Tag Archives: Community

Twitter Search, RSS, and the Future of Connections!

The more we begin to use tools like Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking sites as part of our regular means of conversation, communication, and connection the more creative uses for these tools each of us will find for reaching out and connecting to more and more people. Below is a brief example of something I discovered lately. (I am sure this is nothing new, but it was an “Ahh Hah!” moment for me)

My experience involves Twitter, Twitter Search and RSS! I have been actively involved in promoting and supporting my best friend’s project in Kenya, called The Daraja Academy. I have written about my connection with the school extensively here and here. Twitter has helped me meet and befriend board member Mark Lukach who Tweets @marklukach, as well spread Daraja’s story to Jenny Luca in Australia who Tweets @jennyluca. You can read Mark’s account of our connections here.

With Twitter Search gaining more and more press, I started to think about using it as a tool to connect with anyone who is tweeting abour @daraja. Right now it is mostly, Mark, Jenny, and me, but there will be more right? I noticed that there is an RSS feed on the Twitter Search page, once subscribed I would know immediately any one who mentions @daraja in real time.

I could tweet them a thank you note, or more information about the school, or just follow them and begin building a more substantial relationship. In short, an RSS feed to a Twitter search allows one to sift through countless Tweets and connect with people who are tweeting about the same things in which you are onterested, in my case The Daraja Acacdemy.

My findings showed me that there are a few people who have mentioned @daraja, so I am now following them and have sent them a quick thank you tweet. I hope that after reading this post you will also follow the links, tweet about @daraja, so I can find you in my RSS feed search and begin building our relationship with a common goal of suporting and promoting the Daraja Academy.

Connections

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This is why I blog and twitter and facebook and flickr and youtube and all that jazz. I have a deep faith in the power of human beings to get togther and solve the world’s problems through a shared understanding that if we just sit and understand each other, the world is not as complicated as we assume:

Full Cup

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I am officially full. No more room for blog posts, news articles, or youtube videos. No more funny photos or heart breaking stories. No new bands, new sounds, new anything. I don’t want to contribute to the noise anymore. Not even sure why I am typing these words, perhaps to let out some of the clutter. I want to create some silence, some space.

Image from Jordandouglas

There is so much disorder in the walls of my head that it will take a much more diligent person than I , to clear some space to simply sit and breath. Is this the future we are preparing our students for, a world where we are nothing more than overflowing cups of knowledge and information? Are these the skills we so champion? We have access to more information than any other time in the history of the world, but so what? Once we are full, then we are full. The information then simply spills over the lip and disappears. Why aren’t we teaching our students how to breathe and make room for their souls? Why aren’t we teaching our kids how to disconnect and simply watch the clouds? Why aren’t we teaching our kids life beyond the screens? Why aren’t we teaching them to how to empty their cups?

I know what I need to do, but I find it harder and harder to do so. I understand that there needs to be a balance. But this sense of balance is becoming more and more difficult to find in the enthusiasm of Ed Tech cheerleading. Sometimes it just feels like all of this is too much. I often find myself needing to make time to reconnect with myself, before I can venture back into cyberspace. As an anti-social creature, I have a hard time putting on the happy face deemed necessary for social networking. How do we expect adolescents and children to make sense of so much networking?

I am starting to think that networking with strangers is not necessarily such an important skill to have. Surface level exchanges of information do not seem, to me, to be such a crucial talent. We need to be concentrating more on building communities, teaching our students as well as ourselves how to connect to other people on a more human level. But is this what we are doing? Is that possible on Twitter? Is that possible through this text?

We have all read at length about what it takes to be a networked learner, but what are the skills needed to be a good community member? How do we truly get to know people? I need something more than to be connected to nodes of a network; I am looking to instigate a cultural shift that connects people based on common goals and interests. I want nothing less than a new human paradigm. I want peace and connectivity, not another link to new tool. I am tired of talking about what the 21st century will look like, I want to talk to you, create art with you, and change the world with you. I am tired of reading about what you know, I want to know what you fear, what you dream. I want to become more human with you.

Technology is only useful if it connects our humanity and moves us forward as a community. Anything less is simply data overflowing from a full cup. Come join me, leave a comment, let’s chat on Skype about a topic other than Ed Tech, let’s create an art project together, and let’s build a community.

