don’t throw out your books
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Rhizomatic learning, knowledge and books | Jenny Connected - 0 views
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Perhaps it is not the books themselves but the power we grant them just because they are books. There are lots of reasons why we did this: they were the best technology available for carrying information, they are the tools of power for status quo and revolutionary alike, they have are now the traditional, default method. Yet we are at the beginning of an age which has other methods that are even more ubiquitous. The mobile device is becoming preeminent because it not only carries words but also images, moving and static, and sounds, ours and others. It is immediate and easily reproducible.
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Are we going to ignore or throw away our books and so throw away our history? Doesn’t our past inform our present and future?
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Iain MacGilchrist’s book – The Master and his Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World.
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he traces how the left hemisphere has grabbed more than its fair share of power
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We need books, but we also need to engage with them critically. We need text, but we also need to be able to see its limitations. We need abstraction, but we also need embodied learning. We need to exercise both the left and right hemispheres of our brains.
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I say give books the comeuppance they deserve. Who is the boss of the mind? Mine is reactionary sloganeering here, so let me be less molotov. I, meaning my whole self, am the boss, the master. I am weary of being told and of accepting as writ (holy irony that) that the written word is supreme. I find myself revolting (please no Henny Youngman jokes) against words by my frail attempts to use tools that are decidedly not books--zeega, vine, photography, video, soundcloud, augmented reality--to wrestle control from literacy and return to orality.
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On your side Scott would agree that it is not books who are at fault. Please let us not shoot the messenger. It is our use of books and our abdication to their organization, to their legibility that is our downfall.
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Reader Response theory comes to mind here too. I see where this is both coming from and headed but my own attitude is, like anyone else's, still very much influenced by my personal reading history. I was an only child and, in a time when families moved much less than now, we moved often because of my father's work with a geophysical crew. I didn't spend entire school year in one place or even the same state until the 5th grade -- did not fall behind because my mother taught me to read early and my father made maths fun with cards, dice and dominoes. Add that all that up -- books spoke to me, were my family and friends. FYI Terry, my father was a storyteller and master punster
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A Personal Learning Framework - 2 views
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46:48 "It's funny: in our courses we say "There is no content." The content is the message that one person says to another. And that's not the important thing. The important thing is the totality of all the messages whether it's the official content or not. The content, we call it the McGuffin. And it's the thing that brings the people together, because they're interested in that subject. You know, they gather around you know like people stare at an accident where the accident is a thing not everybody wants to go to but it attracts. 47:35 The McGuffin is a concept that comes from Alfred Hitchcock. It's the thing in a movie that all the plot evolves around. And it can be anything at all. In the Maltese Falcon, the Mcguffin is the falcon, the statue of the falcon. In The Birds, it's birds. In The Treasure of the Sierra Madre it's the treasure. There's always a map with an X on it and, it's funny, it does not matter what it is because what's interesting about the movie isn't what everybody's chasing after. It's what they do during the chase. It's how they interact with each other, it's what we learn about their characters, about what motivates them. 48:22 So, the content of a course is just a plot device to get people together, to communicate, to interact, to take part in this common exercise. And in this common exercise our connection between each other and our connections inside ourselves will be exercised, will be increased, augmented, developed -- and we learn. "
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A Guide to the Building Blocks of Online Learning for Faculty - 0 views
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Deals with the reality of distributing quality education to most of the people in the world. "DRIVERS OF CHANGE IN THE WAY WE TEACH AND LEARN The increasing recognition the world over of the central role that post- secondary education plays in social and economic success has resulted in many drivers for change, including the following which have been identified by Bates: 1) An increasing demand for college and university places 2) Changing demographics (more older and part-time students) and more learner diversity (broader intellectual, language and cultural ranges) 3) Growing numbers of students at ease with new technologies and social media who are demanding the same sort of flexibility and access from post-secondary education that they already enjoy in their daily business and social interactions. 4) Pressures on institutions to be more open and accountable 5) Recognition of society's needs for skilled knowledge-based workers and the associated focus on learning outcomes indicating the extent to which graduates have such requisite skills as critical thinking, problem-solving, communication, independent learning, and the ability to work in a variety of contexts, to work in teams and to navigate cultural differences. 6) Research evidence of the effectiveness of more interactive approaches to learning that engage students more intensively 7) The continuing evolution of Web-based technologies which make knowledge much more accessible and bring learners together without the constraint of time or place..."
