CEGSA2011 In A Few Paragraphs

Published on August 16, 2011 in Conferences & PD. 0 Comments

CEGSA had its rescheduled annual conference on Saturday, and I attended this year as a regular participant with no responsibility for any presentations or workshops. I even dressed casually which backfired when the committee decided to issue awards for the 2010 Leading Lights and I got photographed with president Trudy Sweeney wearing jeans and a hoodie! Anyway, here are a few paragraph summaries of what I decided to attend.

Opening Keynote / Tom March:
The concept of the Webquest is not dead even though some leading edge educators might think so. Tom March, along with Bernie Dodge, is one of the co-creators of the concept that seems almost quaint now in the era of social media. But as Tom points out, it is important to not keep chasing the shiny new toys just because they seem exciting and new, and the webquest can be re-invented for the Web 2.0 era and push students into higher order learning.

Tom's Higher Order Learning Diagram

But the point that Tom made that resonated best with me was the concept of “grit” in learning. Engagement is one thing but meaningful purpose and a willingness to wrestle with learning and persist through to new understandings has never been more important.

Twitter observations:

Get Me On The Net / Karen Butler:

I really enjoyed the fact that Karen is one of those educators who doesn’t let technology issues become an excuse for not pursuing relevant learning for her students. She started by apologising for being nervous and unsure of how her presentation would go. She was surprised that she had a relatively full room, expecting only a handful of audience members. She needn’t have been either surprised or nervous as her presentation was excellent.

She showed us through a number of examples of her students producing short films on a wide range of contemporary issues. Karen really showed us the power and flexibility of new media in order to redo work to get things to a personal or accepted standard, with the video footage including claymation, remixed digital content as well as filmed footage by the students.

The second half of her presentation wrestled with issues that many of us championing technology in the classroom are familiar with – excessive filtering, making do with old and limited equipment, slow school web connections – but with a commitment to keep pushing to be innovative with whatever can be accessed. A really great presentation from a dedicated educator.

Penny Collins / To Google and Beyond:

A jam packed 45 sojourn through the many iterations of Google search from a recent Google certified teacher. Enthusiastic and informative and a few new avenues of attack the next time I go searching.

There was also a keynote from Margaret Lloyd on ICT and the Australian Curriculum after lunch, followed by a session using iPads from Christine Haynes, plugging Apple’s own Challenge Based Learning. (Does the world need yet another tech company producing ts own curricular or inquiry approach?) So, it was probably fitting and telling that my final session was on Oracle’s ThinkQuest run by the very capable and enthused Tina Photakis. Overall, a day well spent and the one day formula seemed to mean that all sessions were all worthwhile. Next year, it will probably be time for me to step up and offer something back to the local edtech community.

The Right Blend

Published on August 7, 2011 in Personal Reflections. 3 Comments

So, stepping into this new Assistant Principal role has been a full on experience for me; that’s for sure. A school that is just over six months old not only in facilities but in culture means that I might have missed out on some of most of the hard work in getting things up and running, but I’m still finding that there is plenty of teething issues that require my attention and hard work. We actually have the official grand opening this week with the State Premier, the Minister of Education and many more important guests in attendance. Something else to put down as a first in my career.

The frantic pace, the steep learning curve has put the blogging on the backburner over the past fortnight. I’m also thinking carefully about how much I want to blog about my new school anyway. I have new collegial relationships to build, a very multicultural student population to get to know a lot better and new systems and circumstances that require time and contextual insight to fully understand. I’m inclined to blog on the side of caution. So, if you only read good news stories involving my new site, it is not because I’m wearing rose coloured glasses or trying to “spin” a one dimensional viewpoint. I’m just trying to be respectful.

I am taking some of John Spencer’s advice for beginning teachers and remixing it for my new leadership role. It goes something like this:

Be bold. Be humble.

It’s become my mantra as I approach the start of the school year [my new role].  It’s the paradox that keeps me in a place where I can serve my students [colleagues] with confidence and lead my students [colleagues] with humility. It’s not a middle zone, either.  I don’t “take down” the boldness by being humble or “take down” the humility by being bold.  Instead, it’s a sense that I should be completely bold and completely humble simultaneously.

