Riverparks makes me happy.

Today my rollerblading was inspiring. Every song that came on the ipod fit the mood and sent me gliding. It is hard for me to resist dancing while skating; I think I've got some legitimate moves and practically chacha'd to the Spanish guitar of Charo, yes that's right Charo check her out. The river glistened with the sunset displaying romantic colors of gold, rose, and blue. The puffy clouds reflected the rose sky and formed perfectly behind the stylish homes on Riverside. The newly paved path enticed bikers, walkers, and skaters. Benches, water fountains, and playgrounds flanked the pathway. Game boards, just like something from old Europe, sat mainly empty. I promised myself I would get some friends and a hooka to gather round for a game. I stopped to watch the sunset and hear the river roaring at the 21st street bridge. It reminded me how satisfying the basics of life can be. That's what its all about; getting out enjoying your community, being a part of nature, breathing in the air and being thankful for those moments when life is blissful.

Scoping out duck barge for Gordon fishing tourny.

Poverty of Attention

Sam Anderson sets out in the Benefits of Distraction to put a positive spin on the all-consuming social media world we now live in. As knowledge becomes broken down into 140 word characters and 3 minute DIY youtube videos are ability to focus is under attack. While many spew warnings of a Idocracy like society, Anderson actually attempts to draw some postives from the current reality 2.0. One of my favorite paragraphs humorizes the doomsdays theories saying,

” Adopting the Internet as the hub of our work, play, and commerce has been the intellectual equivalent of adopting corn syrup as the center of our national diet, and we’ve all become mentally obese. Formerly well-rounded adults are forced to MacGyver worldviews out of telegraphic blog posts, bits of YouTube videos, and the first nine words of Times editorials. Schoolkids spread their attention across 30 different programs at once and interact with each other mainly as sweatless avatars."

Ultimately Anderson argues its possible our brains are rewiring themselves to actually better compute the multi-media modes of information acquistion. While the article may be considered long to the RSS obessed literaries it is very entertaining.

http://nymag.com/news/features/56793/

Indigenous Knowledge in a Knowledge Society

Indigenous knowledge is hot spot of controversy in reincarnations of development theory under the auspices of a knowledge society. One of the biggest concerns is how the codification, digitization, and preservation of knowledge society is affected when the technology required is one developed by outside forces and two dependent upon funding from outside forces. The innovation and distribution of Information Communication Technologies can be partially understood according to the same environmental factors as described by Jared Diamond in his 1997 Pulitzer Prize winning book Guns, Germs, and Steel. Accordingly Eurasian culture has dominated not because of intellectual or genetic superiority but rather because of geographic features that have allowed the advancement of society. This includes the domestication of plant and animals species that contributed to the rise of farming and the ability to support a large population. In turn leading to the development of a complex society in which scientist, artists, and mercantilist could progress thanks to the support of agriculturalists. Since people could rely on others for their sustenance they had time to pursue other activities. Now information is ubiquitous but requires acquisition skills to make sense. In part this has led to the reliance upon experts to provide a context for information, removing the majority away from authenticate comprehension of information. Opposingly many indigenous cultures have not had the luxury to develop skill-replacing technologies and therefore are disadvantaged in the knowledge economy. Others would argue the tacit and uncodified knowledge of Idigenous cultures will prove more valuable should a global crisis of technology occur. Should we ever be in a true crisis of energy our diluted instincts relying upon Youtube-style-codification of knowledge to complete tasks required of survival, will put us at risk. Meanwhile Indigenous knowledge of which plants are poisonous will become the competitive advantage.

