Home Archives 2014

Yearly Archives: 2014

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While my 9 months old cutie is asleep and her sis is out to school,. again I am writing to express my views and understandings on online learning and teaching , although I do not have a strong experience online teaching, but being active and curious in online learning I sort of have a strong idea as what it is should be in online Teaching...

I am writing this with taking notes from University teaching by Prof.Pamela and Dr.David Andrew from Jhons Hopkins University course taken from Coursera.

Effective Teaching and Effective Learning.how can we do it online?

  • Scientific Learning and teaching
When we teach how can we have effective outcomes of the learners of what we teach...

Traditionally most of us ..in past 200 years specially in Sri Lankan culture has been practicing the "Feeding the Chicken Concept" of teaching..

Its like when you have a bucket full of seeds , and throw to the chicken, some chicks digest it and gain weight, some cant, some take more time..
This is exactly in the education sector , Teacher throw content, student go after or some wait until it falls to their foot..;) some understand and do great some take time.. some cant..

Why focus on science of learning..?

1. We know more about how our brain developments in learning than earlier days

2. Education is expensive we have to focus on ROI

3.Its not the same customers anymore.. they demand to know them better.. customization..- just like wallMart know their customer habits..in education side we know nothing about our customer.. how they learn..ect..


What we need to know ?
Individual needs of learning and How they learn..and match it with online habit of learning

How can start to learn  ?
We have to know our students, collect data how they study , how they do assessments, pattern, show them ask them.. is this right about you.. Attend to individual differences and outliers.

 Four methods of way we can instruct students-

1.Understand Cognitive behavioral therapy..-
Researches found Cooperative learning has better outcomes.Its about setting a goal tracking the progress ..feedback and reinforcement

2.Corroborative learning- Small group lead by peer interactions has proven better results,Group size min 3 to max 8 - composition matters - mixing with high productive ones with low..
Peer feedback is just as much as important like instructors

3.Experimental Learning- AKA Practice base learning, AKA-Also Known As- Learning by doing
Relevance improve retention- Always make a habit of explaining in something that close to you or your culture..

4.Pacing and Review - This is incredible -Frequent review and formative feedback at well spaced intervals leads to better learning outcomes by latest research - 

Pashler, H. (2014). Human memory and learning.Science of Learning Symposium. Conducted from Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore,MD

So if you decide to be a teacher - online or physical
Structure your inquiry
It is to discover your students personally,individually
determine evidence based strategies
Test your innovation method of teaching 
Finally match with the learning profiles which contain -Inquire,Observe, question and share and lecturers and with your students.

Most effective practice is EVIDENCE BASED PRACTICE-
1.Find evidence based approaches- trust, 
2.Innovate- modify or throw it after verifying 

 

 
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Composition in Scientific Inquiry: SeuratSpots, DiscoBalls, and the Making of Meaning in Science.

Here’s a link to the slides from our presentation in Indianapolis, IN at the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC):

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foliocoud.com
Dear friends like you notice I don't updated my blog because I don't have so much free time because I was very busy with my school activities/ projects, but dear teachers kindly I invite you to join my Erasmus+ Course developed in partenership with Euneos : ,, Curation Social Media Master Class for education in semantic web 3.0 " Apply http://bitly.com/CurationSocialMediaKingErasmusPlusCourse and discover more http://educuration.wikispaces.com/Main+Page 

Previous post http://bitly.com/top10cloudappsbyLucianeCurator1
I describe why It is verry important for teachers to use in XXI Century Education elearning apps to keep and secure the files ( photos, videos, presentations, documents ) in the cloud . For this reason I curate and describe here my favorite TOP 10 cloud apps . What app you like more and why . Please leave a comment and your feed-back after you read my article and if you enjoy what you read share with your PLN . I also invite you to discover weekly in this blog more TOP 10 edtools who offer gateway through knowledge for teachers and next mounth Top 10 iPad apps to mLearning

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“How Are You Positively Affecting the Data” Sign at Carver Vocational-Technical High School at Presstman & Bentalou | What I Saw Riding My Bike Around Today:



How are you positively affecting the data?  Really?  How about, what are you doing today to help students?Or, what are you doing today to help make this a better place?  Or, how about, how are you today?




