Jobs That I've Had

Following up on this post from Blue Skunk blog, here's a list of the jobs that I've had over the years:

- 1970-74 - Newspaper carrier - I started with a 24 Ottawa Citizen paper route from Frank Stanley in 1974, and gradually absorbed every other paper route in Metcalfe, including the Ottawa Journal routes, ending up with a couple hundred deliveries every day. Eventually I distributed the routes among my brothers. I still have dreams to this day of needing to get the Saturday papers delivered, and deciding that I don't want to do that anymore.

- 1975 - Greeting Card Sales - yes, I sold greeting cards door-to-door in Metcalfe, and actually sold enough to buy various things, including a set of two very nice hockey nets to use when we played street hockey. Oh, it was so nice to have those nets!

- 1974-5 Popcorn Vendor - I sold popcorn and drinks in the stands at Ottaw Roughriders games and Ottawa 67s hockey games. This work was for Versa services, and led to a bunch of other jobs. I still remember my first day, after taking the bus to where we would be picked up (we lived out in the country) I spent my entire day's earnings on a pizza. Best meal I ever had, bar none.

- 1975 - Busboy - I worked for the full summer season at Rideau Carleton Raceway as a busboy in the restaurant. It was another Versa foods operation. It was good work, I would bet my tips, and some of us would race around the track (to the amusement of people who had arrived early for the races). The money I earned at Rideau Carleton paid for my two-week trip to England and Scotland.

- 1976 - Dishwasher - I got a job at another Versa outlet at the Glebe Centre, a retirement home across the street from Lansdowne Park, as a dish washer. Not a pot washer - the distinction is important. I operated the Hobart dishwashing machine, a major appliance that ran dishes on trays through the washer on a conveyor belt. I was "let go" (not "fired", I was told) after a dispute where the pot washer took off for the evening and I refused to do the pots on top of my regular work.

- 1976 - Cashier / Box Lounge Waiter - another summer at Rideau Carleton, and this time I was a cashier. Not a very good one, as it turns out. The manager thought I might be skimming (though I came out over as often as I came out short) and tested me by dropping an initialed $20 on the floor. I just tossed it into the till and then couldn't figure out why I was over $20. Then I transferred into the box longe and served meals and drinks. That actually paid a lot better because the tips were really good.

- 1978 - Breakfast Cook - I had no training, and indeed (as it turned out) no experience even eating breakfast at restaurants, but I got the job of breakfast cook at Ernie's, near Metcalfe. My mother got me the job. This job didn't last long, because I didn't know what I was doing. For example: I never knew you were supposed to serve hash browns with bacon and eggs. On the bright side, it was at Ernies where I learned how to do (and prefer) eggs 'over easy'.

- 1978-79 - Concession Stand Staff - I would from time to time work in the concession stands at the Civic Centre / Lansdowne Park. It was good work for minimum wage. Shifts would usually be 4 hours - the duration of an event - but on good days I'd do 8 or more for things like dog shows and trade fairs. My favourite moment was running a booth all by myself at a soccer game - we did it as a favour to the soccer people and nobody expected to make any money, but it was a cold day and I sold hundreds of hot dogs and coffees, working so fast the soccer people actually called Versa the following Monday and thanked them for the service.

- 1978-1979 - Stand Supervisor - I did a lot of  'outside' work with Versa, involving keeping the concessions stands stocked and functional. I worked with the Coke people to set the drink taps, made coffee in huge urns and sent it around, delivered huge flats of popcorn, and the rest. During football games I was the 'Upper North Supervisor' and managed the staff of about 20 people.

My work with Versa Foods ended when I became a shop steward for Local 237 of the Restaurant, Hotel and Tavern workers association. All of a sudden I wasn't getting any hours. I found I couldn't live on the less-than $100 month I was earning.

- 1978 - Installer - My father got me a job with Northern Telecom for a summer (and a bit more; they kept me on as long as they could) installing telephone switching equipment at the Bank Street Bell Canada building (it's the large concrete building just south across the tracks from Billings Bridge). It paid really well, it was steady work, indoors and just challenging enough to be interesting. I soldered and spun connections, pulled cable, and even did some repair work. Too bad it was temporary.

- 1979-90 - Security Guard - after the job with Northern ended I caught on as a security Guard with National Protective Services in Ottawa. My first job was at the Mitel construction site out in Kanata. I also did a shopping centre construction site out there. My first permanent spot out at Energy Mines and Resources Bells Corners (EMR Bells Corners) in the little gate house. I got the job because I had a car (a 1971 Mercury Cougar I split with my brother) and took the night shift. I lost the car (couldn't keep up with the payments) and eventually transferred to the Jackson Building lobby downtown, pulling the night shift while I attended classes at Algonquin College.

During 1979-80 I was a student at Algonquin College. I had qualified for a grant but when I told them I had a job they took my grant away. I filed an appeal (a 60-page appeal I wrote during Christmas exams) and got the money reinstated, in the form of a loan. For December I lived on $100 my mother gave me.

