A prediction of the future: Aerobics studios

About a week ago I was answering a survey for the gym I frequent, and I suddenly had a premonition of the future.

I feel like recording it somewhere to see if it actually "comes to pass", and here is as good a place as any. I may as well pretend it's a proper prophecy, so here goes:

And lo, it shall come to pass that aerobics shall step out from the shadow of the gym. It shall no longer be sullied by the franchise model promoted by Les Mills and other such "Fitness Workout" providers, but instead become an individualised work of art, delivered unto us by practitioners who design their own classes and produce their own playlists.

And behold, aerobics shall move into "fitness studios", and share space with yoga and Pilates rather than weights and treadmills. The classes shall become more pure, leaving behind names like "Grit" and "Pump" and standing simply and proudly under the name "aerobics". While there shall, verily, be multitudes of aerobics classes to chose from, they shall be known by such terminology as "Strengthening", "Gentle" and "High Energy".

Upon one's voyage home from one's place of employment, one may "pop in" to a fitness studio for a round of aerobics one night a week, and another night of the week visit that very same studio for yoga, though no gym junkies may be seen to pass through the same doors. 

While the gym may indeed - yay, is more than likely to - be located in the same building as this "fitness studio", aerobics will no longer be considered a "gym class", but come forth as a separate entity once again, with classes offered at various times convenient for the working aerobic yogi as well as the stay-at-home aerobic yogi.

Thus I have seen.

Didactic teaching

 We've been updating our training statistics form at work, and I've been finding myself in the middle of some very interesting conversations about words I thought were better known than they are.

First, I used the word "narrowcast" to refer to the lessons we teach via the LMS or Zoom, and then I had to explain to people what "narrowcast" meant. Apparently that's not a common word. In case you were wondering, narrowcasting is like broadcasting, only you have a precisely delineated audience (for example, only people who can log into your electronic classroom).

To wit: if anyone can get it as long as they know when and where to look, it's broadcasting. If you can only get it if you are in the group that has access to it, it's narrowcasting. Public radio = broadcasting, police band radio = narrowcasting. You get the picture.

The second word that brought the discussion up a bit short was "didactic". Rather than talking about "lectures" and "workshops", I was going to suggest "didactic" vs "activity-based" classes. Most of the people in the room had only heard the word "didactic" used in the same context as "preachy" - if they'd heard it at all. Apparently, that wasn't a common word either. Turns out most people don't just randomly talk about pedagogical methodologies unless they've done an Education degree at some point.

When writing up my notes, I wanted to link to something that said what didactic teaching was in a nutshell, but couldn't find something I liked - so I'll just write my own:

Didactic Teaching in a Nutshell

Didactic teaching is the presentation of information to an audience.

It's commonly (and often derogatorily) referred to as "Chalk and talk" - the idea being that the teacher stands in front of a board and simply talks to (or "at") the class, who sit passively and listen, theoretically taking notes.

Didactic teaching isn't necessarily passive, though. Or, rather, it isn't necessarily unengaging just because it is passive. Like anything, it depends on the execution (and the audience). You can regularly ask the students questions to check their understanding, and you can field questions from the class members who wish to clarify matters or offer comments. Active listening is a thing, and you can encourage your audience to listen actively. Technically, using questions is bringing in a spot of dialectal teaching (see below) but it's still a didactic class.

You can also be interesting and humorous in your delivery of the content, so that your audience finds your presentation engaging, even if they aren't engaged in any interactivity at the time. A stand-up comedy routine is technically a didactic presentation.

However, didactic teaching can be very boring, so if you are a naturally boring presenter (or you have a class that refuses to engage in active listening), it is a dangerous method of teaching to use - even if it is one of the most common.

And now for a digression:

Lectures are considered to be didactic, as the lecturer presents/delivers information to people who aren't engaging in any kind of "activity" per se. The word "lecture" actually means "read" - in the olden days, the lecturer would literally stand at the front of the room and read their notes aloud. If you tried doing that these days, someone would complain (unless you got someone like Stephen Fry to read them for you, I suppose). Interestingly, "lecture" is often used with negative connotations - like "didactic" and "preachy". It seems people don't like being expected to listen while someone talks at them.

