a real dance creature

sylvie guillem

a new video

his is a video of a contemporary dance - unknown - I have no critical comment to make yet

moblogging

moblogging and flickr la la
dumb names for these things I tell ya - anatomical names are sooo much prettier and convey so much more...
how exciting is the thought of plantaris or subscapularis
flickr is OK I spose - I used to get called flick..
back to my thoughts about sustainable education and still from a postural - somatic - performative persepctive..
Blanchet writes - before it is there, no one awaits it ; no one recognises it for it is not there- the disaster. It has already diverted the word "be" realizing itself to such a degree that it has not begun." The Writing of the Disaster, M Blanchot.

Step 1. Create an account with flickr.com - er this is the wrong link - just go to the first page you dolt
Step 2. Scroll down the page to - Tools - by help two over..
Step 3. Uploading to your very own precious email - hmm didnt work darn it..
get photo - - on that page - add a tag - its your file name - body stop

examining examples of FL marketing annd articles

Examining examples of marketing and articles about flexible learning - and contrasting them with some writing about arts education...

This blog is partially pre-empted by my previous blog that critiques the chaotic environment of an Elluminate (virtual classroom setting). This blog supports discussion and reflection about transformative thinking which results from chaos. Chaos in this sense means a non-linear learning, where the results of the learning activity are produced as moments in diverse situations (Holland & O’Connor, 2004, pp. 31-32).

 “In a highly competitive international market… …is the first choice of thousands of students”. (Youtube, 2008, 32 secs). This précised comment from a marketing video for University of London, recently released on Youtube, highlights the kind of emphases that have been placed on the advertising profile of flexible learning courses, firstly with a presumption that students respond to the call for higher education primarily through the prompt of competitiveness. Interestingly this clip has been viewed worldwide by just over one thousand viewers (I have seen it 3 times for this assignment).

Paradoxically the clip reveals a key reason that people choose this type of distance learning. “Self pacing” is a term that describes the flexibility of completing study and assessment tasks alongside the ordinary juggle of family roles and responsibilities with work commitments. From this term, several critical notes about this particular presentation and its use as a persuasive tool for recognising the benefits of study access as an educational format spring to mind. Access worldwide is touted as a reason for studying this way, with no real mention about associated fees, course related costs. The very real issue of tutor contact and travel for same were discussed at the end of the video as critical. The costs of travel and sustainability issues for family and work challenged students are hardly mooted, nor the very real carbon footprint issue, engendered by such distance locations.

In describing the University of London as a centre of excellence, the advertising blurb relies on previous standards of qualification. These same criteria define meetings between tutors and students for revision, shared discussion about the subject and challenges to the knowledge input of tutors as critical learning events prior to examination. Once again time dense consideration is not compared with the ongoing schedules of work and family.  Important to note is Annand’s (2007) comment that “despite hopes that social interaction incorporating more characteristics of face-to-face instruction will be facilitated in the ‘post-industrial’ adult distance education era, facilitating significant learner-to-learner interaction requires cohorts of students to move through a course of studies at the same pace. As a result, requirements of social interaction conflict with learner autonomy” Introduction section, para. 2).

Similarly, in this same article about re-organising universities for the information age, Annand (2007) (pre)scribes university education (as) “still generally conducted within pre-Industrial Age organizational structures” and thereby discloses a binary appraisal of different education accesses, somewhat muddled by learning theory, teaching theory and the very real financial problematic of maintaining educational quality in a fiscally disrupted era. The third line of this important article denotes cost effectiveness as a rationale for flexible delivery and becomes highlighted as an anxious and economically driven educational philosophy.

Further to this fear is a very real inhibition created by an increased dependency on technological advancements. Students’ access to learning online and/ or at a distance is to a large extent not yet matched by institutional resources, both human (technical support) and machine (computer and their associated communicational programmes). Alexenberg (2008) describes this same inhibition as “similar to the problem of learning a new language” (p. 16). He states that learners will default to linear or relational pattern of recognition as opposed to the integrative conceptually rich confirmation of learning that occurs in response to learning on site.

Keeping in mind the threads of my crituique, I argue that the same resistance to learning through technologically driven media may catalyse a new model for thinking, where the digital world becomes a conceptual agent, and students are provided with unique pathways to think. Annand (2007) concurs by naming this as a consequence (where) learning can be more autonomous and self-directed. However, Peters (2004) also points out that as this kind of learning is “technically mediated” it must be also be “carefully planned and structured”.

A secondary benefit from flexible learning education is described by this same author as “text-based rather than orally based” (Peters, 2004). In a previous blog I have briefly examined the anomaly which resides in the expectation that the whole world knows how to read. Without diverting this essay into a discussion about such an unreal statistic, this discussion points the way to a surfacing problem with flexible learning of the high level reliance on face to face or tutor to student communication. Both the Youtube clip and the article report the desire for students to be in close communication with their teacher albeit little or no desire to know them.