- 1980-81 - Computer Operator - in May 1980 I moved to Calgary with my girlfriend, slept on a mat in my brother's furnace room (he was renting a basement of a house) and caught a job with Geophysical Services Incorporated on 12th Avenue SW. GSI was a division of Texas Instruments, and my job was to run the TIMAP computers (along with a crew of us) doing seismic processing for various oil companies - I ran charts for Hibernia, the Beaufort Sea, and local Alberta fields.  I was sent to Texas for three months for training on the new IBM mainframes, and became a trainer myself. I left because some university graduates were hired out of school to supervise me; I decided I needed to get an education myself and got out of there. I was making $1368 a month when I left; it would be 15 years before I saw that kind of money again.

- 1980 -  Dish Washer - I didn't really need the money, but when a new restaurant called Chomps - a paté and wine bar that open up on Edmonton Trail near where I live we became friends with the owner and agreed to help out in the kitchen to get him started. The job lasted a few months and I learned quite a bit about wine. Chomps lasted about five years.

- 1981 - Pot Washer - to subsidize my education (I was living on student loads) I started work as a pot washer in the university cafeteria. It was hard work, but the pay was above minimum (about $6.75 an hour). I pulled the evening shift and generally worked by myself. It was OK, but they were leaving the kitchen messier and messier. One day I cut myself on a knife that had been left in dirty dishwater (a total wrong in a kitchen) and found the First Aid box to be completely empty of supplies. So I walked off the job, never to return.

- 1982-83 - 7-Eleven Clerk -  after my first year at university I split up with my girlfriend and, after being on the road for a few weeks (living in basements and such) in southern Alberta and BC, I landed broke and unemployed at my brother's place. I landed at 7-Eleven, working in a store in Canyon Meadows. I would work at this store full time in summer, and the weekend graveyard shift during the fall and winder of my next two years at the university. This is where D'Arcy Norman hung out as a kid. It was good work and I was good at it, the pay was low but it kept me alive. I eventually quit because the travel was too much; it was way down south - and I wanted to focus on my studies.

- 1984-85 - Student Newspaper Editor - at $800 a month it felt like a fortune, and after a failed attempt I was eventually elected co-editor at the Gauntlet. The first half-year was with Stewart Cunningham, and that was a great experience. I was re-elected and my partner this time was someone called Sat Katar Singh Khalsa - he was from Saskatchewan and had converted to Sihkism and changed his name, and he was completely new to the newspaper. It was a very turbulent time, we had business manager problems (I actually took over that job for three months before we hired an excellent manager named Albert Yip). It was a great experience, though, and I was completely dedicated to it.

- 1985 - Welfare - my term as newspaper ended in April 1985, and at the same time I broke my wrist in a fall, and ended up unemployed and on welfare. Because of the injury I couldn't collect Unemployment Insurance (I appealed and eventually won all my back UIC money in late August) but until then I had to live on welfare. I was given $100 a month, of which $60 went to rent (I was renting a room in a basement). I took summer classes (I had already registered and paid for them; no student loans though), drew cartoons, and did nothing else. I also had to appeal for student loans money because I was in my fifth year; I won that appeal as well. I lived on student loans through 1985-86 and the focus paid off: I got a perfect 4.0 GPA in the fall and for the year had straight As except for one C (in logic).

- 1986 - Programming Coordinator - I landed a summer job at the Arusha International Development Centre as a programming coordinator. This was an exceptionally enjoyable job as I organized international development events for the Centre - we did one called 'The Facts About Brazil' and another for the Filipino Society. And various others.

- 1986-87 - Graduate Teaching Assistant - I went straight into a Masters program and secured a position as a teaching assistant, which paid my way. It was better (but not a lot) than student loans. I taught logic classes (they had the brilliant idea that I should teach in my weakest subject).

- 1987 - Writer - The Development Coordinating Council of Alberta hired me to write manuals on fundraising, graphic design, and lobbying. I wrote three manuals over the summer. It turned out to be pretty good money, but it took a lot of time (especially as I was writing my Masters Thesis at the same time). I ended up finishing my thesis and these books in the computer science labs at the University of Alberta.

- 1987 - 94 - Tutor - when I moved to Edmonton I was suddently in a better geographical location to obtain employment from Athabasca University. My main job with them was to tutor informal logic (Critical Thinking 252) by telephone, something I did for the next 7 years. I taught 2.5 'blocks' and earned just a little bit less than enough to live on. With Athabasca I also taught classes in-person at locations across northern Alberta: the Sunrise Porject in Slave Lake (later AVC Slave Lake), Grouard, Yellowhead Tribal Council in Spruce Grove, and Blue Quills in St. Paul. I really enjoyed this work and had really great experiences with the people in these communities.

- 1987-91 - Graduate Teaching Assistant - I complain about the University of Alberta because I think they cheated me out of a degree, but I can't complain about the support, as I received three year's employment as a graduate teaching assistant. Again, they had me doing most of my teaching in logic. Eventually, I learned logic. I'm sorry for my poor students, though.

- 1991-93 -  Assistant Professor - a.k.a. 'sessional instructor'. I taught a number of courses for the University of Alberta, all logic courses. I still remember my first course, 88 students in the Management Building. I spent way too much time revising their writing (but I'm sure they got a lot out of it). It was the one and only time my class applauded at the end of the year (the way they do in the movies).