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Character.
Portrait, photomontage, studio, daguerreotype, self-portrait, caricature, comic book.
Heroes.
Who?
Creates the image
Selects the context
Shapes the meaning
Gazes
Is subjected to the gaze.
By the gaze.
Essential science:
Darwin.
Innate characteristics.
Created by genes
Revealed in physiognomy.
Some are.
Some get to be.
We are text/context. 
Ask the slave.
Daguerreotyped.
Subjected
Typecast
Narrated
Someone else’s story
Essential
Lowly
Difference.
Subjugated.
(And so it goes.)
Studioed.
Bourgeois
Enacting.
Difference.
Improvised.
Multipleselves.
Some *are*.
Some have the power to *become*.
The camera lies
Photomontaged
The ParisCommune
Women
A-flame
Legs sprawling
Animal.
Petrolleur.
Depression.
The.
Showing – commenting – narrating…
Art
That slippery slope of meaning-making …
Carrie Mae Weems
Re-claimed (those slaves)
With blood and fire.

Homework: two weeks - to follow!
This week's:
 Optional Sketchbook Assignment 2 Follow Up
Regardless if you did last week’s sketchbook assignment or not, or you are just joining us, I encourage you to try this out. For our second critique we are building on the prompt given in the first:
Visit the Sketchbook Assignment 2: Mental Map forum and choose an assignment. Try to spread your attention between assignments that have already received a lot of feedback and ones that haven’t. Prioritize finding an undiscovered gem or two.
Look at the student’s submission. Don’t respond immediately. Give yourself at least a few minutes to really look or study what the student has submitted. 
In your reply, describe, in words, exactly what you are seeing or reading in the student’s assignment.
Then, select two of the following and add it to your comment: What is one thing about the submission that immediately caught your attention? What is one thing about the submission that took you a little longer to discover? What are three questions you would ask this student about their submission? How does the medium/format that the student has chosen (drawing, descriptive text, photography, collage, etc. etc.) affect how you understand the meaning of the submission?
Repeat for another assignment. Try to comment on at least three assignments this round.

Optional Sketchbook Assignment 3: Characters Drawn from Life (and Death)
For this week’s sketchbook assignment we are offering two options: one for Track A learners (more visual-based), and one for Track B learners (a written response). Do one or the other, or both! Please note there is a separate forum for each track. 
Track A 
Look in a local newspaper or online source for death or marriage notices. Find one that is interesting to you but don’t choose one that includes a photograph.
Make a portrait of a person described in the notice (deceased man or woman, bride or groom). Use any means and style that you like--drawing, painting, photography, collage. Think about how much of the person you want to show, how s/he is posed or framed, how much context is given through background, accessories, etc. Whatever you choose to include in the portrait should say something about the character you have chosen to depict.
Important: In respect of others' privacy, do not include any names from notices, or link to them, or use images without permission.
In this forum ("Characters Drawn from Life (and Death) TRACK A"), start a new thread and post a scan of your image. Give your post a title, and submit!
Track B 
Find a public place. Sit down and make yourself comfortable. You might be here for a while.
Watch the people.
Choose one person and invent a life for them. Think about who might be in terms of occupation, relationships with family and friends, pets or lack of them, personal possessions or lack of them, personality quirk


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Finally I made my first blog,after day dreaming for days and days.. I came to a point no longer day dreaming but lets get into action... interesting though ..
Today I some came with this article by Stanford news.. 

"How Technology Impacts the Pedagogy and Economics of Residential Higher Education."

 http://news.stanford.edu/news/2014/march/online-stanford-cal-031114.html 

This exactly what I want to emphasize in online learning. I as a person who is keen to learn, found my self taking the 2nd offering of Stanford HCI course offered in Coursera in 2012. Since then I have been actively engaged in different platforms of MOOCs(Massive Open Online Courses). 

While taking these courses I began to think,why our universities do not follow this method. In other words the pedagogical culture implemented by MOOCs seems hitting the thresholds of effectiveness in online learning. 

I will quote some of the interesting points in the ONLINE LEARNING SUMMIT held March 7-8 sponsored by  MIT, Harvard, Stanford. at University of Bekerly

1.----Higher education is in a "period of great experimentation" in the field of online learning, successes and failures will lead to new approaches to teaching that will benefit student.

2.----Colleges and universities will be taking a more scientific approach to online learning than in the past, relying on their schools of education to measure student learning and to provide feedback

3.----Come out with pedagogical approaches that are truly a step forward in terms of helping our students be better learners 

4.---- Technology makes it possible to expose students to a wide variety of learning opportunities.

