UCD and TCD together with Irish Aid have recently been running a seminar series on development issues as part of an on-going project to put a unique, new, cross-institutional masters-level initiative on the ground in Ireland.  It has led to some some very interesting talks both here at Belfield and also in Trinity. Well… until now at any rate!

Friday was my turn to take the floor.  It’s probably reasonable to say that while I think it went off well enough, my penguins didn’t fly and one of my elephants (problems we prefer to ignore) came as a bit of an unknown for a lot of those at the seminar.  The moral of the first part is simple; always make sure Quicktime is installed on a presentation PC in a place you’ve not spoken in before before trying to play your comical-but-pointed Quicktime video.  The second was a bit more worrying.  I brough up Dambisa Moyo’s Dead Aid criticism of the political processes and rational underpinning norther governments’ involvement in overseas development and aid. But surprisingly a fair number in the room hadn’t yet come across her particular brand of smooth but loaded rhetoric.

Perhaps it shouldn’t have been too much of a surprise. The programme that Paul Walsh, Padraig Camody et al.  are putting together is very much in the Amartya Sen and Jeffery Sachs tradition; reasoned and hopeful.  The question of engaging the more sensational  counter-currents is however a thought for a necessary future year 1 inclusion. After all, if the course graduates aren’t aware of all of the type of  ideologically charged, anti-aid stuff that’s out there, it’s hard to see them not being phased by it when they hit it in the fieldwork stages.

The superpipes part of the talk was more like home ground; technology and its affordances for education in a developing world setting, the sometimes ambivalent IT / Telco sector practices, the telecommunications superpipes now hitting developing countries’ shores around the world – as well as the ownership of these and the continuing paucity of provision for the African situation. We also looked briefly at the ITU role in all of this and the part played by ‘maverick’ initiatives such as OLPC, and the increasingly valuable role of ‘northern’ universities in supporting and promoting development and meaningful collaboration with southern counterparts.

But as always the best part of the talk was the conversation that followed.  Many of the seminar participants may not have heard of ‘the best looking voice’ on the anti-aid side but their passion and intelligence was obvious in our discussion.

As an academic and humanistic initiative, this programme deserves to succeed. I hope it gets a kinder reception across the university more broadly that it has in my own school.

It is not yet December, but the sky darkens earlier every evening and there are other signs of wintering times ahead. The past few months have been frenetic. It’s been an academic hand-to-mouth existence with talks and papers passably ready no more that a day or so – if even that – in advance of whenever it was the event took place.

The HII at Belfield, Potsdam, Vienna, Brussels.  The Curragh, Malahide, Brookfield, DIT Cathal Brugha. And Liverpool. 

I’ve hawked my wears with an enthusiasm that  can be put down to hope more than belief but, in the main, found an encouraging amount of interest in what was being rehearsed.  And so the planned wintering: another well-intentioned turn to the page.  Which – even in the shadow of the necessary recompile and reset of ideas, memory of earnest talks in cafes and on hotel corridors, the exchange of business cards and hearts,  digital indiscretion, and the compact folding in on itself of more than one professional hope; ons fiemies - looms like some trompe-l’oeil future.  Or as a restorative and regaling turn, perhaps, which makes complete the journey from July to here and signals – finally – the calculus required in cutting loose from Venetian days and the abandonment of rigorous, longitudinal project in favour of the more venal, gainful and available.

All of which results in my working on a new grammar. One of inventiveness, the sustained, responsibility, probity in the face of disappointment. Questions -  as Attridge might say – of indebtedness to the other, of trust and betrayal, and of confession and truth to the self.  So yes, there’s performance in it all and instantiation. The ineluctable address of intention towards what might otherwise be idle longing, makes for this possibility.  However faint and far away and however awry the actualization that may result.

And of course it may be the travel pass needed to clear this karoo for once and for all.  To drum under different skies.  Or it may be an end of dreaming.

There  you are in early-June, ploughing through another badly-written, badly conceived dissertation which lacks originality, vigour and anything  like criticality.  And you have this idea;  Couldn’t a module on critical analysis and writing out of policy texts go a long way towards giving this crew the understandings and skill-set they need to seriously raise their game?

So you beaver away for a couple of months drafting a course, finding resources, working on novel assessment arrangements. Getting it through the Vogonesque bureaucracy. The works.   Basically, innovating.  Because innovation is not just about doing more. It’s about doing things differently; in a interesting, motivating and more effective way.

But that’s the thing about innovating in and around a university programme. Sometimes the buggers don’t want to be ‘innovated’… it gets in the way of a quiet and well-ordered life.  Better the good old instrumental stuff, the  long booklist and a take-home test!