- 1995-1999 - Distance Education and New Instructional Media Design Specialist - this was my first full time job in 15 years and I was finally making as much as I did when I left GSI in 1981 to join that wild ride called 'a university education'. It was a fabulous job, mostly. I made websites, I created online courses, I built an LMS, I traveled with a LAN to northern Manitoba communities, I sent posts to mailing lists, and essentially built the career I have now.

- 1995-1997 - Evening Course Instructor - With Conrad Albertson I made some extra money offering evening community class courses called 'Welcome to the Internet', and also a web design course. Those were some really fun times, I must say.

- 1999-2001 - Information  Architect - in a risky move (but, when you look at my history, it wasn't really riskier than the rest of my past) I left my full time job at Assiniboine and took a tw-year contract at almost twice the money to work as an information architect, designing and building a website called 'MuniMall'. The project was a success; the University used the site for almost ten years after it was done, and I made the most of the second half of my job, which was to perform original research in the field. I did papers like 'Learning Objects', 'Content Syndication and Online Learning' and 'Hacking Memes'.

- 2001 - Research Fellow - I received an email from Tim van Gelder who offered me a three month stint in Melbourne, Australia, assisting in the development of online philosophy courses. I did some neat things for him - like an in-line comment form - and set up what would eventually be the framework for my newsletter.

- 2001-present - Senior Research Officer - for the last ten years I've had only one job, working as a research officer for the National Research Council. It's a good professional job and the pay is pretty good - and after everything it took to get to this position, I'm pretty glad it is!

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Transparency, Radical or Otherwise

Responding to Doug Johnson, who in turn is responding to Miguel Guhlin, who has made his RSS work again. :)

My managers and co-workers read my blog (though not as speedily as I would like). My mother reads my blog. So I don't "write as though" they read it; I write knowing they read it. They all know I am fallible, that I sometimes have bad days, that I'll call someone out if they deserve it, and (most importantly) that I'm passionate and care about my work. Which makes most mistakes permissible.

I gripe where the griping will do the most good. If necessary, I'll redact names - my long tirade about my doctor didn't need to name the doctor, but it still needed to be said (and was probably read by him). I've written of the incompetence of our provincial government, just before the election in which it was defeated. I'll say good things where they're warranted - but the main point is, if I ever want to see my ideas implemented locally, I have to write about what's happening locally. (I find my influence on the global arena to be pretty minimal).

I sometimes write for edited publications, but I don't like it when they edit my work. Part of this is my own style - I really hate revisiting work I've already written. But part of it is aesthetics - I find first draft work a lot more authentic, if rough around the edges. Some people think by means of writing; me, I write in order to express my thinking. These are two very different acts. My employers have reacted negatively to my blog in the past, so it's hosted on my own server, which I pay for myself, and any other concern is relegated to our common understanding that I enjoy freedom of speech, even as a member of the public service (I add in passing that I am amazed at how many Americans say they can't say this or that for fear of reprisals, all the while proclaiming to be the most free people in the world).

I do write out of goodness, but it's not a stance I take in order to make the rest seem acceptable. I honestly believe that what I have to say is good and that I am producing good in the world by expressing it. This hasn't always been the easiest thing to believe. I have, as a matter of fact, been writing since I was young, but until I was 23 or so my writings remained mostly private. When I started university I joined the student newspaper, and had a very solid shell of shyness to surmount. I still grill myself on a regular basis: am I relevant? Is what I say accurate? Do people care?

So - this is the thing about transparency. It requires a lot of courage on the part of the person being transparent, but it requires more that the people observing understand that they are viewing a real person, with real faults, real opinions, real ideas and real fears. We harm ourselves and each other by assuming that everybody must conform to some sort of magazine-perfection.

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My Charitable Giving Profile

Responding to a post from Beth Kanter

My giving is focused and specific. In particular, I avoid charities performing functions that ought to be performed by the public domain. Specifically, health care and research, education and social welfare all ought to be managed by the government. These should not depend on charities because they are matters of urgent social need and because funding from charities disappears precisely when these are needed most.

Consequently, my giving is focused in two areas that are outside the domain of government: advocacy, and socially-responsible investment. This means that I give to political organizations such as labour advocacy groups, Occupy, Live 8 and One, issues campaigns, political parties, and independent agencies such as Amnesty International. And it means that instead of investing to enrich myself, I invest to improve society, and in particular, support credit unions and co-ops, and support international microlending such as Kiva.

Some people may not consider any of this charitable giving at all. Most of the recipients of my charitable dollars do not even qualify for charitable status. But the underlying purpose of my giving is to do good, rather than (say) qualify for a tax return or receive credit for funding. Moreover, many of the problems in society exist not because of a lack of means but because of a lack of political will.

From my perspective, much charitable giving actually *contributes* to this lack of political will, rather than addressing it. The most urgent health and welfare needs stem from poverty and oppression, yet high-profile charitable research into advanced diseases diverts attention away from these issues. Meanwhile, these private charities also foster the perspective that medical research ought to be funded by private agencies rather than by and for the public good.

My observation is that a great deal of the money raised by the foundations is directed toward those least in need of it. I have commented, for example, on the way educational foundation money is directed toward such needy agencies such as Harvard and MIT. Aid money - even research aid money - would have much more of an impact if directed toward nations and people unable to otherwise conduct the work.