5.----We can flip classrooms, because we can also then have those follow-up seminars. We can give that 'high touch' in person, as well as true customized forms of technological supplementation."

6.----With a little bit of technology, a community of learners self-assembles around a course and forms a group. They do peer grading. They interchange. They exchange conversations and they learn the material together. I think we'll see this happening. It would be a wonderful thing and great for the world."

7.----Great Point----- the challenges faced by instructors whose MOOCs attract students with a dynamic range of abilities – some without the background necessary to succeed, some who would like to move more quickly through the material and others who need to move more slowly. Sometimes instructors don't know there's a problem until exam time.

8.----Now, take an exam to a school where perhaps the students are not quite as capable and give them that exam and you're going to crush them,. "So we've got to figure out how to tailor and customize these courses much more appropriately for the level of the student, the rate at which the material is going to go, the rate at which the students are going to move.

9.---- Over time, this will happen. We've just got to continue to push it there, and make the adaptation to individual ability and to the classroom setting in that particular institution.

10.----one thing that MOOCs do very well is "educate the educators" in other parts of the world, allowing them to use the material to prepare courses for their students.

11.----Flipped" the classroom – delivering lectures online and meeting in the classroom for one-on-one interaction and hands-on projects. While those early indicators are positive, he said, controlled experiments would be the key to understanding how well students are mastering the material in those settings.

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Syllabus – Topics and Readings

 

Week 1 (13 January 2014) – Introduction to the Course

The first lecture introduces the course content, rationale and requirements of the course.

Relevant Book

Kotler, P. & G. Armstrong (2013). Principles of Marketing. Harlow: Pearsons.

Core Readings

Humphreys, L. (2005). “Cellphones in Public: Social Interactions in a Wireless Era.” New Media & Society 7 (6): 810–833.

Additional Readings

Kujovich, Mary Yeager. 1970. “The Refrigerator Car and the Growth of the American Dressed Beef Industry.” The Business History Review 44 (4): 460–482.

Wei, Ran, and Louis Leung. 1999. “Blurring Public and Private Behaviors in Public Space: Policy Challenges in the Use and Improper Use of the Cell Phone.” Telematics and Informatics 16 (1): 11–26.

Related Reading

Selinger, E. (2013). How not to be a jerk with your stupid smartphone. The Atlantic (November).

 

Week 2 (20 January 2014) – Marketing and Technology

Public debates about technological innovation often talk about the ‘revolutionary’ impact of new technology. There are myriad examples for this phenomenon: “the internet revolution”, the “social media revolution” or the “Twitter revolution” to name but a few. These discussions principally argue that technological developments are shaping how we conduct our affairs, including how we organise our daily interactions as well as how we conduct marketing activities. At the same time, these discussions often ignore the political shaping and relevance of these technologies. This lecture explores the textbook premises of the relationship between marketing and technology. It sheds light on different perspectives on how technology is interwoven with marketing theory and practice.

Core Readings

Constantinides, E. (2006). “The Marketing Mix Revisited: Towards the 21st Century Marketing.” Journal of Marketing Management 22 (3-4): pp. 407–438.

Additional Readings

Bartels, R. (1986). Marketing: Management Technology or Social Process at the Twenty-First Century? In Marketing Management Technology as a Social Process. Edited by George Fisk. New York et al.: Praeger, pp.30-42.

Marx, L. (2010). Technology: The Emergence of a Hazardous Concept. Technology & Culture, 51(3), 561-577.

Möller, K. (2006). “The Marketing Mix Revisited: Towards the 21st Century Marketing by E. Constantinides.” Journal of Marketing Management 22 (3-4): pp. 439–450.

Related Readings

Friedman, T. (2009). Tweeting the Dialectic of Technological Determinism. FlowTV http://flowtv.org/2009/06/tweeting-the-dialectic-of-technological-determinism  ted-friedman  georgia-state-university-atlanta  /

 

Related Books

Robertson, D., and B. Breen. 2013. Brick by Brick: How LEGO Rewrote the Rules of Innovation and Conquered the Global Toy Industry. Random House Business.

Stone, Brad. 2013. The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon. Bantam Press.