One candidate registered.

I’ve always consoled myself with the though that over the years I’ve become a half-decent, forward-facing thinker where new courses are concerned.  (Unlike the younger self and the more Norman & Stoppard’s Philip Henslowe modality he lived through; when your feet are in the fire you will promise anything… )  Now I’m not so sure.

Ah well, best just put it down to ignoring too much outside of my own compositional practice and an overweening concern for aesthetic modernity… 

Besides there’s always a conference to look forward to.

… is without a doubt an impressive place and for many it still has a resonance that goes beyond the sporting alone.  I come from a background where both histories of the ground were freely intermingled and easily switched between. So part of me has always been a bit cynical about the ‘modernisation’ that put a towering great sports stadium where the old Hogan and Cusack stands used to be. Not least I suppose because my late father  – after 50 years of unbroken attendance at  Hurling All Irelands – found to his dismay that he could no longer find the wherewithal to continue being a season ticket holder in this bright, new corporate world. [His local club rallied around and ensured he was never short of a ticket through the remainder of his life - but that's another story.] 

However, for reasons that are more trouble to relate than they’re probably worth, I am sitting here on a rather overcast  morning in the conference area of the ‘new’ Hogan stand.  Below me  – or rather below and level with and above me – the U2 stage totally dominates the playing arena.  The conference area itself is comfortable and a little understated. Corporate boxes double as working spaces and meeting rooms and there’s a bit of a 21st century buzz to it all that draws you in. Naturally, the eye is drawn constantly to the pitch – or rather where it should be!- and the surrounding banks of seating that just seem to rise skyward against all odds and expectations. 

The old guy had an expression which today – in this place and space – seems particularly apt; Changing days always suits someone. Usually someone else.  But give things a chance and they can surprise you.   Perhaps he had a point after all.

… from a counterindicative sky.  That would be July, near Dublin. 

It’s the time of year I get to do a bit of reading. Nothing work related. Just a few bits and pieces to fuel the spirit and offer some sort of regeneration.

Just noticed that Ewan McIntosh is also reading one of the small pile I’ve assembled – though I think he’s finding it more impressive that I did.  Mind you, there have been moments lately when what the Zanders say about being out of the boat reverberates to the core of everything I try to hang on to in this life.  Still, it’s all a bit over enthusiastic about needed only to step-away and re-vision to see the absolutely perfect way forward buried in the problematic. Which may be why Sennett’s The Craftsman remains for me the touchstone for these times.  I reread it over the past few days in part to help frame an answer to some personal impasses about where next & why for the year ahead.  And what struck me once again is the power of the claims he makes for freedom from means-ends relationships and the hope – and price –  of dignity.

The Zanders would seem never to have had to deal with the type of idiocy that results in placing people with no true understanding of either teaching or learning in control of academic development in a university setting.  Sennett at least offers the possibility of a meaningful personal way forward when faced with dishonest practice and square-lake cronyism.

It can be hard to please people sometimes.  The morning sessions of the recent GeSCI Workshop were busy and informative.  But over lunch there was a discernible sense of frustration among the participants that there were not enough opportunities to converse and debate. So on a hunch, I decided to take a more dialogical approach to my own session than originally requested and planned.  I worked out rather well…

We opened with a brief introduction to the panel and a short scene setting exercise that involved elephants in corners – those things we all know but don’t always feel comfortable acknowledging. In this case; the extraordinary disconnect between policy making and research of any kind, and the particular challenge we all face in education with the emergence of ubiquitous computing and web 2.0 modalities of learning. We explored briefly the nature and intent of the major players in the ICT4E arena and the various forces driving various agendas forward. This scene-setting generated a considerable amount of discussion in the workshop.

We then approached the task of structuring a discussion in a simple and direct way.  A question was displayed on screen, one or two of the panel offered an initial response and then the conversation moved to the floor. Of the five questions we had hoped to address we covered four.

Things that work…
Initially, a number of very different and very geographically diverse projects were identified that fitted this description in terms of ICT usage in education. However, serious issues around continuity and sustainability were raised where many such project interventions are concerned. It became clear from the discussion that it was very difficult indeed to point to examples of sustained ICT4E where research, policy and good practice were successfully combined. The idea of ‘brokerage’ was advocated as a useful means of connecting leading edge practice and policy making.

