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Jaap Bosman

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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    about research culture
Vanessa Vaile

Communications & Society: Prepositions as the Rhizomatic Heart of Writing - 0 views

  • conversation between Bruno Latour and Michel Serres in Conversations on Science, Culture, and Time (1995), in which Serres talks about his "'philosophy of prepositions'-
  • linguistic keys to understanding human interactions."
  • independently code the entries in the auto-ethnography, and then compare our codings
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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.
  • rhizomes are first about connections
  • At its deepest level, the rhizome itself is all possible and potential connections
  • Language is one of the core tools we use to map our worlds and to create patterns
  • prepositions as stage directors
  • Simon Ensor sent me an article about ecological psychology on Wikipedia.
  • Terry Elliot wrote a post GOODBYE, CLASSROOM. HELLO, CONNECTION JUKEBOX. that claims we are all "a magnificent and unique filter for the world
  • 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?
  • Simon Ensor writes in his post Spacetimecontinuum
  • In more prosaic terms: how do prepositions drive the emergence of a sentence into meaning?
  • cognitive linguistics
  • George Lakoff
  • polysemy (many possible meanings for a given word)
  • They could mean multiple things at the same time. They violate Aristotle's principle of the excluded third.
  • This is very much like elementary particles
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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." "
Jaap Bosman

Australian Humanities Review: Deleuze and the Internet by Ian Buchanan - 0 views

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    Is the Internet a rhizome? All the straws in the wind say 'yes' it is. Whereas mechanical machines are inserted into hierarchically organised social systems, obeying and enhancing this type of structure, the Internet is ruled by no one and is open to expansion or addition at anyone's whim as long as its communication protocols are followed. This contrast was anticipated theoretically by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari especially in A Thousand Plateaus (1980), in which they distinguished between arboreal and rhizomic cultural forms. The former is stable, centred, hierarchical; the latter is nomadic, multiple, decentred - a fitting depiction of the difference between a hydroelectric plant and the Internet.26
Cris Crissman

Identities -- TED Radio Hour : NPR - 0 views

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    "Imagination is bigger than identity." --- Elif Shafak, novelist Look at identity and cultural belonging. Connection to community learning?
Scott Johnson

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..."
Kevin Hodgson

Careertography - 1 views

  • decentralise people’s attention and (interestingly) to allow multiple viewpoints (even disagreements)
  • In a rhizomatic museum, visitors can add meaning to exhibitions
  • 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.
  • moving out of our own space to meet students in theirs. The rhizome cannot be contained
  • In a recent post about learning spaces, Peter Bryant makes the point that learning occurs where people happen to be
  • Wherever “people congregate and share”
  • shift from a transactional to connections model
  • help students make their own connections, create their own career knowledge and take their own lines of flight
  • 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.
    • Kevin Hodgson
       
      This would be more inclusive, more interactive, more meaningful, right?
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    "What would a rhizomatic careers centre look like?"
Kevin Hodgson

The Essence of Peopling - 4 views

  • “People”
    • Terry Elliott
       
      To talk about  "people" is to objectify and alienate. Making nouns of anything is a way to separate them from the world.
  • “peopling”
    • Terry Elliott
       
      "Peopling" on the other hand is about human folk connecting to the world--subjectifying and unshackling the word.
    • Kevin Hodgson
       
      to people?
  • 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,
    • Terry Elliott
       
      Social model of human knowings v. Cartesian knowing
  • 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.
    • Terry Elliott
       
      We learn to become self-aware, we are "constrained" toward that goal by other folk.  Other folk are our first mirrors through non-verbal then oral and then written "interfaces".
  • infinite recursion
  • infinite recursion
    • Terry Elliott
       
      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.  
    • Kevin Hodgson
       
      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 ...
  • 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.
  • 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.
    • Terry Elliott
       
      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?
  • 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.
    • Terry Elliott
       
      We are many selves.  No one reflection gets them all not even our own. Especially not our own.
    • Kevin Hodgson
       
      This reminds me of how to think of our students -- of their lives outside of our classroom,our building ... what literacies are authentic for them?
  • 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.
    • Terry Elliott
       
