Group items tagged

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.

I love the idea of Carnivale.

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.

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!

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?

Better off trusting this sense first and what the experts say a very distant fiftieth.

And those experts include anyone giving unsolicited advice like me.

Sometimes I have had enough of Dave.  

Wait for it....

Dunno, the videos seem pretty scripted to me.  He has an agenda and wants to get it out there.  The community has been guided by each week's prompts, using it as a jumping off point but not really going too far from fold.  I wanted to see much more rebellion and spontaneous, adhoc-osity.  I tried, but no one paid me any mind.  Par.

I agree that the gardener controls but I think it is illusory.  Who plucks the gardener? Who tends the gardener? Who weeds the gardener?  The gardener lives in a larger system that subsumes the garden, a larger Garden.  The gardener thinks he is managing the complexity that is the garden.  Fools paradise for a sock puppet?  

Is this spontaneous and rhizomatic?

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.

I have a great deal of respect for Stephen, and enjoyed his talk at Vlaencia (referenced in this blog) immensely. It seemed to me though, that he was explaining a landscape rather than prescribing a recipe for a MOOC. Might it be better to examine Rhizo14 in light of what Dave Cormier says about it, rather than force it to be scrutinized through the lens of questions raised by Steven Downes' lecture? Dave Cormier at MIT "MOOCs as a selfish enterprise" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Smt8lsPU_Mo If any "making one" objective(s) existed in Rhizo14, it(they) would be very subjective. Dave says he threw a party to see if anyone would come. I certainly participated as part of my process of "becoming", but without conciously adding "...one of X". I just know by experience that by "hanging out" with groups like this, I am able to do interesting things in teaching that I had not deliberately set out to learn (and I borrow that articulation from Dave Cormier), so from time to time I keep engaging with communities and courses that interest me. Some others have expressed or evidenced more clearly defined objectives - academic research, webtool development, and building a PLN are some examples.

I agree with you that Dave is defferent from S.D. and rhizo should be described with Dave's terms

This again gives us insight into the writer's perspective. It is a valid attitude, but important to recognize. Consciously looking through the same lens will keep a reader who experienced Rhizo14 differently from too easily dismissing parts of the critique that do not resonate with herm.

After listening to Dave Cormier, I have to challenge this assumption. What I hear from him suggests that Dave is very much aware that he is still trying to find out what "works".

I thought that rhizo14 was Dave's first try to facilitate a MOOC his first own experiment

This critique of Rhizo14 accuses it of not producing what it was not intended to produce. Seems a bit like criticizing an alligator because, while it has great hide, it makes an unsatisfactory mount since it was never intended to be a horse. I understand the author's dissatisfaction with the course. Rhizo14 neither met expectations nor satisfied any personal objectives. A dissenting opinion eloquently expressed is very valuable. The underlying tone of the post, however, carries a distinctly subjective disapproval or dismissal of anyone who has received satisfaction in their own experience in Rhizo14. The author speaks repeatedly of observing attempts to silence or marginalize those who did not buy into the opinions of the majority. Yet the author engages in a similar tactic against possible critics.

I hope that after my comment on my blog this feeling has eased in you. I absolutely did not intend to disapprove or dismiss any individual. I disagree with some of the choices made in design and educator intervention precisely because I feel they closed down the possibility of having a space where multiple perspective could be held openly without the need for filtering through an agree/disagree frame. This led to people who we could all have learnt from leaving and I was sad about this. Also - just for clarity I was not at all dissatisfied with the course. It was set up as an experiment and I love experiments. I was dissatisfied with our human inability create more silence and space for listening and the compulsive drive to talk. Nick put it beautifully in his blog: "that kind of dialogue. It is a way of being that one has to learn, but seems to me to be integral to what we might call "deep" learnign. The word retreat is interesting, one of the first pre-requisites of that dialogue is to shut up and listen. Online you are largely characterised by the noise you make, the text you generate. Silence online transmutes to a lack of presence, and described as "lurking". Lurk has too many negative associations to be reframed. But we do have the right to remain silent! Another issue, as you observe, is that dialogue is not transactional, but online interaction does very often seem to devolve to that kind of behaviour…" http://avisodemiranda.wordpress.com/2014/02/14/marram-grass/ I chose to create the space I needed for learning and this may be meant I chose 'no intervention' when intervention may have benefitted us all. I need to take time to reflect on this. I will leave it here for now, let's see if this is a space for us to engage before I spend any more time here :)

Mariana speaks so well but why it is so challenging to hear, I am wondering after reading these notes

I recognise this too and this reminds the storming phase of group process. You must be strong as a facilitator to receive all the complaints. It is a normal phase as long as education is in movement

you said that better than I could, thanks

I belong to this group

via GIPHY