Today, TED 2008 begins in Monterey, California, with a sister conference patching in from Aspen for the first time.
Bruno, the TED Europe Director who I ended up next to at LIFT08 (someone who speed-blogs as fast as and more lucidly than me), has revealed some of the behind-the-scenes action as Monterey shapes up, the kind of stories and photos that you can't pick up from the superb video podcasts. I, for one, can't wait to see what comes out of the themes of this year's conference:
I love the great arguments that take place around The Economist's online debates as much as the debacles that take place on the newspaper's own site. This week sees a new debate kick off, with one of my heros in the 'Con' side:
"This house believes that if the promise of technology is to simplify our lives, it is failing."
It's not an easy one on which to predict the outcome since I'm sure many readers of this blog would agree that while technology has enrichened their lives it has hardly simplified it (but in complexity often lies challenge, enjoyment and innovation).
So John Maeda, author of The Laws of Simplicity (Great book; go buy. Great TED Talk, go watch), has a tough job on his hands as a lover of simplicity to make the case that technology is simplifying our lives after all. Interestingly, he didn't want to argue against the motion, which figures given his simplicity, but has had great fun in his opening statement. He's currently winning two-to-one, but as I have found out, the Economist vote lies in your hands... and your blogs.
The LIFTers have managed to put up video from this month's event in Geneva. My five minute open stage talk, voted for by the conference participants, was marred by a dodgy mic and some even more dodgy conversion of the fonts on my preso (must remember to remove older versions from memory pens before handing them to the techie guys). This is the reason, dear conference organisers, that I much prefer just plugging in my own Mac - worth sacrificing 30 seconds of speaking time for :-) Nice versions of many of the same slides are in a 20-minute version of the talk that I've slideshared.
Anyway, I hope that in 5 minutes (and 20 seconds) I manage to do justice to the sterling work of the team back in East Lothian and at LTS. It's certainly had positive feedback, both on the day and since then on some blogs. It is probably the last time that I use that pesky cupstacking video (thanks, Stephen), although I'll have trouble not talking about the continued importance of audience, of purpose, and of sharing what we do. Above all, I hope that some LIFTers take my challenge seriously and help their local learning communities to start sharing a heck of a lot more than they currently do.
At 3.45pm, the time that school's out in Scotland, I will technically hit the big 3-0. I'm meant to feel depressed about this, I think, but I don't quite see why. What actually happens in one's twentysomethings?
1998: Having the time of my life as a student in Brittany (and stressing about reading horrible Stendhal and Flaubert).
Macintosh Classic II.
1999: Having to reign back the time of my life to pass my language and law exams.
Macintosh LCIII
2000: Once again having the time of my life in France, while signing up to the Army. Not sure if it's more exciting to be an Army educator or a spy. Decide to have a go at being a spy.
Macintosh LCIII
2001: Failed to join the Army (and not because I blogged I wanted to be a spy). Discovering instead how hard it can be to live in a big city (Paris) on no money and no time outside work.
Dell Inspiron 4000
2002: Learning (again) how to be a good teacher and living in Glasgow's dampest flat.
Dell Inspiron 4000
2003: Discovering the joys of the pay cheque, while having to fly to Dublin every weekend to see my girlfriend.
Dell Inspiron 4000 and Toshiba Satellite
2004: Asking my girlfriend to be my fiancé
Toshiba Satellite
2005: Asking my fiancé to be my wife. Changing career for the fourth time.
Apple Mac PowerBook G4. 1st Gen iPod
2006: Asking my wife to have a child. Changing career for the fifth time.
Apple MacBook Pro. iPod Shuffle.
2007: Having a beautiful daughter. Changing career for the sixth time, and becoming self-employed.
iMac, MacBook, MacBook Pro and iPod Video.
2008: ... Seeing for the first time that people do actually take me seriously. Work has never been more exciting, I've never seen so many places, I've never enjoyed those around me so much.
iMac, MacBook, MacBook Pro and iPod Video.
You see, looking at things that way, it seems that life only gets better. And there seems to be a direct correlation between happiness, success and Apple Macs. Hmmm. I don't see how having one more candle to blow out is going to change that (unless my lungs give out on that last candle ;-) I hope you'll share a virtual dram with me tonight.
Pic: Slow down Arthur and Stick to Thirty, from the book of the same name.
I tend to use 'text' in a loosely literary/cultural theory way to designate pretty much any sort of signifying practice: adverts, songs, newpaper articles, television programmes, txt msgs etc.
Whenever I use it, i'm reminded of my first reading of lit theory and the blurring of the opposition between the particularity of literary texts and the general textuality of the culture.
As ever, I find Sian a good person to think with (and sometimes against 
). Here's the most recent theme she's got me thinking about.
