+Alec Couros' simple suggestion made during an interview with the +Ed Tech Crew that everything can be a resource online.
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Reading Writing Responding: PLN, a Verb or a Noun? - 1 views
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So often we limit ourselves by seeing PLN's as something made - contained and organised - rather than something continually evolving, changing growing and adapting.
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s I have suggested previously, PLN's often form themselves organically. PLN's are rhizomic. There is no central root system. There is only one connection leading to another.
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A part of this is limiting ourselves by failing to recognise the connections in our lives and what they may have to offer.
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One way in which we restrict these connections is by deciding what it is we want to know, before we have even asked the question.
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everyone does have an opinion and something to add to the discussion. In my view, education is much better from incorporating wider range of voices and perspectives
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a PLN is that it is not something that we build, rather a PLN is something that we grow and nurture.
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There are a number of ways in which a PLN can be nurtured. This includes engaging in dialogue, posting comments, as well as sharing ideas and resources.
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the most important thing that we can do, whether it be in person or online, is to listen and simply be there
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Being connected is a mindset, a way of being and a way of doing, not something static, that is a thing done and complete
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"everything can be a resource online. By approaching resources in this way, our understanding moves away from being an actual object, lets say a textbook, to a resource as being a way of seeing something. In this sense, a resource stops being a noun, something named, ordered and categorised, and instead becomes a verb, a way of approaching something, interpreting it, questioning it. In much the same way, PLNs can be thought of in much the same way. "
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#city & other getaways - 2 views
placesalongtheway.blogspot.com/...city-other-getaways.html
places rhizo14 rhizome urban rhizome cityspace spatial metaphor
shared by Vanessa Vaile on 20 Jan 14
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Communications & Society: Prepositions as the Rhizomatic Heart of Writing - 0 views
idst-2215.blogspot.com/...ns-as-rhizomatic-heart-of.html
communications rhizo14 rhizomatic learning blog-post prepositions syntax language use autoethnography
shared by Vanessa Vaile on 05 Sep 14
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conversation between Bruno Latour and Michel Serres in Conversations on Science, Culture, and Time (1995), in which Serres talks about his "'philosophy of prepositions'-
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I had an intuition that prepositions, and prepositional-like elements, might be the linguistic engines that power the rhizome in language.
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Terry Elliot wrote a post GOODBYE, CLASSROOM. HELLO, CONNECTION JUKEBOX. that claims we are all "a magnificent and unique filter for the world
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Then, two people mentioned their attention shifting from nouns to verbs, Frances Bell in a comment on Maha Bali's wonderful post Network vs community – cc #rhizo14 autoethnog and Aaron Davis's post PLN, a Verb or a Noun?
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They could mean multiple things at the same time. They violate Aristotle's principle of the excluded third.
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"I never expected to be writing about prepositions, but it's the approach I've decided to take with the Rhizo14 auto-ethnography, so I want to sketch what I think I'm doing and why and how I'm doing it. This is a preliminary sketch, so expect abrupt turns of the page and new, emergent directions. In rhizomatic terms, expect lots of deterritorializations and reterritorializations. If you've ever heard the ruffle and rush of a covey of quail scattering in the cold, steel-blue dawn, then you're ready. I became interested in the rhizomatic potential of prepositions after reading the conversation between Bruno Latour and Michel Serres in Conversations on Science, Culture, and Time (1995), in which Serres talks about his "'philosophy of prepositions'--an argument for considering prepositions, rather than the conventionally emphasized verbs and substantives, as the linguistic keys to understanding human interactions." "
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Rhizomatic Education : Community as Curriculum | Dave's Educational Blog - 7 views
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Knowledge as negotiation
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The rhizome metaphor, which represents a critical leap in coping with the loss of a canon against which to compare, judge, and value knowledge, may be particularly apt as a model for disciplines on the bleeding edge where the canon is fluid and knowledge is a moving target.
