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Vanessa Vaile

A new view on lurkers | Harold Jarche - 2 views

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    For several years, there has been a rule-of-thumb, called "90-9-1″, that 90% of online participation in groups/communities consists of "lurkers" or more politely, "passive participants", and only 1% are active creators. Jacob Nielsen's 2006 post on Participation Inequality provides a good overview of this phenomenon. A recent BBC survey of 7,500 people shows significantly different results. Here we see that passive lurkers make up only 23% of participants; active (intense) participants have increased to 17%; and there is now an "Easy" group in the middle who, " … respond largely to the activity of others. This includes replying, 'liking' and rating, all activities where there's little effort, exposure or risk."
Vanessa Vaile

Dimensions to SDL in an Open Networked Environment - 1 views

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    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
Vanessa Vaile

Community learning - the zombie resurrection - 1 views

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    from Dave's Educational Blog: "this course came back to life without a 'head' as it were. After my last goodbye was sent out to the participants, a week 7 popped up on the website. The participants continued the course, but without any 'teacher' filling the role as guide or decision maker. They continued on like this for another 6 weeks, and while activity is now only active in the facebook/twitter/gplus realm (that i know of), the communal learning process continues. The course (now called #rhizo14 by all involved) has refused to die. It has become that individual/community space that i was hoping for when the course started. People post ideas, challenges and thoughts and others bring their perspective to it… we learn, often in vastly different ways, from each interaction. And then this post shows up on the original P2PU course today -"
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?
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?
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  • (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.
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    The system of education will change, teachers should be change agents.
Jaap Bosman

Self-assessment and self-remediation | Dave's Educational Blog - 0 views

  • Overcoming isolation
  • Active learning
  • Controlling learning behaviours
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Diagnosis and remediation
  • Student responsibility for learning
  • Teaching students how to make good questions for themselves, to ask them in ways that are going to lead to effective searching and learning,
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    So i'm basically trying to give people something they can work with… a strategy rather than content… that can get them 'in the know' so that they can participate in the community effectively.
wayupnorth

The Internet and Education - OpenMind - by Neil Selwyn - 0 views

  • First, is the potential of the Internet to offer individual learners increased freedom from the physical limitations of the real world.
  • Secondly, the Internet is seen to support a new culture of learning—i.e., learning that is based around bottom-up principles of collective exploration, play, and innovation rather than top-down individualized instruction
  • Thirdly, the capacity of the Internet to support a mass connectivity between people and information is felt to have radically altered the relationship between individuals and knowledge.
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  • Fourthly, the Internet is seen to have dramatically personalized the ways in which people learn—thereby making education a far more individually determined process than was previously the case.
  • self-directed, non-institutional learning are initiatives such as the hole-in-the-wall and School in the Cloud
    • wayupnorth
       
      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?
  • the most successful forms of Internet-based education and e-learning being those that reflect and even replicate pre-Internet forms of education such as classrooms, lectures, and books.
    • wayupnorth
       
      really?
  • elping already engaged individuals to participate further, but doing little to widen participation or reengage those who are previously disengaged
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    It remains for teachers to figure out how to leverage the opportunities of the internet for their learner's advantage. It is not enough to rely on the internet to "do it for you". The internet is still not a teaching machine. Best practice (Jim's version): teach content creation, collaboration, and reasonable dialogue - globally if possible.
Vanessa Vaile

Ethics and soft boundaries between Facebook groups  and other web services | ... - 0 views

