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Which is rhizomatic practice?  Are any left out in this dichotomy?  Content or no content.

Which is rhizomatic practice?  Are any left out in this dichotomy?  Dave or no Dave?

Which is rhizomatic practice?  Are any left out in this dichotomy?  Old wine or old wine in new bottles or?

Which is rhizomatic practice?  Are any left out in this dichotomy?  Count or no count or no account or ?

Answer these questions before you tell people to go on a rhizomatic snipe hunt?

I believe that a radically different stance from a very different perch is necessary.  

Inspiring me to sponsor some academic play at the beginning of every classroom. So....what does academic play look like?

It looks like any other kind of play with flow and sharing and game boards and game pieces.

I think that without this feel there probably has been no learning. I often ask my students what learning feels like. When this embodied cognition, this snick of the tumblers in a lock feeling, is absent I daresay the reading and writing and academic research have not been integrated, intertwined with not only your own rhizomes but with other rhizomes. I have a post about this struggle here: http://impedagogy.com/wp/blog/2014/01/25/i-know-not-wtf-some-shallow-arboreal-learnage/

Expanding the academic space. Yes. And expanding our idea of what constitutes play in that space. Inviting everyone in to play.

blog, voice, transmedia, iteration, flow, joy, the feeling of climbing and the crossing the divide, failing and banishing fear from the space, playing the fool, online spaces--these are ways to play in an academic space.

My struggle here is an institutional and structural one. How can we play when no matter what it is still my enforced independence, my assignment , my classroom?

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.

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.

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

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/

Perhaps it is repressed in traditional formal learning situations or it just doesn't make good, strategic sense to most learners where they are situated.

I might also add that we invite as well. Permission may be necessary as a pump primer but invitation is the force that drives the water up and out. If you think of it in terms of artesian wells then you have to admit that for most of us you have to drill down for the water. The springs are fewer and may often only be a little weep of water that has to be dammed up a bit in order to drink from it.

And its specific corollary: we conflate learning with teaching.

I tried to talk about this when I referenced James Scott's binary of legible/illegible. Like the quants on Wall Street and in the Department of Education, clarification entails filtering out the fines of complexity. Sometimes this is good--penicillin, for example. But it can lead to unintended consequences--a wider resistance to all antibiotics. Seeing more clearly often has to come from sitting in the vortex and waiting. The water might clear of its own accord.

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.

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.

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?

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.