Not didactic teaching

Traditionally, the opposite of didactic teaching is dialectal teaching. In this method, the teacher and the students participate in a conversation in which they both talk about the subject matter (even though the student might not have had any information "presented" to them yet) and let knowledge and understanding unfold from the conversation.

The famous Socratic Method (okay, possibly not famous if you haven't studied Education or read much about Greek philosophy) is a form of dialectal teaching that actually consists of the lecturer asking the student questions in order to walk them through thinking out the logical conclusions. It's probably much more suited to philosophy than the inner workings of volcanoes, but I expect the right teacher could make it work for anything.

Most non-didactic classes these days are based around activity-based learning or problem-based learning. In these classes, students are presented with something to do or a problem to solve. The teacher should make sure it's possible for them to find all the information they need to complete the challenge before them (although not all teachers do this). In the process of doing the thing, they actively engage with and apply the information, theoretically making it more memorable.

Work-integrated learning is a cousin of activity-based/problem-based learning, in that students attempt to do the job they would be doing in the real world, had they already learnt what they are learning right now. It's sort of what an apprentice does, learning on the job.

You may notice a slight shift in  language for these methodologies. Rather than didactic/dialectal teaching, we've moved to activity-based/problem-based/work-integrated learning.

This is because the focus of the class has shifted - it has moved from teacher-centred to student-centred.

Now, if you're anything like... well pretty much everyone who talks about this in any kind of professional capacity, you're probably thinking "well that all sounds fabbo - so much better than that awful teacher-centred didactic teaching crap we've been forcing on students for generations!" I'd just like to point out that, once again, it's all down to the execution.

Activity-based learning needs to be really well designed to work well. I've been in activity-based classes that were about as engaging as having someone read their lecture notes to me, and I felt like gauging my eyes out with a spoon rather than doing their stupid activity. I've also heard many a student make similar comments.

The fact of the matter is, a good didactic class can be more interesting and engaging than a bad activity-based class. It all comes down to how engaged the teacher is. If you are connecting with the content and the students, the students will connect with the content as well.

Of Pastiches and Steak-and-Ale Pie

What's the difference between a collage and a pastiche?

You might know the answer to that, but I still haven't quite wrapped my head around it. I think the core difference is that a collage is made up of actual pieces of other works/things (cut up magazine articles, photographs, bits and bobs like ribbons, etc) while a pastiche is made up of elements taken from other works (mimicking someone's brush-strokes or phrasing).

Consulting Wikipedia to gain more insight, I discovered that "pastiche" is closely related to the word "pasticcio", and a pasticcio just happens to be a musical term for an operatic work that splices together the work of several other composers (which sounds a bit like a collage, really)... but it also means "pie".

As in, actual pie. That thing we do where we grind up a whole bunch of ingredients into a mince or a stew or a paste and then stick a lid of some description on it and call it a "pie". It doesn't matter what the ingredients are, to be honest. Or even what the lid is. Meat and vegetables under a lid made out of mashed potatoes and grated cheese is a pie. Chopped up apples completely encased in a short-crust pastry is a pie. Thickened lemon curd on a crushed biscuit base, topped with a layer of meringue, is a pie.

"Apple Pie" by Didriks, CC-BY 2.0

I'm rabbiting on about pastiches and pies because I've been looking into the difference between a Collection and a Remix in regards to using Creative Commons works.

Works that have a Creative Commons license are available to be re-used by members of the public (and aristocracy, I suppose). Many of them can also be adapted. If you have given your song, photograph, short film, painting, epic poem or blog post a CC license that allows adaptations, then some enterprising soul could come along and use part of it in a collage (or a pastiche).

If the license doesn't allow for adaptations, it could still be used in a Collection - as long as the collection itself doesn't try to give that work a different license.

I'm probably making a meal out of this, so let's make an actual meal out of it.

