My work is a paradox - pure and simple

It takes a little while for me to "come down" from attending ELI, my mind is full of discussion points - some received, some generated, some still emerging. The conversation is full and vibrant and this year I was struck by the sense of two groups "thought-duelling" with all the intensity of dance duels, respect for each other, passion for what they do and energy...yes...energy. Each session attended represents that group's "top game" pushing the other group to do better, try harder in the next one. The two groups? Well, I've articulated these before elsewhere but in a nutshell:

the "run as fast as we can towards web2.0" group extolling the virtues of SecondLife, WoW, croquet, twitter, mashed up maps n IM, gaming, Facebook etc etc (and of course that VLEs (esp Bb) are inherently evil) - all based on the premise that the kids are leaving us behind and we need to be where they are and know what they know to enable education to keep up with social uses of technology.

the "digi-fear, the technology is OK but what about the people" group asking challenging questions about who the kids are and how confident are they really, how do staff become more digitally fluent to embrace these new technologies when CMS/VLEs still scare them and what are the true tower and cloud implications of the brave new world.

So what is the problem? I want (need?) to be in both groups!! Is that a problem?
I spend most of my brainspace tap-dancing betweeen the two. I believe passionately in the power of web 2.0 - I love the social, participatory, collaborative and user defined principles on which is based. I love the power being in the hands of the learners and the undeniable opportunities for community beyond your immediate reference. At the moment, I'm enjoying, personally, the way twittering enables me to connect quite lightly with others who share my interests, and I have a huge interest in ARGs as a philosophy with as yet untapped potential. On the other hand, (for example) I'm still not buying the potential for learning that Second Life might offer - I want it to be big and transformational, I want it to rock the foundations of the comfortable world of academe, but what do I see, people building virtual campuses that look like real ones, "gatherings" that look to me like the lowest form of knowledge transmission...the lecture. Oh dear. I want to believe, I do, I do...but right now...I don't...not yet, anyway.

I'm lucky that my role leading Academic Innovation at Sheffield Hallam University (UK) enables me to have an academic team that areconstantly looking at and researching new and emerging technologies (and new applications of existing technologies) and how they can be used to support, enhance and, ultimately, transform learning within higher education. They think a lot, they experiment a lot, they track the evangelists - we are so so lucky to have this space. I love this part of my job - what's new? what do we think? what could we do? let's leap into the brave new world!! I also love the people this connects me with - ideas, enthusiasm, energy (yes that word again).

But I have a guilty secret that I'm afraid to share with my n&et connections, I am also responsible for embedding mainstream e-learning across the institution and this involves me supporting, promoting, advocating Blackboard as a learning management system and academic portal. I know it isn't going to get me a seat on the cool kids table but I like Blackboard. It is an easy entry point for staff and students wanting to develop collaborative e-learning opportunities and so far does everything that most people need (and if it doesn't we've found it pretty easy to add something that does...or simply link out to the top shelf web2.0 stuff - not an either or for our users). Yes, the company is big, yes, the support can be hit and miss, but the product does what our community of users needs and having spent a huge chunk of time looking at other options recently, it is still the best solution for us. We have over 95% of our learners (undergrad and postgrad) carrying out some of their learning within that virtual environment - that's over 30,000 students and 3,000 staff and it is an achievement (by the staff supporting e-learning within my team and across SHU) that I am really proud of.

I feel good that the benefits are not just experienced by those students who happen to have highly innovative tutors but for all. I like the idea that (even though it isn't the sexiest feature of technology in learning) our students value the convenience and flexibility of being able to access their learning at a place and time that fits with their busy lives...yes (cliche alert) enabling learning for those who might not be able to participate traditionally. I love this part of my job - small steps but for everyone, how do we make it work for everyone? how do we build on what has gone to where we are going? Again I value the community around this world - sharing the hows and whys (and why nots) with the sense of conviction needed to encourage people to do something they don't have to.

So what on earth!?!? I love the pulsating potential of web2.0 but I also love the enabling power of a large-scale learning management system. I have my two communities and I try best to belong to both...am I being unreasonable?? Why do I feel I'm expected to fit into a box and stay put? I'm not going to! However it is a very different challenge within the institution where close physical proximity requires me to represent both simulataneously perceived interchangably as the face of the "large corporate monolith" and/or the "head in the clouds" lot trying to get us to do wizzy things that threaten us.

The whole of this, though, has just convinced me (more than ever) that all technology has great potential and appropriate application can be transformational but (and its a big "but"!!) only when the people involved feel confident, competent, comfortable, committed, compelled...
The importance in this context of digitial fluency (that we define as the fluencies needed to live, learn and work in the digital age and encompassing, for us, information literacy, IT competencies, online interactions and critical thinking). We need to support all our communities to feel at home in a digitial world, selecting the best tool/resource for the job, engaging whole-heartedly and being unphased by the only thing we can guarantee about the future...things are going to keep changing. The people stuff (hmmm) always the hardest to do, definitely the hardest to quantify but never the least rewarding. The work of the team (so far) of getting this onto the institutional agenda has been great! Now we look forward to the "making it real" phase of the activity.

I'm going to resist the urge to round this post of neatly, I want to just leave it hanging and come back to it later....but just to trail a soundbite that has been engaging me recently:
"you can't cross a chasm in two small steps"