1. PLE Scott J. The story could begin anywhere in my life, though the seed for the change came from Sacred Ecology by Fikret Berkes http://www.umanitoba.ca/institutes/natural_resources/nri_about_faculty_profileberkes.html My initial interest was in his comparison of Indigenous practices of fisheries resources management and current Western ecological theory. Which quickly transformed into an unexpected interest in the validity of diverse literacies and unfamiliar understandings. How do others think, not by the each, but by the whole of their world view. And why do we confine ourselves to one version of all human knowing? The book that introduced me to Population Dynamics ↔ ↔↔
2. This PLE is based on a learning activity I often engaged in as a teenager. I think it’s useful as an example of a deliberate activity that began without a deliberate goal yet functioned well enough to produce something real. (Garden Sculptures). It took 4 bus rides from my house where I initially thought it would be nice to weld up a garden sculpture to the industrial steel scrap yard where all the best shapes were to be found. I decided to draw a picture of this with my mouse in Paint to stay true to the digital format of this class. The concept map seemed too stiff for this project, and once I drew the picture a map emerged anyway. Maps provide directions and they also reveal patterns. What may on the ground seem like, in this case, individual bus routes through many neighbour- hoods, taking time and involving many purposeful individual decisions and acts, can actually be contained in a single process spread across a single page. Or at least represented in a one-look-captures-it manner. What also is revealed is an activity completely embedded in and supported by a complex network of social affordances in the form of an infrastructure. At the smallest, least-observed level it seems like the path of an all important (to himself) individual across a landscape. At a larger level, the whole thing is more a miracle of an uncountable number of individuals coordinating to propel the individual through the space. Almost an organism. That’s how I’ve come to understand how the net works from this course.
3. What follows is are a series of screen shots from an animated cartoon made to introduce my learning space picture that follows. Rather than do a written explanation posted on a blog, it seemed more fun to ask some characters from the Xtranormal (Beige World) acting crew to narrate for me. Being as how my fate is to either have faulty equipment, or just happen by when disasters are imminent, the animation suffered fatal error after fatal error and what’s left are screen prints of the script complete with camera angles, facial and body gestures. In spite of the fact that this application has driven me to distraction, I love it. It has a personality that’s unreliable, difficult to control, and all the other features that would make it an interesting person. And, I was able to at least salvage the script. Anyway, I’ve managed again to bring confusion to clarity. There might just be some sort of limit on how many things you can try out in a certain period of time. Or maybe trying to express pre-digital sensibilities in an unfamiliar format ALWAYS involves a running disaster?
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6. Trip to the scrap yard and back. Real Incident to metaphorical model of learning: idea/urge to make something with my hands sends me off to metal scrap yard for components to assemble. Similar to current approach to assembling ideas in that there isn’t necessarily a clear image of the goal/outcome—only a dogged pursuit of “the project”. Emergence and the carrying power / capacity of a thought space . (Mouse in MS Paint)
