Ex Carta & The Writer's Map

'Ex Carta - The Nurse's Map'

The bookshop is lost to me now, but I have seen Huw Lewis-Jones's The Writer's Map before, and was well impressed. So it was worth leafing through the Times's Luxx supplement to learn of an exhibition on this theme:

Ex Carta - Zentralbibliothek Zürich

Includes:  Signposts for Navigating Moral Landscapes

Tuesday, 17. November 2026 - 18:00 - 20:00 o'clock

How do people find their bearings when faced with moral conflicts and life-changing decisions? 

Drawing on the ancient motif of Heracles at the Crossroads, Professor Emeritus Paul Michel explores the symbolic significance of paths, crossroads and choices of direction. The lecture examines how such visual and narrative motifs have been used since antiquity to illustrate questions of virtue, responsibility and the conduct of life. It also considers why these enduring images continue to resonate today. At its core is the question of what forms of guidance can help us navigate the moral landscapes of the contemporary world. 

Free of charge. Please register in advance. The event will take place on site at the Zentralbibliothek Zürich and will be held only in German. 

Huw Lewis-Jones, (2018) The Writer's Map - An Atlas of Imaginary Lands, Thames & Hudson.
https://www.thamesandhudson.com/products/the-writers-map

These two resources bring home the unique nature of care and caring and the journey of assessment, planning, intervention and evaluation, with the 'return' point often uncertain. Based on person-centredness alone this is unique. Of course, there is much additional variation and complexity as 'The Nurse's Map' may of course be that of another profession. The application of Hodges' is unique to the participants.

My source: Richard Askwith. Adventures into imaginary universes, Luxx. The Times, 3.10.26. pp.82-85.

Half-turns ... to orbit

individual

|

INTERPERSONAL : SCIENCES

humanistic -------------------------------------------  mechanistic

SOCIOLOGY : POLITICAL

|

group-population

	"If you can get your ship into orbit, you're halfway to anywhere."

See: Where did Heinlein say "Once you get to Earth orbit, you're halfway to anywhere in the Solar System"?

Paths, lines, corners, edges and axes . . .

'If a farmer has made a path, he is able to saunter easily up and down it. That is what the path was made for. But the work of making the path was not a process of sauntering easily, but one of marking the ground, digging, fetching loads of gravel, rolling, and draining. He dug and rolled where there was yet no path, so that he might in the end have a path on which he could saunter without any more digging or rolling. Similarly a person who has a theory can, among other things, expound to himself, or the world, the whole theory, or any part of it; he can, so to speak, saunter in prose from any part to any other part of it. But the work of building the theory was a job of making paths where as yet there were none.' 

Gilbert Ryle, The Concept of Mind (1949; Penguin, 1999), p. 272.

path

https://hodges-model.blogspot.com/search?q=path

line (line of sight)

https://hodges-model.blogspot.com/search?q=line

corners

https://hodges-model.blogspot.com/search?q=corners

edges

https://hodges-model.blogspot.com/search?q=edges

axes: STRUCTURE

domains: CONTENT

Frayn, Michael (2006). The human touch: our part in the creation of a universe. Notes. London: Faber & Faber. p.425.

Previously: 'Frayn on maths'

I will keep this book a bit longer - chapter 'Home Address' (the self) a good read.

"Personalized learning has a number of levels ..." c/o MIT Technology Review

MIT Technology Review

"... There's a difference between adaptive learning and personalized learning," says Chris Dede, a professor at Harvard University in the Technology, Innovation, and Education Program. Squirrel is doing adaptive learning, which is about "understanding exactly what students know and don't know."But it pays no attention to what they want to know or how they learn best. Personalized learning takes their interests and and needs into account to "orchestrate the motivation and time for each student so they are able to make progress."

Jutta Treviranus, a professor at the Ontario College of Art and Design University who pioneered personalized learning to improve inclusivity in education, breaks it down into further. "Personalized learning has a number of levels," she says: she calls them pace, path, and destination.

If the pace of learning is personalized, students with different abilities are allowed different amounts of time to learn the same material. If the path is personalized, students might be given different motivations to reach the same objectives ("Here's why statistics is relevant to your love of baseball") and offered the material in different formats (e.g., video versus text). If the destination is personalized, students can choose, for instance, whether to learn with a vocational school or university in mind.

