Facebook & the library

(...)it has become clear that Google is recovery, just like the great library it was built to be. You don’t walk in a library and get handed books by librarian. You go to a section and find what you are looking for.

A comment on a great blog post that stuck in my mind. The social web is all about discovery, not recovery. The media were all over the 'battle' between Facebook and Google when for the first time ever, Facebook had more hits than Google. But the distinction that is so well put in those few words above, shows that these giants are not up against each other as they represent different things. You go to the (Google) library, define your search word (section) and find what you are looking for.

Now go to your Facebook homepage (assuming you have a friend list that mirrors your everyday life/work/interests) and discover. During the time you were away, friends have handed you all kinds of information: links to websites, videos, pictures. But they've also handed you emotions and experiences, whether you asked for them or not.

And there's more! They've let you know they liked the video you put up earlier and have given you an update on a link you posted. This makes you feel good. Makes you feel like a librarian just handed you a book, knowing you'd be interested. It's all about caring.

Libraries have been struggling long and hard to resist Google but most of them have incorporated it into their everyday work now. It's all about recovery, right? Question is whether we want the 'caring' part of information distribution too.

For me, Facebook has become an aggregation device of sorts. I know it makes me neglect my Netvibes pages just because it is more personal, more interactive, more real time. It serves as a big inhale of what's going on right now among the people and issues I care for. I think the best thing it has taught me is that most of the time information doesn't have to be exhaustive to be satisfying. When it does, I will still have Google (the library).

Now read that great blog post: How Internet Content Distribution & Discovery Are Changing

TMC Requiem: Ben Frost - Forgetting You Is Like Breathing Water

Inspiration comes in the the most peculiar ways. I was listening to Iceland-via-Australia artist and producer Ben Frost, who is playing the highly anticipated Big Ears Festival next weekend in Knoxville, and I ran across a comment from a young woman named Sybilla Poortman on Last.fm for the track "Forgetting You Is Like Breathing Water" from his 2006 album Theory of Machines. She said of the song, "I want this played at my funeral, awesome stuff." That gave me an idea. Try out a new feature about songs you would want played at your funeral. I had Sybilla try out for the first cut to see if this peculiar inspiration could actually work as an interesting topic of conversation and I think she did a magnificent job. I present you with the first edition of TMC Requiem for Ben Frost's "Forgetting You Is Like Breathing Water".

Danny Perkins wrote this as an introduction to my post as a guest contributor on his music site 'The Milk Carton'. Here's what I penned down:

It’s all about intensity, whether I listen to Verdi or Muhly, Joni or Jónsi, Swans or Joy Division. I’d like to thank Danny for giving me the opportunity to write on music once again, as it’s been years since I penned my last review for an underground music mag called Fake. I had the privilege to interview musicians like Jim O’Rourke, Oren Ambarchi, AMM & Felix Kubin – all of them still among the best in their field.

I’ve seen Ben Frost perform live twice and was quite literally blown away by the sheer intensity and power of his music. It invades all senses simultaneously and is not for the faint-hearted. Sounds that will resonate inside your ears, your mind, your body. Taking nothing for granted, Frost is always engaged (as well as engaging), questioning and pushing boundaries.

This kind of music is sometimes referred to as noise and that’s fine with me. Noise to me means hearing music in everyday sounds and enhancing it. Appreciating it is a gift of the senses, like being able to distinguish new, meaningful forms in things that have been broken, torn apart, or crammed together. It’s discovering new meanings in ideas that have been rejected or misunderstood.

Why would these sounds be fitting for a funeral, my funeral? There are two sides to that question. Of course you would pick music that meant a lot to you for your own funeral (if you get the chance to pick it). But on the other hand, you wouldn’t be around to enjoy it, would you? So choosing that particular music is a message to the ones you leave behind as well. And the last thing you want is to send them away screaming in terror because of the auditory onslaught you condemned them to suffer.

