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The contents of my brian
Fig. 1. A moment to reflect
This by the by was the title of a TV screenplay I submitted to the BBC – rejected otherwise you might have seen it on the box by now and I wouldn’t be sitting here.
As the round up to my final, final MA ODE module H818: The Networked Practitioner it is suggested that we prepare a timeline drawing on possible blog entries, as well as ‘appearances’ in the OpenStudio platform we’ve been using.
I’ve posted some 80 times since H818 began. I’ve posted some, I don’t know, 1000 times here since February 2010?
The surprise is to find a dozen references to H818 from 2012 and when contemplating how I got to the ideas that I delivered for H818 where these may have emerged from. This in turn takes me as far back as a visit to the Science Museum in 2010. Then all manner of things, from the launch of Martin Weller’s book ‘The Digital Scholar’ and attending seminars in Bristol on ‘curation’ and earliest indicators that I may take an MA in First World War studies having tried to write on the subject for … well, 22 years ago another failed TV play optioned by Tyne Tees Television called ‘That’s Nothing Compared to Passchendaele’ – which is what my late grandfather said to me while we watched the local news featuring a private in the Durham Light Infantry out in Saudi Arabia. He was 96 in 1992 and had joined the DLI in his teens in late 1915.
And all of this for my very, very, very last EMA ever.
And what did I just jot down
‘Word counts in an EMA are anathema to the culture of open education’
My first draft, I haven’t ever dared look, will run to anything between 6,000 and 12,000 words.
Talking of writing … never one to say never, I have committed to a week long ‘retreat’ with a dear friend and writing tutor. My goal is to work on … ‘The Angel of the North’ a story set in the era of the First World War about a woman who flies over the Western Front.
(Actually, I’ve just thought of that. She does fly with an RFC pilot/instructor … and in the final pages is about to set off to attempt to fly the Atlantic for the first time in the wrong direction. She does, as a couple of women did, impersonate a soldier to get herself into the Front Line …)
Oh boy. And I thought I was done with writing. Thought that getting 5,000 words finished was a challenge. It is, but the OU provides the parameters and schedules, the kick up the arse and the carrot that no other kind of writing has yet provided. Except for once.
Meanwhile I must get the kids to school, must walk the dog and must prepare for an online conference I madly volunteered to do a few weeks ago as if I didn’t have enough on … which will include sitting with a veteran of the Second World War this weekend, he was in the Polish Resistance during the Warsaw Uprising. I have a Sony Flip camera and digital sound recorder in my pocket determined to interview him as I did my grandfather …
Onwards to … more of the same I should think
p.s. yes, it is my ‘brian’ – the idea of the brain is so ridiculous.
E-Learning I, II & III – the Picasa Albums of the MA ODE
E-Learning I – MAODE Modules, include innovation in e-learning, professional practices, open learning and ‘creativity, innovation and change’.
E-Learning II Research Practices in use of technology in learning
E-Learning III The Networked Practitioner
Google offers a myriad of ways to share content, whether images or words, from galleries to entire conversations. with circles and hangouts. Unwittingly I’ve been part of their ‘game’ since the outset, an early adopter of Picasa having migrated from Flickr. I’ve not invited much in the way of sharing though I now have over 175 ‘albums’ some of which contain a thousand images (the album max). Many of these albums are closed, or linked only to key family members or friends as they contain family snaps or holiday pictures. Some now contain an archive of deceased relatives (a grandfather, father and mother no less). Others are concept boards or scrapbooks, not just of OU work, far from it … but a place where these snippets of ideas and moments will be for decades while the hardware changes or breaks down, or hard copies, albums and scrapbooks, get lost, or damaged (or both).
I have THREE e-learning album galleries of screengrabs and photos, graphic mash-ups and such like spanning the three years and nine months I’ve been on the MA ODE.
This current E-learning III album is taking everything from H818. It is in every respect an OpenStudio platform – if I chose to share its contents then people may, with various copyright permissions (creative commons) use and re-use the content – though plenty of it I grab as a personal aide memoir and is therefore of copyrighted material.
The value of these becomes greater over time – it is a short hand back into a topic, and in time, indicative of how swiftly things are moving. These platforms are leaking out into formal learning contexts; there could be a tipping point, where someone or something happens that galvanises massive interest, say the ‘Stephen Fry’ personality of Twitter, or the Arab Spring of Twitter where J K Rowling or Tracey Emin open their galleries to the world. Meanwhile, without meaning to be unnecessarily derogatory, OpenStudio is the ‘sheep pen’ while Picasa Web Galleries or Google Galleries are the ‘market’ – the sheep pen is closed and local, while the market is global, open, virtual, connected and online.
How I read has changed, though my curiosity hasn’t dimmed, rather it has been indulged.
Fig.1 pp 116-117 of Lawrence Lessig’s book ‘Remix’
Despite the rhetoric of the content industry, the most valuable contribution to our economy comes from connectivity, not content’. Lawrence Lessig (2008:89) CF Andrew Odlyzko ‘Content is not King’.
There’s some irony that I found I could only get my hands on a book on the generational shift towards the digitized-enabled world of remixing with a book.
What is the legal position of creating a remix, by way of example, marking the passing of Britain’s last First World War veteran, by putting online a video that combines photographs of the deceased, and clips lifted from the TV film about the struggle by Kipling to commission his short-sighted son into the army? Or, not even ‘remixing’ but simply putting a series of excerpts of the film Passchendeale online so that you can watch it for free? Or grabbing stills from archive film, colouring it in and claiming it is as from your own unique collection? Some of these ‘producers’ should be applauded and encouraged in the hope that they generate their own footage and learn how to do so on a shoestring, others need to have their content removed and where a blatant copyright infringment has occured they ought to be warned if not prosecuted.
How I read has changed, though my curiosity hasn’t dimmed, rather it has been indulged.
As an undergraduate I forewent lectures in a hall with 90+ fellow students and instead took myself to the library. I would order up the book the lecturer I felt was reading from, and while reading pick out further books and journals. At the time this meant putting in a request slip and waiting a couple of hours, even a couple of days and quite often moving to a different library entirely. I began this journey most mornings in the Map Room of the Bodliean Library on Broad Street, would find myself in the underground chambers of the Radcliffe Science Library and typically end the morning, or pick up in the afternoon with reading in an alcoved window of the Rhodes Library. These places were conducive to reading. The spaces between reading may have contributed to the retention of the information.
As I read Lawrence Lessig’s Remix I search for books that sound of interest on Amazon and may, with a One Click, have the book in eBook form on my Kindle Reader or iPad seconds later. If an paper or academic gets a mention I may check the full reference, go to the OU online library and search for it. More often than not I will then download the PDF … and ‘stack it’ in either iBooks or on the Kindle Reader. I’ll save the references to the paper to RefWorks and file this in an appropriately named folder – I could leave the papers online, but like to know they are there ready to browse. Far from following therefore a strict reading list from A to B, I tend to meander and indulge. It takes time. I may stumble. I may race off in comletely the wrong direction.