Sunday Morning Review

Sunday Morning Show is my favorite on television. I love the informative pieces on arts, culture, science, and current events. Time to time I'd like to share my after-show thoughts here. For this particular Sunday a somber tone did emerged from the discussions of swine flu and germs; interesting pieces nonetheless. An art service company was profiled which focused on frame gilding and restoration. I liked the part when the owner manhandled the 24K gold foil to illustrate the fragility of it. An American woman married to a Mexican living in the center of Mexico was interviewed to gauge her fear level during the "Swine Flu" scare. The images of a exotic urban area made me want to travel abroad again. The favorite joke of the time "more Mexicans will die of boredom than the Swine Flu." A gentleman back in 1998 figured out how to reconstruct flu virus of old via lung tissue samples nearing a century. The Fast Draw guys demonstrated how germs are us and we are germs; showing the over Trillion germs in our bodies numbering human cells 10 to 1. Some science writer states humans are like super-organisms considering the amount of foreign bodies that make up the human body. That part amazed me; I mean to think our body is only living due to the other organisms taking me as residence. Marianne Faithful won this weeks Sunday Profile spot and brought to light another star of the sixties roughed up and poured out by addiction now cleaned-up. She is still a beautiful woman and pictures from that time make the case for her reaching Muse status as the girl of Mick Jagger for close to a decade. Her voice is "weathered" as the CBS writers put it; and at times is hard to listen to if it weren't for the glimmers of aesthetic sound that make their way through the hard years. Sunday Passage says good bye to Danny Gans, a impressionist with a striking resemblance to Rocky a la plastic surgery. Finally the lovable Bill Giest dialogs on vending machines deserving gilded frames themselves. He spoke of his time of course stating used to only have, "candy, cokes, and smokes" as options. In a hotel in Miami you can purchase everything from eyelashes, to gold handcuffs, to Bentley vehicles. Another gentleman spoke of his God-given idea to put BBQ Ribs in a vending machine. I was impressed with the hotel and the pizza in 90 second machines and wondered what it must be like to put a 90,000 car on your American Express. The CBS Sunday Morning Moment of Zen showcased beautiful falls and horned animals in Yellow Stone National Park. The roar of the water and the freshness of the morning created a beautiful melody. As always Charles Osgood wished ado and promised to see us on the radio.

Tacit Knowledge and Distance Learning

A few thoughts on tacit knowledge and learning.

Regarding motivation to learn, a professor which was very influential for my undergrad development motivated students by passing out a bottle of wine to those students which received an A on a paper. And he'd pass it out in class which I think further encouraged hard work. The drinking age in Alberta was 18 so this wasn't a big deal.

This professor, Dr. Dube, made learning a treat and if it weren't for his endearing monologues I might not have learned as much as I did about the History of Western Political Thought. His ability to pull out the key points from Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Marx, Locke, De Beauvoir, and Alice Walker and make all of that interesting really helped me to learn the topics. Just reading those books on my own would not have been as fruitful. He won the teaching award several times and was well known, he even had a following of student that took every class he taught. I took 6 classes from him myself. We called ourselves Dubeians. Recently I even got him on Twitter now many of the fellow Dubeians have united and are following him there.

Anyhow I think there is a lot to be said about that personal interaction and learning from how he emphasized certain points or his behavior behind the lectern.

Doc Martens has done wonderful for this class, as the teacher can make or break learning no doubt. However I do miss the opportunity of her lecturing to us. At times I was confused by the PowerPoint presentations and wanted further clarification. Here's where I should have made more use of the forums I suppose. While Doc Martens is great about quickly responding it still takes some getting use to. In class you can sort of get the vibe of what the other students are learning and now whether your question would be helpful to ask during class or better saved for after class. On here its slightly more intimidating since everyone can read your posts over and over but because they don't see your smile or hear the tone of your voice they may not interpret your meaning fully. At this point in my life I don't' mind the convenience of online learning and I'm thankful I've had the opportunity to develop critical analysis and study skills in more traditional learning formats. I fear those who haven't had that traditional learning style in higher education especially our first year TCC students taking distance learning, might be lacking in the self-motivated learning skills required of this format.

In an article from Reference and User Services Quarterly, related to the failures of distance learning, the Professor provides findings via evaluations. The Professor gets very poor evaluations for her distance learning classes saying things like, "There's no teaching here..just lots of reading." What gets her the most is when a student comments, "nice shoes" eliciting the "Really, that's what you got from my class" response.