TAKING A BREAK

One of the blessings of modern technology is the ease of communication. The internet has certainly made keeping in contact as simple as sending an email or tapping away a message on a messenger program. Skyping or video-Skyping is even more conducive to effective communication and a conversation can be carried out in more or less normal fashion, especially if you are able to see the smiling face of your interlocutor. FaceTime has its devoted fans already who swear by glitch-free performance and crystal clear video and audio. Virtual meetings, webinars and conference calling are all now routine. Work-related communication has never been easier with the all of the modern means of keeping in touch.

Often, though, the problem with keeping in touch is not how easy or difficult it is, but rather the amount of finite time that we have at our disposal in order to carry out everything that we are compelled to do in a day. Work has increased its demands in the last few decades and many people now work extra long hours in order to keep up with the demands of their job. Unfortunately, this leads to our neglecting many of our other activities, not spending as much time as we would like with our families and friends. Needless to say that the less pressing tasks, as well as the activities that give us personal and selfish pleasure, our hobbies, are often the first to be sacrificed.

The workaholic is very much a product of our modern society and is nowadays in many cases the rule rather than the exception that we were familiar with in the past. Work makes enormous demands on our time, not only in the workplace, but it also invades our own space and private life. How easy it is nowadays to take work with us every night? Simply a matter of loading some files onto a USB flash drive and the computer at home takes over from where the computer at work left off. Or even more to the point, many people work on the same laptop both at work and at home (and also on the train, perhaps, on the way there and back)! Cloud computing means that we can have our work with us everywhere we go on whatever device we may be using. Email access is universal and it is often expected to be able to send and receive work emails at any place and at any time. Mobile phones increase our accessibility and students expect to receive instant replies to their emails.

“All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” is certainly something that applies to today’s world as much as it did, all those centuries ago when the folk sage came out with this saw. It is surprising that in this day and age of labour-saving devices, increasing leisure time, and strictly legislated work hours many of us still manage to run out of time in order to amuse ourselves and take pleasure in the company of our friends and dear ones.

This issue becomes all-important as the year goes on and maybe there are fewer and fewer windows of opportunity presenting themselves to many of us. A time to take a break and indulge in some annual leave should be taken whenever one can do so. If you can afford to, consider taking some time off to have a break from work and relax as you catch up with family and friends, read a novel, fly a kite, go away somewhere, take a drive, bake a cake, put your feet up. “Taking time away from the stress of work can improve job performance, decrease stress-related illnesses and add years to our lives”, says Joe Robinson, author of “Work to Live: The Guide to Getting a Life”.

INFORMAVORES

“Which of these activities occupies more of your time: Foraging for food or surfing the Web? Probably the latter. We’re all informavores now, hunting down and consuming data as our ancestors once sought woolly mammoths and witchetty grubs. You may even buy your groceries online.” - Rachel Chalmers
 

Each year the Macquarie Dictionary names a Word of the Year from a shortlist of words that have made a valuable contribution to the language. And it has declared 2013 to be the year of the “infovore”. The Macquarie defines an infovore as “a person who craves information, especially one who takes advantage of their ready access to it on digital devices”.

The term infovore or informavore (also spelled informivore) describes a person that consumes information. It is meant to be a description of human behaviour in modern information society, and the word is formed in comparison to omnivore, as a description of humans consuming food.

George A. Miller coined the term in 1983 as an analogy to how organisms survive by consuming negative entropy (as suggested by Erwin Schrödinger). Miller states, “Just as the body survives by ingesting negative entropy, so the mind survives by ingesting information. In a very general sense, all higher organisms are informavores.”

An early use of the term was in a newspaper article by Jonathan Chevreau where he quotes a speech made by Zenon Pylyshyn of the University of Western Ontario’s Centre for Cognitive Science:
 

“Zenon Pylyshyn closed the conference with an apt description of Homo sapiens in the information age — Man the Information Processor, or Informavore.”

Jonathan Chevreau, “Some A1 Applications of Wishful Thinking”, The Globe and Mail, March 30, 1984

Soon after, the term appeared in the introduction of Pylyshyn’s seminal book on Cognitive Science, “Computation and Cognition”. More recently the term has been popularised by philosopher Daniel Dennett in his book Kinds of Minds and by cognitive scientist Steven Pinker.

