Knowledging across life’s curriculum

Whos direction?

Well I haven’t shown up in this space for a while and I don’t feel like justifying this long absence; but I’m hoping that an image can better convey the many versions of me which sometime want to go their separate ways! By the way, the artist whom I’ve borrowed from on Flickr is a wonderful French artist who goes by the name bobi & bobi. She has a nack for depicting our ambivalent and human contradictions among other emotional states she renders quite beautifully. Click on the image to see more of her work.

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before the rain
Originally uploaded by (bobi & bobi).

Recent art

Tapestry Hydrangea

Originally uploaded by ArTaide.

A bit of Hydrangea color

Another headache

Neat!!! I can now blog directly from flickr. I tried it a month or so ago and it didn’t work. But hurray now it does.

All that time in front of a screen witll do it everytime!

Perhaps I need to change my glasses too! I photoshopped a fragment of an older painting. I need to be creative at times and digitizing older paintings temporarily satisfies the craving when I don’t have the time to engage in the ‘real’ stuff.

Slow blogging

I’ve been busy with too many other activities, family matter and just plain living. What falls to the wayside is usually keeping up to date with reading news feeds to take the daily pulse of what is out there in the virtual yonder. I’m thinking there is a very definite pace to blog upkeeping and I wonder if the daily entry could ever be a natural rhythm for me.

I am a walking paradox! I suspect I’m not the only one

I both love web technologies with their fast and efficient implications AND slow living, with an emphasis on the leisurely contemplative pace. How do you reconcile the two?

As the holidays approach, family matters expand and life away from the computer calls loudly. I believe a break will do me good. But “real” bloggers don’t take breaks! Didn’t I read that somewhere “…frequently updated” blogs should be! How frequent is frequent? When is not so frequent okay? The internet does not close on Christmas, Hanukkah, New Year or any other holiday; religious or other.

There is no natural break in the 24/7 rhythm of the blogosphere. That is a problem. Perhaps I am not a real blogger! I tend to be allergic to anything that carries a ‘you have to’ tag on it and creates more obligations. As the calendar years add up in my life, pleasure is increasingly important as a criteria for choosing what I keep in my life and what I discard. So far so good I enjoy blogging, but breaking for the holidays and at times, is a BIG desirable option I want to design into the process.

Furthermore, I have a real dilemma and I am wondering how my fellow bloggers (the real ones) handle it. I have a couple of papers (over)due and a number of proposals for chapters and conferences that need tending to. Splitting my time between these different writing tasks I find somewhat complicated.

My style of learning and writing is very much obsessive immersion. The subject I deal with at a given time is absorbed through every pore of my thinking self. Much of the time involves reading and reflecting, note taking, that has yet to be coherent enough to blog. I remember reading Torill Mortensen and Jill Walker in Blogging Thoughts trying to assess when an idea was formed enough to publish in a blog. Furthermore, how do we define the boundaries of what is bloggable material and what is not?

I titled my blog Knowledging across life’s curriculum, to convey the idea that learning is a continual activity that is part and parcel of most everything we do. I defined this writing space as a research blog: material for thinking on the subject(s) that interest not only my academic focus, and hopefully the learning that happens on the periphery and through these activities of living in the world.

Informal and emergent learning in interactive web environments is my particular ‘thing’. A vast and ever changing environment where the personal is intimately intertwined with what transpires in these participatory environments. How personal is personal when speaking of learning ? How are emotions treated as learning variables ? I don’t have the answers to these questions. As an ex-psychotherapist, I know how emotions teach. And these days they are saying “go play in the snow; close the academic books; drink a glass (a bottle) of Pinot Noir; have a meal with a friend…”. How do emotions teach us ? by listening to those feelings.

Happy holidays, be back … rested.

First snow

I couldn’t resist taking pictures of this yearly event. Ok they are digitally tweaked, but you still have the essence.

Montreal from just around the corner

Montreal Nov. 2005