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.
I chose three posts which marked me from the first days of rhizo15:
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.
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.
My head hurts after Week 1 of rhizo14. Just kidding. Enjoying wrapping my three pounds of neurons around the first week's question connecting learning and cheating.
The question is whether we have any way of breaking this circle of neoliberal encroachment into higher education where politicians (and many academics) pay lip service to inclusion and widening access and equal opportunities, while at the same time cutting funding and pushing the cost to end users.
Exhausting to be sure
My filtering dilemma: To get a broad perspective I have to read more than I can budget timewise, but if I filter by Rheingold, Cormier, Downes etc, I get only that perspective.
It's not that difficult picking some channels (people?) and starting there. Those will connect to other channels one begins to trust. The rhizome grows and pretty soon one is back to overload.
those channels tend to be corporate or institutional hierarchies
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/
without new ways to conceptualize the work of learning, we end up replicating top-down power and knowledge structures
filtering and prioritizing
We are skilled
but our culture is not giving us the meta-literacies to recognize and value and utilize those skills
Kop & Fournier 2010 paper on Self Directed Learning: Abstract
New technologies have changed the educational landscape. It is now possible for self-directed learners to participate informally in learning events on open online networks, such as in Massive Open Online Courses. Our research analyzed the agency and level
of autonomy required by learners participating in a course of this nature.
Using Bouchard's four dimensional model of learner control, we found that there are new dimensions to self-directed learning in connectivist learning environments. The research also brought to light new challenges and opportunities for self directed learners who might not be able to call on trusted educators for support in their learning endeavors, but rely on the aggregation of information and informal communication and collaboration available through social media to advance their learning
Kop & Fournier 2010 paper on Self Directed Learning: Abstract
New technologies have changed the educational landscape. It is now possible for self-directed learners to participate informally in learning events on open online networks, such as in Massive Open Online Courses. Our research analyzed the agency and level
of autonomy required by learners participating in a course of this nature.
Using Bouchard's four dimensional model of learner control, we found that there are new dimensions to self-directed learning in connectivist learning environments. The research also brought to light new challenges and opportunities for self directed learners who might not be able to call on trusted educators for support in their learning endeavors, but rely on the aggregation of information and informal communication and collaboration available through social media to advance their learning
I am glad Susan brought this definition up. I was going to search it out. The "subjective reality" hits a nerve with me. I am thinking of not just my own bias but what I bring to the table and intend to take away from the table. I am an active participant.
Pretty strong language here .. I am thinking how the remix culture might be considered subversive in this context, using a different (subjective) view to understand a learning environment.
Thank you for this. Here is the crux of how I think about subjective thinking ... tossed into the subjunctive salad bowl. Or have I been mistaken in my own beliefs about what subjective is?
how our "design" is experienced by any one learner is as unique as a fingerprint, and impeded upon by the scars we have collected throughout our coarses and courses and curses.
For good and for bad .... it could be that we are shaped by the positive energy and the positive experiences. I am thinking of being part of networks liked CLMOOC and DS106 and Connected Courses ... those shape my expectations of what a course should look like these days.
OMG. I had a ball with this. I think I failed. I think I passed. I think I succeeded. I think I thought .... "Thank God, I have people like Susan to lead me astray."
This line between subjective and objective is both intriguing and confusing (for me, anyway). This post by Susan really helped clarify some of the ideas. My annotations are my way of interacting with her text.
Kevin, I've been doing the subjective learning thing on my own for a very, very long time. Not coming to Vance Steven's multiliteracies, connectivist moocs or any open online courses as a "practicing" academic or educator (except in free range, heutagogical sense), I start with making my own subjectivity alignment -- if only to feel at least somewhat less the total outlier.
Besides, isn't all learning is idiosyncratic and subjective?
First, most MOOC research has not brought the connectivist experience to life for readers who have not experienced the rhizomatic swarm of open, online, connected learning.
"Dave Cormier, the mind behind Rhizomatic Learning 2014 (#rhizo14), just posted thoughts on his blog about creating a wonderful learning experience that went from a 6-week course to a self-propelled learning community. The challenge as Cormier articulates it is how to bring in new learners into this community. His original plan - create a new course, but what about the energy of the existing learning community? Connect the new course to the first course or simply bring the new learners into the existing community?"