Welcome to my blog on Quality, elearning, OER, OEP, OEC, and user generated content (UGC)


The posts in my blog will be both in English and Swedish.
Blogposterna kommer att vara både på svenska och engelska.

Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Rhizomatic Learning - The community is the curriculum, week 4

Weeke 4 Are books making us stupied

The challenges for this week in the very interesting course on rhizome learning, the community is the curricula:

  • Are books making us stupid? 
  • Have they always? 
  • What has the medium of print done to learning? 
  • What are the implications of this objective distance? 
  • How does it impact what we believe is valid in our society both inside learning and outside of it? 
I will argue that any kind of media has its benefits and limitations
The nice thing with social media is that it easy to be connected, it is easy to be on track, it is easy to be in a community, it is an often gente and generous athmosphere, everyone is willing to share and to be part.

Of course some limitations are that it can be barriers for those who are not digital skilled or not very socia. Being not very social is not just due for socail media, and on Internet of course
There can be limitations that everything is so fast with social media, you los sometimes time for reflections, further consideration, and second thoughts

With books and printed material there are benefits in some ways, it is solid in one way, but on the other had as soon as a book is printed, it is old, and imagine it takes appro 1 year or even more to publish, print etc. This is teh same with Journal articles, with the review system etc. On the other hand they are more sustainable

The printed word is solid, it cant easy be changes, the oral word can be changes in teh same time it is said

As the saying is

Carve praise in stone, write criticism in sand

Rhizomatic Learning - The community is the curriculum- Week 3

This week is about how to embrace uncertainty in learning




I  will argue that the more you are wondering about, and the more  curious you are and try to discover, the more you learn. Learning is not about questions and answers, nor about right and wrong. Learning is rhizomatic, serendepedy and uncertain. You don´t really know where you end up, but you need to know your goals and your own directions, The way forward is however not just straight on...

As Cormier is emphasizing in this videoclip it is very much about
  • Orient
  • Declare
  • Network
  • Cluster
  • Focus
If you learn those five steps you might learn most everything, and I agree that those five steps facilitate uncertain learning. You have to embrace uncertainity, and find ways which are reachable. It i also important to give up power approaches, you have different approaches and can share,

Tuesday, February 4, 2014

Rhizomatic Learning - The community is the curriculum Week2

Rhizomatic Learning - The community is the curriculum

During this week we had to reflect on indepencence ans freedom, and how to "force" independence .

A challenge which is delicate, however, for me it is very much similar as to raise children, but in an educational settting and formal learning how can you do it then.

I liked very much Daves start of this week:

"I’m hosting a party, not trying to tell you what or how to think"
and further 

"The most important part of your choice is figuring out what is going to fit into your life better. The more you figure out what you’re taking this course for, where you will be when you check in to see what people are doing – the better chance of you having a fruitful experience."
 
We are some 300 people in the course in the course so far and we are invited, promoted, encourage to work at diferent places with our reflections, like:
at the P2P site
at the course siteP2P   the course site
Even  on:
Facebook Rhizo14
Twitter #rhizo14, I also use my own #EbbaOssian @EbbaOssian

Dave has the nice approach to say about Course objectives
"Just kidding. There aren’t any. You can have personal objectives. You can have group objectives. But I’m not creating objectives for anyone."

and also:
"What you should do in a given week?
Try to forget everything you know about ‘traditional education’ and imagine that you are going to camp for 6 weeks. "




cc openedu

I really reflect on the idea with learning and education as a camp, people are coing for different reasons, people have different goals. I will try this  approach fpor my next course
 I do like the serendepity way of learning

Rhizomatic Learning - The community is the curriculum


One of the two MOOCs I have reg for and started now in the beginning of 2014 is

I realy love this course and its title. Rhizomatic Learning- the  community is teh curriculum
and as  Dave says: "Doing this course I've put together a blog post to give you a sense of 'where' the course is happening and what you might like to do as part of it."  In the info about the course it starts with "Your unguided tour of Rhizo14". I really just live the approach.

