So that fact that your birthday is splattered in any number of places means some interesting things. We get all kinds of well wishes from different spaces. It’s nice. It’s part of the glue of social networks, little bits of sharing to build community.
My life is pretty much an open book. For some that’s just too weird, dangerous or stupid. It works for me. My network of acquaintances/colleagues/connections and yes, some friends, know a lot of odd things about me.
I received many birthday wishes but David Jakes (I linked to his blog so you’ll all head over and urge him to blog more) started this little beauty:
And the fun began. I’m not sure I capture them all but I hope so.
For those who have had the opportunity to observe my online nattering, I can see how some might find it trivial, self-absorbed and even perhaps useless. There’s some truth in that for sure. But I can say that much of this it isn’t far off from the way I approach teaching and learning. Wrapped around the glaze of foolishness lies the belief that you need to invest and embrace a level of vulnerability and be prepared to engage in idle chat in order to build community and in turn truly learn from each other. For me this means sharing silliness, exploring new ways to share and communicate and discovering that being playful and curious about other people actually matters. I also think this doesn’t necessarily lose you academic credibility, although again, many would write me off because of my overt sharing practices. I hardly care. I’m sure there are other ways to do this but I’m quite happy with how things have worked out for me. Not that I’m seeking power but “the less you share the less power you have.” In a time of economic downturn, I have tons of social capital.
So with that I give you a really neat little gift that from some really cool people. They supplied the gift, I wrapped it up and put it in a box. That was fun. (FYI, I uploaded this first to youtube but the rendering of the screen captures was pretty unreadable, vimeo does a much better job. There, you learned something)
Birthday Tweets from shareski on Vimeo.