By the time I return to the track I will either be reading at a trot or dragging my feet.
I am currently jogging, though I sense thst it is towards an assault course.
31 Years Ago – Oxford 1982 on video
Fig.1. The author/auteur with his Sony Betamax out. My study, Staircase 11, Balliol College, Trinity Term 1982
31 years ago I was an undergraduate at Oxford University.
In my second year, eager to develop my interest in TV production I managed to get myself a Sony Betamax Camera. It was semi-portable – a backpack and cable. I’ve had the 20 tapes digitized. The pleasure for me and for those featured will be to see themselves and their friends in a way that will have quite escaped them. You are faced with the spatial disjointedness of seeing and hearing yourself as others presumably saw you and the temporal disjointedness of seeing a 19 or 20 year old from the perspective of a fifty-something. There’s some 17 hours of content. I got through it at x18 in a few hours yesterday afternoon.
Fig.2. Rehearsing in the Oxford University Drama Society (OUDS) production of Taming of the Shrew. I played Baptista.
These are the obvious observations:
- How young we looked. Look at the fashion (hair, clothes) and the cars.
- Did I really look like and talk like that?
- Even an idiot could see that I couldn’t grow a beard, so why did I try!
- Why did I buy that shirt?
The more nuanced thoughts and realisations are:
Fig.3. The Oxford Lightweights Crew, Henley. My purpose had been to video them in training.
How amazing it is that watching a blurry clip of a team of rowers an image no bigger than a pea tells me quite quickly that I know one of these people, a few moments more and I have their name. The ability of the human brain to identify faces is remarkable. (The above is far closer and clearer than the silhouette tat initially gave me the location, purpose and person).
There are events I covered, even moments where I appear, that I simply cannot recollect at all.
Being behind the camera can do this … you’re cut-off from the moment slightly in any case as you should be tending to the camera (on a tripod), lighting and sound. There’s a good deal that I didn’t cover – the camera often went out with others.
Then I see a person, and it does ‘come flooding back’ – this personal emotional tie to a person or event is vital.
Just a few seconds of a person and I feel warmth and longing for a lost love. I know the name, when we met and the times we spent together. But what unintended hurt might I cause even these decades later? Or others who had no inkling of my interest? Or is this just part of being who and what we are at that age? And we have, of course, move on … so far beyond that the past really is a different country. And we are not those people who populated it.
Getting myself back into the head of a 20 year old feels like a kind of lobotomy – it had might as well empty my head of everything that has happened since. The perspective makes you realise just how naive and inexperienced you are even at that age.
There are inevitable technical issues:
- The tapes, stored for three decades, are damaged.
- The lighting, anything in doors or when it was dreary, is atrocious.
- The sound, through the directional mic on the camera is pretty dreadful too.
Fig. 4. In conversation somewhere, with someone – but I don’t know with whom, and can’t even tell what was on our minds.
What next?
Just a screen grab shared with a handful of the participants has produced glee. It is a reminder of how friendships are formed, a bond and trust that slips into place between strangers after they’ve got to know each other and then spend more time together doing things and making fond memories. This is its value if nothing else. None of the video will go online. I’m even reluctant at this stage to store content online and offer a password to people. I know that it is too easy for content to ‘leak’ which at this stage I feel is too unfair to those concerned. I’ll start just by sharing the moments with them.
- How much do we need or want to remember?
- Doesn’t the brain, for those of us who are and remain physically and mentally well, do a perfectly adequate job of forgetting?
- Is it not better to see the past through the prism of narrative, anecdotes and recollections. To feel, either good or bad about people and moments rather than getting this ‘in your face’ absolute?
- Twice I spotted people who were lovers.
- Twice I spotted people I ‘fancied’.
Is it not healthier and correct to reinforce my marriage of twenty years with memories of equal strength of her and our children?
Wherein a wedding and some holiday video footage may have served a purpose. On graduation I never, or very rarely, have ‘gathered’ amateur footage like this. Perhaps understandably I want to work with a team of professional broadcasters and filmmakers.
There are fictionalised stories I want to tell about this age group.
This content is an invaluable record and reminder of all that we are at that age. It is also noticeable, even in the streets of Oxford on May Morning, how the student population dominate, while of course cast and audiences of students productions are for the most part students too. For a period, or for some weeks, you live away from your family, without a family – most people around you are your age and possibly, its weakness in the 1980s, amongst those from a white caucasian middle class background. This too would reflect the bias of whoever was behind the camera, and the events covered.
Fig.5. Oxford Theatre Group (OTG) rehearsals for the Oxford Review. I have several hours of footage of setting up, the hall and rehearsals for three out of the five productions: Titus Alone, Edward II and the Review.
Best of all, and the fullest record, is the Oxford Theatre Group on the Edinburgh Fringe in August and early September 1982. As well as our edited highlights from this, behind the scenes, rehearsals and productions, there are several hours of ‘rushes’. There is also coverage of an Eight’s Week (College Rowing Event), the Oxford & Cambridge Ski Trip to Wengen, one May Morning (May 1st, 1982 I presume) and Lightweights and Woman’s Eights at Henley … and some ‘Student News’ from a single edition of ‘Oxford Television News’. I didn’t need three tapes of rushes for an English Language School for Japanese Students.
In a world where such images are so easily gathered are we even more inclined to bin or wipe them?
Do most young people live in a world of image overload where the recording and broadcast of content is instantaneous so little thought needs to be given to what is recorded, how it is stored, how it is shared and who sees it? In thirty years time will my children be able to look at content the way I can?
At my mother’s funeral my God Father presented me with a couple of DVDs containing digitized 16mm footage of my mothers age 17 from the late 1940s. Would this have lasted sixty years on tape? In sixty years time will people want to or need to see clips of themselves in their youth? Isn’t it too easy, even expected to dip back and forth through your timeline?
Fig. 6 I know the people in the line and the person who recorded the footage – rain damage put the camera out of action for several months, perhaps worth it for several minutes of frivolity during May Day celebrations, May 1st 1983 (or 82?)
How will people change if they cannot forget and are not allowed to forget?
I’m sure we’ll become more accepting of the human condition – that politicians who ‘had a life’ may be preferred over those who did not? That we will be accepting of a good deal more of what we do and how we were and how we change, that we have different personas in different settings and at different times.
Fig. 7 My study – second year, a study with separate bedroom. In College. The key to this era, should I wish to explore it, is the diary on the shelf in the background. Whilst the video record is selective and patchy, the daily journal is complete.
What though the value of keeping a diary? I understand the academic value of reflection, but a record of what you did, what you read and maybe who you saw and most especially what you thought back then? Digitised, a process I started patchily two decades ago, others insights – some best left in the past. Devices that capture your day, sensecams and wearable devices … how much more are these a record if the data they provide can be analysed for you or does a memory need and deserve the filter and effort of being recorded as you experienced and felt it?
