I feel both excited and overwhelmed the the profusion of web 2.0 technologies.  It may not surprise you to know that I have already sampled some of them.  I have blogs with Blogger and Wordpress, I micro-blog through Twitter and Tumblr.  I have social networking accounts at Facebook, High5, Vox and LiveSpaces (and a few others, Including Myspace which I have either forgotten / deleted). I am a member of Technorati, Digg and Delicious.  I attempt to organise my online world through both Netvibes and Pageflakes.

But as exciting and empowering as this interactive / integrative technology is, what use is power if you don't know how to wield it?   There is too much out there.  Maybe the point I am missing is you are meant to embrace some of it rather than all of it. But what to embrace?  I need a digital equivalent of a financial adviser.  Extrapolating into education... need analysis has never been so important.  How can we as educators help our students to make appropriate educational choices about which of these tools with enable their growth and development if we aren't able to make those choices ourselves.

I should add that I can stand in the supermarket aisle for 10 minutes trying to decide which  breakfast cereal to buy.  Me and choices don't sit well together.

Wasn't it exciting though eh? I don't think I have ever been so happy at an election result.  Many of the Americans who post on The Northlands (my discussion forum) are running round predicting the end of the world - now that a 'Muslim fundamentalist' has been elected they are counting the days till the beginning of Sharia Law & a police state. 

I don't care, I think he is fab.

The whole class seems excited and energised by web2.0.  It’s a little like Christmas!  J

But as exciting and empowering as this interactive / integrative technology is, what use is power if you don't know how to wield it?

This is a really good point.  Though I am a little uncertain about calling it “power” – what do you mean by that?  To me it seems more like “tools”.  Then again, I guess you could argue that the tool encapsulates particular potentials and possibilities, and it is those that are the “power” of the tool [in the Latin origin sense of ‘potency’].  Thus knowing what tool to select, how to use it and for what purposes becomes vitally important.  So what are the implication for teaching and learning?  How do we equip learners to choose and use an appropriate tool for their needs?

Yes, I think the power comes from the use of tools.  In the case of our studies it can lie in what you have called "high stakes"reflection, effective communication with tutors, and the networking we do with our peers. Power also resides in the tools we choose for personal organisation, research and transmission of ideas.  I call it power because I am focussing on the product or outcome rather than the process.  We only need to watch the video talk given by Michael Wesch to see that the process of uploading video to you tube, is the tool - but my interpretation is the power is the result, a worldwide audience, new relationships, career making fame or career breaking infamy - if only for 15 minutes.

How can we as educators help our students to make appropriate educational choices about which of these tools with enable their growth and development if we aren't able to make those choices ourselves.

Another good question.  For me, the answer will always come back to purpose – what am I trying to achieve and what best enables me to achieve it?  Perhaps in one learning context social bookmarking is more useful, in another a wiki.  Of course, I am always up for the path we’ve taken in IDEL - let the students loose in the sweetshop and see what they choose for themselves.  :)

Yes as I said needs analysis has never been so important.  I have always used needs analysis in my teaching to discover more about my students: their motivation level, reasons for learning English, preferred learning style, previous experience and exposure. When using technology in the classroom I imagine it would be useful to have a parallel learning technology needs analysis to discover their preferences, current knowledge base, research interests, organisational ability, and even basics like computer access at home, internet speed and keyboard skills.

Me and choices don't sit well together.

And how well do you and no choices sit together?  :)

Valid point.  :D

The pic you’ve included is fascinating – are you suggesting the web2.0 services are broken scraps and leftovers that only work when they come together?

The image is (I am sure you know) M.C. Escher's 'Order and Chaos' I chose it to illustrate how for me, the two are still side by side, the order being far more beautiful, but yet there is humanity in the chaos.  Interestingly Escher chose as chaos human detritus; the jetsam of everyday life, as opposed to natural flotsam twigs, bones, leaves etc.  And the order is represented by a crystal.  It is a more natural symbol, but still faceted and therefore imposed or 'tooled'.  But imposed by whom? It could be human - but I see a more supernatural quality in it.  It is no man-made diamond, but an uncanny supernatural thing (a star in a sphere).  Escher spoke the language of geometry and mathematics so I suppose his order comes from the laws of maths and physics.  I am hoping for divine intervention - deus ex machina? Or more probably synergy of connectedness.  I hope by participating in web2.0 technolgies the world and I will come to some agreement on a portfolio of tools which will survive the intitial flurry of early adoption and avoid the crash and burn of fad-death. Yes this portfolio will be in constant flux, but by careful selection I would like to think I can choose (for myself and with my students) tools that will be relied on to have value now AND in the future.

