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What would Proust have done with an eportfolio - Dr. Alan Davis, EPIC 2013

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What would Proust have done with an eportfolio - Dr. Alan Davis, EPIC 2013

  1. 1. What would Proust have done with an ePortfolio? Alan Davis July 9th 2013
  2. 2. Likely outcome Disclaimers • Not in any way scholarly • Entirely personal and idiosyncratic • Fall-out from a blog on PLA/APEL, then a keynote • The Proust angle is a bit sketchy
  3. 3. Part One: Open Me Part Two: Open Proust Part Three: Open Themar Overview
  4. 4. me now me laterme then Part One: Open Me
  5. 5. Likely outcome • My father My story so far
  6. 6. Likely outcome • My father • “He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.” My story so far
  7. 7. So, why me? What is my pedigree? • My father • He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches. • Extended my classroom: teachers, children, adults My story so far
  8. 8. Likely outcome So, why me? What is my pedigree? • My father • He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches. • Extended my classroom: teachers, children, adults • Adult and open learning My story so far
  9. 9. Likely outcome So, why me? What is my pedigree? • My father • He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches. • Extended my classroom: teachers, children, adults • Adult and open learning • Poster child for informal learning My story so far
  10. 10. Marat/Sade
  11. 11. Personal: Box of documents and photos and tastes: easily digitized into an e-Scrapbook and shared via Flikr, YouTube, Spotify Professional CV: http://www.kwantlen.ca/__shared/assets/adavis-cv24542.pdf with some hyperlinks to publications and presentations Citation indexes, presentations, news releases, minutes…. etc. Me now
  12. 12. Regulatory: vital statistics, taxes, passport, FBI, Homeland Security, CSIS, DNA, fingerprints, retina scan Consumer behaviour credit cards, online shopping, travel etc. Personal Wealth: Health: Social identity: Me now credit rating so far, private blog, Twitter, (Facebook), Reb elmouse
  13. 13. 8/27/2013 27
  14. 14. Ancestry.com Proust.com Genealogy
  15. 15. 8/27/2013 29
  16. 16. me now me laterme then Part One: Open Me
  17. 17. A Personal Learning Network and an e-Portfolio Me later
  18. 18. me now my personal learning network
  19. 19. me now me later
  20. 20. me now me later • closer to my personal dreams and goals: happy and fulfilled? • with 21st century skills and knowledge • globally aware, and connected • a lifelong learner with a rich résumé • “open”
  21. 21. me now me later smart people & resources especially OER
  22. 22. me now me later browse, gather, organize, read, and listen smart people & resources especially OER
  23. 23. me now me later browse, gather, organize, read, and listen smart people & resources especially OER Open Textbooks
  24. 24. me now me later browse, gather, organize, read, and listen connect collaborate discuss on site campus work community pub on line MOOCs blogs LMS wikis smart people & resources especially OER
  25. 25. me now me later browse, gather, organize, read, and listen connect collaborate discuss on site campus work community pub on line MOOCs blogs LMS wikis smart people & resources especially OER
  26. 26. me now me later my artifacts writing speaking media browse, gather, organize, read, and listen connect collaborate discuss on site campus work community pub on line MOOCs blogs LMS wikis create share publish smart people & resources especially OER
  27. 27. me now me later my artifacts writing speaking media browse, gather, organize, read, and listen connect collaborate discuss on site campus work community pub on line MOOCs blogs LMS wikis create share publish smart people & resources especially OER
  28. 28. me now me later my artifacts writing speaking media browse, gather, organize, read, and listen connect collaborate discuss on site campus work community pub on line MOOCs blogs LMS wikis create share publish smart people & resources especially OER seek feedback and accreditation, contribute
  29. 29. me now me later my artifacts writing speaking media browse, gather, organize, read, and listen connect collaborate discuss on site campus work community pub on line networks blogs LMS wikis create share publish smart people & resources especially OER seek feedback and accreditation, contribute ACE Mozilla MOOC providers Open Badges
  30. 30. me now me later • closer to my dreams and goals • lifelong learner with a rich e portfolio my artifacts writing speaking media browse, gather, organize, read, and listen connect collaborate discuss on site campus work community pub on line networks blogs LMS wikis create share publish smart people & resources especially OER seek feedback and accreditation, contribute
