Guest Post By Charles Cooper Our world is surrounded by mystery. We seek out limits to our knowledge when watching movies, reading dystopian books, and even as we converse with friends. The mysterious, framed the right way, compels us to seek and enrich our lives and who we are. Often times, absence of mystery in relationships, tired stories, and mundane routes to work put real pressures on us that effect our daily mindset. It’s torturous! The lack of a reliable source in Truth has compelled man for eons to explore, invent, create, and, at times, reorder perceived reality. Mystery and lack of answers compell. Having things or ideas handed to us without having work for those things, often, result in ingratitude and stagnation. How is your content delivered to students? Are you the source of all knowledge? Do your student struggle for your acceptance of their answer or do you struggle with your students as you seek, as partners in education, a new continent of knowledge and experience? None of us wants to be in a tired, drab relationship at home. Why would your students want anything differently at school? As educators, invite mystery, real mystery, into your classroom. Present something that you are ignorant in to your students and ask for their help! Ask your students "What breaks your heart in this world and what can we do about it?" If we are truly getting our kids ready for a future none of us can predict, then why are so many classrooms so predictable in so many ways? Spend a class period having your kids Google problems in the world, BIG problems, REAL problems, and brainstorm ways you all can get on the road to finding solutions, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant those problems may seem. Be a seeker of knowledge with your kids instead of a fictitious (and impossible) knower of all things. Lift THEM up. Knowing more than your kids is safe. Its a given on some levels. Take a risk and get your kids to know more than you… Then celebrate that and advertise it to your fellow teachers, your parents… The world. Leverage the unknown, the mysterious…to benefit your kids!Filed under: Government/Civics, In The Classroom Tagged: #edchat, education, mystery

What is Storify? Storify is a visual way to tell social media stories using your Tweets, Facebook updates, pics, and other social media information.  Storify is overwhelmingly a neat way to show how a story develops over social media — without you having to take screenshots and insert your own links. How to Use Storify: Luckily, it’s easy. First, create an account at Storify (you can log in with Twitter or Facebook). Click the blue "Create a Story" button in the top right hand corner. Look at the right side of the new screen where the icons of your favorite social media websites reside.   Click on any social media icon (like Twitter), then put in a username for that network you want to search. You’ll see all the recent Tweets from that person/hashtag/search query. Now, start dragging content from the right hand panel from the social media networks you are searching into the left hand panel where you are telling your story. Add words or titles. You are finished!! A story told in text and pictures via social media updates. Want an Example? Here’s one of my classes using storify. It’s a recap of our Digital Citizenship Chats we did on our #blogs.  

As part of the DiTE (Diversity in Teacher Education) project we are running a series of seminars. Today’s was given by Kate Reynolds (dean of education) and Pat Black. The focus of the seminar centred around two key questions: What is a qualified teacher and what is PGCE? And what are the associated policy issues? A key question is what is the future of teacher education? What is the impact of the diversity of routes into teacher education now available and what does it mean to be a teacher and what is the role of universities in teacher education?   Pat summarised some of the teacher initiatives of the past few years and associated policy perspectives. She mentioned in particular the November 2010 white paper on the importance of teacher education, highlighting the following recommendations: Teach first to expand Outstanding schools to be given role Bursaries for training More time in the classroom National framework for training State funded schools   She also referred to the 2011 report on training next generation of outstanding teachers.  Of particular note of course is the Carter review, which looked at teacher education. Carter undertook a review of initial teacher training (ITT). The core aim was to identify which core elements of high quality ITT across phases and subject disciplines are key to equipping trainees with the required skills and knowledge to become outstanding teachers. In addition, he looked at how to improve the transparency of training offers and access to course   Pat also referenced the report on the establishment of a new college of teaching referenced in the a world class teaching profession report, which I blogged about recently. She also mentioned the ‘A manifesto for teacher education’ report, which states that: Our schools and colleges need to be able to recruit qualified teachers who are experts in teaching and learning as well as subject specialisms.              