Several edits into the above I realise I have failed to sate the obvious – after a part-time Masters Degree in Distance and E-Learning (MAODE) I am now applying to undertake doctoral research. The youth of these images didn’t have postgraduate study on his mind largely because he didn’t understand who he was – deeply curious about people and learning. If an education is wasted on youth, then I’d say this is even more the case with postgraduate study.
Related articles
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- Cambridge and Oxford places still dominated by south-east applicants (guardian.co.uk)
- Tech That Never Made It (jacamoblog.co.uk)
- Did You Have Betamax? (newgrandmas.com)
Here in Lewes we shut the town centre down for a march as often as we can.
It all stems from 5th November. We had only been here a couple of months and we were enrolled in a Bonfire Society. That was 13 years ago.
The town also has a Moving on parade for all primary schools in the district, not just the town, but from outlying villages. The town centre is closed to traffic and kids, dressed up, carrying banners and whatnot on a theme, march through town and end it with a party in the Paddock – a large field, formerly part of the earthworks around the 11th century Lewes Castle.
It helps to make an occasion of something when we move on. We’re rather good at it:
- Christenings
- Marriage
- Death
- Birthdays
- Anniversaries
- Graduation
I’m down for Brighton or will try to enroll in Versailles for my graduation. I skipped my first nearly three decades ago. I just didn’t feel like moving on. I hadn’t felt I’d had an education to justify the fuss. My fault, not theirs. I put in the hours and came out with an OK degree but that isn’t why I’ll remember my undergraduate years.
I should mark moving on, and away from this blog. It logs, day by day, and in the background countless pages of hidden notes. It has carried me through the Masters in Open & Distance Education.
H809, my bonus track, will mark the end.
For this reason I am migrating most of the content and the journey it records to an external blog.
From time to time I’ll post a note at the bottom of the page to say this is where it’ll be from June.
My moving on.
By May, I’ll also know if the next few years have been set up. We’ll see. I may even be back at the OU in some capacity. I rather
Related articles
Driving learning through blogging: Students’ perceptions of a reading journal blog assessment task.
Fig.1. My take on blogging – the highly skewed view of someone who has blogged with a passion since 1999
Driving learning through blogging: Students’ perceptions of a reading journal blog assessment task. (2007/2008)
Melanie James
I’m reading academic papers on blogging for a few reasons:
- part of H809 (Practice-based research in educational technology) – getting my head around how research is conducted
- my interest in blogging as more than verbal jamming (my take on it)
- its value or otherwise as a student learning experience
- its value or otherwise in a business context
- this paper as its author came out of ‘industry’ to work in academia – my hoped for career shift.
- whether there’s PhD research in here somewhere.
(I currently think not based on the papers I have read and a PhD thesis on blogging in business – to ill defined, too broad, nothing that original to put online what some people may have put in a diary/journal, gets confused with internal communications, PR and journalism. Is NOT an effective means of knowledge transfer. I’d prefer the expert view – in person. Perhaps where the skill of this loose kind of writing is under scrutiny – stream of consciousness as a writing style).
The uses are specific. The greater value is with those for whom writing forms a part of their career plan.
So journalism, creative writing, PR, communications and social media … advertising too. As a platform to support a foundation course it might be used to develop academic writing skills. Three years ago I pulled out my 1999 copy of ‘Learn how to study’ from the OU.
My notes on this are interesting for two reasons
- noting how the book is laid out like a web page (it is of course the web page than still is a poor copy of the printed word)
- the pertinence of the advice to someone studying a undergraduate and graduate level
- the style of writing, that feels like it comes from the 1950s.
After we’ve read, heard and talked about a topic, our minds are awash with ideas, impressions and chunks of information.
But we never really get to grips with this experience until we try to write down our own version of it. Making notes is of some help, of course. But there is nothing like the writing of an essay to make us question our ideas, weigh up our impressions, sort out what information is relevant and what is not – and, above all, come up with a reasoned viewpoint on the topic that we can feel it our own’. (Rowntree. p. 170 1999)
| Problem/Opportunities | Students who fail to engage with the required course readings will be silent and disengaged. This can have a negative impact across all students.Students who don’t engage with the technology, such as blogging, will be at a disadvantage as PR in the future will include the use of Web-based technologies. |
| Structure | Questionnaire taken alongside end of module questionnaires taken by each cohort. |
| Questions | Does this type of assessment task increase student engagement with required course reading? Does the assessment task have wider application than in public relations courses? Does this facilitate the development of students’ technical skills in using new media? |
| Setting | University of Newcastle, Australia First and Second year Public Relations undergraduates. |
| Author | Dr. Melanie James, PhD (UoN), Grad.Cert. PTT (UoN), MA Journalism (UTS), BA Communication (Hons) (UTS), MPRIA joined the School of Design, Communication and IT at the University of Newcastle in November 2006 after working in senior management roles in strategic communication, government communication, public relations and marketing communication. |
| Research | Research on teaching and assessment. (Rowntree 1971, Boud, 1988) |
| Concepts | |
| Methods | A formal survey was undertaken in Semester Two to evaluate the students’ perceptions of the reading journal blog assessment task and to identify students’ opinions as to the strengths and weaknesses of the two specific aims of the assessment task. (James 2007 p. 2 )The first aim was measured by asking whether they felt the task contributed to their learning about public relations at an introductory level through engagement with the course readings and the second aim was measured by asking whether they felt the assignment had facilitated their development of technical skills in blogging.
The survey questionnaire included 12 Likert-type items which asked for levels of agreement-disagreement with statements relating to the reading journal blog assessment task. Multichoice type online survey completed anonymously. |
| Frameworks | |
| Findings | Only a minority of students commented on other students’ blogs even though it was clearly indicated on the grading criteria that it had the potential to earn the student more marks. (James. p. 5 2007)From a lecturer’s perspective, the level of engagement with the assessment task in particular, the coursework projects generally, and the in-class discussion was extremely satisfactory. (James. p. 6. 2007)
The overall standard of the final course group project was high, and although not directly comparable with previous years’ results, average grades for the course were higher. (James. p. 7. 2007) Nearly three-quarters of respondents (71%) agreed that the blogging assessment task tied in well with the class exercises and other assessment tasks (RQ6). (James. p. 11. 2009) |
| Paradigms | A constructivist approach to learning – learners construct contextual meaning rather than students predominantly being passive receivers of information (Anderson, Krathwohl, Airasian, Cruikshank, Mayer & Pintrich, 2001).Combining a learning journal with a blog was seen as a way to design an assessment task that responded to both identified challenges and would also foster the active engagement and personal investment factors that Angelo (1995, cited in Connor-Greene, 2000), considers crucial to effective teaching. (James p. 4. 2007) |
| Limitations | Academics unclear of the marking criteria. Students not familiar with blogging so needed more setup time. Academic integrity of the content. 61% responded to the survey. |
| Implications | Ways to better design the course. Use of sentence leads to start the blog. Use of sentence leads to comment on other people’s blogs. |
PR students will need to be able to set up, maintain and contribute to blogs and make decisions about whether such tactics should be adopted in campaigns (Alexander, 2004; McAllister and Taylor, 2007).