I like what this translates for me. To be an effective leader and someone who will work with a whole bunch of educators all at various places in their own educational journey, I need both of those qualities – boldness and humility. The boldness to ask the questions that will uncover what I need to know for the decisions I will need to take, the confidence that I bring ideas and experiences that will push the school in the direction it wants to go. But equally important is the humility that my colleagues will know a lot more about these students, this community, this new-born facility than I will know. I need to listen to their complaints, their fears, their opinions and their advice. Humility alone will give the message that I don’t know what I’m talking about. Boldness alone will alienate staff who’ve been in these trenches longer than this new boy. But with the two combined together, I just might be able to make a difference.

The Fabulous Dr Joyce Valenza

Published on July 27, 2011 in Conferences & PD, Future Directions, Information Literacy and Web 2.0. 2 Comments

I was very lucky to attend today’s seminar with Dr Joyce Valenza here in Adelaide, and my head is still swimming from the sheer breadth she covered in the day. The whole day in terms of her presentation, her links and pathways can all be found here on her wikispace created for this down under visit. So I won’t try and recreate the day actually that would be impossible because what the site can’t convey to you is the sheer passion that Joyce has. It certainly won’t demonstrate the furious pace at which our collective brains were filled – I was asked to run the backchannel which was quiet and understated, but participants were too busy listening, watching and checking out links and tools on their laptops to be throwing back too many queries and challenges. By only using the wikispace, you would not also appreciate the urgency in her message – encouraging and enthused – but urgent nonetheless. With an audience of mainly teacher-librarians, I got the feeling that the urgency is as much for the future of this role in schools as it was for the future of our students but of course, the two are connected.

So, thank you, Joyce, for a brilliant day. What your brilliant online resource does is enable those of us at today’s seminar to go back through your day in smaller bite size chunks at a pace that allows for deeper reflection, fuller exploration and lengthy consideration of how to change and improve the learning for our respective student communities. It’ll be something I’ll chew for quite a while and is a very timely focus as I start in on my new role.

Can’t Shake That Classroom Teacher Feeling

Published on July 24, 2011 in Personal Reflections. 1 Comment

It’s a weird feeling to be changing schools and positions mid-school year for a number of reasons. I’ve had to whittle down a stockpile of nearly 4000 emails that documented my history of the past eight years down to the essential five hundred or so that I’ve forwarded into a Gmail folder, complete a handover list and even popped out to my new school to pick up a laptop and some timetables. But until I actually start tomorrow and get my head totally around the new role, there isn’t anything urgent to be done over this weekend.

And that’s weird because for the previous twenty odd years, the weekend leading into a new term has meant a planning frenzy, time spent plotting the learning for the term, a more sequential plan of attack for the first week and a detailed outline for the first day. In recent times, this planning has been posted up on the learning team wiki where my colleagues and I have collaborated for our classrooms. But my new role does not include a specific classroom. So this weekend has left me with that strange feeling, almost a form of guilt, that I should be doing something school related. I know the new job will soon gather its own momentum and I’ll have plenty to pore over in the evenings ahead. So, I’m going to try and enjoy this free evening. Tomorrow will take care of itself.

Screen grab of a random day on the wiki.

A Change In Direction

Published on July 14, 2011 in Future Directions and Personal Reflections. 7 Comments

I’ve made a change in my professional life. From next term, I will be the Assistant Principal in ICT & Admin at Woodville Gardens School here in Adelaide, moving on from my position as the Teaching and Learning Technologies Coordinator at Lockleys North Primary School. It’s an upward step and a significant change from what the last eight and a half years have been like. People who know me well know that I’m not an impulsive person and I usually err on the side of caution in most aspects of my life. So, many of my colleagues were surprised to find out that I had applied and won this particular job for the remainder of 2011. After all, Lockleys North is an excellent school with nice kids, parents committed to their children’s learning and many great programs. I’m not being a sycophant by pointing out that the school has one of the best principals going around and I’m not being a braggart in stating that I have been a fairly big influence in the school’s forward movement in the use of technology. But the time seemed right for a new challenge and this opportunity appealed to my restrained sense of ambition and sense of social justice. I’m a proud advocate for public education, and it will be good for me to put the expertise and experience that I have put under my belt to improve the outcomes for a population of students here in suburban Adelaide who in general don’t have life as easy as the kids I’ve been working with.

