I didn’t miss the Week 5 prompt, it’s just that I couldn’t stop my rhizo-head from spinning long enough to stabilize my thoughts.
So this is what Dave said about rhizomatic learning:
Rhizomatic plants are chaotic, aggressive and resilient. It models some of the qualities that can make a good learner. The rhizome, however, can also be an invasive species. It can choke other plants out of your garden such that only the rhizomatic plant remains. (And the rest here which I choose not to address in this post.)
Must rhizomatic learning be an invasive species?
Your challenge This week take a critical look at the rhizomatic approach. Are we just replacing one authority structure with another? Trading tradition for community? What does this mean in our classroom? How can this get us into trouble? What are the ethical implications of creating a ‘community’ for learning? Community as conformity?
Am I having so much trouble responding because I don’t have anything to say? No, it’s more like I don’t know where to start or how to capture my experiences in the Rhizo15 community. There is no way I am going to be able to respond in coherent linear manner so I might just be impressionistic – turn on the sun and highlight a few things.
Must rhizomatic learning be an invasive species?
Well it depends on your definition of invasive. A rhizome plant is invasive and often unwelcome. Some people (like Maha) welcome the plant as well as the experience. The rhizomatic learning community is a chaotic learning experience with an interconnectedness amongst members which appears to have no dominant mapping logic. (I’m struggling to find words for this.) An image is better.
A rhizome is a root-like organism (though not a root) that spreads and grows horizontally (generally underground). Some examples are potatoes, couchgrass, and weeds. Couchgrass, or crabgrass, continues to grow even if you pull up what you think is all of it, since it has no central element. As a rhizome has no center, it spreads continuously without beginning or end. The main principles of the rhizome are “principles of connection and heterogeneity: any point of a rhizome can be connected to anything other, and must be” (A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari).
This kind of unpredictable, unmappable, interconnected learning can be very invasive. It can:
disrupt the previously constructed order
make people get lost
encourage people to reach out into space and grab anyone’s hand so as not to float out into space alone
create worlds different to the ones we knew and encourage people to spend a lot of time there
render people’s speech unintelligible as they exchange clusters of hashtagged memes, poetry, radio plays, and other dubious projects
tempt people to forgo sleep to participate in conversations and schemes
make people lose sight of the central premise of whatever it was they were doing before
make people find they have a fondness for people they’ve never met face to face
disrupt confidence in objective understanding
cause a shift in perception of reality which involves subjectivity gaining credibility over objectivity
creating doubt in the existence of objectivity
Are we just replacing one authority structure with another? Trading tradition for community?
What authority? I can’t see any authority? Where there is no centre there is no authority. But what about Dave? Oh, he comes and goes like an irresponsible parent. We are left out on the streets to play on our own.
That’s what I’m trying to figure out. Can you come back later?
How can this get us into trouble?
Absolutely. I certainly hope so.
What are the ethical implications of creating a ‘community’ for learning?
Can I phone a friend?
Community as conformity?
Too many questions, Dave. Let’s leave some for another time.
Yes! Rhizomatic learning is definitely invasive. I’ve captured 256 rhizo-related things in a Pinterest board and that’s only a small portion of what’s being created by the Rhizo15 community.
I’ve been collecting and categorising (or at least naming) images on Pinterest for a while now. At times it’s been obsessive. Talk about content and non-content – I feel as I ‘own’ these images, that is, I have them in MY collection but actually I know that they are not mine, I don’t own them, nor do I actually have them in my possession. Just like my playlists on Spotify. I have so much music! I can listen to it any time but it’s not actually mine; I have none of it in my hand.
Anyway, I digress from the topic. So for some reason I started collecting pictures that represented ‘looking out’, for example, an open window like the one above. Some of these pictures featured a person looking out like this one.
I think of this picture as ‘looking in’ because it feels like introspection. The woman only has a blank wall in front of her and yet she seems to be intent on something. She is looking inward, don’t you think?
Here’s another ‘looking in’. The woman is concentrating inwardly to such an extent that she is no longer separate from her surroundings.
Here’s one which could should perhaps be ‘looking out’ but feels like ‘looking in’. Do you agree?
Maybe it’s the direction the chair is facing – not out towards the window but inwards. The suggestion of a person having been on the chair, almost still sitting there in spirit, makes me think it’s an introspective picture.
But if we go back to this picture
I also think that the girl is looking inwards. She is simultaneously looking out and in.
Why am I talking about this? It’s the open window. It’s enticing.