The WiserGiving quiz bears this out (I actually took it after making the above remarks, and was mostly able to identify each of the different approaches in the questions). Here's how it describes my responses:

"Your dominant WiserGiving Style is Increasing Effectiveness of organizations, which strives to strengthen an organization so that it can better perform its mission, exert greater impact, and be increasingly sustainable over the long term. You have two secondary WiserGiving Styles, Direct Services, which focuses on the individual as the agent of social change; and Making Change Stick, which protects hard-won gains achieved in the legal and public opinion arenas."

You might wonder why I wouldn't choose options related to 'building movements' and 'research and big ideas' or even 'public policy'. In general, each of these caters in some way to the elitism I criticize above; building movements is about leading people, public policy is about influencing leaders, and research is about funding people who already have money. It's not that I don't think any of these are important, it's that the methods described to obtain the aims are incorrect.

Take 'leading people' for 'building movements', for example. The survey instrument describes these as including "Examples include: Occupy Wall Street, Anti-Bullying campaigns, Pro-Choice, and the Tea Party." These do not belong together in a single category. Some, like Occupy, are much less leader-dependent than others. Some, like Occupy, are not *mass* movements like the others, but are rather composed of relatively small actions intended to make a statement. Occupy doesn't have *followers* the way the other movements (and movements in general) have.

My view is that, in general, in order to enable effective social change, we need to bypass and circumvent traditional power-centered approaches. Instead of trying to change banks, for example, we should work to achi3eve economic objectives, such as lending, in other ways. Instead of catering to elected officials, or running for office, we should create mechanisms through which we govern ourselves. Instead of charity as 'giving' from the powerful to the poor, whether it is direct aid or the giving of end-specific gifts (like, say, 'an education') we need to focus on reducing the disparity between rich and poor and in enabling the disempowered to create the putative 'gift' for themselves.

Most writing and literature regarding charity actually undermines these objectives. Most charity still takes the perspective of a voluntary transfer (usually with conditions) of direct aid from the wealthy (rich, powerful) to the needy, and usually in such a way as to reinforce, rather than ameliorate, the division that created the need in the first place.

People need to realize:
- a donation to an anti-Cancer fund is a vote for a privatized health care system,
- a petition campaign entrenches a hierarchical political system,
- a research program typically entrenches the division between educational opportunities
- direct purchased aid enriches western manufacturers and agriculture at the expense of those elsewhere

Until they do, they will continue to conduct their charitable activities in such a way as to continue to create the need for charity, rather than to achieve its elimination.

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Connectivism as Epistemology

Responding to questions from Vance McPherson

1) What is your response to Rita Kop's suggestion that connectivism is a new epistemology but not a new learning theory?

As I understand Rita, she understands the pedagogical aspects of connectivism to have already been present in constructivism, and hence, connectivism is not proposing something new when it comes to giving guidance to instructional staff. There are overlaps to be sure, however:
- criticisms of a teaching practice, which may be grounded if working in a constructivist perspective, are not grounded in a connectivist environment. For example, I responded to criticisms from Heli Nurmi several times in this fashion.
- there is a universalist aspect to constructivism that is not present in connectivism; to be a 'theory' requires statements of general principles of teaching, and connectivism mostly doesn't have these
- and related, constructivism depends on intention in a way connectivism does not - it supposes that people are consciously building or constructing knowledge, whereas in connectivism this is not required

Connectivism is *definitively* a learning theory, or more accurately, incorporates learning theories (specifically, theories about how connections are formed in networks). It suggests some teaching theories (I have capsulized them as 'to teach is to model and demonstrate' and suggested that connectivism argues for the creation of an immersive learning environment).

But all of that said, whether connectivism is a *new* theory of epistemology or pedagogy is irrelevant to me and I don't spend any time worrying about it. I often preface my remarks with the sentence "everything I have to say has been said (often better) by someone else."

2) My understanding of connectivism is currently as both epistemology and learning theory, which presupposes that it has ALWAYS been correct and is not contingent upon modern technological developments to "work." Rather, technology casts light upon the nature of the model.  But many authors are suggesting that the application of the learning theory is primarily to technology-based learning.  What's your take on this?

It has always been correct (insofar as it has components that say anything is 'always' the case). Networks have always learned. Humans have always been a network (at least, since graduating from single-celled organisms).

Other aspects of the theory change over time. At the deepest level, the principles for stable (dynamic, learning) networks - autonomy, diversity, etc - are probably reasonably constant over different types of networks.

But the sort of environments that create learning vary greatly - the sort of environment that produces a modern information-age knowledge-worker for example varies greatly from one which would produce a skilled bow-maker in the middle ages.

Additionally, with the development of technology, new types of networks have come into being. While human commerce has always formed a network, it has been a relatively simple network and certainly a slow-moving one. There's only so much connecting that can take place via personal communication and the Royal Mail. Technology greatly accelerated the size and speed of the human network, producing in a way not previously possible more observable properties of a network (for example, cascade phenomena as an idea or meme propagates through the network).

 

3) M. K. Dunaway (2011) recently published a paper in Reference Services Review, where she describes connectivism as claiming that knowledge emerges from an individual's learning network as connections are recognized.  If I'm understanding your position correctly, then Dunaway's description is inaccurate in placing the locus of knowledge with the individual learner's recognition patterns, and not in the network itself.  But I may also have not correctly understood you, her, or both.  Could you steer me straight on this?