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clear definition of the word "knowledge" is difficult
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The definition of knowledge is considered 'key' to the search for shared understanding. The more I read that sentence, the more it becomes the worm Ourboros. If it's a key, then the there is a locked something behind it. In litcrit this has been a fiercely fought battle. Some say it unlocks the power relationships undergirding any society, some say it unlocks the mysteries in the knowers themselves. Some say, fuck it and let's just look at the shiny things inside the vault with no further intent. Yes, it is difficult.
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simply another part of the way things are"
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I believe that one of the functions of theory is to reveal our cognitive blindspots. This they very much do while at the same time creating new blindspots that arise from the use of the 'tools' of the new theory. Any new system of knowledge exposes the assumptions of the the old system. For example, awareness meditation reveals the blindspot of categorization and differentiation, but the Buddha realized that say focusing on the breath is like pointing at the moon, just another step along the path toward no-mind. Mind and knowing is the problem.
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Horton and Freire
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The expert translation of data into verified knowledge is the central process guiding traditional curriculum development.
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I am quite taken by the word 'translation' here. I think the metaphor of translation is central to rhizomatic learning as we are always connecting and sharing information that then gets translated into knowledge (actionable knowing).
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Experts are not to be trusted anymore, they work for big companies, their translation is skewed.
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no community can live a healthy life if it is nourished only on such old marrowless truths.
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a negotiation (Farrell 2001)
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social contructivist and connectivist
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(Cormier 2008).
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Great question by Alec Couros in the comments: how do we get to a place where we are really and truly decentralized, and will this make the difference?
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I don't think the decentralized rhizome has reached a tipping point society wide, but perhaps we can play at the rhizomatic game for this short few weeks and see what it might mean to live in this world that may or may not be emerging.
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Information is the foundation of knowledge.
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If a given bit of information is recognized as useful to the community or proves itself able to do something, it can be counted as knowledge.
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the prestige of a thousand-year history,
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all over this history the prestige has been attacked. Prestige and knowledge are to be separated, so many experts were proven false and wrong.
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It's a loaded term, for sure, because those who call themselves experts are often the ones in power, and with books and writers to back them up. Is the Internet changing this paradigm? Not yet. Not yet.
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fluid, transitory conception of knowledge
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rhizome.
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The explosion of freely available sources of information has helped drive rapid expansion in the accessibility of the canon and in the range of knowledge available to learners.
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In the rhizomatic model of learning, curriculum is not driven by predefined inputs from experts; it is constructed and negotiated in real time by the contributions of those engaged in the learning process.
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The living curriculum of an active community is a map
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The cartography of learning. I am always intrigued by how this plays out, if done successfully. Most of the curriculum mapping I have done ... I would not call them maps. They are just plot lines going nowhere, it often seems. But the idea of a map continues to intrigue me.
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I know D&G speak of a map as opposed to a tracing. I struggle with understanding this. The best I can come up with is the idea that a map gives possibilities for exploration, as opposed to a photo which declares what exists. This leaves me wondering about sites like Lino and Pinterest. Might they function as a map of one's exploration too, rather than just a collection of discoveries.
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Knowledge seekers in cutting-edge fields are increasingly finding that ongoing appraisal of new developments is most effectively achieved through the participatory and negotiated experience of rhizomatic community engagement. Through involvement in multiple communities where new information is being assimilated and tested, educators can begin to apprehend the moving target that is knowledge in the modern learning environment.
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we see as our goal the co-construction of those secret connections as a collaborative effort
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the conversion of information to knowledge
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members of several communities—acting as core members in some, carrying more weight and engaging more extensively in the discussion, while offering more casual contributions in others
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students had the opportunity to enter the community themselves and impact the shape of its curriculum
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Sharing power - deconstructing the tradtional power structures of the educational system. Did this recursion result in "watering down" the curriculum? From what I recall of Dave's story, the students put in extra effort instead. Like me, they had difficulty in knowing when to quit, the exploration was so rewarding.