Open is enticing and also a bit frightening. Looking through a window intensifies the longing, anticipation or fear because it contrasts with the contained space – the room. Unlimited space contrasted with contained space. And yet there is no doubt that the space through and beyond the open window is more enticing than the contained space of the room. When our classroom becomes open – for example, open blogs revealing student writing to the world, near and far, or through open ended, unprescribed tasks, do students feel enticed, afraid, both? Does this help them reach out to an unknown audience or reach inside themselves because they have their own space for reflection and slow writing? Both.
Marc Chagall’s ‘The window’ (1924) plays with my perspective. What about you?
If you stare at the window frame and opened window frames long enough does your perspective shift from the way they’re drawn, that is, drawn in (and so the outside is almost coming in) to being pushed out with the energy reaching out into the outdoors, into the vast space.
Openness in learning. Opening the window so that learners have a space to reach out into. An undefined space, a space with limitless possibilities. Is this space too much? Could they drown in it?
As teachers facilitating this kind of learning are we looking out or looking in? Or is it like the pictures in which both occur simultaneously? We want students to look out and imagine possibilities and also look in to reflect and make sense of what they’ve seen.
Rhizomatic learning is chaos. Delicious chaos for those who experience it so. Overwhelming, perhaps, for those who haven’t found their footing. I’m writing this after reading clusters of conversations in different spaces – Facebook, Google +, blogs, Twitter. The rhizome bleeds into spontaneous spaces, following its cluster will. Underground it shoots off and off while the world above the surface wakes, eats, works, plays and sleeps again.
Where is the creator?
What creator? Space is. Within it life. Clustered stars, planets. Human reach goes out far, meets others in space, clustered lights illuminating the dark. Can the rhizome break through the ground and reach space? Are the underground and space co-existant?
Where is the artist creator in this picture?
Who knows? We know the artist painted the picture but he’s long gone; now the picture just is in the present.
How do we ‘teach’ rhizomatically? Or, even… do we?
Are you still asking that same question? Am I teaching? Or am I just opening the window?
Laura Gibbs’ says something heartwarming in her post for Week 3 which is about content. (Dave thinks of the word ‘content’ ‘lonely and disconnected… merging with the learning objective and the assessment to create a world where learning is about acquiring truth from the truth box.’ Laura talks about the #Rhizo15 course :
There are not assigned readings for Rhizo15 as there were in Connected Courses … and that is totally fine with me. It’s the blogs of the other participants that are really alive and important to me for the purposes of the (un)course experience. Yes, CONTENT IS PEOPLE:
Content for #rhizo15 is people and conversations happening, and learning/understanding being constructed in Twitter chats, blog posts, blog comments,etc.
It’s very rich and it draws its own path just as the unheld garden hose comes alive and is a bit wild.
Here’s an example in the form of a Facebook conversation arising from Simon Ensor’s post ‘Does content need a container?’
For #Rhizo15 the content really is the curriculum. But we are educators. No – we are educators who love to learn. No – we are educators who love to learn with each other. Content is people.
Is content people in secondary school? Definitely no. It is predominantly prescribed content delivered to the student by the teacher or assigned to the students through designated sections of a textbook, practised in homework and tested. It is graded, given a percentage, there is a volume that is known and that is assessed.
Is it created? No. Is it constructed? No. Is it shared? Not really, it is given to the teacher to check.
That is sad.
I tried to create an online community for my writing interest group. This is something the students choose to join. It’s not curriculum although the students can get diploma points.
Boys are like ‘how many blog posts do we need to do to get diploma points?’
I’m like ‘are you here for the diploma points?’
So the Facebook group is supposed to be a caring and sharing space far away from the bustle of the bright school lights. I’m thinking my students know how to be on Facebook. In meetings I’m like ‘so feel free to share what you write, something you’ve read that resonates with you in the Facebook group’.
(On Facebook) They’re like: silence (invisible).
I try not to go on about it. I share stuff, all sorts of stuff, hoping to show them how to do it, trying to be unschooly.
Some of them will ‘like’ but many of those I can see have read (or visited) will not offer any response.
Yes, I know they’re busy but sheesh.
I don’t know what to do. I can’t say ‘every term you must share 3 somethings in the Facebook group or else you don’t get diploma points. You understand why I can’t, yes? But what can I do?
How can I transform content from something cold, solitary and unhuman to something which is embodied?
I’ve written about this before. You can see I’m obsessed with it. Making the shift for these students to the kind of learning they construct together is important, more important than giving them content in a textbook-shaped container.
Content is a shifty word. It can mean different things to different people.
So finally I can share the RhizoRadio play I’ve been talking about. The best fun I’ve had for a long time. People, you are so much fun! Huge thanks to Kevin Hodgson for doing the hard (and long) work of putting it together so skillfully. Love the music in the background (Kevin’s) – and I’m not talking about the faint violin in the background (my son, Maxim, practising at the other end of the house). The image is also selected by Kevin. Don’t you love all the languages!
