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Would you prefer to read widely or pick the brains of experts?
Reading a history of the Armistice after the First World War – I’m a few years ahead of the centenary of 1914, I learn the Lloyd George preferred the former: picking the brains of experts was preferable to reading widely. Studying with Open University can be neither: reading is tightly focused by the content provided and you are penalised rather than admired for reading widely: you are supposed to stick to the text as it is on this that your tutor will assess you. And the participation of experts is random: my seven modules with the OU has had some of the more prominent names of distance and open education as the chair and as tutors, though more often they appear only in the byline or tangentially not daining to take part in discussion or debate – it is their loss and ours. Nor should I sound as if I am denigrating the tutors as here my expectation has come to seek in them an ‘educator’ – not necessarily a subject matter expert, but a facilitator and an enabler, someone who knows there way around the digital corridors of the Open University Virtual Learning Environment. Studying with the Open University can also be both: it depends so much on the course you are taking and serendipity. If you are goash you ought to be able to approach anyone at all in your faculty – not that you have much sense of what this is. You can read widely simply by extending your reach through references courtesy of the OU library, though I think what is meant here is a more general and broad intellect, that you take an interest, liberally, in the arts and sciences, in history and politics …
Being online affords a thousand opportunities to both read widely and to pick the brains of experts; what this requires is Web 2.0 literacy – the nous to drill deep when you read in a way that has never before been possible, unless, perhaps you have been privileged enough to have ready access to and the time to use one of the world’s elite libraries and your father or mother is a senior academic, government minister or captain of industry who loves to hold ‘house parties’ at the weekend. For the rest of us, there is now this new landscape – if not a level playing field (there are privileges based on cost and inclusion) – it is one where, with skill, guile, knowledge and experience you can gravitate towards and rope in the people and the books.
I wonder if exposure to the Web will change architecture?
The wonderful world wide Web 2.0 is fuel to and reflection of a purely human societal construct on speed or at speed – on speed gives us more of dark, evil, corrupt side of human behaviour while at speed we get the best of altruism, education, community and a desire to do good.
Now take a deep breath and look around you.
If or when there is a calamity in your life were do you turn? A few family members and a few friends who you will need to see and speak to face to face … not via Skype of face time. Locally I trust my community, neighbours and where required the police to keep crime at bay … venture beyond British shores and my faith, trust and experience of each community and its police service will vary.
The Web, because of its networks, means that we are never far removed from a criminal. Visiting the US this summer, fed by movies and not reassured by some of the places we ventured I felt there were guns of necessity on the hips of the police … and hidden guns on people and vehicles. Perhaps if you want to hold up a mirror to the best and the worst of the Web then you should hold it over a patch in California.
Why should the morals or lack thereof of one part of the world be allowed to poison and exploit the World Wide Web?
As, eventually, law and decency catches up a good deal of the filth and criminality will be shut down, locked behind barriers or diluted. In the mean time, like a layer of volcanic dust in the soil profile, a decade or more of anyone who uses the Web who has been exposed to beheadings and the vile, unloving side of pornography, to scams and suffocating spam will have this stain in the brains forever.
I wonder if exposure to the Web will change architecture?
I would feel happier living in a yurt – at least then I could see and know what my kids are doing and with everyone looking over each other’s shoulders – parents, grandparents, friends … and of course the dog, then that would be the best filter of all.
Network Weather
Fig. 1 The Water Cycle: Created by the US Government and available online under Creative Commons.
My preference is to think of a digital water cycle – with content migrating from the land to the air, from the analogue to the cloud. But it remains a metaphor.
Web 2.0 tales us to the clouds. All text and images on this blog are licensed by Hinchcliffe & Company, 2005-2009.
Dion Hinchcliffe does something similar too.
What is WebScience?
WebScience is the scientific study i.e. the identity of problems, the formulation of hypotheses and their in depth scrutiny and analysis, written up and published for sharing, discussion and further debate. This should mean publishing findings with the broadest possible variety of audiences in mind not just to the academic community, from whom further research should be expected, building on the work already done, but to other audiences who through the Web or serendipity, would find the work either appealing, appalling or inspiring.
To help with ‘meaning making’ (Conole, 2011) the metaphor I use to describe the Web is to compare it to the earth’s water cycle where the ocean is awash with digital content, and akin to Web 1.0 influenced by currents and tides, then evaporating into the atmosphere where it forms clouds is shared and transformed (Web 2.0) only to fall as precipitation and return to the ocean.
