Try this (1)

I have begun analyzing myself within this context of moving through a country, a culture and a mix of languages that are different from what I am used to moving through in my typical day to day world.  Language is an important part of this.  Most people speak English to some extent and I tap into that like my nose grabbing ahold of familiar smells within so much that it does not recognize.  I even surprised myself one day when I caught myself thinking that I liked the smell of cigarette smoke because it was the only smell i could recognize... 

Some people seem to have a few English sentences that they have practiced.  Yesterday when I was traveling back to my hotel, the autorickshaw I was in was running out of gas.  The driver turned to me, said "petrol" and took a detour down some back alleys that I would not call roads but maybe paths with some elements of past attempts at creating a road-like surface - basically an series of potholes that had concrete chunks in them and around them.  The driver navigated through them like I remember my friends navigating through muddy pothole ridden trails in Alaska on their four-wheelers.  No different really - only maybe the sights and smells around.

When the driver pulled over he said "five minutes" and walked away.  I pretty much knew that he did not specifically mean "five minutes" in any sense of a particular element of time, "five" maybe being a safe number to use to designate a measurement like "a few" or "let's see how many".  I sat back to see what would happen. 

There was an old woman on the other side of the street.  I smiled, she smiled.  I listened to the sounds of birds, of children.  Some faint music.  A faintness of indications of traffic in the distance as if all those potholes ate at the harshness of the traffic noise until all that reached me was a wash of honed down humming.  Quite peaceful actually.

The woman walked around, easefully, slowly, not necessarily towards me but eventually arriving over by the rickshaw.  "Which country?" she asked.  My mind wandered.  Which country was I thinking about?  Which country was I from?  Which country was where I called my home?  Which country did I dream about calling my home?  "Finland," I said, and she nodded and smiled and I really didn't know if she understood or if it really even mattered.  "Water?" she said, exposing a plastic bottle that she had under her shawl.  "No, thank you," I said smiling. and she nodded and covered the water bottle with her shawl. 

"Thanks, thanks, thanks," I thought, racking my brains, knowing that I knew that word, where was it, what was it, sh something shakra, shukra, shulkrita, shukria, yeah, shukria, something like that, I knew it was something like that, it seemed to match a memory and all I wanted to do was to say the word to the old woman who was now looking down the street, still smiling a serene smile, and I said "shukria" and her head slowly turned and her eyes met my eyes and her smile did not fade, and I thought that she nodded but couldn't be sure and she calmly as if without effort turned and walked away and the driver came back as if on cue,went to the back of the autorickahaw and fumbled with what sounded like a propane tank, went away again, came back "five minutes" later, fumbled a bit again, got back into his seat and off we went.

Eagles, ducks and a chicken

The auto rickshaw added an interesting dimension to meeting a friend at one of the engineering universities, all forward motion, bumps, noise and views of amazing entrepreneurial spirit all around, people doing business on almost every available square meter of sidewalk space, selling, re-selling, creating, dealing, observing, running, walking, sitting, waiting, discussing, building, pushing carts, cooking substances, re-purposing objects, re-purposing materials, all for the ultimate benefit of those who they could proudly call their customers.

How many were thinking about providing "experiences"?

I once heard Ken Blanchard tell his story about ducks and eagles - ducks walk around quacking about why this and that can't be done, what's wrong with the system, why they can't do anything about it, why they can't help you, excuses, excuses, blah blah blah, quack quack quack, while eagles move through the spaces above a situation eying it with a calm intent asking well now what can we do about this to make it all work out?

My guess is that a lot of those people the rickshaw was passing had an eagle-like experience mentality, focusing in how to make things work out as naturally as that policeman got into the rickshaw with a live chicken in a plastic bag and rode with us for about a kilometer before departing. 