I just want to say that if this isn’t a great example of both connected and rhizomatic learning, I don’t know what is. A play shared, an idea, responses, and suddenly people from all over the place are coming into a Google doc where characters are born, educational theory is interwoven, different tongues start speaking and creativity builds upon others’ creativity. Thanks so much everyone. (How many countries were involved in this?)
How can we measure learning? Can we measure learning? Define learning. What did I learn today? I learned about the Australian Indigenous artist, Vernon Ah Kee.
Ah Kee is also part of the Proppa Now group and is one of the most political aboriginal artists of his time.
The above is from his 2002 collection titled “If I was White”. I was interested in reading the transcript.
6×5 A4 grids transcribed L-R, downwards:
If I was White
I could walk down the street
and people would pay no particular
attention to me.
It may not seem like much
but if you’ve ever had
a shopkeeper tell you to Buy something or move on, or
simply follow you around the shop,
it’s significant.
If I was White
people would speak to me.
Wouldn’t you feel a little lonely
if you were the only White person
in a new school
and nobody including the teacher
understood you or your culture?
If I was White
I would think like a White Person.
If I was White
I would believe myself to be equal
to anyone.
If I was White
I would be more likely
to live longer.
If I was White
I would be less likely
to spend time behind bars.
If I was White
just think of all the names
I wouldn’t have been called.
If namecalling does not seem
all that serious to you
then you haven’t heard the names
I’ve been called.
If I was White
a lot of the fights I’ve been in
would not have been my fault.
If I was White
I wouldn’t have been in so many fights.
If I was White
I would not be part of the Stolen Generation.
If I was White
I would have been counted in the Census since 1901.
If I was White
I could live, shop, and socialise
wherever I want.
If you’ve walked into Real Estate
Agencies where houses and units To Let suddenly become Taken,
and just as suddenly become Available when you leave, then
you know what I’m talking about.
If I was White
I would be accepted.
If I was White
I could group together
all the people who don’t
look like me
into their own separate
communities.
If I was White
I could accept a life of privilege,
wealth, and power
that the exploitation of Black
People has brought me
without even blinking.
If I was White
I could stand back,
walk on by, sit on the fence,
and do nothing.
If I was White
I would think I have every right
to be here.
If I was White
I would fit in.
If I was White
I would not have to live in a country that hates me.
If I was White
I would have a country.
If I was White
I could say This land has been in my family for three generations.
If I was White
I could say My family have lived on this land for two hundred years.
If I was White
I could say My father worked hard to buy this land.
If I was White
I could buy bandaids
the same colour as my skin.
What if all bandaids were black?
If I was White
and in an accident, I would be
wrapped in white bandages.
If I was White
I wouldn’t be asked if I was
Fullblood, Half-caste, or part White.
If I was White
I would not hear other White People
say to me You don’t look like you have alot of White in you, or You don’t look White.
If I was White
my fair skin
would not be such an issue
with other White People.
If I was White
it would be okay
to claim to be White.
If I was White
I wouldn’t have to claim to be White
just to get a job.
If I was White
I would be taken at my word.
Try accepting everything written
here as being true
simply because I say it is.
If I was White
I could really identify with
Australian TV Soaps.
If I was White
I could really identify with
Australian TV Advertising.
If I was White
popular Australian newspapers
would print what I want to read.
If you don’t think so
then count how many Black People
appear in the weekend social
pages.
If I was White
I could go to church
and Jesus Christ would
look like me.
Imagine Christ images all over the
world being black.
If I was White
I would not have to be smart
to keep a good job.
If I was White
I would have more chance
of getting a job.
If I was White
I could wear a suit and tie
and not look suspicious.
If I was White
I could own a luxury vehicle
and not look suspicious.
If I was White
I could shop in luxury stores
and not look suspicious.
If I was White
I could walk
in a white neighbourhood
and not look suspicious.
If I was White
I could dye my hair blonde
and it would not look strange.
If I was White
I could have blue eyes
and it would not look strange.
If I was White
I could marry another White person
and it would not look strange.
If I was White
I would have a better chance of becoming PM.
If I was White
I could write history any way I please.
If I was White
ignorance could be my excuse.
If I was White
I would have nothing to fear
from Police.
If I was White
I would not have to explain
the things I say.
If I was White
the world would make
more sense to me.
If I was White
I could make myself believe
that Black People were evil.
If I was White
I could shelter my children from
the evil that exists in the world.
If I was White
I could lie to my children about
the evil that exists in the world.