This post is password protected. You must visit the website and enter the password to continue reading.Filed under: Curious David, PSY205, Screencasts, SPSS

By all means, marry.  If you get a good wife, you’ll become happy; otherwise, you’ll become a philosopher. ~Socrates Socrates was married.  We know that from several sources.  Socrates had more than one child.  That is also mentioned in several sources (re: The Apology of Socrates).  Yet, when Socrates is moved to talk about love, he quotes, not his wife or another male philosopher, but Diotima of Matinea.  Unfortunately for the reader, the definition for love is never truly nailed down by the interlocutors, left confidently by Socrates as a painted canvas of wispy, enduring, natural/divine yearnings. Socrates understood explicitly… To our detriment, he fails to transfer that knowledge to us. Years, maybe decades, after their initial encounters, it was obvious Socrates’ interaction with Diotima had been a deep and permanent one.  Female philosophers were exceedingly rare, back in the day, and to have a man like Socrates quote a female during a male drinking party would have been "interesting" to the listeners. But, I’m getting ahead of myself… The Story I was talking with a friend the other day.  I can’t remember which friend or which day because my interest in the topic of philosophy, like a mild poison, sometimes blinds me to such details (re: Phaedo).  We allowed the discussion to lead us in which ever direction it wanted while noting, in passing, points of interest and new conversational landmarks, if any were spotted.  As many of my serious exchanges go, eventually we were lead to Plato and Socrates. Plato, of  course, is the author of so many dialogs that are, individually and collectively, intricate and mind blowing works.  His teacher, Socrates, chose not to write anything down in books or treatises (re: Phaedrus), but did teach Plato much of what he knew, as is assumed by many. As the source of such wonder and knowledge, one might ask, who taught Socrates what he knew? One of Socrates’ Teachers If we believe Plato’s (and other’s) account…Socrates was originally a natural philosopher or, as we would say today, a scientist (re: Aristophanes’ The Clouds). He was known to investigate things "above the clouds and below the earth" in his efforts to find Truth.  At the bottom of his search for Truth was his need to know how to live rightly.  Socrates was guided by the question, "How are we to live?" At some point in Socrates’ life, he comes into contact with Diotima, one of the few female philosophers in the Platonic corpus (re: Symposium). The above facts are recounted in one of Plato’s dialog on Love called…well… The Symposium (which is the bookend writing for The Republic…which mentions husbands and wives, but not love, interestingly enough…There is another dialog written on love, The Lysis, but it’s focus is friendship and love).  In the Symposium several men at a drinking party have a contest to define love…but each attempt fails because it is from their own very specific perspective.  For example, the doctor defines it in terms of the body, the comedic poet in terms of ultimate success in man challenging the gods, and the tragic poet in terms of futility against the gods. When it is Socrates’ turn to speak, he claims that Diotima had show him the true meaning of love.  According to her, love was a way to contemplate the divine.  For example, one may become linked in with a beautiful person, or soul, or both and fall completely in love.  Because man is a rational creature, the mind, despite the intense emotion, gravitates toward the nature of this emotion toward that old "friend".   Especially if the love is forbidden, contemplation quickly turns to the nature of this madness, love, and the nature of the person being loved.  The person and the emotion are separated.  When love is divorced from the person and thought of independent of a vehicle or carrier of love, that, says Diotima, is when the mind can turn to the Divine. Even erotic (ie. Eros… longing, not just sexual, you dirty birdies) attraction can lead the mind from the low to the high.  With the guide of reason even the lowly sexual desires can lead to high minded thinking and reasoning.  Without the guide of reason… well compare what happens, for example, at the end of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet on one hand and The Tempest on the other.  The missing element in one play was a careful guiding hand. As in all of his dialogs, Plato writes to several audiences simultaneously.  You have to pay attention to the setting, what is said, what is not said… to every sentence and the layers of meaning they create to really get what Plato is trying to hint at. Such is the case with his definition of love. In the Symposium there are seven major participants and, therefore, seven definitions of love.  The first few definitions are really bad definitions as they are limited by the speaker.  The doctor, Eryximachus, for example, can only talk about love as a function of the body and nothing more.  But the praises and definitinos of love get more and more complex until we end up with the final speaker on the nature of love…Socrates. Socrates, however, doesn’t define love.  He tells a story of our female philosopher.  He lets her define it for him.  She teaches him about love and he remembers years and, even, decades later. Why does Plato do this? Diotima We must turn our attention to Diotima, her characteristics, and her function as a knower in the dialog. Piecing together a few brief experiences and descriptions of this character, we find a tantalizing puzzle.  The following is my own interpretation based on the limited exposure we have to Diotima provided by Socrates and nothing more: She seems to have a very strong personality and is sure of herself.  This is likely the reason the head strong (younger) Socrates stays to listen to her and seeks to understand her completely.  She sees or has seen something that he has difficulty wrapping his mind around.  He is eager to see what she sees.  As a rational, science minded man concerned with inanimate things, Socrates is new to the concept of true and deep love that lifts one’s eyes beyond the physical.  Even the concept of the Divine might have been foreign to him at this point in life.  She is also described as incredibly beautiful, but, as we see in the latter parts of the Symposium, Socrates isn’t simply attracted to physical beauty (Alcibiades attests to this when he breaks into the party, already drunk himself, and wondering why Socrates never "loved" him…Alcibiades was always described as a very attractive person).  Socrates appreciates beauty, but sharp wit, sharp humor, and intellectual capacity is more akin to the beauty Socrates seeks out.  Further, as a "seer", Diotima’s eyes were particularly of interest for our philosopher.  She could see things that were beyond the scientists’ universe and that puzzled Socrates.  As a matter of fact, Diotima is credited with the change in focus that Socrates had from "out there" to "in here".  After his encounter with Diotima, Socrates begins to understand that the Truth cannot be systematized or be put into a formula.  He turns, then, to the Truth’s shadows…human opinions.  Socrates intimates that we all see/experience a different sliver or facet of the Truth, so if enough facets were put together we could get a clearer picture of his main concern, the right way to live.  Finally, there is an easiness to her approach to philosophy that catches Socrates off guard.  There is a joy to her practice of philosophy that, if you’ve ever talked to any philosophy major, doesn’t come naturally to most people who dabble in philosophy. To an extent, and this is my guess, Diotima seems to "be" what Socrates (at that time) was "trying to be".   She was a natural while he had to work, wonder, and contemplate.  Love, then, might be similar.  Diotima’s love covered all of the ground from the lowly physical to the Divine… it was a catalyst to compel people to reach for new heights.  It was a vehicle used to carry (inspire) anything to higher ground.  Socrates’ love was likely grounded in the physical because he was a natural philosopher (again, a scientist).   His chance meeting with her certainly changed that assumption since he was still thinking and talking about her and her views years later. The lesson Socrates might have learned is that the danger in trying to question/investigate love (philosophical or otherwise) too much is that you unravel a solid unified tapestry into its individual pieces…then wonder where it disappeared to.Filed under: Political Philosophy Tagged: diotima, diotima of manitea, philosophy, plato's symposium, platonic, socrates, symposium, the republic, xanthippe

