Connectedness

The other day there I was invited by Twitter ( Josie Fraser ) and by Gmail chat ( Mark Van Harmelen ) to join the George Siemens keynote at the 2008 Emerge Conference which as I understood had Slideshare notes ( gone down ?  )

Stephen Downes comments on the ‘inward’ nature of Twitter fish bowls and I have to agree with him. Which herd ? is also a good point.

What struck me was that across the blogsphere and micro-blogosphere there is a sense of anxiousness as to the continued foray into cross-polination of inclusion permission. Psycho-geographics of participation as Josie . Nice term !

Almost as good as ‘Architectures of Participation ‘ that Kim and I tossed around with NMC and CogDog last year.

The session was interesting but mostly from a voyeurs perspective. Talk, question, answer, talk. Lots of tools and nowhere to go. I’m kind of getting the connectivism message but it’s seeming a little black and white of late….is it just me or do we need some colour in the slides ? I’m still not convinced that a staggered head does much for the future identity drillers.

Strange…..I watched the bridge between Twitter and the event on parallel screens. It’s interesting seeing the timing dynamics between the presentation chat, Twitter and the larger > video as each stage has it’s own masters and magicians. All in all well worth the 30 min drop by.

I’ve been following this participation idea through a lot with the FLNW crowd and exploring things myself a bit however, I’m pretty well content with the dynamics of openess as a political and participatory empowerment process…….. through which ‘permission’ is often not granted but almost always dynamically generated for reason.

Take for instance my up coming presentation at the Western Institute, TAFE NSW CSHT&R Faculty Forum where I’ve forcibly re-morphed ‘Technology In Delivery’ to ‘Technology in [Delivery] Teaching & Learning. CogDog threw in his tidied desktop and lucychili let me have her ’spam’ – penguins and all.

Thanks guys…..desktops have changed so why are we still using IE6 in TAFE ?

Maybe that was my desktop Macs. confuse and amaze me.

If your a Vista refugee you’ll be able to see things in ppsx. – erk. Failing that download the ppt. or if inclined to chase the pdf. around.

So where’s the learner ? Chasing their own technology……… that we choose to shut out of our organisations ? Perhaps the heavy hand of connected[delivery]ness is really an over simplified equation. Danah must be right…it’s ‘their’ technology right…wrong…..we can plan parties using email too you know. Bah !

Let them have rock n’ roll. Sure there were fatalities but none more so than self-absorbed conservatives claiming it was work of the devil only to fall prey to it’s social evil.

Like my Twitter feed in this blog/site.

Blocked but not silent in spaces where once Twitter’s feared to mention the expletive.

All in all a good day. At least now you know how much it will cost to hire me.

Placing Our Feet Well

Lucychili and I spent till some time late in the morning exploring “value” and other useful process oriented actions which leads up to the May 2nd event in Adelaide.

I dropped a post into the Engageme space as i think this brings that community into the discussion and others related to what it means to be living in DER.…an apt coinage by education.au. Ive started tagging things with Diigo on the area from my own and many others ( hopefully) perspective on the idea of a digital education revolution which I think is alive a well.

Today I made some breakthroughs in the nomeclature governing participation within the MECaT online Moodle project I’m Project Officer for which excites me. I didnt think I’d ever get a SCORM compliant learning object operational but with the help of Grant Casey at CLI and Toolbox Champion, Shane Dowd hey….it’s happening !

Building & Construction online. Has a certain ring to it.

You’ll notice some changes with this site. I’m done with the sardonism.

Sick of the smartarse…out with the old in with the new.

Now on with the business of connecting , creating and building things which inspire others. Feel free to drop me a link with some positive, constructive criticism.

News in the door is I’ll be guest speaking at the AFLF Induction Day for the Innovations area in 2008, down in Sydney, networked and built as a participatory event with a few suprises.

Trialling Evernote, research retained through Diigo and playing with other mashables.