Sunday, September 02, 2012

My answer


The question is: Why are you not blogging?

I read, I agree with some points:
-blogging is part of my thinking process.
-sometimes ideas make you feel so full you need them out.

I disagree with other points and wonder lots about the rest.

I wouldn't say my blog is a diary and yet, it is not a conversation. Not always. To begin with, I think there are few readers of this blog. At least when I am writing, I cannot always picture a wide audience. Maybe a few friends. I don't think I write to say aloud what I am thinking and probably start a conversation. I write because I may choke if I don't. I may feel overwhelmed by a well written post. I cannot just nod. I need to make contact with my own perspective.

I do lots of revisions of what I write. Prior to that, I allow myself to write as fast as I can. I leave grammar in stand-by. I even invent words or dig them up from a long-time-I-haven't-seen-it landscape, so I need to check whether they exist in English or Spanish or neither. Most of the time I am pleasantly surprised to find they do exist and they are even more precise and apropriate to the situation than I had thought. This is intriguing. I believe it's part of the thinking process. A linking from the present to whatever you may have learnt before.

Writing here on the blog is miles away from writing an email -in my experience. My emails, I mean my work emails, tend to be three lines, maybe four. Maybe less if they are to arrange a Skype call or meeting. I am far more talkative here and, no doubt, wordier. Emails are more like talking fast; blogging is more like slow-motion thinking. It's about going down and further down into deep waters, challenging my diving skills. Success is not guaranteed: I may not get anywhere with my ideas. I many times feel as if I were drowning. Writing is a half-pleasurable sensation. I struggle to discover how I truly think about an issue as well as how to say what I mean. Stopping writing means not thinking it through. Not to dare think it through. That's not an option.

I cannot think my post over before on the bus, or while preparing breakfast and then sit down and write it out. That would be too late. A good wording, a sensible ordering of ideas may be lost forever in those precious minutes. If right now my browser crashed and this had not been saved, two things would most certainly happen:
a) I would never be able to write this again. It would sound rehearsed in the re-rewrite, perhaps, lose effectiveness.
b) I may have clarified it in my mind already half-way down my writing and then it would not make any sense to write it again. I would lose motivation to do so.

You say, what about sharing?

You see, I am selfish, I blog for myself. I do not desperately need you to agree. I will not be any happier or sadder if you don't. Feel free because I am. I may be ashamed at my grammar mistakes or spelling mistakes and that's as far as I will give room to those limiting feelings. I have more important things to do.

While I write, I have to dedicate my undivided attention to learning to swim in a new tide. After I review this and publish it, you may even be misguided into believing it a fully planned paper. Far from it. The truth is I know where I start the post; I have no idea where or how it will end.

I do know how I feel when I start: I get a sense that the idea is important and a certainty that someone out there will also find it important. I know how the post ends: with a feeling I have surficed something that would not otherwise have come to the surface from my dark sea of thoughts. It's hard to describe. It probably feels like a hunch or an pang of intuition. It just feels that it is well said, well expressed. Not that I have arrived to the absolute truth. I have simply arrived to a peace of mind I get from being more accurate and honest about how I think. It kind of feels safe to read other people's blogs again.

Then, the job. Review, polish, decorate with photo or not and press publish. All of this should be done at a sitting for me. Reviewing on a next day is something I would do if I feel that the issue is sensitive and I fear I may hurt someone. I know that when I feel it is my truth, I may sound too final and not leave much room for conversation. Not my nicest side, you see.

In all honesty, I can hardly say I feel I contribute to the world. If I do, it's so much less than what I have learnt surfing the Internet. Anyway, here's my drop in the ocean.

I have no control over you and what you'll do with these words. Quote them, ignore them, learn a line by heart. Comment, no comments: it's none of my concern while I write. It would interrupt me to imagine your reaction. As much as you will be welcome if you show some form of published reaction to these thoughts, the value of this post for me does not depend on you.

The question of time to blog.
I can relate to the idea that we make time for the things that are important to us. Because this kind of writing is important, I like doing it with time -free from the deadline imposed by the next commitment. Because , in my experience, blogging doesn't have any planned result as an email does; because it is the process of thinking I am sharing and not some final result I discovered to retell ten minutes later, I need to make sure I will have time to end it or risk it to drown under a pile of drafts. Blogging takes quality time.

Should everybody, i.e. teachers, do this?
Probably not.

Should everybody try to experiment to discover what writing and publishing does to their minds?
Most certainly.

What's next? What if they like my blogging voice? I imagine a newbie asking.

It doesn't mean you need to marry the outcome. You may shift to photography, drawing, telling stories of your own to your children and podcast them...

You may hear people would like you to continue blogging, you may hear others who do not blog tell you their projections of what they would do with that literacy.

So sorry. My blog is simply about my thoughts in the making. It is not about taking over the world or apologising. Least of all pleasing people. I'll write it as long as it makes sense writing it. This is the only diary-like aspect I find in it.

However, if you discover in your blogging experiment that you grow by writing, getting tired of it will be hard. A hiatus may be necessary. Abandoning a learning path for good will feel awful.

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Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Identity: Re-inventing yourself one post at a time

Hiatus over. Sometimes you need to stop the inertia that keeps you going without questioning. What I've been up to and, most importantly, what triggered it is subject for another post. Here I just want to say that coming back from the hiatus is easier when your friends unite in conversation about a topic that interests me a lot: identity.

The virtual meeting is at David Truss' blog post: Blurred Identity Lines. The words that trigger my thinking have to do with something I know David believes, since he had many times expressed so in tweets. Something along the lines that meeting f2f or seeing each other's portrait is not a condition to build these connections. It has not been our case, at least.
I tried to summerize that idea in my comment on his blog.
"David, you’re probably the closest person to my thinking that meeting f2f is something that needn’t happen to make connections. I would like to extend that thought. I think that it would be rather limiting to think that the only meaningful connections to our learning and weaving the fabric of our beings are the ones who we might meet f2f one day. The world is too large to leave so many people and their uniqueness outside."
The expression "the fabric of our beings" is David's. Isn't that plain beautiful? (Warning: I suffer from an instant adoption of that expression). We are weaving a fabric one post at a time. It doesn't matter where, it could well be face to face. The point is that learners like us are into building that fabric, which needs the connections to happen.