Students in Mr. Kirsch’s ICT class reflections on the infographic describing information on how their Social Media profiles may be looked at more by employers verse their "hard copy" resume. Source: storify.com See on Scoop.it - FootprintDigital

This post is password protected. You must visit the website and enter the password to continue reading.Filed under: Curious David Tagged: SPSS

  I often say to people that social media has changed the way I work. I have been blogging since 2007, following very good advice from my colleague at the OU, Martin Weller, he said to try and blog on a regular basis, think of things to blog about (reflections on papers or conferences, working up ideas, summarising interesting resources, drafts of papers or book chapters) and also to follow some key bloggers (which I do, you can see who on my blogroll). I was lucky enough that my first post was picked up by George Siemens, which led to an immediate increase in the number of people reading my blog. Soon after I started Tweeting, not always the easiest thing to get the hang of, but I was lucky enough to connect with many others at the OU. I started facebook at about the same time. I tend to use Twitter mainly for professional things, disseminating my research or finding useful links and resources. Facebook is a mixture of professional and personal (be warned there are lots of pictures of cats and food). Cooking and travel are two of my passions; so a few years ago I started a personal blog.   I can’t believe the number of people I am connected with through these sites, I have 8135 followers and follow 2301 people on Twitter. People ask me how on earth I keep up with all of this, the answer is I don’t; I dip in, I look at particular people’s tweets, I interact with people who @gconole me, and I search on hashtags. I have 1328 friends on facebook! I have a different level of interaction with people on both of these social networking sites, my connections are like an onion, at the core are people that I interact with on a regular basis, who will always like my posts, comment or retweet. I have lost count of the number of people who I have met face to face that I feel like I already know because of our interactions online.   My style is very open, a result of my personality and the nature of my job I guess. Blogging has truly transformed my research practice, it is relatively easy to write a 500 word blog post on a nascent idea, which you can then work up into a paper later, I recently did this with a piece on a new taxonomy for MOOCs. Despite having worked at six institutions I feel very much part of a global community of peers. So social networking is an important daily part of both my professional and personal practice.   I was really chuffed to be listed in the AACE list of 20 top people in Educational Technology to follow through social media. I know many of the people on the list, and indeed would count them as friends as well as colleagues. Social media has enriched my life in so many ways; I love the two-way nature of these sites, and the way people are so generous and willing to share and help.