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shared by Scott Johnson on 19 Mar 14
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Tools for Scaffolding Students in a Complex Learning Environment: What Have We Gained a... - 2 views
reforma.fen.uchile.cl/...ironment%20-%20Puntambekar.pdf
scaffolding explanation communication rhizo14
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Ana Cristina Pratas liked it
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Found this paper useful for clarification of what makes good scaffolding. My original intro to the subject focused on the notion of threshold concepts which can reside too far into an expert domain for getting students engaged. Definition: "adult controlling those elements of the task that are essentially beyond the learner's capacity, thus permitting him to concentrate upon and complete only those elements that are within his range of competence" Do not defeat learning by going too far out into the unfamiliar. "Scaffolding is no longer restricted to interactions between individuals-artifacts, resources, and environments themselves are also being used as scaffolds." "...six types of support that an adult can provide: recruiting the child's interest, reducing the degrees of freedom by simplifying the task, maintaining direction, highlighting the critical task features, controlling frustration, and demonstrating ideal solution paths." "Central to successful scaffolding is the notion of a shared understanding of the goal of the activity. Although some elements of the activity may be beyond what the child could accomplish in working alone, intersubjectivity (Rogoff, 1990; Wertsch, 1985), or a shared understanding of the activity, is considered critical. Intersubjectivity is attained when the adult and child collaboratively redefine the task so that there is combined ownership of the task and the child shares an understanding of the goal that he or she needs to accomplish."
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An Affinity for Asynchronous Learning - Hybrid Pedagogy - 2 views
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the possibilities afforded by the new medium
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enormous potential when it works well
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The Internet and Education - OpenMind - by Neil Selwyn - 0 views
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First, is the potential of the Internet to offer individual learners increased freedom from the physical limitations of the real world.
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Secondly, the Internet is seen to support a new culture of learning—i.e., learning that is based around bottom-up principles of collective exploration, play, and innovation rather than top-down individualized instruction
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Thirdly, the capacity of the Internet to support a mass connectivity between people and information is felt to have radically altered the relationship between individuals and knowledge.
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Fourthly, the Internet is seen to have dramatically personalized the ways in which people learn—thereby making education a far more individually determined process than was previously the case.
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self-directed, non-institutional learning are initiatives such as the hole-in-the-wall and School in the Cloud
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But will the majority of children/youth access these learning opportunities, or will they - as I have observed in hosting a community access point - gravitate toward entertainment? What learning experiences can be developed that will grab a young person's attention when watching Tupac and gang fights are available? Is there something that will motivate them to provide well-considered comments on Youtube and Facebook?
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the most successful forms of Internet-based education and e-learning being those that reflect and even replicate pre-Internet forms of education such as classrooms, lectures, and books.
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elping already engaged individuals to participate further, but doing little to widen participation or reengage those who are previously disengaged
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It remains for teachers to figure out how to leverage the opportunities of the internet for their learner's advantage. It is not enough to rely on the internet to "do it for you". The internet is still not a teaching machine. Best practice (Jim's version): teach content creation, collaboration, and reasonable dialogue - globally if possible.
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Ethics and soft boundaries between Facebook groups and other web services | ... - 0 views
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I want to frame my comments in the distinction between reductionist thought and complexity thought, a habit of mind I attribute to Edgar Morin’s book On Complexity
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I find the fourth view, the one from Foucault, to be the most engaging, as it approaches a complex view of power
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first three views of power assume a Classical, simple (not simplistic, but not complex, either) epistemology
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“‘Power’ in its most generic sense simply means the capacity to bring about significant effects: to effect changes or prevent them.”
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The One-dimensional View posits two agents disjoined from one another, and power occurs when one agent prevails in some way over the other agent
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The Two-dimensional view adds agenda control by the more powerful agent, and finally, the Three-dimensional view adds social influence
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it also encompasses being able to secure their dependence, deference, allegiance or compliance, even without needing to act and in the absence of conflict.
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the successive views move in the direction of complexity, but they are always limited by a Classical epistemology that posits disjoined, discrete agents interacting in deterministic ways across or through clear boundaries, either in accordance with or in violation of some social contract or rules.