This reads like second guessing the way the world has gone – but successful social media PR agencies do little else but blog for their clients, some do reputation management seeing what the social media are saying.
Reading to learn has long been a feature of higher education (Guthrie, 1982, cited in Maclellan, 1997).
For all the highfalutin e-learning interactive stuff how much do postgraduates, let alone undergraduates, spend reading? If you study law how else do you engage with the content?
Enthusiasm for the new from academics. “blogs have the potential, at least, to be a truly transformational technology in that they provide students with a high level of autonomy while simultaneously providing opportunity for greater interaction with peers” (Williams & Jacobs, 2004, p. 232).
It must be human nature to respond in one of two ways to anything new – love it or hate it. Academic research can turn revolution or pending doom into the mundane.
‘As expected from the experiences of students in the first iteration of the assessment task, RQ4 and RQ5 clearly indicated that the majority of the respondents were inexperienced with both blogging and posting comments to existing blogs’. (James, p. 10. 2009) So much for Prensky, Oblinger et al and the ‘digital natives’ – far from being eager and skilled online, they are nonplussed.
More than two thirds (67%) of respondents indicated they had not had experience with blogging before the course, and 80% disagreed with the statement “posting comments on other people’s blogs was something I’d done regularly prior to doing this course”. James, p. 11. 2009)
So much for Prensky, Oblinger et al and the ‘digital natives’ nonsense – far from being eager and skilled online, they are nonplussed.
REFERENCE
Alexander, D. (2004). Changing the public relations curriculum: A new challenge for educators. PRism 2. Retrieved 24th April, 2007, from http://praxis.massey.ac.nz/fileadmin/Praxis/Files/Journal_Files/Issue2/Alexander.pdf
Anderson, L., Krathwohl, D., Airasian, P., Cruikshank, K., Mayer, R., & Pintrich, P. (2001). A taxonomy for learning, teaching, and assessing: A revision of Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives (AbridgedEd.). New York: Longman.
Boud, D. (1988). Developing student autonomy in learning (2nd ed). New York: Kogan Page.
Connor-Greene, P. (2000). Making connections: Evaluating the effectiveness of journal writing in enhancing student learning.Teaching of Psychology, 27, 44-46.
James, M.B. (2008), ‘Driving learning through blogging: Students? perceptions of a reading journal blog assessment task’, Prism, 5 1-12 (2008) [C1] (accessed 27 Feb 2013 http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/38338 )
McAllister, S. & Taylor, M. (2007). Community college web sites as tools for fostering dialogue. Public Relations Review, 33, 230-232.
Maclellan, E. (1997). Reading to learn. Studies in Higher Education, 22, 277-288
Prensky, M (2001) Digital natives and digital immigrants.
Rowntree, D (1999) How to learn to study.
Williams, J. & Jacobs, J. (2004) Exploring the use of blogs as learning spaces in the higher education sector. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology 20(2), 232-247.
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The memory is the mind process happening in your brain, it can never be the artefact that plays back footage of an experience.
Fig. 1. Bill Gates featured in a 1985 copy of a regional computer magazine
In the introduction to ‘Total Recall’ Bill Gates wonders when he and Gordon Bell first met.
Was in 1983 or 1982. What was the context? Can they pinpoint the moment with certainty? I ask, does it matter? I ask, who cares? What matters is that they met. A moot point if either one of them claims that at this time one took an idea from the other … and they want to claim bragging rights for a new word or financial rights to a product.
The players in this game of life-blogging or developing the digitally automated photographic memory (total recall) are communicating, sharing ideas, creating or stating an identity, forming allegiances and developing ideas or hedging.
Our memory is selective
Having some sense of what we put in and what we leave out, then having a way to manage what we retrieve how we use this and then add to the record.
As someone who kept a diary and put a portion of it online it surprises me and now worries me when a person I know says that x, or y found out something about them courtesy of this blog (posted 1999-2004).
Fig. 2. A grab from my Year 2001 Diaryland Blog. An evening out with the web hopefuls of Wired Sussex, Brighton.
I thought I’d locked the diary long ago – but of course various digital spiders have always been crawling the Internet snapping pages.
I think there are around 100 pages of some 1500 that I can never get back. It took me a few years to realise that I ought to change names and locations, but this became convoluted.
Fig. 3. Apple have started in an in-house business school, the Apple University, to teach people to be like Steve Jobs.
How might a digital record of a person have assisted with this? And what would be the warnings over diet and over behaviours?
The value of this content would be if I had a life worthy of a biography, but I am no Steve Jobs.
The value might still be for writing, though could have been even then a portfolio for specific subjects of study, such as geography, history, art, filming and writing. In these respects it still is.
Then it becomes an aid to the construction of ideas and the development of knowledge.
Personally, if I wanted to build on my knowledge of meteorology I would start with my Sixth Form classes with Mr Rhodes. I may have some of the newspaper cuttings I kept then of weather systems and may even being able to put some of these to photographs. I have a record of the 1987 Hurricane over Southern England for example.
I might tap into a Physics text book I first opened when I was 14 and recuperating at home from a broken leg.
There are those we know who have stored digitally the product of their illegal behaviour – paedophiles who are hoisted by their own petard when their digital record is recovered or identified. There may always be images that you may never want stored for later retrieval – a scene in a horror film that captures your attention before you flick channels, worse a real car accident … even making the mistake of clicking on footage of the hanging of Saddam Hussian. The image will be even less likely to be wiped from your memory if you have it stored somewhere.
Google, Facebook and other sites and services are not the only ones to capture a digital record of our behaviours – as I know if I write about and publish the activities of others.
Fig. 4. ‘Total capture’, as we ought to call it, could be the digital equivalent of hoarding
Sensors on and in you will know not only about your body, but your environment: the location, temperature, humidity, sound levels, proximity to wireless devices, amount of light, and air quality. (Bell and Gemmel, 2009 p.217)
Just because we can, does not mean that we should. Bell has a record of such minutiae as when he blew his nose – he has too given the detail of what he captures. I know of someone with an obsessive disorder who keeps the paper tissues he uses to blow his nose.
For what purpose?
A data grab of Ridley Scott or some other director as they plan, develop and create a movie might be a fascinating and rich journey that would serve an apprentice well. A detailed recovery from an illness or accident too. There are problems for which a comprehensive digital capture could be a helpful, valid and possible response. How about wearable underpants that monitor your activity and heat up if you need to exercise – eHot Pants ?! Better still, a junior doctor who has to cram a great deal may extract parts of lessons. However, who or what will have structured these into bite–sized pieces for consumption? Is there a programme that could be written to understand what to grab then offer back? But who would pose the testing question? Or can AI do this? From a set of question types know how to compose one using natural language and create a workable e-tivity such as those produced by Qstream (were SpacedEd).
Fig.5. Watching students of the SCA at work I wonder how life-logging would assist or get in the way.
