Beginning Again?

Robin Nest Photo © Linda Kloosterhof iStockPhoto® #208792

Does it feel as though you’re always starting over? I’m beginning new projects, new rounds of old projects, new teaching quarter. Therefore, clients and students are doing the same; some students have even taken the leap to begin or return to their higher education. Their stories and their dedication inspire me.

Beginnings take courage, so I offer this favorite passage from John O’Donohue’s To Bless the Space Between Us: 

“Perhaps beginnings make us anxious because we did not begin ourselves. Others begat us. Being conceived and born, we eventually enter upon ourselves already begun, already there. Instinctively we grasp onto and continue within the continuity in which we find ourselves. Indeed, our very life here depends directly on continuous acts of beginning. But these beginnings are out of our hands; they decide themselves. This is true of our breathing and our heartbeat. Beginning precedes us, creates us, and constantly takes us to new levels and places and people. There is nothing to fear in the act of beginning. More often than not it knows the journey ahead better than we ever could. Perhaps the art of harvesting the secret riches of our lives is best achieved when we place profound trust in the act of beginning. Risk might be our greatest ally. To live a truly creative life, we always need to cast a critical look at where we presently are, attempting always to discern where we have become stagnant and where new beginning might be ripening. There can be no growth if we do not remain open and vulnerable to what is new and different. I have never seen anyone take a risk for growth that was not rewarded a thousand times over” (2).

He also warns, “There are journeys we have begun that have brought us great inner riches and refinements; but we had to travel through dark valleys of difficulty and suffering. Had we known at the beginning what the journey would demand of us, we might never have set out. Yet the rewards and gifts become vital to who we are. Through the innocence of beginning we are often seduced into growth” (3).

Isn’t it great we aren’t in it alone? We support each other in our beginnings and our risk-taking, and here we are! Before we know it, we’re completing something and beginning again. Wishing you “great inner riches and refinements.”

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Text © Gwyn Nichols 2011. All Rights Reserved.

Photo © Linda Kloosterhof iStockPhoto®  #208792

Modern Magic

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

~Arthur C. Clarke

This weekend, I watched ITT Tech Tempe’s graduating design students present capstone projects of architectural plans, or animation, or video-game design, or illustration. The work was stunning. None of these projects would have been done in the same way even a decade ago, and many couldn’t have been dreamed of.

I was also editing a newsletter for professional speakers when technology emerged as the focus of our sharing. Because I add a quote and my own “Editorial Aside” column, I reviewed what many have said about technology over the centuries and was struck by the predominance of doomsday prophecies. People still fear being replaced by machines, controlled by machines, and destroyed by machines.

But this communication revolution has a whole new flair. It might take fewer people to run an assembly line, but more of us depend on these new tools—which require more of our minds and souls. Technology is expanding our learning opportunities, our circles of influence, and our creative options. It’s driving new communication and collaboration opportunities.

We’re participating in one right here. Let’s celebrate the magic.

New Messages on Texting

Photo copyright PixDeluxe, iStockPhoto #000014390567 (cropped)

Could texting be good for literacy? Some early and brief studies are suggesting that it might not hurt as much as you fear. Students who spell well in general can still spell after texting. And anything that gets kids reading, writing, and playing with language might work.

In a report by Ki Mae Heussner for ABC News, Kathleen Blake Yancey of Florida State University summarizes, “Basically what you have is a small line of research showing that texting helps people read and helps them write, both, and then you have a lot of anecdotes and anxiety. That’s basically it.” Heussner continues that Yancey “has heard of textspeak slipping into students’ formal written work. But, while she doesn’t doubt that it’s there, she said the research doesn’t support it and at the college level, they don’t see it at all. A recent study from the Pew Research Center found that students perceive a ‘firewall’ between their texting and their formal writing.”

Well, I certainly do see it. I could share anecdotes, and I do have to teach most students that a firewall should exist, but I can confirm that these are usually students who didn’t spell well to begin with. And texting does give us wonderful openings to teach about audience, tone, purpose, and levels of formality. (See my post on Txt Translation.)

Connine Varnhagen of the University of Alberta observes that “just as kids know to speak to their grandparents differently than they speak to their peers, they know when to use so-called textspeak and when to use conventional language.” (Let’s hope so.)

I wonder how these studies will play out over time and in varying populations. Here’s the news report: Can Txt Msgs Really Help Kidz 2 Spell?

At one point, it appeared that letter-writing would be replaced by long-distance phone calling. Now we have people with unlimited cell phone minutes who prefer writing–e-mail or texting instead of calling. It’s literacy’s new stand.

However, I’ve now acquired a different fear. Whenever I see kids standing side-by-side texting each other instead of opening their mouths, I worry they’ll take that into marriage, texting across the living room. I take comfort in knowing that it sounds more like a slippery slope logical fallacy than the truth. And I’m trusting that the human drive to communicate–by whatever methods become possible, necessary, and ubiquitous–will see us through every communication revolution.