(Sorry, couldn’t help myself after seeing that photo!)

I do this in my teaching, but I don’t take up that perspective in my personal blogging/comments.

What you’re suggesting, moving the notion of scaffolding from the educational institutional setting to a business setting. I think you’re right, this would improve how things get done in business.

You know me… I shy away from the instutionalization of lived experience. You’re getting people to become aware of the diversity of lived experience, “Start *caring* about the variety of learning styles and purposes and cognitive responses to information that are out there.” while I’m trying to get people to embrace the diversities themselves in their own practice, a notion I don’t think industry is ready for. Perhaps institutions would cease to be if they actually embraced the diversities of the lived experiences of their members, and at this point in our culture(s), I think people still want their industries, institutions and corporate models because that structure and standardization they provide is consistent with the present western world view.

Didn’t mean to jump the gun… as I said, you’re the one in the field trying to improve the functioning of organization, and I’d agree that that will do much to improve how people interact in and with institutions, and encourage people to reflect on their personal and professional practice.

My suggested strategies were intended as guides – with the reader developing their OWN approaches. To that end, it would be helpful if you could:

A) Identify the specific nature of your own experience of content (text, video, etc) and how that impacts your interest (i.e., how long you are able to engage that content and what that experience is like for you – pleasurable, challenging, disengaging). and

B) identify some strategies for content producers to better engage different styles of learner. Especially the learners who are not linear. If you have a problem with scaffolding (as i framed it so generally – and I made a point to say that it was very general), then please feel free to suggest an alternative that is more inclusive. The intention of my post was inclusivity.

Additionally, I didn’t write my post with, specifically, classroom or educational use in mind. I actually directed it largely at content producers – editors and writers – who are still creating works for a “read only” culture model that is not at all inclusive, top down and assumes the most heteronormative, high functioning, linear sort of reader in mind. That’s actually where you should take aim …

Traditional writers and editors *still* have little to no thought of learning issues or styles. It’s not their job – it’s a component of how they are trained (they’re not trained as educators or even made aware of these issues in any explicit way – I know, I’ve taught in content production programs). They are not versed in these ideas nor are they particularly inclined to care. I know from experience that our “deliverables” are very limited. We’re not expected to create content that anyone or everyone can access or understand. That’s just my problem with it.

What I’m suggesting is a radical idea that content creators start thinking more like educators. Start *caring* about the variety of learning styles and purposes and cognitive responses to information that are out there. Right now, that’s not really on the table. And that’s why I wrote the post.

Furthermore, I’m trying to inspire a movement away from a read-only content model that leaves engagement to those who are already oriented to do so – those who are entitled to do so. This is inequitable and accounts for the reason why only 3% of participants in any form take part. Why? because the rest of the people are not particularly inspired to participate – because their styles of participating and engaging are not EXPLICITLY activated. That’s … what I’m trying to get at.

Again, if you can add to what I’ve written and provide some further context, go right ahead. I welcome it.

(What was the otter doing on the lawn? don’t they live in water?)

…I could take that as a compliment or an insult. Haha.

My name is Miguel Nogueira and I am the head of a educational MMORPG project (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) inspired on Bleach, a well known international Japanese anime series.

The project already has two years of experience and is well know between the enormous Bleach community.

This project is called Soul Society RPG, and its goal is to implement this role play game within the virtual world of Second Life, we already have a good number of skilled artists within our team for the development of the game itself within Second Life; At the moment, we have the support of two on-line communities of Bleach fans, Bleach-Network.net and BleachExile.com, both whom have an extremely huge number of fans as their member base spans around 750 thousand fans who follow the stories of Bleach, and both these communities are now associated with us on this project and agreed to advertise it to the fan base once our project is officially up and running.

For this year and the near future we have planned some of the following activities, which we intend to take to a successful level:

- Creation of massive social events, tournaments and contests within our community and Second Life.
- Expand the number of educational teams/groups themed on Bleach and all Japanese themed series alike within our community in Second Life, in order to teach good grammar and improve the players skill set on the construction of sentences, while the players are role playing their character.
- Creation of role play schools within this virtual world.
- The development of high quality freebies of all kinds, in order to make the access of outside Bleach fans who were not present in Second Life before and allow them to get started without any problems.

All of these initiatives cannot be run by any community without further support from others, since they require infra structures that are not available to just any user, with this said, we appeal to your interest for the new technologies and make the name of your company take place and stand out on this virtual world, by analyzing our proposal and support us by some way. Your contribution is very important for our group, and surely will be most appreciated from our part.

We will await for any suggestion of support from your side, in case it is of your interest to help and associate yourselves on this project.

Thank you very much for taking the time to read this email, in case you are interested on our proposal, please, feel free to contact us to:
Email: soulsocietyrpg@gmail.com
Second Life Screen name: Voodoo Schnyder