I would have to read Dunaway to be able to provide a reasonable response - if you could link me to a copy that would be helpful.

That said - 'recognition' is a core thesis of my own theory. To 'know' x is to be capable of *recognizing* 'x'. To recognize 'x' is to assume an appropriate neural configuration when presented with an 'x', where 'appropriate' may be described in any variety of manners. I sometimes talk of 'knowing' 'x' to having the right 'feeling' when represented with 'x', a feeling of recognition. To 'recognize' is a property of a successful network.

Additionally, networks exhibit patterns or regularities. For example, a weather network may exhibit a characteristic 'storm front' or a mumuration of blackbirds may display shapes in the air. In my own work I often use examples like 'facves on a TV screen' or on the surface of Mars. These patterns in a network are phenomena that exist *only* as things that are recognized. To say a pattern 'x' exists in network 'y' requires a perceiver 'P' presented with 'y' and who instantiates an appropriate network state (a 'familiar feeling', a 'habitual reaction', a 'recognition') when presented with (a perspective of) 'x'.

 

4) I sometimes get the impression that you and George Siemens are not exactly on the same page when it comes to the epistemological aspects of connectivism, which of course would be perfectly fine in the context of a dialogic process, but I wondered if you'd care to comment on this.

George and I have our debates. My sense is that is is much more concerned with the pedagogical aspects of connectivism while I am much more interested in the epistemological aspects. Philosophically, George is a realist while I am more of an idealist - that is to say, he is more likely to say the phenomena we observe (be they chairs or colours or shapes and movements) are 'real' while I (for reasons just stated) say they require a perceiver.

 

One more thing, something of a comment.  You've described semiotic processes (language, symbols) as epiphenomena of networks, but not essential to them.  This reminds me a lot of Stephen Jay Gould's idea of "spandrels."  I thought it was interesting because one of Bill Kerr's beefs with connectivism seems to be that there is not a good evolutionary / biological explanation for how connectivism is possible.  But I think that, on the contrary, connectivism, if correct, would prove conclusively Gould's spandrel hypothesis, which is widely accepted in evolutionary biology circles.  Just a thought.

I have described the patterns we perceive as supervenient on the phenomena that produce them. So that does make them epiphenomenal in a way.

The whole question of an evolutionary basis for connectivism is one I have not considered. But I think there's a good basis for such an argument. A network is at heart a recognition system; it responds in consistent ways to complex and variable phenomena. It embodies the capacity to adapt to change. The more complex an environment the more likely that a network, rather than a simple innate instinct, would ensure survival.

A language I think emerges quite naturally out of this. Given that humans have the capacity to make noises and gestures, and that these would be consistently produced given certain phenomena, it would not be long before the adaptive advantage of communication ensured its adoption. Most - if not all - of actual language is (in my mind) learned. But there is no question that the networks we are born with at birth are sensitive to the sounds and movements made by people like ourselves.

That said: language (as an entity) is a *social* phenomenon, not a personal phenomenon. Language is stigmergic. As Wittgenstein would say, there is no private language. Not because of some 'private language argument' (I think this is a recreation of Wittgenstein's thought after the fact, and not core to what Wittgenstein had to say) but because the properties of language - specific words (the associated sounds and symbols, and conventional meaning or reference), grammars and syntax, works in literature and art that constitute paradigms, etc. - are physical phenomena, present out there in the world and not in the humans that speak and write it.

Is language a spandral - an accidental artifact of evolution? In one sense no - I think a look at language after the fact shows how important it has been to survival. But in another sense no - it's not an artifact of evolution at all, as it is not a property of individual humans.

But should investigation show a particular innate sensitivity to some aspect of language - a 'mirror neuron for syntax', say, that might be a spandral. That might be a selected preference for a particular aspect of language that *could* have been different (you could have an equally effective language without it) but was the way it was, and was selected for. It might show up in the way, say, an innate preference for the colour red might have - as an aid to identifying dangerous stuff in the world, which in an alternative history could well have been blue or green (think Vulcan) or whatever.

Good questions, interesting discussion, thanks. I will post these to my weblog, if you don't mind.

-- Stephen

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Feelings of Science

David Hume's philosophy of morality is distinct from most approaches in that it does not postulate some set of principles or criteria for moral behaviour.

Rather, he argues that we are governed by a 'moral sense' that tells us when an act is right or wrong. "Extinguish all the warm feelings and prepossessions in favour of virtue, and all disgust or aversion to vice: render men totally indifferent towards these distinctions; and morality is no longer a practical study, nor has any tendency to regulate our lives and actions." (Hume, Of Morals)

The idea here isn't that Hume is arguing for some sort of moral relativism and 'anything goes', though he has often been mischaracterized that way, but rather that other putatively ''objective' measures of morality are crude instruments, and that our own sensations are fine-tuned detectors of moral nuance that can be developed, through practice and experience, into reliable measures of morality.

It's a bit like the difference between monitoring the gauges on a dashboard and a driver feeling how the car responds to the road around corners and while braking. An experienced and sensitive driver can tell if there's something wrong with the car well before any objective instruments can because the car doesn't 'feel' right.