Back in 2003, I was given an opportunity as a green-behind-the-ears young classroom teacher to become the ICT Coordinator at LNPS. I had an abundance of enthusiasm, some ideas around how technology could make a difference to student learning and a whole lot to learn about being on the first rung of leadership. Being a coordinator in South Australian schools means still being responsible for a classroom as well as the leadership and management aspects of the wider role, and that is a much harder juggling role than being full time in the classroom. I also went from a school where I had access to a well equipped computer room whenever I wished, pursuing digital projects with my class without worrying too much about the whole school direction. I started off in my new role with one computer room with twenty computers and one solitary PC in the back of each classroom for a school of over 400 students. It was always going to be a long term job but I was not following in an incumbent’s footsteps and had the freedom to build up overall ICT focus of the school gradually. In 2005, we started introducing interactive whiteboards well before they became mainstream items in this state and in 2007, I got our wireless laptop program up and running. In 2008 – 2010, we were one of only four DECS schools involved in a lengthy Learning Technologies research project right before the State Government wound up that arm of the department. Late last year, I wrote the application that got our school into the 2011 Microsoft Innovative Schools program. Ironically, the final two Forums of that program are something that I am giving up to move to this new position!

So, I feel that I have achieved a lot in my time. I never did my job so well as to become redundant, but stretched between classroom commitments and other constraints, I feel that what I have contributed will continue and branch off in new ways without my input. I’ve mentioned some of the outstanding colleagues I have been lucky to work with – the rock stars who have embraced digital planning, real “just in time” use of technology and tasks that have pushed student learning into new places. These same colleagues encouraged me to apply for this new position when I wasn’t sure if I was the right person or if it was the right opportunity, and were the first to congratulate me when I got the news of my appointment.

So, why this new job? Well, Woodville Gardens is one of the sites dubbed as a “super school” by the South Australian media, formed by the amalgamation of three smaller schools. The school is brand new (well, six months old) and the notion of being part of building a new school culture is very appealing. The school is also a Category One with the greatest level of social disadvantage, so knowing that I will be working towards improving these students’ future means I have the potential to really make a difference. I also get to apply all of the experience and knowledge from my own time at Lockleys North into a new site and open myself up to new experiences to continually make myself into a better educator. The role also has more time built into working with staff, and influencing practice on a bigger scale is important too, especially if the mantra of “21st Century Learning” is to have any meaning at all. This new school is about re-defining the schooling experience for our less privileged students and it will be humbling and exciting to be in on the ground floor. I’ve seen how schools like Dallas Brooks Community, St Albans Meadows and Silverton (all in Melbourne) have become learning centres of excellence and hotbeds of exceptional practice – so I’m hoping that my new role can help lead out in a similar direction.

So, I’ve been lucky to be part of one of the best schools in this state. It’s time to see where this new opportunity goes. Wish me luck.

Citizen-based Surveillance

Published on June 23, 2011 in Internet and Mobile Technology. 0 Comments

Being here in Australia, I didn’t pay too much attention to the Vancouver riots after the NHL finals loss of their local team until I read about the role that social media played in the events of that day on Stephen Downes’ OLDaily. His links got me interested, and over the last few days I’ve followed numerous other links and sought to make some sense of the vast array of views and counter-views that are online. So, here are some tenuous thoughts…

In an age where we are concerned about privacy and the role that closed circuit video has in our society for catching wrong doers, it is ironic that people think nothing of the potential surveillance in people’s hands and pockets in the form of their smartphones. So, when things swung out of control in Vancouver, those “caught up in the moment” never considered that their actions captured and uploaded to the web might come back to bite them on the backside. One of the sites that Stephen points to is run by Captain Vancouver, who combines the actions of naming and shaming real people behind the protection of an online alias. Here, commenters sway between admiration for this new form of online accountability or the reviling of an online vigilante squad caught up in their own moment of “seeking justice”. I’m still not sure where I sit because some of the actions of those participating were so moronic and lacking in any moral fibre that seeing some form of justice dished out seems to be perfectly defensible. But then the comments take their own dark turn and the Captain’s intents are being hijacked by others and turned into racist, misogynist, homophobic attacks that undermine the moral high ground that the site’s owner wants to be able to maintain.

In a lot of ways, the rioters who posted about their own antics on Facebook and Twitter have messed in their own nest, and are reaping the consequences in more ways than they ever could have anticipated. It is a fascinating insight into mob human behaviour. People behaved as if they were truly anonymous, unleashing their most inappropriate and hedonistic actions on property, public and private – and what I’ve viewed across the web, there is certainly no stereotypical rioter. In fact, most of the names and faces that crop with regularity seem to be bright, ordinary people – kids still at high school, people working for charities and university students. Did they fail to notice the array of mobile phones held high recording moments for posterity? Except posterity is now a Facebook profile, or a Twitpic link or a YouTube upload. And are the bystanders whose footage is now being used in the digital witchhunt just as guilty for standing by and being part of the rebellion? Or were they adopting the position of citizen journalists?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tzofia/5840853460/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tzofia/5840853460/

So the rioters had their fun, the police dispersed them eventually and the mainstream press filed their reports. But many net savvy citizens were very unhappy about the way that individuals had not only trashed their city but gleefully shared their antics for anyone in the world to see. So, the various shaming sites I mentioned before started to spring up. Some merely had the goal of posting clear pics of persons of interest asking if anyone recognising them to contact the Vancouver Police Department.