An aside to these thoughts. Perhaps a word of warning. I'm not saying meeting f2f is not necessary or not as valuable as it is. I'm saying that online encounters for people who are committed to learning is revealing new aspects of identity building I would not have associated with Internet before. I mean, to the vast majority of f2f people and friends not connected to my profession leaving all or most of our interactions to online spaces or text messages is a sign not to overlook. When meeting f2f or a phone call has a local cost, not doing so is a red flag that tells me we are not that close friends. If I think about my adolescent students, their constant distractions with the mobile phones in class, the overload of importance (and amount of thinking) given to a text message from a significant other can make me shudder. However, this post is about people committed to keep in touch, not merely relying on lazy forms of near synchronous communication. It's about making a large word smaller. It's about drawing materials for the fabric of our identity with a far wider freedom of sources. That's what's new; that's what we have never been able to do before in the days prior to the Internet. I think it's worth exploring what it entails and enables.

Now, I believe David Truss and Alan Levine are attracted to another twist of the same topic: being one, being yourself, no matter where the connection is made. Alan would say (see his comment) he is one Alan everywhere. Of course not all of Alan goes online. Privacy always exist, but he has been able to do away with pre-conceptions that being whoever you are depends on context -offline or online as if it were another place.

For me, "going online" has been somewhat similar to becoming a citizen of another country. Not a new place, but a country -or more precisely a culture- I had been studying for years while becoming a teacher of English. College does not guarantee you'll get some aspects of a culture blended into the fabric of your being. Many teachers of English I know would never "feel" the language in the same way as your mother tongue. But for me, I started having a voice online in English; it was much later that I started blogging in Spanish. I do change the topics I blog about when I shift languages. If you think translating them is easy since I am the writer as well as translator, you might as well delude yourself. Nothing is as difficult as translating words passionately written. A language is not a tool. Translation has limiting effects; there are what we call degrees of translatability and localization of the message to a different culture in an audience. Just as in friendship, are you sharing and being in exaclty the same way with each and everyone of your friends? See? Those are translated versions of yourself at work.

A language change is to your identity development something quite close to choosing connections which are outside your echo chamber. A comfort stretch exercise. Do it or not, it's your own choice and peril. Once you "speak" that new language from your heart, you need interlocutors. Isolation of important aspects of who you are, and what you believe in is death to the development of that richness within you. In a nutshell, don't try to learn a language if you are not going to have significant people around who would interact in it as a preferred means of communication. Same goes for ideas about education: you need context and people to make them flourish, people who share your learning direction, not the findings. Even if you don't do a project together, even if you never meet face to face these people are very important. I can say no one in my staffroom except Gabriela Sellart understood fully what my blog writing implies. I could have never become so clear about what I believe without interlocutors who take me further. That's the value of blogging and connecting to me. The essence is in those shared values and directions, not in meeting face to face.

I know it sounds harsh when I say it so bluntly. Allow me to go back to the word of warning above and extend that idea. Think of this scenario: your daughter has a boyfriend who only texts her, but doesn't see her much. Wouldn't you clearly see something is not committed there? Wouldn't you feel like advising your daughter there is so much more imaginary stuff than a real thing potential in that relationship? Sounds like short lasted, right? You'd probably agree with me that text, chat or other forms of communication are a nice I've-been-thinking-about-you message to support a well founded f2f relationship.

I argue that the opposite happens online for committed learners. Why is that possible? Because in the day-to-day flow of so many bureocratic aspects of teaching, complying with syllabuses and the like, we have lost the disposition to have reflective conversations in the staffroom, which has turned into quick plastic cup coffee places and the odd catharsis about being occassionaly feeling overwhelmed by the profession and parent's or manager's misunderstanding of our job. We make friends out of sharing some circumstances, but not out of shaping together our most valued beliefs. Blogs are not immune to trivia exposing, but let's be realistic: who would spend time writing, transcribing those mundane staffroom conversations or let alone reading them? We are too lazy to create that noise online. Besides, writing is permanent. People may quote you. So when teachers write, we tend to have something to say or we go hiatus.

To build relationships over online spaces as a primary means of communication takes time. I don't know if more or less than physical spaces (I can't bring myself to use the word "real" spaces). I think it might take as much time because it is more relative to how aware you are about what you are after, how much you know yourself and how much meaning you ascribe to isolated words as opposed to words supported by consistency of previous blog posts, transparency about how you got there, etc. Writing about learning as a profession complicates it, because our "business" is change, innovate, then expand and change a bit more. In my case, dedicating so much effort to sharing my self teaching photography and dealing with issues of identity now has made me shift the topics in my writing and it most definitely made me lose contact with teachers who want fun activities or ideas for their lessons. Everything has a price, right?

If you are more "practically minded", I mean, if you set out to write a blog to make connections who might end up collecting partners around a f2f project or collaborate from a distance on a regular basis, then of course, all my talk about thinking and reflecting with online friends sounds too much bohemia to spend your time on. But with that criteria, why ask your students to read a short story by an author who is dead and will never interact with your students via Skype when there are so many authors alive? I wouldn't miss reading Shakespeare because I need a translation of bits of his language, understand his composition and poetic rules and know some historical facts to fully appreciate what I am reading. How could I say diversity is important in front of a student if I am not willing to go the distance to Shakespeare's context? How can we say our blogs are global just because they are online?

Speed of connections as well as instant publications make you think you can get wherever you need and learn instantly all the time or make a thousand friendships with so many followers on Twitter. Mind you, important learning, great ideas and good relationships still take a lot of time. Internet hasn't changed things much there.