  31. 31. me now me later • closer to my dreams and goals • lifelong learner with a rich e portfolio my artifacts writing speaking media browse, gather, organize, read, and listen connect collaborate discuss on site campus work community pub on line networks blogs LMS wikis create share publish smart people & resources especially OER seek feedback and accreditation, contribute
  32. 32. me now me later • closer to my dreams and goals • lifelong learner with a rich e portfolio my artifacts writing speaking media browse, gather, organize, read, and listen connect collaborate discuss on site campus work community pub on line MOOCs blogs LMS wikis create share publish smart people & resources especially OER seek feedback and accreditation, contribute Open Textbooks
  33. 33. 8/27/2013 47 Part Two: Open Proust
  34. 34. 8/27/2013 48
  35. 35. Consummate observer and listener and reader Proust in a digital world
  36. 36. Consummate observer and listener and reader Writer and re-writer Proust in a digital world
  37. 37. 8/27/2013 51
  38. 38. 8/27/2013 52
  39. 39. Consummate observer and listener and reader Writer and re-writer Self-publisher Proust in a digital world
  40. 40. Consummate observer and listener and reader Writer and re-writer Self-publisher Embraced technology Proust in a digital world
  41. 41. Consummate observer and listener and reader Writer and re-writer Self-publisher Embraced technology Multi-media Proust in a digital world
  42. 42. Consummate observer and listener and reader Writer and re-writer Essayist and commentator Self-publisher Embraced technology Multi-media Art versus just reminiscences or history Proust in a digital world
  43. 43. 8/27/2013 57
  44. 44. 8/27/2013 58
  45. 45. Has the digital revolution transformed how we write about the past — or not? Have new technologies changed our essential work-craft as scholars, and the ways in which we think, teach, author, and publish? Does the digital age have broader implications for individual writing processes, or for the historical profession at large? 8/27/2013 59
  46. 46. The HeritageCrowd Project: A Case Study in Crowdsourcing Public History Citizen Scholars: Facebook and the Co- Creation of Knowledge Popular History, the Academy and the Internet: Blogging History for New and Old Audiences 8/27/2013 60
  47. 47. Part Three: Open Themar Open Me Open Me Open Me Open Me Open Me Open Me Open History
  48. 48. 8/27/2013 62
  49. 49. 8/27/2013 63
  50. 50. 8/27/2013 64
  51. 51. 8/27/2013 65
  52. 52. 8/27/2013 66
  53. 53. 8/27/2013 67 Open Me
  54. 54. 8/27/2013 68 “All these years, I’ve had such an intense homesickness for Themar and I do not know how many times I have thought of the place.”
  55. 55. 8/27/2013 69
  56. 56. 8/27/2013 70
  57. 57. 8/27/2013 71
  58. 58. 8/27/2013 72
  59. 59. 8/27/2013 73
  60. 60. 8/27/2013 74
  61. 61. 8/27/2013 75
  62. 62. 8/27/2013 76
  63. 63. 8/27/2013 77 www.judeninthemar.org
  64. 64. Static text etc. Dynamic Limited by costs Unlimited by cost One medium Multi media One language Two languages Life cycle? Archived indefinitely Incremental Continuously One author Many authors Builds community Continuous building Considerable reach Global reach Process fixed Process evolves Criticism clumsy Criticism open Analog Identity Digital Identity Book versus an e-portfolio?
  65. 65. To conclude 8/27/2013 79 Open Me Therapy Art History
  66. 66. To conclude 8/27/2013 80 Open Me Therapy Art History
  67. 67. To conclude 8/27/2013 81 Open Me Therapy Art History
  68. 68. Thank you alan.davis@kpu.ca @presadavis

Editor's Notes

  • I am pleased and honored to be here. Once again I find myself in a situation somewhat under false pretences. So, let’s start with the Disclaimers.
  • This presentations is:Not in any way scholarlyEntirely personal and idiosyncratic, and isThe fall-out from a blog, then a keynote in BC,Plus,The Proust angle is a bit sketchyThe title is misleading: which is often the case for conference presentations, even in higher education.But I am a university president and that means I know very little about a lot of things, which may or may not explain what follows.I am also a member of the Board of the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning: one of the foremost organizations that advocate and innovates in this space, and I have worked at several open institutions.
  • The presentation is in 3 parts.
  • We start with Open Me, my favorite subjectMystory at any given point in time includes my history, my current identity, and my hopes and goals for the future.“Me later” eventually means death of course, but we’ll avoid that touchy subject here. It would be more interesting if I believed in the hereafter.
