Stephen Downes

According to Ann (no last name), "there is a weight of expectations that we all carry in eduspace, and sometimes those expectations are things we put on ourselves and not necessarily things folk have put on us realistically." the term, as the title suggests, 'pedagogical weight'. I'm sympathetic, but having worked a variety of jobs over my career, I can attest to the reality that this weight exists in every occupation, save perhaps that involve no mental preparation at all. But that's not to dismiss the fact of the weight. We all feel it, we feel it a little more when people are protesting in the streets, and we feel it in the face of war, disease, and the remaining horsemen. And while it may be that "folk just have no real interest in engaging in virtual spaces as they used to anymore, because.... there's too much weighing on them," it may also be because virtual spaces, as we know them today, don't do anything to address that weight, other than to make it heavier. (p.s. I don't know how it started as a linguistic convention, but the use of 'folk' to refer to 'people' will never not sound strange to me).