      Powerful assertion here.  And the proof is in asking what happens when we do not maintain that identity.
  • 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
    • Terry Elliott
       
      I wonder how much of our cognitive load is spent maintaining (breaking down and building up) identity, the metabolism of identity?
  • 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.
    • Terry Elliott
       
      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.
  • 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
    • Terry Elliott
       
      I have never seen the problem of identity so succinctly put.  And it explains why there is and can be no permanent solution to the conflict here except perhaps the meditative one of observing the breath and making that identity.
  • 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.
    • Terry Elliott
       
      So how do we play this infinite game of mutually modelling each other's identities to each the other? Language and ritual Language for the easy stuff and ritual for the hard stuff. So what are the #rhizo15 rituals?
  • 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.
    • Terry Elliott
       
      The sparseness of ritual environment in rhizo15 is very painful to me.  The sparseness of feedback from language is just as painful, but the lack of ritual makes it even more so.  Dreadfully more so.  In fact I am on the edge of withdrawing all the time.  I think it is the ritual that will save me.
    • Terry Elliott
       
      So bring on the salve of ritual to rhizo15.
  • 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
    • Terry Elliott
       
      Ritual 1: greeting everyone, every day.
  • (with some caveats).
    • Terry Elliott
       
      Ritual 2:"Serene Social Sloth Sunday, a made-up internet holiday in which we avoid posting "outrage porn" 
    • Terry Elliott
       
      Ritual 3: Breaking Bread Together
    • Terry Elliott
       
      Ritual 4:  Share natural spaces through YouTube, make part of any group meeting e.g. Hangout.  
    • Terry Elliott
       
      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
    • Terry Elliott
       
      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.
  • 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.
    • Kevin Hodgson
       
      Intriguing ...
  • A freeway is useful for getting from place to place, but it’s not a place to merely exist in the moment.
    • Kevin Hodgson
       
      Interesting, since the "internet highway" was an early metaphor for technology and online elements .. and now we are working on ways to slow down, be more reflective, plant flowers along the ugly underpasses of the freeway
  • “we’re here to fart around together.”
    • Kevin Hodgson
       
      Is this a motto of Rhizomatic Learning communities? Ha
  • 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.
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    There are also linguistic differences...for example, the verb vs noun thing does not work the same in Spanish (and perhaps to some extent in other Romance languages as in English, where verbs are the power words. Syntax and the role of particles-prefixes are other factors.
Vanessa Vaile

The literature on CAE (Collaborative Autoethnography) Reflecting Allowed | Reflecting A... - 0 views