  • My story so far?I’ll begin with my father, since he was the a major influence in the choices I have made: to pursue an academic career, and then to develop a special interest in open and adult learning and in the arts, science and business of h.e. generally
  • My father was the youngest of 4 brothers and wasa nerd.He passed the entrance exams to Reading School, but his parents couldn’t afford to send him since it would result in forgone income. He never graduated in the sense we understand today: he left school as soon as was legal to get a job.
  • He met my mother, joined the gas company as an apprentice gas fitter, and that would be the end of the story if not for WW2.
  • He went off to war as a flight engineer, and was a mathematical wiz,designing some sort of ready reckoner that allowed calculations to be made quickly about the status of the aircraft.But he was shot down over Germany and spent 2 years in POW camp
  • He studied informally in POW camp with a group of Brits, Americans and others: the Red Cross sent text booksHe came home, wrote his matriculation exams and went to a post-war, intense teacher education program, and then taught Mathematics for 25 yearsHe was non-traditional, he was an open learner, and education changed his life.
  • “He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.”Shaw wrote this in Man and Superman: it is oft cited by people who know nothing at all themselves, and both my father and I became teachers none the less.So, let’s fast forward to me:
  • I trained as a research Chemist, but became a chemical educator in a local college, where I did quite a bit of outreach to the community beyond the classroom (driven by the fact that my children were being taught lousy science in school)
  • And somewhat accidently (though inspired by my father I think), I started to work at open and alternative institutions: the BC OpenUniversity, Athabasca University, and at Empire State College especially.
  • I am a poster child for the value of accidental and informal learning.I am President and Vice Chancellor of a university, which has an annual budget of $150 million, 18,000 students, and 1500 employees, but: - I have no formal education in finance, HR, organizations, administration, higher education or leadership
  • But here’s what I do have:A PhD in Chemistry, where I gained transferable skills: I learned to write concisely, deal with a lot of data, and I developed the “discipline” that the community of research chemists require, to translate curiosity into some form of cogent investigation: and to make sense of seemingly unconnected information.That is the relevant formal learning. The rest is informal.
  • At school where you were forced to participate in sports if you could run without dropping the ball (it was a small school with big ambitions and everyone had to participate), I learned a lot about being on a team.
  • As a boy scout, I learned how to tie knots and to light a fire in the rain, and how to get along with people, when the going gets tough.
  • At school, if you could cross the stage and gesture without tripping up, you were in the school play. You had no choice.This translated to a lifelong predisposition for messing about in the theatre: here I am at University College London, in the Dramatic Society, which was a good place to meet girls.
  • This continued in Canada at Simon Fraser University, where I was supposed to be studying Chemistry.
  • And then in community theatre….
  • Which then led to an invitation to write and direct plays for young people.
  • I was also elected to serve as a School trustee, where I got a serious look at public service, at the role of administration, and at local politics
  • Plus, I am a Father
  • And a soccer coach: learning how to win and lose graciously
  • And I have enjoyed the company of several pets and learned a lot about non-verbal communication
  • Overall then, Open Me comprises the following:The Personal Me: (heavily filtered)Box of documents and photos and memories and tastes: easily digitized into an e-Scrapbook and shared via Flikr, YouTube, SpotifyThe Professional Me (cleaned up a bit)CV: http://www.kwantlen.ca/__shared/assets/adavis-cv24542.pdfwith some hyperlinks to publications and presentationsCitation indexes, presentations, news releases, minutes…. etc. but not the people I have truly annoyed
  • RegulatoryI have vital statistics in 3 countries, I have paid taxes in all 3, a passport in 2, plus profiles with the FBI, Homeland Security, CSIS, with DNA (?), fingerprints, retina scan, plus I am a trusted traveller: so in exchange for this all this open identity, I get to skip certain customs and immigration queues.Consumer behaviourI hate actually shopping in stores, so my digital identity is widespread credit cards, online shopping, travel, etc.Personal Wealth: it is easy to get one’s credit rating: fund raisers get all kinds of information on you if they think you are a potential major donorHealthso far, privateSocial identityI have a blog, Twitter, (no Facebook), and I could use tools like Rebelmouse: a social media aggregator that brings all one's social identities together into one screen and updates dynamically.Plus phone records and my internet trail. You could easily track my every move, anywhere in the world.
