UPDATE on Invisible Learning/Aprendizaje Invisible, a wonderful bilingual project headed by Cristóbal Cobo, Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales en México (FLACSO-México), and John Moravec, editor of http://www.educationfutures.com.

Their idea:

EXplore, eXploit and eXport innovative knowledge.

EXplorar, eXplotar y eXportar conocimiento innovador.

Participants will share great ideas about redesigning education to foster sustainable innovation and connect with the people making these changes happen. Through the development of 1) a collaborative, printed book; 2) an e-book; and 3) a repository of innovative ideas at www.invisiblelearning.com, we seek to:

Share experiences and innovative perspectives, focused on rethinking strategies and innovative approaches to learn and unlearn continuously

Promote critical thinking of the role of formal, informal and non-formal education at all educational levels.

Contribute to the creation of a sustainable (and continuous) process of learning, innovating and designing new cultures for the global society.

This project aims to facilitate the creation of a globally distributed community of thinkers interested on the creation of new futures for the education.

Los participantes compartirán ideas valiosas acerca de rediseñar la educación para promover innovación sustentable y conectarla con personas que están logrando que estos cambios ocurran. Mediante el desarrollo de 1) un el libro colaborativo impreso , 2) un libro electrónico, y 3) un repositorio de ideas innovadoras en www.aprendizajeinvisible.com, buscamos:

• Compartir experiencias y perspectivas innovadoras, orientadas a repensar estrategias y enfoques innovadores para aprender y desaprender continuamente.
• Promover el pensamiento crítico frente al papel de la educación formal, informal y no formal en todos los niveles educativos.
• Contribuir a la creación de un proceso de aprendizaje sostenible (y continuo) , innovando y diseñando nuevas culturas para una sociedad global.

Este proyecto tiene como objetivo facilitar la creación de una comunidad distribuida a nivel mundial de pensadores interesados en la creación de un nuevo futuro para la educación.

Congratulations for this project to both Cristóbal and John. I hope to participate myself in the collaborative book effort.

Here is the project’s logo

Great presentation on the Society of Learning (Sociedad del Aprendizaje) on the Prezi canvas. It’s a very well done concept, real multimedia storytelling in action!

It includes a short interview with Manuel Castells, videos on augmented reality, wearable computing, pillow fights in Wall Street, etc. By Cristobal Cobo Romaní (ergonomic.wordpress.com), from aprendizajeinvisible.com (Invisible Learning).

Nice little interview with danah boyd (@zephoria in Twitterland) in The Guardian of Dec. 9, 2009 (People looked at me like I was an alien). In the short pages of the article by Bobbie Johnson, there is space enough to mention three major issues of contemporary networking.

1. Boyd believes there’s no such thing as a digital native:

There’s nothing native about young people’s engagement with technology

she says. In a few words, if the external world works through mediated technologies, then to learn about the social world they must learn about the mediated technologies! This logic works, to me. Perhaps this is one of the myths surrounding the new pedagogies and the Web 2.0-based view of learning that must be challenged.

Of course the articles talks about her studies that brought to light the idea of a class and race divide between users of MySpace and Facebook, in America. Now we almost take it for granted, but she made an inference that was met with high resistance some time ago. In fact, her work allows us to understand the niche (I should say, the ghetto) composed of MySpace users of today, and opened up a space of reflection where for the first time we see the digital divide issues under the lens of class and race differences.

However, the most striking issue boyd brings to our attention is another myth. We think that our “techno-utopia” is the great democratiser, she reflects. Yet, if it’s true both creation and distribution of content are available to everyone, it is also true that the real commodity now is no longer distribution: on the contrary, it is “attention”. And boyd adds:

Who gets attention is still sitting on a power law curve… we’re not actually democratising the whole system – we’re just shifting the way in which we discriminate.

Strong words, which I subscribe 100%. They have profound implication on education, since again, they compel us to view the new networked society under a broader perspective that must include power balances and class issues.

It’s the beginning of the new year, thus time to discuss what was best in 2009 in a number of categories. So, I hereby unilaterally proclaim the 2009 Skate best film award. The category is only one: the films I actually went to the movies for during 2009.

First, the award does NOT go to: Curious case of Benjamin Button. Indeed, beautiful performance by both-divine Cate Blanchett and Tilda Swinton, it is a nice movie… or better, a nice mis-en-scene, a theatrical show of good acting and mannered direction, plus cinematography. That’s all folks, don’t ask for no more, there ain’t, Scott Fitzgerald notwithstanding.

The award may go, definitely to Inglourious Basterds, latest provocateur-Tarantino’s tour de force, with Brad Pitt as the Basterds’ boss… The opening scene is epic and extraordinaire. The scene when Shosanna gets killed is a masterpiece in direction, music and irony. Tarantino’s movie making is all about cinema, and here one finds everything from many genres. German war hero/sadist Colonel Hans Landa (actor Christoph Waltz) is unique in his subtle ironic kindness and elegance; actress Mélanie Laurent is also quite charmant.