Hope

Some notes on one man's view on hope:

I spoke with one man working at the hotel about children and hope.  He is the father of two children.  He has very strong and high hopes for his two children and sees education as a very important aspect of this.  Every month he and his wife put a not so small percentage of their total earnings into their children's education.  he said that it is sometimes not easy but they are always trying to do the best they can.  There are very many costs.  Education is not free.  He said that he is fortunate that his children are good students because it is very difficult if a child has learning problems.  "No one wants to talk about this," he said.  it seems that if someone's child is having some sort of problem, it is difficult for the parents to reach out to seek help.

I asked about families who want to keep their children at home working in family businesses.  He said that this is true, but it is not usually because parents do not trust education or see education as any sort of threat to having their children continuing to work with them in the family business - it was more that there are sometimes no possibilities to have the children attend school.  Maybe there is not enough money or support, and it is a vicious cycle of having to make the money for the child to attend school but needing the child to help with the business to make the money, which leaves very little time then for the child to actually attend school.  "Drop-outs" in this context might be thought of as children who are "recalled" to the family business in order to try making more money to get the child back into school.  This man I was speaking to said that most parents understand the value of education and hope for their children's best possibilities and want to give their children the best education possible, and see the value for instance of children learning math and English to bring this competence back into the family business, but many times there is just not the possibility to allow for the child's attendance.

Disney

On the plane down to Bangalore I got talking to a man who was visiting all of the major airports in India to assess service quality.  He had a “light reading” book with him titled If Disney Ran Your Hospital

Talking with him, I could understand his interest in this book - he works in an area that serves the needs of many people, and these many people do not always think so much about what is behind their "experience" of passing through an airport.  But there is a very large amount of levels of planning and logistics of so many little details that add to the overall experience, all of which bring great benefit to those having the experience.

I went to three bookstores trying to find the book but none of them had it, so I haven’t read the book and am not sure what the “Disney way” could be, but I’m imagining for instance, that hospitals need to create an atmosphere that resonates with the people who are there for reasons I imagine all have to do in some way with health.  reading some of the book reviews, and recalling what this man had said about the airport experience, it seems that what the "Disney way" focuses on is a perspective of each individual person as a unique admixture of life contexts, who each have a role and need and desire to attain the best balance of information that's most relevant for them to get the most relevant and beneficial "health experience". So for instance in Disney World, they would be able to have control of their experience, making informed decisions on the way to navigate through the vastness of all the choices of timings, rides, eating, meeting Disney characters, resting, buying souvenirs, going to the bathroom...  In a hospital, this could translate into the ability to make informed decisions about medicines, treatments, foods, exercise, preventative activities, mindset and attitude, alternative medicines, healthcare, etc as realistic aspects of our journey through life?

Now, if all of that were to be translated over to learning and education, we might seek to look at each individual within their many different life contexts and explore their quest to attain the best balance of relevant information so that they can make informed decisions about their learning experience.  It might be that there would be quite many similarities to the potential for the health space to transform towards a more empowering experience of informed choice by framing the learning experience with aspects of informed choices for navigating through the vastness of potential, ways of learning, contexts for learning, communities for learning, timings, exercises, comprehension, reminders, etc as realistic aspects of our journey through life.

The man told me that the Deli airport was chosen last year as the #2 airport in the world for quality of experience.  I asked how far they were behind the #1 airport and he said it was very close, and said that the deciding factor had been that the Delhi airport had gotten comments that it not had enough toilet paper in the women's bathrooms.  Simple things.

Kingfisher

When I took the shuttle bus between Delhi International and Domestic terminals I caught a glimpse of the tail-fins of many Kingfisher planes exposed above a tall concrete wall, looking like gravestone markers across an expanse of calm light blue endlessness that was the clear India sky.

I'll have to ask someone, or many people, what their views are on the seeming demise of what I had thought to be a really nice airline with comfortable and good service and a good attitude to everything that their brand touched.

