Collaborative Sestina for Rhizomatic Learning

(Sarah)
Rhizomatic learning is very subjective.
It’s up to you, not up to Dave, what gets to count.
The important thing is not to worry, but be content
to mess around, mix it up – play
around. Be warned – rhizomatic learning can be invasive
and you might find it affects your regular practice

(Maha)
So you wanna know about theory versus practice?
What counts as practice? Isn’t that subjective?
Theory can be invasive
but which kind of theory counts?
rhizo-practice is the fun we have when we play
Focusing on connection not content

(Nick)
I wanted to learn but I wasn’t content
with the dull monotone of the usual practice,
I felt that I needed new spaces to play
and explore my own paths, though they might be subjective.
So I found for a metaphor, a fresher account,
a resilient notion that’s clearly invasive.

(Autumm)
Who determines what is considered invasive?
And could this be more than plants? Animals? Could this be content?
Earworms, forking ideas, blogs turn to radio. Count
how many times it breaks and heads off. Practice
connecting someone else’s thinking to your subjective
And don’t forget how important it is to play

(Tania)
The pulse of the rhizome we feel as we play.
To us it’s energizing, to others invasive.
Unleashed we reach into unexplored spaces always subjective
And what is created and must surely be content
is reshaped constantly as is our practice.
To whom the ideas belong does not even count.

(Wendy – Bill jumped your claim)
(Bill)
Two. Four. Six. Five. Three. Count
Not the hours. Instead, play.
Perfect will not practice
Make. Explore. Invade. I’ve
Switched freedom for content,
My subject, the subjective.

(Lisa)
Questions (beyond counting) are more invasive
than answers. We learn through playing with content
and share a practice that is inherently subjective.

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Cinquain for Rhizomatic Learning

 Rhizomes
Invasive things?
That depends on the type.
Some need nurturing so they thrive;
others choke.

flickr photo shared by Internet Archive Book Images with no copyright restriction (Flickr Commons)

(purists might say this is not a true cinquain. I’ve just gone for the number of syllables, so bite me) 😛

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Haiku for Rhizomatic Learning

By Игоревич (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

What’s rhizo learning?

A chance to play with new things.

Don’t worry ’bout mess.

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#rhizo15: An Invasive Species?

In this week’s #rhizo15 question, Dave Cormier asks if rhizomatic learning is an invasive species.

Depends

 

(This is inspired by Keith, btw.)

 

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Introducing the swarm

A swarm of stars: flickr photo by NASA on The Commons http://flickr.com/photos/nasacommons/9460789390 shared with no copyright restriction (Flickr Commons)

 I used to refer to myself as “One of Eight” in emails regarding my tutoring. Back in 2009 (or thereabouts) the University conceded to pressure from the trade union and put we lowly teaching assistants on a proper pay scale with increments and yearly pay rises and everything. It was a big thing to have pulled off and, as a bonus, the letter to tell us about it contained the phrase:

you have been assimilated

Cue the inevitable reference to the Borg. We were a team of eight, so the handle was obvious.

 

I keep thinking about the Borg when I reflect upon the collaborative writing that I have been participating in since rhizo14. We’re a diverse group from (as we are proud to tell folk) a range of countries across the globe, and we are all strong-minded, opinionated people who somehow manage to reach consensus without falling out with each other. We’ve played with various ways of describing ourselves, and seem to have settled on calling ourselves a “swarm”.

Fractal bee art: http://flickr.com/photos/tommietheturtle1/15543891763 shared under a Creative Commons (PD) license

I think that it’s important to remember that this is just our attempt at finding an appropriate metaphor, and not to dig too deeply into it (Dave made a similar point about the rhizome story recently and told us to pay LESS attention to it and just squint sideways at it, or something.) We are not bees, or ants. Sorry to state the obvious, but sometimes this needs saying.

 

I think a difference between our rhizoswarm and the Borg is that we will come together for the purposes of writing a paper or a presentation and seek to find words that represent what we feel we want to say, while at the same time never speaking on behalf of the swarm in the rest of our lives. When we’re not collaborating I read others from my swarm saying things that I would not put my name to, and I am sure that they feel the same about the stuff I write. This is not because I think that they are wrong, but because we each have our own voice and our own interests. we’re not just a collective, we are individuals as well.

More on this later.

Posted in #rhizo14, #rhizo15, Rhizomes, University | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Be careful what you “black box”

I often describe my job as a learning technologist as “trying not to break things”.  Folk respond to this with a nervous laugh, because they are fairly sure it is a joke that they don’t understand, but there’s a serious point to my description.  Keeping technology running smoothly is an achievement – and making it invisible to users, so that they do not have to think about how to use it, is an art.