Reflection in working is a way to think through what they are learning – a grabbed record of kit on their person cannot construct this for them. Without a significant edit it would be cumbersome to review. In a digital format though it could be edited and offered back to aid review. Would the return of the bad or weak idea be disruptive or distracting? It could infect the unconscious. Would there not need to be a guide on how to use this log in the context given the outcomes desired? They can’t be up all night doing it.
Fig. 6 Age 17, for one month, I became a hoarder of a kind, of the pre-digital keep a record of everything kind.
A diarist already, starting a new school, back at home from boarding school and a new life opening up – so I kept bus and theatre tickets, sweet wrappers too. And when I sat down in the late evening to write the day I did so onto sheets of paper I could file. With no parameters I soon found myself writing for two hours. September 1978 is a book. Would a few lines a day, every day, in the tiny patch of a space in an off the shelf Five Year diary do? It would have to.
An exchange trip got the file treatment.
And a gap year job of five months was a photo-journal – one file. And then the diary resorted to one page of A4 in a hardback book. This self selection matters. It makes possible the creation of an artificial record or ‘memory’. The way content is gathered and stored is part of the context and the narrative, and by working within reasonable parameters it leaves the content, in 1980-1990 terms, manageable.
I have letters from parents, grandparents and boyhood ‘girlfriends’ from the age of 8 to 18 … and a few beyond.
Perhaps science and maths should have been the root to take? If there is value in reflection it is how I might support my children as they have to make subject choices, choices over universities and their careers beyond. Seeing this I am more likely show empathy to any young person’s plight.
Fig. 7. A boy’s letter home from Mowden Hall School. Presumably Sunday 14th July 1974 as we wrote letters home after morning Chapel. I can see it now, in Mr Sullivan’s Room, French. Mr Farrow possibly on duty. His nose and figures yellow from the piper he smoked … looks like I would have been younger. He never did turn up on Saturday … or any school fixture. Ever. See? The pain returns.
I have letters I wrote too. I feel comfortable about the letters I wrote going online, but understandably shouldn’t ‘publish’ the long lost words of others. I might like to use the affordances of a blog or e-portfolio, but in doing so I would, like Gordon Bell, keep the lock tightly fixed on ‘Private’. Is it immoral to digitise private letters, even those written to you. How will or would people respond to you if they suspected you would scan or photograph everything, load it somewhere and by doing so risk exposing it to the world or having it hacked into.
People do things they regret when relationships fall apart – publishing online all the letters or emails or texts or photos they ever sent you?
Putting online anything and everything you have that you did together? Laws would very quickly put a dent in the act of trying to keep a digital record. In the changing rooms of a public swimming pool? In the urinals of a gents toilets? It isn’t hard to think of other examples of where it is inappropriate to record what is going on. I hit record when my wife was giving birth – when she found out she was upset. I’ve listened once and can understand why the trauma of that moment should be forgotten as the picture of our baby daughter 30 minutes later is the one to ‘peg’ to those days.
Selection will be the interface between events
What is grabbed, how is it tagged, recalled and used? Selection puts the protagonist in a life story back in control, rather than ‘tagging’ a person and automatically and comprehensively recording everything willy-nilly.
We don’t simply externalise an idea to store it, we externalise ideas so that they can be shared and potentially changed. Growing up we learn a variety of skills, such as writing, drawing or making charts not simply to create an analogue record, but as a life skill enabling communications with others. Modern digital skills come into this too.
Just because there is a digital record of much that I have done, does not mean I don’t forget.
If many others have or create such a digital record why should it prevent them from acting in the present? A person’s behaviour is a product of their past whether or not they have a record of it. And a record of your past may either influence you to do more of the same, or to do something different. It depends on who you are.
The memory is the mind process happening in your brain, it can never be the artefact that plays back footage of an experience.
REFERENCES
Bell, G., and Gemmel. J (2009) Total Recall: How the E-Memory Revolution Will Change Everything
Blackmore, Y (2012) Virtual Health Coach. (accessed 28 Jan 2013 http://mobihealthnews.com/16177/study-virtual-coach-improves-activity-levels-for-overweight-obese/
Isaacson, Walter (2011). Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography (Kindle Locations 3421-3422). Hachette Littlehampton. Kindle Edition.
Ituma, A (2011), ‘An Evaluation of Students’ Perceptions and Engagement with E-Learning Components in a Campus Based University’,Active Learning In Higher Education, 12, 1, pp. 57-68, ERIC, EBSCOhost, viewed 13 December 2012.
Kandel, E. (2006) The Emergence of a New Science of Mind.
Kennedy G., Dalgarno B., Bennett S., Gray K., Waycott J., Judd T., Bishop A., Maton K., Krause K. & Chang R. (2009) Educating the Net Generation – A Handbook of Findings for Practice and Policy. Australian Learning and Teaching Council. Available at: http://www.altc.edu.au/ system/files/resources/CG6-25_Melbourne_Kennedy_ Handbook_July09.pdf (last accessed 19 October 2009).
Mayer-Schönberger, V (2009) Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age
Myhrvold, N Princeton Alumni (accessed 29 Jan 2013 http://www.princeton.edu/pr/pwb/04/1122/ )
Schmandt-Besserat (1992) How Writing Came About.
Vernon, J.F. (2011) Life according to Anais Nin, Henry Miller and Samuel Pepys
(accessed 28 Jan 2013 http://mymindbursts.com/2011/08/13/1162/ )
W. Boyd Rayward Wells, H,G. World Brain.
http://people.lis.illinois.edu/~wrayward/HGWellsideaofWB_JASIS.pdf
Waybackmachine
http://archive.org/web/web.php
Wixted and Carpenter, (2006) “The Wickelgren Power Law and the Ebbinghaus Savings Function,” 133– 34.
Related articles
- The idea of gathering a substantial part of one’s life experience fascinates me, as it has often inspired others (mymindbursts.com)
- Brandon Turbeville ~ ‘Better Than Cash Alliance’ Backed By Bill Gates To Usher In Cashless Society (shiftfrequency.com)
- Why I Use Pen and Paper Notebooks AND Digital Tools To Take Notes (bethkanter.org)
- The power to remember and the need to forget (mymindbursts.com)
- Our Digital Selves (nytimes.com)
- I Should Have Kept a Diary As a Child (write-2-be.com)
- From Memory Scarcity to Memory Abundance (thefrailestthing.com)
- Automatically Augmenting Lifelog Events Using Pervasively Generated Content from Millions of People (mymindbursts.com)
- Lifelogging and Self Quantization : the good and the bad (gelnior.wordpress.com)
- Nobody knows what Digital Curation is. But they’re all doing it. (digitalcollaboration.wordpress.com)
- Gordon Bell at Microsoft
The power to remember and the need to forget
Fig 1. Your life? Remembered or forgotten?
Digitally record or better to delete?