How much the Web conforms or differs from this pattern helps my analysis and comprehension of what is taking place.
Fig. 1 How we learn behaviourism (Vygotsky) to third generation activity theory (Engeström ) and the World Wide Web. (Doodle by J Vernon, 2013)
A more organic metaphor that places the Web in one context that interests me the workplace is that used by Yrjo Engeström (2008), in which a transmogrification of the model of an Activity System (Fig. 2) becomes like the ‘fingers’ of a funghi. The web after all is alive and growing. Here, an Activity System should be seen not as a static entity, but rather a living and growing thing. KnorrCetina (2003) talks of ‘flow architecture’ and if neither of these concepts ring true for you in then Zerubavel (1997) talks of ‘a mindscape’ while Cussins (1992) talks of ‘cognitive trails’.
Such patterns help describe, explain and predict what is happening in the Web, indeed a third metaphor, building on the ideas of Vannevar Bush from the 1940s, would be to think of the Web as a brain and to draw on lessons being learnt from neuroscience on how complex systems form connections and clusters. In turn, the brain would be an additional important area of study in relation to assistive technologies in relation to chronic illness and memory loss such as with. Alzheimers or Parkinsons.
In relation to WebSciences at the University of Southampton (SOTON) my interest in the iPhD begins with the lofty desire to ‘make a difference’ and to do so drawing on a combination of interests, professional experience, training and study.
It is from a career identifying problems, devising a synopsis, writing treatments, then scripts where amongst a plethora of industry and government an interest in health has developed. This can be pinpointed further to an interest in what role the Web can play in medicine, to inform and support health workers and patients, in particular patients with chronic illnesses such as Alzheimers, Parkinsons, asthma, diabetes and epilepsy.
Focusing even further to one illness and a particular group I have been considering what role e-learning might play to improve adherence to drugs.
I have produced training videos for pharmaceutical companies on the use of preventer inhalers.
My interest with e-learning is to use an inexpensive and readily accessed platform such as Qstream (Kerfoot & Baker, 2012) to deliver appropriate content, including video, through mobile and other devices in order to improve adherence to medication. A literature research has not shown the use of video in this way but there a number of studies where text messaging has been used to improve weight loss (Haapala, 2009), smoking cessation (Rodgers, 2005; Bramley, 2005) and diabetes management (Benhamou, 2007; Cho, 2009; Franklin et al, 2006; Hanauer, 2009; Rami, 2006) which suggests that e-learning initiatives to patients could change behaviours (Cochrane, 1992; Rand, 1994), while emails to multiple-choice questions are used to support medical students. (Kerfoot, 2008, 2009, 2009b, 2010).
A research question I would like to consider is:
‘Can the health of moderate persistent asthmatics aged 14-25 be improved through an e-learning programme that uses targeted emails linked to tailored short videos online (under 90 seconds) in order to achieve adherence to taking their prescribed asthma preventer inhalers to 80% or more?
The appropriateness and relevance to me of such an approach to research is to start with a clearly define problem and place it in a context where scrutiny can occur. In relation to the Web
increasingly the opportunity exists to use and gather ‘big data’, in this instance therefore to have at one level the belief that the globally, all those being treated for asthma form the data set.
Indeed, patients defined as anyone with a chronic illness who should be regularly and consistently taking preventative drugs for a chronic illness would embrace diabetics, those with epilepsy, Parkinson’s and Alzheimers. It is this bigger cohort, and the the role the Web can play to improve the prognosis of those with chronic illnesses that may be the focus of my interest for doctoral research.
It is vital to understand how people learn insights gained studying for a Masters in Open and Distance Education can in part be summarised in Fig. 6 as from each learning theory comes an appropriate research methodology. How therefore are patients with a chronic illness becoming informed about their condition and why in many cases are they failing to act upon it?
Fig. 2 Learning Theories drawn from multiple sources (Authors given). J Vernon (2013)
REFERENCE
Benhamou PY, Melki V, Boizel R, et al. Oneyear efficacy and safety of web-based follow up using cellular phone in type 1 diabetic patients under insulin pump therapy: the PumpNet Study.
Diabetes Metab. 2007;33(3):220–226.
Bramley D, Riddell T, Whittaker R, et al. (2005) Smoking cessation using mobile phone text messaging is as effective in Maori as non-Maori. N Z Med J. 2005;118(1216):U1494.
