abject learning

More Canada, originally uploaded by elmada.

So, obviously I am somewhat relieved to see that Canada’s unfashionable and stodgy regulatory culture has meant a relatively healthy banking sector, at least for now… Though our heavy dependence on exports to the USA ties our economic fortunes to our southern neighbour anyway…

But I was thrown by this bit of back-handed praise from a British columnist:

So, yes, let’s hear it for Canada. For once. (Actually, given the number of Britons moving to the old dominions, we should class Canada as a great success story just as we do Australia.) [emphasis added]

I hadn’t realized that the Brits thought of us as inferior children of the Commonwealth. Is this a widespread perception?

Maybe you, like me, have been inspired by D’Arcy Norman to try to take a picture a day. And maybe you, like me, have been inspired by D’Arcy to ride your bike more often.

And maybe you, like me, have missed days in the 365 Days photo challenge; and maybe you, like me, wimp out on the biking when the weather gets cold or wet, or when your bike gets stolen…

And you just have to admit to yourself that you will never be as hardcore as D’Arcy Norman. Man, I’ve been there… every day.

But now you can romp with D’Arcy on his maddest adventure yet:

I just registered to participate in the 2009 Alberta Ride to Conquer Cancer. It’s an epic 2 day, 200km bike ride in the Rocky Mountains west of Calgary, with riders raising funds to support the Alberta Cancer Foundation.

My goal is to raise $2500. But I need your help. If you can, please sponsor me.

I will be training for the ride, to build up to the longer distances and mountains that will be part of it. It’s going to be one hell of a challenge, but it’s also going to be well worth it.

Buy the ticket, take the ride… Like another amigo, the D-Man shows us how it is done.

So today OLT had its monthly departmental meeting, and as part of it engaged in a World Cafe dialogue on what our “values” as a unit might be… I’ll be honest, the sounds of something like this usually brings out the McNulty in me, but I had a good time. It helped that the session was very well facilitated, that I have so much affection and respect for the people I get to work with — I found myself particularly provoked hearing what our student employees had to say.

Apparently “distance education” (or we might say technology-based distributed learning) has been part of UBC for what will soon be sixty years. Being the type of person who talks a lot more in these exercises than I probably should, I offered the assertion that “values” are a product of time and culture, and that it would be hard to imagine the distance educators of 1949 engaging in a “values visioning” exercise at all, much less coming up with the same sorts of values that we would. Most people seemed to agree – if only to shut me up, perhaps – but one person in our unit (whose experience and expertise vastly outstrips mine) strongly disagreed, suggesting that these values are more or less universal.

I think this question speaks to a fascinating thought experiment of a fairly classic epistemic problem.

Here are some values expressed by our “strategic planning and operations” group (not the unit as a whole) a few months back:

I’m ignorant of the history of educational technology (maybe Dr. Schwier or one of his proteges can help) but I have a hard time imagining people in 1949 coming up with a list like this. Even accounting for shifts in terminology, the only potential common threads I see here are ‘collaboration’, ‘service’ and ‘integrity’ (and in all cases, I think what would be meant by those concepts would be different).

Am I being small or shallow-minded? How many of the values that (we might assume) are (mostly) shared by educational technologists today might also have guided our predecessors? “Access” comes to mind… others?

I more or less stumbled onto this fascinating short film directed by Stanley Kubrick’s daughter Vivian.

It’s not a terribly original sentiment to consider Kubrick as a favorite filmmaker, but he is a figure I hold in almost singular esteem. I’ve read a couple of books recently about how he put his films together, both of them from the perspective of screenwriters: Michael Herr’s highly recommended Kubrick, and Frederic Raphael’s less impressive but still compelling Eyes Wide Open. Being so intrigued by Kubrick’s process, it’s a huge treat to see short but revealing glimpses for myself – in fact, I’m fairly certain this was the first time I had ever seen film (or heard audio for that matter) of the director himself.

A good summary of the film’s appeal from verdoux:

…a wander around the edges of quality filmmaking. It’s all here: the laborious nature of the filmset, frayed tempers, hissy fits, in-jokes, crying luvvy-actors, and genuine insights into the creative process. Let Vivian Kubrick (Stanley’s daughter) show you that sly old hound Mr.Nicholson talking dirty between takes..listen in on spats between geeky Mr Kubrick and high diva Shelly Duvall..greet James Mason who’s just popped in for tea..gasp at the uncomfortable tears of Scatman Crothers (odder than anything you’ll see in The Overlook Hotel).”

I was somehow disappointed by the revealing interview with Danny Lloyd, who contrary to his uncanny performance as Danny Torrance seems to have been a normal kid after all. The scenes where Kubrick guides Lloyd moment-to-moment while filming almost give the game away too clearly. It takes nothing away from the achievements of actor and director, but in this instance it feels like a mystery has been displaced by an interesting but nonetheless quotidian reality.

I intend to watch the version with Vivian Kubrick’s commentary and reflections as well. And it’s hard not to think of the Bava at a moment like this:

A quick note to inaugurate my new digs… Many thanks to Novak, Michael, Scott and everyone on the OLT team who has facilitated a seemingly pain-free migration. Old links should be redirected appropriately, and I am impressed and grateful for the work that has gone into preserving the integrity of internal links, as well as uploaded and embedded media from other places… I had a ton of that stuff. There are still a few finickity bits with blip.tv embeds, but I can live with that, and will try to fix some of it manually. If you see other problems please do let me know.

