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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
  • ...78 more annotations...
  • 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?
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.
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?
  •  
    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."
Kevin Hodgson

The Essence of Peopling - 4 views

  • “People”
    • Terry Elliott
       
      To talk about  "people" is to objectify and alienate. Making nouns of anything is a way to separate them from the world.
  • “peopling”
    • Terry Elliott
       
      "Peopling" on the other hand is about human folk connecting to the world--subjectifying and unshackling the word.
    • Kevin Hodgson
       
      to people?
  • The first part of this essay is an account of innermost peopling – the social, self-conscious nature of human cognition. The second part of this essay moves outward, connecting cognition to the rituals and social information flows that make up the most important parts of our environment.
  • ...19 more annotations...
  • In Others in Mind: The Social Origins of Self-Consciousness (one of my favorite books of all time), Philippe Rochat presents a social model of human cognition,
    • Terry Elliott
       
      Social model of human knowings v. Cartesian knowing
  • Rochat, in contrast, models human cognition as fundamentally social in nature. Each person learns to be aware of himself – is constrained toward self-consciousness – by other people being aware of him. He learns to manage his image in the minds of others, and finds himself reflected, as in a mirror, through the interface of language and non-verbal communication.
    • Terry Elliott
       
      We learn to become self-aware, we are "constrained" toward that goal by other folk.  Other folk are our first mirrors through non-verbal then oral and then written "interfaces".
  • infinite recursion
  • infinite recursion
    • Terry Elliott
       
      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.  
    • Kevin Hodgson
       
      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 ...
  • The self is not unitary and separate from others; peopling occurs in the context of mutual-mental-modeling relationships, which continue to affect each person when he is alone.
  • Each person’s self is spread out among many people, simulated in all their brains at varying levels of granularity. And each person has a different “self” for each one of the people he knows, and a different self for every social context.
    • Terry Elliott
       
      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?
  • The self at work is different from the self at home with close friends, or in bed with a spouse. And none of these are the “true self” – rather, the self exists in all these, and in the transitions between them. There can never be one single, public self; to collapse all these multiple selves together would be akin to social death.
    • Terry Elliott
       
      We are many selves.  No one reflection gets them all not even our own. Especially not our own.
    • Kevin Hodgson
       
      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?
  • Mentally maintaining one’s identity in relation to others, including one’s accurate social status and relationships in each case, is the core task of being human.
    • Terry Elliott
       
      Powerful assertion here.  And the proof is in asking what happens when we do not maintain that identity.
  • a huge portion of our internal cognitive machinery, of which we are not normally aware, is concerned with the ordinary function of maintaining one’s own identity and that of others
    • Terry Elliott
       
      I wonder how much of our cognitive load is spent maintaining (breaking down and building up) identity, the metabolism of identity?
  • Baumeister and Masicampo posit that interfacing between identities – both within a single mind, and between minds – is the purpose of conscious thought (Conscious Thought Is for Facilitating Social and Cultural Interactions: How Mental Simulations Serve the Animal–Culture Interface). And just as Rochat proposes that we are “constrained toward consciousness” by others, Kevin Simler says that we “infect” each other with personhood.
    • Terry Elliott
       
      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.
  • There is a profound irreconcilability or dissonance between first-and third-person perspectives on the self once objectified and valued. This dissonance shapes behaviors in crucial ways, as individuals try to reconcile their own and others’ putative representations about them. These two representational systems are always at some odds or in conflict, always in need of readjustment. It is so because these systems are open, and they do not share the same informational resources: direct, permanent, and embodied for the first-person perspective on the self; indirect, more fleeting, and disembodied for the third-person perspective on the self. A main property of this dissonance is that it tends to feed into itself and can reach overwhelming proportions in the life of individuals. More often than not, this dissonance is a major struggle, expressed in the nuisance of self-conscious behaviors that hinder creativity and the smooth “flow” of interpersonal exchanges. Others in Mind, p. 41
    • Terry Elliott
       
      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.
  • People are able to accomplish this feat of mutual simulation by use of two tools: language and ritual. Ritual allows for the communication of information that language can’t convey – hard-to-fake costly signals of commitment, dependability, harmoniousness, and cooperative intent.
    • Terry Elliott
       
      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?
  • If humans are somehow calibrated to expect a constant flow of social information, then the sparseness of ritual and social participation in modern environments might trigger a cascade of rumination.
    • Terry Elliott
       
