Author Archives: NomadWarMachine

Not so private after all

So here’s a funny thing. On Saturday I blogged about how I only played my uke in private. If you’d asked me about this at the time I’d have been adamant that nobody bar the cats was ever going to … Continue reading

Posted in #rhizo14, #rhizo15, Learning, Music, Rhizomes | Tagged , , | 6 Comments

Learning in private

I’m not a shy person. Ask anyone who knows me – I can be very fond of blowing my own trumpet. And I enjoy collaborative writing – the stuff we’ve been doing over the last year has been fun, and … Continue reading

Posted in #rhizo14, #rhizo15, Learning, MOOC, Rhizomes | Tagged , , , | 17 Comments

Whose rules are they anyway?

I’ve been talking a lot in my various social networks, communities, collectives (whatever the heck we are!) about exactly what #rhizo14 was.  Was it a MOOC? A course? A happening? A party?  Who knows.  At the time it all began we … Continue reading

Posted in #rhizo14, D&G, MOOC, Wittgenstein | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Wittgenstein PI

I’m so used to abbreviating Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations  to “PI” now that I’d forgotten how funny it used to seem.  Here’s a cartoon that a friend drew for me when we were undergrads together (she gave me permission to publish it … Continue reading

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Perceived objectivity

You’ve probably seen pictures of that dress – is it black and blue, or gold and white, and what does this say about our perceptual experiences?  But enough about that. There’s another discussion I’ve been having with friends recently, about … Continue reading

Posted in #rhizo14, Rhizomes, Wittgenstein | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

Words can hurt

Mary Magdalene by User:Vassil (File:Sépulcre_Arc-en-Barrois_111008_12.jpg) [CC BY 3.0] via Wikimedia Commons There’s an old playground saying that we used to bandy around a lot as children: Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words will never harm me. I said it … Continue reading

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What’s the point of ethics?

It’s a frequent misconception that the Hippocratic Oath contains the phrase “do no harm”, and that means that doctors can’t do anything that might hurt their patients. But it doesn’t,  and sometimes they have to.  Primarily the thrust of the … Continue reading

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A herd of freely associating, autonomous cats.

At the moment some of us are attempting to finish an article about the collaborative autoethnography we’ve been working on since the second week of #rhizo14 (the first rMOOC?). One thing we’re attempting to characterise is the way that we zigzagged between … Continue reading

Posted in #rhizo14, D&G, MOOC, Rhizomes, Writing | Tagged , | 3 Comments

Scribbling all over the place.

I’ve never been one to toe the line: my automatic reaction to being told I must do something is to say no, and I spend way longer looking for ways to thwart bureaucracy than obeying its diktats.  And I loathe … Continue reading

Posted in #MoocMooc, Learning | 1 Comment

Institutionalisation of values

Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains.  Rousseau, Social Contract, Book 1 I’m teaching my first years Rousseau and I’m (meant to be) reading Ivan Illich’s Deschooling Society – everywhere I look there are critiques of the state … Continue reading

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