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if knowledge is to be negotiated socially
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Stephen Downes (http://www.downes.ca/post/61209 and elsewhere) argues against socially "constructed" knowledge, saying instead that knowledge is recognized. Cormier's "negotiated socially" fits nicely.
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the expert is the power. No resistance is tolerated, because who knows better than the expert? But curriculum is not only made by experts, pressure groups do influence curriculum, hypes and politics do either. Here is the reason for cheating.
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Recommended by Telli01 in Vialogues conversation https://vialogues.com/vialogues/play/13001 as good intro to Dave's work on rhizomatic ed
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Rhizomatic learning, definitions and cheating | Jenny Connected - 0 views
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He believes that cheating is a structure in which the teacher has decided what is true or not true and that this disempowers learners. It is not about stealing people’s stuff – but is about finding your own path – creating your own map. For him this is rhizomatic learning.
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I don’t think we can just cut ‘ethics’ out of our thinking about rhizomatic learning, by saying – Yes OK, there is this thing about ethics and dishonesty associated with cheating, but we are not going to consider it in relation to our discussions about rhizomatic learning.
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Communications & Society: Sliding Out through Rhizo14 - 1 views
idst-2215.blogspot.ca/...iding-out-through-rhizo14.html
blog-post rhizo14 rhizomatic learner community boundaries #rhizo14
shared by Vanessa Vaile on 26 May 14
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from the blog support ingKeith Hamon's explorations of the rhizome. "I'm sliding outwards, across the boundaries and just in time. One of the most important results of Rhizo14 for me has been my connection to educational thinkers outside of North America and Western Europe, the West. In a series of articles for Hybrid Pedagogy, Maha Bali (Egypt) and Shyam Sharma (originally Nepal, now in New York, USA) tackle the issue of working with and speaking to the privileged West from a non-Western context. I had an epiphany when I read that Westerners and non-Westerners "do not talk the same language." I think Maha and Shyam are correct. We don't. Even the way I just wrote that-Westerners and non-Westerners-privileges the West, makes the West the touchstone, renders everything else as Other. I don't do it on purpose, but I do it none-the-less. "
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from the blog support ingKeith Hamon's explorations of the rhizome. "I'm sliding outwards, across the boundaries and just in time. One of the most important results of Rhizo14 for me has been my connection to educational thinkers outside of North America and Western Europe, the West. In a series of articles for Hybrid Pedagogy, Maha Bali (Egypt) and Shyam Sharma (originally Nepal, now in New York, USA) tackle the issue of working with and speaking to the privileged West from a non-Western context. I had an epiphany when I read that Westerners and non-Westerners "do not talk the same language." I think Maha and Shyam are correct. We don't. Even the way I just wrote that-Westerners and non-Westerners-privileges the West, makes the West the touchstone, renders everything else as Other. I don't do it on purpose, but I do it none-the-less. "
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digi-flânerie | discovering the world-as-text - 1 views
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"We all practice daily curation that is more or less creative. In the instant of clicking on a link, you forge a connection. As you rifle through your feed-loads, snatching up the most appetizing headlines, you cause collisions. You select a bit of content out of a boundless pile, scanning or storing it for later, and you recover or reframe value. If you choose to share what you've found, you provide commentary and context. In these automated ways, habits of curation create your online identity."
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"We all practice daily curation that is more or less creative. In the instant of clicking on a link, you forge a connection. As you rifle through your feed-loads, snatching up the most appetizing headlines, you cause collisions. You select a bit of content out of a boundless pile, scanning or storing it for later, and you recover or reframe value. If you choose to share what you've found, you provide commentary and context. In these automated ways, habits of curation create your online identity."