Note again that this isn't an 'anything goes' theory of auto mechanics. There is an objective fact of the matter as to whether the car is performing badly or not. But this fact is not equated with dashboard monitor readings, or indeed with any particular measure that can be determined a priori. Prior to an actual breakdown or measurable malfunction, it's no more than wear and tear in a car's engine the human mind can sense well before any more coarsely-tuned measuring device can.

This sort of juding appropriateness by feeling isn't limited to ethics and auto mechanics. Rob Cottingham posted this cartoon today and then discussed how he came to produce it:


He writes, "For me, the trick is to not overthink it, because that’s a sure route to paralysis... ultimately, the goal is to create the cartoon I want to make, and then reach more of the people who will enjoy that cartoon." In a cartoon there can be a million variables that go into the definition of 'good' and the cartoonist does not create a cartoon to specifications, but rather, works by feel.

These considerations emerged today as I discussed the concept of a connectivist research methodology with Sheri Oberman. Now I hadn't really thought in such terms about connectivism - I remarked that I see myself as more akin to an explorer than an experimenter, and that my methodology is based more in Paul Feyerabend than in anything else: "The idea that science can, and should, be run according to fixed and universal rules, is both unrealistic and pernicious. It is unrealistic, for it takes too simple a view of the talents of man and of the circumstances which encourage, or cause, their development. And it is pernicious, for the attempt to enforce the rules is bound to increase our professional qualifications at the expense of our humanity."

But again, this isn't an 'anything goes' methodology, and Oberman is right, I think, to suggest that a connectivist methodology would be based in some significant way on connections. And when I reflect on my own practice it does seem to me that my own work is based in forming connections - though, more specifically, it is based in acting as a node in a network, and not in network-forming per se (I think the concept of 'building networks' is a bit misleading; if we want to be a part of a network we must be in the network, as a node, and not outside it, as a god).

But what would that methodology look like? Again, I could probably draw out some criteria - I've talked about the importance of autnomy and diversity, etc., in the past, and these qualities certainly characterize my own practice. And perheps, after the fact, you could measure my own research performance against, say, an 'autonomy index', and determine to what degree I practices and promoted autonomy in my own work.

But that's not how I actually evaluate my own work. It's not that the criteria are wrong. It's that, first of all, the criteria that determine whether my work was a success or not do not emerge until later, and second, even then, I evaluate my work according to how it feels against any such criteria (indeed, it would drive me crazy to try to evaluate against such criteria).

For example, the Skype conversation I had this morning, and practices like that Skype conversation (I have another in less than half an hour, and routinely have short conversations where I talk to people interested in this and that). I'll pose one 'research' question: should I record them? (Another: should I blog about them after? Etc.) I don't record them because I want the conversations to feel more like practice rather than performance. Is this a correct methodology? What would tell me whether it was? I won't know until some time in the future the basis on which these conversations were a success or otherwise. But I do know I have a pretty good feel for such things, so I that's what I use.

Would it be better if there were some criteria against which I made my decision whether or not to record? No, because the success of the conversation is based in much more than whether or not it is recorded, and so any such standard would be artificial and arbitrary. And, in some important respects, wrong.

Obermann mentioned knowing whether a dance is successful. It's the same sort of thing, again. I know whether I am dancing well by how it feels when I'm dancing. If I'm feeling awkward, not knowing where to put my feet, unsure if I'm holding my partner properly, and all the rest (and I speak from experience here) then I know I am dancing incorrectly. By contrast, if these concerns fall by the wayside and I feel only a smoothness of motion and attachment to my partner, then the dance is progressing well.

Now, a couple of things. I could assess my dance against a dancing design pattern, consisting (for example) of a series of step marks imprinted on the floor (kind of like the old 'figures' in figure skating). This would certainly be objective, and measurable. But it would be incorrect - I could dance poorly even while hitting every step, and dance well even though missing the mark. Indeed, the point of the dance is do no more than to merely replicate a best practice, it is to take it and make it something more.

Again, though, note that this is not an 'anything goes' theory of dancing. Nor is it even a theory that supposes that my own standard of 'good' dancing is static (and hence, forever primitive). As I dance, as I watch other dancers, as I discuss dancing with my dance partner (or with total strangers I've bumped on the dance floor) my sense of dance becomes more refined. What I feel changes. What used to feel pretty good now seems to me to be slow and simplistic. As I evolve, I strive to be a better dancer, and my sensation becomes one of detecting this improvement in my dance.

This is an important point. One of the fundamental difficulties with the empirical sciences is that the science of measurement - which is what we need in order to obtain experimental results - is itself an empirical discipline, and itself subject to amendment and improvement over time. Nowhere is this more evident than in personal perception - our tastes in music when we are young are (typically, and with some caveats) laughable when we are older. Did I really buy that Bay City Rollers album? Yeah - I did.

The literature of aesthetics is full of references to things like the refined palate in wine tasting, the expertise of the chef in cooking, the appreciation of a master carpenter for a fine mortise and tenon. People who study colour closely are able to distinguish differences in tint and tone that will escape a novice. Our quality of experience improves over time, and it does so because our capacity to perceive nuance, distinction and difference is improved, and this reflects the impact of hundreds of thousands of individual experiences over time on our mind. Our brains, quite literally, become shaped into better perceivers (given the appropriate practice and experience).

