Group items tagged

Classic take down of 'one way thinking'--the opposite of rhizomatic thinking.

Larry L in Unhangout: My point: Could you blame Captain Kirk cheating in Kobashashi Maru test? I'm really convinced that cheating is an intrinsic part of a damage/broken/unfunctional education system. Cris C -- Now that I know what Kobashasi Maru means, I'd say that Captain Kirk both cheated and hacked his way to success by disrupting the unfair system. Reminds me of Ender in Ender's Game (book/series by Orson Scott Card) who was continually and brilliantly breaking the rules.

The question is whether we have any way of breaking this circle of neoliberal encroachment into higher education where politicians (and many academics) pay lip service to inclusion and widening access and equal opportunities, while at the same time cutting funding and pushing the cost to end users.

"for #rhizo14 Rhizomatic Learning (which has its own board that I will pin from) but mostly because I like the images and the tangled root system of associated concepts in philosophy, education, SNA, network and communication theory, design, etc."

"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."

Competency-Based Education appeals to me because it seems easier for the teacher to be the facilitator/guide if not also responsible for the assessing/grading. Can it lead to independent learning?

It appeals to me too...I wonder why same person facilitating as assessing is rarely thought of as a conflict of interest. It's not impossible but can challenge impartiality

Stephen Downes's comment in OLDaily, Feb. 7 Questions about rhizomatic learning Jenny Mackness, February 6, 2014 At a certain point, perfectly good theories become nonsense. This may be that point. I am sympathetic with the list of questions Jenny Mackness poses to Keith Hamon about rhizomatic learning (a concept I'm increasingly questioning). For example: "I'm not sure that I would know how to distinguish a 'rhizomatic learner' from other learners." And "'A rhizome has no beginning or end; it is always in the middle, between things, interbeing, intermezzo.'" Strictly speaking, this is false of rhizomes (unless you're talking of the specific connection between plant and plant, in which case, one wonders how it is different from any other connection (and wonder why it can't have a middle)). I've commented to Dave Cormier (who seems to have a better handle on this) about this in the past: a rhizome network is a mesh, which is good, but there's no openness, no diversity, not really even any autonomy. And you mix that in with (quite frankly) silly statements from Deleuze and Guattari (like: "'State space is 'striated' or griddled") you get something that really begins to lack coherence. I've long complained of continental philosophers that when they don't understand something, they just make stuff up. There's too much of that in educational theory too.

"Good ideas will also look like bad ideas because they go against social norms." We need more "bad ideas" in education!

Most parts of life are or social or economical.

is counting in education a social or an economical activity? Is school money-driven or by social norms and values?

from Dave's Educational Blog: "this course came back to life without a 'head' as it were. After my last goodbye was sent out to the participants, a week 7 popped up on the website. The participants continued the course, but without any 'teacher' filling the role as guide or decision maker. They continued on like this for another 6 weeks, and while activity is now only active in the facebook/twitter/gplus realm (that i know of), the communal learning process continues. The course (now called #rhizo14 by all involved) has refused to die. It has become that individual/community space that i was hoping for when the course started. People post ideas, challenges and thoughts and others bring their perspective to it… we learn, often in vastly different ways, from each interaction. And then this post shows up on the original P2PU course today -"

About teaching and learning to be rather than learning to know. You could open this link and highlight annotate this paper with us. You need to download a little app for that: see https://www.diigo.com/tools

to annotate and highlight.

If the question concerning where technologies come from must be understood within a political context, how are we then to understand the agency of technology? Should it be approached from a deterministic point of view or are we, since it's a question about political processes, still in control?

it is about rhizomatic education,

about independence and self-responsibility.

So i'm basically trying to give people something they can work with… a strategy rather than content… that can get them 'in the know' so that they can participate in the community effectively.