INTRODUCTION
It frustrates me to try to read two complementary books e in two different formats – the first is marketed in its traditional hardback edition with a designer cover and eye-grabbing introduction from Bill Gates, while the second, an eBook I find understated – as if it is ashamed to compete. They are a pair. Twins separated at birth. They argue from opposite sides of the digital coin, one in favour of digitizing everything under the sun, the other for circumspection and deletion. Perhaps there should be a face off at the Oxford Union Debating Society. My role here is to bring them together and in doing so provide a one word conclusion: selection.
TOTAL RECALL
‘Total Recall’ (Bell and Gemmel, 2009) with its film-reference title and sensationalist headline ‘how the e-memory revolution will change everything’ risks ostracizing a discerning academic readership in favour of sales reputation and coining a phrase or two. It’s hero Gordon Bell might be the protagonist in the movie. The is is shame is that at the heart of what is more biography than academic presentation there is the desire to be taken seriously – a second edition could fix this – there needs to be a sequel. My copy of Total Recall arrived via trans-Atlantic snail mail in hardback, with it’s zingy dust jacket – it feels like a real book. I’m no bibliophile but I wonder if the pages are uncut and this edition has been pulled from a reject pile. It was discounted Amazon and as I’m after the words contained in the book rather than the physical artifact its state ought not to be a concern. Though the fact that it is a physical book rather pegs it to a bygone era. Total recall refers to the idea of a photographic or ‘eidetic memory’ – this needs to be stated.
Fig. 2. DELETE
‘Delete’ (2009) Viktor Mayer-Schönberger is subtitled ‘The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age’ and sounds as if it was authored by a vampire from Transylvania. It is a foil to ‘Total Recall’ with Viktor the antagonist to ‘Flash Drive’ Gordon. Delete hasn’t been – its in its fourth printing, needless to say I got mine in seconds as a Kindle version. I only ever by a book if I have to. I am too used to the affordances of the eBook to skim, search, highlight and share – and to have it on multiple devices, the Kindle, iPad, laptop and smartphone.
The copyright notice in Total Recall on ‘the scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet’ is ironic because this is what Bell does with his life – he has scanned and uploaded his life (though access is totally private). A double irony as he elects for Web 1.0 but won’t join the Semantic Web 2.0 and share.
I have been an exponent of ‘exposure’ – the release of a substantial part of who you are for others to chew over.
The online diary.
The way forward stands between the two, selective extreme gathering, storing and retrieval of your personal archive, while discretely deleting the irrelevant, possibly illegal (copyright, plagiarised, libel) and otherwise potentially reputationally damaging to kith or kin. (How can these be avoided if you wear a device around your neck that takes a digital snap every few seconds?)
They could be landform and landfill.
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- Infographic: Who Reads eBooks? (the-digital-reader.com)
- Enjoy Ron Shusett’s Interview with Craft Screenwriting! (lcoonline.wordpress.com)
- Tracker, scanner, detector, spy… (thehindu.com)
- Five Reasons Why You Should See Total Recall (binsidetv.net)
- Google Glass – Interactive Glasses (threekingsclub.wordpress.com)
E-Portfolios? Blog, content aggregator or storage in the cloud? Is there more to this for e-learning?
Fig. 1. The two faces of e-portfolios. Barrett (2010).
Think of an e-portfolio in terms of:
- Workspace
- Showcase
- Specific academic fields
- A Learning journey
Evidence (content):
- Writing
- Photos
- Videos
- Research projects
- Observations by mentors and peers
- Reflective thinking
(Butler 2006, p. 2)
My view is that these tasks, or affordances, are better and well managed by a blog. During 2010 while in my first year of the Masters in Open and Distance Education (MAODE) not only were we encouraged to use the OU Student Blog platform, but we were also encourages to use the OU eportfolio MyStuff.
Fig. 2 Müllschlucker
I dutifully ‘dumped’ and labelled content, even sorted it in an effort to write assignment using this system. I would liken it to a Müllschlucker – a rubbish shoot in a tall appartment block (Isn’t the German for it such a great word?) – it made grabbing and dumping stuff easy.
What was far harder was to sift through this content and create meaning from it a a later date. It didn’t have enough of me about it most of the time to trigger recollections. We got a warning that MyStuff would be killed off – I made a stab at sorting through what I’d put there, but like boxes of papers in a lock-up garage I was more relieved when it was over. I also tried a couple of external e-portfolio services: Peppblepad and Mahara for example. I tripped up quickly as the learning curve was too steep for me – and why duplicate what I was enjoying with WordPress?
I’m about to cook a lasagna, so why give me a pick-axe? Or, I want to make a toasted sandwich so why give me a MagiMix? All tools need to be carefully promoted, demonstrated then used in a sandpit with careful instruction and support. Basic scaffolding in other words.
“The overarching purpose of portfolios is to create a sense of personal ownership over one’s accomplishments, because ownership engenders feelings of pride, responsibility, and dedication.” (Paris and Ayres, 1994,p.10).
“The e-portfolio is the central _and common point for the student experience. It is a reflection of the student as a person undergoing continuous personal development, _not just a store of evidence.” (Rebbeck, 2008)
Process (a series of activities)
Product (the end result of the process)
Blogging and keeping an e-portfolio are synonymous
A web log, or blog, is an online journal that encourages communication of ideas, and individual entries are usually displayed in reverse-chronological order. Barrett (2010, p6)
Blogs provide an ideal tool to construct learning journals, as discussed by Crichton and Kopp (2008) from the University of Calgary, ‘… that eJournals help to make ePortfolios more authentic and relevant to the students’ lives.’
Workspace or Working Portfolio. Washington Stage University.
- Or (digital) shoebox.
- Presentation Portfolios, showcase or ‘showtime.’
John Dewey (1933) discusses both retrospective (for analysis of data) and prospective modes of reflection (for planning).
Beck and Bear (2009) studied reflection in the teaching cycle, comparing how pre-service teachers rated the development of their reflection skills in both formative and summative e-folios.
Fig. 3. JISC (2008) Effective Practice with E-portfolios. Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) on behalf of JISC. (Page 11)
Reflection is the “heart and soul” of a portfolio, and is essential to brain-based learning (Kolb, 1984; Zull, 2002).
Once we have looked back over our body of work, then we have an opportunity to look forward, setting a direction for future learning through goals… reflection in the future tense. Barrett (2010, p3)
Blogs are organized in reverse chronological order; most showcase portfolios are organized thematically, around a set of learning goals, outcomes or standards. Both levels of reflection and organization are important, and require different strategies for supporting different levels of reflection.
REFERENCE
Barrett, H. (2010). Balancing the Two Faces of ePortfolios. Educação, Formação & Tecnologias, 3(1), 6-14. [Online], Available online: http://eft.educom.pt (Accessed 29 SEPT 2010) http://electronicportfolios.org/balance/ (Accessed 4 NOV 2012) Updated version http://electronicportfolios.org/balance/Balancing2.htm (Accessed 4 NOV 2012)
Beck, R. & Bear, S. (2009) “Teacher’s Self-Assessment of Reflection Skills as an Outcome of E-Folios” in Adamy & Milman (2009) Evaluating Electronic Portfolios in Teacher Education. Charlotte: Information Age Publishers.
