abject learning

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Eclectic Odd Fellows located Here, originally uploaded by (nz)dave.

This is old news to readers of David Wiley’s weblog, and to my Twitter friends, but in the coming weeks readers of this weblog will see some fairly significant changes here. As of next month I will be taking on a half-time research fellowship with Utah State’s Center for Open and Sustainable Learning.

My first act as an employee of UBC in early 2002 was a trip to Utah for a conference that was featuring David as a speaker, and I took the opportunity to take him aside and grill him about his work. Right away, he impressed me not only with his obvious intellect and erudition, but with his generous spirit and infectious enthusiasm. We’ve crossed paths all too sporadically ever since. I’ve had the chance to spend more time with him and his colleague Brandon Muramatsu in recent weeks, and the amount I’ve learned from these guys has me stoked for more of the same. I hope I’ve made my esteem for COSL clear already, and I’m sincerely humbled to be working with these people for an cause I feel strongly about. From what I understand, the objective of this project is to explore the actual effectiveness of web 2.0 technologies for learning and todemonstrate what works and doesn’t work with solid empirical evidence. I am all too aware of the need for this type of inquiry.

I have to thank the Office of Learning Technology’s Director Michelle Lamberson for her unflinching support in making this opportunity happen. Part of the appeal of this fellowship is that I do not have to leave the awesome job I have now, a job that has been very good to me. I honestly think UBC is poised to make some even more amazing things happen in the coming year, and I want to be here for them. And I do not have to uproot my family (who have also been most supportive) from a city and neighborhood we have come to love.

With every opportunity comes challenges, and this one is chock full. There will be more travel, and that has already complicated life on the home front. I will be expected to do a lot of things I’ve never done before, as a researcher and as a technologist. So you can expect the themes on this blog to shift, and if I start posting cries for help on learning PHP or Ruby or programming bots this is why. This fellowship is one of the biggest and frankly most terrifying challenges I’ve ever taken on. I very much hope I can reward the confidence that has been invested in me.

I’ve been known to sample Dr. Strangelove myself (and will be doing so again shortly), so this fantastic set of images recreating stills from one of my supreme favorite flicks really broke on through…

The photoset and interview reveal that this show will come to Vancouver’s Contemporary Art Gallery in July. I’m there!

Peace and precious bodily fluids.

Via Boing Boing.

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guts, originally uploaded by striatic.

I’ve got ’em. You’ve got ’em.

“The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never allow us to bring about genuine change.” ~ Audre Lorde

Stephen Downes cites that passage in today’s Half an Hour post:

The implication is: so long as what we’re doing online (such as messing around with Google rankings) benefits them, they are happy to let it continue. But if it begins to threaten their lordship over things (’tearing down the house’) they take the tools away.

I have been thinking about this small saying a lot recently. About how much of our new empowerment is genuine, and how much exists only through the benevolence of the masters.

In some completely unrelated news, Pandora is now US-only. So long music genome project, it was nice to know ya…

And the masters have granted net radio a 60 day reprieve. And there is activity in Congress — but you don’t need a weatherman to know which way this wind is blowing…

http://www.savenetradio.org/

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The Real Costs, originally uploaded by MrGluSniffer.

The Real Costs:

is a Firefox plug-in that inserts emissions data into travel related e-commerce websites. The first version adds CO2 emissions information to airfare websites such as Orbitz.com, United.com, Delta.com, etc. Following versions will work with car directions, car rental, and shipping websites. Think of it like the nutritional information labeling on the back of food… except for emissions.

That’s a screenshot from a flight I took last month.

Via Stay Free!

Cape Bonavista Lighthouse on Bonavista peninsula, Newfoundland, Atlantic Canada.
Originally uploaded by Gebuys.com Photopgraphy.

I almost fell out of my chair when I read the news in my morning paper:

“I told them when I handed in the album and we started talking about touring, I said, ‘Before anybody starts getting any ideas, this time we’re doing a solo tour of Canada, and I will not take no for an answer.’ I put my foot down before anyone even mentioned any shows we were going to play,” Jack [White of the White Stripes] said.

“I told our tour manager and our manager, ‘I want to play in every province and territory in Canada, and I want you guys to call up people and make sure that if we’re going to do it, we’re going to do it. I don’t want to come home and say, well, we technically didn’t play every province because we didn’t play Prince Edward Island or something like that.’ You know what I mean?”

…”When you don’t take the easy way out, something interesting happens. Maybe we’ll have the best show of our lives in Nunavut. Maybe it’ll be a disaster, who knows?”

…”I want to push to see how far we can go with it. Okay, we’ve never done a tour of Canada. Well, let’s not take the easy way out and just play all the major cities. You play Winnipeg, Manitoba. What about the guys who live 200 miles north or whatever? I always think that if I lived in the Northwest Territories or the Yukon, it would be nice if bands came here once in a while.”