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The literature on CAE (Collaborative Autoethnography) Reflecting Allowed | Reflecting A... - 0 views
blog.mahabali.me/...-collaborative-autoethnography
collaborative autoethnography ethnography rhizo14 rhizomatic learning blog-post
shared by Vanessa Vaile on 30 Aug 14
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Disclaimer: I’m not a methodological purist, I’m an omnivore & a quilt-maker. I don’t even think ethnography believes in methodological purity; the researcher is the instrument even more so if it’s auto
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I’m interested in what didn’t work. But I am also interested in what did work, and for whom.
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this knowledge to help influence future designers of connected courses by highlighting the participant experience
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Geist-Martin et al cite Ellis (2004, p. 30) on autoethnography, and it captures how I feel about this approach
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“The goal is to practice an artful, poetic, and empathic social science in which readers can keep in their minds and feel in their bodies the complexities of concrete moments of lived experience”
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OR a type that focuses on the ethnography part (more analytical, relating one’s own experiences to the wider culture)
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I *think* in #rhizo14 we’re attempting something closer to the latter, but what we have at the moment is closer to the former.
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Autoethnography needs to “use personal stories as windows to the world, through which we interpret how their selves are connected to their sociocultural contexts and how the contexts give meanings to their experiences and perspectives” (Chang et al, p. 18-19).
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Geist-Martin et al’s & Chang et al’s critiques of their own process – here are some parts I wanted to highlight:
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They mention how social activities they participated in, in each other’s lives, influenced how they wrote together
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They talk about community-building that occurs because of the collaboration on the autoethnography itself
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They raise ethical issues about how personal narratives actually refer to people outside the narrative itself and the ethics of such story-telling that will get published and scrutinized
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Clearly, doing autoethnography collaboratively is meant to diversify the viewpoints on a topic, making the interpretation richer and more complex than just one person’s autoethnography. It also, of course, makes it more complicated to do. Easier to start than to finish
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the more “critically dialogic” work is, the more it tends towards an analytic/ethnographic rather than evocative/biographical type of research
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it makes sense to do evocative research on emotionally sensitive topics, where over-analyzing it might actually lose the essence of what is being researched
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for tales of abuse, illness, etc., but not for #rhizo14 which is less of an emotionally taxing thing to talk about
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Chang et al call it an “iterative process”), there’s data collection at the beginning (which can keep happening as gaps are found via group negotiation); there’s data analysis and interpretation (where we seem to be at – and I think that might raise areas of gaps to go find data about or to re-write our narratives about – will explain later); and of course writing.
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what matters is that I can basically do whatever I want, call it CAE, and set my own criteria for rigor I’m only half-kidding.
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CAE as an emerging research practice should not be limited to a particular approach or style of representation
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“CAE offers us a scholarly space to hold up mirrors to each other in communal self-interrogation and to explore our subjectivity in the company of one another”
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“This kind of collaborative meaning-making requires that each team members be willing to be vulnerable and open with co-researchers in order to enable the deeper analysis and interrogation that enriches the final product”
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Ethics & confidentiality (this prob deserves a post on its own, but I’ll just give it a section here for now)
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Authors ask if CAE needs to go through IRB? Ours went through IRB. Not sure if they really understood the extent of what we were doing, but they approved it.
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The biggest ethical issue I see is that when only indirectly reference others, we may be broaching on their confidentiality
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We also need to be clear on who gets access to the data after we write our “report”, and how they can use it
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We as individual autoethnographers also need to recognize the need to protect ourselves – how much are we revealing about ourselves and is it OK that all of that becomes open to public scrutiny as we publish it?
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The incident over the use of our data during #et4online by Jen Ross and Amy Collier was a case in point – it is not that simple.
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I’ll just come back to one MAIN point that’s running through my mind (well, points, plural, but they are all related):
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How do we incorporate the views of people who wrote narratives in the autoethnog but who are not part of the team currently analyzing the data?