Beetham, H. (2005) e-Portfolios in post-16 learning in the UK: Developments, issues and opportunities http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/ documents/themes/elearning/eportfolioped.pdf
Bruce, L (1994) Self-Assessment (Last accessed 4Nov2012) http://ozpk.tripod.com/000000selfassess
Butler, P (2006) Review of the Literature on Portfolios and Eportfolios. eCDF ePortfolio Project. Massey University College of Education. Palmerston North, New Zealand
Crichton, S. and Kopp, G. (2008) “The Value of eJournals to Support ePortfolio Development for Assessment in Teacher Education.” Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New York City, March 24–28, 2008. An updated version of this paper was published by the British Columbia Ministry of Education, Innovations in Education, 2nd Edition, April 2011. Available online (PDF of book); Printable version of revised article: balancingarticle2.pdf
Dewey,J. (1933) How we think. How we think: A restatement of the relation of reflective thinking to the educative process. (1971 ed.). Chicago: Regnery
JISC (2008) Effective Practice with E-portfolios. Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) on behalf of JISC.
Kolb, D. (1984). Experiential learning: Experience as the source of learning and development. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Paris, S., & Ayres, L. (1994). Becoming reflective students and teachers. Washington D.C.: American Psychological Association.
Rebbeck, G (2008) e-Learning Coordinator, Thanet College, quoted in JISC, 2008).
Zull, J. (2002). The Art of Changing the Brain. Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing
Related articles
- Teachers Guide on The Use of ePortfolios in Education (educatorstechnology.com)
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- Fwd: Manchester Workshop – How can e-Portfolios Support 21st Century Learning? (academic-practice.blogspot.com)
- 2012 Eportfolio Forum to be live-streamed (eportfoliosaustralia.wordpress.com)
- Facebook-folio? (imagincation.com)
- Mobile devices, mobile learners and Web 2.0 (mymindbursts.com)
- Enhanced learning as a mind-map, mind dump, composting exercise from where ideas brew (mymindbursts.com)
What is meant by ‘curation’ in our brave new world wide Web 2.0 way?
Fig.1. Web 2.0 is visualised in many ways, Engestrom (2007) Mycorrhizae thinks in term of fungi.
Is this what curation online looks like? Part of a complex web or organism? An aspect of a new ecosystem?
Fig.2. Think of these labels as: curation, blogging, e-learning, moderating, social networks …
Writers, thinkers and bloggers are constantly taking common terms, the meanings of which we feel we understand, and giving them fresh, broader or nuanced meanings.
My understanding of curation is embedded in museums – I overheard the curator of the current Superhuman exhibition at the Wellcome Foundation Museum being interviewed by Aleks Krotovski on Tuesday. When I took a picture using my iPad a member of the museum staff politely told me that ‘the curator asked that people did not take pictures’ (and that the curator was in part to blame as he hadn’t wanted the signage saying ‘don’t take pictures’ too prominent) – curator as stage manager and executive producer of a collection of themed objects. The term ‘object’ itself embracing stills, artefacts, video-clips and activities. You curate stuff in a space and set parameters so that an audience of visitors can get their head around what, in effect, has come the curator’s mind.
In the bizarre ways that these things happen I recall, age six at most, creating a fossil museum with ammonites found in the low rocky cliffs of Beadnell, Northumberland.
I was a curator, I brought together a themed collection of rocks, set them out in a room and invited people in – no doubt in the back of my mind imagining the glass cabinets and displays in the Hancock Museum, Newcastle.
Ian McGreggor of the British Museum with his History of the World in 100 objects is a curator – far more so than an amateur’s eclectic collection of e–stuff. Or am I being a 20th century snob? Craving for academic elitism that is fast vanishing down the plug–hole as the digtal ocean and equally digital–cloud washes and blows over everything?
I search that externalised part of my own mind, an extensive blog 13 years in the writing, for what I’ve said or stumbled upon before regarding ‘curation’ and find three entries, one prompted by my intention to attend this session in Bath and feeding off a visit to the De le Warr, Bexhill and the rest from Martin Weller’s book ‘The Digital Scholar’ in which he lists curation as something universities will need to do. On Chapter 12 he has this list on publishing as:Publishing
- Publishing
- Research
- Authoring
- Submission
- Rejection/modification
- Publication
- Dissemination
WHY?
- Accepted practice
- Academic respectability
- Reward and tenure
- Dissemination
- Curation
I wonder if this following quote gives a sense of Martin Weller‘s comprehension of the term ‘curation’ as used in a Web 2.0 context:
‘If Boyer’s four main scholarly functions were research, application, integration and teaching, then I would propose that those of the digital scholar are engagement, experimentation, reflection and sharing’. Weller (2011).
On a quest to become ‘digital scholars’ or ‘thought leaders’ we should, to change one word –engage, experiment, reflect and curate’? The word, used in this, come to think of it, ought also to include ‘moderate’, even to ‘chair’ or ‘host’.
In 2002 Gilly Salmon, then a lecturer at the Open University Business School, tried to coin the terms e–tivity and e–moderator.
Perhaps then, as these things go, the digital community have not picked up on these terms – instead they have hijacked ‘curation’. We are going through a rich phase of redefining and inventing words and understandably they result in carnage and debate. Academics are guilty I feel of sometimes wanting to be the first to coin a word or use a new phrase or word in a new way because citation will mean that they are then quoted for every more. This happens in academic publishing and study, unfortunately ‘curation’ can leave you wondering about the source. Is ‘jumbling together’ the content of others from multiple sources even more questionable than turning to self–monitored wikis such as wikipedia?
Weller also says:
‘If the intention is to encourage engagement then low-quality routes may be more fruitful than seeking to produce professional broadcast material’. Weller (2011)
and
‘Low quality individual items because of their obvious ease of production, can be seen as an invitation to participate’. Weller (2011)
Is curation a dirty word? Is curated content reliable? What does it mean in the corporate world?
At a self–managed meeting of the curious courtesy of Wee–Learning in the vault of a pub called ‘The Cock’ in Bristol last Thursday (18th October 2012) Sam Burrough , who represents the online learning of thousands of learners in the financial sector in Bristol, UK – put ‘curation’ in the context of when it continual professional development and personal development planning – his drive is to get internal learners to seek out pertinent courses and content for themselves rather than waiting for and relying on a course list. As well as self–development reading and curating content themselves will make them more connected in and out of the company as well as gaining a better understanding of the technology. – so looking for relative content to solve their problems that they can share or make available to others.
Sam introduced Beth Kanter, Robin Good and Howard Rheingold.
Beth Kanter: Seek, Sense, Share – take the pain out of finding content.
Robin Good – master curator:
So is ‘curation’ no more grand than ‘sharing’?
Indeed those who use term may prefer ‘curation’ to describe what they do over ‘sharing’ just as professional bloggers like Andrew Sullivan (The Daily Beast) simply describe themselves as journalists. Amateur aggregation of content from other sources with no comment or original content of your own is surely the equivalent of cutting out articles from newspapers and magazines and putting them in a scrapbook? But I can’t see the phrase ‘to e–scrapbook’ catching on.