Is there some element of a cautionary tale to all who have even the slightest tendency to envision how money might roll into town all guns blazing without really having such a firm grasp not only on those 45s of their Western myth-vision but also on the reality of whatever situation they're riding into whether it be a highly complex phenomenon like moving people through the skies or the simple, straightforward, wondrous chaos of transversing spaces of various ways to accept, reject, question, posit, share or shun education?

I spoke to a woman in the airport about children in India.  She told me that many children do not get the chance to go to school because parents want them to work in their family businesses and thus see education as a threat.  I asked her if that was still largely true, meaning, is it something that is still quite common?  Yes, she said, it's quite common still.  She seemed well-educated and seemed disheartened by what she was telling me.  I wondered if there are activities that are seeking to bridge this mindset towards making these parents aware of alternative possibilities.  Could there be some intermediate reality, where a child's introduction to education might actually help the family business?  Could there be a dynamic where a guns blazing approach has no direct bearing on the potential for positive outcomes, but where positive outcomes nevertheless emerge and thrive?  I'm sure that there are many people asking these same questions, many people and organizations exploring this landscape of so many intertwining hopes and dreams and fears, and many groups, people, companies and collaborative attempts that are seeking to work through this for the ultimate benefit of children, which is always, I believe, ultimately for the benefit of the communities within which these children live.

Learning

I seem to remember that "learn" was originally the root word for what we now define as "teach" and that there was some connection in those early words with "lore", as in folklore, as in storytelling.  You "learned" something by telling about it - in a sense, the "learn" aspect was in the passing of information from one person to the other, with the learning being done by the one who held the knowledge and thus who passed it on.  It kind of fits the old adage that you never know what you really know until you try to tell it to someone else.  I imagine the one receiving the learning as one who journeys through a landscape that is being posited by the one who is presenting learning - establishing the space within which one begins to move, explore, discover.

It can also be thought to be about letting go.  It's a bit like "stuff".  So many people have a tendency to collect stuff, yet there are those who seem to always be giving stuff away.  In the Finnair magazine on the plane, Arja Suominen's editorial was about (excuse my crude paraphrasing) how many people remember having experiences more than they remember possessing things.  Is the stuff of life what we move ourselves through, experience and share for others to experience?

It's like love. What is it?  If you want to collect it, what do you have?  It's only in giving it away that it seems to begin to develop a sense of developing some sense of substance however tenuously sensed.  It cannot remain static, like the firing of synapses in our brain that create ideas - if they stopped, there would be no thought.  It's like the idea of how our bodies are in a constant state of turmoil and chaos, battling viruses and all sorts of firefighting drills if only because the body needs to keep in constant motion, in a sense, sharing its vitality across many different levels of interaction if only to effect an ongoingness of a flow of energy.

From this perspective, learning and teaching are interwoven aspects of this ongoingness, a dynamic of the passing on and sharing of movement within a landscape of potential.  We define that potential, we define that landscape, with the definition being framed by what we are given as fodder for the flame we might call life.

Lemons

I was getting packed and ready to go and went to empty out the fridge and saw that there were four lemons.  I recalled something a friend had once mentioned about the somewhat odd alkaline state of lemons (I would typically think that they were acidic because of their sourness), which helps balance the body's Ph levels against all of the acidic rush of so many foods available on store shelves these days -but this supposedly only works for about 20 minutes after cutting into the lemon before it too slides over to being acidic.

I got thinking about all of the amazing stuff that tends to just happen to emerge within conversations; you talk with someone, share news, facts, gossip, information, details at the wayside of relevance, jokes and banter and suddenly they're telling you something, like in so many conversations when it seems that people tap into what's underneath all of the back and forth to access an innate wish to keep practical information moving, as if as some undercurrent to the day to day talk - how to do things, what to look for, how to avoid problems, how to make something, how not to break something.

It might be that we give indications of interest, sometimes even unconsciously, and others pick up on that - so many good people willing to share so much, and they share so much...

Created by humans, the internet seems to mirror a sense of design around a similar dynamic - we articulate our interests, for instance in a search term, and it replies back with suggestions, or we move through various activities and the side bars start to feel around for ways to grab our attention...