Let's say we have a piece of steak that is licensed CC-BY-ND (attribution, no derivatives) - this means we can't adapt that steak in any way. But we could still serve it with a side of vegetables which had a CC-BY (attribution) license, as long as we made it clear the steak and vegetables were separate items with separate licenses. If we also had a glass of ale that was CC-BY-NC-SA (attribution, noncommercial, share alike), well we could have that along side our steak and our vegetables but then we couldn't sell it (we'd have to give it away freely, and not bundle it with the meal, or we wouldn't be able to sell the meal - we'd have to give away the whole thing). Once again, everything is being shared together, but kept separate - with separate identities so we can make the licensing conditions clear for all. This is a Collection, in Creative Commons terms.

"Steak & Ale Pie - The Cat's Whiskers" by Cross Duck, CC-BY-NC-ND 2.0

If, however, the steak was under a CC-BY-SA license, we could mix the whole lot together and put it in a pie (a Remix). The subsequent steak-and-ale pie would still need to have all of its sources clearly acknowledged (that's why the BY is for), but it would be okay that you can't separate the steak from the ale without sorcery, as long as you didn't try to sell the pie (the ale is still NC licensed). We can only make this pie because the licenses are compatible - if they weren't then we wouldn't be able to mix all the ingredients together. The pie itself would need a CC license, by the way. And the license given to the pie would need to be the same as the most restrictive of all of the licenses. In this case, the ale is the most restrictive (CC-BY-NC-SA), so that's the best license to use for your steak-and-ale pie.

And remember, "there is no ND in pie". If any of your sources is ND, you can't use it, and if it's SA, you have to use it carefully. You can read more about that here: https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/licensing-considerations/compatible-licenses.

"Stevens pie" by CloW, CC-BY-SA 4.0

And since we're on the subject, I could also just mess with the steak by turning it into mince, or cutting it into strips for a stir fry. That would be a derivative (both derivatives and remixes are kinds of adaptations). There's no ND in derivative, either.

The really important thing to remember is that you still have to give full credit and license acknowledgement for any work you use, regardless as to whether or not you made something new and exiting and different with it by turning it into a pie.

"Key Lime Pie" by sk, CC-BY-ND 2.0

By the way, you might have noticed I have a collection of pies in this blog post (just to be a smart-arse, really). I have assembled a collection of pictures (of pies) with incompatible licenses, but you can clearly see what they are, follow them home and use the right license for each, should you choose to re-use them yourself. This means I also have to be careful if I want to apply a CC license to the contents of this blog post - because a collection also needs a CC license if you want people to share it, and that license has to be compatible with the spirit of the licenses of the individual parts of the collection. I cannot make this post available commercially, because one of my pie pictures has an NC license.

I actually don't understand that part of the process, to be honest. I get that I can't use any of the images in a way that would go against the licenses, but I don't know how to license them as a collection (I'd have an easier time with a pie, er, I mean remix). I've been trying to find a good example of a collection with a CC license that honours the incompatible wishes of the items in the collection, but I haven't been able to. So I'm just going to get around this particular issue by giving the text of my post a CC license independent of the images held in it. If you want to re-use my text, go for it - I think you can also choose to re-use the images I've chosen on their own merits, or substitute them with your own pies.

If you know the answer and can link me to a good example of best practise for applying a CC license to a collection, please let me know in the comments.

Text: CC-BY 4.0

Images: See individual images for attribution and licenses

A Monk's Guide to a Clean House and Mind (a Book Reflection)

 It has been far too long since I have reviewed/reflected upon a book. For those of you who haven't come across one of my "Book Reflections" before, it's basically a gonzo book review - I'm ostensibly reviewing the book, but mostly just talking about my own ideas and opinions.

Today I'm talking about A Monk's Guide to a Clean House and Mind, by Shoukei Matsumoto.

This is an "Amazon knows me too well" find. Because I read books about Zen, and books about tidying and decluttering, the Amazon algorithms recommended a book about cleaning written by a Zen monk. This is, by the way, why I'm happy with this Faustian deal I've got going with Amazon - yes, they are the devil and they know too much about me and my reading habits... but dang that's come in handy.

Matsumoto's book is not technically about decluttering, but if you followed the advice in this book you probably wouldn't own a lot of clutter after a while - if for no other reason than the fact that you have to clean it.