 The book to read for reference here is Reason in History by G.W.F. Hegel. My pal, Hegel, suggests that sometimes giving into the loss of control may be what is called for as opposed to expelling massive amount of energy in an attempt to keep a tenuous grasp on events.  In a certain sense, he writes that control is a mirage. G.W.F. Hegel was a German Idealists philosopher doing his thing in the late 1700s and early 1800s.  His "thing" was to attempt to tie up philosophical loose ends so that he could present a finished system of systems (my wording) to the world.  He wanted to incorporate all events, past, present, and future, into an understandable system while preserving the possibility of freedom (kind of).  Needless to say, systems and freedom don’t mix well.  They largely contradict each other.  Systems are products of reason, rationality and a little luck while freedom can be acidic to systems and tend to lead to dissolution (in its purest form). In particular, I’m thinking of his "thesis, antithesis, synthesis" model (which technically was a summary of his ‘system’…and not something he proposed directly). So, looking at the chart above, Hegel proposes that as time moves in a forward direction events, people, whatev’ collide in that same forward direction…but the collision creates complexity and gets everyone closer to Truth.  This gets a little complex, though.  As person one (thesis) collides in an event with person two (antithesis), they inextricably affect each other in an event called a "negation".  That doesn’t mean they destroy each other… simply put, they affect each other so that the two are different people after this collision.  They affect each other into perpetuity. So let’s say two people meet and fall in love.  #Bam! There’s the first negation.  One can assume this is good… However, they break up for some stupid reason a few years later.  #Bam!  There’s another negation.  The couple is the new thesis and whatever broke them up was the antithesis.  Those two collide and, via negation, a new reality sets in.  Oooh, that’s bad.  But then years later they meet again and fall in love because they ran into each other in a car wreck, let’s say.  #Bam!  Another negation.  Now they’re back together.  So the car wreck was actually a good thing disguised as a bad event. After each event, at least according to Hegel, the relationship gets stronger and closer to what it "should" have been from the beginning. Now, because we can’t predict where each negation is going to take us… we can’t ever finally say whether an event was good or bad even thought at the time it seemed good or bad (ie. the car wreck seemed bad at the time, but brought two people back together). We have to suspend judgement of events indefinitely.  If we assume, like Hegel did, that all of human history is leading us toward the promised land (Heaven, Shangri La, [Shangri La is different than ‘hangry’ which is being angry because of hunger] etc.) then each event that leads us in that direction is an ultimately good event. If each event is ultimately good, then even the "bad" is actually "good". On page 11 of my copy of Reason in History, Hegel writes "That this IDEA or REASON is the True, the Eternal, the Absolute Power and that it and nothing but it, its glory and majesty, manifests itself  in the world-this, as we said before, has been proven in philosophy and is being presupposed here as proved." In history, we must find a balance between accepting what happens to us as fated and listening for that small voice of History as it tries to guide us in our actions toward good.  We must both give up the world and try to affect it simultaneously in much the same way Abraham was asked to sacrifice his only son Isaac even though God had promised to make Abraham the Father of many Nations through Isaac. Now, Hegel takes this in the direction of "the State" and says that since governments survive longer than people… they are prone to learn more lessons than people.  Governments know better for people than people know for themselves via bureaucracies as long as the government is efficient and aware that Reason is working its way through the State’s actions. I’m not sure that I can fully subscribe to this, but maybe that is what Reason wants me to do… to doubt as I play out its plan toward Truth :) What I gather from Hegel that I can align myself with is that to a certain extent we need to believe and doubt simultaneously.  We need to be patient and act simultaneously.  We need to act as individuals as we move toward a perfect marriage.Filed under: Government/Civics, Political Philosophy Tagged: American Government, government, hegel, philosophy, reason, reason in history, thrasymachus, thrasymakos, U.S. Government, US Government

Yes, everything you do online is being tracked. Your searches, the videos you watch, transactions, social events, even crime. Scandalous crimes. With a little help, especially with our guides, you’re still able to remain anonymous on the Internet. Source: www.makeuseof.com See on Scoop.it - FootprintDigital