Roy Williams

Jaap, many thanks.  I agree, translating is a great way to explore and share meaning-in-multiple-contexts.

I will respond later in more detail - just to say I love 'soepel' as a component of ambiguity - could even be a replacement for ambiguity in Dutch, thought I dont think supple would work in English (and I'm constantly cross-referencing this to Afrikaans, which I know quite well). 

Translation as "trying to read the wind?"  - which is a supple / subtle skill, no? 

Nick, wonderful, thank you so much.  Critique, paricularly from 'outside' our own 'echo chambers' is refreshing.  By definition, we have little or no 'outside' perspective available to us, personally, any more as we have been working on this for far too long. 

So ...

• It started, and progressed, I guess, as a research tool, from the inside. It shows, you are quite right. (As researchers, that does not matter, as members of a community of users 'of learning' it does - a difficult paradox). 
• This was not funded, it was done in the time we could find, or steal, between the demands of our day jobs This was good because it gave us freedom from delivering the goods to funders (we have published a lot, so I suppose we had to deliver to the journals, but IRRODL and NLC (amongst others) have been very supportive. More recently we have bumped up against the 'big data' / instructivist /xMOOC / 'physics envy' lobby, and have had a few refusals, including a refusal from our first funding application! mmmmmm ....
• A whole new literacy - exactly.  I often think about doing a meta-mindmap of the factors and clusters - literally, placing the palette in the centre of the mind-map, and drawing in the miriad links to the researchers whose shoulders we are standing on - but that would probably make it even more complicated, and more of a challenge for a whole new 'meta-literacy'.  Aaaaaaggh!
• Question: how far can one go in developing new tools, without losing most of your audience in the process?  Food for thought. This is very new, taken as a whole, but it is also very old, and builds, for example, on some central ideas and experience that we got from Montessori pre-schools, many years ago, and that she developed more than 100 years ago now. That doesn't answer the 'user friendly question though, I know. 
• Question: Is this an 'app', and should it be an app that can be downloaded and used in the first 5 minutes, or is it a new tool that requires two webinars and two weeks of discussion to use?
• Based quite largely on the experience of running these webinars and forums in SCoPE (the first time we have attempted it fully online), I am tempted to 'package' it as a two-week engagement event - I think we might have been over-ambitious in trying to do it in 60 or 120 minute workshops before, but hey, that's also a learning experience for us. For me, this 14 day format (for participants, and for us) looks about right, though I must say that we have had some seriously useful and positive responses from quite a few people (in education, admittedly, but some of them were students without too much research experience).  
• We would seriously like to make it more interactive, which might (?) make it more user friendly. 
• But ... should we / can we ... still demand of our users that they do some work on a new literacy first?  
• I am reminded of the 20 years I spent trying to convince my brother (otherwise quite intelligent, he was a fellow of an Oxford college) of the sense of post-modernism - he finally got the point when someone said "for example, you have to be able to see the dog as text ...".  I sometimes wonder if it will take another 20 years to convince people of the 'sense' of complexity theory (which we try to avoid, and just talk of 'emergence' instead - dont know if that works). 

Any thoughts/ suggestions?  We would love to find some 'get out of the tower' cards / ideas.  Cutting the list down from 24 or 25 is one idea we have considered, but rejected - so far. 

Thank you again - these are crucial issues, and not 'external' to the debate at all - though of course your 'external' vantage point gives you an advantage! 

Jenny, interesting question - how much do the images influence the way people interpret the factors?

As I said elsewhere here, hopefully the images help to keep the thinking more open (than texts, which tend to tie meaning down), but thinking about your post, I guess images could be too strong, and too directive too.  

What would a usefully open image be like?  And have we got any in our mapping sheet?  

My first impressions are that the images for Unpredictable Outcomes, Open Affordances, Presence/Writing, Informal Writing, and Autonomy - in that order - are the most open, Networking is the most clunky [please help out if you have a better one], and Liminality is the most closed.  But maybe that's just me.  

Barb, good to hear that the 'interactive' tool worked.  

Language, language ... and odd business.  On the one hand we dont mind making the footprint creator do some work in thinking about the language and the terms, and to make them specific enough, (and reference the work of the many people who have designed and researched and thought about this before us) - but on the other hand we would like the creation of a footprint to be as intuitive as possible.  

That means that the simpler the language the better, particularly if the accompanying graphic still opens up the possibliities for mearning and context.  All suggestions on both these issues will be gratefully received and acknowledged! 

An 'I'll show you mine if you show me yours' sharing of footprints is exactly what we have in mind, to open up a 'collaborative reflection' conversation.  That's, really, where we think this should all be heading. 

So ... interesting questions and processes for engaging on 'alignment' and alignments (there are so many things to align with), and hopefully an iterative process for open/ended conversations - which ends (or doesn't end) when you have completed what you want to do.  

Barb, great that the table was helpful.  We started off adding detail, and got to a point where it started looking like a over-elaborate instruction manual, which is when we began working on the graphics, to try to make it more intuitive, and open too (graphics are inherently open to more than one interpretation, no?).  Would love to hear your reaction to the graphics - we wont be offended if you think they are OTT, clicheic, or just plain dumb - we need to know. 

And yes, the creation of the footprint is a reflection of the course, but also of the writer and the process of writing, which is partly describing the event, and partly describing your own position and understanding - just as you say.