  • collaborative autoethnography
  • Mainly this article (Geist-Martin et al) and this book (Chang et al)
  • plans to read this open access book on (non-collaborative) autoethnography
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  • open access article by Ellis et al on autoethnography (only skimmed it)
  • 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
  • So what was MY question?
  • how are people experiencing rhizo14?
  • I am interested in sub-topics of making connections and building community]
  • Why am I interested?
  • I would like to understand how other experienced this MOOC
  • it’s important to note the diverse ways in which the course was perceived by different people
  • I’m interested in what didn’t work. But I am also interested in what did work, and for whom.
  • this knowledge to help influence future designers of connected courses by highlighting the participant experience
  • it will always be partial
  • Geist-Martin et al cite Ellis (2004, p. 30) on autoethnography, and it captures how I feel about this approach
  • “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”
  • collaborative autoethnography rejects the traditional approach of disembodied academic research
  • came out of Chang et al is that there are three broad types of autoethnography
  • the type that emphasizes the auto (closer to autobiography, more narrative)
  • OR a type that focuses on the ethnography part (more analytical, relating one’s own experiences to the wider culture)
  • but any AE contains elements of both
  • I *think* in #rhizo14 we’re attempting something closer to the latter, but what we have at the moment is closer to the former.
  • the practice needs to move beyond mere storytelling in order to be research
  • 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).
  • Geist-Martin et al’s & Chang et al’s critiques of their own process – here are some parts I wanted to highlight:
  • They looked for themes across their stories
  • They helped each other clarify certain aspects of each other’s stories
  • They critiqued and recognized ways in which their stories reproduced cultural stereotypes
  • They struggled with how to “cut” parts of their stories in order to make this paper
  • They mention how social activities they participated in, in each other’s lives, influenced how they wrote together
  • They talk about community-building that occurs because of the collaboration on the autoethnography itself
  • 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
  • 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
  • Chang et al mention 4 key dimensions of CAE:
  • Self-focused
  • Context-conscious
  • Researcher-visible
  • Critically dialogic
  • the more “critically dialogic”  work is, the more it tends towards an analytic/ethnographic rather than evocative/biographical type of research
  • 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
  • for tales of abuse, illness, etc., but not for #rhizo14 which is less of an emotionally taxing thing to talk about
  • Some more stuff about CAE:
  • Alternation between solo and group work
  • This part in Chang et al made me laugh because of its vagueness:
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • CAE as an emerging research practice should not be limited to a particular approach or style of representation
  • The authors suggest the following benefits of CAE  (p. 25):
  • collective exploration of researcher subjectivity
  • power-sharing among researcher-participants
  • efficiency an enrichment in the research process
  • deeper learning about self and other
  • community-building
  • this quote (p. 26):
  • “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”
  • this quote (p. 28):
  • “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”
  • the challenges of CAE:
  • Risk of incomplete trust to lead to premature consensus-building that compromises the data
  • Apparently quite difficult to do at a distance because of degree of closeness needed
  • Interdependency of research efforts
  • Mutlivocality can make each researcher influenced by the voices of others
  • Team effort
  • Ethics & confidentiality (this prob deserves a post on its own, but I’ll just give it a section here for now)
  • Ethics
  • 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.
  • The biggest ethical issue I see is that when only indirectly reference others, we may be broaching on their confidentiality
  • We also need to be clear on who gets  access to the data after we write our “report”, and how they can use it
  • 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?
  • 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.
  • Ch 5 of that book about the data analysis side of things
  • emerging coding approach
  • I’ll just come back to one MAIN point that’s running through my mind (well, points, plural, but they are all related):
  • Can we get multiple autoethnogs out of this
  • 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?
  • 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
  • Can we use some of the other data in the narratives DIFFERENTLY? So not as autoethnog, but as narratives
  • 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
  • I usually do ethnography by using any and all data I can; this would mean referencing public blogs, etc.
  • 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?
  • 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?
Jaap Bosman

Testing For Learning, Not Assessment : 13.7: Cosmos And Culture : NPR - 0 views

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    cheating as a teaching strategy. Testing effect. Links to Peter Nonacs (UCLA)
wayupnorth

we don't need no thought control: the deep grammar of schooling | the theoryblog - 0 views

  • a constant filtering that exhausts us
    • wayupnorth
       
      Exhausting to be sure My filtering dilemma: To get a broad perspective I have to read more than I can budget timewise, but if I filter by Rheingold, Cormier, Downes etc, I get only that perspective.
  • desire for trusted channels
    • wayupnorth
       
      It's not that difficult picking some channels (people?) and starting there. Those will connect to other channels one begins to trust. The rhizome grows and pretty soon one is back to overload.
  • those channels tend to be corporate or institutional hierarchies
    • wayupnorth
       
      Lucky me who discovered MOOCs before our institution caught on to providing channels
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  • what would (or do) YOU do in a classroom full of people with devices
    • wayupnorth
       
      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/
  • without new ways to conceptualize the work of learning, we end up replicating top-down power and knowledge structures
  • filtering and prioritizing
  • We are skilled
  • but our culture is not giving us the meta-literacies to recognize and value and utilize those skills
  •  
    Bonnie Stewart on new ways of thinking about education
Vanessa Vaile

Jaap's FB Thread: mooc anthro research, Rhizo14 - 0 views

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    Mooc research, antrhopology study on a mooc as a tribe: new roles in the tribe; communication patterns; language used, neologisms; subgroups in the tribe; central and peripheral places; roles, rules and what ever. Might be the first anthro research on moocs and online communities ever. Participatory research, living among the natives is a accepted qualitative research method.
Vanessa Vaile

Mediated Cultures: Digital Ethnography - 2 views

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    Michael Wesch's NetVibes aggregation page: links, feeds, Padlet message wall, resources, etc for digital ethnography/webculture courses, Kansas State University. Wesch's network - aggregation page, personal and course blogs, YouTube channel, etc is (in my opinion) a rhizome ~ with the caveat that my own understanding of the term is continually shifting
Terry Elliott