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power is the flow of energy, matter, information, and organization throughout a complex, multi-scale system
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an agent is formed and informed by the flows of energy, information, and organizational structures of the systems within which the agent lives and functions
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Power is the weave of the fabric we are all woven into, and it is difficult, often impossible, to isolate any single thread of power and to trace it back to a single cause.
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the more open the use and sharing of information, the more important it is to clarify how we expect that information to be used
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This is a fine example of a clear, classical social contract. Independent agents agree on boundaries and behaviors between themselves
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A complex view of power and reality—my view—says, however, that Frances is already part of the Rhizo14 group and the document
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Power as flows of energy, information, and organization have already woven us together in ways that I do not know how to disentangle.
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most views of plagiarism are based on the simple view of relationships among agents and social contracts
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ole authorship is a reductionist’s fiction, a useful fiction perhaps, but perhaps becoming less useful as online, open spaces emerge
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How to behave in an open community, then, where flows of power are unavoidable and many are uncontrollable, even unknowable
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if we don’t confront this problem, then we will continue to apply the old social contracts. I don’t think those social contracts alone can address the issue
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interested in learning how this group will write this document. Like all good ethnographers, I think I can learn most by living and functioning within the group, by helping to write it. I want to define the process from the inside
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Will · The Lazy Language of Learning - 0 views
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I think Gary Stager gets it right:In the absence of a clear and publicly articulated vision for a school or district and a misguided quest for the holy grail of balance, the weeds will always kill the flowers. If you are a school leader with a coherent vision for educational progress, you must articulate your vision clearly and publicly so people will follow. Why make others guess what you want and stand for?
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The elements that comprise this Gear include:Personalized Learning Student-Centered Learning Authentic, Deeper Learning 21st Century Skills College and Career Readiness Digital Citizenship Technology Skills Anywhere, Anytime Learning
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Are students learning our stuff (curriculum) or their stuff (interests)?
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Are we more concerned with them becoming learners or learned?
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Are teachers organizing the school experience or are students building it?
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Do the technologies we give to kids transfer agency and increase freedom on the part of the student learner or do they just transfer our curriculum in digital form?
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And, importantly, what does success look like, and how are they measured?
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And these are important to ask and answer before we embark on any initiative that purports to “improve student learning.”
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not about doing things “better” but about looking at schools and classrooms and teachers fundamentally differently
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Enough About Getting Rid of 'dave': Exploring Spontaneity and the Metaphor of the Gardn... - 3 views
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But I think that Dave has just shown us that it is possible in an online environment.
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I don't always feel that way. Sometimes I feel it is a guiding hand, but after two of these rhizo things I am beginning to think of it as a shving hand in a cattle chute. The chutes only appear down, but the binaries still suggest two paths: objective/subjective, content/no content, dave/no dave and whatever the hell the other one was. This is not rhizomatic teaching.
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Dave has done a good job of modeling rhizomatic teaching
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the teacher is the gardener
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If Dave is the Gardener,then the way he weeds is to point to the weed and say, "Isn't that interesting?". Irresponsible? Unethical? Bait and switch? Not sure. Personally, I am much more drawn to Heraclitus and Voltaire. For the latter the world is in flux and idiosyncratic as can be and for the latter he has Candide say, "That is very well put, but we muct cultivate our garden." We must be our own gardeners.
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#rhizo15 needs Dave Cormier
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I have some kind of sense for it
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Enough
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Deleuze and Guattari
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we should get rid of dave
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spontaneity
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Dunno, the videos seem pretty scripted to me. He has an agenda and wants to get it out there. The community has been guided by each week's prompts, using it as a jumping off point but not really going too far from fold. I wanted to see much more rebellion and spontaneous, adhoc-osity. I tried, but no one paid me any mind. Par.
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Of course it is the gardner who decides between the weeds and “flowers”, sets the parameters of the garden, and ultimately decides who lives and who dies – but that is my next blog post.
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I agree that the gardener controls but I think it is illusory. Who plucks the gardener? Who tends the gardener? Who weeds the gardener? The gardener lives in a larger system that subsumes the garden, a larger Garden. The gardener thinks he is managing the complexity that is the garden. Fools paradise for a sock puppet?
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Spontaneity and the Metaphor of the Gardner
Communications & Society: Ethics for MOOCs: Imagination - 0 views
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Wanna do a cMOOC? | doublemirror - 5 views
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Matthias Melcher – he made it so easy to follow everyone’s blogs
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power is not due to the technology or its design, but to the actual people involved
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So, when I did DS106 as a course for the first time in 2013, life was already set up in such a way that I could give it my full attention.