But I am Black
and I am as misunderstood as the next Blackfella
but I am beginning to understand the White Men.
What did you learn from that text art by Vernon Ah Kee? Does it make you curious to know more? Does your understanding shift into another context? Are you thinking about this in a broader sense? How did you feel when you were reading this? How did you feel when you were thinking about it? How would you assess the learning during all of that?
Give yourself a mark out of ten. Make sure you address the outcomes which sit neatly in lines next to their dot points. Don’t forget to ignore everything that is not neatly summarised by these points. Don’t go including the metacognition. Make sure you toss all those airy fairy ‘what if…’ thoughts. Don’t even think about including the way you felt when you were reading the text; that’s not important and we can’t be getting all touchy feely when we’re assessing serious learning outcomes.
So, back to Dave.
Dave:
Learning is a non-counting noun. It’s not something we should worry about counting, I don’t think measuring it makes any sense. Once that’s done, what can we measure? Dig into the possibilities of measurement. What can we use to send to administrators? Some way of talking about using all these numbers and How can we map out the rhizome? a tool for people to map out their own rhizome. I understand this conflicts with the freedom but work with that.
Really. This is hard. If I knew how to do that …
Taking a look at my own learning which has taken place in MOOCs lately – Connected Courses and now Rhizo15…
If we are talking about connected learning rather than the consumption of learning then counting is no longer useful. You can’t ‘count’ connected learning but connected learning does count. Turn it on its head. It counts. Show it, write about it, share it, discuss it – make it transparent. There it is; you can see it for yourself.
Learning is complex. Yes, we could map it. But… there’s so much to take into account. It’s giving me a headache. Big data. That term gets bandied about a bit lately. Looking it up on Wikipedia gives me a bigger headache. (Not sure where I saw this image; someone shared it on Twitter?)
And don’t forget –
As I’ve said in a previous blog post, Einstein, Newton, Edison, Tolstoy, Pasteur, Lincoln – these are only some of the notable gifted people throughout history who were assessed as failures in school.
How could that happen? Is it happening now? How reliable are our methods of assessment? One thing I know – we should definitely assess assessment.
Dave Cormier, I can’t answer your question. Fail me.
Here’s the final version of the play (although I wouldn’t be surprised if the Google doc version continues to evolve).
My THANK YOU: My original story, Mr X loses his battle for objectivity, has been stormed, hacked and now exists as an evolved creation belonging to those playing and learning in the rhizome (#rhizo15). It is no longer mine and that’s a fantastic thing, something I’m excited about. Thank you, everyone, for the experience – in particular to Kevin for putting together the audio files – but also to those contributing voices, to the voices in the chat comments for the evolving Google doc, to those on Twitter and other social media platforms, to the creative people designing promos, and anyone else I’ve forgotten. I know it sounds as if I’m accepting an Oscar (haha) but I really do want to thank all of you for the fun we’ve had together.
#Rhizoradio presents a radio play courtesy of the #rhizo15 community:
Ms Y1: Good afternoon. Please take a seat. Mr Arborescent will be with you shortly.
Me0: Thank you.
Inner Voice1: I take a seat and settle into the chair which is terribly uncomfortable. I am too large for the chair and always have been, but I’ve accepted it with the appropriate …
Ms Y2: So, Mr Arborescent will see you now. I assume you’ve brought your papers.
Me1: Er – papers?
Ms Y3: Yes, your CV, your references, your learning objectives.
Me2: My…
Ms Y4:Never mind. Please go down the corridor. It’s the first red door after blue one…
Me3: Er – thank you.
Inner Voice2: I walk until I find the door. I knock twice.)
Me4: (mumbling to self, wandering hallways) How come there are so many doors here?
(knock on the door followed by sound of door squeaking open)
Mr Arborescent1: Come in, please. I would like to introduce you to Dr. Certain and Ms. KnowItAll
Inner Voice3: I enter the room. Mr Arborescent is sitting behind a large wooden desk, studying me. The two other committee members on either side of him.
Mr Arborescent2: Please, sit down.
Inner Voice4 My Thoughts (in my head)Narrator: I do.
Mr Arborescent3: So, you’re applying for the rest of your life, are you?
Me5: Ye…
Ms. KnowItAll1: (interrupting) She IS.
Mr Arborescent4: You realise that you’re one of many millions of applicants – all wanting to keep learning for the rest of their lives, don’t you?
Me6: Yes. I understand. But you know, I myself am multiple…
Mr Arborescent5: (interrupts) Show me your learning objectives, please.
Me7: Well…I – um…
Dr. Certain1: This is outrageous!