I'll remind myself to do the hiatus again sometime. It's a sanity check of my ideas, of myself. I once was told I should care about my online "reputation" and post more often. For those who blog on as if they ran a business or promote it, as if they sold themselves to be called to presentations and build a reputation, it will be hard to grasp what I am trying to say about forging and identity, a presence and from there, build your relationships to end up with a nice fabric of ideas you can rely on. I don't expect to do this with thousands of people. A number that would seat around a good Argentinean coffee table will suffice for me.

Lectura
Photo by me, at a café in Monserrat neighbourhood http://www.flickr.com/photos/yet-one-more-pic/5351561825/

If you get the habit of speaking, shaping your thoughts and revealing the process online as a natural thing to do (i.e you blog), then, only then, I think something magical happens. There is a you that exists (or was born) online and that not all of the people in your face to face world know about. More dramatically put, they wouldn't care to know about. In a previous post on identity I framed the question in a way my friends Alan and David have considered significant.
"Let me ask you once again: Who are you when you write online? Think of it conversely. The offline-only people in your lives who have never ever cared to read what you passionately write about, who do they actually know?"
Don't get me wrong. Don't rule out the f2f people who would not read your blog! Go inwards and ask yourself where you choose to reveal what and how to imbue each space you live in with the nature you've acquired in the other.

There you have some learning exercise to spend a lifetime to master.

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Saturday, March 24, 2012

Identity Revisited


I won't play around this. So let me say it straight: I simply want you to watch this 15' video.



If you don't have the time, or rather, you *think* you don't, then read my post,which is loaded with the hope you will watch that video later.

The story goes back to 2007, but given the fragmentary nature of snippets of writing spread all over the Internet, I am confident to say that this post could well make sense without too much background.

What is more, it could even be worth it without a reader. I actually write this to make sense of my fledgeling thoughts around the experience of meeting people online.

If I had to be precise, I would say it was Alan's post linking to my post where we truly first met (see comments there). What happened to me the day I read his post was very similar to what happens to me now after watching that video.

At the same time, the immediate reaction after watching it was a mental link to a lesson I taught the day before yesterday as well as something I've read in the (online) paper this morning.

The image of one of my students came to mind as I watched. He has heard me speaking in class about RSS readers and blogging and tweeting making email quite a basic and moderate technology compared to all that powerful combo. You can imagine what I was talking about, but the point is his eyes and body language were showing uneasiness until he bursted:

"Oh you are a geek. I hate social networks".

The evangelizer in me was about to go on a rage of passionate thoughts about my online experiences, but fortunately I said nothing there and then. After all, my student had already declared war to Internet possibilities without any prior experience -good or bad or indifferent- to account for it.

Why my link to all this? Because I wonder about the people who do not share the same experiences of the web. People who have never read and felt deeply moved by Jabiz or Gardner also mentioned in the video. What do they understand from Alan's keynote?

What I wonder is, can meaning be made without a prior connection to those people mentioned there? I am sure the intended audience of the video -the Flat Classroom people- already have an idea of who Alan is, probably they've read a post or two of his and heard wonders about him from Vicky and Julie.

Probably someone is now clicking on my blog, not because I am who I am, but because I am who I became for Alan, whom they "know" already.

Two sides to this coin: how to express this concept of Digital Selves and how to grasp it.

Whenever I need to teach (whatever that entails) any skeptical student about being yourself online, I am faced with that feeling of being in a prison I'd call "wordless". Talking about these elusive concepts emerging from my online experiences, I know I simply go around the idea, but I do not always hit it. On the other hand, I am glad there are good storytellers out there who can summarize it in 15 minutes of video, from the experience of loss and receiving my email to the concept of a Personal Cyberinfrastructure. As you can guess, that's not an easy story to tell. Talk about literacy.

I said my thoughts also linked to the paper this morning. I read an article about the Malvinas/Falkland conflict. There was an online, perhaps via Skype, communication from a bar in Buenos Aires with another bar on the Islands. People, not governmental authorities, but ordinary people voiced their feelings about the most controversial issues around the conflict. In spite of the tension of the dialogue, some agreed both our cultures love spending time with friends at a pub. An Argentinean war veteran sympathized with a woman who lost her husband in the 1982 war as she still feels hurt. Neither of them knows the feelings at that moment had been foreshadowed by Thomas Hardy's poem long ago:
"Yes, quaint and curious war is!
You shoot a fellow down
You'd treat, if met where any bar is,
Or help to half a crown."

Would a war have taken place if people had been able to talk online like this 30 years ago? A participant in that conversation said that it will be difficult to solve the conflict while there are people who remember the war, who suffered the consequences and have too many emotions around it. It'll take new generations freer from the pain to really have some dialogue. And that's what I link to my feelings after the video. Alan made me play a big role in his story. I am so moved I write this right after watching -still exploring my thoughts about it. So how can I be the one to have distance enough to make sense of this for the audience of my blog or for my students? Can I? Really?

It seems incomprehensible for those who dread the idea of being online. But then again, Nicholas, who is online, is far too negative about it.

I'll try.

A bit of fresh air


After watching the video today I felt something very similar to what I had felt when I first read/met Alan. It was the first link to my blog, I think. Definitely the first meaningful link. Because Alan had expressed how my idea triggered his thoughts and he developed it with a graph and all. I thought: he is teaching me what blogging means. There is a learning conversation starting here. This is good.

But now, five years on, I see that he was not just modeling what blogging means. He was reiforcing a blogging direction I had already taken. I was *becoming* a blogger. And this is the point: One thing is to simply read and get informed, perhaps learn something, and quite another is to become, to expand who you are. To revisit your identity.

Yes, quaint and curious the Internet is.

How else could it have happened? I mean, I had been reading blogs and seeing people linking to each other by then for sure. Yet that had been reading, not becoming. Blogging can be a loss of time to the outsiders while it feels perfect time spent to the bloggers. It's magic. We are so positive about it, but blogging just doesn't happen unless you make friends, folks.