Week 3 (27 January 2014) – Technology, Interaction and Networks

Over the past few years, social relationships are increasingly being described as networks. We find public discourse about networks, social networks, the network economy, network society and others. This lecture begins with a discussion of social interaction before moving on to concepts of market relationships and networks. It will form the basis for subsequent lectures concerned with online communities

Core Readings

Kaplan, Andreas M., and Michael Haenlein. 2010. “Users of the World, Unite! The Challenges and Opportunities of Social Media.” Business Horizons 53 (1): 59–68.

Additional Readings

Bernoff, J., & Li, C. (2008). Harnessing The Power of The Oh-So-Social Web, MIT Sloan Management Review, 2008, 49, pp. 335-342.

boyd, d. (2010). “Social Network Sites as Networked Publics : Affordances, Dynamics, and Implications.” In Networked Self: Identity, Community, and Culture on Social Networking Sites, ed. Zizi Papacharissi, pp.39–58. Abingdon: Routledge.

Ferguson, R., (2008). Word of mouth and viral marketing: taking the temperature of the hottest trends in marketing. Journal of Consumer Marketing, 25(3), pp. 179 – 182.

Watts, Duncan J, and Steve Hasker. 2006. “Marketing in an Unpredictable World.” Harvard Business Review.

Watts, D.J., 1999. Networks, Dynamics, and the Small-World Phenomenon. American Journal of Sociology, 105(2), p.493-527.

 

Related Books

Papacharissi, Zizi (2008). Networked Self: Identity, Community, and Culture on Social Networking Sites. Abingdon: Routledge.

Rainie, L., & Wellman, B. (2012). Networked: The New Social Operating System. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Week 4 (3 February 2014) – Wessel van Rensburg (RAAK) – Inequality in Networks (working title)

@wildebees 

 Week 5 (10 February 2014) – Social Networks and Reputation Management

At the same tome as social media and social networking has risen in importance for marketing practitioners new challenges have emerged that for example impact the ways in which companies’ reputation can be impacted by the use of these new media. This lecture draws on a few recent examples to explore some of these challenges to companies’ reputation and discusses ways in which companies might manage their reputation when using social media and social networking sites for their marketing communications.

Core Readings

Hennig-Thurau, Thorsten, Caroline Wiertz, and Fabian Feldhaus. (2013) “Does Twitter Matter? An Investigation of the Impact of Micro Blogging Word of Mouth on Consumers’ Adoption of New Products.” http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2016548

Additional Readings

Gruzd, A., B. Wellman, and Y. Takhteyev. 2011. “Imagining Twitter as an Imagined Community.” American Behavioral Scientist 55 (10): 1294–1318.

Hamilton, K. & P. Hewer. (2010). Tribal mattering spaces: Social-networking sites, celebrity affiliations, and tribal innovations. Journal of Marketing Management, 26(3), p.271-289.

Hennig-Thurau, T., E. C. Malthouse, C. Friege, S. Gensler, L. Lobschat, a. Rangaswamy, and B. Skiera. 2010. “The Impact of New Media on Customer Relationships.” Journal of Service Research 13 (3): 311–330.

Phelps, J. E., Lewis, R., Mobilio, L., Perry, D., & Raman, N. (2004). Viral Marketing or Electronic Word-of-Mouth Advertising: Examining Consumer Responses and Motivations to Pass Along Email. Journal of Advertising Research, 44(4), 333-348.

Rainie, L., & Wellman, B. (2012). Networked: The New Social Operating System. MIT Press.

Sarstedt, M. (2009). Reputation Management in Times of Crisis. Journal of Brand Management. Vol.16, 499-503.

Week 6 (24 February 2013) – Rob Wilmot (BCS Agency) – Start-ups and Valuations

 @robwilmot

Week 7 (3 March 2013) – Jadis Tillery – Content Marketing (working title)

@jadistillery

Related Books

Jenkins, Henry. 2008. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York University Press.

Week 8 (10 March) – Search and Social Media Marketing

Over the past decade or so two important developments have emerged in the context of Internet Marketing: Search Marketing and Social Media Marketing. The growing economic weight of companies like Google suggest that Search will be one of the important marketing activities over the coming years. It is being used to obtain an understanding of the market as well as for the building of relationships and networks (Marsden and Kirby 2005; Moran and Hunt 2008). The lecture will discuss some of the practices involved in Search Marketing and assess possible problems these practices might raise for the relationship between companies and their customers. It then will turn to Social Media Marketing and explore how social networks like Facebook, Myspace or Jumo are used for marketing purposes, including the design, promotion and distribution of products and services (Penenberg 2009; Scott 2008). The discussion will touch on current debates concerned with viral marketing and online gaming as well as trust and reputation.   