  • I love those movies where people are tearing around the world being tracked by the good guys who turn out to be the bad guys who can access every database and transaction and security or traffic camera, and you see how anyone’s the digital and actual foot print can be tracked.Entertainment aside, there is the serious matter of post 9-11 expansion of surveillance: in the US now, all e-mail is scanned, Apple, Facebook and Google receive orders for information routinely, and that may be the tip of the iceberg.Don’t even start about digital security and identity theft: almost everyone I know has been hacked or had some aspect of their digital identity compromised in some way. I watched the The Identity Thief on the plane over here: The first half is very disturbing, and, being Hollywood, all is resolved, btu the perpetrator steals identities because she doesn’t have one of her own.
  • And we should not forget the field of Genealogy and the affordances of the Web: you can sit at home and build your family tree on Ancestry.com or less formally with Proust.com
  • “Proust.com is a place for families and close friends to share the stuff that really matters. Proust is a private place to capture our life stories, thoughts, and aspirations to spark meaningful conversations about who we are. Here you can send questions to your family and friends, discover their life stories, and get to know them better.We’ll come back to Proust.
  • So, that’s interesting, but what about my future? How do I document not just my prior learning but also my emergent learning?
  • This gives me the opening to talk about what I believe are the 2 central killer concepts and apps in the field of open and e-learning, broadly defined.
  • My PLN is how I hope to develop from who I am today to……
  • ….who I hope to be tomorrow
  • closer to my personal dreams and goals: happy and fulfilled?with 21st century skills and knowledge to be successfulglobally aware, and connecteda lifelong learner with a rich résumé“open”
  • I will link to smart people and their works anywhere.
  • I will browse, gather, organize, read, and listen
  • e.g. Harvard/MITStanfordTED talksKhan AcademyOpenLearn: OU podcastsThese are free or cheap and accessible anywhere.
  • I will connectCollaborate and discuss
  • Lots of ways to connect formally and informally
  • I will createShare, and publish
  • And there are many free ways to publish and share
  • Then I want to join the smart people by seeking feedback andaccreditation, and being a Contributor (a smart person) myself
  • I could use Open badges to validate my learningSome MOOC providers now accredit learning, and Learning Counts is an inexpensive online service for validation of your learning, however gained, prior or emergent.
  • Theculmination of all this is that I will be:closer to my dreams and goalslifelong learner with a rich and dynamic e-portfolio
  • 2 points:The arrows go back and forth: it is a very dynamic processthe key aspect of an e-portfolio is the REFLECTIONinherent in its assembly: more than a scrapbook or a repository.It is easy to compile information: making sense of it is the tricky bit: a lifelong process to achieve deep understanding of one’s identity in relation to a global knowledge society.In other words, “What you know, how you came to know it, what you don’t know and need to learn more, your own role in composing reality as you move through life, how and why you have developed certain belief systems and different identities: personal, social, intellectual, political etc.” ….to paraphrase Baxter-Magolda and King (2004) in their book on self authorship.
  • It is this reflective and creativeaspect of e-portfolios that got me thinking about this man.Marcel Proust lived from 1871 to 1922He was the author of In Search of Lost Time: one of the great masterpieces of 20 century literature. It long, at 3000 pages (I have read it twice: I will read it once more before I die)It speaks to me: it provides some comfort, but I am not sure why.Proust was raised in a bourgeois household: his father a doctor, and with a doting Jewish motherHe was a mama’s boy, asthmatic, weak and sensitive. He was gay at a time when France was unenlightened, and half Jewish at the time of the Dreyfus affair.He was a layabout; he did very little, never really had a proper job, and just sponged off his family. He hung out with aristocrats in the Faubourg St Germain, he was a bit of a writer, was well-read, but not very worldly in any way.Then he read John Ruskin, and this changed his life, and he spent several years in bed translating Ruskin’s works into French, and this suggested a scholarly career.But in 1908: he started writing his masterpiece, still working in bed. The first volume was self published in 1913, and the final volumes were published after his death from notes and galley proofs.
  • I am indebted to Alain De Botton’ book for much of my analysis of Proust.De Botton suggests that reading Proust can inform you as to, for instanceHow to readHow to slow down and smell the rosesHow to suffer successfullyHow to express your emotionsHow to open your eyes, andHow to understand the limits of readingIn short: how to stop wasting time and start to appreciate life.