What ‘education innovation’ looks like…
This was an interesting discussion and at the end of it we were still not totally sure we could agree what it looked like. But we were pretty much in agreement about the usefulness of keeping on looking for it! Different conceptual understandings of innovation were discussed; industrial models versus educative models, the linkage between innovation and ICT at both general and field-specific level, and the policy implications of buying-into one model as opposed to another. Several speakers emphasises the moral and values aspects of education – and the challenge of retaining these in a world where economic ideals were more often emphasises.

Policy making as practice….
We discussed two issues under this heading: the value and utility of networks and lessons form policy work North and South. The discussion was lively and productive. We agreed that policy was a complex and layered process, all too often misunderstood or only partially understood by those encountering the process for the first or at least first significant time. We got some way into the task of identifying who the policy makers are and how and why they operate as they do. We also made some gains in terms of placing teachers and other field practitioners at the rightful heart of the process. And we unpicked some of the more general problems and benefits of operating in and through networks for change.

Networks and partnerships…
A spin off from this last discussion saw further exploration by the workshop of the contributions and opportunities to participate that might usefully exist with a research network or partnership in ICT4E. The primacy of really understanding the practice context and the context right to the school level of the proposed intervention – with all its myriad challenges and opportunities – was emphasised. The various ways that governments and NGOs can contribute to framing and supporting policy for intervention and subsequent action were explored. And finally the role of the academy was emphasised – in terms of providing policy research expertise, focussed assistance where requested and in honest and constructive policy evaluation that focuses on lessons-learnt rather than target gain.

We closed the session on a slightly mischievous note by discussing the need to be able to know the difference between ‘the good guys’ and ‘the bad guys’ in policy and research terms. There were no clear outcomes from this particular area of the forum other than the conversation – both light hearted and more serious – it engendered subsequently over coffee and in the following sessions.

All in all an enjoyable and I think useful event. Though it falls somewhat under a pall of gloom when set alongside the recent news  from Irish Aid…

This evening, about when our new School building was being officially inaugurated (in a meaningful and significant manner) by a covey of carefully chosen dignitaries, deputy registrars and other University placemen, I took my dog for his evening walk.  It seemed to represent a better use of time.  And as I stood in the parklands to the south of Castletown and watched him chasing swallows, I couldn’t help a fleeting thought and a rueful smile.  What a pair…

… a considerable amount of activity around the Roebuck Buildings yesterday. Portfolios and assignments overflowing the desks in the main office, placement files being dropped off and/or collected, new regulations for grading and marking being explained to successive groups by those most concerned in that aspect of the School’s work, tri-corn mangement cabals all over the place – with faces looking suitably serious and concerned.

In short; busywork. On a major scale.

I was glad to be able to close my door and simply focus first on the assignment materials that have come in from the DLD programme and then on one of the new courses I am planning for next semester.  Things like the sequestration of the university role, reading power , the deep nature of US neo-conservative policy, and failures of political & moral courage could wait for another time. 

There are days when I regret not having left here long ago.

… there is light on the water of this digital world and the sun pours down on something to be wondered at.

“Now, as I sift through the pages of the anthology, I experience a strange thrill, something akin to a homecoming. Constantly uprooted, I have lived my life accepting the idea of home to be nothing more than notional, a clutch of haphazard memories. But here, between the covers of this book, I realize, my character has found shelter, and I an uplifting peace, amidst an eclectic sisterhood of writers.”

When I read this I know the voice instantly. And I can see the flowing, cursive script that once carried stories and poems to my classroom - that  led me as a young teacher  into a world of dancers and dancing and walled castles and younger hearts so lost in the poetry of themselves that they could see nothing and nobody else. 

But this is far more. This is the work of a writer. Perhaps one still seeking that final something – that contemplative certainty of voice and place in the world.  A restless, cosmopolitan soul,  now touched by the whitefire of life and the otherwhere.  But a writer  to the core.

DLD 09 were not convinced. The problem about playing fast and loose with location is that when you really are stuck in an airport  transit lounge and you want to do some shared activity on line, they are hard to convince that this time you are not messing about!

The upshot was that we had to run another ‘realworld’ session yesterday to close out the current course. And it was actually very impressive to see how far they had come in a few months.  A couple did absolutely fantastic pecha-kucha  on their projects; others went for more traditional presentation and one even laid-on a bespoke YouTube slot.

Funny how quickly these endings come around.  Another course hears off into the wild blue yonder and I go back to the deskwork…

There are compensations. A British Council Conference invite has come around for mid-June. Talks in Potsdam and Vienna are both lined up for the autumn and now a very interesting opening slot for a Dublin workshop on digital literacy and 21 century higher education has come along.