Cho JH, Lee HC, Lim DJ, et al. Mobile communication using a mobile phone with a glucometer for glucose control in type 2 patients with diabetes: as effective as an internet-based glucose monitoring system. J Telemed Telecare. 2009;15(2):77–82.
Cochrane, G.M. (1992) Therapeutic compliance in asthma; its magnitude and implications. Eur Respir J 1992;5:122458/
Conole, G (2011) Designing for learning in a digital world. Last accessed 30 May 2013 http://www.slideshare.net/grainne/conolekeynoteicdesept28
Cussins, A. (1992). Content, embodiment and objectivity: The theory of cognitive trails. Mind,
101, 651–688.
Engeström.Y (2008) From Teams to Knots: Activity theoretical studies of Collaboration and Learning at Work. Learning in doing: Social, Cognitive & Computational Perspectives.
Cambridge University Press. Series Editor Emeritus. John Seely Brown.
Franklin, V, Waller, A, Pagliari, C, & Greene, S (2006), ‘A randomized controlled trial of Sweet Talk, a textmessaging system to support young people with diabetes’, Diabetic Medicine, 23, 12, pp. 13321338, Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost, viewed 16th March 2013
Hanauer DA, Wentzell K, Laffel N, et al. Computerized automated reminder diabetes system
(CARDS): email and SMS cell phone text messaging reminders to support diabetes management. Diabetes Technol Ther. 2009;11(2):99–106.
Haapala I, Barengo NC, Biggs S, et al. (2009) Weight loss by mobile phone: a 1y ear effectiveness study. Public Health Nutr. 2009;12(12):2382–2391.
Kerfoot BP, Armstrong EG, O’Sullivan PN. (2008) Interactive spaced education to teach the physical examination: a randomized controlled trial. J Gen Intern Med 2008;23:973–978. Kerfoot BP. (2009a) Learning benefits of online spaced education persist for 2 years. J Urol 2009;181:2671–2673.
Kerfoot BP, Kearney MC, Connelly D, Ritchey ML. (2009b) Interactive spaced education to assess and improve knowledge of clinical practice guidelines: a randomized controlled trial. Ann
Surg 2009;249:744–749.
Kerfoot BP, Lawler EV, Sokolovskaya G, et al. (2010) Durable improvements in prostate cancer screening from online spaced education a randomized controlled trial. Am J Prev Med 2010;39:472– 478.
Kerfoot, BP., Baker, H., (2012) An Online SpacedEducation Game for Global Continuing Medical Education: A Randomized Trial. Annals of Surgery Volume 256, Number 1, July 2012. pp.12271232 http://www.annalsofsurgery.com
Kerfoot, BP., Baker, H., Pangaro, L., Agarwal, K., Taffet,G., Mechaber, A.J., Armstrong, E.G. (2012) An Online Spaced Education Game to Teach and Assess Medical Students: A Multi-national Prospective Trial. Technology and Learning. Academic Medicine, Vol. 87, No. 10 / October 2012 pp. 1443 -1449
KnorrCetina, K. (2003). From pipes to scopes: The flow architecture of financial markets. Distinktion, 7, 7–23.
Rand, C.S., Wise, R.A. (1994) Measuring adherence to asthma medication regimens. Am J Respir Crit Care Med 1994; 149:6976
Rami B, Popow C, Horn W, et al. (2006) Telemedical support to improve glycemic control in adolescents with type 1 diabetes mellitus. Eur J Pediatr. 2006;165(10):701–705.
Rodgers A, Corbett T, Bramley D, et al. Do u smoke after txt? Results of a randomised trial of smoking cessation using mobile phone text messaging. Tob Control. 2005;14(4):255–261.
Zerubavel, E. (1997). Social mindscapes: An invitation to cognitive sociology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
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- Living with Chronic Illness Changes Your Life (theadventuresofarthritisnfibromyalgia.wordpress.com)
- The Ingredients of being chronically ill (brainlesionandme.com)
- An A to Z of chronic illness: Part 5 (brainlesionandme.com)
13 Learning Theories in a SimpleMinds mind map
Fig. 1. Learning Theories. Click on this and you can grab the original in a variety of sizes from the Picasa Web Album where it resides. (Created using SimpleMinds APP)
In an effort to impose some logic these are now grouped and various links also made. The reality might be take a large bowl of water then drip into these 12 coloured inks. The reality of how we learn is complex and will only be made the more so with fMRI imaging and advances in neuroscience.
