>I haven't developed the ease of use of the vocabulary that most of
>the postings reflect. I can only speak in my own words and would not sound as
>learned and authoritarian as most of what I have read. If the intention of
>this group is to encourage new, diverse voices, then I will tell you that
>this is a problem. If the intention of this group is to evolve as a
>close-knit community of people who continually draw on past shared
>experience, then I will have to decide if it's worth the effort to work my
>way into the circle, remain content observing from outside, or leave and find
>another, more rewarding list-serve to participate in. If the group does not
>have one common, manifest intention regarding this issue of participation
>(which I suspect is the case) perhaps it would be worth discussing.
Dear Kathie
Being Swedish by birth I can only speak to this in borrowed words (if there
is ever any other kind)... and what I would like to say on this first point
is that you are right, there is no common group intention here, although it
is recurrently discussed.. As I see it (having participated for two and a
half years now) there is a whole bunch of intentions, most of them bearing
some family resemblance, and all of them well-intentioned (what else?) I
think the evolvement of a close-knit community is NOT in that bunch,
although in spite of the efforts to make this an OPEN community the flow of
discourse here may have that effect on people who first enter this "garden
party" in the middle of ongoing interaction. On the other hand, part of the
cultural-historical ethos in this community is to keep a sense of our
historical location, and of the local history of this community, drawing on
past experience. To me it seems this is possible even though people come
and go: same wave, different water molecules. Yes, yes, there is also
personal continuity. But it is by no means total. And listening to
individual contributions there is certainly a wide variety of voices, on
scales ranging, for example, from the personal to the academic, from the
narrative to the abstractly logical.
You also write:
>As an addendum, I am female and quite comfortable with computers and some
>technologies, but not with others.
Which is something that describes me, too. Now, reading Mary Bryson and
Suzanne deCastell just when I did accentuated, for me, some rather painful
suspicions about being seen as a threatening (anomalous?) woman, because of
my computer skills and my competitiveness in some areas of computer use.
And perhaps even more so because of my equally competitive skill in
adopting a subset of this other technology: the powerful discourses and
reasonings of Academia: I was recently told to my face, by a Professor,
that people are afraid of me (intellectually!!!) And what is that saying
except that I should refrain from practising my skills (too openly)? Or
else I will be punished, i.e. isolated.
Well, that was some anger slipping out through my typing fingertips.
Eva
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Dr Eva Ekeblad
Goteborg University Goteborgs Universitet
Dept. of Education & Educational Research Institutionen for Pedagogik
Box 1010 S-431 26 Molndal, SWEDEN
e-mail: eva.ekeblad who-is-at ped.gu.se
Tel: (Int +46 31) 773 22 75 Fax: (Int +46 31) 773 23 91
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