      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.
    • Terry Elliott
       
      So bring on the salve of ritual to rhizo15.
  • A very simple example is greetings. “Greeting everyone you see” is a candidate for a ritual universal, a part of the ritual atmosphere that displays good fit with peopling
    • Terry Elliott
       
      Ritual 1: greeting everyone, every day.
  • (with some caveats).
    • Terry Elliott
       
      Ritual 2:"Serene Social Sloth Sunday, a made-up internet holiday in which we avoid posting "outrage porn" 
    • Terry Elliott
       
      Ritual 3: Breaking Bread Together
    • Terry Elliott
       
      Ritual 4:  Share natural spaces through YouTube, make part of any group meeting e.g. Hangout.  
    • Terry Elliott
       
      Ritual 5: "With joy and zest, publicly celebrate milestones and recurring events. Affirming shared history, we nourish community, crystallize a sense of accomplishment, and build group identity by unifying our stories and common goals. Can be planned and ritualized, or as spontaneous as a group cheer."  Celebrate | Group Works. (n.d.). Retrieved April 19, 2015, from http://groupworksdeck.org/patterns/Celebrate
    • Terry Elliott
       
      Ritual 6:  Feedforward with the imagination.  In other words project your self into the future and 'recall' all that 'happened' from the beginning of #rhizo15.  In a way I think this defines what rhizomatic learning is.  Each of us creates identity for the group by being who we are with the voices we have.  Why not imagine that forth along with others instead of relying solely upon the weekly proddings of one person identified as 'teacher/leader'.  Feedforwardings would allow us to compare rhizomatic identities. and from there decide where we might go as a group as well as individually.
  • Information about the self from the first-person perspective tends to be inflated and self-aggrandizing; information about the self from the third-person perspective, projected into the minds of others, tends to be deflated and self-deprecatory.
    • Kevin Hodgson
       
      Intriguing ...
  • A freeway is useful for getting from place to place, but it’s not a place to merely exist in the moment.
    • Kevin Hodgson
       
      Interesting, since the "internet highway" was an early metaphor for technology and online elements .. and now we are working on ways to slow down, be more reflective, plant flowers along the ugly underpasses of the freeway
  • “we’re here to fart around together.”
    • Kevin Hodgson
       
      Is this a motto of Rhizomatic Learning communities? Ha
  • In conclusion, drink tea, together with your friends; pay attention to the tea, and to your friends, and pay attention to your friends paying attention to the tea. Therein lies the meaning of life.
  •  
    There are also linguistic differences...for example, the verb vs noun thing does not work the same in Spanish (and perhaps to some extent in other Romance languages as in English, where verbs are the power words. Syntax and the role of particles-prefixes are other factors.
Vanessa Vaile

cheating on cheating, make a list? - 5 views

OK then make a free association list w/o categories, or put them on separate 3x5 cards and shuffle the deck -- or use a random generating program. According to Judge Dee, there is no such thing as ...

rhizome cheating

Terry Elliott

Down the Rabbit Hole | Exploring Digital Culture - 0 views

  • “the reader is invited to move among plateaux in any order.”
    • Terry Elliott
       
      In the #clmooc I helped to facilitate last summer one of the principles that we reiterated in welcoming posts was that of invitation. Not just any invitation, but invitation anywhere and any time. The course/collaboration had no beginning in that all who came to it brought with them a history that powered them like an artesian well. The cMOOC has also had no end either. It still exists and is used and is bring those who are and were a part of it into other worlds like #rhizo14.
  • A rhizome has no beginning or end; it is always in the middle, between things, interbeing, intermezzo.  (Deleuze & Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus.  P. 25)
    • Terry Elliott
       
      Sometimes my familiarity with the the fact of real rhizomes saps the metaphor's usefulness. I understand that D & G are talking about power relationships, but in a way that makes no sense at all when discussing 'whole things'. There are power relationships in biological beings, but all the parts are pulling toward the imperative of surviving. So...I have been working through the uncertainty of applying this vague theoretical scaffold into the learning space of the classroom. Now that is where the idea of being always in the middle makes sense, suspended across to learners as a bridge and at the same time walking across other's bridges.
  • forever in flux.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • Lines of Flight:  Deleuze and Nomadic Creativity,
  • Maureen Maher
  • Knowmadic thinking is “exposing metaspaces in between each, opening new opportunities for new blends of formal, informal, non-formal and serendipitous learning. As in the Invisible learning project, we focus on educating for personal knowledge creation that cannot be measured easily.”
    • Terry Elliott
       