My favourite Learning Theory here is one that Knud Illeris (2009) came up with – not learning at all, resistance too or defence learning. You just block it. That’s how I did 9 years of Latin and can decline how to love a table – I have no idea anymore what ‘ramabottom’ or some such means either. Ditto French as taught before secondary school and Chemistry – right or wrong, tick and box in a multiple choice each week. Still, for someone who couldn’t give a fig for either this approach got me through on a C grade. For French the ‘holistic’ approach worked a treat – French exchange, then back to hitch through France with some French guys who didn’t have a word of English, then got a job out there. Chemistry worked best with my Chemistry 7 set.
Activity Theory and Communities of Practice are surely in meltdown with the connectivity of Web 2.0?
The nodes and silos are too easily circumvented by each of us going directly to the source. ‘Community of Ideas’ works best for me.
Learning Theories
1) Neurophysiological – stimulus response, optmization of memory processes: Sylvester, 1995; Edelman, 1994; Jarvis, 1987.
2) Holistic – Illeris, 2009.
3) Behaviorist – Stimulus response pairs, Skinner, 1974.
4) Cognitive – Communication, how the brain receives, internalises and recalls information, problem solving, explanation, recombination, contrast, building upon information structures, focus on internal cognitive structures, models, methods and schemas, information processing, inferences.; Wenger, 1987; Hutchins, 1993; Anderson, 1983; Piaget, 1952.
5) Constructivist – Learners build their own mental structures, design orientated, assimilative learning (Illeris, 2009); task-orientated, cohort/collaborative group. Leonard, 2010): Vygotsky, 1934; Piaget, 1954; Bruner, 1993; Papert, 1980.
6) Transformative Learning – significant (Roger, 1951, 59); Transformative (Mezirow, 1994); Expansive (Engestrom, 1987); Transitional (Alheit, 1994).
7) Social – Socialization, a psychological perspective, imitation of norms, acquisition of membership, interpersonal relations (Bandura, 1977)
8) Communities of Practice – The focus is on participation and the role this plays to attract and retain new ‘members’; knowledge transfer is closely tied to the social situation where the knowledge is learned, (Learnard, 2010); shared, social and almost unintentional; legitimate peripheral participation (Lave, ); taking part in the practices of the community. A framework that considers learning in social terms. Lave & Wenger, 1991.
9) Communities of Interest –
10) Accommodative Learning – Illeris, 2007.
11) Activity Theories – Learners bridge the knowledge gap via the zone of proximal development, Wertsch, 1984. Historically constructed activities as entities. Thinking, reasoning and learning is a socially and culturally mediated phenomenon. Learnard, 2010. Engestrom, 1987; Vygotsky, 1934; Wertsch, 1984.
12) Organizational – How people in an organisation learn and how organisations learn. Organizational systems, structures and politics. Brown and Dugiod, 1995. Noaka and Takeuchi, 1991.
13) Resistance to/defence learning – Illeris, 2007
What will the impact be of the Web on education? How is knowledge sharing and learning changing?
Fig. 1. Father and daughter
From four or five months after conception with the formation of the brain, to the moment of brain death we have the capacity to learn, subconsciously as well as consciously.
Whether through interlopers before birth, in infancy and early childhood, or through family and carers in our last moment, days, weeks, months or years. At both ends of life the Web through a myriad of ways can advise, suggest and inform, and so educate, like never before. While for all the time in between as sponges, participants and students we can access, interact, interpose and interject in an environment where everything that is known and has been understood is presented to us. The interface between person and this Web of knowledge is a fascinating one that deserves close study for its potentially profound impact on what we as humans can do as people and collectively: Individually through, by, with and surfing the established and privileged formal and formal conveyor belt of education through nursery, primary, secondary and tertiary centres of learning. Individually, also through expanding opportunities globally to learn unfettered by such formal education where such established opportunities don’t exist unless hindered through poverty and politics or a lack of communications infrastructure (a robust broadband connection to the Web). And individually and collectively alongside or beyond whatever formal education is provided or exploited by finger tapping into close and expanded networks of people, materials, ideas and activities
Open learning comes of age.