Mr Arborescent6: (sighs) You do have learning objectives, don’t you? I hope you are not wasting my time.
Me8: N-not exactly.
Mr Arborescent7: Well how exactly do you intend to get through life without objectives? How will you know where you are going? How will you know when you get there? What data will you use?
Dr. Certain2: One cannot get through life without knowing where one is going. Where one is going is far more important than where one is. I certainly know where I’m going, where I came from, where my children will go.
Inner Voice5: Arborescent’s brow is seriously furrowed.
Me9: Actually – I don’t have objectives but –
Mr Arborescent8: You realise that we are talking about the rest of your life, don’t you? This is no laughing matter.
Me10: Well – if I could explain. I don’t, as you’ve said, have learning objectives for the rest of my life but what I do have is learning subjectives.
Inner Voice6: The room is silent. Uncomfortably silent.
Mr Arborescent9: I’m not sure what you’re playing at, but as I’ve already said, there are millions of people applying for this privilege. You’ve come here completely unprepared.
Me11: If I could just explain – I think you will understand that it’s possible to continue learning through life with learning subjectives in place of objectives.
Inner Voice7: Mr Arborescent lowered his thick rimmed glasses and peered intensely and unpleasantly at me.
Inner Voice8: I continued before he could speak.
Me12: You see, subjectives are a type of objective … only seen from a different perspective.
Mr Arborescent10: A different perspective! Please explain. (eye rolling) (to himself): Oh, you educators and your theories of learning …
Dr. Certain3: There is only one perspective: the RIGHT one!
Me13 (ignoring Dr. Certain): Well, with objectives you start from the end and work backwards whereas with subjectives you are free to move any which way and even simultaneously. Subjectives are based on learners’ needs, not dictated as in the objectives… There’s freedom in the journey.
Inner Voice9: Their looks of contempt did not deter me. In fact, they spurred me on. I realized, I had to make them understand.
Me14: You see, I’ve developed an allergy to things which support objectives. Things like preconceived ideas, data entered carefully into spreadsheets, dot points, meta-metrics, the narrow suffocating strangulation of finite theories, that sort of thing. I have an aversion to these things and I become so ill that I am unable to function.
Mr Arborescent11: I’m not sure our health insurance policy covers such sickness. The government plan only goes so far.
(Ms. KnowItAll adds over Arborescent: Oh, it won’t cover this, I can tell you!)
However, Go on… How would you measure, report your learning? Reveal your rubrics! What kind of standards are you following? Aversion is no justification…
Me15: Neither is measurement! We need to put learning at the center of our…er learning, not measurement and accountability you know. It’s my own learning here and i reserve the right to direct it however I see fit! It is my human right…
Dr. Certain4: Impossible! We will tell you what you need to know! Learning must be visible!
Inner Voice10: Arborescent’s eyes narrowed, and he started tapping a pencil on his desk. he seemed sort of annoyed at me.
Mr. Arborescent12: go on…
Inner Voice11: I swallowed.
Me16: (whispering in Egyptian Arabic: w ba3dein ba2aaa)
Me17: I need to approach life in a less organised, predetermined way. I need to include the way I feel, for example, in the way I understand life. I need to include questions and doubts in the way I make sense of things, I need mood changes and I also need to be able to synthesize seemingly illogical things into a new way of seeing. I need to follow – what I refer to as learning subjectives.
Mr Arborescent13 (all simultaneously): Preposterous! Absolutely preposterous. We need data! Not whimsy feelings! What is this? Some kind of therapy session?
Ms. KnowItAll2: She is completely unsuitable! No idea what she needs to learn.
Dr. Certain5: If we allow this, we invite chaos. Then where will we be? People learning anything?!! Outrageous! There are things everyone MUST know!
Inner Voice12: Their outbursts moved the large desk forward and Arborescent’s four generation family photos fell down with a crash.
Mr. Arborescent14: Now look what you’ve done!
Dr. Certain6: I saw this coming. Chaos, I tell you.
Me18: you do know that by accepting me, you are accepting multiples, right?
Mr. Arborescent15: Who said we were accepting you?
Ms. KnowItAll3: Certainly not I!
Me19: Although I appear as one person to you, I am a multiplicity. Because I am embracing my subjectivity, you will have access to all of the open aspects of my identity and influences beyond my person. Didn’t you notice the different voices, accents and languages used throughout this discussion?
MrA – What you are telling me is that you are rejecting MY good common sense and traditional values and insisting on this groundless faith in what can only be described as blasphemous nonsense. This is a NON-SENSE! Do you hear me?! You will not be able to go through lifelong learning clinging to these asinine beliefs. Get out! All of you!