Sian writes:
I think that digitisation represented quite a radical de-stabilising of text in particular, and that when that text became networked, it entered an even more volatile state in which it became increasingly problematic to talk about textual 'stability' and association notions of truth/knowledge. (Bayne 2007)
I take issue with Sian's view of digitisation in a couple of ways:
1) I think it's inaccurate to homogenise all digital texts. Here's Joensuu (2005):
... it is not fair to treat the existing digital literature as one “lump”. Electronic literature is divided in different categories. Digitalization of (already) printed literature – conserving classic literature and making it electronically available – is very different from genuinely digital texts, new literature published as a digital file (to be read from computer screen or hand-computer) or texts that take full advantage of digital opportunities, such as interactivity, linking, updating, programming, multimedia, or internet. These sorts of “originally digital” texts base their logic of functioning and textual dynamics on digital technology – thus being impossible to print.
2) I'd claim that arguments about the destabilisation of the text have been applied for many decades to printed (pre-digital) texts. For example, Jacques Derrida has argued consistently that what we communicate textually cannot be interpreted in a stable or predictable way that assumes authorial intention has been sucessfully 'transmitted'. Derrida characterises text as inherently “iterable … able to break with every given context, and engender infinitely new contexts in an absolutely unsaturable fashion” (Derrida, 1982, p.320).
References
Bayne, S. 03 December 2007. Re: Are we making too much fuss about the perceived digital/pre-digital divide? Introduction to Digital Environments for Learning discussion board week 11. [online]
Derrida, J. (1982) 'Signature, Event. Context.' Margins of Philosophy. Trans. Alan Bass. Chicago: Chicago UP.
Joensuu, J. (Jun. 2005) "Intimate Technology?: Literature, Reading and the Argumentation Defending Book and Print," M/C Journal, 8(2). Retrieved 03 Dec. 2007 from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0506/02-joensuu.php>.
Well, we're approaching the end of the module and, more worryingly, the deadline for submission.
Until late last week I'd forgotten that we'd have to collect up all our favourite posts and present them for assessment. A bit of a tedious undertaking technically but one that raises some interesting questions about this particular form of assessment.
It's a really intriguing assessment format: on the one hand, regular blog posts allow feedback from tutors and, if access rights have been widened, fellow students and other Eduspaces users; on the other hand, creating a presentation allows us to select and add retrospective (meta)comments to a smaller body of posts and replies that ultimately form a loose patchwork text. Actually, I feel like I'm creating a kind of 'greatest hits' compilation (is 'I heart Web 2.0' my 'Wake me up before you go go'?).
I suspect I'm second-guessing Rory and Sian on what's expected. Coherence? Diversity and range of topics addressed? Coverage of the module's big issues? Stable and volatile environments - yup; Second Life - got it; communication anxieties - sorted; hypertext - another tick; embodied presence - accounted for; digital natives - done! etc..
Is our final blog presentation supposed to be a raw record of reflection-in-action or something more polished (e.g. properly referenced, typos tidied up)? Should I therefore go back to earlier posts and edit them or leave them as they are, raw testimony to the arguments I've been mulling over since September?
Should I add some kind of commentary on why the post has been selected, where it fits in a pattern of posts, and the degree to which an initial position has altered in response to further discussion and reflection?
What about the order of the posts? Chronological (easy) or thematic (harder)?
Finally, do I need a final summing up post like this to draw out some key themes?
Actually, to this last question I'm going to answer yes. So, here they are then, my top themes:
Bonne lecture!
A colleague sent me this today - quite relevant to our digital native debate:
I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies:
1. Anything that is in the world when you're born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.
2. Anything that's invented between when you're fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.
3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things.
-- Douglas Adams
We are stuck with technology when what we really want is just stuff that works. How do you recognise something that is still technology? A good clue is if it comes with a manual.
-- Douglas Adams
Here's an interesting quotation from Glynis Cousins:
Being a teenager in contemporary Western society involves different ways of being-with technology than it did for former generations. The social life of the juke-box generation of the 1950s considerably varied from that of the ‘net generation’ of today. Cousins p.119
It's a part of a bigger argument about technology and ontology or how machines, media, hardware and software change who we are. So, ask not what your technology can do for you but what it can do to you.
I wonder if Cousins isn't overstating the importance of the 'being-with' technology part of identity. How considerable a variation is there between the social life of juke box generation and that of the net generation?
Details rather than substance I'd guess. iPod (and docking station/speakers) providing the musical score to teenage dramas rather than the jukebox; Starbucks the venue rather than the milkbar; shouting over the garden fence rather then txt messaging to arrange social life etc..
Another question relating to the digital native/migrant debate: are we making too much fuss about the perceived digital/pre-digital divide?
Does it make sense to draw too clear a line between digital and pre-digital eras? Haven't we, as individuals, cultures etc. always been engaged with making sense of the technologies that surround us and the myriad ways they effect our lives?
Let's imagine a language lecturer born in the baby boom of the mid/late 1940s. The technologies s/he have used as a student and as a lecturer might include:
The list indicates a continuum of technological innovation and use rather than a huge jump from one epoch to a completely new one.
Is this line of introduction of new technologies and their use, are there occasional, smaller breaks or jumps? Could we argue that the introduction of affordable personal computers in the early 1980s constituted a small jump in the line? The mid/late 1990s and the WWW another? The mid-noughties and Web 2.0 as yet another tiny leap?
A Saturday spent doing homework and a freeish afternoon have meant a particularly productive blog today.