  • So, what is it about Proust that one might project into this digital ageHe was a consummate observer and listener and readerIn1919 the diplomat Harold Nicholson met Proust in Paris: Proust asked about his work at the peace conference following WW1: Nicholson started talking about the meeting, but Proust stopped him and asked for detail: you leave you hotel, you take a car, you climb the stairs….and so Proust got all the tiny details… the rustle of the maps, the tea in the next room, the macaroons, and interrupted now and then with: “n’allez pas trop vite” which could be the Proustian slogan.Plus, Proust read the newspapers very closely, every article in every paper, every daySo, with so much detail and input, and the ability to document each day and organize data into digital, searchable systems surely is something Proust would have valued, as must so many writers today, not just scholars and journalists and biographers, but all creative writers.
  • And Proust was a writer, and he wrote a lot. Also, for his masterpiece especially he was a notorious re-writer, with scribbled notes and changes and flaps of paper glued to the edges to enable inserts and edits.
  • The Morgan Library in NYC currentlyexhibits some of his notebooks
  • Even the galleys of his first book were extensively edited.But this is typical of writers: maybe Proust was extreme, some think not, but one would assume that even use of MS Word, with appropriate version control would have made this process of revision much easier, and much easier for those who now translate his works, which is very contentious and very difficult.
  • He had to pay for the publication of his first volume: Swann’s Way.Probably would have welcomed the tools we have today to share his work: offering downloads for a fee or a printed copy for a higher fee: this is now a viable option for any author, especially one starting out.
  • He embraced technology as it appeared during his lifePhotography came of age during his life.The telephone was invented: Proust commented very astutely that 30 years after its introduction, the magic and super naturalness of the invention had become a mundane convenience, which people readily complained about when it didn’t work properly.Motorised transportation became common, WW1 was the first truly mechanised war, including the first use of the aeroplane.
  • Would Proust have used the multi media capabilities of the Web to “illustrate” or “augment” his work?Photos of places: there is a whole industry now of people visiting the places where Proust lived, and which were clearly the basis for the locations in his books.Photos and portraits of people who inspired the characters in his booksHe talks wonderfully about a piece of music: might actually linking to that music have destroyed what he was trying to express?As for paintings, he waxed eloquently about how good paintings can reveal more to us than what we actually see: comparing photos and paintings might have helped him illustrate his point?Which brings us to the nature of art and why it is different from documentary, though I am a fan of the work of WG Sebald who blurred the 2 so elegantly.
  • Here again I use De Botton’s analysis to help me out.In Search of Lost time took all Proust’s own memories and observations and relationships and created something much more: a reflection on our inner and social and personal lives that transcends the simple facts of his life. He showed :That it is our experiences, observations and our problems that can open up the possibilities for intelligent, imaginative inquiry.That art (or the e-portfolio?) gives us a way to say what we really think and feel.That true art has the ability to open up for us a distorted or neglected or more interesting aspect of reality that convention or habit or laziness or fear has shielded That reading or listening or observing or documenting are the instigators of ideas, not the conclusions: they represent a threshold to understanding. As one good friend told me: “There's lots in the psychological literature on the role of narrative in identity construction, and I suppose that as one selectively (or not) posts material on an open e-portfolio, a lot of re-storying (the basic process of narrative therapy) could go on.”Which got me thinking: insteadof guessing what Proust might have used in a digital age, look at what online tools current authors use? David Mitchell and his convoluted global novels? Biographers?How do they collect, collate, make sense of ideas and sources?Well, you don’t have to go far to find out that this is a big issue in creative writing….
  • The Literary Conference 2013: Writing in a Digital Age was last month here in London
  • Writing History in the Digital Agea born-digital, open-review volumeU of MichiganAnd speaking of history….
  • From the blurb of this open review digital book:Has the digital revolution transformed how we write about the past — or not? Have new technologies changed our essential work-craft as scholars, and the ways in which we think, teach, author, and publish? Does the digital age have broader implications for individual writing processes, or for the historical profession at large?With chapter titles such as:
  • Part three:Let’s turn it around: can sense and meaning and identities about places, societies, events and eras be generated from individual portfolios? Of course they can: it is called history.Is the field of history forever changed by the digital world, as has been journalism?Could historians in the future search through individual, open portfolios to create deep meaning about the past.Yes, of course. Here is one story to conclude with:
  • Themar is small town in the former East Germany
  • In the late 1930’s its small but significant Jewish community suffered the fate of most at that time:
  • This is list of the families that lived in Themar in the 1930’s was drawn up from memory by a town official in 1962.
