Come Together

It is a strange phenomenon, as I reflect on our group effort this week, to feel as though we are using our communal capacity to create the very platform Ulmer necessitates for the effective power of electracy in pedagogy. Student- powered blogs, like Ulmer's Army, are the key vehicle for the transition into a collaborative, functional communication system in the new-age of internet and interface. As Band 5 got to know each other we were able to pull from what our peers knew and learned together much we did not know about how to establish a blog page and navigate through our new website. Suitably, we found ourselves focused on the theme of collaboration that Ulmer calls a "new skill that must be explicitly taught." As ideas began to flow we agreed on collaged images of popular icons (the header) and familiar words (the Radiohead cover) to represent our focus. My contribution to the thoughtfulness of the blog this week was posting teachings I found to be particularly insightful when read in conjunction with our images. I chose the following from Taoist sage and philosopher Chang- Tzu because it seemed to appropriately call for a balance between spontaneity, activism and progress that I believe Ulmer would support.

"(The Sage) constantly goes by the Spontaneous, and does not add anything to the process of life."

"Mysteriously, wonderfully, I bid farewell to what goes, I greet what comes; for what comes cannot be denied, and what goes cannot be detained."

"Paths are made by shoes that walk them, they are by no means the shoes themselves!"

"The bells and stones have voices but, unless they are struck, they will not sound."

*Also included as my picture for this week is Ryan in action.. working on resizing the image for the header. Hope Ulmer would be proud of this use of multi-media/ group interaction :) 

-Sam