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Vanessa Vaile

The Medium Is The Meaning We Consume and Create ... Together | Wirearchy - 0 views

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    "Subsequently, the presence of electronic media for creating, distributing and communicating information, knowledge and meaning has grown more widely and more dramatically than perhaps even he could have foreseen. Within this context, I want to try to stitch together a few concepts, perspectives and examples with which I am more or less familiar and perhaps update the core implication of McLuhan's famous phrase."
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).
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    "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."
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    "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."
Jaap Bosman

Rhizomatic learning | Learning Research & Change Methods - 0 views

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    This paper uses complexity theory as a means towards clarifying some of Gilles Deleuze's conceptualisations in communication and the philosophy of language. His neologisms and post-structuralist tropes are often complicated and appear to be merely metaphorical. However their meanings may be clarified and enriched provided they are grounded in the science of complexity and self-organising dynamics.
Vanessa Vaile

Steven Lukes: Power (overview of four approaches) - 0 views

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    'Power' in its most generic sense simply means the capacity to bring about significant effects: to effect changes or prevent them. The effects of social and political power will be those that are of significance to people's lives. When these effects of power are such as to affect people's interests adversely we speak of power being held or exercised over them - and the social scientist's quest is to try to reveal what this involves. There are other ways of identifying social and political power: for instance, as collective power to achieve shared goals (as when people co-operate to promote a cause or pursue a campaign), or as positive or beneficent power, where power serves others' interests "
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    'Power' in its most generic sense simply means the capacity to bring about significant effects: to effect changes or prevent them. The effects of social and political power will be those that are of significance to people's lives. When these effects of power are such as to affect people's interests adversely we speak of power being held or exercised over them - and the social scientist's quest is to try to reveal what this involves. There are other ways of identifying social and political power: for instance, as collective power to achieve shared goals (as when people co-operate to promote a cause or pursue a campaign), or as positive or beneficent power, where power serves others' interests "
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?
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
  • ...15 more annotations...
  • 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." "
Terry Elliott

Insight: Picked up a great lesson from the book Turn… by Jason Fried of 37sig... - 2 views

  • Picked up a great lesson from the book Turn The Ship Around. David Marquet, the author and nuclear sub captain, says you can’t empower people by decree. While you might be able to ask someone to make a decision for themselves, that’s not true empowerment (or true leadership). Why? Because you’re still making the decision to ask them to make the decision. That means they can’t move, or think, or act without you.
    • anonymous
       
      I use an approach to teaching created by Ian Cunningham in the 90s called Self Managed Learning. The quote reminds me of a dear mentor of mine when I first started teaching on my Masters programme; she would say that the biggest paradox in what we were doing with the students came to life when in answer to us saying ' What do you want to learn?' they said 'I want you to tell me' Yes, we are always making the decision to ask them to make the decision. In my experience the dynamic shifts pretty quickly when they get we mean it when we say ' you decide the 'wha't and we will help with the 'how''. it is about owning the power the role inherently carries and using it to encourage self-direction rather than boosting it further…may be?
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    The highlight in the article makes me wonder where the power to learn rhizomatically comes from in the classroom. We can tell students to empower themselves but they can't "move, think, or act without you."
Jaap Bosman

Communications & Society: Decalcomania and CCK11 - 0 views

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    "Keith Hamon'" decalcomania is a process for transferring a pattern from one thing to another, and it describes quite accurately how we create meaning in our minds. In decalcomania, a surface with a potent image or medium is pressed against another surface. After the two surfaces are separated, self-similar images reside on both surfaces
Cris Crissman

Kobayashi Maru - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 1 views

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    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.
Terry Elliott

touches of sense...: From mobs to communities. - 1 views

  • Beautiful, terrifying mob
    • Terry Elliott
       
      I love the visualization. Part of its charm is in realizing that it is a snapshot, a 2D slice of the body of #rhizo14. In a way it is the smoke from the fire and the wake from the ship, not the fire and not the ship. I am only vaguely aware of the 4D presence that is the growing tip and the blooming buzzing perfusion that is the felt whole of #rhizo14.
  • We will be long gone in the ether and without a care in their world.
    • Terry Elliott
       
