own voice speaking!

At the same time, I have noticed a slowly emerging trend on the ELT blogs – a couple of renowned practitioners wrote about the increasing dilution of high-context relationships in their professional lives  due to the profusion of cybercommunications with a number of ‘followers’ and other ‘friends’ on social networking sites and expressed a strong longing for fewer but deeper interactions. One ‘guru’ has questioned the value of personal social networks, taking it so seriously that he decided to commit twittercide and deactivated his account. Although it is generally considered a great loss among ELT community members, I can understand his reasons, even more now when I have read about the need for silence and sanctuary. Strangely enough, he is the same person I mentioned in the previous posting about the uncanny education (toward the end in the post scriptum) on the occasion of discussing two approaches in m-learning. The apps approach could be likened to the routinised ‘ratio’ thinking stipulated by (Levi 2007b). There is nothing bad about such quizzes and alike because they let language learners familiarise themselves with vocabulary and grammar chunks probably quite effectively but other approaches are needed too which will allow them to use the language creatively and expressively. And as you have aptly summarised it, Clara, we should be  speakers of thoughts, not mimics of noise!

What really struck me in Levy’s paper is the origin of the word ‘school’ – it derives from ‘leisure’ (2007b: 247), which itself has a very interesting etymology in Greek philosophy! I found these two facts very revealing. And since universities - but I think this applies to other educational institutions too - are regarded as our culture’s think tanks, on the one hand, and ‘descendants of Plato’s academic’, on the other hand, contemplation and reflection should be placed in the foreground (Levy, 2007b:247). Land (2006:6) argues that these could facilitate better integration and thus transformative learning, in the process of which threshold concepts can be acquired, threshold concepts being important gateways providing insights into links between and within theories. The necessary processes of analysis and synthesis often resulting in problem formulation and solution as well as fostering creativity and criticality in more general terms can be instigated and managed in slow motion of liminal spaces more effectively than in ‘concertina-like time compression’. Since life seems to have accelerated rapidly in recent years and so creativity is likely to be obstructed, Levy (2007b: 248) claims that unfortunately education often pursues these societal trends and focuses on preparing ‘efficient multi-taskers in a world of total work’ (247). This can be seen in business-like obsession with outcomes and objectives (CEFR), summative assessment being the driving force of teaching and learning (high-stakes English preparation courses I teach on) and students’ attitudes – interestingly enough two weeks ago in a class of 16 Chinese pre-masters students, to my question why they decided to do a uni course, 5 admitted it should increase their future job prospects, 4 wanted to get a degree (their hope being that a good job would follow), which shows their strategic and business-like thinking. Of course, it can be questioned whether such strategic approaches are a result or a reason for the education to often so oriented towards outcomes. Just to finish the digression on a more positive note, two of my students admitted honestly that they want to do it for the sake of life experience, which is a ray of hope! Land (2006) introduces an interesting concept of ‘virtual stacking’ in which ‘every vacant spot is filled’, debilitating our higher thinking skills of spotting intra- and interdisciplinary relations. Our knowledge becomes fragmented into bitesizes of often meaningless noise. Digesting so cooked ‘knowledge’ presents a challenge in terms of time. Suffering from its permanent shortage, we fall victim to Eriksen’s temporal principle which says that within unchanged time limits, attention span decreases as the amount of information grows. A vicious circle is thus created. Slowing down to contemplate paradoxically seems to be a solution for businesses, universities, organisations and individuals (Levi, 2007 and Loy, 2007).

What is alarming about the situation is that digital technologies often get blamed for such a state of affairs. As clarified in my prezi presentation, it’s not the Internet itself. Time compression seems to be strangely pre-programmed in the history of the human kind, particularly the contemporary one. Land (2006:7) points out how digital education often gets limited to stacking (within VLEs?) instead of being used for internal integration. This is probably due to reasons Cousin mentions in her 2005 paper, e.g. the toolbox view of technology. Instead, as Garrison and Anderson (2003:122) suggest, e-learning represents a new ‘learning ecology’, which for has a strong flavour of wetlands from the prezi. These and other smooth spaces might help us reconceptualise teaching and learning by establishing integrative practices (e.g. Landow’s hypertext, Ulmer’s electracy) and contemplative practices whereby individuals might focus ‘within and beyond the human’ (Braman, 2007; see also your comment on the uncanny).