Inner Voice13: There was only one thing to do. I wasted no time. In my mind I drew a cage around this dreadful man and his colleagues and locked them in. Tossed the key. Walked away. Their ranting and raving were repulsive. I transformed it into the sound of crashing waves and let it wash away from me, to become nothing in the infinite sea. I left them there in their salt water turbulence, thrashing at the iron bars. They were now but molluscs, doomed to forage in the mud amongst rhizomatic sea grasses for eternity. I had more important things to do. I had a subjective life to lead and I was quite willing and even pleased to not know exactly where I was going.
Inner Voice14: So I started talking to my multiple selves.
MeA: we don’t need them! We don’t need no certified learning! We don’t need no thought control! They don’t even get our weltanschauung. We will continue without them.
MeB: or interdependently! Let’s make our own organization. Our own rhizome. Divide & conquer!
MeC: and wait, to have impact, we need to challenge authority, to break down the institutional structures so more people can benefit from our idea of subjectives and so we can liberate them from these neoliberal chains. This is idtihad. That’s oppression in Arabic. It is zulm. Injustice in Arabic, though it has a much stronger connotation in Arabic.
MeD: i don’t know what you’re talking about, I just wanna have fun with my learning. Let’s write a song or write a play…
Me20: or we could just lead our subjective life, create our own space… We might need to wander a bit to find it.
MeB: exactly! I guess it can be a space not an organization… I don’t think we can convert him. He is too far gone … (sounds of ranting still in the background)
Me21: Learning is natural and intrinsic… Like a rhizome, like a phoenix.. Her defasında küllerimden doğarım… learning is actually rising from the ashes… I don’t need any objectives, I only need my subjectives to reborn and start a new cycle of learning…
MeC: and we need to think of ways of liberating the oppressor. We need to fight for other people’s rights… Subvert the system, cause a revolution, plant the seed, nurture the ideas, rewild ourselves without becoming the next oppressors!
MeF: yeah right, like that worked for Egypt…
MeB: Tell me why we wanted that job again?
MeC: I don’t even remember anymore. What a learning experience this has been!
MeG: Hey! You lot are so noisy! I am trying to sleep here! Jeesh. Haud yer wheesht!
MeH: (tentative hesitant self) 爸爸常说 忍一时风平浪静，退一步海阔天空. 怎么办?Should I try to negotiate in this potential zone of change? But these folks are resistant to any new ideas …
MeI: Ils refusent de comprendre! Les abandonner déjà!
Inner Voice15: And so from that moment it continued, with A caged and continuing to splutter in the sea, in a mind, I stood up, breathed deeply, and turned to leave those four walls and walk into the rest of my life. I moved out of the room, slammed the door behind and me and the company sign fell to the floor with a crash. I picked it up and read “Peachson Advanced Testing Systems” and tossed the sign into the trash can. I had better things to do with my life, anyway.
Epilogue:
Me22: I did get that job, and I get it again and again every day. It’s only when I forget the contract I made with myself that day – the subjectives, and get mixed up with too many objectives – that I sometimes see Arborescence rear its head (still in the cage though – haha!). Fortunately I have some pretty good friends and co-learners who remind me that the book hasn’t been written yet; we just keep writing.
After writing Mr X loses his battle for objectivity I was overwhelmed by the response from the #Rhizo15 community through comments on the blog, in the Facebook group, on Twitter and Google+ group.
I have to admit I felt elated with so much attention but what really excited me was when Terry suggested it would work as a radio play/podcast.
Hello there. My name is Tania Sheko. Thanks for responding so positively to this short piece of fiction/non-fiction. I’m taking up the suggestion to create something for #rhizoradio (suggested by Terry Elliott and seconded by Simon Ensor) and other suggestions to do a collaborative rewrite eg include a larger cast so we can actually (somehow) create a podcast for #rhizoradio (which is going to be a thing I think). Hope you can join me here!
With Maha‘s well earned influence the Google doc I shared was suddenly populated with #Rhizo15 people (and others?) working together across time zones to hack my ‘story’. So many creative people chatting in the margins of the document about what could work.
It was fun watching the little animal-head avatars popping up at the top as people joined in. Kevin Hodgson shared some an introduction on SoundCloud and then Simon Ensor did a brilliant reading of Mr X – who evolved into Mr Arborescent (or just Arborescent, as Laura Ritchie suggested). The ‘me’ character was named Rhizoka and the narrator became an inner voice (voices in the head). The ‘me’ character then exposed a muliplicity of identities and even spoke in more than one language.
I don’t think it’s finished but I sure hope it actually gets acted out as a podcast/radio play. Thank you so much to all who jumped in – it’s been amazing! It’s still open so come in and contribute. I saw Maha talking on Twitter about who might be able to create the podcast so I hope someone will because I’m not sure about how to do that.