Live Poetry

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Earlier this evening, I was trying to get more out of my social networks by engaging in more artistic collaborative projects. I hatched the idea for the “live” poem. The idea is simple:

Send out a request on Twitter for participants.
Create a Google Document.
Find an image from Flickr (Make sure to pick one from the Creative Commons)
Wait.
Wait some more.
Start to write.
Leave your poem as a comment on the original page.

Ideas for next time:

Set a time limit
Take a screencast of the process so as to watch the “growth” of the poem
Look at something like Etherpad.

Here is the image and the poem:

Cerulean Tide

a wall of day
and a door to night
creaking hinges
keeping time
footsteps
shuffle
in and out

this is where we met,
the smell of brine and barnacles
moving the sea, slaves to the moon
and desire

warm smoke escaping from a door
in flux soon to close
forever, or so we thought

our eyes consumed, engaged, divorced
time peeling another layer
pushing us together
awash in the sound of
laughter and a distant snare drum

touch gave meaning
memories embrace
did we?
if we choose to believe, we did

this is not ours to keep
never was
but what is left?
closed door, new season
but still, the blue
and blue and stillness blur

choice led us here then
and again
choice parts us after we give
“I want to fall in love with a living poem,”
you said.

another couple in
another out

I laughed and kissed your serious brow
learned the tangles of your hair, left alone too long
waiting for someone to know you
your only desire
for someone to know you

this place will be different tomorrow
in the light
we will see the decay
if we choose

what is the scale for measuring moments?
I say pain
you look away and take a drag on your cigarette
can’t help but disappoint you

your eyes have moved on
I wonder if you will ever be happy
Or if you will discover there’s no such thing

will you come back?
the wall was green, yellow, eggplant
your letter will say.

will your memories lie?
it was blue
it was dark.
we’ll never really know.

The poem is average at best, but it is the process of creation we are concerned with here over product. More thoughts on collaborative art soon.

Later I received a Tweet from @jhawtin telling me about the sonnet she wrote. Here it is:

A wall of daylight met a door of night.
Creaking hinges kept time with our journey,
the drift of lazy footsteps, left and right,
wrapped in smoke and shadow, a comedy.

Awash in laughter, haze and amber pints,
eyes engaged then slipped across the hecklers.
We watched the distant snare drum catch the light.
Crowds moved on. In comfy chairs we rested.

We stayed here under summer’s scudding skies.
Photos captured tangle haired embraces,
the buoys and bikes and lobster pots you liked,
colours rich with time and salty laces.

A season ends, the colours change, and leave.
A smile still sees you here, our dark retreat.

Leave her comments on her blog, Cranky Mango.

Identity, Avatars, and Future of Humanity

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Frozen in fear every time we appear
Im not surprised and really, why should I be?
See nothing wrong
See nothing wrong
So sick and tired of all these pictures of me
Completely wrong
Totally wrong
Go walking by
Here come another guy…

Elliot Smith

I was sitting in a closing session at Learning 2.008 with Ewan McIntosh and a group of teachers, and the conversation became very free and loose. The session was designed to be an open gathering, a place to discuss any lingering ideas and end the conference. People were throwing out ideas, while others either let them drop or set them up for a volley. I don’t remember everything we discussed: something about being able to download your brain some time in the future, buying domain names for your children to be sure you are in control of their web presence, and Facebook profile pictures.

Ewan joked about how he couldn’t understand why people would change their Facebook profile picture every other day. The room chuckled a bit as he made the comment, but I smiled uncomfortably. I have changed my profile picture 31 times in the last year.

At the time, I didn’t have the energy to explain why I felt the need to constantly update what I look like, but recently I have been thinking a lot about the idea of profile pictures, avatars, self-expression, and the online social networking community. I think I may have a response.

These ideas began to germinate in earnest last week after two separate incidents. The first was after a talk I had with Bud Hunt regarding the difference between a network and a community, and the second was after I started to look at avatar creation sites for my students. I am the computer club teacher, and I will soon start the Web 2.0 network journey with a group of ten 4th-6th graders.

What do the pictures of ourselves that we present to the world mean? How can a simple profile picture affect a person’s place within a community of strangers?

You may be thinking that a topic likes this is at best superficial and at worst a study of narcissism and vanity, but I ask that you bear with me.