      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'.
  • Rhizomatic Learning
    • Terry Elliott
       
      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.
  • “how do we bring this concept of embracing uncertainty into our classrooms?”
    • Terry Elliott
       
      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.
  • the leap into the unknown is the learning process.
    • Terry Elliott
       
      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.
Vanessa Vaile

Trebor Scholz (ed.): Digital Labor: The Internet as Playground and Factory (2012) - Mon... - 0 views

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    "Digital Labor calls on the reader to examine the shifting sites of labor markets to the Internet through the lens of their political, technological, and historical making. Internet users currently create most of the content that makes up the web: they search, link, tweet, and post updates-leaving their "deep" data exposed. Meanwhile, governments listen in, and big corporations track, analyze, and predict users' interests and habits. A collection of essays offering a wide-ranging account of the dark side of the Internet. "
Kevin Hodgson

Kevin's Meandering Mind | The Making of the #Rhizo15 Radio Play, or The Complexities of... - 1 views

  • important artifact of content
    • Terry Elliott
       
      This makes the radioplay an object
    • Kevin Hodgson
       
      Yes. Right? Right.
  • a bit of mayhem.
    • Terry Elliott
       
    • Terry Elliott
       
      Aren't we all in Rhizo15?
  • Dave Cormier, the facilitator of Rhizomatic Learning, will showcase the premiere of the radio play — A Multitude of Voices: Mr. X Loses His Battle for Objectivity — in his next post and message
    • Terry Elliott
       
    • Terry Elliott
       
      Then he should land here, too, unsteady in the subject/object just like you were and all of us were. Yes?
    • Terry Elliott
       
      Talk about rhizomatic.  Annotation is the mycellium/hyphae of rhizomatic learning
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • something to represent our relationship as friends and colleagues and collaborators.
    • Terry Elliott
       
      Or something beyond them, transcending them, entering into new realms.
    • Terry Elliott
       
    • Kevin Hodgson
       
      Maybe it is that transformative process that lures me in ...
  • I would have slipped into file madness (it may have happened … I’m not saying).
    • Terry Elliott
       
    • Kevin Hodgson
       
      What? No little boohoo violin?
  • My aim as editor was to help nurture into place a radio play
    • Terry Elliott
       
      When something had to get done I think it's interesting that there had to be a director and an editor and whip wielder to get it done. Doesn't seem entirely rhizomatic to me.  Means to me that there are places for rhizo and other places for hiearchy.  
    • Terry Elliott
       
    • Kevin Hodgson
       
      Hmmm .. good point ... collaborative editing would be interesting and nearly impossible ... maybe ... there is the tension of "let's get this done" and the "let's wait to hear your ideas on how to get this done" in the mix ...
  • Sill, the many hours
    • Terry Elliott
       
      What is the dif b/t rhizomatic collab and non-rhizo collab?  
    • Terry Elliott
       
  • Terry had a great song earmarked for the ending (an Arabic version of Toy Story and “You’ve Got a Friend in Me”), but I could not figure out if it would violate copyright if we used it, so we abandoned it. As I told Terry, it probably is best, as Michelle Shocked wrote in one of her songs, to make your own jam anyway.
    • Terry Elliott
       
    • Terry Elliott
       
      Didn't think you would get away that easily, did you?  The snarky beauty of Diigo annotations rears its janky head.  
  • Too many timezones.
    • Terry Elliott
       
Scott Johnson

The Art ofCritical Making, Rhode Island School of Design on Creative Practice. Ed: Rosa... - 1 views

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    "In my teaching, I stress the importance of the creative process over the product, but the impact of how or when this shift in understanding takes place came into sharp focus only recently. In preparation for the final of my Studio Design{ course, I took my class to the study Room at the RISD Museum to view a portfolio of paper folding structures by the artist Tauba Auerbach. The Complex structural and color interactions in the portfolio make it a favorite to show[….] instead of witnessing surprised joy, I watched a roomful of heads and shoulders slump in desperation. I was startled to realize the little more than half-way through their first semester, my students were projecting themselves into this portfolio not with the passive eyes of spectators, but with the knowledge of makers. No longer just an end product to them, this portfolio now embodied hours of toil and experimentation, trial and error, measuring and calculating. Seeing it demonstrated to the students that if they wished to make successful work they needed to build up their creative muscles." Page 37
Vanessa Vaile