I don’t know much about ANT (Actor Network Theory), but a friend described it to me as being relevant here, in that folk often only notice tech when it goes wrong – otherwise we “black box” it (ignore it as something they don’t need to think about).* I think that’s a fair description of a lot of people, and I think that this attitude to tech as something they can ignore is one that should be challenged in our web 2.0 world. However, that’s a rant for another day. The point that I want to make here is that when something is functioning well we often don’t notice it, or realise how important it is to our everyday lives.

There are some things that are a lot more important than learning tech that we also often forget about until they are threatened, and that’s our fundamental human rights.  Jeremy Waldron says somewhere that rights typically only come into focus when they are threatened, otherwise we ignore then (we “black box” them, in ANT terms).  The poor and the vulnerable in our society are already well aware of how the Tory Government are eroding their basic moral rights to liberty, autonomy and welfare. Now they propose a step further – the removal of the protection of the Human Rights Act from all citizens. We should be very afraid of a government who wants to do that. I think that it’s time that we all reminded ourselves of the history of the Human Rights Act and consider seriously the implications of living in a society with no regard for the values it protects.  Scottish MSPs agree.

* This will eventually turn into something for one of our #rhizo14 presentations, hence beginning to think here about it.

Posted in #rhizo14, Politics, Rhizomes, Technology, University | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Time to cluster

flickr photo by Kiwi Tom http://flickr.com/photos/tom_hall_nz/14917023204 shared under a Creative Commons (BY) license

flickr photo by Kiwi Tom http://flickr.com/photos/tom_hall_nz/14917023204 shared under a Creative Commons (BY) license

I’ve seen a few comments over the last couple of weeks about people not being able to keep up with rhizo15, or read everything, and I think that this might be causing some folk to worry that they are not doing enough, or that they are missing out on something important. I know it’s easy to say that it’s fine not to do everything – and probably impossible to do it all. We don’t usually expect our “regular” students to read absolutely every suggested reading do we, so why do we expect that we should digest every offering in #rhizo15?

A lecturer once explained to us that a reading list was like a menu – we should try to make  a balanced selection, but not attempt to cram everything in. More recently, Stephen Downes makes a similar point. He suggests that unlike a traditional course, which compares to a book in having  a linear content, so that later parts depend on those earlier, things like rhizo15 are more like magazines and newspapers – you dip in and engage with the bits that catch your attention and ignore the rest. (Or they are more like a map, to make a D&G analogy.)

Dave also has suggestions about how to approach a thing like rhizo15, and which I keep written on my whiteboard as a reminder:

SAM_0265

  • Orient: find out what the course is about
  • Declare: say who you are
  • Network: talk to some others
  • Cluster: concentrate on those with similar interests:
  • Focus: what do you want to take from this experience?

Is is time to cluster?

Posted in #rhizo15, D&G, Learning, MOOC, Rhizomes | Tagged , , , | 18 Comments

Content is Glasgow?

Photo by Thomas Nugent: http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/4086384

Photo by Thomas Nugent: http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/4086384

Last summer the Commonwealth Games were in Glasgow. The image on the left is the perky mascot, Clyde, with the slogan “People make Glasgow” proudly displayed on his chest. I was reminded of this last night when I saw it painted on one of the taxis in town. The mantra for week 3 of #rhizo15 is “Content is People”, so I wonder whether this is a n acceptable syllogism:

Content is people
People make (are) Glasgow
Content is Glasgow

Posted in #rhizo14, Rhizomes | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Returning to learning

So this week Turnitin announced their automated marking service.  My first reaction was to groan and wonder how long it would be before we were asked if we’d be supporting the service.  Then Scott said something that made me think …

So I propose a new model of assessment to please the bureaucrats.

1. Set the students and assignment and tell them that they can use any text generator they want.  Here’s one and here’s another and another. There’s plenty to choose from – the main thing is that this should not take time.

2. Upload all the submissions to the Turnitin Scoring Engine. Tweak the resulting grades as required to suit your students.

3. Get back to teaching what students need to know, not what is assessable.

Posted in #rhizo15, Academia, Learning, Teaching, University | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

rhizoradio promos

While we wait, with bated breath, for Dave to announce our #rhizoradio play, I thought it would be an idea to collate the various promos here.

Kevin’s Thinglink

Autumm’s Mr X loses his battle with objectivity (image by Angela)

My song

Simon’s take

And a bunch of memes.

Did I miss anything?

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