We are who we are because of those people who care to read and react, let their hearts rage a little with your words and then -this is key- they *do* something about it. Maybe write a blog post, tweet, shoot a photo or edit a video. Even if they feel overwhelmed by your words, they do not comment as fans, but as friends sitting with you at the same coffee place. Only then you can go back to writing emails that make more sense that the ones you used to write before these open writing experiences.

I am so grateful to every reader who has been touched by my words. My voice, my digital self reaching out here to you has grown on echoes of all of them. There are so many potential friendships out there. It's just so much more than I can express.

So do go and watch that video, OK?

It's a video in which I have had the surprise of unexpectedly meeting face to face with a meaningful part of who I am.






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Thursday, October 20, 2011

Why I Write

I cannot resist the temptation to write about this. It's the national writing day in another country, but when online, those boundaries are blur. I'll join the celebration. Here are my thoughts on why I write.

I write to be and become a self that is nowhere else found.

When my mind thinks in 'writing mode', I become a more organized and hopeful self.

I write to make sense. I write because if I don't, bits and pieces of varied, so far unconnected dots, come to overwhelm me and intrude with every new idea. They have been waiting in line and look forward to coming into the light, shining and giving me a sense of peace and balance.

I write because it's a read write web. The gems I find in my RSS create an anxiety or positive stress that urges me to write or let it die unsaid.

I write in the here and now. I write in a way that cannot be left for later. Just like a landscape will yield a different mood and tone if photographed at different hours of the day, when I blog, I need to be an impressionist.

As much as I write to reach out and connect to others with my links, I also write to shut out all the other voices and be in contact with me. No music in my room, no peeping into the Twitter stream. In my silence I write in the hope of being genuine.

I write for my own selfish reasons. If they touch your own, if they erode a sinew of yours, then go on and leave a comment, o RT or write in your own blog about it (I'd much rather you did that). Otherwise, move on: it's all right.

I write because, whether it ends up online or not, I cannot not write. (Believe me I keep as many drafts as you do, or more).

I write to know where my mind is at and also, most importantly, where it is going. I write to know where my mind is before (before is the operative word) I read someone I admire, because, sadly, that could corrupt my own thoughts. It's a shame not to think for yourself. It's a shame to read somebody jotted down what you merely -lazily- thought about or hinted at. It's OK to find that somebody can articulate it better. I'd much rather comment "well said" than "I agree".

I write because if I left this post for later, you may never see the like of it again. I write and publish to make sure that words will not be marred by my over thinking and prevent me from being faithful to my draft conversation style with you, dear readers, as I do now and today.





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Saturday, September 24, 2011

Should've Known Better

This year I've made a point of quitting the use of the word 'should'. Seven months into the experiment, I can (almost) safely say it is now gone. Gone from my blog, from my everyday vocabulary. Above all, gone from my inner thoughts.

Why? How did I start this?
Because whenever I read that teachers should...(you fill in the blank)..., I've always felt a need to resist inside instead of engaging in conversation.

Coming closer to examples, I think we mean different things when we use 'should'.

Generally speaking, in affirmative form, I think it sounds like a disguised form of protest.
e.g. "Every teacher should blog".
Which probably translates to "I would like, I need, it would be nice if... I do, it works for me, why not you? Come on!"

Speaking more personally, it's a bit of a diminishing word.
e.g. "I should blog every day."
Which may well translate as: "I think that my not blogging everyday is not enough" or "I wonder if I ever will". These phrases invite to approval or disapproval. A pass or fail in a test. (Who needs another test, anyway?).

I could go on. A quick search in my RSS reader gives me inspiration, but I won't quote. You go search for yourself and write your own subtitles to the 'should' movie. There is a lot in need of translation written out there.

'Should' works very well in question form, though:

"Why should I believe that?"

See? That's the kind of blogging I want to read on without feeling an internal argument building up inside me to resist it. It engages me to find my own reasons. I may even blog back at you. So we both get a chance to learn.

The mind has a natural tendency to resist change at times. if you mean to create or lead change when you write, watch your use of 'should'.

I hear the word very frequently in my network; I do not stop reading people who use it. I just read between the lines knowing I cannot assume what they really meant until I read much more.

Excuse me for contradicting myself in the same post, but I don't think anyone should anything, be it change the way they teach or publish their minds in blog posts, until they find their own genuine reasons. Anything else is as attractive as thoughtless cut&paste of ideas.

About writing, I think that there are more powerful words than 'should'. Only the sentences need to be more wordy, you need to go meta reflective to create meaning, you need to put yourself out there in the open.

How? Here's a possible structure:
"I would like this to change because..." Paragraph. Concise.
Followed by,
"I shape my thoughts like this because of where I come from". More paragraphs. These are key.

That's more humble and also less pretentious. Bonus: that's is the way I can get to connect to you. Speak from your known corner of the world to the unknown world wide web who might read and write responses, if they feel so inclined. Your ideology need not be photocopied elsewhere. Finland is already taken. Perhaps, we need to do differently.

If you ask me, I like sentences with a deep structure grammar based on freedom, not authority. Freedom from the critic or evangelizer lurking in your voice. Besides, 'should' is a poor authority invoker, in my opinion. It tends to overstep it.

So consider cutting down on affirmations with 'should', please. I'll see for myself what I might do with your thoughts, if anything at all.

Engage me. Show me your learning. I'd rather you tell me your stories.


Time Long Past
Time Long Past, by me on Flickr

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Sunday, September 18, 2011

Writing Phantoms

"It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen..."


Expressing yourself. Online. Making connections. Learning all along. That's the common denominator of what we are doing here.

But there are differences. Huge.

Daily Homework

What I enjoy about writing my thoughts online is that these posts give closure to a string of ideas and free me to turn onto things I had not considered before. Sometimes they are like a soup -cooking slowly and mingling what were merely ingredients, spin off ideas read in blog posts. This post has a network of ingredients.