By seeking to peg answers to the role the Web is starting to play, at one end to the very first opportunity, at the micro-biological level to form a thought and at the other end to those micro-seconds at the end of life once the brain ceases to function – and everything else in between, requires an understandings neuroscience and an answer to the question ‘what is going on in there?’ How do we learn?
From an anthropological perspective why and how do we learn?
Where can we identify the origins of knowledge sharing and its role in the survival and domination of homo sapiens? And from our migration from the savannas of Eastern Africa to every nook and cranny of Earth, on land and sea, what recognised societal behaviours are playing out online? And are these behaviours mimicked or to a lesser extent transmogrified, warped or elevated by the scope, scale and speed of being connected to so much in such variety?
A history of learning is required.
From our innate conscious and subconscious capacity to learn from our immediate family and community how has formal education formed right the way through adding reading, writing and numeracy as a foundation to subject choices and specialisms, so momentarily expanded in secondary education into the single subjects studied at undergraduate level and the niche within a niche at Masters and doctoral levels. And what role has and will formal and informal learning continue to have, at work and play if increasing numbers of people globally have a school or university in their pockets, courtesy of a smartphone or tablet and a connection to the Web?
The global village Marshall McLuhan described is now, for the person connected to the Web, the global digital fireplace.
It has that ability to gather people around. Where though are its limits? With how many people can we develop and maintain a relationship? Once again, how can an understanding of social networks on the ground inform us about those that form on the Web? Multiplicity reins for some, flitting between a variety of groups while others have their niche interests indulged, celebrated and reinforced. Is there an identifiable geography of such hubs small and large and if visualised what does this tell us? Are the ways we can now learn new or old?
In relation to one aspect of education – medicine – how are we informed and how do we respond as patients and clinicians?
The journey starts at conception with the mixing of DNA and ends once the last electrochemical spark has fired. How, in relation to medicine does the quality (or lack of), scale and variety of information available on the Web inform and impact upon our ideas and actions the length of this lifetime’s journey At one end, parents making decisions regarding having children, then knowledge of pregnancy and foetal development. While at the other end, a child takes part in the decision-making process with clinicians and potentially the patient – to ‘call it a day’. Both the patient or person, as participant and the clinicians as interlocutors have, potentially, the same level of information at their fingertips courtesy of the Web.
How is this relationship and the outcomes altered where the patient will know more about their own health and a good deal about a clinician’s specialism?
The relationship between the doctor and patient, like others, courtesy of the connectivity and capacity of the Web, has changed – transmogrified, melted and flipped all at the same time. It is no longer them and us, though it can be – rather, as in education and other fields, it can be highly personalized and close.
Can clinicians be many things to many people?
Can any or only some of us cope with such multiplicity? A psychologist may say some will and some won’t, some have the nature for it, others not. Ditto in education. Trained to lead a classroom in a domain of their own, can a teacher take on multiple roles aimed at responding to the unique as well as the common traits of each of their students? While in tertiary education should and can academics continue to be, or expected to be undertake research as well as teach? Where teaching might be more akin to broadcasting, and the classroom or tutorial takes place asynchronously and online as well as live and face-to-face.
Disaggregation equals change.
In relation to one aspect of education in medicine and one kind of problem, what role might the Web play to support patients so that they can make an informed decision regarding the taking of potentially life saving, if not simply life improving, medications? Having understood the complexity of reasons why having been prescribed a preventer medication, for example, to reduce or even eliminate the risk of a serious asthma attack, what is going on where a patient elects, sometimes belligerently, not to take the medication. Others are forgetful, some misinformed, for others it is the cost, or the palaver of ordering, collecting and paying for repeat prescriptions. Information alone isn’t enough, but given the capacity of the web to brief a person on an individual basis, where they are online, what can be done to improve adherence, save lives and enhance the quality of life?
My hypothesis is that a patient can be assisted by an artificial companion of some kind, that is responsive to the person’s vicissitudes while metaphorically sitting on that person’s shoulder i.e. in the ‘Cloud’ and on their smartphone, tablet, headset, laptop or whatever other assistive interface will exist between us and the Web.
Fig. 2. Where it ends … more or less
At a parent’s side when they die is a profound experience. The breathing stopped and a trillion memories drained away. To what degree will this no longer be the case when a life logged digitally becomes a life in part preserved?
Web 1.0, Web 2.0, Web 3.0 – The way it was, the way it is, the way it will be.