‘Forgetting You is Like Breathing Water’ grants us the best of both worlds. It combines a ‘noise ethic’ with a wonderful ear for gorgeous sounds. It’s everything the title implies: “I would choke & drown when I try to forget you”. The elements and nature in all its raw and unsurpassed beauty are very important in Frost’s oeuvre, as is the notion of breathing, in nature and through the elements. Breathing air means life, breathing water means death. Breathing fire means creation. Ashes are beginning as well as end. The cycles of nature should run their course so that we will never forget.

The piece enfolds like a procession march, unrelentingly building up through sustained rich drones that solemnly ascend in slow motion (an acquaintance of mine who teaches music at UCLA recalled Stravinsky’s Orpheus upon hearing it). There’s chiming electronics at first, with a heartbeat drum pulsating throughout. Then the heartbeat fades and gives way to grief as acoustic strings take over, surrendering to a majestic, thankful kind of grace that urges us to remember - and move on.

Posted first on The Milk Carton

Ending one thing to master another

I have abandoned my 'old' blog, which was in Dutch and primarily about my work at the library. I am now looking forward to using this new blog to its full potential, not just for my master course.

Ideally, there will be a mix of information/education related things (think media literacy, digital & mobile learning) and cultural issues (music, literature, art, language) with perhaps a family story thrown in for good measure. And I always love to mix issues that at first don't seem connected. Be surprised as I surprise myself!

Must admit that I thought about changing the name as 'Mastering Things' was clearly chosen because of my master course. But then again, this is the story of my life: I strive to master the things I like doing. So 'Mastering Things' it is.

Will you bear with me?

Red

My personal review of Sam Amidon's brand new album 'I See The Sign'

In times like these, when I ponder abandoning the Catholic Church, I need someone or something to remind me that true spirituality is to be found within ourselves. A church that tells people what to do and where to abstain from, meanwhile covering up their own mistakes and wrong-doings, cannot be my church.

Sam Amidon deals in spirituality. From the blood-pumping heart beat of ‘How Come That Blood’ onwards, his new album is like a catalogue of human emotions. Some reviewers wrote about this album as a collection of children’s songs. No way. This is as mature as it gets, hell – it could do with a parental advisory warning.

Despite the fact that “we are one, the war is over, there’s an angel in the sky and love is still alive”, there’s a veil of blood all over his music. People drown their sisters out of jealousy; kill their brothers over a hazelnut tree; shoot their lovers’ suitors and kill their wives because they feel ill treated. People are vain, credulous, ignorant, and selfish and still believe all will be well in the end. Will it?

Yet the songs are so beautifully performed, with meaning not merely conveyed in the lyrics themselves, but also in their delivery. For example, in the heart wrenching ‘Rain and Snow’, the first time Sam sings “this way, and I’m not gonna be treated this way”, it sounds raw, displaying constrained anger and deception. When the same line returns after the deed is done, it sounds soft, wondering and almost remorseful.

Judgement Day, that’s what this album is about in my opinion. Everyone will have to account for their deeds, if not below, then above. And it’s a struggle to get to that day, to get home. Some hope to cover up their deeds, others offer justification or seek understanding. Most show remorse, all are afraid.

And right there in the middle is 'Kedron', unfolding like a lost gospel. A gorgeous hinge around which the album’s songs revolve. Don’t be afraid, it says. “Oh, look how patiently he hangs - Jesus our Lord is crucified”. What could be worse than that? This is not a song; it is a prayer for redemption.

“Thou Man of grief, remember me.
Thou never canst Thyself forget.
Thy last expiring agony.
Thy fainting pangs and bloody sweat.”

The songs’ order is crucial. A reviewer mentioned that the album should have finished with ‘Relief’ (an amazing R Kelly cover). Yeah, you wish it would. But things rarely end in relief, although there may be some of it along the way to keep your spirits up. The end is Red, blood red. All the major themes on the album come together, musically as well as lyric wise. 'Red' is the one song that Sam wrote himself; the others are traditional songs. The lost sheep have been found and gathered. The last mountain is to be conquered to get home. Ben Frosts guitar pounds relentlessly, like a heart beat counting down – but with climbing notes. And then that sweet but haunting Kedron theme kicks in from Nico Muhly’s harmonium, leaving you with goose bumps all over.