If I was going to summarise the book in one sentence, it would be to "clean everything often and well so the dirt doesn't get you down."

Like many of the other self-help books I read for fun (and for which I am very bad at taking the advice contained therein), I found the book to be a mixture of "good, practical advice" and "that's totally nuts". It's not as crazy as Kondo's The Life Changing Magic of Tidying (Matsumoto never once suggests storing carrots upright in the fridge), but there is a deep and abiding flaw in the book that he never addresses, and it is impossible to take on his advice properly with this flaw in the way. But I'll come back to that. First, I want to talk about the dirt on my heart.

Matsumoto is constantly talking about how dirt on this or that is dirt on your "heart". How the ink stain on the cuffs of your sleeves is a stain on your heart. How the dust on the floor is dust on your heart. An insufficiently cleaned bathroom reflects on the heart of the person who was supposed to clean it as well as weighing on the mind of everyone who uses it. This is a refrain he comes back to over and over again in the book: we clean to rid the dirt on our hearts and minds.

I was really struggling with this language and definitely leaning towards the "you're a little bit insane" interpretation of his book, before I suddenly asked myself what he meant by "heart". I was taking it from a Judeo-Christian, Western view of things were the idea of "dirt on your heart" meant that you were deeply flawed and a terrible person. But then I started to wonder if "heart", in the context of this book, wasn't one's "essential essence" or "soul" (which was a very weird attitude for a Zen monk to have, it must be said), but rather one's sense of happiness and joy. 

We sometimes talk about "heart's ease", things that are "good for the heart", or having something "weighing on our hearts". There are things that dampen our spirits and lift our spirits, but have nothing to do with our "Spirit" (capital S). And I think, this is what Matsumoto is getting at when he talks about cleaning our hearts. We are far more intertwined with our environment than we realise (and even if we do realise it, we tend to forget), and seeing jobs of cleaning and maintenance left undone in our world weighs on us in ways we're not always conscious of.

Dust, stains and broken things that need mending get us down. They tickle at the backs of our minds, stopping us from being completely at ease. Taking the time to clean it/fix it lifts our spirits. Taking the time, every day (or at least on regular days), to keep things clean and mended makes as feel generally better about the universe.

This book is a mixture of "how to" advice for cleaning (as gleaned from centuries of monks taking care of their temples and grounds) and philosophy about the relationship between people and their environment and objects. And, yes, you will probably end up owning fewer things and taking better care of them, because it's not really possible to have a giant household full of stuff and keep it all clean and well tended.

And now for the deep, abiding flaw:

Matsumoto is a monk. He's a monk at a Zen temple with other monks where all of the monks clean the temple all day. That's what they do, that's what their day consists of - "service" (i.e., cleaning) and meditation - and there's a bunch of them to do it. They rotate the tasks so the person cleaning the floors on Tuesday might be tending the garden on Wednesday. The advice he gives on cleaning is based in a reality where a) a task is done everyday or at least several times a week, b) the person doing the task has time to do it well, and c) there are enough people around to do the tasks to make sure they are all done every day or at least every other day.

As a single person with a full time job, I look at much of what he says in the book and think "that's not physically possible - I would have to be in two places at once for every single hour of the day to do all of the supposedly 'daily' tasks." I would have to be or have a full-time housekeeper to keep on top of it all - and then I'd probably need a groundskeeper as well. It simply cannot work in a world where you don't have at least one person whose entire job consists of taking care of things. 

Now, there are days when I long for that to be my schtick. I could happily play monk for a while and just sweep the floors and clean the kitchen and bathroom all day. Who knows, one day I just might do this. But I'm not financially in a position to do it at the moment. I doubt most people are.

I am probably going to start cleaning more things more often, though. I've already started doing this with my desk at work, and it is definitely calming and relaxing to start the day with clearing away whatever dust might have accumulated in my space.

I was saying to someone recently that I'm thinking of developing a cleaning disorder. Hopefully, if I cultivate it on purpose, I'll be able to put it to good use without becoming too obsessive about it. And even if it does get out of hand, it's better for my health than other "disorders" and I might be able to make a living out of it - hey, it worked for Marie Kondo.