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2011-06-22-facebook-vancouver-riots_n.htm

Just five days after the June 15 riot that plunged the Canadian city into three hours of chaos, police had received 3,500 e-mails that included 53 videos, 708 photographs and 1,011 hyperlinks to social media sites such as Facebook.

Now police have warned outraged residents to avoid using social media to exact vigilante justice. Authorities “are asking the public to resist the temptation to take justice into their own hands,” the police said in a statement.

Others, like Captain Vancouver, decided that some meticulous research across varying forms of social media held to some personally defined standards would be the way to ensure that these everyday people were held to some form of justice. These sites weren’t buying the “I was caught up in the moment” reasons offered by some identified and also felt that the court system would merely give out a “slap on the wrist” for anyone who was arrested anyway. But there is always the risk of getting the facts wrong, as the police found out.

So, maybe not quite uberveillance but another cross-pollination of mobile devices combined with social media mixed in with old fashioned mob rule produces results that spiral and viral way beyond the control of any individual whose profile can be matched. I mean, what are the odds of wearing the same outfit when stealing from a store as on your social media profile? And someone is ready to mix and match the whole concoction together in another example of internet remix interactivity.

Name That Moron Screengrab

Name That Moron Screengrab

You Know You’ve Become A Techno-Teaching Cliche When …

Published on June 9, 2011 in Interactive Whiteboards. 0 Comments

cliche

This idea sparked from a claim in the staffroom the other day that Comic Sans helps kids learn. Who would have thought it?

Australian Video Game Ratings – Issues For Underagers

Published on June 8, 2011 in Gaming. 1 Comment

Last year, I bought a copy of Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare as I thought it would be interesting to play a game aimed at adults and in a genre that I would not usually gravitate towards. We have a Wii system and I hooked up the Wiimote and nunchuk ready to get into video warrior mode. I think I played it twice before getting bored and nauseated by the motion caused by my unsteady gameplay. A couple of months later I traded it in alongside a few other disused games of my son’s in order to buy a DS Pokemon title for him.

But unlike, many of my teaching colleagues when I heard kids in the upper grades talking about playing COD at home, I knew they weren’t playing a virtual fishing game. In Australia, all of the Call of Duty titles carry a M 15+ rating. Interestingly, this seems to be used a guide rather than as a rule as I have heard kids casually tell me that “everyone has this game” and “my parents bought this for my birthday”. I’m pretty sure that many of the pre-orders for the latest installment Black Ops were from the 13 years and under brigade with either very open minded  or possibly naive parents (maybe a combination of both) collecting the coveted goods so that bragging rights would be in place for school the next day.

Australia has a mixed approach in rating video games. On one hand, Australia is seen as quite liberal with the Call of Duty games available without guardian approval or assistance from the age of 15. In North America, the ESRB rates the game’s starting age at 17, in Britain the age is 16 and Europe’s PEGI sets the bar at 16 years of age. But there is also a large list of games that are banned here that can be bought under different rating systems elsewhere in the world. So, are there dangers in allowing younger primary school aged students access to these more mature themed games?

A blog post by Carlton Reeve, highlights some of the potential dangers:

I think it’s right to be concerned about the underage use of games like Call of Duty (COD).  Increasingly parents are succumbing to perceived peer pressure and allowing their children to play these games because ‘all their friends are.’ I know lots of parents that have decided it’s okay.

I think there are a number of reasons to be concerned.  It’s not just the gratuitous violence that risks becoming normalised, COD and alike are riddled with bad language, sex and other adult themes.

It’s odd that many of us regulate our children’s access to TV but feel that the violence presented in games is somehow different and therefore harmless.  But visual realism in these games is increasing.  What’s more, it’s participatory.  COD Black Ops has a gruesome torture scene, Modern Warfare 2 has terrorists murdering innocent civillians in an airport, and the player can join in.   Computer games present violence in the same manner that porn shows sex – entirely casual and inconsequential.  I can’t imagine many of us would be comfortable with our children watching 18 certificate films but the content in video games is basically the same.

