>>Throughout the text Dreyfus maintains the premise that distance learning can only 'pass on information'. Which is an extremely limited view.<<
>I agree.  But why?<

I think my whole point here started with the observation that Dreyfus opposes f2f and distance learning, where as, from a more pragmatic point of view, the difference is only gradual. In a sense, f2f learning has always had a distance component, simply when it comes to doing your homework for a course. When I read a text, that text is not 'passed on as information', I am trying to make sense of that text, trying to connect it with things I already know, and finding new points of view. In other words, there is not only 'information passing on', there is also 'information processing' going on. In fact, the whole idea of information passing on could be seen as a deliberate disembodiment of a student, where the student is seen as a vessel into which information is being poured. Which is obviously wrong.

>For the 7 stages, I think one of the issues is how Dreyfus views skills (is that the only product of learning?) and how he assumes skills are learned in f2f education.<

I am not sure what your trying to get at with your question. I simply wondered why nobody questioned the 7 stage model itself.

>I’m curious as to why you think Stage 7 could also be stage 0.  (I have some idea why, but I’d just like you to tease it out a bit more.)<

All of a sudden there is no more 'progression' in the model. Even the examples about how culture is transmitted by how different cultures care for their babies shows this. In the end, I think it is more a stage in the argument that Dreyfus has been developing. Like: these are the things that you could never learn in a distance course. And of course he's right, but he only is drawing out a rabbit he put in his hat himself.

>Good point re emotions and embodiment.  I wonder if it might be useful to think of how emotions are tied to social practices to and what that might imply for the issues of embodiment and risk as Dreyfus sees it.  I think you are doing this in some of your notes on pages 37-39, for instance, and with your kite anecdote, but it might be worth drawing these together more.<

I'm really not sure what you're trying to say here. My simple point of view is that body / mind, ratio / emotion, social / individual distinctions are only helpful to a certain extent. In the end, you and I are all of those things at the same time.

>>p. 44 about teaching assistants picking up their teacher's style: I question that.<<

>Why?<

Based on my own experience teaching economics for 5 years. If you try to imitate a style, your students will pick that up as not authentic at once. You need to develop your own style with which you are comfortable and only then can you connect with your students. (Teaching bodies could be a whole subject of its own.)

>It might be useful to move from the notes-style to trying to write posts on particular themes or concepts, drawing together the readings. E.g. making your own argument about embodiment and risk, drawing on the readings to support or counter your claims.<

I am not there yet. I see myself as being in a dialog with the readings for the moment. That might change as soon as I get some more perspective on the course as a whole.

>> I am still not sure what the authors exactly mean by the notion of 'embodied knowing'. It echoes things like tacit knowledge, learning-to-be, but that is as far as I get.<<

>I think that it is partly that, but it’s also an epistemological stance.  It’s saying the only way we can construct knowledge is *through* the body, it is the way in which we experience, and thus have knowledge about, the world.<

I think I was hinting at that when I said that mind / body distinctions &c. are only helpful to a certain extent.

And finally regarding Twitter:

>>There might be some worthwhile information there, but to distill it afterwards is simply to time consuming. Maybe the experience is / gets better when you're in the middle of the flow.<<

>Interestingly, I’ve had folk both argue for and against the ‘retrospective twittorial’.  Some, like you found it especially hard to follow, others found it a worthwhile detective experience, a puzzle to piece together that gave them further impetus for learning.<

I can imagine that some people like detective work. But I am more of a pragmatist, technology should help us achieving our goals more efficiently, if it gets in your way, than don't use it. I think I made a point a while ago that I gave up looking television years ago because the signal noise ratio was near to zero. I have a similar feeling here.

Again, I can see some scenarios where Twitter could work in teaching and learning.

>>…false sense of linearity. Here I can't find an angle to make it work for me, to have it make much sense to me. Or it could make sense, but like I said, it would simply be too much hassle for me.<<

>I wonder if this is also because time is different for each member of the discussion.  For instance, in Skype we are all on simultaneously and know that’s basically how each other is experiencing it (albeit with a bit of lag).  On the db, we know people are unlikely to beon at the exact same time as us and that they may read things in different order.  On Twitter, we might be online at the same time as some, and because of the unthreaded nature, cannot guess at how others might enter the stream when they do come online.  So perhaps this makes for an even more temporally strange experience?<

I don't think the experience is 'temporally strange', it's just another medium, and a medium which I think works best when you're in the middle of it, reconstructing it afterwards is too much work - although I could imagine you could write a script to condense such a stream so as to make it more readable (f.i. drop all the retweets but count them and put the number in front of the original tweet, do some tag cloud like things.)

Finally: I had the impression you were interested in the Power of Pull. I have added a file with my notes on that book to this blog post, but cannot discover how I can link to it from within this post.