Welcome Aboard
Rhizomatic learning is one story for how we can think about learning and teaching in a complex world.
Think of this course as a camp you can visit for six weeks. The camp has a theme ‘a practical view’ of rhizomatic learning. That means that this year we’re hoping to talk about how Rhizomatic Learning can and does happen in a classroom, in a knitting circle or on the front stoop.
This is the second year of camp. We have some returnees from last year. Some of them have #rhizo14 Tshirts on (actually, that’s not a metaphor, some of them really do have #rhizo14 tshirts). They are not the boss of you. What we talk about at camp is really up to you. You get to choose what you think and work about. The community (you guys, hopefully) is the curriculum. This is a new year.
Why am I doing this?
I’ve been working with the idea of rhizomatic learning for close to 10 years. I get the feeling that learning is a very messy place, and the story of the rhizome is one that i have found super useful in explaining things i’ve seen happen in learning spaces. This is my research lab, in a sense, and ya’ll are researching along with me.
What will happen in this course?
Great question. I’m not sure yet. I know that I will post the first challenge on April 15th. I’ll post it in the newsletter, I’ll tweet it to #rhizo15, I’ll post it in the facebook group and I’ll post it on the course blog.
I should take this course if…?
You’re interested in participating in a discussion about learning. I can’t really say much more than that. We’re going to take a look at some of the practical implications of saying that learning is messy and uncertain. It can be confusing. It can, sometimes, be upsetting. It’s super fun though, and it’s a great way to push your thinking with the ideas of folks from around the world.
Tweet #rhizo15 right now. Say hi. See what happens.
Course blog
http://rhizomatic.net is the closest thing we’ll have to a home base. You can go there and see what’s going on a given week, ask questions, or make comments on those posts. Frankly, you never need to actually go there, if you don’t like, but if you want an overview, that’s the closest you’re going to get. I’ll also post links to projects accompanying #rhizo15 that people have asked me to put up there.
Tracking Rhizo15 should be a good page too…
Twitter
Twitter is my chat platform of preference. Put your stuff up there, put the #rhizo15 hashtag on it, and there’s a fair chance that someone else will get back to you. Be persistent, if you don’t hear the first time, post again. Try posting at a different time of day. Don’t give up. Respond to others. Make connections. This course is, maybe fundamentally, about making connections.
Facebook
I have so many mixed feelings about Facebook… but i do know that it totally works for some people. The course group for #rhizo15 is at https://www.facebook.com/groups/1516869091918393/
A LAST NOTE
One of the central narratives of rhizomatic learning is the idea that learning is at once a deeply personal, individual process and something that only happens in collaboration with others. We are all different, but we need each other.
By all means, push people’s ideas… please do not push people.
Connect with everyone. Try and understand what they are saying and why they are saying it. And, on the other side, understand that when people push your ideas, they aren’t pushing you. We do not need to agree with each other, to learn from each other.
NOTE: @sensor63 did a great job of challenging this post http://tachesdesens.blogspot.fr/2015/04/no-pushing-please.html
“Uncertainty, in the presence of vivid hopes and fears, is painful, but must be endured if we wish to live without the support of comforting fairy tales. It is not good either to forget the questions that philosophy asks, or to persuade ourselves that we have found indubitable answers to them. To teach how to live without certainty, and yet without being paralyzed by hesitation, is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can still do for those who study it.” Bertrand Russell – History of Western Philosophy. retrieved from http://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/1167354-history-of-western-philosophy-and-its-connection-with-political-and-so
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