[This post was published elsewhere in 2015]
This is a response to Heli’s deep and honest reflections about open online learning.
I titled the post with a quote from Heli in the comments to her post as it resonated with some of the concerns I have been experiencing recently. I was deeply touched by the post and how in listening to a book review of a book about one topic new frames of learning opened for her.
Continue reading “‘I see mostly preaching and I am worried’”
[originally published on another site in July 2015]
My response to Viv’s plea for an ethical commons and a 6th R of Open – Responsibly!
I am having to add another book to my already large pile! I love the distinction matter and manner of education. We spend so much time on the matter of education and so little in the manner of education.
[This post was published elsewhere in 2015]
A response to Viv’s excellent reflection on attending ALTc.
I have been trying different ways to respond to Viv’s post. I wrote a post on my other blog, I ditched the post. I started using Hypothesis and commenting on her blog, I deleted my annotations. I thought of calling her, and then realised this would mean my response would be private when her questions had been public.
The presence of absence. How do we get to choose to leave online life and leave behind a clean screen if not a clean slate? Jenny Mackness has been writing about absence as an essential element of presence from many interesting perspectives – art and metaphor, for example. I am also interested in silence as part of dialogue, disconnection as part of connection. It is so easy to forget the background in favour of the foreground of the moment.
“As we bring to the foreground new structures, we focus on them to understand them or destroy them…as we assimilate the new structure without sight of the whole but just those aspects that attract or repel us it becomes ‘normal’. What was figure becomes the ground, the way things are around here. New figures come to the fore including the seeing of the old as obsolete and to be shedded. What can our actions be in that interface of figure and ground almost instant and certainly not stable shapeshifting?” McLuhan
This post seeks to bring to the foreground resonances I found when reading Jenny’s posts.
I have been interested in online conversational dynamics for a long time now. I am interested in understanding what are the patterns that can create so many misunderstandings and how we navigate the unique nature of this space where the public and the private do not map to physical spaces. I often joke that if I diss you in the pub to a friend nobody but my friend needs to know. Our lives online are much more transparent than that and this context collapse can be both a gift and a curse.
The video above was produced for an altogether a lighter purpose – but I include it here because it makes the point, all be it a little more dramatically than I might want.
I think plausible deniability can help us talk about what happens when our conversational dynamics do not work well. This post explores my understanding so far and whilst it can be used as descriptive of something, it cannot infer intent in any one individual. In a sense this is the curse of text mediated dialogue even when skilled.
Plausible deniability refers to circumstances where a denial of responsibilty or knowledge of wrongdoing can not be proved as true or untrue due to a lack of evidence proving the allegation. US Legal definitions