Earlier in his book Weller (2011:Chapter 2) lists university functions as:
1. Teaching
2. Research
3. Dissemination
4. Outreach
5. Curation
· Change can be quick
· No assumptions are unassailable
· Form and function are different
· Boundaries are blurred.
· We can’t wrap libraries and such like in cotton wool if their time is over.
· Global networks, unpredictable environments, rapid response.
Robin Good (2012) likens Google to Macdonalds, whereas the curator runs a bespoke restaurant. He talks about curation as ‘sense making’ not just links. That curation helps people to learn better and faster from people they know or respect.
Rowlands in a 2008 study talks of ‘skimming and skipping’ about instead of deep reading. Easily distracted, or persuasively detracted’. Of what value is e–curation where an algorithm packaged as Stumbleupon, ScoopIt or Evenote assembles vicariously content gleaned from noisy self–publishing amateurs, professional online newspapers and academic studies mashing them up in one place and giving them the look of a professional edited paper?
Is ‘e–curation’ nothing more that semi–automatic ‘skittish bouncing behaviour’ Wijekumar et al. (2006).
You see, curation supposes authority, supposes in the sense of managing a collection for a museum that a panel of scholars or authorities has appointed this ‘curator’ as they have some kind of scholarly or professional track record of expertise to warrant tenure and the title. In our Web 2.0 world just as anyone can publish, so too can anyone ‘curate’. We are back with hiw Weller (2011) describes Web 2.0 as the ‘mass democratisation of expression’.
My teenager children (16 year old girl, 14 year old boy) share images on Tumblr and Instagram – a tumbling riot of choice images grabbed and reblogged into a visual expression of who they aspire to be, or who they are or the people they want to attract. Is this ‘curation’ or self–expression, or even a quest for identity and understanding who they are through others? There is no boundary between what they do, curation and publishing – indeed, where either one galavanises huge interest they become champion curators surely? This isn’t even a museum of the person, for the person, but a visual stream of consciousness by a person created by the people for the people. Perhaps this is the answer – blurring the boundaries between blog, gallery, library and museum we each become the curators of the external expression of the contents of our minds forming in total a waterfall of information and ideas. As a reader, visitor or learner you are the fish swimming in this river, dipping in and out and through it. The space is an interplay between what others contribute and what you elect to tangle with.
Curation is more than aggregating stuff, there is a sense of purpose, a theme, even if it is a current in this digital river, this torrent, this deluge of information – the content is gathered, and presented in a certain way.
The curator is making choices that they think will impart value to the content pulled in. Someone has made choices on the visitor’s behalf. The collection is assembled for a purpose, to change minds, to open heads, to instigate a journey, to act as a catalyst for learning and and the creation of understanding. Some curators will trawl for their catch like deep-sea fishermen, others will be more akin to specialist shop keepers stocking their shelves with gems and taking the time to meet and know their customers.
Whilst blogging implies creating content or self-publishing, curation is aggregating content by one person for others – going out with a broom to sweep autumn leaves into a pile then picking out the russet red ones. It isn’t publishing either, these leaves are literally individual pages, not entire books, they are, in the parlance ‘bite–sized’ pieces of information.
At what point does it cease to be curation?
The London Underground Lost Property Office is not a curated space – this stuff has been pushed into the space, not pulled. Push or pull are key words when it comes to curation, especially where the curation is prompted by the desire to respond to a problem – such as engaging people to take responsibility for their own learning by providing them with a space with blurred boundaries that will contain, more often than not, objects that satisfy and pique their cursioty in order that they then go on to construct their own understanding.
There is an iconic TV series hosted by Stephen Fry called QI, which stands for ‘Quite Interesting’.
They wax lyrical and test their knowledge and understanding in a way that varies from after-dinner speaking and chat, to Oxford Dons in the Senior Common Room over a glass of sherry. The French would call them intellectual or even philosophers. A spin–off of the TV show is a new Radio series called ‘The Museum of Curiosity’.
Online, comments left by people become objects in this curated space – these are ‘items’.
They have a permanence, not only that, whether or not attributed, they can be shared, duplicated and re–versioned. Whilst you curate them in spaces you control, what happens once the item has been shared on? It may no longer be in such an attractive space at all? You may not even be credited as the author, which puts into question copyright, plagiarism and proper referencing.
Sam Burroughs (2012) likes the idea that you ’learn for myself’, and how it started with blogs then moved onto tools such as Delicious, the Digo +tag, organise with key words and RSS feeds. There are various RSS aggregators. Sam has come across 250 curation tools. How do you know which are the best? You give them a whirl or ask others what they think. Some to try include:
- ScoopIt
- PearlTree
- DigIt
What tools for curating content can you recommend?
But can an algorithm curate? At what point is is less a pile of autumn leaves and more of a compost heap of meaningful ideas that ferment and enrich the plants around it?
Curation is a form of stage management, even direction, a conscious decision to put some things in and leave others out, to appeal to a visitor or imagined personas with certain needs and expectations. If this journey works, if the story draws them in, then by default they will be changed and therefore have learnt something.
WITH THANKS
This particular blog, one of several developing over the last week, feed by discussions online, blog posts, articles and face-to-face presentations and meetings, is written with special thanks to Thomas Garrod who is doing a very good job of cajoling me to get my head around this – though I should say that it is our joint heads – as there several of us are struggling with the term ‘curation’ and question its validity.
What do you think?
REFERENCE
Gold, R (2012) http://www.scoop.it/t/digital-revolution-leaderboard. In interview –http://masternewmedia.org about curation – what it is, what it requires, why it’s important, how to do it.
Kanter, B (2012) Seak, Sense, Share – take the pain out of finding content.
http://www.bethkanter.org/content-curation-101/
Krotovski, A (2012) The Digital Human. BBC Radio 4 (last accessed 22 October 2012)
McGreggor, I (2011) The History of the World in 100 Objects –http://www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/about/british-museum-objects/ + Neil McGreggor
http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/ahow/all
Rheingold, H (2012) Exploring Mind Amplifiers since 1964 http://rheingold.com/
Salmon, G. (2002). E-tivities: the key to active only learning. Sterling, VA : Stylus Publishing Inc. ISSN 0 7494 3686 7
Salmon, G (2002) e-moderation
Stodd, J (2012) https://julianstodd.wordpress.com/2012/10/19/creating-and-sustaining-high-performance-learning-cultures/
Sullivan, A (2000-2012) The Daily Beast
Weller, M (2011) The Digital Human. More from Martin Weller in his blog: http://nogoodreason.typepad.co.uk/Wijekumar, K. J., Meyer, B. J. F., Wagoner, D., & Ferguson, L. (2006). Technology affordances: The “real story” in research with K-12 and undergraduate learners. British Journal of Educational Technology, 37(2), 191-209.
FURTHER LINKS
Rowlands et al (2008) British Library Google Generation study.
Mind Bursts 