Ipseity

Just got a proof of an introduction I co-wrote for a special issue of “‘International Journal of Interactive Technology and Smart Education.” An excerpt is below; the whole piece is here.

In the fall of 2003, it was suggested that a conference or summit on learning objects would be a welcome addition to work occurring in the context of the eduSource project (www.edusource.ca). eduSource was a pan-Canadian initiative, in active development from 2003-2004, funded by the Canadian federal Government, and having as its goal the development of a network of learning object repositories that is international in its scope. The summit, held in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada, attracted approximately 150 participants, attending both face-to-face and virtually. The summit was conceived as a forum for the open discussion of technologies and critical understandings related to learning objects, repositories, and their educational application.

This special issue is considered a capstone for the summit, and in some ways, it serves a similar purpose for the eduSource project as well. It brings together five of the many papers presented at the forum; and these five represent a diversity of perspectives and understandings of learning objects, and their technical, as well as social, economic and pedagogical ramifications.

I’ve been working on and off (more off than on) over the last few years on some projects that make use of Princeton’s WordNet Thesaurus. These projects exploit what Lev Manovich has called *the database logic:* the roles of paradigm and syntagm are reversed. Instead of dealing with words syntagmatically, one after another, as they combine together in sentences over time, databases (like thesauri) make it possible to deal with words as they relate conceptually, paradigmatically.

The projects playing with this idea include a page that selects a word (and its definitions) at random, one that generates sentencesrandomly using WordNet’s identification of word-types, and most recently, an attempt to combine its powers in a hypertext exploration of Joyce’s Ulysses and Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera. The attempt is explained here, the prototype is here.

This is a proposed data model that I’ve been working on in the context of an ISO/IEC e-learning standards workgroup. Such proposals and drafts are not generally posted publically, here goes.

Here’s the scope statement:

This standard provides a data model for the interchange of communicative and related information generated through the set-up and use of text-based, synchronous (chat) and a-synchronous (discussion) communication technologies. This data model would allow communication forum contributions and their attributes to be represented in a vendor-independent format for interchange, storage, retrieval or analysis by a variety of systems. It would accomplish the same thing for the set-up and design of these communication forums, representing the names, access conditions and other parameters for chat rooms or discussion forums.

The purpose of this data model is to allow data generated in one chat or discussion system to be utilized in another chat or discussion system. Typically this data would not be exchanged from a system of one type (e.g. synchronous chat) to a system of another type (e.g. asynchronous discussion). Also, this data would typically not be exchanged between systems while a discussion or chat is being conducted; this standard does not currently define an API or other mechanism that would allow users to access and control data and behaviours in two systems simultaneously.

In this draft paper, Darryl Cressman and I discuss a number of ways of understanding the potential and limitations of standardization in e-learning. We focus particularly on notions of “black boxing,” as it is understood in the context of both learning object approaches to educational content and Actor Network Theory (from science and technology studies). Here’s an overview:

Standards in e-learning contexts, unlike social science disciplines, appear to be generally understood as “neutral artifacts.” In many cases, they are explicitly described as being pedagogically –and otherwise– “agnostic” or “neutral” (e.g. Allert et al 2003; see also Friesen, 2004, Blandin, 2003). It is the intent of this paper to adopt the perspectives of socio-theoretical research in order to explore the “non-neutrality” of standards as social artifacts –and to show that that they are constructions that embody specific interests and agendas. In doing so, this paper will give special emphasis to what is likely the most widely discussed and implemented e-learning standard, the aforementioned Learning Object Metadata standard (also known as IEEE 1484.12.1 or simply, the “LOM”). This paper will undertake this exploration by considering a range of research on standardization, and by exploring the potential one particular framework of understanding the development and implementation of technical standards: that provided by Actor Network Theory.

A paper I just submitted to GLIMPSE: Proceedings of the Society for Phenomenology and Media. Here’s the full text; here’s an abstract, of sorts:

Foolishness, frustration, and feelings of intellectual inadequacy seem to be common in the context of computer use. Computer books written explicitly for “dummies” and “idiots” have been runaway successes; phrases such as being computer “literate” or “illiterate” or of “dumbing down” the operation and documentation of computer systems are all commonplace. Feelings of foolishness and inadequacy seem clearly dysfunctional in our “networked” or “information” society –a social and economic order for which networks, information and the Internet itself are widely regarded as eponymous (for example, Castells; Bell; Turkle). Moreover, these feelings present an interesting contrast with what many have said about the educational potential of computers as cognitive or “mindtools” that form a close “intellectual partnership” with the learner, “amplifying” her thinking “by transcending the limitations of the mind” (Jonassen, Mindtools, 10).

By giving voice to ignored, anecdotal user “know how”, and by contrasting it to more expert and theoretical understandings, I intend to shed light on how computers are experienced by users, especially in educational contexts. By presenting and analyzing a number of anecdotes of computer use, I hope to show how the acquisition of denigrated user “know-how” is actually intimately interconnected with computer expertise and with understandings of the role of computers in education. I will also show how the actual experience of computer use casts into doubt the educational efficacy of computers understood as instruments of cognitive amplification, or simply “mindtools.”

That’s the title of a presentation I gave at the Fachhochschule Hagenburg in Austria (very close to Linz, home of Ars Electronica). Here’s the abstract (in German; written with the generous assistance of Christoph Richter). See a version of the PowerPoint (in English):

Mit der Gruendung von Piaget’s Centre International Epistemologie Genetique begann 1955, vor genau 50 Jahren, die kognitive Wende in Europa. Die kognitive Psychologie hat die Forschung und Theoriebildung im Bereich der Lerntechnologien in dieser Zeit sehr stark gepraegt. Dieser Einfluss, der auch heute noch sehr stark ist, wird aber im Bereich der Lerntechnologien nur sehr selten explizit aufgezeigt, und noch seltener in Frage gestellt. Im Gegensatz hierzu hat sich die Bedeutung des Kognitivismus sowohl in der pädagogischen Psychologie als auch in den Erziehungswissenschaften verändert. Es gibt in diesen Bereichen eine Reihe von theoretischen Standpunkten — jenseits der zentralen kognitiven Hypothese von der fundamentalen Aehnlichkeit von Geist und Computer.

Diese letzte Hypothese spielt eine besondere Rolle im Bereich der Lerntechnologien: Wenn man behauptet, dass das menschliche Denken und Lernen den Rechenoperationen eines Computers entspricht, liegt der Schluss nahe, dass der computer-basierte Unterricht die beste Form des Lernens ist. Die Lerntechnologien werden fuer das Lernen als wertvoll erachtet, weil sie die Formen, Inhalte bzw. Verfahren des Lernens und Wissens widerspiegeln.

Der grosse Erfolg des Internets und des World Wide Webs legt aber eine andere Sichtweise nahe: Diese Technologien haben neue soziale und kulturelle Praktiken in den Bereichen Medien und Kommunikation moeglich gemacht. Für das Verständnis dieser neuen Medien- und Kommunikationsformen (Bulletin Boards, Chat, Blogs, Hypertext, usw.) sind sozial- und kommunikationswissenschaftliche Ansätze besser geeignet als kognitivistische Theorien. Entsprechende Theorien und Methoden werden zunehmend in Bereichen wie dem Interaktionsdesign aber auch der Psychologie eingesetzt und können unter dem Begriff des „Post-Kognitivismus“ zusammengefasst werden.