In the article, Anderson (2003) posits the following equivalency theorem: Deep and meaningful formal learning is supported as long as one of the three forms of interaction (student–teacher; student-student; student-content) is at a high level. The other two may be offered at minimal levels, or even eliminated, without degrading the educational experience. High levels of more than one of these three modes will likely provide a more satisfying educational experience, though these experiences may not be as cost or time effective as less interactive learning sequences. (p. 5). In conclusion, the economically driven decisions of distance and flexible learning has not yet made inroads into the teacher hours to student self directed learning ratio.

Reference list

Alexenberg, M, (2008). Educating artists for the future: Learning at the intersections of art, science, technology and culture. Bristol: UK, Chicago: US. Intellect

Anderson, T. (2003). Getting the mix right again: An updated and theoretical rationale for interaction. The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 4(2). Retrieved June1, 2009 from: http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/149/230

Annand, D. (2007). Re-organizing universities for the information age. The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 8(3). Retrieved June 1, 2009 from http://www.unescobkk.org/information/news-display/article/re-organizing-universities-for-the-information-age/

Distance Learning & Flexible Study - University of London External System. Retrieved June 1, 2009 from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLyEiYC_0Xg

Holland, C. & O’Connor, P. (2004). Like writing off the paper: report on student learning in the arts. Ministry of Education: New Zealand. 

Peters, O. (2004). Distance Education in Transition. New trends and challenges (4th Ed.). Oldenburg : Bibliotheks-und Informationssytems der Universitat Oldenburg.

Flexible Learning Practice Blog - orientation and introduction

I am Felicity Molloy - just come back from a massage conference in Invercargill - the most significant thing about this period of time (not the event) was a trip (hauntingly ugly Mataura - we chose to go through the back roads and came by the mill and a dirty sad river and crumbling houses - is this who I am - a traveller on a misused pathway??
Felicity means happiness and Molloy is an oldish Irish name. Born in England of Irish/ New Zealand heritage. I live here but I am not from here. Nor am I from there because I have not lived there for the last so many years - so in many ways I see myself as a gypsy - this informs how I think - about myself and about thinking. Also about knowledge - that it is transient - fixed impermanently in the scribes who care to write it and it seems more recently - I have come upon a perhaps gross assumption - that all people have a capability for flexible learning because all people are capable of reading and writing.
I (dont think of myself as an expert in anything but I have been doing and integrating these things for a long time)
parent
wife
read
write
dance - perform teach critic choreograph direct
massage - clinic teach
practice and teach yoga/ somatics
cook
think
research
there's more but I always get bored with this as a list - the lables are as transient as the emphases on why I do them
I am interested speciously in this flexible learning course. As always I am tempted by the thought of more ways of thinking about learning to inform the framework from which I teach. I had no real aim before starting and my previous aim since was to use it as a way of skills building into technology/ blended delivery.. - I have found disappointingly that this is not the case so instead I maintain my focus and interest (spurious) in the attempts of others to endorse learning through technology as a way of reachnig all students. As a student I have not found this to be the case so suffer. Once again flung about as gypsy - unbelonging.. etc. etc.
as a flexible learner - I find this course more of a brainwash attempt. Oh well. Safe in the thought that no one reads stuff - my absent teachers..
I have no questions or demands on either the schedule or the orientation. My demand for learning skills was met with a negation. Suffering is part of the learning pathway - I am familiar with that.
Some other course I had I realised that what I learnt most was about how other people experience things - Nussbaum (2008) calls this the capabilities approach... more about that later..

Nussbaum M.C. (2000). Women and human development: The capabilities approach.

Oh and I think for this course I will endeavour to only use books as a resource - this may not be possible. I hope that some readers - if anyone does read this blog will make there way in cool clear air to a library (maybe smile at some other human on the way) and find the volume (asking for help from a real live person?) - smell the rich read smell of books and feel that lovely feeling of opening the "right" book, finding the page and wondering how many others have touched those pages, connected their thoughts slowly single focussed like I do, and thought how those same thoughts are then revealed as a shared sensorial moment. Spend time in the roomy silence of a vast spacious cavern of mingled thought. Touched, smelt, seen..
The massage conference was great!
FM

synaesthesia

synaesthesia - being able to capture a sensation through a different sense - the author Boucher - uses the example of coloured hearing - examples which give you/ me a sense of visceral - ity - gut response! may be a good way in - can I feel it (although I am then submerged in this awful feeling that i shouldnt be asking others to feel anything - thinking (notetaking about "access")
and
wow I found this tonight on socially constructed media time.. its about the craziness of dance gesture (there is an interestingly absttract abstract which contains language abuot this subject form a technology perspective... - here it is
the full document was freakishly unwieldy - I ll read it mebbe

in the meantime I thnk of dance gesure as a yet to be articulated vocabulary - reaching to distinctive ways of expressing human evolution..

PRACTICE, SPATIALITY AND EMBODIED EMOTIONS: AN OUTLINE OF A GEOGRAPHY OF PRACTICE

and the way we / me - you / audience / performer interact..this is the next condition of my presentation - more about this later... ps virtual classmates - I will be catching up with you quite soon!

FM

a perspective about the desire to learn

A students perspective about a desire to learn something they don't know much about - a critique?