 

Core Readings

Rijnsoever, Frank J. van, Castaldi, Carolina, Dijst, Martin J. (2012). In what sequence are information sources consulted by involved consumers? The case of automobile pre-purchase search, Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 19(3), pp.343-352.

 

Related Books

Marsden, P., & Kirby, J. (2005). Connected Marketing: The Viral, Buzz and Word of Mouth Revolution. Butterworth-Heinemann.

Moran, M., & Hunt, B. (2008). Search Engine Marketing, Inc.: Driving Search Traffic to Your Company’s Web Site. IBM Press.

Pariser, E., 2011. The Filter Bubble: What The Internet Is Hiding From You, Viking.

Week 10 (17 March 2013) – Social and Sustainability Marketing and Technology

The arrival of new technology has also been picked up by market and consumer researchers. For example, over recent years video recording of consumers in shopping and leisure environments has been used to track people’s navigation through isles and gain an understanding of their shopping behaviour. With the arrival of the internet it has been recognised that people’s every ‘click’ can be tracked and followed and the information be used to personalise offers. This lecture critically assesses how technology is used to improve companies’ profits as well as offers for customers and considers some of the practical and ethical implications of these developments.

 

Core Readings

Brennan, Ross, Stephan Dahl, and Lynne Eagle. 2010. “Persuading Young Consumers to Make Healthy Nutritional Decisions.” Journal of Marketing Management 26 (7-8) (July 9): 635–655.

Related Books

Aaker, J., & A. Smith. (2010). The Dragonfly Effect: Quick, Effective, and Powerful Ways to Use Social Media to Drive Social Change. Jossey Bass.

Peattie, K., & Belz, F. F.-M. (2009). Sustainability Marketing: A Global Perspective (p. 306). John Wiley & Sons.

Striphas, T. (2009). The Late Age of Print: Everyday Book Culture from Consumerism to Control. Columbia University Press.

Vaidhynathan, S., 2011. The Googlization of Everything: (And Why We Should Worry), Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

 

Week 10  (24 March 2013) – Marketing, Interaction & Technology


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Massive open online courses (MOOCs) have become a worldwide phenomenon, as  interested folks from anywhere in the world can participate. Some MOOCs attract huge numbers of students, many coming from countries where access to higher education may be difficult or not available at all.  In some cases, students completing a MOOC are able to earn […]

The post Making MOOCs truly open appeared first on Communicating Across Cultures.

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I can only post a sort of ‘marker’ blogpost for this week; too busy for words: student conference – music improvisation event – all the usual work – started a new F2F course – finishing another MOOC - tons of marking. Hey ho.
But this CalArts course is so excellent, I need to capture it here; if I cannot do all the work this week, I can at least re-visit it later and catch up with myself. I foresee a very visual summer!



Art as story
We explored art as public storytelling, and history- and meaning making from the caves of Lascaux to Persepolis via Davide, Jericho, Monet, Picasso, Kerry Kames Marshall, Jeff Walls, Cindy Sherman, Martha Rosler …
A key implicit theme was power: who gets to tell the stories – who has access to the traditions, resources, vocabulary, training, tradition, time… the cultural, semantic and semiotic capital to make the meanings that count – that stick – that help us become who we are – or that deny us alternative ways of being who we might become.
Out task this week is to tell our tale of who we are in ten images with a very brief commentary: one for after the marking!! But a wonderful additional task for this week is to go back into last week’s assignments and to engage with another participant in a deep and thoughtful way. I have posted useful questions, suggestions and resources below – and these are definitely things that I will be embedding in my own practice as soon as humanly possible.
W2: Assignments
Optional Sketchbook Assignment 1 Follow Up
Regardless if you did last week’s sketchbook assignment or not, I encourage you to try this out. Some of you are already commenting on the work that’s been posted to date, but let’s make our first attempt at critique with the following prompt:
Visit the Sketchbook Assignment 1: My World and the Art World forum and choose an assignment. Try especially to spread your attention between assignments that may have already received a lot of feedback and ones that haven’t. Prioritize finding an undiscovered gem or two.
Look at the student’s submission. Don’t respond immediately. Give yourself at least a few minutes to really look or study what the student has submitted. 
In your reply, describe, in words, exactly what you are seeing or reading in the student’s assignment.
Then, select at least one of the following and add it to your comment:
a.                            What is one thing about the submission that immediately caught your attention?
b.                            What is one thing about the work that took you a little longer to discover?
c.                            What are three questions you would ask this student about their submission?
d.                            How does the medium/format that the student has chosen (drawing, text, chart, etc.) affect how you understand the meaning of the submission?
Repeat for another assignment. Try to comment on at least three assignments this round.

