Group items tagged

What is the dif b/t rhizomatic collab and non-rhizo collab?  

Social model of human knowings v. Cartesian knowing

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.  

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 ...

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?

We are many selves.  No one reflection gets them all not even our own. Especially not our own.

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?

Powerful assertion here.  And the proof is in asking what happens when we do not maintain that identity.

I wonder how much of our cognitive load is spent maintaining (breaking down and building up) identity, the metabolism of identity?

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.

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.

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?

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.

So bring on the salve of ritual to rhizo15.

Ritual 1: greeting everyone, every day.

Yes and what has been the instrument of that power grab--books. Cormier's distrust comes from the valorization of yet another master of the holist part of our mind. Books are colonizers aren't they?

I say give books the comeuppance they deserve. Who is the boss of the mind? Mine is reactionary sloganeering here, so let me be less molotov. I, meaning my whole self, am the boss, the master. I am weary of being told and of accepting as writ (holy irony that) that the written word is supreme. I find myself revolting (please no Henny Youngman jokes) against words by my frail attempts to use tools that are decidedly not books--zeega, vine, photography, video, soundcloud, augmented reality--to wrestle control from literacy and return to orality.

On your side Scott would agree that it is not books who are at fault. Please let us not shoot the messenger. It is our use of books and our abdication to their organization, to their legibility that is our downfall.

I know better.  You are obsessed with the rhizomatic meme.  I am, too. Not that I get it.

left me feeling...a bit manipulated again by that teacher who does that fucking Socratic thing.

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.

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.

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/

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?

"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'.

"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.

If you like this then go to these two podcasts: https://soundcloud.com/allusionistshow/puns https://soundcloud.com/allusionistshow/c-bomb

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, 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.

I would go on but nobody is going to read these OED references.

The future is already rhizomatic, it's just not evenly distributed.

I wonder what disciplines he is referring to here. Which ones live on the edge these days? And is that changing?

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.

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.

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.

Myles Horton adapted Danish Grundtvig Folkehojskole to USA schools.

Yes, he did and then used it at the Highlander School in Tennessee.

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).

Experts are not to be trusted anymore, they work for big companies, their translation is skewed.

Brave words those--no community.

I wonder if this is similar to rhetoric and comp's idea of writing as a conversation?

Interesting word, though: negotiation. It suggest an unfair balance at the start, right?

These are dead links to the innovateonline site.

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?

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.

I like this phrasing .. that knowledge is always in motion

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.)

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.

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

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'.

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.

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.

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.