Updated: 7/7/06; 6:16:23 PM.
Connectivity: Spike Hall's RU Weblog
News, clips, comments on knowledge, knowledge-making, education, weblogging, philosophy, systems and ecology.
        

 Sunday, January 19, 2003

This entry began as a report of my recovery from an awkward migration from Mac 9 to Mac 10. (Before the migration I had a working, if excessively cluttered, weblog. After going through code contorting brain-based gymnastics, it is now looking alright.) I have learned a few surprising things from my experience, about knowledge-making and about intuition. Maybe writing about what I've learned will help you too.

Clearly, I hope you do learn from this; otherwise, why show my frailties. (See my Trophy or Workshop entry). As colearners in a vast electronic yeshiva we participate in a way so that all learn more, and more quickly, only when we show ourselves not just when we have sparkly, complete, learning products but when we are learning (=struggling) as well.

As a token of my commitment to this notion, I[base ']m writing these notes about my weblog repair efforts, not knowing when, or whether, I will succeed. [This was an earlier version of this entry. I now have a form of success in hand! :>) ]

I have hopelessly bolloxed up my weblog; only the final straw being my migration from Mac OS 9.2.2 to Mac OS 10.2.3. I went to bed last night a grumpy fellow... but woke up with a plan. The core philosophy: don[base ']t multiply features beyond necessity; complexity is confusing and hard to maintain. Adding, one after another, new features can be destructive. It is a hard-to-remember fact that newness is not, in itself, a good justification for change.

[I have changed the nature of this entry, utterly, from what it was intended to be. But before I go on and tell you what it has become, I have to note, for those of you who might have watched the halting, awkward metamorphosis from caterpillar to --- er --- what?, frog? , that the necessary site codes have come to me and the worst of the awkwardness has, at least for me, been brought under control]

As for what this item has become? Well, first it's a song in praise of well organized actions of any sort. I'm sorry to say, though, that when I'm learning anything for the first time, particularly when I'm doing it independently, well-organized is not the first phrase that comes to mind. Finding structure from multiple contesting themes is no easy quest. But eventually, eventually, the pillow of fighting cats segues, with my help, into form, and structure, process and purpose, sylph-like.

In chasing down code that would make my weblog work again I also had to chase down, refine is more exact, what my purpose in weblogging is. And that has changed in the 8 months that I have been doing it. Weblogging has changed my conception of weblogging. And, with this different conception, I have different specifications in my list for a great weblogging tool.

[More to come but it will be far more about weblogging and self-understanding than it will be about coding. Also it will be about transparency, but I will tell you more about that, and why, when I can next sit down to the keyboard]

key phrases for above:

anxiety and thinking clearly are not friends;

sometimes it takes misplaced action to help me understand the deep purpose that I really want to address;

why I'm weblogging= writing multiple inductive journals in which reflection is important and in which relationship with sources and audience (to be explained) needs to be finely tuned;

keep focus in hand!!!


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Spike Hall is an Emeritus Professor of Education and Special Education at Drake University. He teaches most of his classes online. He writes in Des Moines, Iowa.


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