1 - The new year kicked off with "Everything Unplugged" on Wednesday. On Thursday it was the first "First Thursday" of the year - which Nikki kindly hosted as I was at a Christmas family-happening. On Friday there was New Tuttle, followed by some website work with Andy Broomfield, then a useful Tuttle follow-up meeting, and a quick visit to Hub Westminster on my way home - which conveniently happened to overlap Mix at Six.
(This blog could be bursting with live links - but if I tried to add them all it would never get published. I'm happy to provide more information - just contact me and say what links you want.)
2- Directions for 2013
I'm still thinking through the "Dadamac, me and direction for 2013" issues, and have scribbled some notes while away from my laptop.It looks like those "thinking aloud" blogs I started over the holiday will continue further on into 2013. There's more to consider than I realised when I started to write.
3- Wikiquals
I'm thinking of claiming my work on my Wikiqual as my main identity for 2013 - then I can simply say I'm a student doing research. I now have an (empty) Wikiquals page and have exchanged a couple of emails about it with Fred Garnett this week.
Fred suggested the idea of Wikiquals at Dougald Hine's weekend event about universities and alternatives at Hub Westminster back in 2011 and I said I'd do one. The first Dadamac Meetup that I organised had a tenuous link to my Wikiqual which is why Fred attended. We both go to Everything Unplugged, but I need a separate "Wikiquals learning conversation" with him at some point, then I'll "move into my online Wikiquals space".
4 - E-learning and Virtual Academia
My recent Wikiqual thoughts have been influenced by Skype chats with Brian Sutton. I spent a lot of time at the end of 2012 writing and re-writing my contribution to an e--learning book he is editing with Anthony 'Skip' Basiel. Thinking the ideas through in writing, and discussing them with Brian, provided a great opportunity for me to sort out some of my thoughts about the ways I've been learning, thanks to the Internet, since 2000. I decided that I've been a free-range learner in virtual academia, and I've been exploring ideas on the similarities and differences between established academia and virtual academia. (When I say virtual academia I'm talking about Dadamacademy-style learning, not formal courses).
5 - Dadamacaemy endorsements and slow projects
I had a great endorsement from Ken Owino just before Christmas ref Dadamacademy. (Ken's a "Dadamac learner") He'd invited me to join in the discussions at his online group. It links some acrobats in Denmark with the Nafsi Acrobats in Kenya. Ken was using an ether pad the way that we do for First Thursdays. He wrote about it on Facebook in late December saying:
Hi Pam, it is an inspiration from my teacher. You enlightened me on how to create a participatory environment online.
Ken and I have been communicating online for years. We first met face to face in 2007 in Kenya, after I'd finished presenting Teachers Talking (TT) but we knew each other before that through Minciu Sodas. I got to appreciate his courage and other qualities though his work in Pyramid of Peace during the post-election violence. His meetings are based on the etherpad format we've developed for First Thursdays.
The encouragement from Ken was one of my favourite Christmas presents. The other was an email, which I would love to quote, but I won't as it wasn't posted on a public forum. It was from another of my learners. He had been on my Teachers' Talking (TT) course in Kenya in 2007, but had lost contact and had now found me through Dadamac.net. The Kenya TT group did well regarding keeping in touch with me online following the face to face course. We met once a month, despite limited access and reaching the end of the funding. Then post-election violence caused all kinds of chaos and disruption. Naturally I was delighted to find a "TT Kenya" participant wondering how to become part of our community again. I'm hoping he may be able to join us at First Thursday sometime in 2013.
Those two "Christmas presents" influenced my thinking about what it is worth continuing to do in 2013. Maybe I should recognise that my work yields slow growing fruits, and appreciate their quality. Maybe for my Wikiqual I should start to compare my work with the completely different world of traditional top-down projects which are only funded for a couple of years, and look at the similarities and differences. Better still, maybe some ICT4Ed or ICT4D research student could be persuaded to investigate for me.
6 - GlobalNet21 Meetup
I finish this week looking ahead to Wednesday next week, when I lead the new Education Study group for GlobalNet21.
That's another possible thread for my Wikiqual, if I decide to focus on learning. Maybe I will be clearer by the end of next week.
(A reminder that this blog could be bursting with live links - but if I tried to add them all it would never get published. I'm happy to provide more information - just contact me and say what links you want)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.