Down the Rabbit Hole | Exploring Digital Culture - 0 views

  • “the reader is invited to move among plateaux in any order.”
    • Terry Elliott
       
      In the #clmooc I helped to facilitate last summer one of the principles that we reiterated in welcoming posts was that of invitation. Not just any invitation, but invitation anywhere and any time. The course/collaboration had no beginning in that all who came to it brought with them a history that powered them like an artesian well. The cMOOC has also had no end either. It still exists and is used and is bring those who are and were a part of it into other worlds like #rhizo14.
  • A rhizome has no beginning or end; it is always in the middle, between things, interbeing, intermezzo.  (Deleuze & Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus.  P. 25)
    • Terry Elliott
       
      Sometimes my familiarity with the the fact of real rhizomes saps the metaphor's usefulness. I understand that D & G are talking about power relationships, but in a way that makes no sense at all when discussing 'whole things'. There are power relationships in biological beings, but all the parts are pulling toward the imperative of surviving. So...I have been working through the uncertainty of applying this vague theoretical scaffold into the learning space of the classroom. Now that is where the idea of being always in the middle makes sense, suspended across to learners as a bridge and at the same time walking across other's bridges.
  • forever in flux.
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  • Lines of Flight:  Deleuze and Nomadic Creativity,
  • Maureen Maher
  • Knowmadic thinking is “exposing metaspaces in between each, opening new opportunities for new blends of formal, informal, non-formal and serendipitous learning. As in the Invisible learning project, we focus on educating for personal knowledge creation that cannot be measured easily.”
    • Terry Elliott
       
      As a practicing teacher working under the constraints and affordances that make modern pedagogy such an act of hypocrisy, I find that these generic observations are 'unhandy'. In fact, I get visceral with them. I get pissed off and feel a certain amount of 'how dare you'.
  • Rhizomatic Learning
    • Terry Elliott
       
      This is what I asked about last week, too. What makes learning different from rhizomatic or deep or knowmadic learning. I think the modifiers (deep, rhizomatic, knowmadic) have a purpose. They allow us to filter learning differently very like having a variety of critical stances. It is, however, like the story of the blind men and the elephant. Which description is correct? All of them--in part.
  • “how do we bring this concept of embracing uncertainty into our classrooms?”
    • Terry Elliott
       
      I tried to address this in my blog post this week: http://impedagogy.com/wp/blog/2014/02/01/hodie-quid-egisti-what-have-ye-done-a-rhizomagic-week-of-blooming-buzzing-confusion/ I don't think I used the word 'uncertainty' once in that post, but the tone is, I think, one of taking that leap.
  • the leap into the unknown is the learning process.
    • Terry Elliott
       
      It is unnatural to leap into the total darkness of the unknown. In fact I think that by definition it is impossible. Instead I think we leap into the partly known. My analogy is the Kentucky pioneer Daniel Boone. Some might say that he worked his way into virgin, unknown territory. I would say yes and no. He did blaze trails into places no Euro-American had ever been, but the territory itelf shared lots of known traits with where he had already been. For example, water flows downhill to larger streams. The sun rises in the east. And the thousand other 'knowns' that come from a lifetime of living close to ground. And, of course, he really did blaze the trails he made by walking. He emblazened trees with marks for others to follow. Now that must've been an ego trip and a half! The other half of the analogy is that we too have general knowledge that we take with us into the knowmadic life and the rhizomatic wilderness of learning. We have theoretical knowledge. I would include the whole baggage of ed school in that. But we have to dump most of that when we move into the partly known territory of deep, rhizomatic knowmadicism. You need to travel light when you are blazing the trail. You need the practical stuff in your backpack. All week and every week I will be bringing back news as I light out into the territories. I expect to get well and truly turned around on occasion, but I don't plan on backtracking much except to send back reports. Boone wasn't much good at this part, but Lewis and Clark were, but I daresay I call more on the Kentuckian than I do the Virginian. All I know is that every one who reads this could be my Sacajewia, a real guide to the undiscovered country. Amen.
Vanessa Vaile