But it's still not nearly close to any level of where so many people seem to be able to sense where you're coming from at some almost sub-conscious, sub-rational level of an essence of interest.  They throw out a few exploratory queries, watch you and hear what you say and boom, there they are, telling you the most amazingly interesting and useful things.  Maybe it's not so much about academic degrees, prestigious positions or walks of life as much as it's about that good old basic willingness to share worthwhile information and knowledge.

Centuries before Socrates sat under his tree, people were sharing information and knowledge.  Over time, it's been turned into a type of art form, what some might call teaching, advising, mentoring, showing the ropes, what others might say is having a gift for gab, yet some cultures seem to disregard this art, some seem to make excuses why they can't give it more attention, some seem to be confused about how they can raise its stature, get more people involved, build upon the growing surge of technologies that well up on the shoreline of potential.  One possible way forward is to allow for informal associations of communication to form into ad hoc communities of driving interest, and provide means for these communities to find their identities.  Possibly.

I made lemonade.

Charro

I remember exactly where I was when I first tried spotify - I was in a taxi in Mexico City going by a bar or some such place that was called "Charro" - which I remember only because I like watching even the goofiest of Westerns and remember Elvis Presley's "Charro".

I asked someone what the word meant.  "It's like a guy who tells a woman he loves her and will be back but she knows that he won't come back."  Well, there are for sure quite many other ways of defining it, and maybe Elvis didn't play that sort of character but come to think about it, maybe he did.

In the taxi I had been playing with my phone and had just opened the spotify app.  I had distractedly gotten it all set up in the hotel room along with a few other apps, and there I was ready to try it.  But I distinctly remember thinking, "this probably rips a huge chunk of data out of the network..." Like a gun blast sending a bullet to high heaven to rip through flesh, data flies with a vengeance.  I hesitated.  I looked out the window and saw The Word painted on the side of a building.  I turned off the app.  That was my "first try".

I've been hearing a phrase "spotify for education" being thrown around by various people.  It's a great concept.  For instance, a space "where anyone's songs of knowledge can be found. where teachers are learners and learners are teachers".

Interesting how fast this term has moving into this space of use.  Not as common as Band-Aid but moving fast.  Yes, a great concept, browse, listen, create, share, be shared, join together...  Mobile education does not have such a common shared and sharing space at the moment.  There is much that is separate, and separated.  It would do well to bring some more togetherness into the picture.

But IMHO the Charro syndrome should be avoided.  Something like: try not to go into a space, bring promises, money, technology, plans, partnerships, predilections, predictions, presumptions... and then have things fizzle when the well of whatever philanthropic groundwater stream dries up.  This should not be about corporate social responsibility or any of the other tangents of well-intentioned initiatives with agendas hidden or not, clear or somewhat muddled policies and strategies that push and pull like that Dr. Doolittle creature...

And it should all be for the ultimate benefit of children who can grow, and thrive and learn and teach onwards.

And it shouldn't end up ripping into huge chunks of data?

And it shouldn't end up haggling about DRM?

And it should allow "the experts" their voice in all relevant forums even if  "those other experts" do not recognize them as experts?

And it should, as a tool,  be able to be reverse engineered, chewed up, improved, re-shared around  and possibly even presented out into a free space of onwardly good action just like any good open source tool with good open source manners brought to any wondrously good open source feast of something quite akin to paying it forward might potentially do?  Jeez I have to admit that I really do love run-on sentences:)

Zugunruhe

I was trying to remember how this word "zugunruhe" got into my head, and then I remembered Annie Dillard.  She called it "the great restlessness".  She had been watching the animals begin their journeys of autumn migration, she had contemplated places to go, spaces to move towards and through, but ultimately she had said to the animals, "I'm staying here.  You all go on, I'm staying here."