"We need students to understand their own learning. We need them to determine what they want to learn, and we need them to learn to learn," Treviranus says. "Squirrel AI doesn't address those things at all. It only make it more efficient to bring all of the students to the same standardized place." pp.27-28.

  Self - LEARNER - Person

|

 INTERPERSONAL    :     SCIENCES               

HUMANITIES - ARTS ----------------------------------  SCIENCES

SOCIOLOGY  :   POLITICAL 

|

Community - Group - Population

path destination purpose	pace destination path process
pace destination path practice	pace destination path policy

 

In the first instance Treviranus's three P's are located in what I feel are the most pertinent domains in bold and underlined. 'Path' is placed in the intra- interpersonal domain because as explained the learning must have meaning, sufficient to motivate the student. This might be global, sharing this domain with 'destination' as an overall goal (personal ambition - aspiration). As ever, having my cake and eating it ... what is the rationale for the secondary... occurrences? Let's take 'destination', first, in the sciences and political domains this may relate to a student's particular interest in a subject, or course of study to enter a profession at a specific university. In the sociology domain, what are the other influences on choice for the student's 'destination'? 

Individual choice is a great gift but only when it can be exercised, can it stand chance of being realised. In the group context, socially and politically is the 'path' and 'destination' (truly) open? The skills of teachers and mentors are key to the secondary execution of 'path'. Knowledge of the subject, technology, and as described the student allied with the latest educational research are essential. A teacher in a subject may prove an inspiration for a student: helping to generate an educational fusion.

'Pace' was placed in the sciences domain, to denote process, sequence, time; a curriculum delivered. In an exam there is no greater enemy than lack of time, but without the facts, knowledge, and insight to answer a question, time can make a mockery of us. Our 'pace' can also be noticed by our peers, which can be positive or negative socially and personally. 'Pace', is invariably political, as the calendar flicks whether by an analogue or digital turn. Outcomes and reports ultimately count.

The 4P's which I associate with each of the model's domains are italicised at the bottom of each domain.

Karen Hao, Born in China, taught by AI. MIT Technology Review - Allow me to introduce my selves, The Youth Issue. Volume 123, Issue 1. Jan/Feb 2020. pp.24-29.

It is interesting to reflect on the State's intervention in 2021 into tutoring and EdTech companies in China since this issue was published.

Liminality in "How ancient rituals help us adapt to the digital age" c/o G. Tett

How ancient rituals help us adapt to the digital age

Ceremonies and symbols matter more than ever in a disorienting world

Context: "This week I made a pilgrimage to the east coast of Scotland to participate in that classic ritual of modern middle-class life: a university graduation".

"However, heritage marketing is not the only factor, given that such rituals also occur in places that do not have 600 years of history behind them. Another way to frame the issue is to ponder a concept first developed by the ethnographer and folklorist Arnold van Gennep, and later elaborated by the anthropologist Victor Turner and the psychologist Carl Jung – “liminality”.

This word comes from the Latin limen – doorway or threshold – and refers to the idea that whenever societies or people make a transition, they typically use rituals and symbols to mark this. 

These usually contain three parts: a ritual to show the end of the old life; a ritual to mark the entry into the new one; and a “liminal” stage between the two, when the transformation occurs. Moreover, in that liminal state the normal rules of life tend to break down. Liminality is the cultural equivalent of the pupation that insects undergo: patterns become untethered and fluid, to be remoulded".

Tett, Gillian. 2019, How ancient rituals help us adapt to the digital age. FT Weekend, Magazine, June 29-30, p.46.

'Dead End Tunnel Folded Into Four Arms With Common Walls' by Bruce Nauman

‘Dead End Tunnel Folded Into Four Arms With Common Walls’ (1980), by Bruce Nauman
Photo: Hauser & Wirth

My source: FT Weekend, Collecting, 28-29 April 2018, p.3.

Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice

individual

|

INTERPERSONAL : SCIENCES

humanistic ----------------------------------- mechanistic

SOCIOLOGY : POLITICAL

|

group

My source: BBC World Service