  • exchange of information between open and closed spaces
  • Facebook groups can be open, closed or secret, the meanings of these being laid out in the Facebook help
  • the ‘closed’ space of Facebook, only visible to one of the 1.3 billion members of Facebook
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  • Facebook is not completely open from the outside but doesn’t seem very closed
  • anyone who has the link to an open Facebook group post or comment, can share it inside or outside Facebook, and it can be opened by any Facebook (not just group) member.
  • participants who are not Facebook members are excluded from sight of posts in the Facebook group, whilst a very large number of Facebook members who have never heard of rhizo14 could check it out if you sent them the link
  • Ethical dilemmas
  • How do we behave around here?
  • The rhizo14 MOOC offers no explicit written norms, behavioural or otherwise, and the strapline for the FB group is “An attempt to create a feed for Rhizomatic Learning posts from around the web.”
  • a number of people (significantly less than the full 240 ish membership) regard the group as a semi-private backchannel
  • The implicit norms on lurking in the FB group are to some extent discernible, but the norms on other behaviours sometimes seem to be taken as read by some active members of the group.
  • Teachers and moderators can model ethical behaviour, and communities usually engage with norm-building online where misunderstanding is not uncommon. Overt moderation and norm-building activities have been generally absent from rhizo14 in general and the FB group in particular
  • What does sharing mean within and beyond the rhizo14 community?
  • A lot of sharing goes on at rhizo14, and there is a sense that openness is a value of rhizo14. The remix culture has been very evident in rhizo14, and creativity and remix
  • Communities of Practice literature and others have identified the importance of the boundary in the propagation of knowledge.  The facility for stuff and people to cross boundaries presents great opportunities, but with these come tricky questions of how we share and what we do with what is shared
  • A great set of ‘rules’ that has helped sharing is Creative Commons Licenses, not always enforceable but signifying intent in a sharing and use context
  • A dilemma presented by research data sharing is current at rhizo14 FB group, and raises, for me at any rate, some very interesting issues about how we do Open Research
  • the issue of ethics of use of open/closed data for research purposes in rhizo14 at the time it became clear that a group doing auto-ethnography, and a group of which I am a part were both doing research around rhizo14
  • The data arrangements
  • my wish not to be quoted was incompatible with the publicy of the document
  • Discussion of Agency
  • sharing our ethical stance with others can help our moral agency within a network of human and technical agents.  I am not thinking of a set of rules but rather our expectations and ethical stance that we could share with other moral agents
  • ome participants seem to assume there is a ‘common decency’ approach to the use of ‘open’ information
  • unwarranted assumption of community
  • technology as ‘moral agent’ where permissions and constraints on agency can be coded into a system
  • hard rules, hard boundaries can be explained in help pages and observed in action
  • rules can be overcome by human agency.
  • Some Tentative Conclusions
  • An important element of the digital moral agent’s backpack to complement their ethical literacy is the digital literacy of having an active understanding of the ethical and other implications of using a digital space/service for communication
  • benefits in clarifying use of information, utterances, multimedia in practice
  • the more open the use and sharing of information, the more important it is to clarify how we expect that information to be used
  • unclear use in the above extract from Help of the words
  • I would have benefited from a clearer statement of expectations and behaviours in rhizo14
  • discussion on how we behave around rhizo14
  • digital literacies are a moving target
  • communication in open spaces is tricky, we need flexible repair strategies
  • state our expectations and promote discussion of expectations within a group  as starting point, then we may be able to minimise but not eliminate problems
  • the issue of who can use the information in the auto-ethnography
  • “when you engage online in equally public settings such as on someone’s Facebook Wall, the conversation is public by default, private through effort.” (boyd, danah. 2010. “Making Sense of Privacy and Publicity.” SXSW. Austin, Texas, March 13).
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    "As part of a MOOC on rhizomatic learning that performs itself in many different spaces (Facebook, P2PU, G+, Twitter and others), I am a member of an 'open' Facebook group.  It is endlessly fascinating, and has given me a lot of scope for reflection about back channels and the exchange of information between open and closed spaces. Of course, I say that as if a space could be categorised as open or closed:  it's often a lot more complicated than that, acted out by technical aspects of the space and by the agency of the people who interact there. Facebook groups can be open, closed or secret, the meanings of these being laid out in the Facebook help."
  •  
    "As part of a MOOC on rhizomatic learning that performs itself in many different spaces (Facebook, P2PU, G+, Twitter and others), I am a member of an 'open' Facebook group.  It is endlessly fascinating, and has given me a lot of scope for reflection about back channels and the exchange of information between open and closed spaces. Of course, I say that as if a space could be categorised as open or closed:  it's often a lot more complicated than that, acted out by technical aspects of the space and by the agency of the people who interact there. Facebook groups can be open, closed or secret, the meanings of these being laid out in the Facebook help."
Scott Johnson

Theoretical foundations of learning environments first ed / edited by David H. Jonassen... - 2 views

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    Second Edition (2012) available from Routledge Preface This book is about the learning theories that provide the foundation for the design and development of open-ended learning environments (defined in Chap. 1). During the 1990s, we have witnessed a convergence of learning theories never before encountered. These contemporary learning theories are based on substantively different ontologies and epistemologies than were traditional objectivist foundations for instructional design. This book is intended to provide an introduction to the theoretical foundations for these new learning environments for instructional designers, curriculum specialists, mathematics and science educators, learning psychologists, and anyone else interested in the theoretical state of the art. Edited April 8/14 by Scott J. Dropped the chapter list and replaced with a sample from the section on self-directed learners: Self-Directed Learning and Self-Regulation Theory Chapter 11 Learning Communities: Theoretical Foundations for Making Connections Janette R. Hill "As indicated throughout this chapter, learning is "strongly influenced by setting, social interaction, and individual beliefs, knowledge, and attitudes" (Dierking, 1991, p.4). This is particularly important to keep in mind while turning attention to the individual within the learning community. While there is often a focus on the collective that is the learning community, individuals are the foundation that enable the community to form. Two theories can help guide our understanding of how to support learners within the context of a learning community: self-regulated and self-directed learning. Self-regulation encompasses a variety of individual characteristics, including self-efficacy, motivation and metacognitive skills. Each characteristic has been studied to various extents (see, for example, Lim & Kim, 2003; Oliver & Shaw, 2003; Song & Hill, 2009), with the majority of the studies indicating that all
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.
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  • 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
Vanessa Vaile

The Power of Networks-Video + Links #rhizo14 - 0 views

  •  
    example of carrying rhizomes beyond course and connecting to other areas --
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.
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  • 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?"
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.
Kevin Hodgson

Teaching Beyond Tropes: Subjective-Learning Subjugated-Objectives Subversive-Subjunctives - 5 views

  • Subjective-Learning Subjugated-Objectives Subversive-Subjunctives
    • Kevin Hodgson
       
