Hi Dave and Oscar

First of all, I learned a ton of stuff about dinosaurs, so *thank you both*.

Second, though, is that you both helped me see how rhizomatic learning is a suggestive way of thinking about the importance of creativity and curiosity, and being able to follow a trail even when it seems to wander off topic.

As your learner, I was suddenly struck by a question about why plastic dinosaurs have certain features that might be misrepresentative in relation to biological dinosaurs but are actually quite revealing about toy design. Why do their legs point outwards? So they stand up on the bookshelf.

What made this rhizomatic, for me, is that it’s not something that driven by your agenda for the core topic—the biology of dinosaurs—but by my own interests in the material world of toys. I’m always ready to think about this because I live with a six year old, and I teach in material culture. So as well as learning about dinosaurs I can now head off in this direction that works for me: I can take your story into a conversation that I might have with someone else completely about why other toys are also designed to look a bit like the world we live in, and a bit not.

But watching you guys on the video helping me understand actual dinosaurs, it’s also clear that some of learning-by-questioning is still pretty focused on the topic and, as you say Dave, on the question of rightness and wrongness. So I wonder if that’s a limit to what makes it genuinely, openly, rhizomatic under these circumstances?

That’s my question.

Kate