One final thought, in Escher's image chaos finds itself reflected in order - maybe that is all we need order for, chaos is infinitely more creative and inspiring, but sometimes we need order to act as a mirror, a reflective devise to organise the chaos into something we can use.

I find it hard to explain how touched I was by Michael Wesch's An anthrolopological introduction to You Tube.  It had me in tears three times:  the first was right at the beginning with the wonderful Gary "Numa, Numa" Brolsma, whose video according to Gary Walker "single handedly justifies the existance of webcams".  He is the first ambassador of "a new cultural order". I actually was part of that first wave of sharing that celebratory video.  I remember - startled by its joyous power - sending it to many friends, including one guy who had just quit his job and was suffering one of those life "why am I here?" moments of existential angst.  I told him "watch this video, it will change your life" and he replied "I have watched it over for about an hour, I love him.  Thank you - suddenly everything seems ok, I have even started to learn the dance".

The second moment of teary joy was over Juan Mann's Free Hugs camapaign. Here I recognised myself as an educator.  The first time I got a group of students to create a community blog it's name was Towards World Peace etc.  I had a group of bright but fractured Thai Teens and the blog brought them together and created a creative energy that transcended by far the original English language learning dynamic and became an essential connection for living life.  Wesch mentions, in relation to Mann's video, the sense of "people trying to reconnect with humanity in some profound way"and this spirit is what both myself and my partner are about as educators (and personally as an educational manager).  The lesson content is almost incidental, the empowerment and relationships (student/student, student/teacher and ultimately student/world) is what drives me.

Final tearful moment was with bnessel1973 who said, "Some people have said that the videos we have made on You Tube should be created in hopes to change the world. I've made mine to help me live in it".  Once more that is a powerful message for me as an educator - almost a mission statement.  If I can use the tools of web2.0 to help people live in the world, I will be happy.

A final whimsical connection: As I watched the Wesch's video and experienced that surge of emotion I was reminded of a very early memory. Watching the TV advertisement for Coca Cola from the early 70's (hey I was 3 or 4 years old, I was allowed to be cheesey).  Unburdened by distrust of marketing and a dislike of multinationals (cynicism came later) I used to watch it and want so bad to stand on that hill and sing with them.  I think (judgement on the tooth rotting product aside) there is a spirit in that clip that lives on in the best of our web2.0 connections.  We will always yearn to connect and embrace the learning and growth comes through those connections.  The technologies we have at hand which (quoting Welsch talking about the Numa Numa meme) evokes "new forms of expression, new forms of community, new forms of identity" allow us connect more widely than ever before and in doing so maybe we will understand ourselves better.

Come on Clara, sing along - you know you want to!

I'd like to build the world a home
And furnish it with love
Grow apple trees and honey bees and snow-white turtle doves

I'd like to teach the world to sing
In perfect harmony
I'd like to hold it in my arms and keep it company

I'd like to see the world for once
All standing hand in hand
And hear them echo through the hills "Ah, peace throughout the land"

(That's the song I hear)
I'd like to teach the world to sing (that the world sings today)
In perfect harmony

Bitch, Meredith Brooks

Thinking about identity and ego in Second Life I was reminded of Meredith Brooks' song Bitch and the line "I'm a little bit of everything all rolled into one".  I reflected that our avatar, although they may deviate from our actual physical reality can be used to reflect some of our inner complexity - and therefore rather than being deceptive or illusory actually help us to give a truer picture of who we really are than we can through the limitations of our physical 'meatselves'. 

These led me to experiment with a few images inspired by the song lyrics (plus a few more that appealed to me).  This is post is a photo journey of that experiment, and some thoughts that arose from it.

When I first got got interested in Second Life I had an avatar that resembled me more closely than the one I have used throughout our tutorials. Like me this avatar is a freckly redhead:

I enjoyed this look as I like to imagine it is how I would look if I layed off the chocolate and went to the gym.

I experimented with making her fatter too, in the interests of truth.  But I couldn't get the dimensions right, and none of my clothes would fit properly (just like real life).  I have since found you can buy chubby shapes, but I wasn't so interested in the pursuit of veracity that I was willing to pay money for flab that I would pay money to lose in reality.  So I learnt to love the slim me and have faith that in a world of beautiful people having a beautiful you isn't a lie, simply a fantasy.