Thank you, people! So far Maha Bali, Sarah Honeychurch, Angela Brown, Ronald Rudolf, Kevin Hodgson (@dogtrax), Laura Ritchie, Aras Bozkurt, Keith Hamon, Simon Ensor and Barry Dyck. Hope I haven’t left anyone out. Let me know if I have.
Warning: My current confusion (chaos) – which is (I remind myself) a necessary state during the process of understanding – has got me clutching at different metaphors in an attempt to liken rhizomatic learning within a rhizomatic connectivist MOOC to this and that. Already I have mentioned a jigsaw and a rhizome but I will also be talking about a river (which is actually a rapid) as well as swimming and drowning. Sorry.
Feelings and happenings:
So I’ve jumped into the MOOC Rhizomatic Learning, otherwise known as #Rhizo15. In Connected Courses I had my first taste of being part of a MOOC which is a Massive Open Online Course. Some of the people I met and continue to interact with have done #Rhizo14 (Rhizomatic learning: the community is the curriculum) and so I eavesdropped a little and was intrigued. And by the way, I learned that #Rhizo15 is a cMOOC and not an xMOOC.
So, the MOOC.
It’s massive so you feel initially as if you’ve been thrown into a raging river while trying to study a map. The map you’re using is rendered useless and the only way to keep going is learn how to swim while you’re drowning.
It’s open. As much as you might be feeling there’s enough to interest you in your career and life, your social network, suddenly it’s as if a section of the planet has been sliced with a giant cheese knife. You can see inside and you realise there is so much activity going on in there that you didn’t realise, and from afar it looks both fascinating and frightening. You draw closer to make sense of the activity; you try to find patterns in the activity, guides for the social behaviour, but there is too much going on at once, and so you give up trying to figure it out and jump into one of the conversations. Only when you do, they lead you to so many more – for example, in the Facebook group: Rhizomatic Learning: a practical discussion, the Rhizomatic Learning Google+ community and around the Twitter hashtag #Rhizo15.
Suddenly there are not enough hours in the day and you desperately want to keep up. But you also want to be everywhere at once. You remember you have a job and personal life and you wish you could put them on hold for a while.
And sleep! What is happening when you sleep! You’re missing out on conversations and posts, and your time zones are not synchronised with much of the population so at the start of the day you have so much to catch up on.
But while you are taking part in conversation in groups all over the place, reading and commenting on posts, you realise that there are books you haven’t read, educational theorists you should be researching. You need background so that you understand more fully what people are talking about. When will you have time to do this?!
STOP.
At this point I’m stopping before I hyperventilate. Time for a bit of grounding reflection. Dave Cormier introduced the MOOC as a curriculum that writes itself. It’s writing itself now from many, many spaces and simultaneously. I remind myself that nothing is compulsory; everything is optional. A bit of focus and self control amongst all the choice and I should be able to replace anxiety with a calm acceptance of the raging river, and manage to keep afloat.
Okay so that’s all about how I feel about taking part in cMOOCs.
Who am I? (for some reason I don’t feel like doing this now)
A brief introduction (suggested by Dave Cormier) for those who don’t know me: I was born in Australia to parents of Russian and German background – mainly Russian. For a while I taught English, German and French at school and a Russian at a Saturday school. Now I’m a teacher librarian but I won’t try to explain my role in this post although I really should finally write a post dealing with the frustrations I have explaining my role. Currently I’m at a selective boys’ secondary school 9-12.
Happily I found my way into cMOOCs after looking for an online learning community. When I ‘became’ a Google certified teacher I found myself pulling back from going further with this role and I wasn’t sure why; I just knew it wasn’t me, and I felt like a phoney. I love Google tools and encourage their use but I didn’t see myself as a promoter of Google or as an expert presenting Google to others. I didn’t feel at home with the cohort of confident, outgoing people who seemed to have no problem taking on this role. I needed to find people with whom I could ask questions instead of giving answers and continue learning. The cMOOC communities are where I want to be.
(I’m not happy with this introduction.)
More importantly (for me), why am I here? It’s because I’ve connected with super-moocers like Maha Bali, Terry Elliott, Laura Gibbs, Kevin Hodgson, Simon Ensor, Tanya Lau, Sarah Honeychurch, Laura Ritchie and many others through Connected Courses – all people I admire greatly and would like to keep talking to. And in the last few days I’ve connected with so many more people I want to talk to and learn from.
And how can you even try to keep up when someone like Keith Hamon writes a post that will take me a semester to really get through?
