“There are too many heroes and not enough chocolate”

“Already, ads that once appeared in print are showing up on blogs. Bloggers stand to gain ever more of the advertising share for one simple reason: they can create custom content for advertisers. This is leading to a new style of blog that blurs the line between editorial and advertisement.” Web 3.0 Annalee Newitz New Scientist 15 March 2008 p63

When I think about edubloggers creating custom content for advertisers, it occurs to me that fretting about bloggers “blurring the line” with respect to Web 2.0 is “too little too late  thinking” ..... not only because creating custom content, for advertisers to place ads in, is entrenched day job practice for online marketers like Fairfax Media’s online Division Fairfax digital .... where advertising and content are essentially simulacra - but also because “blurring the line” happens all over in the landscapes of education ... an online edu_conference this week only affirmed my belief that marketing educashin and promoting those who will cynically or ignorantly promote educashin based initiative will always be with us .... educators are helplessly implicated in promotional marketing,  for much like Faifax digital, in the workforce of the 21^st Century learner the advertisement creates the activity/ creates the placement rather than the reverse.

Like those pimento and almond overstuffed olives sold across upmarket deli counters, the hierarchies of influence in education are over stuffed with the educashin gullible, and back filled with those made vulnerable by educashin flattery.  And yeah you are right some of them blog

The kindest thing you can think about it all is - They know not what they do to belong.

It has been a big week and I am trying not to think about it all and to concentrate instead on collecting my new learning.

I have been working two jobs this week – each day’s job extended by breakfast and/or late afternoon briefings/meetings ... and I have had some great new learning from my involvement helping teachers plan for  “concept curriculum” achievement objectives, learning intentions, learning experiences and assessment rubrics for   concepts of “Turangawaewae”, citizenship, culture, and sustainability using the new New Zealand Curriculum.

My only regret for the week is not reading  the “Be Green Drive” Freakonomics blog post before I took the gulley walk option on our split school site in Auckland on Wednesday -

I cannot wait to share this "drive don't walk" post with the teachers looking at reducing their carbon footprint in our Sustain ED Cluster 

At least some choices are beyond reproach environmentally. It is clearly better for the environment to walk to the corner store rather than to drive there. Right?

Now even this seemingly obvious conclusion is being called into question by Chris Goodall via John Tierney’s blog And Chris Goodall is no right-wing nut; he is an environmentalist and author of the book How to Live a Low-Carbon Life.

Tierney writes:

If you walk 1.5 miles, Mr. Goodall calculates, and replace those calories by drinking about a cup of milk, the greenhouse emissions connected with that milk (like methane from the dairy farm and carbon dioxide from the delivery truck) are just about equal to the emissions from a typical car making the same trip. And if there were two of you making the trip, then the car would definitely be the more planet-friendly way to go.

But I am hitting Easter break so very tired ...

Grandpa to all formal measures – lost in his dementia – is especially insightful today

He described his experience in the dementia centre as living in a place where “there are too many heroes and not enough chocolate” [I brought the brie he requested yesterday instead of the chocolate he wanted today ... I am certain that tomorrow he will puzzle loudly over why I have brought chocolate and neglected to bring brie]

He describes himself as living in a place where when he came out of the tunnels and fed himself into the bean machine he emerged into a most beautifully made but ultimately bewildering foggy sky ... as living in a place where “the Americans” (aka anyone who can move around without a zimmer frame) who insist on shuffling around the saveloys and mashed potato on the lunch trolley had never considered that the weakness in the place lay with Lynda (the charge nurse) .... as living in a place where every question is  countered with a “wait until you see Lynda” answer ... a place where when you try to pin anything down it just keeps moving away from you ...a place where your zimmer frame keeps on going around and around and around.

I can identify with the “too many heroes’ – with feeling like I have been “being fed through a bean machine” and with the frustrations of an institutionally imposed reliance on the “wait until you see Lynda” for the answer – all of Grandpa’s musings ensure the relevance of that widgetbox   online countup counter I have set up for those - yet to arrive - “shortly and soon guidelines”  

Comments

[Marnie Thomas]

Definately a good argument to use about why to drive round to the other site rather than walk... or why to drive to school on walk to school day!

[Artichoke]

Ha - I hoped I'd have at least one other with me on this one Marnie

is why righteous behaviour is such a tricky place to play - my favourite comment on the post comes from Mercutio - pasted below ... I am going to have a lot of fun with this ..

• "I’ve been awaiting the following argument for quite some time:

  Exercise is bad for the environment - playing recreational sports, going for hikes in the mountains, riding a bike on a warm sunny day - all bad for the environment. Whenever we partake in unnecessary physical activity of any sort, we are burning calories. Calories which must be replaced if we are to maintain the same body mass.

  There is no such thing as a free lunch: If you burn extra calories through exercise, then you must replace those calories through increased food intake. The only way around this is if your exercise causes you to permanently lose weight. Anyone who is maintaining a constant body mass whilst engaging in unnecessary exercise must replace that spent energy with increased caloric intake.

  Maybe in the future going on a nice bike ride will be socially equivalent to driving a Hummer.