Oral Tradition - 0 views

  •  
    Founded in 1986, the Center for Studies in Oral Tradition stands as a national and international focus for interdisciplinary research and scholarship on the world's oral traditions. Our long-term mission is to facilitate communication across disciplinary boundaries by creating linkages among specialists in different fields. Through our various activities we try to foster conversations and exchanges about oral tradition that would not otherwise take place. CSOT publications include the journal Oral Tradition (http://www.oraltradition.org/ot/, 1986-) and three series of books: the Albert Bates Lord Studies in Oral Tradition (1987-96; 17 volumes); Voices in Performance and Text (1995-97; 3 volumes); and, Poetics of Orality and Literacy (2 volumes to date; 2004-). CSOT projects include: ISSOT, International Society for Studies in Oral Tradition, http://issot.org/, and The Pathways Project, http://www.pathwaysproject.org/ Pathways
Cris Crissman

The Firestarter | Virtually Foolproof - 1 views

  •  
    Week 4 response to question about community and curriculum. I introduce the course as gift community idea after Hyde's 1983 Gift Community.
wayupnorth

The Internet and Education - OpenMind - by Neil Selwyn - 0 views

  • First, is the potential of the Internet to offer individual learners increased freedom from the physical limitations of the real world.
  • 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
  • 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.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • 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.
  • self-directed, non-institutional learning are initiatives such as the hole-in-the-wall and School in the Cloud
    • wayupnorth
       
      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?
  • 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.
    • wayupnorth
       
      really?
  • elping already engaged individuals to participate further, but doing little to widen participation or reengage those who are previously disengaged
  •  
    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.
Vanessa Vaile

Ethics and soft boundaries between Facebook groups  and other web services | ... - 0 views