I gotta give ’em credit, I’ve been thinking about it all morning, and I can’t find the cynical angle here. If it was just about getting some publicity, they could do some beer company event one-off in Tuktoyaktuk like Metallica did. The logistics of that northern territory swing will be killer. And in addition to Iqaluit (population 6000) and the north they’re stopping in places like Thunder Bay and Glace Bay further east. Hell, even The Tragically Hip doesn’t tour like this. And this will be happening during prime summer touring season — they could be doing a succession of shows in the States or Europe for huge dollars. As it stands, it’ll be almost impossible for them to make money on this tour…

Maybe they saw Hard Core Logo and decided they wanted a first hand experience. My current theory is that somehow Stompin’ Tom Conners, esconced in his hidden bunker in an abandoned Sudbury nickle mine, has somehow gained remote control of Jack White’s mind, perhaps via advanced Mufferaw Ray Gun technology.

Anyhow, I hope to be at Deer Lake Park on June 24 to welcome the White Stripes to Canada in person.

In other music news, I am finally seeing LCD Soundsystem tonight, and it’s been a long time since I’ve been so excited about a show. If you don’t know them, the audio section on the website has pretty much all their stuff.

Just to bring it back home, at the end of their single North American Scum James Murphy’s last line as the track fades out is “don’t blame the Canadians…” which is a nice sentiment. Except lately I don’t feel like Canadians have much justification for our characteristic sense of moral superiority.

Here’s a question that should make any of us think: if you were you to give one last lecture or presentation, what would you say? Presumably you wouldn’t hold anything back, you would share your deepest passions and convictions… but how to use that precious time? What really is your own special contribution to the human discourse?

And of course, the fleeting nature of our lives being as they are, those are not purely hypothetical questions. Carpe diem and all that…

Gardner Campbell has faced up to the challenge, offering up a “first draft” (thankfully) of what that lecture might be. Anyone who knows Gardner will not be surprised to hear that music, poetry and a mania for learning are the core components. The opening section is sheer brilliance. And the rich interweaving of song lyrics, poetic fragments, and Gardner’s own overflowing eloquence brings to mind Jonathan Letham’s wonderfully constructed Harper’s essay The Ecstasy of Influence.

Anyone who reads this blog knows my respect, admiration and affection for Gardner. I’ve had immense and mind-bending fun talking and arguing music with him on far too few occasions. So naturally this talk rocks my world in a very, very big way. (Though it still doesn’t change my mind about Steely Dan, sorry.)

I’ll shut up and urge you to listen to the thing (33:03, 19MB MP3) — gotta love how the time duration evokes 33 and a third. One thing I haven’t mentioned yet is what great fun it is.

I don’t know what my own last lecture would be. But I am grateful to Gardner for once again inspiring me to think a little deeper about my profession and what’s most important to me, while delighting me and giving me something to aspire to…

Yeah, he played the piano some. And did some of the coolest avant-garde radio work ever. And he wrote perceptively, even prophetically about technology and culture.

But in assessing Gould’s talents and contributions, it’s rare to hear much consideration of him as a comedian. But surely his antic achievements are more significant than allegedly amusing Canadians such as Rich Little, Howie Mandel, Leslie Nielsen or Red Green (names cited in all apparent seriousness as evidence of innate northerly comic sensibility).

Consider The Scene, a 1972 radio show (46 min, 64MB MP3) in which Gould pretends to be discussing sports, but actually ruminates on the very nature of human competition, on technology, and all manner of digressions along the way. The first time I heard this, I had no idea it was Gould doing the voices of his ‘guests’ (sorry if that’s a spoiler) — and was amazed when I realised his skills as a mimic. Shades of Peter Sellers. Hilarious and provocative stuff.

A shorter hit — a two minute YouTube video of Glenn Gould on animals and the prospect of inter-species communication via music. The look on Gould’s face the final few seconds of this clip warms me up every time I see it.

Two down, and thirty more short posts about Glenn Gould to go…

My Mashup of Mike’s Mashup of My Mashup, originally uploaded by cambodia4kidsorg.

I was preparing for tomorrow’s virtual session with Alan, D’Arcy, and Jim, doing a search on CC-licensed stuff in Flickr tagged with “mashup,” when I came across the image above. It wasn’t quite right for the page I ended up assembling. But I like it so much, for so many reasons, I can’t resist sharing it here.

Things are still looking rough around the edges, but I actually think this is going to be a fine session. Better than the write-up in the blurb might suggest. As often happens, the act of putting something together has pushed ourselves to some new places, and I have a feeling we’re going to have some fun tomorrow. If you are available Wed April 25th at 10 AM PST, 1 PM EST I do hope you’ll join us.