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CAE implies that only the authors’ stories are told. Now the authors could react to stuff that happened by and with other people, but there are ethical issues in getting to deep with that
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Can we use some of the other data in the narratives DIFFERENTLY? So not as autoethnog, but as narratives
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The inherent “connectdness” of it all makes it almost paralyzing to imagine how we can tell our own stories (6-7 of us) without either implicating others, or needing to reference others
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I usually do ethnography by using any and all data I can; this would mean referencing public blogs, etc.
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I keep circling back to the same thing, right? There power questions, there are questions of who can tell whose story? There are multiple “others” in the “we” of autoethnography, and what do we do by telling our story and leaving out theirs?
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What about the people who didn’t even blog visibly or at all, and so have no easy “trace” to find even if we wanted to incorporate their views?
Welcome to the Boundaries and Limits of Networked and Connected Learning Hot Seat discu... - 3 views
forum.networkedlearning.net/...259
limits networked connected learning discussion education conference
shared by Maha Abdelmoneim on 14 Nov 15
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The Power of Networks-Video + Links #rhizo14 - 0 views
thenewfacultymajority.blogspot.com/...tworksvideo-links-rhizo14.html
networks video power links Deleuze network theory rhizome Manual Lima
shared by Vanessa Vaile on 18 Jan 14
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Three Pounds of Neurons | Virtually Foolproof - 2 views
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Independence as Essential for Lifelong Learning | Reflecting Allowed - 1 views
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This might be the “role” of the teacher here – to make learners realize they are better off becoming more independent.
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I don’t know how to foster this, or if it is possible.
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I bet you do know how to foster this. In social capital theory they describe two ways of connecting that we all use--bridging (across groups) and bonding (within groups). All of this is part of a larger tool-reciprocation.
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In fact annotating and sharing this is a way to reinforce both your independent stance and your interdependent connections. It is like Mrs. Malaprop discovered: she has been speaking dialogue here entire life. I think we all are doing this dance of independence and interdependence all the time.
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my attempts to let them
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(with my help at first,
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Even worse control because it becomes internalized,
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None of the issues of pre-requisites and order of learning and institutional imperatives matters if we put the power in the heart of the learner. After that 'engine' is started all of the world becomes fuel whether it is credentialing, certification, accrediting--it doesn't matter. It is all grist for each unique learning soul to turn into her or his own bread.
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these questions an “A” for “answering”
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You could argue he system is flawed, its structures non-conducive to learning,
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PDF.js viewe - 1 views
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Rhizomatic research cultures The current research climate in Australian universities is one in which projects are increasingly conceived as multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary, extradisciplinary, even 'wicked' (Brown, Harris & Russell 2010). A recent lead article in Campus Review (Bennett 2012) takes this as a critical shift in the academy that urgently requires attention. One effect of this increasingly interdisciplinary focus is that the traditional boundaries between disciplines seem to be blurring. Within this, the people working on these projects are also increasingly diverse, coming together from non‐traditional pathways, from different disciplinary backgrounds, and from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds, so that distinctions between local and global also seem to be blurring. One way to understand these conditions might be through the rhizomatic knowledge structures described by Deleuze & Guattari (Deleuze & Guattari 1988): perhaps it would be useful to think about this research climate as a kind of rhizomatic academic network that is characterised by connection, heterogeneity and multiplicity.
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we don't need no thought control: the deep grammar of schooling | the theoryblog - 0 views
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a constant filtering that exhausts us
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desire for trusted channels
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those channels tend to be corporate or institutional hierarchies
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what would (or do) YOU do in a classroom full of people with devices
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I teach a small adult literacy class and provide connected devices for each of them. I encourage them to use social media, help them to create Google and Facebook accounts if they don't have one. At least they are reading and writing authentically if not gramatically. Yes, it is a distraction, especially when I think we need some whole-class activity. I have not found THE ANSWER to balancing power and independence. But we have some wonderfully illuninating moments. See my blogpost about my own serendipitous encounter with Pink Floyd http://www.wayupnorth.ca/blog/2013/01/14/something-weird/
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without new ways to conceptualize the work of learning, we end up replicating top-down power and knowledge structures
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but our culture is not giving us the meta-literacies to recognize and value and utilize those skills
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The Perils of Standardized Testing: 6 Ways It Harms Learning - InformED - 0 views
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"Don't the standards of the classroom prepare us for the standards of the real world?" Thoughtful article making the real world and education connection/ Google Oxygen Study seems real breakthrough. Cathy Davidson says it was for her and it have made big difference in her teaching for more "productive, happily socially-engaged lives."