Humans are active information foragers who gather and consume new knowledge, unlike a passive sponge that sits in the sea depths and relies on whatever the sea currents bring its way. From controlling the movement of our eyes to determining which sources of news to consult, judging the quality of alternative sources of information is a critical part of our behaviour. Researchers are now investigating, explaining and predicting how people shape their information seeking behaviours to their information environments. Nowadays a lot of this relies  on the Web, Twitter, social tagging systems, media, etc.

By hunting around for reliable information that satisfies our need to learn we construct Personal Learning Networks (PLNs). A PLN is an informal structure of information sources around a learner (or informavore!), with which he/she interacts and derives knowledge from in an environment that is adapted to the individual’s own needs. In a PLN, a person makes a connection with another information source with the specific intent that some type of learning will occur because of that connection. Generally, in a PLN, individuals are involved and the interactions between them is how information is transferred.

An important part of this concept of PLNs is the theory of connectivism developed by George Siemens and Stephen Downes. Learners create connections and develop a network that contributes to their personal development and knowledge.

A Personal Learning Environment (PLE) is very much related to a PLN and is sometimes used synonymously with it. PLEs can be created independently, by building and collecting content sources from the Web, including creating content through blogs, podcasts, slideshares, etc. A natural extension of one’s PLE is the development of relationships with individuals that emerge from the process of building the PLE, which is how the PLN develops. When connections from a PLN are engaged, knowledge creation becomes interdependent.

In Dryden and Vos’s book on learning networks (Dryden, Gordon; Vos, Jeannette (2005). “The New Learning Revolution: How Britain Can Lead the World in Learning, Education, and Schooling”. UK: Network Educational Press Ltd), we read:

“For the first time in history, we know now how to store virtually all humanity’s most important information and make it available, almost instantly, in almost any form, to almost anyone on earth. We also know how to do that in great new ways so that people can interact with it, and learn from it.”

NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS

Are you the sort of person who makes New Year’s resolutions? I used to be, but it was many years ago when I was younger. Nowadays, I prefer to set some goals at appropriate times throughout the year and then do my best to achieve those goals. It certainly works well and if I manage my goals like projects they are much more likely to be completed successfully. Experience has taught me to be realistic about goals and this increases their likelihood of being attained at the appropriate time.
 

Some of my colleagues, acquaintances and friends come back to work in the New Year with impressive lists of resolutions (I have seen a couple of them even post them up above their desk so that they can look at them daily). However, come February, these resolutions are rather forgotten, taken down unceremoniously or else are conveniently covered by other bits and pieces of paper that are posted over them.
 

New Year’s Eve has always been a time for looking forward to the coming year and celebrating the new beginning. Taking a tally of all that has happened and not happened in our life and making some decisions about what we want changed in our life is something that we think more soberly about in the days that follow. It’s a time to reflect on the changes we want (or need) to make and resolve to follow through on those changes. If you are in the habit of making New Year resolutions, see how close they come to a popular “top ten list”:
 

1)     Spend More Time with Family & Friends
2)     Exercise more, get fit, live a healthier life
3)     Lose weight so as not to be obese
4)     Quit smoking
5)     Enjoy life more, be happier
6)     Quit drinking
7)     Get out debt
8)     Learn something new
9)     Help others more
10)  Get more organised
 

I am sure that most people would have found a few of those resolutions that resonated with them, and perhaps were even familiar from last year’s list, or even the list of the year before. Funny thing about these resolutions they keep recurring like clockwork, year after year…
 

Perhaps one of the best resolutions one can make for the New Year would revolve around learning something new. Perhaps enrolling into an educational course and achieving something that would actually manage to tick off several of those resolutions in the list above. In these days of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) it is easy to find something one is interested in and taking some time each week in which to learn.
 

I have just enrolled in a free Coursera course on composition, which begins January 6. See it here (https://www.coursera.org/course/classicalcomp). I am sure that you can find something that interests you as well. Numerous other MOOC providers abound and you can find almost anything you are interested in studying online.
 

Have a Happy New Year

full of health, prosperity and joy!