Communications & Society: Sliding Out through Rhizo14 - 1 views

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    from the blog support ingKeith Hamon's explorations of the rhizome.  "I'm sliding outwards, across the boundaries and just in time. One of the most important results of Rhizo14 for me has been my connection to educational thinkers outside of North America and Western Europe, the West. In a series of articles for Hybrid Pedagogy, Maha Bali (Egypt) and Shyam Sharma (originally Nepal, now in New York, USA) tackle the issue of working with and speaking to the privileged West from a non-Western context. I had an epiphany when I read that Westerners and non-Westerners "do not talk the same language." I think Maha and Shyam are correct. We don't. Even the way I just wrote that-Westerners and non-Westerners-privileges the West, makes the West the touchstone, renders everything else as Other. I don't do it on purpose, but I do it none-the-less. "
  •  
    from the blog support ingKeith Hamon's explorations of the rhizome.  "I'm sliding outwards, across the boundaries and just in time. One of the most important results of Rhizo14 for me has been my connection to educational thinkers outside of North America and Western Europe, the West. In a series of articles for Hybrid Pedagogy, Maha Bali (Egypt) and Shyam Sharma (originally Nepal, now in New York, USA) tackle the issue of working with and speaking to the privileged West from a non-Western context. I had an epiphany when I read that Westerners and non-Westerners "do not talk the same language." I think Maha and Shyam are correct. We don't. Even the way I just wrote that-Westerners and non-Westerners-privileges the West, makes the West the touchstone, renders everything else as Other. I don't do it on purpose, but I do it none-the-less. "
Kevin Hodgson

Careertography - 1 views

  • decentralise people’s attention and (interestingly) to allow multiple viewpoints (even disagreements)
  • In a rhizomatic museum, visitors can add meaning to exhibitions
  • we need to think of new ways to engage with students and make them active participants in their career thinking.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • we need to break through this cultural baggage earlier. Changing our own culture in order to allow student voices to have an equal value to our own could be part of this.
  • moving out of our own space to meet students in theirs. The rhizome cannot be contained
  • In a recent post about learning spaces, Peter Bryant makes the point that learning occurs where people happen to be
  • Wherever “people congregate and share”
  • shift from a transactional to connections model
  • help students make their own connections, create their own career knowledge and take their own lines of flight
  • In a rhizomatic careers centre, however, there should be a way for students to add their own knowledge to these. Interactive workshops/discussions in the centre (rather than in a separate space) based around the displays? Giving space for students to add their own observations and comments within the display or to create their own? In this sense, the displays need to ask questions rather than present facts. They should stimulate discussion.
    • Kevin Hodgson
       
      This would be more inclusive, more interactive, more meaningful, right?
  •  
    "What would a rhizomatic careers centre look like?"
Heli Nurmi

Wanna do a cMOOC? | doublemirror - 5 views

  • Matthias Melcher – he made it so easy to follow everyone’s blogs
    • wayupnorth
       
      That was a huge contribution Matthias made to help tie Rhizo14 together. Although later in the course, when it became impossible for me to keep up with all the blog posts, I opted for the narrower conversation on Facebook as my link - even that subset exceeded my capacity
  • power is not due to the technology or its design, but to the actual people involved
    • wayupnorth
       
      strongly agree - although the ds106 assignment bank is an outstanding design element
  • So, when I did DS106 as a course for the first time in 2013, life was already set up in such a way that I could give it my full attention.
    • wayupnorth
       
      This helps understand the author's perspective. Not everyone in an open online course shares that life-setup. Many are trying to squeeze learning into the varying cracks between other overlapping committments.
  • ...15 more annotations...
  • So, what was Rhizo14 setting out to create? A one of what? Stephen uses his own courses as an example
    • wayupnorth
       
      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.
    • Heli Nurmi
       
      I agree with you that Dave is defferent from S.D. and rhizo should be described with Dave's terms
  • If my need for inclusion had been high, then I think I would have felt excluded from what some called Rhizo14FB.
    • wayupnorth
       
      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.
  • They did what humans do so well in new situations: gather in their tribes and by definition exclude those not in their tribe, or try to ‘convince’ those outside ‘it’ to join it;
  • batting the ideas back and forth in order to win the game.
  • The design of Rhizo14, I have to assume, is the current state of what Dave as an educational technologist believes works for massive open online courses.
    • wayupnorth
       