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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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Careertography - 1 views
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decentralise people’s attention and (interestingly) to allow multiple viewpoints (even disagreements)
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we need to think of new ways to engage with students and make them active participants in their career thinking.
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we need to break through this cultural baggage earlier. Changing our own culture in order to allow student voices to have an equal value to our own could be part of this.
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In a recent post about learning spaces, Peter Bryant makes the point that learning occurs where people happen to be
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help students make their own connections, create their own career knowledge and take their own lines of flight
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In a rhizomatic careers centre, however, there should be a way for students to add their own knowledge to these. Interactive workshops/discussions in the centre (rather than in a separate space) based around the displays? Giving space for students to add their own observations and comments within the display or to create their own? In this sense, the displays need to ask questions rather than present facts. They should stimulate discussion.
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The Essence of Peopling - 4 views
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“People”
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“peopling”
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The first part of this essay is an account of innermost peopling – the social, self-conscious nature of human cognition. The second part of this essay moves outward, connecting cognition to the rituals and social information flows that make up the most important parts of our environment.
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In Others in Mind: The Social Origins of Self-Consciousness (one of my favorite books of all time), Philippe Rochat presents a social model of human cognition,
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Rochat, in contrast, models human cognition as fundamentally social in nature. Each person learns to be aware of himself – is constrained toward self-consciousness – by other people being aware of him. He learns to manage his image in the minds of others, and finds himself reflected, as in a mirror, through the interface of language and non-verbal communication.
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infinite recursion
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We see ourselves through the constraining influences of other people, through the 'peopling' of others. Others people us. It is a limited recursion. I think this has significance in #rhizo15. How? We are all seeing ourselves through the eyes of others. How accurate is that subjective view? Sometimes it is off by degrees of magnitude. For example, I see some pretty effusive praise for stuff that by its nature is half-baked. Yes, some is very good for a first draft, but most goes little past the initial draft and into further revision. I expect further recursion, further refinement through reciprocal action, sometimes I get it, mostly I don't. Part of me take no offense while another part is deeply disturbed that the responses I get are so cursory. And the cursory nature of most responses, the desultory considerations of others we have come to respect become the default. And, worse, they become internalized as the default mutual mental modeling. Shallow of necessity, quick by force of circumstance, and a bare reciprocal exigency.
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How much of that is on other people? How much of it is on us? How inviting are we to gather up ideas, particularly those who challenge our thinking? That "infinite" word in there .. that's a lot of recursive thinking going back and forth, toppling on itself ...
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The self is not unitary and separate from others; peopling occurs in the context of mutual-mental-modeling relationships, which continue to affect each person when he is alone.
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Each person’s self is spread out among many people, simulated in all their brains at varying levels of granularity. And each person has a different “self” for each one of the people he knows, and a different self for every social context.
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Therefore, we have different subjective reflections from among different folk. Each reflection is a unique self simulated by another's mind. The same is true for social context. We have a Rhizo15 self created by our Rhizo15 folk. My question here is whether it is in any way an objective measure and does that matter? Should any of us care about the simulations of others? Should we rebel and subvert these simulacra because they are not 'us'? It is hard to argue for this position simply because this acceptance of the peopling of others seems quite natural. It is natural for us to consider this subjective and recursive view from others as the real deal. Or is it just the default view? Can we generate another way toward identity that is a balance between outer and inner subjectivity?