      Paradox. A finitude (#rhizo14) creates an infinitude (something greater than #rhizo14 that is only partly glimpsed in Hawksey's visualization.
    • Terry Elliott
       
      I am reminded of the story here: The nun Wu Jincang asked the Sixth Patriach Huineng, "I have studied the Mahaparinirvana sutra for many years, yet there are many areas i do not quite understand. Please enlighten me." The patriach responded, "I am illiterate. Please read out the characters to me and perhaps I will be able to explain the meaning." Said the nun, "You cannot even recognize the characters. How are you able then to understand the meaning?" "Truth has nothing to do with words. Truth can be likened to the bright moon in the sky. Words, in this case, can be likened to a finger. The finger can point to the moon's location. However, the finger is not the moon. To look at the moon, it is necessary to gaze beyond the finger, right?"
  • Chaos is a lure for gaze but hard to digest.
    • Terry Elliott
       
      Chaos is too big to eat. I say swim in it like a fish, breath it, do the full catastrophe in it. Grow in it.
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  • God we need fun, what more is there? God we need poetry, when they only give us time for prose.
    • Terry Elliott
       
      I am so glad that you get this. I wrote a post recently that was a short video of a glass of water overflowing in my sink. I put it on YouTube and then shared it via Vialogues so that others could just play with it. Jenny M commented that she didn't get it. There wasn't really anything to get, but it was kind of her to play along. We are homo ludens.
  • #Rhizo14 is carnival.
    • Terry Elliott
       
      I love the idea of Carnivale.
    • Terry Elliott
       
      I think we can view the visualization as part of carnivale and your post as part of it. It doesn't really end if we continue to act with the idea of it in our heart. Carnivale is an irruption of life. Your post is an irruption, conscious and alive and aware. There is a larger Carnivale.
  • We are not all maggots.
    • Terry Elliott
       
      Yet in the end we are all food for the maggots. In the end our word and ideas and memes are the wakes from our ships. So be it. Let the maggots dance!
Vanessa Vaile

Rhizo14 MOOC Research Storm - Ma Bali, Google Drive - 1 views

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    Thoughts about the #Rhizo14 MOOC Research Project? INTRO BY MAHA: We can EACH have our own research agenda and work together to support each other in making it work for this course. This might mean four or five or ten different research questions led by different people, and supported by as many of us as are interested in the other's question. I see already we are on the path to a rhizomatic research approach that is not unidirectional and slightly chaotic but has such rich potential. This would hopefully result in different research projects and publications that each give a different perspective on rhizo14. A metaphor i like is "crystallization" - like a crystal, u can look at it and illuminate it from different angles and see totally different things. Would be beautiful to have this about #rhizo14.
Cris Crissman

The medium is the message? | Hit the balloon and comment - 0 views

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    Downes's comments in OLDaily, Feb 7: The medium is the message? Jaap Bosman, Hit the balloon, comment, February 6, 2014 Icon "Language needs a medium," said Jaap Bosman. By contrast, to me, language is a medium. "Learning depends on language, the medium (books, blogs) of the language restricts or benefits the learning," he writes. To me, language is only one of the many media we could use to support learning. Becominbg literate in the 21st century means recognizing that literacy applies far beyond language; it's a way of understanding the world.
Cris Crissman

Is books making us stupid? behind the curtain of #rhizo14 | Dave's Educational Blog - 0 views

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    Stephen Downes' comments in OLDaily, Feb. 7 Is books making us stupid? behind the curtain of #rhizo14 Dave Cormier, Dave's Educational Blog, February 6, 2014 This post actually provides a good overview of the first few weeks of the Rhizomatic Learning course, exploring as it does a set of "challenges" posed by Dave Cormier: Cheating as learning Enforcing independence Embracing uncertainty Is books making us stupid I can certainly be frustrated by some of this sort of discussion - when people express concerns, for example, about "enforcing independence" my reaction is that they just don't know what those words mean. And in another post I've raised some questions about some of the more nebulous aspects of this approach to learning. But I see value in these discussions. And questioning the authority of the book is certainly something I support.
Vanessa Vaile