As this is true of individuals, so it is true of the assessment of science and research in society generally. For while on the one hand we have today a trend toward objective criteria-based assessments of research and science, a connectivist approach (if there were one) would suggest that the acceptance of a research methodology or a specific research program is an emergent phenomenon describable only in terms of that programs placement in the wider network?

What does that mean? One way of stating it is that society as a whole feels good about a given program, and senses discord about another. Think of the sort of social approbation or revulsion we feel for certain moral or immoral acts - there is for example in Canada a certain crime of murder and dismemberment that has just been committed, and there is a widespread sense of revulsion regarding the fact that it was recorded and posted on the internet. This isn't a matter of voting or counting individual preferences, or of violating some guideline, law or precept; it's more like a whole body response to the phenomenon.

What constitutes it? Well precisely it is the set of interactions each of us with the others, the call-in radio shows, the blog posts, and the rest, combined with our inner sensations about the act as they are expressed in a myriad of ways, some not even connected to the act (that's why simply counting votes would be inappropriate; it completely misses the changed way we regard each other in the grocery store, a change imperceptible and almost unidentifiable, but if you were sensitive to it and looking for it, you might say you saw it there).

This form of social perception is the ultimate judge of the adequacy of any research program (or musical taste, or dance moves, or cartoon, or any of the rest of it). Again, it is not an electoral process, nor a market behaviour (quite the contrary; these are mass phenomena intended and designed to magnify the needs and interests of individual members of society, rather than to reflect the sense of society as a whole).

And - importantly - like personal perception, social perception is itself subject to refinement and improvement. It's as Richard Duscho writes, "the proper game for understanding the nature and development of scientific knowledge is engagement with the ongoing pursuit and refinement of methods, evidence, and explanations and the subsequent handing of anomalies that are a critical component of proposing and evaluating scientific models and theories."

The mechanisms we use to validate are - or ought to be - similar to those used to validate great cuisine, or dancing, or auto mechanics. Both society as a whole and experts in particular play a role. Society probably defines relevance - and again, relevance may not be immediately apparent. Most of society understands this, and we have always kept a place for abstruse researches, not because we understand them, but because we don't. Experts in the mean time are needed to distinguish the gold from the dross, the genuine from the imitation; their own inner sense of the discipline has been finely honed.

We need both, and we need these to be undefined, rather than specified in terms of some sort of code of guidelines or best practices or whatever, not only because such are hopelessly inaccurate abstractions on the judgements that are actually made, but also because by their very nature they are resistant to the sort of growth and personal development every society needs. When societies learn to feel and not just to measure, arts and sciences flourish; when they return to standards and specifications, they have lost that capacity, and a decline has begin.

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Experts and Empowerment

We all, as David Wiley writes, want to empower learners. While we read a great deal these days about education as job training and workforce readiness, what we really want to be able to do is to enable each person to make his or her way in the world, to pursue their own good in their own way.

This, to me, involves reducing and eventually eliminating their need to depend on experts. As I imperfectly expressed the point the other day, "It’s about actually empowering people to develop and create their own learning, their own education. So not only do they not depend on us for learning, but also, their learning is not subject to our value-judgements and prejudices."

Unfortunately, this is often read as a casting of the student into the world to rely solely on their own devices. David Wiley echoes the sort of misinterpretation of this view that is common:

"It is hard to imagine any form of learning that does not involve an expert – except pure, unguided, trial-and-error discovery learning. Without reference to any person – or any artifact created by a person – of more experience than ourselves, all learning would be maximally inefficient. We would each be left to rediscover the entirety of physics from scratch. And the entirety of music theory. And the entirety of every other field, without a conversation or a textbook or a Wikipedia article to guide us."

Such a proposition is absurd, and as it is absurd one should conclude (I would hope) that it is not the proposition I am arguing for.

So let me be clear: in the world as I understand it, there are more than two options. There is an option somewhere between "depending on an expert" and "left to rediscover the entirely of physics from scratch."

And - to be clear - a great deal of 'expert content' exists. There is not only the aforementioned Wikipedia, there are also academic publications, magazine and newspaper articles, open online courses, blog posts, NASA videos, TED talks, and a host of additional educational content. Indeed, in today's environment, and for the foreseeable future, we are virtually swimming in educational content. It would be rash, irresponsible, and unthinking to say that a person should not consult any of this when learning physics or any other discipline. So, that is not what I am saying.

What I am addressing with remarks like "we should not depend on the expert" is the stance that ought to be taken by the learner with respect to the learning material extant on the web and elsewhere. And I mean this two two distinct but related ways:

- first, the learner should not accept the report of the expert uncritically. Expert advice on any given subject may not merely be misleading or misinformed, it may also be offered out of context, it may be outdated, it may be misunderstood, and in some cases it may be malicious. Examples of any of these cases may be found in abundance, especially on today's polarized and politicized media environment.

- second, the learner should resist the characterization of certain sources, certain perspectives, and certain content types *as expert*. While once we may have been able to rely on peer and publisher review to verify the authenticity and accuracy of the information, this is no longer the case. Moreover, an increasing body of verifiable and reliable information is being published outside tradititional channels.