Let’s see if the award will ultimately go to IB. Next, please.

The Reader (Stephen Daldry) with Kate Winslet. Ralph Fiennes plays a very important but minor part, in my opinion. The Reader is a masterpiece and should compete with UB one-to-one. Director Daldry made an exceptional work; it’s great cinema, readable under many lenses: power, for instance. The woman’s power over the kid and the Nazi power over the woman. Both unaware of their role, both negating the bigger powers hanging over their head all the time. The woman, always the best denier (”never underestimate the power of denial”, said the main character of American Beauty), because alienated by those powers (yes, class differences, etc.), does a crime because she must always do a good job. Nice metaphor, eh? A beautiful movie, one which still resonates with me. The Reader reaches poetic status.

Another big shot would perhaps be Revolutionary Road (Sam Mendes) with Leonardo di Caprio and again, Kate Winslet. It’s a very good movie, and I heard people saying it is a feminist movie. Indeed it may be; sure it is a political movie. However, Kate is far superior to Leo’s natural plasticity and in my mind, the movie never reaches poetic status; however, it does resonate and it is still with me!

Woody Allen’s Whatever works, with Larry David + youngster Evan Rachel Wood is a very good Allen movie, but I shall say no more. It simply does not stand up against Match Point or Vicky Cristina Barcelona. With Woody, one has higher expectations. Next.

Burn After Reading (Cohen bros.) with George Clooney and Frances McDormand, plus a very self-ironic Brad Pitt, is a masterpiece of poetic grandeur. An unforgettable film. Irony, elegance, splendid direction and acting.

Almodóvar’s Broken Embraces will likely win the 2009 Skate best film award. As I have tweeted, the movie is a splendid execution of film noire plus melodrama. Perfect in the extraordinary little human story about a classic quadrangle: the movie director who loves his star, a gorgeous Penélope Cruz, the hated husband, an old man, envious and of course jealous, and the husband’s son, a pathetic peeping Tom who videotapes everything in the background (thus shooting a parallel movie). So, we have three movies!! Nice play, Almodovar! A story of passion (Almodóvar’s film company is named “El Deseo”/”Desire”), and certainly of broken desires. It’s the only other movie of the year, together with Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds which is stylistically 100% cinema and cinema about cinema as well. And it’s one of my favorite movies of the year. More than The Reader?

Last movie seen was Avatar. A beautiful film, it has been dubbed “the Pocahontas of space” and it certainly follows Pocahontas’ plot and characters very closely. A pity for its grand idea: having people incorporate in the body of others could have been played much better. Also, less rhetoric would have benefited the movie, but what can it be done. Only beautiful thing in the movie (sure, the scenery is great, so?) is the blue Na’vi woman from Pandora, so blue, so sexy. Always topless, by the way, and no church protesting. We have really progressed.

And the award goes to…

The Reader, my preferred film for 2009. Congratulations.

Broken Embraces comes shortly behind, just a couple of points less, as well as Basterds. Those two, are **soooo** non-Hollywood it’s really a pleasure to shift for a while one’s viewing pleasure onto different perspectives.

The following quote from Anna Karenina illustrates quite well one of the commonest vices of current well-spoken and well-educated dandy people who inhabit our petite bourgeoisie.

Stepan Arkadyevitch took in and read a liberal paper, not an extreme one, but one advocating the views held by the majority. And in spite of the fact that science, art, and politics had no special interest for him, he firmly held those views on all these subjects which were held by the majority and by his paper, and he only changed them when the majority changed them–or, more strictly speaking, he did not change them, but they imperceptibly changed of themselves within him.

Stepan Arkadyevitch had not chosen his political opinions or his views; these political opinions and views had come to him of themselves, just as he did not choose the shapes of his hat and coat, but simply took those that were being worn.

Do you recognize yourself, my friend, my simile?

But I want to talk about something else. I’m reading Anna Karenina for two reasons.

1. It is *the* book* being read by the main characters of the little great novel “The Elegance of the Hodgehog“, to wit: the French concierge Renée and the Japanese Monsieur Ozu.
2. I can get it one little piece a day through email, thanks to little precious DailyLit.com, a house of books which would even let me subscribe to a RSS feed of Anna Karenina, should I wish so.
3. (I’ve never read the book).

Soon after starting I made a suggestive conclusion. There are some “memes” which are on the mouth of everybody for one reason or the other. Which are used and abused on many languages. Some of these memes were actually created by someone. Yes, “created”, as in “they did not exist before” as memes. Shakespeare is famous for his new ideas, expressed in his new language. And thus, every time one utters one of these memes, one is quoting some author, with or without one’s knowledge.

Isn’t this all fantastic?

Tolstoy began Anna Karenina with the all too famous phrase:

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

Do you recognize the sentence, the meme that you must have quoted once at least in your lifetime?

Happy families are all alike.

Well, like it or not, you’re quoting Tolstoy!