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

  • This is rhetoric, perhaps even rhizorhetoric, at it’s best
  • I want to frame my comments in the distinction between reductionist thought and complexity thought, a habit of mind I attribute to Edgar Morin’s book On Complexity
  • tension between a reductionist understanding of power and a complexity understanding
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  • Steven Luke’s short article about power
  • I find the fourth view, the one from Foucault, to be the most engaging, as it approaches a complex view of power
  • first three views of power assume a Classical, simple (not simplistic, but not complex, either) epistemology
  • “‘Power’ in its most generic sense simply means the capacity to bring about significant effects: to effect changes or prevent them.”
  • The One-dimensional View posits two agents disjoined from one another, and power occurs when one agent prevails in some way over the other agent
  • too simple, too explicit and over
  • The Two-dimensional view adds agenda control by the more powerful agent, and finally, the Three-dimensional view adds social influence
  • it also encompasses being able to secure their dependence, deference, allegiance or compliance, even without needing to act and in the absence of conflict.
  • the successive views move in the direction of complexity, but they are always limited by a Classical epistemology that posits disjoined, discrete agents interacting in deterministic ways across or through clear boundaries, either in accordance with or in violation of some social contract or rules.
  • its affordances are outweighed by its limitations
  • This is where Foucault’s view of power comes into play, and note that it’s the only unnamed view
  • complexity is often nameless, even unnameable
  • those flows all implicate power
  • an agent is formed and informed by the flows of energy, information, and organizational structures of the systems within which the agent lives and functions
  • we are not discrete entities, independent of an enclosing ecosystem
  • power is the flow of energy, matter, information, and organization throughout a complex, multi-scale system
  • Power is the weave of the fabric we are all woven into, and it is difficult, often impossible, to isolate any single thread of power and to trace it back to a single cause.
  • what does this mean for how we should decide who is in Rhizo14 and how we should behave there?
  • the more open the use and sharing of information, the more important it is to clarify how we expect that information to be used
  • Clarity has great affordances, but it also has its blindness
  • This is a fine example of a clear, classical social contract. Independent agents agree on boundaries and behaviors between themselves
  • This assumes discrete agents with clear boundaries, a simple view of power and reality
  • A complex view of power and reality—my view—says, however, that Frances is already part of the Rhizo14 group and the document
  • Likewise, I suspect that Frances has herself been in/formed by the Rhizo14 discussion
  • circular causality, a core mechanism of complex systems with their complex flows of power
  • Power as flows of energy, information, and organization have already woven us together in ways that I do not know how to disentangle.
  • really only a very small part
  • request not to be part of the group leaves me with some sticky issues
  • most views of plagiarism are based on the simple view of relationships among agents and social contracts
  • ole authorship is a reductionist’s fiction, a useful fiction perhaps, but perhaps becoming less useful as online, open spaces emerge
  • How to behave in an open community, then, where flows of power are unavoidable and many are uncontrollable, even unknowable
  • if we don’t confront this problem, then we will continue to apply the old social contracts. I don’t think those social contracts alone can address the issue
  • interested in learning how this group will write this document. Like all good ethnographers, I think I can learn most by living and functioning within the group, by helping to write it. I want to define the process from the inside
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.
simonwarren

It's amazing what happens over coffee: or deterritoralising the curriculum (a #rhizo15 ... - 7 views

  • coffee
    • Kevin Hodgson
       
      I am drinking coffee as I read this ... sort of drink symmetry going on right now ....
  • my first full academic year in the job
    • Kevin Hodgson
       
      I am curious if this newness is freeing or is it constricting? Can you try new things or are you expected to toe the line? I suppose it depends on the "boss man" in charge.
    • simonwarren
       
