On Wednesday May 13th my beautiful mother passed away. I spent the last two months by her side almost 24/7 and even though it was extremely difficult to literally watch life fade away it also gave both of us time to prepare for her passing. During her final months my mother did not wish to see or talk to anybody but a few people, so it was a very intense and sometimes lonely process, but taking care of her and postponing everything else is one of my best decisions ever. At the end my mother was exhausted from fighting against the cancer and she was ready to leave this world – and I was ready to let her go. Fortunately she showered me with so much love throughout my life that I’ll be able to continue living without her in grateful and loving memory.
Mom and I about 40 years ago – one of my most cherished pictures.
I could not have done this without my truly amazing family, friends, colleagues and not least students who supported me throughout the process. I’m forever grateful and thank all from the bottom of my heart – especially Lars & Maj-Britt.
I’ve not made a habit of writing personal posts here on my blog, but my current life situation influences my work and my ability to blog on a regular basis, so I think a little explanation is appropriate. Since the beginning of March I’ve been staying in my mother’s home taking care of her. She has recently been diagnosed with incurable lung and lymph node cancer. I do not wish to instigate a debate on cancer by writing this post – there are other excellent forums out there for that.
Without getting too personal, I think it’s safe to say that being a cancer patient and a cancer patient relative is a very tough job – my mother and I (as the rest of the family and our friends) are slowly learning to live under these new circumstances. One major lesson learned already is that now it is the cancer that controls our lives – cancer is so unpredictable and things may change rapidly. I’ve been trying to keep up with my work, but not very successfully. Especially this unpredictability and the emotional stress that follows makes it almost impossible to keep appointments, deadlines, plan ahead etc. I’m probably what many people would characterize as a workaholic, I really do enjoy my work, I’m still immensely fascinated by my PhD project, I value teaching and supervising very much and I do have some fantastic colleagues … but none of this comes even close to what I feel for my mother!
So – together with my PhD supervisors – I’ve decided to apply for a postponement of my PhD period, so that I can take care of my mother and try to make the best of whatever time we have left. The postponement has not been effectuated yet, but I expect it to happen soon. This means that I will not be blogging as much as I used to, and it also means that I will not be as much in-world. However, I will work a little whenever possible – working is a way of trying to maintain just a little normality/sanity in the midst of a truly chaotic situation.
I’m privileged with supporting friends and colleagues form near and far – I’ll take this opportunity to thank all … sometimes there’s just no energy left to respond, but it means the world to me :-)
George Siemens & Peter Tittenberger(unfortunately his personal website is currently unavailable) just released their number 1 version of “Handbook of Emerging Technologies for Learning”. A wiki, which will continue to be updated is available, but it’s also possible to view it as a pfd-file.
Siemens & Tittenberger encourage everyone to comment, discuss and react – so enjoy studying it :-)
Via SLTalk I just read about Sametime 3D, an ongoing IBM Research and Lotus initiative to integrate enterprise business applications with virtual world applications. This video shows the integration of Lotus Sametime with OpenSim.
According to IBM’s press release the main purpose of this initiative is to “make it easier for widely dispersed businesspeople to interact and collaborate without the time and expense of in-person meetings.” And here is another quote:
The new software overcomes several challenges that have existed for businesses wishing to hold meetings in virtual worlds:
First, businesses can collaborate the way in which they are accustomed, using software they may already have, such as electronic presentations, enterprise security, and instant messaging tools.
Second, IBM has prefabricated a variety of re-useable spaces specifically designed for productive meetings, making it unnecessary for adopters to painstakingly build meeting rooms each time they want to meet.
Third, these spaces are secure, overcoming privacy concerns manifest in many public areas of popular virtual worlds.
And finally, colleagues not wishing to participate in a given virtual meeting can still view documents, presentations and results from those sessions — or even snapshots of a previous meeting.
I have to admit that I’m somewhat ambivalent about projects like these, that is projects behind “closed doors”. I think it’s great that companies like IBM research and experiment with virtual worlds and possible mash up’s between 2D and 3D. And I do appreciate the need for especially private companies to operate on their own servers, securing the data etc. – and this may also be appropriate in certain educational settings. My fear though, is that this sort of “closed door” behavior becomes the prevailing trend. If we all stay in our own little walled gardens, there’s no need to dub them “worlds”…
Of course I’m aware that there are de facto many closed doors in real life too, but I still believe that one of the major affordances of virtual worlds like SL is the inter-cultural openness in all aspects of the word. Where else do I accidently bump in to fascinating, clever and friendly people? Just this week I made two new acquaintances, Benjamin, who turned out to be a Danish US based e-learning consultant and Digi, a Scottish anthropologist with a special interest in freedom of expression :-)
In the MIL course that I ran in the fall ’08 I had planed several visits to both Danish and international colleagues, and I know that the students really appreciated these opportunities to meet, discuss and reflect on professional matters with people from different educational cultures – meetings that would have been impossible to realize outside SL.
I’ve always felt that if 3D virtual worlds were to make a really, really important and innovative contribution to educational technology the secret would lie in the community – the global community feeling in SL is what brings and binds us together. Quoting Lennon; You may say that I’m a dreamer – but I’m not the only one ;-)
Mariis' digitale refleksioner 