WE/ME in epedagogy design

I have just been into Mimerdesk and I have started 2 topics in a forum. I am not convinced I have started them in the right place, but I could not find any other place (or any other way) to start them.

There are two topics:

* A VLE Course Cafe, for the personal announcements; and
* Where are our blogs and web sites? for our personal urls so we can find each other’s stuff.

This is how you find them:

1. Log into Mimerdesk
2. Navigate to the Virtual Learning Environments group
3. Click on “Latest Posts To The Forums”
4. Click on “Improving elearning communities”
5. Click on one of the topic names.

Warning: to write a new entry click on reply on the FIRST entry (the one explaining what the topic is about). If you read another entry and reply to that then your message will become a sub thread…

If I have put these in the wrong place then it is because Jaap needs to create the discussions at the top level, because he is the administrator. All we can do (I think) is create topics in existing discussions…

1. I logged into the new Helsinki website in order to find the notes and/or material for Jaap’s online discussion tonight. I could find nothing.

2. I skyped Christina who said that she found it by logging into the new site and then following the link to the old site and then looking there. I did that. The old site has several sections COURSES has a broken link to Hamburg. PROGRAMS has no downloadables that I can see. The other sections are publicity material.

3. I have no idea where else to look.

4. WHY IS IT THIS HARD? Why do we have to play “search the web” to find announcements and materials? It could be that I am stupid and do not understand how to use this internet thing, or it could be that the game of “hunt the materials” is a vital part of the didactical process.

5. Either way I do no know where the materials are. I have failed to complete Level One, and will not meet the Level Boss. Can somebody who has completed the level and defeated the Level Boss please post an actual URL to the materials for this course here please.

6. I will give you five gold pieces and a power up

On Saturday night the whole group went to the Dialog in the Dark performance where, for ninety minutes or so, we walked through a series of environments which were all totally dark. We had sticks and we were accompanied by a blind gide who talked us through the environments and helped those who got lost of stuck.

Several things occurred to me as I walked around.

Fistly my eyes were conjuring up phantom images and were not “seeing” the uniform blackness that was objectively all there was. At one point when we were sitting in a simulated boat being blown by simulated wind and splashed by real water my perceptual apparatus was inventing a rocky shoreline that persisted. By persistence I mean that I could follow individual rocks as we moved past them, turn away, and then look back and see them again.

Secondly, my experience of the safety of the different environments varied for no external reason at all, except for the audible noises and the textures of the surfaces. At one point I realised that I was quite confidently walking around what we had been told was an empty room, whereas a few moments previously I had been shuffling along in case I tripped over any obstacles or steps that probably existed only in my imagination.

The final environment was a dark bar in which you were invited to purchase drinks and snacks: a process that involved finding your money, paying at least the right amount and then possibly getting change as well as the glass and the snacks. I had a beer and a peperoni thing ( a BIFI to be accurate, fact fans). Nobody spilled anything, or at least I heard no smashing glasses.

We had a discussion later about whether the barman was really blind and operating using only his other senses. This arose because he was so fast and so accurate, even when he was handed banknotes. Certainly he recognised my note as 5€ and gave me the correct change.

Eventually everyone agreed that no cheating had occurred, which was itself an insight (if I can use that word in this context) into operating sightlessly in the world.

 Update:  thanks to Christina for pointing out the correct spelling of Bifi which I didn’t know because I received and unwrapped my delicious pepperoni-style snack in complete darkness.