My last post on identity made me realise that I write with a premise -or an illusion- of being understood. Actually it was Graham Wegner's comment that painted it quite clearly to me:

"Claudia, I'm never quite that confident that I have understood your intent in your blog posts, but I am confident enough to know that any written content is open to interpretation from the reader's perspective. Even text that is interpreted differently from the author's intent is valuable and pushes the reader to consider things from a new angle. And if they present those conclusions or ideas back to the original writer, it can open up new insight that wasn't originally considered. If all your readers understand perfectly what you are trying to say, then they may have nothing useful to add to the conversation!"

Interpretation is open source by nature. While my illusion of being understood probably springs from a genuine need, in a networked world, being misunderstood matters most.

Graham says more,

"Maybe in the online connected environment, we can bypass what is considered essential personal detail trading in the face-to-face world, and get down to the emptying of one's still embryonic concepts out to an unknown but open minded audience."

Hopefully someone will 'misunderstand' and leave thoughtful comments like these! And yet, we still long for those details. The unimportant things that make us human.

While slowly mentally drafting this post, making sense of my own need to be understood, David Truss alerted me of Amalia's post, Voice Found. Now What?.

There you have a voice struggling beyond whatever may be a stumbling block for me; for when I write, I completely trust a connection will be made. I simply don't see how it cannot. Unless I change my style to how-to manual writing mode. There's you out there. I know that for sure.

Amalia says,

"So, instead of saying that I’ve found my voice, the bigger truth is that I trust my voice. I know when I’m going wrong. My bones tell me. And if I can stay true to that, then I’ve done something. The problem now is choosing what to say. There are so many things I’m passionate about..."

Her need is different from mine,

"This blog is forcing me to choose. Well, let me put it this way. For the sake of a sense of community around my blog, I want to focus a bit more. Even if it’s only me and two other people, I want us to chew on some common topic together. (...) Show me what You want me to do with this voice. I want to be useful, I want to harmonize, I want to connect."

The post left me wondering and with a strange sense of sadness. I think it's important to find a voice, but it's not enough. Now I see it differently. I'm afraid I disagree with Amalia. The problem is not choosing what to say. The problem is trusting yourself enough to stand at the edge of the writing cliff and make a bungee-jumping leap of faith. Trust your voice to be neither right nor wrong. Connections? That's the easy part: they are the inevitable consequence of sharing your-self.

I am reminded of a lecture by Virginia Woolf: Professions for Women. Fifteen years ago, I would read that lecture voraciously.

Flashback. I remember a bicycle going by in front of Cambridge University on a cold January, sunset, organs playing -one clear, another one fading-, the walls looking like sepia-toned photographs. Me, walking and holding a copy of A Room of One's Own next to my heart. I was planning to buy a flat of my own in Buenos Aires, to be free of paying a rent forever. Maybe write. The Internet was not a dream yet.

I hear Virginia again. (Are you still reading me, Amanda?).

"While I was writing this review, I discovered that if I were going to review books I should need to do battle with a certain phantom. And the phantom was a woman, and when I came to know her better I called her after the heroine of a famous poem, The Angel in the House. It was she who used to come between me and my paper when I was writing reviews. It was she who bothered me and wasted my time and so tormented me that at last I killed her. You who come of a younger and happier generation may not have heard of her--you may not know what I mean by the Angel in the House. I will describe her as shortly as I can. She was intensely sympathetic. She was immensely charming. She was utterly unselfish. She excelled in the difficult arts of family life. She sacrificed herself daily (...)

I turned upon her and caught her by the throat. I did my best to kill her. My excuse, if I were to be had up in a court of law, would be that I acted in self-defence. Had I not killed her she would have killed me. She would have plucked the heart out of my writing. For, as I found, directly I put pen to paper, you cannot review even a novel without having a mind of your own, without expressing what you think to be the truth about human relations, morality, sex."(...)

Thus, whenever I felt the shadow of her wing or the radiance of her halo upon my page, I took up the inkpot and flung it at her. She died hard. Her fictitious nature was of great assistance to her. It is far harder to kill a phantom than a reality. She was always creeping back when I thought I had despatched her. Though I flatter myself that I killed her in the end, the struggle was severe; it took much time that had better have been spent upon learning Greek grammar; or in roaming the world in search of adventures. But it was a real experience; it was an experience that was bound to befall all women writers at that time."

At that time? The lecture was written in 1931. The phantom was the impediment to say exactly what you think while being a woman in a man-writer's world. I could harry to say that the 21st century is different, that there are no such gender differences; however, I think we do have phantoms lurking.

I still see it is more likely for women to take care of the home than become prolific bloggers. I still find men more straightforward and less puzzled by dichotomies of online vs offline identity. Less concerned with having to open different blogs because they found new topics of conversation, which may cause worries about losing audience or clicks. I may well be over-generalizing, but men are more likely to be beyond all that. They would probably not write a post like this one. Or take as long as I take to write it!

I had a Skype call with my friend Alan Levine recently. A first synchronous talk after years of connecting online. I remember Alan told me about how he writes. He needs to get it said and published. He is fluent about blogging. I don't imagine too many drafts sleeping in his blog editor.

Alan left this comment on my previous post,

"We talk about 'going' online like it is a place, we never talk about other media like that. And given the way mobile connectivity enabled the communication, I hardly see my online and not online modes as being so cleanly split.

I exist as one Alan: there are things I don't put online but I do not see a neat division."

Perfect.

We are all sharing, connecting, learning. There are interesting differences, though. Amanda is struggling with the phantom of connecting; I am struggling with one of elusive expression. Meanwhile, Alan is being himself.

You need to find your voice and your purpose. And then, not to be tongue-trapped by anything. There's some learning job, if you are patient. After that, there is the most difficult of all. To react genuinely to every single blog post that stirs your mind, to every agreement or deep disagreement with the closest people in your network. For that, you'll probably have to learn to kill a few phantoms. Even when you think you have mastered that exercise, it would not be surprising to find yourself again back to square one in the network game.

Note to Self
Remember the basics: never ever assume you're that connected, well- expressed or understood.