On Thu, Apr 30, 2009 at 4:47 PM, Felicity wrote:

I am often struck dumb by the fragmentation of communication that goes on in an Elluminate session..
I have come lately to teaching through this medium myself - its like a really really noisy classroom and hard for a girly swat (pre-interactivity I know I know) to establish emphasetic learnings. (learning based on emphases - my word!)
This made me think about me - as a student learner model (not a model learning student) - and my current freakish experience of teaching stuff through a medium I am so new in - I was thinking about how I asked you if I could go back to the Socially Constructed Media course without actually knowing if there is a timetable but trusting that I can fill out some of the (sensed) gaps in my tecknowledge - this trust is based on three assumptions.
1
That there is stuff to know and that will help
2
That whatever I practice will support knowing - its all going somewhere
3
That the order of its knowledge lodging is not so critical?..

Example - going to a dance show the other night and watching the choreographer struggle with a linear narrative - I was reviewing - see Theatreview - Finders Keepers

and as I was watching - re-placing sections in my mind to see if she - the choreographer would be more successful (clear) if she were to edit/ place the dance sections less in narrative order - so that the final piece/ dance became a whole but more through the attempts by the audience to make sense of it.. not the choreographer telling the story.

It seems odd but, for me when watching contemporary dance, often a more successful way of promoting the intricacies of a "story" - hmm filmwise like Sliding Doors with Gwyneth Paltrow..

so whilst chatting to David McQ afta - I thought up something... if Blogging weren't designed as a list - shopping list styles or worse even that what has been stated previously is lost because it has so easily been replaced by whatever else is next (shame on this post colonialist way of thinking) -

but instead was tiled as its interface or even thumb nailed on a page with a graphic "arrow " tool that could link (bit like a database keywords link - see Eric Educational) themes/ topics/ words to produce the next RSS - hmm my techno language is daunted again - imagine how steady the flow of ideas could become - learning to learner..
sort of like Delicious but forward facing (communicative) rather than accumulative..
Is there such a widget that would cope? gasp!!

- would we then be able to install a different face (not interface but a lisable face - say profile) of the learner?

and Response from leigh B - permission to use this feedback below ... and for efficiency sake I have inserted some responses/reactions in brackets - like a dialogue between words.. (FM... )

Indeed, blogging is as you suggest it should be. To you (FM...who? me - or the student that Leigh thinks I might be - the "unknower - the outsider even? or the cause of the session - i.e. the student who doesnt really exist - or the student who reports the process of learning - may be this can become the presentation assignment?),
LBcont. -it is linear. To your committed followers it is too. But to everyone else it is a patchwork or stumbled upon search result, emailed link recommending a post, or a stretch and a yawn followed by an "oh, why not. I have 5 minutes to read it". To most people, blogging is all interconnected and a "hypertext reality" - very non linear. I think I recall a dance performance in Melbourne back in 2001 inspired by hypertext. I'm sure it hasn't made its way to Dunedin yet - just as the Internet hasn't really either. (FM... aaaargh - how is it we have defaulted to your dance experience.. is this what I mean? Is it all I can mean?)

As for the difficulty to focus on such a session as this afternoon. I agree. I get that too.. its a different type of listening, requiring a pretty intense level of concentration. (FM - multitasking is not necessarily the best way of learning? see.. The multitasking generation and Attention literacy -What I found interesting is the way I somatically whirled out of the chaotic assemblage of multi techno learning tools and sorted a vortex - a calm place in the eye of the storm - to postion myself as a reflexive learner - i.e. what was I learning about this situation - therefore not soo much content driven knowledge accumulation - but questioning how do students (like me - distressed? ) learn?).

LB - Which is to say - its not for everyone. Part of that had a lot to do with the fact that we were trying to do a panel. Much the same as a radio panel. Which is inherently very non linear and difficult to do well. Even Radio NZ do it badly. Elluminate is much better used as a lecture delivery tool.. where you, Felicity can relax and watch passively (FM I actively resent this - I dont think I am passive by not being reliant on hyperactivity! - ouch Leigh! You dont know my history - just a virtual- ly empty space of your prejudgement!!)

The rest is back to Leigh...as you would in your average lecture. And perk up again when a prompt for "questions" was given. Personally, I think todays panel was not a great success. But it was worth a try.

Check the course blog for the recording, and see if that makes a difference. Have a listen while you cook a pasta in your PJs after a relaxing bath and wearing your fav slippers (or your equivalent depiction of a relaxed state). If you feel inclined, email one of the panel members (as you have me) and consider how very personal that is as a q and a session - that could go on for ever! Then compare that to attending a panel in a classroom at the Polytechnic, on a cold and windy day at around 4 in the afternoon, with 10 minutes left for questions. Precious are those classrooms. Over all, I'd prefer a panel discussion on a train ride up the gorge. We did that in 2006 with a packed carriage. It was a great success! Equal in distractions and requiring intense concentration some of the time.

LB - PS. Please add your notes to your blog. You're welcome to take anything I typed here btw.