Is this The Sign Sam wants us to see?
Don’t know if I’ll stick with that church. But I will stick with Sam Amidon, that’s for sure.

Out now on the Bedroom Community label.
Search the internet if you want to read reviews that deal with the music, the instruments used, the musicians performing. This is just a very personal view.

Summing up

Looks like we have ways of examining the studies on mobile learning according to:
• aspects of learning (Ally)
• types of learning (Vavoula)
• intrinsic characteristics of mobile technology (Laurillard)
• affordances of mobile technology (Gibson, Kirschner)
• a theory of mobile learning (Sharples)

I find many points in these studies underlining my proposed principle of iterative negotiating in context. This very principle illustrates the sheer impossibility of separating device or didactics from context (setting). Sharples puts it this way: context is not a fixed shell surrounding the learner, but a construct that is shaped by continuously negotiated dialogue. Kirschner states: Mobile technologies offer distinctive educational affordances - they 'afford' real-time information whenever, wherever and they 'afford' a rapid access interface. These two characteristics of the artefact 'on hand' (i.e. a PDA), determine if and how a particular learning behaviour could possibly take place within a given context. And Laurillard says: mobile technology often changes the pattern of learning/work activity; the context of mobile learning is about more than time and space.

One could regard the task-artefact cycle (negotiating in context) as the next step up from the 'substitution-transition-transfer' three step. To see the context of mobile learning as merely a step forward in being able to learn anywhere, anyplace, is not going beyond that three step (that suited 'regular' e-learning). Mobile learning is also about negotiating the tool used and the pattern of learning, both process and goal. This can go on and on because the possibilities of the tool will keep changing endlessly, adapting to the need of the learning intended. In return, the learning goal will keep changing because more has become possible through the tool used. Mobility in time, space and learning context.

Which leads to one more question next to the three discussed in my last post:

4. Where does CELSTEC stand in all this? Are there studies being conducted at the time (or have there been in the past) that address these issues?

Waiting for answers - meanwhile more questions

I'm struggling with a few questions that need to be addressed before I can go on.

1. I find that the matrix I set out to use is bound to generate ambiguous results and insufficient conclusions. The model that Frohberg, Goeth and Schwabe (2009) use, is far more detailed and so offers more space for fine-tuning – thus describing the crucial elements of each mobile learning study in a less ambiguous way. Obviously, in a master course of limited time, it is impossible to use a model like Frohberg’s but I wonder how to avoid some of that ambiguity and still get usable data from each study.

2. There are so many ways of categorizing the findings from these studies on mobile learning. One could categorize according to ‘Aspects of Mobile Learning’ (Ally, 2009), to types of learning (Vavoula), to intrinsic characteristics of mobile technology, regarding its pedagogical implications (Laurillard) - and possible more ways. Which one to use?

3. If ‘context is everything’, how will I ever be able to separate device from setting, or setting from didactics? Or setting from didactics?

Some summing up to do next.

A theory of Mobile Learning

According to Sharples et al, a theory for mobile learning should be tested against these criteria:
* significantly different from current learning theories
* account for mobility of learners
* cover both formal and informal learning
* theorise learning as constructive and social process
* analyse learning as personal and situated activity mediated by technology

This brings him to a tentative definition of mobile learning as 'the processes of coming to know through conversations across multiple contexts amongst people and personal interactive technologies'. Sharples puts the communicative interaction between learner and technology central. He regards learning as a conversational process of becoming informed about each other's 'informings', whereby the context is not a fixed shell surrounding the learner, but a construct that is shaped by continuously negotiated dialogue.

I like Sharples' notion of convergence of mobile technologies, which would demand a new learning theory and didactics. Look how New Learning and New Technology go hand in hand in this table:

New Learning / New Technology
personalised / personal
learner centered / user centered
situated / mobile
collaborative / networked
ubiquitous / ubiquitous
lifelong / durable

More on a theory of Mobile Learning by Sharples, Taylor & Vavoula next.