Conncetivity through play

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jD00ghlf4aA&feature=related     Wow, talk about connecting.  I love the woman who runs towards Yogi ( I've decided that's who it is, and yes, pun intended),  laughing with open arms.

An Application of Connectivity

Connectivity & Creativity Presentation

"In reading about the process of learning outside of a classroom, I cam across this article,  by Alan Roper,
http://www.educause.edu/EDUCAUSE+Quarterly/EDUCAUSEQuarterlyMagazineVolum/HowStudentsDevelopOnlineLearni/157435
What interested me in particular, for all  facets of learning, was this excerpt:

"How Students Develop Online Learning Skills
Good Ideas

7. Make connections with fellow students.
The participants in this study had the opportunity to share successful techniques and practices that helped them in developing their online student skills through some open-ended questions. One student mentioned that making a friend (connected with online) helped. Being part of a community of learners is helpful in courses that are taught in-person, and the same holds true for online classes (15.8 percent). One student explained that "it made a huge difference when you had good students in the class." Another student commented,

The experience was enriched greatly by the relationships and interaction with my fellow students. It amazes me how well we got to know each other even though we were often thousands of miles apart and were only virtual classmates.
I learned as much from other students and their experiences as I did from the instructors. I never expected that type of rewarding learning experience in a traditional classroom.
Using online threaded discussions in their course management system, the students can extend classroom discussions beyond the traditional boundaries of physical class time. Students in the online class may get to know one another more from recognizing the writing style and expression of thoughts and ideas rather than by physical attributes. Many students develop meaningful connections with their online classmates that can translate into career networking opportunities later."
  This applies of course,  to the process of taking virtual classes, but it's interesting to apply the use of threaded conversations to all sorts of discussions.  It is a discourse, and can become akin to a chess game.  Each  move is allowed time for  ponderance and deliberation. In some ways, it is a more beneficial learning tool than a classroom usually provides..

USA Today, Neanderthal Metaliteracy?

So, many of us have seen the video now of the toddler who rapidly loses interest in magazines, having become completely accustomed to the i Pad in her life.   http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2049117/readLater.html   Here we see the rookies, who will become the veteran meta literacy specialists, the mavericks, frontiersmen, and front-runners.   I think back on what it meant to find the USA Today issues filled with charts, graphs, photos and graphics, and an ever-diminishing content of words. What happened to that newspaper?  The intention was news that didn't cause too much anxiety, made the world easier to take, and digestion possible for even the dyspeptic among us. It was a capital sponge, soaking up great infusions of cash for over a decade before turning a profit, sixteen years after the first issue.   We were, as a reading people, slow to turn away from all the news that's fit to print.
No doubt about the fact that inter-disciplinary presentation of information allows for greater understanding, crosses all sorts of disability boundaries, and considers learning styles, a long abandoned approach to dismal public education statistics, in favor of the all children positioned  behind corporate-test-production.   Too, I think we are witnessing rapid adaptation of our sense organs towards multi-tasking at a level that would confuse a palm-pilot.  Yet, I cannot help but wonder what becomes of that word, all of those words, that left it up to the reader to see the color, hear the shouts, picture the lightening, feel the grief.

OWS

Most of us are thoroughly interested in the Wall St. Occupation, whether it's as a supporter, participant, or dissenter.  It's catchy, and catching, clearly spreading like a seasonal shift, throughout the nation.
Today's intention of cleaning up the park( Denver's endeavor  is long underway), has been stalled for now, but the point is that it is in the very least, annoying enough to induce such a thought.  Douglas Rushkoff, via CNN, states, "Anyone who says he has no idea what these folks are protesting is not being truthful. Whether we agree with them or not, we all know what they are upset about, and we all know that there are investment bankers working on Wall Street getting richer while things for most of the rest of us are getting tougher. What upsets banking's defenders and politicians alike is the refusal of this movement to state its terms or set its goals in the traditional language of campaigns."

Exactly.   How the absurd comments demanding a more specific demand, are even coming out of mouths, is beyond me.  Tea Party members are crazed by the idea losing first place in  the grass-root movement competition?  REALLY, wait, REALLY?  The non-issue of the century has just arrived, and what is their action?  To seek financial support ostensibly to fight this most recent crop of  dirty hippies, by running background checks, and basically using all the old FBI techniques from the sixties and seventies.  If you look at the Tea Party membership, included are plenty of people who are not wealthy, have serious religious convictions that they feel are being violated, and look for the very same turnover of the system that the OWS movement advocates.   Divisions, divisions, always the saddest part of the human experience. Let's not let the media or the ignorant continue to create chasms of mistrust.

As I read the posts from those who are interested in the American Fall, watch the videos, and speak directly to those who've attended, I am so impressed with the range of emotion.  Those who are involved, are hopeful beyond expectation.  Hope springs eternal, right?  It is contagious and synergistic, and the involvement of youth, bumps it exponentially higher.  
  On the other hand, I do not understand the venomous attacks from those who seem to find it reprehensible.  The mere fact that someone out there, let alone many people out there, have made the TIME in life to demonstrate, appears to topple the anthill for some.  This 'get to work' mentatlity is the machine that has manufactured the lavish heel that is grinding us further into the parched earth.

What of this space junk?

It occurs to me that the information we are getting about the re-deposited UARS/ space junk is emblematic of this process, of planet-wide, fast-moving information, shared by anyone who has it.   We had to wait and see, despite the best estimates of the Harvard Astrophysicists, still, it was wait and see.   So, as to the communication piece, anything you read about it now, from the gambling stories to the debris chasers, is all light-hearted and fun.  The fact is that many people who knew it was coming, were anxious over it.  A one in thirty-two hundred chance is not such slim odds, and that is NASA's estimate of the likelihood of a personal splat.   Those are far stronger odds than a young athlete has of making it as a professional, yet it clearly happens.
  My point:   As information is so readily shared, the inherent value of emotional expression and release can not be understated.   In this course, I will look for the flow of the personal, within the seemingly impersonal format.
  As for me, I'm student in the ESC/ CMC11 class, and live in the Mid-Hudson Valley of NY.