These two conditions amount to the assertion that the learner should take what amounts to a critically reflective stance with respect not only to expert content but with respect to all content. Maybe there was once a day when we could trust expert opinion, but today we live in an environment where not only can we not trust the experts, we cannot even trust that the people offered as experts in fact are experts.

This is an important point. While it is common to use terms like 'elite' and 'expert' interchangeably, they are in fact distinct concepts. To call a person an expert refers to their knowledge. A person is an expert in a discipline if they have a deep knowledge of the field, a base of experience in the field, and can talk about matters related to the field rationally and reasonably. But to call a person an 'elite' refer to their position in a community or society. A person who is elite will have accumulated a disproportionate amount of power, wealth or influence.

Sometimes a person will be elite as a result of their expertise. If we speak of, for example, "elite scientists", we may be referring not to the richest or most powerful scientists, but those with the most expertise. But in practice we are rarely so precise. And so the word 'elite' even in a scientific discipline may refer not to those with the greatest knowledge, but to those with the most power and influence.

My own experience in life is that the people who become elite do not always become so as a result of their generosity, but rather as a result of their parsimony. They achieve their status as elite not by sharing but rather by hoarding. Such members of the elite carefully cultivate a culture of dependence. By ensuring that their followers depend on them for knowledge, influence and wealth, they augment their own position in society. The parsimonious elite are not interested in the empowerment of their students. They are greedy, selfish and self-interested.

Not all members of the elite are parsimonious, and not all experts are members of this elite. But the membership is sufficiently large that a learner ought not, as a general policy, place oneself in a position of dependence on experts. With every word of advice received, the learner must be in a position to ask whom the advice is intended to benefit. And the learner must be in a position to seek alternative sources of expertise, to weight options, and to decide what to believe for him or her self.

What is significant, to my mind, is that by being able to adopt such a critical stance with respect to expertise, learners are not only much better able to vet for themselves the reliability and authenticity of a piece of expert advice, they also acquire the capacity to look beyond a smaller set of 'trusted sources' and cast their gaze across the wider information landscape, as they will be able to select the reasonable and reliable even from such nontraditional sources as discussion lists, blog posts and alternative media.

It's like being able to read. Before we could read, we had to depend on the priest to tell us what the book said. After we learned how to read, not only could we see what the book says for ourselves, we can also read other books that may say different things. Being able to read not only increases our understanding, it increases our power to choose what will inform that understanding.

From my perspective as an educator, we should not be like the educator who reads to people, and who builds a large hall and charges fees in order to have people come to us to listen to use read to them.

Nor should we be like the educator who reads to people for free. This does not achieve our aims. 'Giving content for free' does not reduce the need for people to depend on a reader. Rather, it creates a new problem, that of sustainability - how are we to pay people who read for free?

We should be like the educator whose primary interest is in teaching people to read, so they do not need to come to us at all, so there is not only no need for a hall and for fees to be paid, but no need for our particular expertise, because everyone can have it.

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Moncton On Top

Responding to comments on the Globe and Mail article,  Moncton on top after surviving recession, government austerity. Also posted to Moncton Free Press.

Bilingualism is an asset. Yes, it means you have to be more educated to get a job; speaking one language isn't enough. But having a more educated workforce is an asset.

But bilingualism is only one aspect of Moncton's revival. When I moved to the city in 2001 many of the services it now supports were underdeveloped. It had a tiny NB-standard airport. The retail sector was underdeveloped. It was difficult to access medical services.

The new highways to the east and west had not yet had an impact and the Confederation bridge had only been open a few years. In the early 2000s Moncton combined its infrastructure with a new airport and aggressive positioning as a regional service centre.

The health services sector has boomed, with a proliferation of clinics and pharmacies opening. Major national retailers (finally) moved in, providing competition for the NB-specific retailers that had prevailed until then (I remember when Home Depot opened that Kent (Lumber) finally extended its hours).

The redevelopment is not yet complete. Moncton has invested a lot to become an entertainment hub - with the new Casino, stadium, and concert facilities at Magnetic Hill - but needs to continue to support the transition of downtown to a business and entertainment hub. It's starting; we're finally seeing apartment buildings go up, but more needs to be done.

All of this results from people taking calculated risks and making an investment. The city benefits from demographic shifts as rural NBers move in, but it is mostly based on a willingness to build toward a prosperous future. There are always sceptics who will say, for example, that a football stadium is not feasible, or that a such-and-such a concert will not be a success, but we work toward these things and make them happen.

It also results from people who are involved in the community and want to make a difference. I've made a habit of telling people in the city, "everyone here is in the tourism business." And more: it's the people who lobby and build biking trails and parks, the people working for their school system, the people raising money for health services, the people who helped develop the municipal plan, the people who understand that the city belongs to all of us. That's a spirit that is new in New Brunswick. We don't work for some company. We work for each other.

When I travel and show pictures of where I live their first reaction is how beautiful it is. They've never have heard of Moncton, but I tell them about the well-educated people who live there, the work ethic and desire to succeed, the sense of community and concern for everyone's well-being, and they begin to understand why I would work and live here rather than in Toronto or New York.

I've seen the Stones and U2 here, I've spent a month camping by the seaside, I've walked through dense forests and tasted maple syrup right from the tree, I've seen my first pro basketball game and revisited my love for the CFL, and I've made a home here.

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