Fig. 1. Way is will be …
- Way was
- Way is
- Way will be …
Web 1.0 Top down and traditional
Web 2.0 Democratization of information – anyone can publish
Web 3.0 The data takes over – construction and reconstructing itself to form unique and original combinations, even coming up with new ideas?
This is doodled on the back of a handout from the Web Science Doctoral Training Centre, University of Southampton where I had spent the afternoon on 6th February.
Serendipity really – the long train journey in and back and the iPad had run out of juice obliging me to do some reading. In any case, pen on paper is often the best place to express thoughts, to ‘get them out there’ in a scamp or draft form.
This is how Dion Hinchcliffe expresses it:
With a link to hundreds of his diagrams
Related articles
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Openness in Education WK1 MOOC
Get comfortable with the technology
Look around
Set up a blog if you don’t have one and use the Blog Aggregator with #H817open tag
There are badges in Cloudworks if you like this kind of thing
Think about the priorities.
This is how I start a post in my Open University Student blog which I have posted to most days since 6th February 2010. I put in bullet points and notes. I just get the thing started then add to it. My own private wiki. It isn’t a fixed thing. Months even years later I may add to it – there are no rules on blogging, no guidelines worth following. Anything goes today as it did in the 1990s.
Learning Objects: Resources for distance education worldwide
Need
Theoretical
Practice
Shared education as courses
Traditionally through text books, wall maps and charts, videos and DVDs.
Save money, improve content.
Objects and object–orientated design
Hand rolled bread or a supermarket loaf? Are you a connoisseur or simply hungry?
Open scholar – shaped by digital and networked.
Positive feedback loop between openness and creativity.
Alongside more learning at uni, lifelong and flexible learning.
I may try to write a piece that is journalistic, or more like an academic paper, or just record an event, jot down an idea. Rough rather than smooth, where other can tread and find traction, if only to correct, add to or develop the thinking here and take it somewhere esle.
After a paper and a SlideShare and generally following the conversation asynchronously as it occurs I then do the first activity. I should originate a mind map or spider map, but having dwelt on this so often over the last few years in particular I find myself recreating the same kinds of things: the water cycle, Engestroms fungi as an ecosystem, swirling ink or Catherine-wheel like fireworks all in an effort to visualise what open learning looks like.
I use Picasa Web Albums and have some 135 folders.
Each folder tops out at 1000 images. I am onto e-learning II and have 1250 images across the two – this is my e-learning world as much as 1500+ blog posts here and perhaps 2000+ in my OU student blog. When I get a good scanner and Mac in a few weeks time I will digitize some thirty years of diaries and fiction writing too – and ‘stick it out there’ so that it can compost in cyberspace rather than a lock-up garage.
For now here are a set of images that I have used in the past to describe or illustrate e-learning and for the purposes of this activity ‘Open Learning’ as a subset, or overlapping beast of e-learning, contained by the universe of ‘Learning’.
This last one from Dion Hinchcliffe
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- Openness in Education WK1 MOOC (mymindbursts.com)
- Martin Weller and the MOOCers (mymindbursts.com)
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- Olds Mooc Narratives (mymindbursts.com)
- Who Needs Harvard When There Is Always a MOOC? (clarissasblog.com)
- Lost in the clouds in an OLDS MOOC 2013 (mymindbursts.com)
Dreams in the digital ocean
Breaking Waves and Pelican (Photo credit: Bill Gracey)
I’ve described it as a digital ocean often enough so I shouldn’t have been surprised when I found myself in it. That was a couple of nights ago.
Writing to a colleague with a mixture of excitement and concern I told them why they had to take an interest in Web 2.0. I explained that there would be an impact on the Pharmaceutical industry – she works in medical market research interviewing then analysing qualitative data and writing reports. I had written the sentence, ‘do you want to get on your surf board or get washed out in the ripe tide?’ when I visualised myself back in this dream.
I can use lucid dreams deliberately to help me dwell on matters, or just for the fun of it.
I remember being able to go back into dreams having woken up age 11 or so at boarding school: Beamish Dormitory, Mowden Hall School. I may have only been 10. I was in a three musketeers sword fight, three against one. I was killed. I woke and returned in the dream behind the three attackers. In my teens I found a book on it and learnt a few tricks to ‘find’ a dream or two from the night before and then some decades later I found a list of some 27 questions I could subject myself too if I really wished to get a sense of what was going on.