  • exchange of information between open and closed spaces
  • Facebook groups can be open, closed or secret, the meanings of these being laid out in the Facebook help
  • the ‘closed’ space of Facebook, only visible to one of the 1.3 billion members of Facebook
  • ...36 more annotations...
  • Facebook is not completely open from the outside but doesn’t seem very closed
  • anyone who has the link to an open Facebook group post or comment, can share it inside or outside Facebook, and it can be opened by any Facebook (not just group) member.
  • participants who are not Facebook members are excluded from sight of posts in the Facebook group, whilst a very large number of Facebook members who have never heard of rhizo14 could check it out if you sent them the link
  • Ethical dilemmas
  • How do we behave around here?
  • The rhizo14 MOOC offers no explicit written norms, behavioural or otherwise, and the strapline for the FB group is “An attempt to create a feed for Rhizomatic Learning posts from around the web.”
  • a number of people (significantly less than the full 240 ish membership) regard the group as a semi-private backchannel
  • The implicit norms on lurking in the FB group are to some extent discernible, but the norms on other behaviours sometimes seem to be taken as read by some active members of the group.
  • Teachers and moderators can model ethical behaviour, and communities usually engage with norm-building online where misunderstanding is not uncommon. Overt moderation and norm-building activities have been generally absent from rhizo14 in general and the FB group in particular
  • What does sharing mean within and beyond the rhizo14 community?
  • A lot of sharing goes on at rhizo14, and there is a sense that openness is a value of rhizo14. The remix culture has been very evident in rhizo14, and creativity and remix
  • Communities of Practice literature and others have identified the importance of the boundary in the propagation of knowledge.  The facility for stuff and people to cross boundaries presents great opportunities, but with these come tricky questions of how we share and what we do with what is shared
  • A great set of ‘rules’ that has helped sharing is Creative Commons Licenses, not always enforceable but signifying intent in a sharing and use context
  • A dilemma presented by research data sharing is current at rhizo14 FB group, and raises, for me at any rate, some very interesting issues about how we do Open Research
  • the issue of ethics of use of open/closed data for research purposes in rhizo14 at the time it became clear that a group doing auto-ethnography, and a group of which I am a part were both doing research around rhizo14
  • The data arrangements
  • my wish not to be quoted was incompatible with the publicy of the document
  • Discussion of Agency
  • sharing our ethical stance with others can help our moral agency within a network of human and technical agents.  I am not thinking of a set of rules but rather our expectations and ethical stance that we could share with other moral agents
  • ome participants seem to assume there is a ‘common decency’ approach to the use of ‘open’ information
  • unwarranted assumption of community
  • technology as ‘moral agent’ where permissions and constraints on agency can be coded into a system
  • hard rules, hard boundaries can be explained in help pages and observed in action
  • rules can be overcome by human agency.
  • Some Tentative Conclusions
  • An important element of the digital moral agent’s backpack to complement their ethical literacy is the digital literacy of having an active understanding of the ethical and other implications of using a digital space/service for communication
  • benefits in clarifying use of information, utterances, multimedia in practice
  • the more open the use and sharing of information, the more important it is to clarify how we expect that information to be used
  • unclear use in the above extract from Help of the words
  • I would have benefited from a clearer statement of expectations and behaviours in rhizo14
  • discussion on how we behave around rhizo14
  • digital literacies are a moving target
  • communication in open spaces is tricky, we need flexible repair strategies
  • state our expectations and promote discussion of expectations within a group  as starting point, then we may be able to minimise but not eliminate problems
  • the issue of who can use the information in the auto-ethnography
  • “when you engage online in equally public settings such as on someone’s Facebook Wall, the conversation is public by default, private through effort.” (boyd, danah. 2010. “Making Sense of Privacy and Publicity.” SXSW. Austin, Texas, March 13).
  •  
    "As part of a MOOC on rhizomatic learning that performs itself in many different spaces (Facebook, P2PU, G+, Twitter and others), I am a member of an 'open' Facebook group.  It is endlessly fascinating, and has given me a lot of scope for reflection about back channels and the exchange of information between open and closed spaces. Of course, I say that as if a space could be categorised as open or closed:  it's often a lot more complicated than that, acted out by technical aspects of the space and by the agency of the people who interact there. Facebook groups can be open, closed or secret, the meanings of these being laid out in the Facebook help."
  •  
    "As part of a MOOC on rhizomatic learning that performs itself in many different spaces (Facebook, P2PU, G+, Twitter and others), I am a member of an 'open' Facebook group.  It is endlessly fascinating, and has given me a lot of scope for reflection about back channels and the exchange of information between open and closed spaces. Of course, I say that as if a space could be categorised as open or closed:  it's often a lot more complicated than that, acted out by technical aspects of the space and by the agency of the people who interact there. Facebook groups can be open, closed or secret, the meanings of these being laid out in the Facebook help."
Kevin Hodgson

Teaching Beyond Tropes: Subjective-Learning Subjugated-Objectives Subversive-Subjunctives - 5 views

  • Subjective-Learning Subjugated-Objectives Subversive-Subjunctives
    • Kevin Hodgson
       
      I am feeling a bit like this is some lost text from a Dr. Seuss book for college students.
    • Terry Elliott
       
    • Kevin Hodgson
       
      Nice
  • Subjective
    • Kevin Hodgson
       
      I am glad Susan brought this definition up. I was going to search it out. The "subjective reality" hits a nerve with me. I am thinking of not just my own bias but what I bring to the table and intend to take away from the table. I am an active participant.
  • subvert or overthrow, destroy, or undermine
    • Kevin Hodgson
       
      Pretty strong language here .. I am thinking how the remix culture might be considered subversive in this context, using a different (subjective) view to understand a learning environment.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • These include statements about one's state of mind, such as opinion, belief, purpose, intention, or desire.
    • Kevin Hodgson
       
      Thank you for this. Here is the crux of how I think about subjective thinking ... tossed into the subjunctive salad bowl. Or have I been mistaken in my own beliefs about what subjective is?
  • how our "design" is experienced by any one learner is as unique as a fingerprint, and impeded upon by the scars we have collected throughout our coarses and courses and curses.
    • Kevin Hodgson
       
      For good and for bad .... it could be that we are shaped by the positive energy and the positive experiences. I am thinking of being part of networks liked CLMOOC and DS106 and Connected Courses ... those shape my expectations of what a course should look like these days.
  • entryway into possibility.
    • Kevin Hodgson
       
