Techlearning blog

Yesterday, I was browsing in a used bookstore and found something more than the hand-me down literature in the bookshelves. Posted on two of the walls in the shop was an exhibit of what was described as “found art.” It was in fact a collection of all the things that were found within the pages of the used books. I guess people sell their used books but forget to take out what they leave inside as bookmarks. There were all kinds of things: grocery lists, receipts, baby photos, to-do lists, even a very intense and personal love letter. Scanning the artifacts gave me the feeling of an anthropologist, but it also made me uncomfortable, thinking that the exhibit was a breach of privacy. Surely, the people who had left these things did not intend for them to become a wall display. Some of the artifacts were most likely from local people who had either traded in their used books or sold them to the store. What would their reactions be if they returned to the store to find their baby’s photo on the wall? What would the response of the author of the love letter be? Would the original owners have the right to reclaim the pieces or have they rescinded that right when they handed over the books without carefully inspecting them for these personal effects?
Like it or not, much of our lives are now like those walls, whether by choice, or by chance: open to review and examination on the Internet.

On the positive end of the spectrum, an example of this may be how many of us are now learning in public in ways that were never before possible, through tools such as blogs, wikis, podcasts, etc. Though this approach of putting your learning out there for all to see can be daunting and challenging, I firmly believe the rewards are enormous. As a personal case in point, I believe that I am a better teacher by reflecting on my practice in public, opening up my professional development to a larger network of participants ---my learning network--- for feedback, challenges, and even accountability.

On the “not so positive” end of the spectrum, an example may be a photo posted on Facebook of some youthful indiscretion, that just doesn’t go away, could potentially even become “viral,” and may have a compromising outcome on future opportunities (such as college admission or employment). While many of these “youthful indiscretions” are not new, the public and global spotlight on them has evolved far beyond what existed when my generation was “young and stupid.” If you “messed up” in the days when I was in high school, chances are whatever public thrashing or judgement you received would eventually “fade away” and certainly couldn’t be “Googled” years later, when you were older and wiser and had “cleaned up your act.” No matter how hard we try to warn the “digital natives” of the potential negatives of giving the skeletons in their closets a global stage, I suspect that these incidents will continue to increase. The tools just make it too easy, with decreasing time for the opportunity of sober reasoning between the click of a cellphone camera and its post to email, MySpace, or YouTube.
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Still Rezzing after all these years...

The fact is that this technology is going out into the world in a state of marginal readiness. It does wonders. It’s marvelous. But it’s a mess.
Seymour Papert (The Connected Family)

The title of this post is a quote I heard one day when I was in Second Life. It was uttered by an avatar who had teleported near where I was standing. He said this to another avatar when she asked him why his shirt and pants said “MISSING IMAGE.” This is a common occurrence in Second Life as sometimes the servers that run the virtual world are “lagging behind” your activities and movement. Sometimes you may get a message that lets you know that “Your clothes are still downloading.” The term “Rezzing” in Second Life usually is used in the context of waiting for a texture or object to load. When you’re waiting for your clothes to finish downloading, it’s nice to have the backup of the “MISSING IMAGE” in the interim.
In a sense, isn’t so much of the Internet “still rezzing?” Most of the tools we use are either still in “beta” or are an early draft in a long lineage of “updates.” Many of the technologies that we think are brilliant today will be replaced with even better realizations in the future.

We are working with a medium still in flux, perhaps forever in the process of becoming the instrument we dream of. And yet, most of the time, we are forgiving. We’ve become accustomed to websites being “down,” browsers crashing, incompatible applications, constant problem solving. Our response to technical issues is to find alternatives, seek upgrades, reconfigure. I’ve yet to meet anyone who’s given up on the Internet because of its problems. We understand that the Internet is still evolving.

I wonder if this acceptance of “evolution” for the technology is also allowed for the people using the technology. We welcome the revision of “Web 2.0” but are we also allowing for people’s “Personal Growth 2.0?” In a world where much of our learning and exploration is now carried out in public arenas, are we accepting of revisions and addenda of thought and understanding?

Ewan McIntosh has an incredible keynote for the 2006 K12 Online Conference called, “Personal Professional Development” in which he says:

“I think we don’t know what we don’t know. So why should we be afraid of putting our views, at that particular moment, forward. If someone ridicules it in 36 hours, or in 36 months, or 36 years, does it really matter? Can we still learn from that experience? So is the fear that we’ll do something stupid justified?”

Certainly, I have posted plenty of blog entries that were not my best writing, were “thoughts in process,” or just got things plain wrong. Still, I believe that each publication made me a better writer, teacher, thinker. I believe that allowing for public scrutiny and opening my ideas and reflections up to comments from the larger community has helped me advance further in my profession than if I exercised them in private. I am both appreciative and better for the assistance I have received along my professional development journey. I trust that I can explore my ideas in the blogosphere and be allowed to update and refine those ideas without any single post definitely representing who I am.

Perhaps this same opportunity needs to be afforded to the “not so positive end” of the spectrum. As we move to a more public and everlasting capture of what used to be personal or inaccessible, perhaps we will allow for revision and become more open minded about mistakes and poor choices made by our young “digital natives.” Certainly we will keep educating and fostering an understanding of responsible and ethical conduct on the Internet. But hopefully we “digital immigrants” will come to understand that the results of a simple Google search does not define the entirety of the individual.

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"Missing Image" Credit:
James, Wagner. "New World Notes: The Second Life of Babylon: An Iraqi Scholar Embraces the Metaverse." Second Life: New World Notes. 12 Dec. 2007. 22 Apr. 2008 <http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2007/12/the-second-li-1.html>.