      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".
    • Heli Nurmi
       
      I thought that rhizo14 was Dave's first try to facilitate a MOOC his first own experiment
  • diversity was managed out through a group dynamic that excluded what the majority did not approve
    • Heli Nurmi
       
      I agree = saw this happen, all norms are not written, they can be strong without it
  • I did not see much by way of supporting the importance of diversity in action rather than theory.
    • Heli Nurmi
       
      very true in my eyes too
  • people left and may have been silenced by a vocal minority
  • gossiping about other participants
    • Heli Nurmi
       
      and this still praised as a good strategy - a year after the end of the studies
  • but Rhizo14 as an experiment on the future of higher education as a whole is not what the originators intend
    • wayupnorth
       
      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.
    • anonymous
       
      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 :)
    • Heli Nurmi
       
      Mariana speaks so well but why it is so challenging to hear, I am wondering after reading these notes
  • what he created with CCK08
  • own work in self-managed learning
  • I recognise this clearly from my
    • Heli Nurmi
       
      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 were definitely the right kind of ‘one’ if you believed in emergence, non-linearity, poetry and art rather than theory and explanation.
    • Heli Nurmi
       
      you said that better than I could, thanks
  • to connect with ‘old MOOC friends’ no mention of rhizomes of the metaphorical or garden variety.
    • Heli Nurmi
       
      I belong to this group
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.
Jaap Bosman

"Spec"-tacular: Going Beyond the Rubric (The Makes, the TIONS, the Promises) | Amy's MO... - 0 views

  •  
    some rules for writing and learning. Could be practical guide for rhizomatic teacing.
  •  
    What is your opinion on this short & clear text on rhizomatic learning?
Jaap Bosman

10 Things I've Learned (So Far) from Making a Meta-MOOC - 0 views

  • How We can Unlearn our Old Patterns to Relearn for a More Engaged, Successful, Fruitful, Productive, Humane, Happy, Beautiful, and Socially-Conscious Life.
  • This meta-MOOC advocates that 21st century education needs to return to Deweyite roots, embracing much more of a maker spirit, and much more willingness to experiment, to stray away from expertise
  • Do we really want knowledge that comes only from senior professors? I don’t know about other profs but my most exciting conversations invariably are those with junior colleagues, graduate students, or undergraduate students.
Vanessa Vaile

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

  •  
    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 Perils of Standardized Testing: 6 Ways It Harms Learning - InformED - 0 views

  •  
    "Don't the standards of the classroom prepare us for the standards of the real world?" Thoughtful article making the real world and education connection/ Google Oxygen Study seems real breakthrough. Cathy Davidson says it was for her and it have made big difference in her teaching for more "productive, happily socially-engaged lives."
Cris Crissman

Questions about rhizomatic learning | Jenny Connected - 0 views

  •  
    Stephen Downes's comment in OLDaily, Feb. 7 Questions about rhizomatic learning Jenny Mackness, February 6, 2014 At a certain point, perfectly good theories become nonsense. This may be that point. I am sympathetic with the list of questions Jenny Mackness poses to Keith Hamon about rhizomatic learning (a concept I'm increasingly questioning). For example: "I'm not sure that I would know how to distinguish a 'rhizomatic learner' from other learners." And "'A rhizome has no beginning or end; it is always in the middle, between things, interbeing, intermezzo.'" Strictly speaking, this is false of rhizomes (unless you're talking of the specific connection between plant and plant, in which case, one wonders how it is different from any other connection (and wonder why it can't have a middle)). I've commented to Dave Cormier (who seems to have a better handle on this) about this in the past: a rhizome network is a mesh, which is good, but there's no openness, no diversity, not really even any autonomy. And you mix that in with (quite frankly) silly statements from Deleuze and Guattari (like: "'State space is 'striated' or griddled") you get something that really begins to lack coherence. I've long complained of continental philosophers that when they don't understand something, they just make stuff up. There's too much of that in educational theory too.
Cris Crissman

do you know networks? on leaving the Garden of Eden | the theoryblog - 0 views

  •  
    Bonnie Stewart response to Week 4 question: Do books make us stupid.
Cris Crissman

The Main Responsibility of Teachers? Make yourself dispensable! | Reflecting Allowed - 0 views

  •  
    I'd say Dave made himself dispensable ;-) See Comments, too.
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