Killing is the point of these games – it is relentless and mindless.  But that might not be an issue to those of us who know better.  There is no evidence to suggest that playing violent video games makes well-adjusted players more violent in the long term but there is ample research that shows a rise in aggression and drop in empathy immediately after playing.  Current studies suggest that violent games can exacerbate underlying psychosis, that is, if you have a tendency to be violent, first person shooters will make it worse.  Thankfully most of us aren’t psychopaths and by our early-mid twenties most of us have settled into our skins.  Young people are still ‘solidifying.’

One of the possible solutions in making these sort of games less accessible to the under 15′s of Australia is the elimination of the MA 15+ category and the creation of a new R 18+ category where only an adult could buy games of that classification. The logic says that it would be less likely a child could talk their parent into buying a R rated video game as the internal alarm bells should be ringing clearly in that responsible adult’s head. But I still continue to be amazed (in a negative sense) at the sort of content that students I have known over the last few years have had exposure to with their parents’ knowledge and blessing. At times, I feel very conservative!

Many serious adult gamers want the kids out of their space as well. There is a wealth of reading at the Australia Needs A R18+ rating for video games website, where the reasons for such a move are clearly outlined. And interestingly, my own state is willing to go it alone in such a move with a decision about dropping the MA 15+ rating for the R 18+ due in July. Will it change the behaviour of video gamers under the age of 15? We’ll have to wait and see if the talk of COD gameplay becomes nostalgic around the schoolyard.

Games Aren’t What They Used To Be When I Was Your Age

Published on May 27, 2011 in Personal Reflections. 1 Comment
http://www.flickr.com/photos/visnes/176197434/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/visnes/176197434/

My two sons, seven and eleven respectively, enjoy games. They quite enjoy a game of Uno, Monopoly or Sorry, but their favourite form involves digital formats. They both own a Nintendo DS, we had a Nintendo Wii and an aging Playstation 2, plus they share the family Windows desktop where they are very adept at finding different forms of games to play. The portable DS systems go with us a lot – over to the grandparents’ house on a Friday or in my office or classroom when one of them is dropped to me while the other goes to swimming or speech therapy. The boys go through phases with games, feeding off each other’s choices with my younger, Joshua, usually leading the way and his older brother joining in when he feels he can see what the whole thing is about and whether there is an appeal for him. The phases sometimes tie to other media – last year, Joshua started getting into the Star Wars series of films where he started buying Star Wars themed Lego with his pocket money and we ended getting the Star Wars Lego Wii game that he promptly and systematically starting working his way through. Aaron never bit during this particular obsession but earlier this year, Pokemon became the new focus for both boys.

I started thinking about the Pokemon factor in games and culture in general for kids when considering Digital Literacy for a presentation I was planning for the canned CEGSA/SLASA conference. It was easy to see as it quickly become part of the everyday conversation and paraphernalia around our home. It started with a DS game, Pokemon Diamond and a Christmas gift Pokepark for the Wii, and has currently expanded to a small collection of small plush toys, a couple of very complex Strategy Guide and Pokedex books and even ended up with the hardcore gamer action of pre-ordering the latest Black version of the DS game before its early March release. That was a strange feeling, standing in EB Games handing over contact details and trading in old games to build up credit to pre-purchase a game that would be sold out within a day and impossible to get quickly any other way. It has spread to research as well, as the boys have hunted down details of pre-DS games – Red, Blue, Emerald, LeafGreen and the list goes on.

“Awww, I wish I could play these games, Dad. They look cool.”

“Well, actually you can although it’s not really legal. The games you found listed on Wikipedia are all from a system called Gameboy Advance that you can’t buy in the shops any more. Fans of these games have converted these games into files you can play in an emulator on the computer.”

“What’s an emulator?”

“Just a version of the original game system that comes up on your computer screen. You search for these game files, called ROMs on different websites, download them and you can run them pretty much like the original game through the emulator.”

“I want those games now!”

So, old skool video games are easy to find and use. Leaving aside the ethical issues surrounding IP and the hold that multinational companies like Nintendo and Sony have on the minds of our young people, it is an amazing way hands on way to explore the history of video games and how the gameplay and graphics have evolved to become more sophisticated and rich in both narrative and challenge. It is interesting that the quality of the imagery is not all that important to my boys – what you do in the game and where you can go is vastly more important. Gaining experience, unlocking levels and gaining new powers and characters are the key components for them. I even had to take Joshua back to the store to use their wi-fi to pick up a virtual gift card in the game that would unlock an unique character only available for a short period of time (again a deal for those dedicated pre-ordering customers) because it would give him credibility back in the school yard when discussing prowess with his friends.