Today it is usually swift and automatic; I know that the dream, its location and events, are a projection of how I feel about an issue. After a couple of months of total immersion in Web 2.0 (Open University Masters in Open & Distance Education, OLDs MOOC) reading and coursework and trying to plan a long term future in this environment I started to find myself in the water.
The beach at Mawgan Porth, Cornwall seems to the spot, probably because for the first time ever in my life I got caught in the rip last summer. Had I not taken a pull-buoy out as a precaution I would have certainly been in trouble as my stomach and back cramped. (I’m a former competitive swimmer gone to seed – its ten years since I did a triathlon). It was a shock to find myself heading down the coast and looking inland for all intense and purposes as if from a bus window that was on its way.
In the dream though, I had a sense of both nerves and excitement at being in the waves just before they broke – my preference however was to get out beyond them.
What I take from this is the need to be adequately prepared – fit for the water and armed with a surf-board (if only to sit on it), even to have something to wave to get the lifeguards’ attention. An observer, and player, beyond the waves, suggests to me research.
This is my digital landscape visualised.
The flotsam and jetsam of old practices get washed away or left on the shore. The ‘players’ creating content in e-learning agencies and departments are on this breaking edge, where the oceans makes landfall.
Related articles
- Anyone else dreaming about the ocean? (lunaticoutpost.com)
- Flotsam and Jetsam (platypiphotography.wordpress.com)
- Carl Jung: objective and subjective dreaming (immanence.net)
- I’ve long visualised digitization as creating an ocean of content. With Web 2.0 this ocean developed currents, weather systems and a water-cycle. (mymindbursts.com)
- Dream Recording (blogyourpassion.wordpress.com)
- Ocean Tides (melancholybeauty.wordpress.com)
Inter-life, Young People and Activity systems
“The Inter-Life Project: Inter-cultural Spaces for Young People to Use Creative Practices and Research to Assist with Life Changes and Transition.” (Lally and Sclater, 2012)
This paper considers the experiences of two groups of young people from quite constrasting backgrounds in their use of the online virtual world ‘Inter-life’ in which you take the name and form of an avator and role play through a game, or through reconstructions of real life. The authors, over a three year period, consider how the virtual world, mirrors, mimics, supports and even prepares the participants for the real world.
My fascination and interest is more than simply someone curious about the effectivess of such enterprises – at a web agency in 2000 these were conversations we had when and where budgets, a fraction of what was required, were made available to thinkabout, mockup and trial immersive, role-playing games in language learnign and for ‘youth awareness’ (well being, career decissions, life choices).
Fig. 1. Val Desire. My Avatar. Leaving her to be safeguard by my more able 13 year old son he decided it was perfectly OK to sell her clothes to raise some cash!!!
As a parent with two teenagers it has been a constant, tangential observation of their use of computers, games and the internet.
Born in 1996 and 1998 they have been on my knee or in front of their own screens before they could talk and have been able to touch type since they were 4/6. Until recently, the day long bable, interaction, negotiation and sharing of roles in various games has been the background to my own efforts to work online – until the age of 14 we kept computers in a communal space – a reasonable effort at parental supervision.
Is my son mentor or pupil, leader or lead in the real world as in the virtual, where he may tutor friends through battle and football scenarios, or on other occasions be the learner – with people I’ve heard, from amongst others, Germany and North America. The conversations do sometimes sound exactly as if these young people are on an exchange visit – between the ‘action’ sharing insights on language, rephrasing jokes and surely gaining insights and life-skills that they can and must apply in the real world.
Both worlds are of course ‘real’. Both are having an affect.
Were it measured activity would be recognised in the brain. Memories are being formed.
They are changed by these experiences. The mind translater or transmogrifies what goes on … even translates or superimposes virtual experiences into the real, just as one superimposes the unconscious. (I need to add a psychology degree to the others at some stage).
To understand how Activity Theory (AT) is used I personally need to see the diagrams, each separate activity system and the interaction in the ‘third generation’.
I find annotated notes at each of the nodes (see above) , or explaining problems within the activity system enlightening.
I may try and recreate the above from your paper, either on a scroll of wallpaper backing paper, or with chess pieces on a very large (door sized) piece of MDF with some marker pens. Ideally I might even want to see an Activity System in an historic form, so have five or six in an animation ‘movie’ to show that it is a ‘snap shot’, a kind of audit of a moment in a live, shifting, potentially volatile scenario. This can reveal itself in video and transcripts of meetings.