Now make that as big or small as you want.

Carry on.





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Sunday, May 22, 2011

Blogworthy Tweets II

This post is a sequel. Here's number 1 in 2009. This new selection was made from the list Twitter provides of my own tweets re-tweeted. They are mostly from 2010.

Why these?
-Because they are very telling of my own interests in networking.
-Because they are the result of dialogues with my learning buddies that sparked a synthesis.
-Above all, just 'cause.

With such three powerful reasons listed above, I can save you any further introduction and proceed to embed a few snippets of my thinking aloud.

Learning

If the learning experience is just for the student, if it is unidirectional, is it learning? Just saying.less than a minute ago via web Favorite Retweet ReplyClaudia Ceraso
fceblog


Voices

@budtheteacher Blogger/writers face -at least- two problems: a) find your voice to express. b) not to get trapped by it.less than a minute ago via web Favorite Retweet ReplyClaudia Ceraso
fceblog


Experts

@dkuropatwa Now seriously. If people *decide* you are an expert, there isn't much to control there.Keep your learner attitude with them.less than a minute ago via web Favorite Retweet ReplyClaudia Ceraso
fceblog


Excuses

Both children and adults can find excuses for not learning. The difference is that children' excuses tend to be creative. Adults copy&paste.less than a minute ago via web Favorite Retweet ReplyClaudia Ceraso
fceblog


People

@budtheteacher Networking is about choosing special people. What makes them special is you cannot avoid learning when they're around.less than a minute ago via web Favorite Retweet ReplyClaudia Ceraso

fceblog


There.

It feels much better to know you have saved a few thoughts from ever wondering in cyber-outer-space.

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Thursday, October 21, 2010

Sharing

I could simplify things by saying that I've just seen Dean Shareski's keynote for k12online, hence post. If you hear him speak, have a notebook at hand for he can compel you to write! But that is not the origin of this post.

Let me start by digressing, which is perhaps one of the most important things a blogger can do.

I was deep in thought in my RSS considering a post from Gabriela , who had just seen Dean's keynote, mentally linking it to a conversation we had a couple of weeks ago about our stagnant blogging and then, Dean shares Alan's post pointing the missing blogging link in his preso, so I watched the vid.

Mind you, these people are all what I call direct contacts. By this I mean I do not need anyone to tweet out loud that they write well. Yet, I have been reading them today because they have the habit of sharing side thoughts the moment this intimate Internet proximity of reading each other makes them tick and learn.

Dean starts his presentation with a quick series of screenshots from a few of the many blogs he reads and learns from -or should I say "with"? I know all of them. (I recognise my fceblog, by the way ;-) Thanks!) My first impulsive reaction was: closed circles. Echo chamber. A split second, because these thoughts quickly gave way to other jaw dropping conclusion of how closely intertwined our collective ideas can be. Each of us has a distinct style. We have diverse teaching contexts. Still, we seem to move ahead together when the collective message makes sense. All of this is possible via sharing. I have never met most of my key contacts f2f; so for me, everything I've learnt informally, everything that has made a deep impact on my practice, I learnt by simply sharing.

Back on track and on the post proper.

Half way down the presentation, Intrepid Teacher tells the story of the creation of a blog for his daughter. As a side note, he mentions the blog would avoid the need to answer or send some family update emails. Then, his sharing takes off and reaches new connections. The mention of email reminds me of the springboard for my idea of a blog for my class in 2006: avoid emailing long answers with private explanations that actually needed to be shared by the whole class.

I've never been surprised by this need to shift from closed email to public blogging. However, Gabriela, who knows her colleagues at school never land on her blog, decides to write them an email to let them know about k12online! To keep her mind sane, she decides that the email can be a good gem of a post and it is. I read it, can't help writing this, you get the point.

Yes, Alan. Blogging is alive. Blogging is long term and Twitter is probably an ephimeral passion. The tool choice is irrelevant when the sharing attitude is absent. Sharing is the love underpinning it all.

Ah, the edublogosphere. Talk about an amazing story.

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Sunday, May 09, 2010

An Aside

Day: Friday evening, May 7th 2010.
Place: Colegio Las Cumbres, downtown Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Scene: Stephen Downes had just finished his informal talk with teachers. Everyone is walking about the room.

I just wanted to say thank you when a small talk started. The fueling ideas after attending the morning presentation, the engagement of the teachers debating how far to guide students was all there. Stephen said something about noticing the enthusiasm among us. He added it would be even more interesting if people disagreed with him at times.

I deliberately took that as an invitation to voice disagreement. I found myself unable to do so, though. My own mind was a bit clouded with so much f2f blog talk. I tried to explain to Stephen why I could not disagree yet. This is my best recall of what I said mixed with what I meant.

When I hear an idea explained concisely, articulately organized and backed up by effective domestic examples, I find it hard to disagree immediately. I simply know that I will have questions. Eventually, at a later moment of the day, or perhaps some other day, I will find the points where inconsistencies with my own thoughts will provoke a need to challenge both his message and my previous way of thinking. I cannot help needing more time for disagreement to happen.

There were underlying assumptions to why I felt a need to explain this to Stephen. I believe that Stephen is an expert blogger who does not share these thinking or writing time limitations. He has learned a kind of fluency of expression regardless of the writing conditions. He can protect his mind from a hectic airport and decide to write like this. I admire that capacity. Yet, that kind of admiration is something I will need to question. Particularly if I find myself using it as an excuse to limit my own writing capabilities.

I said to Stephen that today I listen to him and give him the benefit of the doubt. For now, I am just taking my mind on a ride towards the message. Then, I'll take a few steps back to think further. I will try to post reflections or questions here in my blog. Sometimes, I need to write my mind out before meeting the lecturer. I find it is a blogger's advantage to do so. To write the here and now of my thoughts saves them from being taken ashtray or buried forever by a new glittering idea. I think I write to save my personal fledgeling thoughts. What I do not write today, I will never write again. Ever.