Optional Sketchbook Assignment 2: Mental Map (Tracks A & B)
It’s good to try to know yourself as an artist and visual thinker. And it’s interesting to learn from others. This week I’m asking you to tell your own story in images and words, and learn about things you might not know from other people’s stories.
1.                 In your sketchbook, assemble ten (10) images, books, films, or even music/songs that provide a history and context for your current work or interests in art, animation and/or gaming, whether as a practitioner, viewer or player/participant. Choose works that are important to the way you think, and just as importantly, works that inspire you in ways that you can’t always perhaps put into words. Reach back into your childhood (where you may perhaps find some unexpected sources of inspiration) and look around you to collect some contemporary resources. (This assignment is particularly well-suited to a digital sketchbook, like a Tumblr or blog, but as before, if you are posting content that is not your own, please cite where you retrieved each image with a link.)
2.                 Sequence your images/items in a way that makes sense to you, chronologically or thematically or some other way.
3.                 In this forum, start a new thread. Give your thread a title, write a short intro (100-200 words), and post your images/list of links, or a link to your digital sketchbook/blog where you created your sequence.
4.                 Click “Create New Thread.”
Further Readingand Web Resources:
Bayeux Tapestry at the Museum of Reading, UK
See the work in fine detail, panel by panel.
The Caves at Lascaux, France
A simulated walkthrough of the caves.
Kerry James Marshall Lecture at National Gallery
Marshall’s 2012 Elson lecture at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., The Importance of Being Figurative, is worth a listen (recorded March 12, 2012).
A list of some photographers working in a way similar to Jeff Wall:
Edward Burtynsky
Andreas Gursky
Thomas Struth
Persepolis (the book), 2003, and Persepolis (the film), 2007
Marjane Satrapi’s 2003 graphic novel is highly recommended, and we encourage you to see her 2007 animated feature, too. It’s available on Netflix if you have access to it in your part of the world (membership required), or on video.
Charles Baudelaire, “The Painting of Modern Life,” in The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays, 1964.
Baudelaire’s seminal collection of essays has been republished widely. Check your library.
TJ Clark, The Painter of Modern Life: Paris in the Art of Manet and his Followers. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985.
A revised edition was published in 1999.


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I have a couple THANKS to offer this week – one is to all those that have buoyed me up during #rhizo14 – and the other is to the student team who devised and delivered this year’s student-facing Get Ahead Conference. They are my answer to this week’s ‘what next’ question: we need a re-schooling rhizome and creative learning space!!

W8: Demobbing Soldiers (Mar 4-?)