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So, what was Rhizo14 setting out to create? A one of what? Stephen uses his own courses as an example
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I have a great deal of respect for Stephen, and enjoyed his talk at Vlaencia (referenced in this blog) immensely. It seemed to me though, that he was explaining a landscape rather than prescribing a recipe for a MOOC. Might it be better to examine Rhizo14 in light of what Dave Cormier says about it, rather than force it to be scrutinized through the lens of questions raised by Steven Downes' lecture? Dave Cormier at MIT "MOOCs as a selfish enterprise" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Smt8lsPU_Mo If any "making one" objective(s) existed in Rhizo14, it(they) would be very subjective. Dave says he threw a party to see if anyone would come. I certainly participated as part of my process of "becoming", but without conciously adding "...one of X". I just know by experience that by "hanging out" with groups like this, I am able to do interesting things in teaching that I had not deliberately set out to learn (and I borrow that articulation from Dave Cormier), so from time to time I keep engaging with communities and courses that interest me. Some others have expressed or evidenced more clearly defined objectives - academic research, webtool development, and building a PLN are some examples.
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I agree with you that Dave is defferent from S.D. and rhizo should be described with Dave's terms
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If my need for inclusion had been high, then I think I would have felt excluded from what some called Rhizo14FB.
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They did what humans do so well in new situations: gather in their tribes and by definition exclude those not in their tribe, or try to ‘convince’ those outside ‘it’ to join it;
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The design of Rhizo14, I have to assume, is the current state of what Dave as an educational technologist believes works for massive open online courses.
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diversity was managed out through a group dynamic that excluded what the majority did not approve
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I did not see much by way of supporting the importance of diversity in action rather than theory.
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gossiping about other participants
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but Rhizo14 as an experiment on the future of higher education as a whole is not what the originators intend
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This critique of Rhizo14 accuses it of not producing what it was not intended to produce. Seems a bit like criticizing an alligator because, while it has great hide, it makes an unsatisfactory mount since it was never intended to be a horse. I understand the author's dissatisfaction with the course. Rhizo14 neither met expectations nor satisfied any personal objectives. A dissenting opinion eloquently expressed is very valuable. The underlying tone of the post, however, carries a distinctly subjective disapproval or dismissal of anyone who has received satisfaction in their own experience in Rhizo14. The author speaks repeatedly of observing attempts to silence or marginalize those who did not buy into the opinions of the majority. Yet the author engages in a similar tactic against possible critics.
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I hope that after my comment on my blog this feeling has eased in you. I absolutely did not intend to disapprove or dismiss any individual. I disagree with some of the choices made in design and educator intervention precisely because I feel they closed down the possibility of having a space where multiple perspective could be held openly without the need for filtering through an agree/disagree frame. This led to people who we could all have learnt from leaving and I was sad about this. Also - just for clarity I was not at all dissatisfied with the course. It was set up as an experiment and I love experiments. I was dissatisfied with our human inability create more silence and space for listening and the compulsive drive to talk. Nick put it beautifully in his blog: "that kind of dialogue. It is a way of being that one has to learn, but seems to me to be integral to what we might call "deep" learnign. The word retreat is interesting, one of the first pre-requisites of that dialogue is to shut up and listen. Online you are largely characterised by the noise you make, the text you generate. Silence online transmutes to a lack of presence, and described as "lurking". Lurk has too many negative associations to be reframed. But we do have the right to remain silent! Another issue, as you observe, is that dialogue is not transactional, but online interaction does very often seem to devolve to that kind of behaviour…" http://avisodemiranda.wordpress.com/2014/02/14/marram-grass/ I chose to create the space I needed for learning and this may be meant I chose 'no intervention' when intervention may have benefitted us all. I need to take time to reflect on this. I will leave it here for now, let's see if this is a space for us to engage before I spend any more time here :)
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Mariana speaks so well but why it is so challenging to hear, I am wondering after reading these notes
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I recognise this clearly from my
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You were definitely the right kind of ‘one’ if you believed in emergence, non-linearity, poetry and art rather than theory and explanation.
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to connect with ‘old MOOC friends’ no mention of rhizomes of the metaphorical or garden variety.