I guess another side of a certain coin relates to this sort of dynamic of staying put.  But I wonder, is it always only necessarily about a certain amount of time spent within a certain designated space?  Thoman Mann wrote that "time... is water from the river Lethe", and if we're to accommodate mythology with a belief that Lethe was the river of oblivion, we might be wary of things like staying put because it might be that we start to get a bit complacent with our observations, for instance as we tend towards things like comfortable routines or feeling like we're getting an understanding of the world within which we're supposedly integrating?

But, as Mann continued to write, "alien air is a similar drink".  So what are we to do, or am I just reading this all wrong?...  We might think of time and space as two aspects of the ways we move through our lives, yet the ways do not always need to be physically spacial, and movement does not always have to take place across a certain space of time.  Can we stay put within our missions and visions, goals and intentions even as we wander across the time and space of this sensed world?  From this perspective, staying put would be to allow ourselves a freedom of limits.  Strategy isn't only about what you do, it's also about what you don't do...  Beyond all the fancy words, it's our love, faith and calmness of acceptance of life and our role in life that might frame time and space.

My zugunruhe may not be about physical journeying, getting on the airplane and displacing myself to some otherness; it may be my restlessness to hold tight, hold true, to a perspective, a reason, a framework, a belief, a faith, some basics of action that guide me into the unknown today, tomorrow and any day just like any other day.   

Shear

Imagine.  It's a very, very, very windy day.  You are out in a kayak, alone, bracing against the wind, moving along with all the elements balanced upon every moment.  And then there is one moment of breath-taking, awe-inspiring on the verge of frightening motion and sound when the ocean's surface breathes its rising and falling of an outgoing tide and falls away from a hidden rock, and the wind shears across it with a violence so immense that all you can do is take in the sound  like having your ear forced down against one second of sizzling oil in a hot pan when a drop of water hits it and all chaos breaks loose, like someone going "PSST" into your ear as loudly as they can, for one rude-wrenching second like the sound when you disconnect a hose from an air compressor and a burst if air seethes against your eardrum with painful ferocity.

Why do I write this here?  

Because it is a moment I always remember when I am thinking of venturing into some new space of experience. Remembering that first moment that you may never, really, even get used to remembering.  

Because I remember the first time I experienced this sound and this amazing moment when there was so much chaos and power and energy and violent beauty packed into that moment that it was impossible to step back and realize that beauty because everything within me was suddenly focused on all that chaos and power and violence...  

But in this case, and in many cases, it usually doesn't happen just once, and after a while you begin to be able to anticipate it, and then you can begin to see it and hear it and experience it with a more observational objectivity, and see its beauty.  

But there is that first time.

There is that acknowledgement of being caught off-guard by something beyond what had been up until that moment your wildest imagination. 

And there's a strange phenomenon about this - many times, these sort of first moments make you want to discover so many more first moments...

To my mind, that's what journeying is about.

"Connect"

I remember back in my McGill days, there was this guy who had an interesting gesture - he would tap his two index fingers together and say "connect" with a wistful, almost devious smile, seeming to imply something like a combination of "grok" and "get it" and "pull it all together for yourself" and "read my mind", what I sort of interpreted as giving us a hint like "hey can't we create some great thoughts if we just connect our brainwaves?"

That was back in the mid 80s, I think before Nokia took up its "Connecting People" mantra, definitely before mobile technology and right at the first nascent phases of internet.  He was a visionary. I imagine he still his.

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer.  I should look him up again sometime.  Rafa, if you ever read this, hello!

This all whipped through to my mind when I was looking at Paul Kim's Stanford SMILE technology - wifi clouds for classrooms.  SMILE Plugs - what a great concept.

I was once talking to a company in Turku - Sanako (then Teleste Educational) - about how they might use their classrom technologies for the benefit of students in areas where there may not be such reliable internet connectivity, maybe not much reliable electricity.  At that time they said that they are a relatively small company with limited research resources, so could not pursue that sort of exploration.  I wonder if they might utilize the SMILE Plug.  Just a thought.