  • 2/3rds of the Themar Jews disappeared during the holocaust, the other 3rd took the opportunity to leave.One of them, a teenage Manfred Rosengarten fled east via Shanghai with his family to settle eventually in California.
  • Manfred and his wife Eveline are shown here in California in 1979.After he died in 1987, Manfred left a portfolio…..
  • : an analogue portfolio, which his son Andy, who could not read German, took to the Vancouver Holocaust CentreThe Centre passed this onto a volunteer, SharonMeen:a historian and German scholar, who, upon reading the letters and materials in the portfolio realised that she had stumbled on a gold mine.
  • Manfred had started to think about his home town: he was deeply homesick for the city and for the friends he left behind. (Themar was in East Germany, so access for many years was difficult, and Russian was increasingly being taught in schools, so the potential loss of history and identity was serious.)He wanted to compile a photo album for his children, and someone he knew had a sister in Dresden and he asked her to go to Themar to take some pictures of the town, and Manfred was even able to draw a map of the town from memory to make sure she got the pictures he wanted.
  • Anyway as this sister of his friend was photographing Manfred’s birthplace, the house of Karl Saam the watchmaker, Karl happened to come outside:
  • Karl not only remembered Manfred, but invited him to write…..
  • Here is the beginning of that first letter from Manfred to Karl.What followed was an avalanche of correspondence between Manfred and his old friends: a sort of truth and reconciliation by snail mail if you like. The letters were rich in detail and memories, both good and bad.
  • Photographs were shared connecting the past to the present: this is Willie Forster and he is in the front, with Manfred behind him, as young boys in Themar.Sharon Meen is a friend of mine, and on a drive we were taking together in 2008, she told me all about this treasure box of social history, and I suggested that there must be a great book in all this. No, she said, not a book…..a web space of some sort, though she had no idea where to start. Talk to my daughter I said: she can get you started. 5 years later they are still working on this, with so many connections having been made, and which continue to be made with the diaspora from Themar from descendants from all over the world……….
  • ………….rebuilding the stories of each family and re-connecting them to the town, which itself has joined in celebrating this miracle of global networking, which might still have happened with the writing and researching of a book, but much more slowly, less spontaneously, and well, time is running out as those originally involved pass on, and even the generation that followed is aging, and memory and interest will surely fade.
  • The resulting e-portfolio of the Jewish community of Themar, built in Wordpress,is dignified, interactive, rich in documentation and photos, and continues to expand as people across the world are connecting to each other.
  • What affordance of the Web make this type of historical “taking stock” so special?Static text and datavsDynamic: sortable tables, interactive maps etc.Scope and size is limited by costs vsUnlimited by cost: very inexpensiveImedium (print) vsMulti mediaOne language plus translations vs2 languages continuouslyLife cycle of a book?VsDigital Preservation & Curation : JISCIncremental expansion by editionContinuously expandable: portable scanner in dusty archives in Themar and elsewhereOne authorMany authorsBuilds community (book clubs and blogs) vsContinuous building: digital bridge between those who left and who stayed, between the Jewish families and descendantsConsiderablereachGlobal reachProcess fixedvsProcess of new media storytelling itself evolves and has its own value: the process is part of the story: blogs by SharonCriticism and research is “clumsy” Criticism and research by others is open: meta tags: responsive to concerns (one woman)Plus you can also measure activity very precisely.Analog Identity Digital Identity for Manfred and for Themar’s Jews and for the city itself.It started simply with digitizing Manfred’s story from the letters and photos and postcards in the analog portfolio box.Even though Manfred did not have a Facebook page or a twitter account or even an email address, his digital identity can be found through this website, including his hand drawn maps, his personal thoughts, memories and photos on leaving Germany, his birth and death certificates, his passage documents, his journey routes, his hand written letters. Itlinks his story written in his own words with his and others photos and stories. ……..Identity construction, in other words, for Manfred, which then led to the development of an e-portfolio of a community.  The further the work goes on, the more fleshed out and complex the intertwining stories of Themar become, with connections to many surrounding communities, as well as with families and descendants throughout the world.
  • I have tried to reflect my thinking as this presentation developed of how “Open Me” via its documentation and reflection is connected to the fields of therapy (making sense of one’s life), art, (making sense of our world), and history, (making sense of our past) and……
  • ……. how all this is being changed in many exciting ways by the evolving digital environment.
  • And how all this is being changed in many exciting ways by the evolving digital environment.

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