      Well, a mixture really.  It is 'my' course but that doesn't mean it is always viewed that way by those upstairs - this is a very small unit and can be claustrophobic at times.  Dealing with a bit of a culture of talking the talk but not necessarily walking the walk.  If you get what I mean.  It depends how assertive I wish to be.
  • My recent engagement with digital scholarship and #connectedlearning has propelled me to consider other options, and to think about how I might hack my own course, hybridise it.
    • Kevin Hodgson
       
      This is the heart of all this connected work ... how do we bring our explorations of learning in online spaces and adventures back into the classroom (unless you teach online courses, of course).
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • sets of resources organised around difficult ideas
    • Kevin Hodgson
       
      I like this phrasing and the idea here ... of shifting the learning, as long as you don't focus on the tool/technology but on the learnings elements. Sometimes, the tech drives the learning, not the other way around. We want our students to have agency of exploration in their learning.
    • simonwarren
       
      This year we used the closed box of the institutional VLE to do some of this work but I want to push this further by using more open platforms and ask participants to find their own materials. The assessment will have to be tweaked to facilitate this.
  • have shorter workshops that model many of the ideas we promote
    • Kevin Hodgson
       
      This might up the engagement factor. I think a few folks from Connected Courses are tinkering with collective design of curriculum, right? Of allowing students to have a say in the learning. This is what Dave is doing with us. I think.
    • simonwarren
       
      The 'time' allocated to 'teaching' sessions is driven by the Bologna process (Tuning in N.America) and 'European Credit and Accumulation Transfer System' which usually gets reduced to 'time on task' rather than learning.  We can play with this though
  • Emergent objectives could become points for reflecting on what the course should be dealing with, what the difficult ideas and issues are, and therefore the content required.
  • I am after all a final arbiter, the one who, institutionally, is responsible for assessment
    • Kevin Hodgson
       
      Always a struggle, no matter the age of student (says the sixth grade teacher).
  • working with the play of smooth and striated space.
    • Kevin Hodgson
       
      Thanks for the deep thinking ...
  • Also, could we introduce aspects of peer review?
    • Sarah Honeychurch
       
      I always like peer review
  • @davecormier
    • Sarah Honeychurch
       
      It was me actually :)
Jaap Bosman

Independence as Essential for Lifelong Learning | Reflecting Allowed - 1 views

  • This might be the “role” of the teacher here – to make learners realize they are better off becoming more independent.
    • Terry Elliott
       
      I am thinking that this is the difference between inviting participation and permitting participation?
  • I don’t know how to foster this, or if it is possible.
    • Terry Elliott
       
      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.
    • Terry Elliott
       
      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.
  • my attempts to let them
    • Terry Elliott
       
      Invitation or permission?
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • (with my help at first,
    • Terry Elliott
       
      the idea of 'minimal necessary scaffolding' is so important here. Have you read Myles Horton's The Long Haul. He addresses this question over and over.
  • because nothing essentially assessable or measurable needs to result from their learning
  • Even worse control because it becomes internalized,
    • Terry Elliott
       
      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.
  • “A” for “answering”
  • “A” for “answering”
  • these questions an “A” for “answering”
    • Terry Elliott
  • You could argue he system is flawed, its structures non-conducive to learning,
    • Jaap Bosman
       
      Education is expensive, online courses are cheaper. Online courses engage people from all ages, they foster life-long-learning. Online courses are a means to make schools change. If schools do not change they will suffer and go down.
  •  
    The system of education will change, teachers should be change agents.
Terry Elliott

So now I am in Diigo, what do I do with Diigo? - 7 views

I love the autoblogging tool. I use it to post links to my blog. Come join us in annotating Dave's post here: http://davecormier.com/edblog/2008/06/03/rhizomatic-education-community-as-curriculum/

help diigo bookmark topic

wayupnorth

Rhizomatic Education : Community as Curriculum | Dave's Educational Blog - 7 views

  • define what counts as knowledge.
  • painstaking process by which knowledge has traditionally been codified.
  • Knowledge as negotiation
    • Terry Elliott
       
      The Secret Sits We dance round in a ring and suppose, But the Secret sits in the middle and knows. Robert Frost
  • ...27 more annotations...
  • 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.
    • Terry Elliott
       