  — Posted by Mercutio

[David]

So when Milk is more expensive per litre than petrol and petrol's carbon footprint is less per km than milk production, driving makes the better option? Hmm OK, I promise not to drink milk as I ravage the skies as I fly to Prague!

Airbus claim that the A380, which I shall be flying from Singapore, only produces 75g of CO2 per KM per passenger. How do they come to that figure? Do these figures include all the smelting of the aluminium to produce the airframe, the transportation of the various parts of the airframe from all over Europe to Toulouse? The commuting mileage of the workers? The manufacture of the machinery to transport the parts etc etc? I would be interested to find out just what the total carbon footprint of the production, distribution and marketing of these industries are, including Fontera's export and distribution model. It is not just about gas emissions from the rear end of cows!

This whole carbon footprint argument has rapidly become an expedient political bandwagon with carbon trading companies enabling you to absolve your carbon guilt by investing in already existing forests. The solution is easy, walk and cut out dairy products! A win win, we get healthy and Fontera's 95% monopoly is challenged. Not only that you get to see the delights of our gully over the over priced delights of Remuera Road.

At this juncture I would rather question the morality of knowing that milk is more expensive than carbonated drinks per litre in this country and we wonder why our students are fatter now than a generation ago?

[Artichoke]

Delighted to have provoked ... albeit with the thinking of others David - I keep thinking of you on that bicycle and how you remain virtuous in all this - refer Tierny Lab Post

• Michael Bluejay, who’s done some number-crunching at BicycleUniverse.info, says that walking is actually worse than driving if you replace the calories with food in the standard American diet and if the car gets more than 24 miles per gallon. He calculates that bicycling is a win for the environment because it’s 117 percent more efficient (in calories expended per distance) than walking is

I wonder if the Freakonomics post's walking and milk consumption argument is all about replacing lost energy with animal products, if perhaps your "fatter now" argument is more about the insidious market driven immobilistaion of the young of the "bewildered herd" by the ubiquitous screen than any overt politicised argument over the price difference between carbonated drinks and milk?

[David]

The gaping hole in Michael Blue Jay's argument is the 'Standard American diet.' According to Greg Critser author of Fat Land, by the mid 80's "American's had ceded "nutrient control' - and self control." In the supersize generation of 64fl oz carbonated beverages and a culture of giant portions of course the calorific intake of the standard American diet, and the resultant CO2 emissions will be more than the emissions of a short car ride. I seriously doubt that the distribution chain that enables me to drive 5km to work in what the Americans would derisively call a 'sub compact' car would produce less CO2 emissions than the distribution chain that would enable me to replace 397 calories burnt walking the same distance. And yes I do regularly walk it and have calculated it based on the following site: http://www.caloriesperhour.com

[nix]

I was just about to post about all of the apparent twists, turns and inconsistencies of all of these green / carbon / energy arguments and post a link to Anne Else's

[nix]

darn, cut off in my prime ...

Anne Else's new blog - http://elsewoman.blogspot.com/2008/03/getting-rid-of-plastic-why-its-no-use.html

- I was about wax lyrically and post this link but found you had got there before me.

[Artichoke]

And this has got me thinking about levels of doubt David,

I see you favour the Lex Luthor measure when it comes to doubt

• Lex Luthor: I seriously doubt I'd forget meeting you

Why is doubt so often preceded by the descriptor “serious”? ...what ever happened to frivolous doubt, or for that matter to trifling, inconsequential or flippant doubt?

... are shadows of doubt the last remnants of this?

• Blackadder: Baldrick, that is by far and away, and without a shadow of doubt, the worst and most contemptible plan in the history of the universe. Blackadder

Or perhaps it is scalable doubt that will vanish next and we will see a movement from small doubt to no doubt at all

• The Editor: But the chips allow me to see inside their heads find the smallest doubt and crush it! Dr Who

• Lister: Becoming a dog. That is without doubt the most stupidest, crappiest, most pathetic idea you've thought of the whole week. Red Dwarf

[Artichoke]

RE: “darn, cut off in my prime ... ”

With apologies to Sir Humphrey Appleby and “Yes Minister” , Nix

I must protest in the strongest possible terms my profound opposition to a newly instituted practice of cutting oneself of in one’s prime which imposes severe and intolerable restrictions upon a bloggers ingress and egress .... which will, in all probability, should the current deplorable innovation be perpetuated, precipitate a constriction of the channels of communication, and culminate in a condition of organisational atrophy and administrative paralysis which will render effectively impossible the coherent and co-ordinated discharge of the function of an edu_blogger within the “wobbly isles” ... if you have hit your prime Nix ... let nobody and nothing limit you ..

I am just hanging out for someone to be captured by the "educashin" angle in the post ..

[nix]

Ahh, the educashin angle ... They know not what they do to belong ... yes.

The trouble is that one person's specialised content is another person's personalised learning is another person's closed system where entry is only gained through the annointing with the magical ink of special clickers, pads and pens. Those who don't see and understand the message are digital heretics denying the word of the Web2.0 apostles.

Educashin is only part of the issue.