However there was still something not quite right about my self image, and the feelings I had when I saw myself in SL.  I realised that it was in a sense because I had used the name Hirondelle.  Hirondelle was the first screen name I ever had online and has become my favourite online name.  In the early days she was a character I  created in 2004 for a text based role-play, and although I have stopped role-playing this character (except for a few brief cameos when her public demand it) she has (just like Gee's Bead Bead) evolved an indentity and personality quite distinct from mine.  She is a cruel and demanding Goddess of an underworld realm.  Physically tall and slim racially between European and Asian - her human self had hailed from a medieval kingdom which is now modern Uzbekistan.  One day I decided to try and replicate how I had imagined her and came up with the look I used in the tutorials (albiet in modern clothes). So on to the song:

I'm a Bitch

Oddly I felt far more comfortable in this skin than I did in the freckly red-head one.  I wasn't treading a fine line between me and fantasy any more; I had plunged headlong into the pool of make believe, and it was a relief.  I felt far more honest.

In this picture Hiro is curled up next to a dragon, symbolising her mythical inheritance.  Her clothes - buckle strewn pvc - recall her warrior past and express a kinky streak that we share.

I'm a Saint

Inspired by Klara, she tried on wings - going for angel rather than fairy:

I'm a Sinner

And the opposite of angel is:

I'm a Goddess on my knees

Sticking with the Brooks song I played with the line "I'm a goddess on my knees" and rather than going for a deific goddess, I opted for a Hollywood interpretation with a nice little Marilyn Monroe frock.  I was trying for 'coyly sexy' but when she knelt her stocking clad legs poked through the prims - which kind of put paid to a pretense of demure.  My boyfriend loved it by the way.

I'm a child

This just made me a wee bit too uncomfortable, which tells me that fantasy can only give us a limited license to deviate away from our real life moral compass.       

I'm a mother

Now my reaction to this pregnant Hirondelle was interesting, and shows again how no matter how far we move from our physical reality we are still to be found lurking under the skin.  In real life I have been trying, unsuccessfully to get pregnant for a couple of years.  The sight of Hiro in a form that (sometimes painfully) eludes me was even more uncomfortable than the sailor suit.  I felt sick, and wore the look for the amount of time it took to get a picture and then tore ot off (metaphorically speaking) with a huge sigh of relief.  

I'm a Lover

I have lived in South East Asia (Singapore & Thailand) for most of my adult life and I am a real lover of all things Asian.  So i chose to play with a few Asian Hirondelle's rather than a more conventional romantic look (maybe this is because I get enough chance to play the romantic lover in real life that I don't feel the need to represent it in a virtual sense).  Having been surrounded by slender Asian women and feeling like a pale, freckly sack of potatoes in comparison I found these versions oddly theraputic.  Yes I would love to be able to carry off a Kimono or a Sompot Suit in real life, but I can't and I am old enough, and suffiently at peace with my limitations to be satisfied with admiring this particular style of grace in others. But these three images were lots of fun to create and the Vietnamese Ao Dai is now may favourite SL outfit, I may even wear it to the next tutorial.

Japanese Hiro, stomping in someone's beautiful Zen gravel.

Thai Hiro. If you are wondering about the startled look she is thinking "I can't believe you made me turn my back on the Buddha".

Vietnamese Hiro, and her lovely Ao Dai.

And aside from off the wall therapy for eductators what use is this reflection for an educational context?  In 'Learning and identity' Gee explores how a projective identity as experienced in virtual world game playing can, when taken into the classroom can help make students more successful ('leaner as scientist').  I think exploring who we are as people is essential to success at everything yet so many people lack the skills to be sufficiently reflective.  They are too close to their subject, so immersed in their issues.  Having an avatar self forces you to face questions of ego.  A friend was a poor test taker, the nerves and stress of an exam made him panic and throw up a block which impeded his academic success throughout his school career.  As an adult facing yet another test situation he realised that he had fallen into the trap of regression back to his school self, and in so doing had made a choice to continue to be a bad test taker.  This realisation helped him overcome his fear, and take his first successful test in his life.  I think a virtual self can make this process more efficient.  The personal risk is shifted to one side enough to allow experimentation.  The learner is then able to decide how much their virtual and real selves align and share the lessons learned.

My brief foray into alternate selves I didn't even try and experiment with non-human selves, but even in these limited shape and style changes I learnt a lot about myself.  Yet I don't think I have at any point been deceitful, all of my Hirondelle's (even the sailor-suited Lolita) are an aspect of me.  I am in all honesty 'a little bit of everything, all rolled into one' as are we all.

