Open Everything : The Rolling Gallop

[ image : sridgway ]

I met Mark Pesce a couple of years back and he had been booted from one job and was courting a thousand others.

He’s right….of course.

How the f…. can we convince huge beaucratic environments to do anything more than lock down learning further and put more roadblocks in place with ICT’s ? Open the doors and maybe using the commercial brilliance of the web some say.

Here’s some more on what he is stirring up here in the land downunder.

Connected, challenging, futurist.

Efficiency As Fetish

[ image : mobology ]

In the privacy of my own private contemplation this week I’ve successfully avoided employing with others the more avid forms of cognitive audiosonic dissonance which would otherwise surface my silent utterances.

Forms collided in my collective as clear as clockwork.

Coffee.
Retorts and enrapture from work colleagues.
Patience.
Silence.

Factors which added together all produce some effervescent synapsial moments like an orchestra of syllables coming to rest in a tin of grammatical chocolates. Memories colliding in a whirling dervish punctuated with the odd moment of awful………. silence.

It’s the silent times that make it all the more absurd. Points where pictures form of politicians propounding brevity and bravery whilst the ‘nodders’ bob and weave in the background rows.

Ever noticed that ? Wherever politicians plunder they have nodders and hanger-on-ers’ keenly massaging the crowds egocentric aptitudes and auditory desires.

A moment in this time of avid observence this week surfaced as edu-punk…a notion that even for the most vested creative educator, the sameness of system best suits…..debunked effectievely one hopes.

We have ties to match for those with permissions to do so.

The anthropocentrism of it all makes for frightening fare. The petulance and the flatulent flattery seems to be getting everybody nowhere at once.

We so aptly wrap our workplace efficiencies and our heart felt wanderings in a wanderlust that better resembles haiku having a hernia.

Why must every day equal a dollar and every week be month divided by four.

Are we free ? Is this freedom ?

Or is this within constraint…..

Thinkgeek | Tightness

[image : javier Aroche]

It’s difficult to comprehend how deep the act of logging in resonates for those whose voice is otherwise unheard.

Changing systems means changing the gears on something racing into tightness.

You’ve Reached A Private Space

You’ve Reached a Private Space
You’ve Reached a Private Space
You’ve Reached a Private Space
You’ve Reached a Private Space

I cannot even post a discussion thread
[10:02:13 PM] all I can do is send……… a message
[10:02:45 PM] shit and I cannot even do that
Please sign in to send mail.
[10:02:54 PM] christ it’s a dead zone

Welcome to business in the 21st Century.

Unending Rhetoric

Excerpt from an email I received today in response to my repeat request to gain access to the most important national database records which underpin the whole success of the flexible learning program being managed ( or rather mismanaged ) or perhaps re-managed by an unsaid body of corporate wisdom.

Read carefully for the resolve

Dear alexander hayes,

We are pleased to inform you that your reported Incident has been resolved.

Reference No.: INC000000291614
Summary: Website Unblock Request

Your reported Incident has been resolved with the following resolution:

Alexander,

Re http://docs.google.com <http://docs.google.com/>

Thank you for requesting that the above URL  be unblocked.

Following examination by the web filtering team it has been decided to initiate no action to unblock this site, at this stage.

Thank you for advising us about this site.

Locus Of Control

I’m just reflecting on a day filled with three levels of administrivia and / or benign requests for intervention in other peoples issues in as equally diverse a location as the issues at hand in other words a bureaucratic jungle of permissions and finger pointing.

They have occured in three forms;

1. Pleas for responsibility - repeat attempts to shift responsibilities up or in many cases down

2. Blame setting - manouvering discussions to eventually settle on blame for actions taken

3. Behavioural Appropriation - use of tactics that pose behaviour as influenced and therefore admissably incoherent due to influence ie. did I really do that ?

Apart from that here I am at 11.04PM signing off.

Things are on the up and up

Alls well…..

…….that ends well and by the sounds of it at least 8 out of 10 things were covered in the Learning In The 21st Century gig hosted by education.au in Adelaide today.

Many thanks to all who attended both physically, virtually or in spirit.

Mike Seyfrang has preliminary thoughts and I’m sure Michael Coghlan and Graham Wegner will add their piece later.

Graham passed on some links also - http://www.groups.edna.edu.au/course/view.php?id=1843

Framework - http://www.groups.edna.edu.au/mod/resource/view.php?id=51520

Al upton said hello via Skype.

I was driven to Dubbo NSW and sat with three groups of educators talking about networked learning and wikispaces. The knees gradually on the mend.

So is the head

Hovering Over The Delete Button

Today I re-read an email sent around from a large national organisation who are scheduling used / un-used discussion groups for deletion. Hang on a minute…did I read that right ?

Yes..I did…scheduling extensive conversations and knowledge gathering for deletion.

My reply was thus;

…….I’m amazed……. now that I’ve had time to digest the directive and the flowing gowns of tribute.

Schedule it for deletion ?

An SQL dump and an Internet archive schedule surely…..or perhaps we’ve overlooked the visions of those who seek to see that endurance also has it’s place in networked learning history.

Anything less and I’d begin questioning whether OMN was yet another fund driven acronym.

*ducks*…..you know what I’m getting at…..leave it alone…..change your policy….leave archives open and direct your efforts to sustain what will be worn in 2020 when the jargon gets a new catwalk to wander down…..”

The whole is idea is absurd……like….delete it ?

No wonder some areas of the internet are black holes to dump precious time into.

Expectations

I’m sitting here yet again contemplating why on earth humans can be so ridiculously obtuse with each other resultant in anxiety and lack of consideration.

My email this evening produced these ‘contextual’ Google advertisments in my Gmail sidebar which have pixel by pixel steadily increased from nothing as a Gmail newbie;

School speaker motivates - Leading motivational speaker to inspire your NSW high school year!
http://www.michaeldayes.com.au

Spot The Bad Boss - What makes a bad boss? Discover top staff gripes & how to address them.
www.CareerOne.com.au/BadBosses

Go figure.

With colleagues swanning on the golden pond and others buried up to their armpits in digital perma-frost it’s another night of cryptic explosions and unnecessary neck aches.

Better get used to life as a consultant.

ps. maybe I could take a leaf out  of Michael Dayes book of life.

Corporate Walled Gardens

Only 63 spam today.

Loving Bothered By Bee’s comment over in TALO…could well be distributed to all those jumped up ……heads who get bedded down in semantics and self-important beaucratic cods-wallop.

Quote :

” …With the increased casualisation of the workforce intersecting with
broadband mobile social networks, contractors for small to medium
businesses will be picking up skills ‘on the fly’ using their phones
and global links. Literacy and numeracy will become even less relevant
than they are even today. Mobile devices will not only be used for
simple calculation, but for OCR and reading too:
http://www.knfbreader.com/products-mobile.php People with the most
charisma and the best skills at making-it-up-as-they-go-along will be
the (temporary) employees of choice. We could well be heading for the
wuffie driven world painted by Cory in his magic kingdom:
http://craphound.com/down/download.php

Meanwhile, in a frenzy of denial, the current bastions of education
will cozy up ever closer with big business to ensure that there are
plenty of replaceable workers that can operate within corporate walled
gardens, creating and consuming in-house documentation to fulfill
their mission-critical day-to-day tasks - secure in the knowledge that
since they’re the only ones licensed to bestow degrees, they are also
the only ones that can accurately determine the content of these
courses.

Mind you, I could be wrong.

George Siemens has a much more optimistic take on it all.

…….” Courtesy of BotheredByBees.