“the great humanistic and historical task of the oppressed [is] to liberate themselves and their oppressors as well.” Paulo Freire via Maha Bali
Question: "How can we take people who've spent their whole lives believing that [BLAH] is 'learning' and MAKE them … [plan towards their obsolescence] ? (Remix of Dave's thoughts from week 2 and week 6.)
Demobbing soldier
W8 Challenge: Help us think more clearly (big challenge!). Do we demob soldiers? Do we de/re-school soldiers? Do we mob soldiers? Who needs soldiers? Who is we?
And Sandra says, Thank you to all of you whose blogs, poems, songs, voices and stories have made this such a special special rhizome. Many of you are in the auto-ethnography project – https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mSrZFBt1cYjDSAaFc6Et-BAZ95oEEBMi-AvAX8Fz8Qs/edit- and you are in my mind and in my heart. 
My small rhizome…
… and one possible answer to this week’s question: keep fighting for creative learning spaces for students. Our non-traditional students especially need physical real world and real time spaces to be with each other to feel their power – to gain their voice – to SING! And that is where our Get Ahead conference comes in.
Get Ahead
Get Ahead is our conference by students for students. Ostensibly an event that promotes study and employability success – it becomes a student generated space where students have permission to be with their University and each other: to experience university as a place of opportunity, energy and excitement.
We sponsor one annually – and each year we recruit a team of students to design the day – to get students to present - to drum up interest – to run the day itself. It is hard work for a small team whose other academic work goes on regardless and relentlessly – and who may also have paid employment and families to support.
So THANKS to the Get Ahead Team! They were fearless in their attempts to drum up interest in the Conference – talking their way into lectures - talking about Get Ahead and talking people into the Conference. It was a buzzy, exciting and engaging event – and they were amazing: http://learning.londonmet.ac.uk/epacks/get_ahead_conf/
Where next - and how: Staff Buy-in to student as agent
For this student initiative to work, we need Lecturers to sign up to the Get Ahead idea and help to engage their students with the Conference.
One of the Education Studies tutors worked with a Team of Education Studies students – including a couple of our first year #becomingeducational students - to produce a session for other students. They chose ‘Networking’ and spread the rhizome! The Get Ahead Conference and that session were flagged up in Education Studies Team meetings - and those staff recommended the Conference as an Enhancement Week event. Our own 'Becoming an Educationalist'  students had Get Ahead as their Enhancement Week activity - they knew about it – we made time for it - and they attended with a sense of excitement and expectation.
Initiating big ideas like 'student as partner', 'student as producer', 'student as change agent', ‘student as rhizome’... takes investment of mind, body and timetable. We think that it is worth this time and effort...
But how?
One thing this year's Team suggested is that they build on what they have learned this year - and run next year's Conference. They have also suggested that the Conference is 'built up to' from the very beginning of the year - this way staff can write it into module handbooks - and the students can run pre-conference events - with *staff* and students.
The pragmatics
We would love it if staff substituted engagement with the Conference for one small piece of course work; we can offer a menu of possible 'buy-ins': students from one Module could put on a poster exhibition - perhaps students from Work Placement can present about that - perhaps Computing students could run something ICT - Maths students could run a Quants session...  Events Management students might still run the Conference - and if so - Events Management staff would ensure that attending the conference was either a module requirement or an enhancement Week activity for *ALL* Events Management students...
We could go International?
As a second year literature student our Tom ran the first ever International Dario Fo Festival. This event was a mix of academic symposium and Theatrical workshop and performance. Alongside an International Fo Symposium, to which students were also invited, there were theatre workshops for students and people from the local community... And there were big theatrical performances as well – including Fo’s ‘The bosses funeral’ (!!).
This mix of the academic and the theatrical or the more fun elements seems a great model - we can help students do better with their studies and with their job applications - but we also provide opportunities for some of the cultural and play events that the University also offers.
De-schooling society

If students are to embrace different concepts of learning – and the what – where – why and how of it – staff have to buy in to that as well. Or… ‘that’s all folks!’

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How hard is it to get people to change their beliefs? Really hard, even if facts are provided that refute those beliefs.  And even if those facts are accepted as true!  A recent study in Scientific American points to this conclusion. The study, by Brendan Nyham of Dartmouth College, dealt with the now-debunked idea that […]

The post Facts: irrelevant! appeared first on Communicating Across Cultures.

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Hello to my new art community, #LiveArtHistory: https://class.coursera.org/livearthistory-001/wiki/overview. I took Penn State's Introduction to Art (#artmooc – from http://lastrefugelmu.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/artmooc-introduction-to-art-concepts.html) last year and loved a course that had me making art. This course seemed to have a similar angle... so here I am! I want to learn more about art history and make something a bit like art. I also try to take everything I learn back into my own teaching - and blog about that. 
To make this class happen, we all need to be friendly, welcoming and helpful: make a Comment, 'like' a post, 'Reply' where possible. We are the course - we all need to make it happen.



For me - art is fundamental to being human, we are art. Many of us are taught at school that we cannot 'do' art - that we are not good enough - and it cuts us off from ourselves.  I found myself again after hearing someone talk about doing a daily water colour to de-stress - a meditation to start each day. I took my unused water colour box to work (a very stressful place) and started. Soon my walls were plastered with pix - and I discovered joy and a new confidence. I try to build artwork into all my teaching - and helped put on a small conference to help others do this also: 
http://learning.londonmet.ac.uk/epacks/look_make_learn/

These are the pictures that Chris O’Reilly took of our artful day: https://plus.google.com/photos/111292261919257411213/albums/5974268028746180785- and if you look at the very last couple – you can see that Raquel Duran, our Visual Scribe for the day, illustrated a bit of Tom Burns and my comment, ‘We’ve always been visual’ with an image of a cave painting. 



