CLMOOK

This is what I see referred to as the folksonomic power of a community. Think of it as an artisian well as opposed to a hand or electric powered well. All of them get the water up, but we would all prefer the water that is the most self-sustaining with the least energy. We want to harness this artesian well in any community of learning because it is deep, cool, clean and drinkable right away. It can be pooled up and used to power everything else in the community.

Once you have the power of the people (the folk that are folksonomy), you can multiply these personal interests by creating commuties that connect them with as little friction as is possible.

In social capital theory their are two kinds of relations: bonding (in this case representing peer-isolated support) and bridging (adult participation). In our CLMOOC we need to think in terms of facilitators as the peer-isolated, bonding in our shared interest and of our educational innovators as bonding with each other as well. Where would bridging social capital fit in this scheme?

Where does informal learning (which some adult learning experts say accounts for upwards of 90% of the learning we actually do in the world) fit into this academic orientation? Personally, I think we need to have manifold orientations, each appropriate to and sustainable for the task at hand. For example, what place do discussions outside of the educational institution have? What place to students who we remain connected with after they pass through our academic space? When you begin to think about what happens outside the academic space for the 23 hours of the day, how does this insistence upon 'academic orientation' really make sense?

Does anybody else thinks this sounds manipulative? Or is 'positively manipulative' like most of what we do in the classroom? It seems like the authors are asking us to consider how we can 'harness' (let us not forget that horses are harnessed) the power of open networks (or even proprietary ones) to heighten what we do in our educational institutions. This is good when horses are pulling for a common good, but not so good when the horses need to be out browsing, playing and resting.

Implicit in this is the idea that we have free-range learners who get to choose from or create their own learning environments. This is already highly constrained because of federal privacy laws and almost makes it certain that to satisfy this that students will do it on their own or at least be part of very tightly veted cross-generational communities. Also, implicit is this is a powerful need to show learners how to be safe in any community they choose to be a part of. I do not think that this is a deep societal value yet.

What are our common interests and goals in the CLMOOC? And what kind of place is best suited to achieving those goals?

This is such an American value. We need to have something to show for what we are doing. I approve, but I also think that the 'thing-centered-ness' of this value should be extended to processes as well. Nouns are good, but let's get verbish as well. For example, I think that workflow is a product and a process. I think PLN's are products and processes. Collaboration is an act that goes well beyond its products.

I heartily agree with the value of open networks although I usually have to navigate through mostly proprietary and walled gardens that only appear open (Twitter/FB/Blackboard/Prezi/Diigo). I am uneasy about this and can only say rather vaguely that I prefer to work within networks where I can sense my own center of gravity.

This is a truism, but the problem is that reimagining has an inherent bootrstrap problem--how can you reimagine something truly new that helps learners engage, that don't alienate, that satisfies business, and that doesn't widen the opportunity /equity gaps already built in to the old way? Imagining often amounts to remixing (what the snarky might call Titanic deck chair management). Imagining oftne amounts to mashing up. Imagining almost always is about putting old wine in new bottles. The truly imaginative (think William Blake, think Nicola Tesla, , think Edward Deming, think Ivan Illich) typically step utterly outside the old imaginative sphere and concoct new ones that are not backwardly compatible and usually creatively destructive. These are not 'adjacent possible' thinkers. They are usually outside the discipline, outside the paradigm, outside that cliched box. These are not reimaginers; they are imaginers. They are drawing new doors on walls and then grasping the knob that has magically become 3-D, walking through and leaving it open for others. What does that leave us as facilitators to this reimagination of education? We are obliged to render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto our new learners what is our new learners. How tough is that? Double tough. And I think it is risky business. How do you show someone how to use a wiki to conduct the business of a classroom and at the same time show that same someone how to conduct the business of their own learning using that tool? This purposeful code-shifting has the potential to generate double binds in its users and that is not good. Mama never said this teaching thing would be easy.

I think this is how we can solve the paradox of the double bind--public education. We have public learning institutions in order to give everyone a shot at shared purpose, shared making, and shared networking. In a word educational institutions are opportunity shops, a place where we all can gather to connect.