      I am feeling a bit like this is some lost text from a Dr. Seuss book for college students.
    • Terry Elliott
       
    • Kevin Hodgson
       
      Nice
  • Subjective
    • Kevin Hodgson
       
      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.
  • subvert or overthrow, destroy, or undermine
    • Kevin Hodgson
       
      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.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • These include statements about one's state of mind, such as opinion, belief, purpose, intention, or desire.
    • Kevin Hodgson
       
      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.
    • Kevin Hodgson
       
      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.
  • entryway into possibility.
    • Kevin Hodgson
       
      Great phrase embedded in a deep paragraph .... We should get this tattooed on our web/head.
  • ridden like a wild bronco while you laugh maniacally.
    • Kevin Hodgson
       
      I am tempted to make a comic with this line .... Yeehaw!
  • Click here for your summative assessment. 
    • Kevin Hodgson
       
      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."
    • Kevin Hodgson
       
      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.
  • Revised Bloom's Taxonomy
  •  
    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?
Scott Johnson

Blurring the Boundaries? New social media, new social research: Developing a network to... - 1 views

  •  
    Woodfield, Kandy and Morrell, Gareth and Metzler, Katie and Blank, Grant and Salmons, Janet and Finnegan, Jerome and Lucraft, Mithu (2013) Blurring the Boundaries? New social media, new social research: Developing a network to explore the issues faced by researchers negotiating the new research landscape of online social media platforms. NCRM Working Paper. "On a practical level, some of our network members were struggling with the constant stream of social media data, finding it difficult to keep pace with their participants as they moved on in their conversations and discussions. Digital overwhelm might become counter-productive to reflective social science if researchers are not skilled at managing data flows. Similarly, gathering massive datasets requires a computing power outside of the grasp of many independent researchers or students. The increasing emphasis on 'big data' runs the risk of access to datasets being increasingly concentrated in the hands of a tiny minority of researchers and organisations. An alternative perspective sees this as an opportunity for researchers to come together in creative, cross-disciplinary collaborations, Either way, social researchers will need to find ways of convincing those who own social media sites about the merits of extending, or at least continuing, some freely accessible datasets. The politics of social media research will become an increasingly important agenda for social scientists to engage with. Despite the strengths that social media offer in terms of providing an accessible platform for some marginalised groups, other hard-to-reach populations like the elderly, the poor and those with limited literacy remain more difficult to reach online." Page 12
simonwarren

It's amazing what happens over coffee: or deterritoralising the curriculum (a #rhizo15 ... - 7 views

  • coffee
    • Kevin Hodgson
       
      I am drinking coffee as I read this ... sort of drink symmetry going on right now ....
  • my first full academic year in the job
    • Kevin Hodgson
       
      I am curious if this newness is freeing or is it constricting? Can you try new things or are you expected to toe the line? I suppose it depends on the "boss man" in charge.
    • simonwarren
       
      Well, a mixture really.  It is 'my' course but that doesn't mean it is always viewed that way by those upstairs - this is a very small unit and can be claustrophobic at times.  Dealing with a bit of a culture of talking the talk but not necessarily walking the walk.  If you get what I mean.  It depends how assertive I wish to be.
  • My recent engagement with digital scholarship and #connectedlearning has propelled me to consider other options, and to think about how I might hack my own course, hybridise it.
    • Kevin Hodgson
       
      This is the heart of all this connected work ... how do we bring our explorations of learning in online spaces and adventures back into the classroom (unless you teach online courses, of course).
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • sets of resources organised around difficult ideas
    • Kevin Hodgson
       
      I like this phrasing and the idea here ... of shifting the learning, as long as you don't focus on the tool/technology but on the learnings elements. Sometimes, the tech drives the learning, not the other way around. We want our students to have agency of exploration in their learning.
    • simonwarren
       
      This year we used the closed box of the institutional VLE to do some of this work but I want to push this further by using more open platforms and ask participants to find their own materials. The assessment will have to be tweaked to facilitate this.
  • have shorter workshops that model many of the ideas we promote
    • Kevin Hodgson
       
      This might up the engagement factor. I think a few folks from Connected Courses are tinkering with collective design of curriculum, right? Of allowing students to have a say in the learning. This is what Dave is doing with us. I think.
    • simonwarren
       
      The 'time' allocated to 'teaching' sessions is driven by the Bologna process (Tuning in N.America) and 'European Credit and Accumulation Transfer System' which usually gets reduced to 'time on task' rather than learning.  We can play with this though
  • Emergent objectives could become points for reflecting on what the course should be dealing with, what the difficult ideas and issues are, and therefore the content required.
  • I am after all a final arbiter, the one who, institutionally, is responsible for assessment
    • Kevin Hodgson
       
      Always a struggle, no matter the age of student (says the sixth grade teacher).
  • working with the play of smooth and striated space.
    • Kevin Hodgson
       
      Thanks for the deep thinking ...
  • Also, could we introduce aspects of peer review?
    • Sarah Honeychurch
       
      I always like peer review
  • @davecormier
    • Sarah Honeychurch
       
      It was me actually :)
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