I'm Still Slammed! So Slammed!

Nothing much to report this week. I attended the Elluminate session this morning. We discussed quite a lot of stuff, but it really seemed pretty inconclusive.

On the bright innovative side, I researched the Second Life and Teen Second Life Virtual worlds, and wrote an article about it on IT Toolbox (http://it.toolbox.com/wiki/index.php/Second_Life_Virtual_World)

So not a lot to tell you... Hopefully next week we'll see some changes take place!

If you read this - go out and vote!

The Game of Virtual Pilot...

I wanted something new to do so I played Lufthansa Virtual Pilot here:
I did very well. Let's see how well you do.... OK?
Have a terrific day!
:)

Whew...! I'm Maxed Out...!!!

You know, I just don't have time for anything.

So I am just going to post this little short piece and then maybe things will change by Friday. Right now I am slammed with a massive writing project. If I don't complete this, I will have a major problem....

So, dear readers, be patient... I will be back! :)

The Five-Week Wonder, or Discovering What I Have Learned So Far

You know, there are many things about this course which are not immediately apparent to the eye. One of these is the truly international flavor of the course... We come from all over, not just Canada, Australia, USA and the UK.

There are subgroups meeting in SL which belong to Spain, Argentina, Turkey, Israel and Korea. These subgroups are trying to do the impossible, have a class at all different time zones! This is the point. We relax in a beautiful area of SL surrounded by palm trees and gentle breezes, totally oblivious of the real FL environment which many of us may be in. This is what makes it so special! We set all of the reality aside to bask in the imaginary world, wherever physically we may be. And it is remarkably alluring. It is a magic environment, full of magic beings.

Getting Down to IT...

So much has happened since the last entry. I have entered the fifth week of Connectivism and Connective Knowledge CCK08. I had a wonderful SL experience on Friday. Here we were, educators sat around a balmy patio in a beautiful villa... What more could anyone want? We discussed methods and learned about each other. It was interesting to see that we had all been brought together: I had emerged from California, United States, and the others were from Argentina, Mexico, Israel and the United Kingdom, a meeting of world minds, but appearing in the same room in SL!

I will probably add to this later on today. Right now, I have rather too much to do...

The Deeper Meaning of Networking

To align truly with this week's focus, that of the History of Networks, I thought I would add a few lines in my blog about how this strikes me...

We have seen how people interact and that a group of people or entities, who have an effect on each other constitutes a network. The networks of all time, over eons and ages, were formed by similarities of thinking and focused viewpoints. Let's take Socrates, for example. He had a network of friends, but because of his association with the local community, he was accused of corrupting the youth of that community with his ideologies.

I was led to think about networks of people who have lived and who have already passed on and who presumably belong to a different age, and I was struck particularly by a line or two from a historic novel about seventeenth century Venice. This quote comes from Barbara Quick's novel, "Vivaldi's Virgins" and tells a story about the agelessness of music even though by definition, the statement she makes paints a completely different picture!

"What more can a mere musician possibly hope for?
Music cannot be kept or captured. It unfurls in one miraculous moment in time, and then it's gone. The glorious sound of Marietta's voice in a cantabile aria will be forever lost after she is dead and all of us who ever heard her are dead, too. No matter how well I manage to play, my playing will be forgotten when all those who have heard me have died." (Quick, Vivaldi's Virgins, 254)

This really rings false in this age of shared music, royalty hearings and other copyright legislation, doesn't it? But the network to which Anna Maria belonged had none of the instantaneousness of today's world. Life was indeed slower and possibly more predictable, but nonetheless a valid network of like-minded individuals, having an effect on those people who were around them.