      Great phrase embedded in a deep paragraph .... We should get this tattooed on our web/head.
  • ridden like a wild bronco while you laugh maniacally.
    • Kevin Hodgson
       
      I am tempted to make a comic with this line .... Yeehaw!
  • Click here for your summative assessment. 
    • Kevin Hodgson
       
      OMG. I had a ball with this. I think I failed. I think I passed. I think I succeeded. I think I thought .... "Thank God, I have people like Susan to lead me astray."
    • Kevin Hodgson
       
      This line between subjective and objective is both intriguing and confusing (for me, anyway). This post by Susan really helped clarify some of the ideas. My annotations are my way of interacting with her text.
  • Revised Bloom's Taxonomy
  •  
    Kevin, I've been doing the subjective learning thing on my own for a very, very long time. Not coming to Vance Steven's multiliteracies, connectivist moocs or any open online courses as a "practicing" academic or educator (except in free range, heutagogical sense), I start with making my own subjectivity alignment -- if only to feel at least somewhat less the total outlier. Besides, isn't all learning is idiosyncratic and subjective?
Terry Elliott

touches of sense...: Doodling in Latin... - 1 views

  • I just couldn't be bothered.
    • Terry Elliott
       
      I was bothered. I never rose above it.  I stepped outside of it as soon as I finally understood my abuser.
  • I am the one at the back that the teacher gives stern looks to.
    • Terry Elliott
       
      I was a good boy.  I liked school.  I memorized my catechism.  I pleased my parents and my teachers.
  • I am the archetypal distracted student.
    • Terry Elliott
       
      I paid attention.
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • This class has got nothing to do with me.
    • Terry Elliott
       
      I know better.  You are obsessed with the rhizomatic meme.  I am, too. Not that I get it.
  • left me feeling a little frustrated
    • Terry Elliott
       
      left me feeling...a bit manipulated again by that teacher who does that fucking Socratic thing.
  • subjectives
    • Terry Elliott
       
      gotta love a word like 'subject' that is itself a placeholder nothing turned into an even vaguer noun and whose first meaning it to be submissive, subjugated, quite literally sub-jected.
  • lump of concrete just under the surface
    • Terry Elliott
       
      Many rhizomes are serious disrespecters of the concrete, irony that.  Bamboo--irreconcileable with any other plant.  Johnson grass--unless eaten back by my sheep, will run rampant.  And that doesn't even get at kudzu.  Rhizomes are in the dark and partake of the dark.  Don't ever forget.
  • I chose three posts which marked me from the first days of rhizo15:
    • Terry Elliott
       
      Of note: I wrote a post today before I read this that explored 3 ways of looking at 1 walk:  http://rhetcompnow.com/tools/one-walk-three-ways/
  • "Ethics in MOOCS: the Two Four Ten or so Commandments of #rhizo15" 
    • Terry Elliott
       
      Not sure I want to be told what not to be (raptor, troll) and what to be (swarm).  Isn't ethical action an exercise of will and choice?  Perhaps I need to learn to be in the swarm or maybe the swarm can be just as unethical?
  • uses language
    • Terry Elliott
       
      "unique as a fingerprint, and impeded upon by the scars we have collected throughout our coarses and courses and curses"--I love this because of the word 'impeded' literally to shackle the feet. In this case I see experience as shackle.  Too true and poetic as all 'get-out'.
  • exudes energy in her writing
    • Terry Elliott
       
      "Those who can meander freely through such a course as #rhizo15, whether it be maze-like or cloud-like or layers-deep or miles-wide, should consider this choice, this freedom, this perquisite of economy and culture and opportunity as an entryway into possibility."  This is the work of more than just facility, this is flexing and breathing and working repetition to serve a larger purpose--that of pointing to the nature of contingency in the world of free agent.  We open the doors of adjacency one after the other and here she points to our agency as a working through and through mazes and more mazes. Sweet metaphor.
  • one of the games that I prefer.
    • Terry Elliott
  • Dejected
    • Terry Elliott
       