They both enjoy a variety of game sites online although I’ve had conversations warning them off certain sites that have very virus-y looking pop-up windows that they blissfully ignore. Joshua would already have five or six free memberships to online sites that contain some form of in-world interaction, ranging from the World of Cars site to the fun Poptropica. As with any popular game, user created content abounds in the form of FAQs and walkthroughs. When Dean blogged about Lego Universe, I told Josh that I probably allow him to join if the fees were reasonable but so far, Australia seems to be too small a market for inclusion. Again, creative enthusiasts are doing things like creating a US based identity, paying via Paypal etc, in order to gain access.

There are times when my wife and I worry that maybe the boys spend too much of their time on gaming but that could be just our own insecurities surfacing. After all, I’m not much of a gamer. My two favourites are actually Guitar Hero (despite having extremely limited musical ability) and Need For Speed (ironic for a guy who drives a Toyota) but I can see how engaging they are for my boys on a daily basis. It’s even more than that though – gaming is part of their culture, it forms a core part of their conversation and how they relate to their peers and offers pure no-strings-attached pure enjoyment.

Learning Through The Screen

Published on May 26, 2011 in Digital Convergence, Information Literacy and Internet. 0 Comments

How we make sense of the world beyond our own personal day to day experiences?

For me, it started with books mixed with the occasional dose of television back in a fairly isolated childhood back on the farm. My first impressions of what life might be like in the English countryside were shaped by Enid Blyton books and popular music culture via Molly Meldrum and the weekly Countdown Top Ten. I was so insulated in this rural, Lutheranised existence that when I started Year Five at the Appila Rural School (school population: 13 kids) I had no answer to the typical Australian playground question, “Who do you barrack for?” My then best friend went for the Port Adelaide Magpies and so I did. His favourite player was Russell Ebert and so he became mine. Saturday afternoon SANFL broadcasts on the radio and Saturday evening replays suddenly opened up a part of the world that I had no idea existed.

So information flowed to me through newspapers, radio, books, films and television, painting a collective picture of the world beyond my day to day experiences. My concepts of other countries, of other places, of other people were all shaped by this information drip feed. And I thought that I was pretty well informed although in reality, my grasp was pretty opaque in its clarity.

Contrast that now to the view of the outside world that I now get through digital technologies. Much has been written about the fire hose effect of the web but the freedom I now have to pursue any line of research or interest that I want is bringing my learning to an unparallelled level. A concept or topic might come up in conversation and via the internet, I can be tracking down digital pieces to bring together a richer and deeper understanding. Maybe a few examples paint the picture about how the web can fill in the gaps of comprehension.

A few years ago, my class were covering an inquiry unit on the plight of refugees and we were lucky enough to have a student teacher of Serbian background whose family had fled war torn Sarajevo speak to the students about her experiences. That talk prompted my own curiosity and via the web, I easily found articles, video clips and images that helped to grasp some (definitely not all) of the wider perspective of an extremely complex situation.  I could read first hand accounts from multiple perspectives, view the work of photojournalist Ron Haviv or view any number of first hand home video accounts on YouTube. All of this adds up to a much more complex and informative picture than any sanitised television special or reference book could provide.

Digital information and media delivers more detail, more avenues to explore and a greater opportunity for self-participation in the pursuit of learning than mere paper based text or traditional media can deliver alone. That does not mean that traditional outlets don’t have a part to play in my expanding knowledge of the world that I cannot see, touch or feel on a daily basis but my greatest moments of clarity happen more and more online. Individuals who I have never met face to face offer insights into their personal life that enable me to peek into the ordinary and mundane (to them anyway) parts of their everyday life that I find personally interesting and insightful. Be it Doug Noon’s descriptions of an Alaskan winter, the first snow fall in Chris Harbeck’s Winnipeg, Sue Waters’ tweets about American Coke or Leigh Blackall’s family trip to the Philippines, I get a little taste of the world beyond my limited suburban Australian vista.

It does reinforce the old adage that the more you know, the more you start to realise that you don’t know very much of what there is to know. The internet is the greatest repository of human knowledge ever assembled and traversing its vastness one network link at a time is all one person can do.

worldbeyond