But about connecting - what Dr. Kim has moved towards with the SMILE Plugs is framed within an essential basic premise - that students should be at the center of their exploration of learning. 

This is part of the Seeds of Empowerment initiative.  I'll try to explore this as things move forward.

Voice

What is the reality of the need for children to gain access to their own voices?
What is the role of those around children to create spaces for those voices? 
How does the emergence of this voice tie into learning?
Do we ourselves know what is "our own voice"?
Who are we speaking to?
Who is doing our speaking?
Where's the gap between the others who speak for us and the "I" who speaks?
Constructs.
Bonfires.
Speech envisioned as a burning construct.
"A bonfire can be defined as any structure to burn until destroyed.  The successful prediction of the behavior of  any particular bonfire is a matter of experience..."  
                     - David Clough, Engineers of the Imagination
Voice, on the other hand can be like...
a look upon wind through trees
a glance of a whisper of acceptance of another's  goofy giggle
the acknowledgment of a (seemingly) silent  seeking of help
the lick of a bonfire flame upon a night's crisp stillness, warming senses, second-guesses, shapes and souls

Basics

In her "Old Fashioned Recipe Book", Carla Emery wrote that there are a few good basics to cooking:
For instance, "a person needs a recipe maybe to guide them through the first few times." But it seems that what she's really getting at is that to develop a sense of those basics while adjusting ourselves towards the wonderful magic of winging it, but with a framework of understanding, of ourselves and our ingredients, and preferably with an understanding of the source of those ingredients. "To make real homestead kraut, first you grow your cabbage."

A friend suggested that knowing what we are looking for is different from trying to find out what is known or not known before we get involved in something and then gauging it against outcomes to be able to identify and analyze differences.

It's a bit like it used to be when I was preparing to peek around some rocky outcrop that would supposedly allow me to see far along the coastline I was heading along in my kayak.  Every time I wanted to take those peeks, there was the challenge of the kayak's bow riding out there in front of me catching whatever weather was there to be found - more likely than not, whipping headwinds that would rip that bow around so that I would have to re-adjust everything and get back ready to try again.

I could see the whitecaps out there; it wasn't like it was any surprise.  After a while I had begun just building up a good dose of forward momentum and shooting myself out into the open view of whatever was out there that I would need to contend with.  Usually it was just more paddling.  Traveling.  Journeying.  On and on. 

What I learned of myself is that I had some basics under tenuous control, and I was always learning a few more basics...

So:
- what do I know or not know of the people I'll be with, be working with, be happening upon?
- what do I know, or not know, about myself?

India

A first activity will have no target outcome except
- see what is to be seen
- evolve within what has essentially been many years of moving towards new possibilities

There have been all kinds of wondrous and crazy grand schemes and dreams and it has been great and maybe all of this has set the stage for a time to step back to look at the expanses with eyes that we know and trust can learn to see it in new ways.

We know our journeys and know that most journeys build upon the learning of some basics and figuring out best ways to continue onwards, allowing ourselves a leeway of assurance that those basics will always remain a part of the journey. 

Slip into the lee, take a breath, head back out.

Onwards, and boat bows

Learning is like a boat.  There is beauty in the way it clefts through its spaces of movement, with so many years of so many people's understandings of that movement plying that space. 

The bow of a boat is the epitome of a beauty envisioned through many years, decades, possibly centuries of envisioning the movement of that bow through the space of oceans, lakes, rivers, seas...  Its curves tell a tale of its intent.  And then it moves. 

I feel like the bow of a boat.  A wondrous past of so many wonderful people forming this space of movement that is me and before me a wide open sea. 

There is a destination, of sorts.  But I have always loved the feel of the ocean when it allows the strictness of knowing where you are to be set aside.  I feel like that now.  It feels good. 

I will be exploring some possibilities to build a "space of learning" for children.  There are many good people, involved, helping, hearing, giving advice, giving encouragement.  You know who you are.  Thanks.