Six years ago I registered on an online discussion board for fans of Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series.  I had just started reading it and was waiting for the next book, which was to be published in a few months.  I thought joining a fan site would be like a methadone programme... tiding me over until I got my next fix.

In addition to the forums dissecting plot and analysing character there were some text based role-play areas too.  After I had got used to posting (and being ignored as often as not) I stumbled into this area and got involved with an informal roleplay.  I loved it, my D&D character creating self was reborn, and within a couple of months I was a dark and deadly ruler of a an underworldly kingdom of the undead called... er... The Underworld, lol.  I was very circumspect about revealling much about my real-life self.  I preferred to stay in character and keep myself and Hirondelle separate.  It was escape, pure and simple.  

One day a wolf walked into my realm and he introduced himself as Timberwolf guardian of The Woods. He was fun but not at that time a huge role-player; he stayed in character, but didn't really immerse in plot. He would just drop by and say "hi how are you?" and wander back to his woods.  We started messaging and after a long and casual interlude we started to get more intense about our relationship.  We talked more about real life, we were both married, he with kids. Both a bit 'blah' about the state of our RL relationships. 

Falling in love was a slow process, and had little to do with the characters we created, and more to do with discovering the people behind the characters.I saw in him an ideal of what I wanted in a partner.  This scared me initially because I felt I was creating him rather than seeing who he really was.  I also realised that it was possible he was creating himself for me.  We spent a lot of time talking about who we were, and whether or not we were talking to real people of figments of each other's imagination.  It was actually at moments of crisis that we got closer.  When he did or said something that went against my ideal.  When I saw flaws and imperfections I started to believe in him more.  If I had created him (or simply superimposed an imagine on a basic framework) he wouldn't have been such an asshole. The fact that he could be an asshole made him real, and separate from me.  He had more veracity. Which meant I loved him more.

In 2004 Dom's wife asked him for a divorce and we talked for the first time about the possibility of being together.  It took another year or so for me to leave my husband. In September 2005 I moved out of my husband's apartment and in October Dom flew from the US to Thailand to live with me.  Not to visit, but to live. By this time we had talked on the phone for hundreds of hours and IM'd with webcams.  I had gone through phases when I thought I was making a huge mistake / decided he was a serial killer / worried he was just after my money (not that I had much but hey) / gone through every kind of fear imaginable plus worried about the really scary stuff I couldn't even imagine.

You know they say you should tell someone if you are meeting an online friend? And meet in a public place?  I had told no one he even existed.  I was ashamed of leaving my husband, and also afraid I had made a mistake.  By the time he was due to arrive I was almost more ready for my close friends to find my cooling mutilated corpse than to admit that I had met someone online and was willing to start a life with them.  In a world with him and me I had no doubts we were doing the right thing, it was only when I imagined presenting this to other people did I get antsy.

Anyway, we met for the first time in Bangkok Airport on October 9th and I took him back to our new home to start being forever together (whether that was 50 minutes or 50 years I didn't know, but I had a strong suspicion it was going to be the latter). 

It was a wonderful unusual experience knowing someone so well (we had talked about everything, he knew more about me than anyone I had ever met... because the "distance" of online communication, can make you feel safe and more able to be honest than face to face conversations) and yet not knowing them at all.  Honesty and openness is the cornerstone of our relationship.  I think that is thanks to the nature of the early days of our affair.  We see friends who have all these secrets (small and large) from their partners and we marvel at how that can be acceptable to them.  But obviously that is how we were too in our previous relationships.

I am not saying online relationships are better, but I do think there are lessons to be learned from that form of communication.  In order to be intimate and to have faith in the truth of your interlocuter (or lover) you need to make everything explicit. You cannot assume.  You cannot use body language or facial experession as a litmus test for honesty. Every fear I had, I discussed with him until it was gone.  I never second guessed what he was thinking.  I asked.  I clarified his meaning far more than I would have face to face. I asked (and answered) very deeply personal questions that I would never have had the courage to ask (or answer) if he were sitting in front of me.

In the course of our relationship I came to dislike to the distinction between real and online because what I had found online was far more real than anything I had experienced in my everyday existence.  I began to think in terms of authentic and inauthentic experiences... a value that I felt transcended the mode or medium of communication. 

The authenticity that Dom and I found in our online romance we have worked hard to maintain in our offline, real-life, flesh and blood love affair.  And I think we are happier and wiser for it.