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The self at work is different from the self at home with close friends, or in bed with a spouse. And none of these are the “true self” – rather, the self exists in all these, and in the transitions between them. There can never be one single, public self; to collapse all these multiple selves together would be akin to social death.
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Mentally maintaining one’s identity in relation to others, including one’s accurate social status and relationships in each case, is the core task of being human.
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a huge portion of our internal cognitive machinery, of which we are not normally aware, is concerned with the ordinary function of maintaining one’s own identity and that of others
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Baumeister and Masicampo posit that interfacing between identities – both within a single mind, and between minds – is the purpose of conscious thought (Conscious Thought Is for Facilitating Social and Cultural Interactions: How Mental Simulations Serve the Animal–Culture Interface). And just as Rochat proposes that we are “constrained toward consciousness” by others, Kevin Simler says that we “infect” each other with personhood.
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Three views of this social model of cognition: 1. Baumeister and Masicampo: conscious thought is the transport mechanism for moving between inner identity and outer identity. 2.Rochat: we become conscious because of others, 'constrained by folk' in order to be. 3. Simler: we infect each other with consciousness through the interaction of identity.
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There is a profound irreconcilability or dissonance between first-and third-person perspectives on the self once objectified and valued. This dissonance shapes behaviors in crucial ways, as individuals try to reconcile their own and others’ putative representations about them. These two representational systems are always at some odds or in conflict, always in need of readjustment. It is so because these systems are open, and they do not share the same informational resources: direct, permanent, and embodied for the first-person perspective on the self; indirect, more fleeting, and disembodied for the third-person perspective on the self. A main property of this dissonance is that it tends to feed into itself and can reach overwhelming proportions in the life of individuals. More often than not, this dissonance is a major struggle, expressed in the nuisance of self-conscious behaviors that hinder creativity and the smooth “flow” of interpersonal exchanges. Others in Mind, p. 41
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People are able to accomplish this feat of mutual simulation by use of two tools: language and ritual. Ritual allows for the communication of information that language can’t convey – hard-to-fake costly signals of commitment, dependability, harmoniousness, and cooperative intent.
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If humans are somehow calibrated to expect a constant flow of social information, then the sparseness of ritual and social participation in modern environments might trigger a cascade of rumination.
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A very simple example is greetings. “Greeting everyone you see” is a candidate for a ritual universal, a part of the ritual atmosphere that displays good fit with peopling
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(with some caveats).
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Ritual 2:"Serene Social Sloth Sunday, a made-up internet holiday in which we avoid posting "outrage porn"
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Ritual 4: Share natural spaces through YouTube, make part of any group meeting e.g. Hangout.
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Ritual 5: "With joy and zest, publicly celebrate milestones and recurring events. Affirming shared history, we nourish community, crystallize a sense of accomplishment, and build group identity by unifying our stories and common goals. Can be planned and ritualized, or as spontaneous as a group cheer." Celebrate | Group Works. (n.d.). Retrieved April 19, 2015, from http://groupworksdeck.org/patterns/Celebrate
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Ritual 6: Feedforward with the imagination. In other words project your self into the future and 'recall' all that 'happened' from the beginning of #rhizo15. In a way I think this defines what rhizomatic learning is. Each of us creates identity for the group by being who we are with the voices we have. Why not imagine that forth along with others instead of relying solely upon the weekly proddings of one person identified as 'teacher/leader'. Feedforwardings would allow us to compare rhizomatic identities. and from there decide where we might go as a group as well as individually.
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Information about the self from the first-person perspective tends to be inflated and self-aggrandizing; information about the self from the third-person perspective, projected into the minds of others, tends to be deflated and self-deprecatory.
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A freeway is useful for getting from place to place, but it’s not a place to merely exist in the moment.
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“we’re here to fart around together.”
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In conclusion, drink tea, together with your friends; pay attention to the tea, and to your friends, and pay attention to your friends paying attention to the tea. Therein lies the meaning of life.