So, what is rhizomatic learning? Many people know a lot about this but I’m just starting so I go back to Dave Cormier’s 2011 post where he talks about successful learning :
Rhizomatic learning is a way of thinking about learning based on ideas described by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari in a thousand plateaus. A rhizome, sometimes called a creeping rootstalk, is a stem of a plant that sends out roots and shoots as it spreads. It is an image used by D&G to describe the way that ideas are multiple, interconnected and self-replicating. A rhizome has no beginning or end… like the learning process.
What does successful learning look like?
the rhizome pertains to a map that must be produced, constructed, a map that is always detachable, connectible, reversible, modifiable, and has multiple entryways and exits and its own lines of flight. (Deleuze and Guattari 1987, 21)
Meanwhile others have led me to this 2010 video by Dave Cormier about how to successfully navigate a MOOC. Good place to start.
I really want to write about what happened after I shared the Mr X story in my previous post but I thought I’d get this post over and done with and then devote a post just to Mr X. See you soon. (Or not).
Good afternoon. Please take a seat. Mr X will be with you shortly.
Thank you. (I take a seat and settle into the chair which is terribly uncomfortable. I am too large for the chair and always have been but I’ve accepted it with the appropriate …
So, Mr X will see you now. I assume you’ve brought your papers.
Er – papers?
Yes, your CV, your references, your learning objectives.
My…
Never mind. Please go down the corridor. It’s the first door to your right.
Er – thank you. (I walk until I find the door. I knock twice.)
Come in, please.
I enter the room. Mr X is sitting behind a large wooden desk, studying me.
Please, sit down.
I do.
So, you’re applying for the rest of your life, are you?
Yes.
You realise that you’re one of many millions of applicants – all wanting to keep learning for the rest of their lives, don’t you?
Yes. I understand.
Show me your learning objectives, please.
Well…I – um…
You do have learning objectives, don’t you? I hope you are not wasting my time.
N-not exactly.
Well how exactly do you intend to get through life without objectives? (His brow is seriously furrowed.)
Actually – I don’t have objectives but –
You realise that we are talking about the rest of your life, don’t you? This is no laughing matter.
Well – if I could explain. I don’t, as you’ve said, have learning objectives for the rest of my life but what I do have is learning subjectives.
Silence.
Silence.
I’m not sure what you’re playing at, but as I’ve already said, there are milliions of people applying for this privilege.
If I could just explain – I think you will understand that it’s possible to continue learning through life with learning subjectives in place of objectives.
Mr X lowered his thick rimmed glasses and peered intensely and unpleasantly at me.
I continued.
You see, subjectives are a type of objective … only seen from a different perspective.
A different perspective! Please explain. (eye rolling)
Well, with objectives you start from the end and work backwards whereas with subjectives you are free to move any which way and even simultaneously.
His look of contempt did not deter me.
You see, I’ve developed an allergy to things which support objectives. Things like preconceived ideas, data entered carefully into spreadsheets, dot points, the narrowness of finite theories, that sort of thing. I have an aversion to these things and I become so ill that I am unable to function.
Go on…
I swallowed.
I need to approach life in a less organised, predetermined way. I need to include the way I feel, for example, in the way I understand life. I need to include questions and doubts in the way I make sense of things, I need mood changes and I also need to be able to synthesize seemingly illogical things into a new way of seeing. I need to follow – what I refer to as learning subjectives.
Preposterous! His outburst moved the large desk forward and his family photos fell down.
What you are telling me is that you are rejecting good common sense and traditional values and insisting on this groundless faith in what can only be described as blasphemous nonsense. This is a NON-SENSE! Do you hear me?! You will not be able to go through lifelong learning clinging to these asinine beliefs. Get out!
There was only one thing to do. I wasted no time. In my mind I drew a cage around this dreadful man and locked him in. His ranting and raving were repulsive. I transformed it into the sound of crashing waves. I left him there in his salt water turbulence, thrashing at the iron bars. I had more important things to do. I had a subjective life to lead.
P.S. I had trouble keeping a straight face while writing this. Just didn’t know how to approach the first #rhizo15 task set by Dave Cormier – “Learning subjectives”. Decided to be a bit silly. I think I need a good gif or two. Any suggestions?
I do like a course that admits to not knowing where it’s going. A course with a history, however. The history of Rhizo14 which has crept into conversations in Connected Courses, on Twitter and other spaces where people gather to do what keeps them fascinated in a collaborative way as they teach, put their children to bed and scribble out course outlines. And so I begin the much awaited Rhizo15, knowing that we go where others have gone before us but we get lost intentionally so we can go our own way.
I might need someone to hold my hand.
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