Elliot Clifton has contributed a long and challenging reflection on
the relationship between conductive education and the internet (in a Comment to an earlier posting of mine). At one point Elliot writes: “As a community CE hasn't really grasped the possibilities of Web 1.0
(static web pages), never mind the community-building social possibilities
offered by 2.0.” Without fundamentally disagreeing with all that Elliot writes, I find myself perhaps a
little more optimistic.
For over 30 years I have been a family historian. My earliest records
are on file cards, carefully copied from my handwritten transcripts of census
records and from parish registers held in libraries and record offices. A day
or so ago, I recorded on my Facebook page that I was “contemplating
a photograph taken in 1914, in Pudsey, Yorkshire of a woman born in 1824, at
Rousham in Oxfordshire, who died shortly after it was taken: how different the
reference points of her world and ours.”
That woman was the elder sister of my
Great-Great-Great-Great-Grandmother. The digital photograph came to me by
email, from an American woman I had never before met or knew, who had seen the family
history website set up by my son and realized that we were related. It turns out we are in fact fourth
cousins. She writes: “I am still in awe of this technology that I can take a scan of a
photograph almost 100 years old and it's in your hands within seconds.”
A couple of years ago, I was fortunate
enough to be awarded a Travel Fellowship by the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust. Needing to complete
my itinerary, I did a search on Google. I found and emailed Glenda Watson-Hyatt
in Vancouver. My later meeting with her and her husband Darrell inspires me
even now. I visit her website and have her as a friend on Facebook. She
recently attended BlogWorld New Media Expo2009 in Las Vegas, where she was a
speaker at WordCamp. When I say ‘speaks’ you need to know that Glenda speaks
what she calls ‘Glenda-ish’; she’s a person with cerebral palsy who uses an
electric wheelchair (as does Darrell); who describes herself as ‘the left-thumb blogger’.
In fact, it would just be easier if you’d take a moment to visit her blog – her
report “Fresh from WordCamp Las Vegas” would be a good place to start. Oh and Glenda
uses hashtags too (#bwe09 for Blog World Expo 2009 on
Twitter). As if all that is not
enough, an expert in web accessibility, she has just produced an eBook of her
presentation at Wordcamp “How POUR is Your Blog?
Tips for Increasing Your Blog Accessibility”.
For the Travel Fellowship, I booked
all my flights and hotel reservations online. I now use online banking; paid a bill online just today in
fact. The book I’m reading at the moment cost me £15 all-in from Amazon.com instead
of £25 from Waterstones in Sheffield. Last July my Dad was taking a break on
his own at his house in Pembrokeshire; injured himself, stayed longer than he
intended, couldn’t get about to get food in, didn’t eat well and made himself
ill. Next time he takes a holiday
there, I’m going to order some groceries online for him and get them delivered.
Haven’t done that before.
On the way, I set up this blog, used Netvibes to set up Conductive Web, joined
Facebook and this past month I’ve been getting into Twitter (PacesCEO) - mostly just to see how they worked. I've never yet uploaded video to YouTube, but its only a matter of time - when I can afford an iPhone maybe! (I have used videos from YouTube though: there's one coming up in the next link here). I now use wikis on wikispaces for all sorts of writing, mostly for putting grant-funding applications
together and writing job descriptions, strategic plans and such with colleagues
for Paces. It works well and saves effort all round. We are slowly becoming
quite proficient. Gabor Fellner, Headteacher of Paces School, has set up an
online messaging system that generates text messages and emails for
communicating with parents using ParentMail. It works well. (He’s just now trying to persuade our
new Board of Governors to adopt it for communicating among themselves.)
I have explored using NING to set up a private social network for
Sheffield parents of children with disabilities and special needs and another
for Paces' staff. The latter didn’t work so well – some things just don’t.
Yesterday, from a community learning
centre in Royston, Barnsley, just up the road from us at Paces, Martha Lane Fox, Government Digital Inclusion Champion, launched
National Get Online Day (note sound is low). The CEO of ‘the Digital Region’ earlier in the week announced that
broadband will be brought to the front door of every home and business in South
Yorkshire within 3 years.
All of which is to say that loads of
ordinary people are using the internet in loads of ways, to do things in their
ordinary lives as people.
In other words, it’s not because I’m Paces CEO or because I’m
passionate about conductive education that I use the internet. It’s the
opposite way round. Because I’ve slowly found all sorts of ways in my life to
use the internet, I now ask how I can use it to benefit conductive education.
So it happens, over the past few weeks, I’ve been wondering how the 7th
World Congress could be enriched if the organisers adopted social networking
tools. I don’t say they should. I offer only that it would be interesting if
they experimented. It’s all a journey. We are all explorers.
Here are two new experimentings, on the journey: (1) Andrew Sutton has asked whether
a facebook group might be set up to discuss conductive education and social
networking. We have just done that. (2) In response to Andrew’s request for
help writing an article about CE, I have set up a wiki for anyone to respond.
Will either be used? Will either be useful? Who knows? If people find them
useful, I suppose. The important thing is, we have tried. Somewhere down the
road, I've no doubt, people will find this all very ordinary. My grandchildren have no awe at all that a photograph taken in 1914 of their 6x-Great-Aunt should have been sent from America and printed from Grandad's computer.
One of the memorable moments in my life was attending the Peto
Institute with Sarah, our daughter, for her very first assessment. We were asked by the senior conductor
assessing her (I wish I could remember her name. We’ve so much to thank her
for.) if Sarah could do various tasks: roll, get to her feet using a ladderback chair, tie her shoe laces and so
on. To most questions we answered, “Not yet, but she does try”. Asked to demonstrate, Sarah did so - with wonderful theatricality, I should add. Thus was cemented in my brain my
very first association with conductors and conductive education: they liked children who tried; conductive education was not about playing it safe, it was about risk and
effort, about being motivated to try.
Slowly, like everyone else, conductors and all others working in
and for conductive education, will eventually find reasons to use the internet
in their own personal lives – and sometimes for conductive education purposes,
too. I find that a cause for optimism.