Here's another post, this time on my reading of Jamie McKenzie's Digital Nativism, Digital Delusions and Digital Deprivation, a critique of Prensky's Digital natives, Digital Migrants (Part 1 and Part 2).
I really think Prensky needs intelligent critics; unfortunately McKenzie isn't one. A shoddy article guilty of the "arcade scholarship" he finds in Prensky.
For example, he counters Prensky's uncritical endorsement of videogaming with claims about their supposed harmful effects. He is just as selective in his use of scholarship as Prensky (see Computer Games - Violence - Media Effects Theory wiki for a more balanced view of the scholarship) and just as sensational in the claims he makes.
Another example of technology and moral panics?
Some first thoughts on this …
I was familiar with Frand (‘information-age mindset’), Prensky (‘digital natives’), Oblinger (‘net gen’) Radford and Silipigni Connaway (‘screenagers’) and their description of some of the characteristics of young people born in the 80s and 90s with regards to technology before I began this course.
I hadn’t come across McKenzie’s intemperate counterblast through – perhaps more of what I think of his um … piece in another post.
Understanding who are students are and their skills, attitudes, and aptitudes is a difficult undertaking because, in a time of increasing student numbers, widening participation, growth of WBL and CPD courses etc., our students are already a very diverse group. This is a point that Krause (2007) makes in her description of the Australian HE system in an article that’s loosely about the ‘digital native’ debate but really a blast against rhetoric about technology leading us to a brave new world.
Differences aknowledged, I still think it’s useful to at least try to understand where our students coming from (‘coming from’ understood in the broadest sense of the term) and using that understanding to inform how we support their learning. I don’t think this is labelling.
I think some (e.g. Frand, Oblinger) have made a reasonable first step in making some generalisations about our current and potential students that we might develop and test how well they fit with data we have about students (and potential students) in the UK (e.g. the student expectation survey). I’m less convinced by Prensky who I find a bit glib although I like his native/immigrant metaphor which, I think, has its origin in a line from Alan Kay , a member of the team that developed the Apple Mac, who described technology as “anything that isn’t around when you’re born”.
Finally, I think it’s important to understand the the how, why, where, what etc. of young people’s technology use as there’s the risk of missing some important opportunities for learning.
References
I think I've finally got it, my final idea for an assessment piece: 21st Century Learning Environments.
Shooting from the hip ideas ...
Currently a number of UK HEIs are engaged in process of re-thinking their learning spaces - both in terms of a physical estate composed of buildings and external spaces as well as a digital infrastructure composed on a VLE as well as other kind of digital environments (e.g. Eduspaces).
What do recent developments tell us about:
mediaeval (e.g. Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, St Andrews) as well as C19th (e.g. some of the colleages of the University of London) models with their, respectively, religious or classical influences no longer as relevant to new generation of students used to Prêt à manger and shopping centres?
Actually, old probably still holds lots of appeal but access restricted to mass of applicants - pre-92 (Glasgow Caledonian) and 'old new' universities (Warwick) more prone to reinventing physical estate in the light of new expectations?
flexible, 24/7, social as well as formal learning spaces
library now LRC - part library, part internet café, part Starbucks
student access and control of spaces inaccessible to academic staff unless invited - Warwick Learning Grid but also "study pods" in Kingston University John Galsworthy building
It's time to start thinking about final assessment.
I haven't come up with a topic (the nature of its realization to be determined) I'm fully happy with yet.
Oh, for the good old days of a 2,000 word essay on pre-determined question (e.g. "Vichy was a regime of spectacle and image" (M. ATAK). What do you understand by this claim?) when you had the physical presence of a master to guide you!
There's a gallery section of the MSc web site with some examples of past work.
I'm hovering between the rather pedestrian topic of PowerPoint (Can PP be redeemed? Does it have a 'cognitive style' that militates against learning?) and a slightly more complex topic of whether e-learning represents a form of 'troublesome knowledge' for the majority of academic staff still operating within essentially pre-digital pedagogies.
I'm frankly not convinced by either.
I need to find some space to be a bit more creative ... . These sites might help:
My thoughts have recently been turning to present buying (armageddon - aka Christmas - is approaching).
What struck me was the degree to which digital stuff had captured the mainstream. I'm talking here of cameras, digital photo frames, phones, iPods (inc. iTunes gift cards), Sony PSPs, Nintendo lites etc.. Ok, Ok, there are still bikes, Scaletrix sets, Dr Who albums (i.e. the stuff of my childhood) around but we've really gone seriously digital. Bill Gates' prediction that the HD DVD would be the last physical format is maybe an accurate one.
I'm into all this (I have a digital camera, my CDs are in the attic as the home stereo is now an iPod etc.). However, I find myself strangely resistant to replacing the physical object that is the book (you know, rectangular paper object with pages, pictures on front cover, blurb on back etc.) with something digital. Articles about Amazon's The Kindle really turn me off - and I write this as a person who really wants an iPhone for Xmas.
Is it habit, concealed fogeyism or nostalgia making me feel attached to this analogue relic or simply that the codex form is a great bit of technology whose ease of use has yet to be beaten?