      The future is already rhizomatic, it's just not evenly distributed.
    • Kevin Hodgson
       
      I wonder what disciplines he is referring to here. Which ones live on the edge these days? And is that changing?
  • clear definition of the word "knowledge" is difficult
    • Terry Elliott
       
      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.
  • simply another part of the way things are"
    • Terry Elliott
       
      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.
  • Horton and Freire
    • Terry Elliott
       
      I am profoundly happy to see Myles Horton cited and used. I think he has had more influence on my teaching and learning than any other. His autobiography The Long Haul is absolutely must-read for a rhizomatic pov.
    • Jaap Bosman
       
      Myles Horton adapted Danish Grundtvig Folkehojskole to USA schools.
    • Terry Elliott
       
      Yes, he did and then used it at the Highlander School in Tennessee.
  • The expert translation of data into verified knowledge is the central process guiding traditional curriculum development.
    • Terry Elliott
       
      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).
    • Jaap Bosman
       
      Experts are not to be trusted anymore, they work for big companies, their translation is skewed.
  • no community can live a healthy life if it is nourished only on such old marrowless truths.
    • Terry Elliott
       
      Brave words those--no community.
  • a negotiation (Farrell 2001)
    • Terry Elliott
       
      I wonder if this is similar to rhetoric and comp's idea of writing as a conversation?
    • Kevin Hodgson
       
      Interesting word, though: negotiation. It suggest an unfair balance at the start, right?
  • social contructivist and connectivist
    • Terry Elliott
       
      These are dead links to the innovateonline site.
  • (Cormier 2008).
    • Terry Elliott
       
      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?
    • Terry Elliott
       
      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.
  • Information is the foundation of knowledge.
    • Jaap Bosman
       
      doubt if information really is the source of knowledge. Mostly it is, but the road from information, over statistics, logics, arguments is not that simple I think
  • 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.
    • Jaap Bosman
       
      again info is not easily translated into knowledge. Distrust and care are needed, even in a rhizomatic world.
    • Kevin Hodgson
       
      Or skepticism?
  • the prestige of a thousand-year history,
    • Jaap Bosman
       
      all over this history the prestige has been attacked. Prestige and knowledge are to be separated, so many experts were proven false and wrong.
    • Kevin Hodgson
       
      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.
  • fluid, transitory conception of knowledge
    • Kevin Hodgson
       
      I like this phrasing .. that knowledge is always in motion
  • rhizome.
    • Kevin Hodgson
       
      And here is it.
  • disciplines on the bleeding edge
  • 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.
  • Information is coming too fast for our traditional methods of expert verification to adapt.
  • 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.
  • The living curriculum of an active community is a map
    • Kevin Hodgson
       
      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.
    • wayupnorth
       
      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.
  • 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.
  • we see as our goal the co-construction of those secret connections as a collaborative effort
    • Terry Elliott
       
      Is this what we are doing together here in Diigo, co-constructing secret connections collaboratively? Sounds like an underground conspiracy (forgive the lame joke there.)
  • Changing Knowledge
    • Terry Elliott
       
      Meta note here: I see our collaboration as a secret growing of knowledge among us. It may only even be true for us, on this web page, at this particular juncture because we are growing it out on the tip of the root of this text.
  • the conversion of information to knowledge
    • Terry Elliott
       
      Examples of this conversion in our work here? 1. Each of us runs these words through the filter of our own experience 2. sharing out on social networks 3 asking and answering quesions
  • 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
    • wayupnorth
       
      And some of us are still mainly consuming, jumping in with perhaps superficial content, practicing our engagement.
  • students had the opportunity to enter the community themselves and impact the shape of its curriculum
    • wayupnorth
       
      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.
  • if knowledge is to be negotiated socially
    • wayupnorth
       
      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.
  •  
    Let's play with group annotation here.
  •  
    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.
  •  
    Recommended by Telli01 in Vialogues conversation https://vialogues.com/vialogues/play/13001 as good intro to Dave's work on rhizomatic ed
Matthias

cathellis13 Post - 5 views

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