Welcome to The Spaces in Between, a weekly newsletter on culture, language, and technology written by Stephan Caspar. If you’re new here, then welcome, feel free to subscribe.
Hello,
This might have to be a short one, birthdays are like buses in this household, you wait and wait, then three come along at once. Today our youngest reaches double-digits, so we’re celebrating with a meal and a movie later on. His birthday falls on the one-year anniversary of the lockdown.
A year on, I’m working from home and the kids have an asynchronous learning day, while their teachers prepare to fully re-open next week. We are apprehensive, and there will be an increase from the number that took part in hybrid part-time schooling. Still, there is another cohort of students learning through the Cyber Academy, established last year for those that wanted to remain online, which means there will be fewer attending next week and will make room for social distance, just about. My kids tell me that mealtimes will continue to be staggered, corridors use one-way systems, and desks partitioned with cardboard dividers. Masks will continue to be worn throughout the day.
This strange year, how quickly we have normalized behaviors and adapted to circumstances. As a family, we have been incredibly lucky, our privilege during this time has been to reduce the risks of exposure to a virus that has claimed millions of lives across the world.
So, with a busy home life today, constant interruptions, birthday calls back home, and later my schedule including an online talk that I’m giving and meetings dotted in between, I’ll have to rush through. It’s nice to be writing Friday morning again, twice is starting to become a habit, but I’m afraid we won’t have too much time.
I hope that you’ve had a good week in any case and that this pandemic anniversary brings hope, solace, and time to reflect. I know that there some among you who will be thinking about family, friends, and neighbors who are no longer with us, who lost their lives. I’m so sorry for your loss and wish I could offer more than words of comfort, but know that I’m also thinking of you and hope that you’ll find a way to cope with the pain and sadness that you are no doubt feeling.
Stephan
Teaching & Learning
We took some time out of the lesson to talk about tone, in particular how students (and others) have needed to adapt when working in digital spaces. Often we convey ourselves using an informal tone in these spaces, especially group chat and messaging. However, as these spaces have come to replace in-class discussion or the type of debate that occurs in seminar sessions, it has useful to remind ourselves what is appropriate or inappropriate phrasing. When we reference these conversations at a later stage or save them as evidence of learning, they don’t always hold up as a record of formal discussion or constructive collaboration.
Language matters, a quick comment or throw-away remark is burnt into the permanent record. Those who are regularly shamed on social media, politicians, celebrities, or sometimes ordinary citizens know this. Now, when it comes to learning online, students should be aware of the trace that they are leaving, whether these are within closed learning spaces or not. You would think that the full-time training of social media might prepare people for this, but no - I’m afraid we read things every week that often jar or contribute to microaggressions of harm to others.
Understanding tone, writing intentionally, and thinking of others online is a digital literacy that needs to be supported and developed. At the top of this passage, I said “we took time out” but talking about how much language matters is crucial to the critical thinking in the course.
As a part of the conversation, we talked about useful phrases for discussion and the difference between informal and formal writing. There are a great many resources online, but the two included seemed to be useful at the moment.
Life Lessons
The weather has been terrific and clocks go forward over the weekend to give us more light in the evenings. I can’t wait to get on my bicycle again and hit the trails. I’ve been missing the bridges.
As they’re a bit of an obsession of mine, I have decided to do some research and find out more about how they were built. I’ve already discovered that there’s a history of moving bridges to new locations, to service cycle trails or footpaths when they’re no longer needed by steel mills, factories, or industrial zones.
We didn’t end up going for a bike ride last weekend as hoped but found myself a last-minute adult invitee to a teenage birthday party. Although I was there to assist the supervision, there wasn’t much I could do while taking cover from a million paintball shots raining in my direction. Of course, I was firing back, whether or not I hit anyone I’m still unsure. It was good fun though.
Lost and Found
A few fun things that caught my eye.
My students have been asking about podcasts on TEL and I happen to speak to colleagues back in the UK who are happen to have a very good one. The quite brilliant Pedagodzilla brings together learning theory with cult references so that a simple discussion on community of practice starts to encompass World of Warcraft or other geekery to explain and illustrate frameworks, concepts, and other such ideas that inhabit these areas.
This interesting article in Vox, published last year speaks to the work that my students have been creating in our Everyday Learning course. PSA (Public Service Announcements) on Twitter and Instagram seem to be everywhere, but how useful are they, and how does the aesthetic affect the impact of whatever social justice message is being sent.
I am the designer of this restaurant’s outdoor seating space and this is my artist’s statement. from McSweeneys via Jocelyn K. Glei
I’ve had a few plays with the fun tools at Google Music Lab, and on a similar tip found myself channeling my inner Howard Moon.
Thank you
Sorry to cut the conversation short, I hope that you’ll forgive me this week. I’ll try and make up for it, hopefully with a short podcast update that I’ve been planning for a while now and hope to have time over the weekend to record.
If you enjoy this newsletter and would like to show your support you can now buy me a coffee. You’ll get a thank you and mention (if you want one) and happy to pass on any news that you want to share.
You might notice a few typos occasionally, and although I can’t do much about them once the email is sent, I do try to mop them up and update the web version with corrections. Thank you for your patience.
See you next week. Take care.