And that is art – the magical mystical boundary between us and what we see, hear, feel, believe, imagine, seek…
Art is not about money, big business, the stamp of approval from big collectors. 
Art is being human.

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So it’s a sort of goodbye to the wonder that was #rhizo14 – but not quite and not yet… For one thing we are taking forward the autoethnography project – so if you were part of #rhizo14 for any amount of time – we would love to have your experiences here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mSrZFBt1cYjDSAaFc6Et-BAZ95oEEBMi-AvAX8Fz8Qs/edit


For another – who could let go of a FB Group (Sarah, Simon, Apostolos, Scott, Dave… you know who you are!!) that sprouted wonderful discussions like this:
Heeeeelp! I have to write a piece titled: "What does the metaphor of the rhizome mean for collaborative learning. How would it impact on teaching methods?" and I am stuck. What the heck is this rhizomatic learning anyway? [How can learning] be structured, but still be spontaneous. 
Be still. Let em sing/dance/write/graft/dig and together make a show. This came to mind: http://youtu.be/xlvf1Jawg6E
It's all very woolly. My thesis might be about collaborative learning in undergraduates, it's up to me to make up some models. There's this thing called patchwork text that I am quite drawn to, also some comments by John Seely Brown that I have half remembered ... 
I suggest knitting.
I’m always knitting, fecking uni won't accept it as a PhD thesis!
Our Dave: What does the metaphor of the rhizome mean for collaborative learning - the rhizome challenges collaborative learning to allow learners to really be at the centre of the learning. If there is no beginning and end, and all is middle, then we need to allow for student to make their own map of the territory being studied. The facilitator sets the ecology for learning, tends the garden, but allows the rhizomes to spread, be cut off, and re-grow elsewhere. It also challenges the possibilities of outcomes as being seen as objectives. Goals can be shared as a community, in face, they shape the community, but objectives grow as part of the mapping process.
How would it impact on teaching methods - many teaching approaches start from the hoped for outcomes and work their way backwards. The rhizome challenges this as an artifice that is a child of hierarchy. Hierarchies for learning and knowledge that are legacies of a book driven, yes/no, final product history that overlays a deep complex human experience. If the outcomes are actually the coming together of the lines of flight that occur in the middle space, they will shape themselves differently for each learner, and the maps themselves will be unique (or close enough to it). This actually mirrors the 'real life' experience of professionals and more closely emulates our goals in that as educators to prepare students to be creative participants in their field of study: https://docs.google.com/.../1-Jqr08jT.../editThis course hopes to prepare the learner for dealing with uncertain situations with respect to educational technologies. The goal is *not* to teach any specific area of edtech nor to achieve a level of competency with a specific tool but rather to introduce and develop the literacies required for being able to make good decisions with respect to technologies in an educational context.
There are lots of tools out there, and, in some cases, they change all the time. The communication skills involved in being social... those are constant. The process of converting your existing skills in being social, in doing research, in project management, in information literacies - this is the focus of the course. And I expect that to work out differently for each student. We all come to this kind of course with different understandings and a different background and I expect we’ll all come out with different outcomes. That’s good. And expected. If I do my job in this course as an instructor, you’ll be working for yourself... not for me.  I talk about literacies. uncertainty. decision making. creativity. lots of nice buzz words. This year I'm going to be adding 'abundance' and 'permission'…
People like terminology. From what I was reading recently: Agent-Based Modeling ABM's (fits with shaken not stirred). "Thus relying mainly on experimental and descriptive approaches places limitations on a quest to seek understandings of the possibility space over which an emergent phenomenon may unfold." Dad, you're talking out your ass again. "...can reveal insights that may otherwise remain elusive..." (I love "elusive" much better than "slippery." … I'll keep slippery then. Goes with just having our car fixed. They took 3 days and claim it was because they were "short one seal and had to order another." I can see this as problematic for an active circus but not a car dealership. Having fish left over at the end of the day should have alerted someone? … Don't the slippery town fathers always take the badge away from in-corruptible sheriff in the westerns? Badge-less I stand on the side of honesty and the more elusive, justice.
If that leaves you a bit breathless and hungry – join the #rhizo14 FB Group – you will be welcome. Spread the rhizome. Be the fungus!


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