While I don’t plan a radical reinvention, I do intend to take this opportunity to freshen up the Abject. So expect a series of theme changes and different features appearing and disappearing over the next few weeks, and perhaps beyond…

Photo by Leigh Blackall

It was a real thrill to have Wayne Mackintosh out to UBC to talk with characteristic passion about WikiEducator. There is so much to admire about this project: its deep commitment to openness, a technology platform that is both simple and powerful, its innovative approach to training and a community engagement and governance model that is second to none.

All this Wayne discusses far better than I can:

(You can play or download the 68 MB MP3 here.)

There are a couple of extensions that WikiEducator has built for the MediaWiki software that I need to highlight. One, is a Collections Manager which “allows any user to build selections of wiki content, and to export them as a PDF file.” (A surprisingly attractive PDF I might add…)

The other extension is the WikiEducator Package Export, which will export a collection of wiki contents as an IMS Content Package, which can then be imported into a learning management system.

Oh, did you know that Open Office exports in MediaWiki format?

Nothing warms me up so much as yummy radical reuse… This work, in addition to MediaWiki’s other strengths (and the possibility of syndicating MW content via embed code and plugins) makes the case for using MW as a core collaborative authoring engine publishing across multiple applications.

On a personal note, Wayne is leaving Vancouver to take on a post with the new International Centre for OER at Otago Polytechnic… Otago has already demonstrated their leadership with open learning (and it’s mind-blowing to ponder what kind of stuff Wayne and Leigh might get up to being at the same institution). It’s been a pleasure to interact with Wayne both here in Van Rock City and as a travel-mate for events elsewhere… and he will be missed on the wet coast. Happy trails Wayne!

It’s a striking headline: Neil Young fans upset that he is releasing a new album:

Neil Young has announced the release of a new album, and no one could be more distressed than his fans.

For months now, Young obsessives have been awaiting the release of Archives Volume 1 – a vast library of early recordings, in the form of 10 Blu-ray discs. This week, however, reports have emerged that an album of new Neil Young material – called Fork In the Road – will pre-empt Archives, pushing its February release back into spring.

Often, this would call for celebration. Who needs old material when you are being offered shiny, new songs by a music legend? Alas, that’s not what Neil Young’s fans seem to be thinking. They have heard these new songs – on Young’s recent tour, or in a new viral video – and let’s just say they don’t like them very much.

“Would a record company actually listen to this garbage and then agree to release it?” asked one fan at the popular Thrasher’s Wheat site. “At some point, they’re going to have to take a stand – right? I’m actually rooting for the record company here.”

OK, I’ll admit it. My favorite Neil Young product in the past ten or maybe thirty years was a re-release of a Crazy Horse live show recorded in 1970 …and I don’t doubt there is some stuff in the Archives that will rock me, and I know that the production of this Archives project has been insanely tantalizing and slow, going back to the 1980’s… so yet another delay seems like a nasty joke.

Then again…

…this is not the crowd-pleasing thing to do, but in my view any artist doing anything worth anything is going to piss the audience off at least some of the time…

… I don’t look to Neil Young for political wisdom (I remember “Let’s Roll”…back then I half-expected Neil to start a band with Ted Nugent and Sammy Hagar), but I don’t blame him for wanting to express concerns about some dire realities. If he wants to sing that the ongoing wars are obscene, and that maybe the “bailout is not for you” that “it’s for the creeps watching tickers on TV”… why shouldn’t he? He seems sincere and passionate in this video, and what more can I ask from any artist?

…I haven’t heard many of the new songs, but “Fork In The Road” is not that bad… It won’t make anyone forget “Like a Hurricane” but it’s a solid unpretentious electric guitar workout, and I that’s what I want Neil to be doing. I won’t pay 250 bucks to see it in concert, but it could be worse… he could be playing with Crosby, Stills and Nash again.

A lot of people are complaining about the video for Fork In The Road and yes, it’s profoundly goofy… But also low-key and personal in the way that so much of the best new media is… Neil admits in the lyrics that his rock star sales have tanked, that the world has changed, but that he wants us to keep blogging till the power goes out (solidarity signaled with that UStream icon in the corner). The visual joke of having earbuds plugged into an actual apple is a groaner, but that’s always been Neil’s style — do you remember the “I hit my head on the microphone” gag in the Rust Never Sleeps concert film? (That one always kills me…)

The first Neil Young encounter that nudged me toward lifelong fandom was when I was eleven years old, watching the video for “Wonderin”… It wasn’t so much the music as his comic presence that grabbed me. At that moment I saw Neil as a peer of SCTV and Steve Martin, the comic sensibility was more vivid to me than the music…

And in a lot of ways, watching Neil bitch honestly and vamp for the cameras goofy and free brings me closer to a “classic Neil” of my own… One that the Blu-Ray technohippies who can’t wait to buy another “Sugar Mountain” outtake will never connect with…