Testimony

We can interpret testimony and, with the web, we can create testimony.

Students testify to each other: such-and-such is a good book and xyz is a great book. We collaborate with each other as we pass on our titbits of information.

Blogging helps in this way too: we accept others critical comments if they are informed, accurate and sensitive to our needs.

Ecce Homo

Dr Brian and His Thoughts
When we learn, we are sometimes very impressed by a person who has a deep understanding of life and its associated issues. In such instances we find we are "beholding" the person who is the embodiment of so much. We try to drink them in. They have an aura of awe. it is our personal "Ecce Homo" or "Behold the Man.".

This 'drinking in' is an attempt to learn. It is more than that, it is an attempt to see everything about them. There is no real time for reflection. They command all of our attention.

Why is that? What does it mean to 'behold'?

The new journalist, through blogs, links with the learning conversations and the learning coach.

Dr Brian and His Thoughts
This is written on 2 November 2004, as the votes for a new president in the USA are being counted. I came across this quote on Jay Rosen's website, and it summarises "The New Blog Effect" (e.g. www.bopnews.com, www.moveon.org)

     "Blogs are undoing [via blogs] the system for generating authority [through newspaper publication] and therefore credibility of news providers that's been accumulating for well over 100 years.  And the reason is that the mass audience is slowly, slowly disappearing.  And the one-to-many broadcasting model of communications--where I have the news and I send it out to everybody out there who's just waiting to get it--doesn't describe the world anymore.  And so people who have a better description of the world are picking up the tools of journalism and doing it.  It's small.  Its significance is not clear.  But it's a potentially transforming development... I like it when things get shaken up, and when people don't know what journalism is and they have to rediscover it.  So in that sense I'm very optimistic."

Old tools (broadcast model) --> New tools (Narrow cast model)
Which is similar to the change in teaching and learning
Old tools (I teach, you listen) --> New Tools (Learning Conversation, We collaborate)

Mentors and Learning Caoches are the new trainers, but with a conversational power which has an inherent substrate of authenticity.

Artists take over from Engineers

Dr Brian and His Thoughts
I was talking to a student about his portfolio and this quote, referenced by the student, caught my eye:

Movies did not flourish until the engineers lost control to arists
- or more precisely to the communications craftsmen. The same
thing is happening now with personal computers.
Heckel, P. 1984. The Elements of Friendly Software Design. p. 5.

The artists saw they could do more with the new medium. Because they could see they COULD do more, they simply stepped up and DID SO. They wanted to express themselves.

As this short post is being written, on the eve of the USA Presesidential Elections, politicians, public relations people and journalists have turned blogging into a dark art. Witness the infamous rise of "Swift Boat Vets" and "MoveOn.org". Notice the emergence of the counter balancing "FactCheck.org". All very intriguing. A new form of persuasion emerging in the political realm by "communication craftsmen."