By then, a few teachers had gathered to listen to this. Stephen looked at them and concluded: "This is what we do when we blog".

Since last Friday, the personal pronoun 'we' has taken on a new meaning.


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Friday, May 07, 2010

Liveblogging: Stephen Downes in Buenos Aires

Edited on May 8th.

Yesterday morning I attended the presentation Stephen Downes gave at Fundación Telefónica in Buenos Aires. Slides, video and audio.

I had many times participated in other blogger's liveblog, but I had never experienced being the liveblogger. As the conference proceeded, I found myself shifting roles in the way I blogged.

At first, I had the idea of an audience in mind. Probably I had a memory of myself being a remote enthusiastic participant at the other end of a screen, curious about the experience inside the conference room. The first role was the reporter of the event. A window for a remote audience to peep into.

I tweeted the link. I realised people were probably lurking, pondering whether to join me to say something or not. I moved a step away from that in my mind. Having read Stephen since 2006, the talk was familiar at first; however, the wording of the message was new at times and it started to engage me. I tried to separate what I heard from Stephen from my own thought sketches by enclosing mine in parenthesis. I became a side commentator. When this kind of involvement with ideas happens -generally when I blog- I feel a need to turn off the music and make my room as quiet as possible. At this point, the thought that viewers could interrupt me with their own reactions to the video streaming suddenly made me uneasy.

I had to choose. Should I continue writing for an audience or just for myself? I stopped checking the Twitter tab on my netbook. I had a good view of Gabriela Sellart's screen sitting next to me. I could see her exchanging thoughts with Diego Leal from Colombia. I felt that was enough. I stayed in an inner network circle, an echo chamber perhaps. Most viewers were busily sharing tweets as well as noisy (by which I mean, uncommented) re-tweets and tagging them #downesba. A tag I had suggested in Facebook to join teachers who would like to meet Stephen for an informal talk, accidentally became the tag of Stephen's visit to Argentina, not just Buenos Aires. It conveniently became a stream to gather ideas separately from my liveblog. A place to visit later.

I went into blogger mode. Involved in semi-private reflection. Trying to extract new meaning to a message I had heard many times before. Obtaining meaning for me is like going for a ride on a carrousel (1). You go round and round seeing the same places from your own movable centre. Sudden changes in perspective make the known seem unknown again. The man standing and taunting the children with the key to a free ride prize is always standing at the same corner doing what he dexterously does. Going round and round is no guarantee you will get it. There I was sitting and blogging about connectivism again.

The value of this experience I share may probably be strictly personal. This liveblog documents the shifting focus of attention of my mind, from a word spoken to portions of Stephen slides, through emergent flashbacks of the days when I studied Chomsky's generative grammar and back to the speaker. At times, the tip of the iceberg of a question appeared. I was lucky to be able to relax at the brief question time. Stephen would meet with a few twitterers later in the afternoon for an informal talk, so I saved my questions for later. More about that, when Stephen shares the recording of that meeting.

The following are my raw notes. Reflection posts will follow.





Note on the tool used. I unsuccessfully tried to pull in the hashtag #downesba into the stream of the liveblog. Just one tweet made it. Perhaps it was a limited feature in the free version of the tool.

(1) The metaphor of the carrousel is a stretch from the way the writer Juan José Saer describes the experience of writing. I've been playing with it in my blog in Spanish.

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Sunday, October 04, 2009

Blogworthy Tweets


These tweets of mine need not be noteworthy, except that I want to make a note of them. To make sure they do not vanish in cyberspace. They deserve a spot in this personal learning scenario.

Many an important idea, a moment when my thoughts take a new turn take place in Twitter. I should probably be blogging them out and state exactly what I meant. Probably. Perhaps their value lies in keeping its shorter original form.

These are not all of my tweets. Just the ones that were not, but could well be extended tweets one day in this blog.

Seeing the selection from the last two months makes the pattern of my twitter interests only more evident. Funny when I think those topics are not my most frequent blog tags. The people I reply to do not always get a link in my posts. Yet all this backstage underpins my blogging.


September 2009

About lurkers and their presence traces.

The "I like" in FB may not add to the conversation, but it does to presence. Maybe the one + thing compared to Twitter.3:56 PM Sep 30th from web

  1. @cogdog Blopgposts need a sort of comment aggregator. But still, people comment in private FB or in Twitter without an @ . How to RSS that?3:15 PM Sep 27th from web in reply to cogdog
  2. RT @budtheteacher: We can never know the totality of our influence in the world, or what conversations happen in response to our work.2:07 PM Sep 27th from HootSuite


About Twitter (why not).

Lurkville-There are so many untweeted thoughts, so many unwritten comments. Every time I shut up, who learns? How much have I missed?1:57 PM Sep 25th from web
  1. I joined twitter 962 days ago - http://whendidyoujointwitte... ? Uso Twitter hace 962 días. Ergo existo. O algo así.12:17 PM Sep 24th from web
  2. Considering my Twitter network http://tinyurl.com/ybqm6q4 . Linktribution @mweller11:55 AM Sep 24th from HootSuite in reply to mweller

Thoughts on audience affecting the way I write. The backchannel before the post Edubloggers Meta-conversation
  1. @PhoenixDennis #2 Lately, I am struggling with this when I write. I understand I need to speak for a known and unknown audience.All at once.12:14 PM Sep 23rd from web in reply to PhoenixDennis
  2. @PhoenixDennis #1 Granted. Audience affects choice of syntax in writing style. But the target reader of a blog may/will change.12:11 PM Sep 23rd from web in reply to PhoenixDennis

Thoughts on story-telling from tweets or comments:

  1. I must say that when I chat with @gsellart my reflection levels soar. That's a sure sign I am close to one of the key nodes in my network.5:31 PM Sep 22nd from web
  2. @aletorto e.g. This beautiful post in Spanish explaining the birth of a novel from chat and blog archives http://tinyurl.com/l8mym55:26 PM Sep 22nd from web in reply to aletorto
  3. Tweeple: Would you say there is a distinctive blog post language style different from the way you speak in a comment? Wondering.5:24 PM Sep 22nd from web
  4. @aletorto I wouldn't publish a private chat. But you're right. They make up a kind of story line. If your eyes are inclined to see it, sure.5:21 PM Sep 22nd from web in reply to aletorto
  5. @aletorto Write that story? Maybe another one -Wink @gsellart.5:19 PM Sep 22nd from web in reply to aletorto
  6. Note: The previous tweet is a line I almost add to a private chat with Gabriela, but then I realised it was worth sharing.5:07 PM Sep 22nd from web
  7. @gsellart It's possible to make a story out of a few twitter exchanges. You just need a story-teller. Fiction everywhere.5:06 PM Sep 22nd from web
  8. "an always updated 'world wide corpus' is changing the very nature of the language we teach" @carlaraguseo @petesharma Yes, yes, yes.3:38 PM Sep 22nd from web

A thought on web presence. The silence of lurkers.

@dkuropatwa So true. They may feel at a loss for words to comment. Maybe an "I like this" in FB when you tweet posts.9:17 PM Sep 16th from web in reply to dkuropatwa

Writers' block
  1. @nancito Buen punto para tener en cuenta en la evaluación de herramientas/procesos. +potencial -practicidad = riesgo de dolor de cabeza!2:33 PM Sep 11th from web in reply to nancito
  2. What is it about the preview of a post that allows you to see the necessary edits? Magnifying glass effect.1:53 PM Sep 11th from web
  3. Taking a Twitter break. Post writing got stuck in the final para. Those things.12:23 PM Sep 11th from web

Where are the tweet-worthy comment threads?
  1. @kalinagoenglish Checking out the tag now. So #ocp lists posts with great comments. Interesting.12:06 PM Sep 10th from web in reply to kalinagoenglish
  2. @jenwagner Right. I'd like links to "good conversations" as well as "good post". Let's give the term 'good' some suspension of disbelief.12:01 PM Sep 10th from HootSuite in reply to jenwagner
  3. @willrich45 The scarcity of admins to speak about the teaching of writing is thought provoking in itself.11:56 AM Sep 10th from HootSuite in reply to willrich45

  1. Tweeple, just wondering. I notice lots of "New Post" announcements here, but few "I'm commenting here". Why is that?11:43 AM Sep 10th from HootSuite

  2. Draft Posts- What to do?
    @datruss Get that post drafted somehow. Posts have such a short-term head life.11:38 AM Sep 10th from HootSuite in reply to datruss
  3. @glassbeed I've been through the long hiatus. Lost some stats I had. Learning value intact. Just my experience. (I'll read your post later).11:35 AM Sep 10th from HootSuite
  4. Tweet sifting. Starring a few to come back to. Feeling more like going asynchronous in my reading than reading live or on a cloud.11:31 AM Sep 10th from HootSuite

  1. @gsellart I remember the Tumblr we used for playing and quick posting. Not what I have in mind now.3:29 PM Sep 8th from web in reply to gsellart
  2. Organising draft posts. Sort of.3:09 PM Sep 8th from web
  3. @gsiemens "wiki technology" Has the speaker clarified terms for his talk? Or is that assumed as the sun rising in the East? Odd synecdoche.10:27 AM Sep 8th from HootSuite in reply to gsiemens
  4. Anyone else keeping draft posts? Problem: my mind has shifted view point angle.Solution: a) publish untouched + edit note. b) re-write. c)?10:13 AM Sep 8th from HootSuite

Ah the faces of students discovering how much google can tell about them. Awareness shortcut.8:52 PM Sep 7th from TwitterGadget


August 2009

These were the exchanges before I wrote Content 1st, People 2nd
  1. @budtheteacher You're right. I'll try to express it in a post.1:49 PM Aug 29th from web in reply to budtheteacher
  2. @jenwagner How can we trust speakers or conferences which do not intend to reach out or be reached?1:44 PM Aug 29th from web in reply to jenwagner
  3. @budtheteacher I get the illusion I have potential contacts nearby in BA. You've got to see their content in blogs before you connect.1:42 PM Aug 29th from web in reply to budtheteacher
  4. @budtheteacher I think I sense a lot of people 'having to' speak about tech now among ELT teachers. The opposite of 2006 when I started.1:39 PM Aug 29th from web in reply to budtheteacher
  5. It is not forced. Learning just happens. Forget about saving and classifying. When you need, it'll be there.1:32 PM Aug 29th from web
  6. 'One new super tool to revolutionize blogging'. 'This is a must-follow person' Says who? Nah, content 1st, resonate with me, then we'll see.1:30 PM Aug 29th from web
  7. There's a point when you must stop looking for like-minded nodes in the web. If they've been blogging, content would've joined us already.1:15 PM Aug 29th from web
  8. Just 1 speaker in a BA event who will talk on 21st century skills. 1st thought: Wow. 2nd reaction: check if they tweet. They don't. Sighs.1:09 PM Aug 29th from web


Thoughts on blogging trends and learning in counterintuitive ways.
  1. Automatic reposting of delicious links into a blog. Frankly, I simply can't help ignoring those in my RSS. Thoughts?11:26 AM Aug 27th from web
  2. From my inbox:Link exchange request. Says she reads and likes my blog. Wants a link to her on my sidebar. (There's no sidebar in my blog).10:57 AM Aug 27th from web

  1. @elaws Personalmente no me gusta la idea de la división en capítulos. Si el tema es serio=1post. Blognovela=3, 4 o los que quieras.2:17 AM Aug 27th from web in reply to elaws
  2. @elaws Digamos que algunos subtítulos en negrita en un post largo pueden ayudar a tentar una lectura parcial. Después decido si es completa.2:14 AM Aug 27th from web in reply to elaws
  3. The things I will not learn now
    Surprised at the sad news. RIP @glutzky Learned a lot from our different points of view. Shared others to the corehttp://tinyurl.com/24sm861:55 PM Aug 26th from web


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