The wikipedia article on Self says:

The self is a key construct in several schools of psychology, broadly referring to the cognitive representation of one’s identity. The earliest formulation of the self in modern psychology stems from the distinction between the self as I, the subjective knower, and the self as Me, the object that is known. Current views of the self in psychology diverge greatly from this early conception, positioning the self as playing an integral part in human motivation, cognition, affect, and social identity.

The article about Self-Portrait goes on to say:

The self-portraits of many Contemporary artists and Modernists often are characterized by a strong sense of narrative, often but not strictly limited to vignettes from the artists life-story. Sometimes the narrative resembles fantasy, roleplaying and fiction.
The self-portrait can be a very effective form of advertising for an artist, especially of course for a portrait painter.

The self-portraits of many Contemporary artists and Modernists often are characterized by a strong sense of narrative, often but not strictly limited to vignettes from the artists life-story. Sometimes the narrative resembles fantasy, role playing and fiction.

Finally Jay B. McDaniel says:

When one attains enlightenment in Zen Buddhism, at least two things are realized. First, one realizes that the deepest level of one’s life — what in Zen is called the “true self” — is always here-and-now. And second, one understands that this true self, even though here-and-now, is always changing.

What does this all mean to me, and what does it have to do with my network avatars and profile pictures? This is what I took away from the quotes above: The self is a key construct of one’s identity. Self-portraits are characterized by a strong sense of narrative. Sometimes the narrative resembles fantasy, role-playing and fiction. True self, even though here-and-now, is always changing.

In other words: Our sense of identity is derived from the story we tell the world and this story is constantly changing.

In an online world, the images we present of ourselves can be the most powerful representations we offer. I see myself as more than a static promotional portrait. I am a being in a constant state of flux, and I feel it is crucial that these transformations be presented to my equally malleable network. After talking with Bud, I realized that our social networks can never really know exactly who we are, and let’s be honest even our closest friends can only guess. How can we build community, if each individual member does not really know who any other member is?

We present fragments of ourselves online, as if offering cyberspace a random set of pixels, will somehow paint a clear picture of who we are. We use blog posts, Tweets, Skype calls, profile pics, book lists, photos, podcasts, and music sharing sites to scatter pieces of ourselves into a giant void, hoping that maybe somebody out there is picking up the pieces, and what’s more we hope that once they have assembled some sort if idea of who we are, they will like the image enough to start building a community around it.

An online community is nothing more than a group of people sharing the same puzzle of online debris. I guess my philosophy is that the more open, honest, and raw I can be, the clearer picture I can paint, thus creating the most authentic community for myself. As my resignation from my job proves, this openness is not always the best route to take, but it is the only one I know. I believe in web 2.0. I believe open honest communication is one of the best tools we have to building a better world. All of this talk about technology and collaboration means more to me than mere talking points. I need this. Humanities needs this. Our hope in the future lies in teaching young people to learn to express themselves as honesty and openly as they can, so we can begin to tear down the walls that have been constructed by generations of cultural, nationalistic, and religious engineers.

I am still evading why any of this is relevant to profile pictures and avatars. The portrait is one of the most powerful ways to share ones identity. The tiny picture next to each Tweet is the first impression many newcomers to any network will see. I get excited when I see people change their photos, because I feel that they are real, changing, and growing.

I am not the same person one day from the next, so how can my picture stay the same month after month. I felt a bit uncomfortable after I changed my picture to a computer-generated avatar. It felt as if I was cheating somehow. But after a few days, I am starting to feel more comfortable with the image, because I know that it too will change. This is simply a stage of who I am at this stage of my life. I love looking back and seeing all of the people I have been:

If I am a collage educated father and teacher, and I am still dealing with these kinds of identity issues, imagine what our students are going through. In an image-saturated world, they need to be having conversations about self, identity, and community, especially if we want them to be participating in a world where they may not meet every person they interact with online. We need to teach them how to sort through the debris and construct the puzzles of the people they encounter online. More importantly we need to teach them how to express themselves as clearly as they can, so they are able to paint the most authentic picture of who they are. An avatar or profile picture should mean more to us than some throw away superficial exercise in vanity. These pictures are who we are online, so they deserve thought and attention.