      dejected, ppl. a. (dɪˈdʒɛktɪd)  [f. deject v.]  1.1 lit. Thrown or cast down, overthrown. arch.     1682 Wheler Journ. Greece vi. 427 Buried in the Rubbish of its dejected Roof and Walls.    1881 H. James Portr. Lady xxvi, Looking at her dejected pillar. b.1.b Allowed to hang down.     1809 Heber Passage of Red Sea 12 The mute swain‥With arms enfolded, and dejected head. c.1.c Of the eyes: Downcast.     1600 [see 3 b].    1663 Cowley Pindar. Odes, Brutus ii, If with dejected Eye In standing Pools we seek the Sky.    1715-20 Pope Iliad ix. 626 With humble mien and with dejected eyes Constant they follow where Injustice flies. d.1.d Her. Cast down, bent downwards; as dejected embowed, embowed with the head downwards.     1889 Elvin Dict. Her., Dejected, cast down, as a garb dejected or dejectant. †2.2 Lowered in estate, condition, or character; abased, humbled, lowly. Obs.     1605 Shakes. Lear iv. i. 3 The lowest and most deiected thing of Fortune.    1641 Milton Reform. ii. (1851) 71 The basest, the lowermost, the most dejected‥downe-trodden Vassals of Perdition.    a 1680 Butler Rem. (1759) II. 14 Able to reach from the highest Arrogance to the meanest, and most dejected Submissions.    1721 [see dejectedness]. 3.3 Depressed in spirits, downcast, disheartened, low-spirited.     1581 Marbeck Bk. of Notes 115 So that he was deiected and compelled to weepe for very many, which had fallen.    1608-11 Bp. Hall Medit. & Vows i. §39, I marvell not that a wicked man is‥so dejected, when hee feeles sicknes.    1667 Pepys Diary (1879) IV. 369 Never were people so dejected as they are in the City.    1793 Cowper Lett. 8 Sept., I am cheerful on paper sometimes, when I am absolutely the most dejected of all creatures.    1835 Lytton Rienzi x. viii, Thus are we fools of Fortune;-to-day glad-to-morrow dejected! b.3.b transf. (Of the visage, behaviour, etc.
  • Adjacent
    • Terry Elliott
       
      adjacent, a. and n. (əˈdʒeɪsənt)  [ad. L. adjacent-em pr. pple. of adjacē-re to lie near; f. ad to + jacē-re to lie. Cf. Fr. adjacent, 16th c. in Littré.]  A.A adj.  1.A.1 Lying near or close (to); adjoining; contiguous, bordering. (Not necessarily touching, though this is by no means precluded.) adjacent angles, the angles which one straight line makes with another upon which it stands. Also fig. in Logic of nearness in resemblance.     c 1430 Lydg. Bochas v. xiii. (1554) 132 a, There wer two cuntries therto adiacent.    1509 Barclay Ship of Fooles (1570) 104 [He] warred on other realmes adiacent.    1606 Shakes. Ant. & Cl. ii. ii. 218 A strange inuisible perfume hits the sense Of the adiacent Wharfes.    1663 Gerbier Counsel 6 The Houses adjacent, and those which are opposite.    1745 De Foe Eng. Tradesm. XI. xxxiv. 72 Those parts of Essex, Surrey, and Kent, which lie adjacent to London.    1789-96 J. Morse Amer. Geog. I. 302 The adjacent inhabitants had assembled in arms.    1827 Hutton Course of Math. I. 317 The sum of the two adjacent angles dac and dab is equal to two right angles.    1846 Mill Logic iii. xxi. §4 (1868) II. 108 With a reasonable degree of extension to adjacent cases.    1860 Tyndall Glaciers i. §2. 20 Furnishing ourselves with provisions at the adjacent inn. †B.B n. That which is adjacent, or lies next to anything; an adjoining part; a neighbour. Obs.     1610 Healey St. Aug., City of God 721 The LXX rather expressed the adjacents, then the place it selfe.    1635 Shelford Disc. 220 (T.) He hath no adjacent, no equal, no corrival.    1725 De Foe Voy. round World (1840) 224 The whole place and its adjacents.
  • Conject
    • Terry Elliott
       
      I would go on but nobody is going to read these OED references.
  • Rhizomatic learning in rhizo15 is about making connections.
Vanessa Vaile

digi-flânerie | discovering the world-as-text - 1 views

  •  
    "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."
  •  
    "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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