It occurs to me that learning is rhizomatic at most any scale you choose to consider it — from the level of complex networks of neurons in a single brain through the level of complex networks of social and educational institutions to the level of complex networks of cultural evolution. It’s rhizomes all the way up and down.

And each scale interacts with and affects each other scale, so that we are left to contemplate networks within networks. It can be quite daunting, especially when we are trying to figure out how to show up for tomorrow’s class with a lesson that might actually work for most of our students.

Dave suggests an answer with the concept of contexts, which I take to be rich ecosystems with enough texture that students can find something to anchor to. This is much like a MOOC, where each participant (student) must find a point or person that anchors their engagement with the whole. It can be a blog, a presentation, a tweet, or whatever, but we all need some point to which we can attach and from which we can view the whole rhizomatic structure. This implies a multiplicity of views and as many entry-ways into the structure as there are participants. It’s the complex interaction of each participant with the structure that defines the learning for that participant. The learning of one may or may not be similar to the learning of another in the same MOOC, or class. Our mistake has been to think that this is not okay. Rhizomatic thinking says that it is okay.