I’ve toyed with Engestrom’s imagery (OU Student Blog Post) of this all being some kind of living organism a lichen – Mycorrhizea – but assume that to be a metaphor.
Diagrams for me start to bring the model out of the abstract.
To see tools, object, subject and division of labour etc: as people, concepts, guidelines, artefacts and so on. I find case studies that use Activity Theory very readable, so enjoy ‘From Teams to Knots’ (Engestrom, 2007) for descriptions of AT used in management consultancy like scenarios. Where there is a fit I would certainly see myself using AT for the reasons given in this paper.
In H809 are currently questioning the validity of words. What about graphs, charts and diagrams?
There is often bias, even a cultural position on these. For example, I’m curious to understand ‘our’ obsession with triangle and pyramids. I’ve tried other shapes with AT, putting the triangle on its side, even visualising it in 3d … and, as Web 2.0 is doing it, deconstructing the model and adding additional points of interaction … as Web 2.0 is allowing interaction of all nodes with each other, not simply via each other. i.e. the complex is winning.
Is there a case for research to provide a substantial part of the research finding for others to work on?
Or would it have to be redacted? Or are there practical, ethical and legal reasons why such data isn’t offered? i.e. the research team say, this is what we did, this is what we found, here are our conclusions … and if you’d like to analyse all the original data yourself … here it is.
I’ve followed up one or two further links, alternatives to AT.
Bardram looks interesting and I will be reading more from the likes of Kuutti and Nardi.
I have applied AT, most recently in understanding the flow of activity between the Institute of Swimming and a large, 1,000 member, swimming club, in relation to e-learning provision/accommodation for swimmers or coaches with disabilities. (ECA for H810)
I can think of many situations where I would apply AT from a consultancy perspective in order to better understand what is going on.
- Between e-learning, web agency, L&D department of multinational and learners.
- Across the GP Clinic, Local Hospital and Regional Hospital
- In Swimming, to include the IoS and ASA, and regional organisations, large as well as small and niche swimming clubs and the various players – online tools, tutors, amateur teachers, local authorities and leisure centres.
- On a film set, or in live TV.
Having the time/budget to ‘indulge’ AT would be an theory worth using with any of the corporate L&D projects I have worked on recently.
Turn round is quick, budgets tight and whilst they want you to think about the issues they don’t want me to come along and ‘over think it’.
I liked this quote in relation to the value of and use of theories.
‘From this point of view, theories are more like a pair of dark glasses. We put them on and the world is tinted. The change brings some objects into sharper contrast, while others fade into obscurity’. Halverson (2002)
FURTHER READING
Wilks, Y (2010) (ed)Close Engagements with Artificial Companions. Volume 8. Key social, psychological, ethical and design issues. Natural Language Processing. John Benjamins Publishing Company. Amsterdam/Philadelphia.
REFERENCES
Bardram, J. (1998): Designing for the Dynamics of Cooperative Work Activities. Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work, Seattle,WA, ACM.
Engeström.Y (2008) From Teams to Knots: Activity-theoretical studies of Collaboration and Learning at Work. Learning in doing: Social, Cognitive & Computational Perspectives. Cambridge University Press. Series Editor Emeritus. John Seely Brown.
Halverson, CA (2002), ‘Activity Theory and Distributed Cognition: Or What Does CSCW Need to DO with Theories?’,Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 11, 1/2, pp. 243-267, British Library Document Supply Centre Inside Serials & Conference Proceedings, EBSCOhost, viewed 23 February 2013.
Lally, V and Sclater, M (2012). “The Inter-Life Project: Inter-cultural Spaces for Young People to Use Creative Practices and Research to Assist with Life Changes and Transition.” Research in Comparative and International Education 7, no. 4 (2012): doi:10.2304/rcie.2012.7.4.480
Related articles
- OLD MOOC 2013 – Why Activity Theory needs to be seen, not itemised, to have any chance of being understood (mymindbursts.com)
- Who would you invite to an e-learning dinner party? (mymindbursts.com)
- The Gutenberg Galaxy – first thoughts, from the first pages (mymindbursts.com)
- I Have An Affliction – Models and Relationships (interactioncultureclass.wordpress.com)
- Reddit (2ndselves.wordpress.com)
- Analyzing Computer-Mediated Communication in Professional Environments: An Activity Theory Approach (tc.eserver.org)
Mind Bursts 