course image

Rhizomatic learning is a story of how we can learn in a world of abundance – abundance of perspective, of information and of connection. A paper/location based learning model forces us to make decisions, in advance, about what it is important for students to learn. This was a practical reality – if we were going to have content available for a course, it needed to be prepared in advance. In order to prepare the content in advance, we needed to prepare the objectives in advance. And, given that we know what everyone is supposed to learn, we might as well check and see if they all did and compare them against each other.
What happens if we let that go? What happens when we approach a learning experience and we don’t know what we are going to learn? Where each student can learn something a little bit different – together? If we decide that important learning is more like being a parent, or being a cook, and less like knowing all the counties in England in 1450? What if we decided to trust the idea that people can come together to learn given the availability of an abundance of perspective, of information and of connection?


I  really love and I am really dedicated to the rhizome way of thinking and learníng, In my dissertation on Benchmarking in higher edcuation- lessons learned from interantional projects, I argued for a rhizome model of quality enhancement, actually I have the rhizome theory as a frame of reference in my research.

 the work by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari

Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari use the term "rhizome" and "rhizomatic" to describe theory and research that allows for multiple, non-hierarchical entry and exit points in data representation and interpretation. In A Thousand Plateaus, they oppose it to an arborescent conception of knowledge, which works with dualist categories and binary choices. A rhizome works with planar and trans-species connections, while an arborescent model works with vertical and linear connections.

As a model for culture, the rhizome resists the organizational structure of the root-tree system which charts causality along chronological lines and looks for the original source of 'things' and looks towards the pinnacle or conclusion of those 'things.' A rhizome, on the other hand, is characterized by 'ceaselessly established connections between semiotic chains, organizations of power, and circumstances relative to the arts, sciences, and social struggles.' Rather than narrativize history and culture, the rhizome presents history and culture as a map or wide array of attractions and influences with no specific origin or genesis, for a 'rhizome has no beginning or end; it is always in the middle, between things, interbeing, intermezzo.' The planar movement of the rhizome resists chronology and organization, instead favoring a nomadic system of growth and propagation.
"In this model, culture spreads like the surface of a body of water, spreading towards available spaces or trickling downwards towards new spaces through fissures and gaps, eroding what is in its way. The surface can be interrupted and moved, but these disturbances leave no trace, as the water is charged with pressure and potential to always seek its equilibrium, and thereby establish smooth space.


Deleuze and Guattari introduce six principles:
  • 1 and 2: Principles of connection and heterogeneity: any point of a rhizome can be connected to any other, and must be
  • 3. Principle of multiplicity: only when the multiple is effectively treated as a substantive, "multiplicity" that it ceases to have any relation to the One
  • 4. Principle of asignifying rupture: a rhizome may be broken, but it will start up again on one of its old lines, or on new lines
  • 5 and 6: Principle of cartography and decalcomania: a rhizome is not amenable to any structural or generative model; it is a "map and not a tracing"

 

The very first task in this course is to reflect on
Use cheating as a weapon. How can you use the idea of cheating as a tool to take apart the structures that you work in? What does it say about learning? About power? About how you see teaching?

This is  really a challenge as such. Knowledge has always build on what others are doing of course one has  to give recognition to teh one/s who create thíng, but is it always easy to know who was teh firsst one, A lot of knowledge is so called common knowledge, and as such always has benn known.  By cheating you can learn a lot as well, you just have to know how  you can use it and what it means.  It is strange there as alway been some strange opinion that knowledge ahs to do with power. Some know more than others, and as such have "higher" status.
It would be nice, if an assignment in HE should say to students , cheat as much as you can, and tehn discuss waht we can learn about it. ONe thing for sure, is how to deal with Creative Commons, Copyright,  referrie rules, acknoledgement etc . Could be a nice starting point

I think with a rhizome mindset, sharing is caring, and caring is sharing. Together we gain knowledge and experiences and learn to network

 #rhizo14

@EbbaOssian