Rhizo2015 - learning rhizomatically

Into the deep - Week 2 and 3 of Rhizo15

Week 2 - Learning is not a counting noun .... so what should we count?
Week 3 - The Myth of Content
Both topics challenge thinking of education, educational practices and why educate. Blog posts varied greatly. A collection of these blog posts are found HERE: https://idleclicks.wordpress.com/rhizo15-blog-posts/
So in trying to pull apart, deconstruct, reconstruct and weave sense out of these ideas, I've collected and gathered words of wisdom from the crowd of Rhizo-writers. Out of this, I hope to make sense and connect some dots, reconstruct my knowing and understanding.
What do we count?
  • "the transfer of knowledge from one to another, not the business of institutions awarding certificates, this concept of the difference between what’s expressed and what’s received should be what we wrestle with, and in, not what we become complicit in making reducible" Aaron Johannes
  • "Measure in love (Measure, measure your life in love)" Aldon Hynes
  • "for me, that’s what I’ll be measuring. Do the interactions in #rhizo15 make me want to learn more? I know that’s going to be driven in large part by my own investment initially, to find those conversations and resources that keep me engaged, keep me coming back" Will Richardson
  • "Since I don't really understand the question, here's my take on trying to measure something that's rather non-linear/amorphous/constantly evolving/impossible to pin down. Like #rhizo15." Susan Watson
  • counting blessings and friendship - Lisa Hubbell
  • counting "student as networked learner", "student as completer", student as curator of their own learning" Lisa Chamberlin
  • "Dave I give you a bucket of brownie points for asking good questions. Great questions. Questions I like to think about and answer - what better questions are there? You have caused me to spend a good few hours thinking about all this... and it's probably done me and my students some good!" Emily Purser
Content is:
  • "Content is our human platform for conversation, communication and connection – artifact" and "it is the art of collecting and sense making, born from generosity and a desire to share; "content is a myth, and myth is necessary and should be encouraged.   Content is how we conjure and trigger our stories, in ourselves, and each other.". Angela Brown
  • "Content is like the matrix, it's all around us (or is it like the force?).  You cannot escape content because content is everywhere.  Rhizo15 is content." Apostolous K. 
  • "for me the content emerges in the conversation itself rather than being defined in advance" Laura Gibbs
  • "I would like to posit that the more one grapples with the choosing of content – the more one engages in that internal conversation, uses their imagination to understand that point of view from the context of the person that developed it, compares it and contrasts it to other view points (content) with the end in mind of creating harmony among those ideas to create new ideas" Autumn Caines
  • "Thinking of content as a kind of conversation with the people who created it is a useful way to shift our thinking, it might also be valuable just to stop using the word, and go back to using words like “resources” or “materials” or “texts”, which are words that help to reframe the conversation." Nick Kearney
  • "Where people are presented as content, we are also challenged to look again at our/their place in the world."; "I think content is assembled and experienced in many different ways, under the influence of people, power, and perspectives." Lisa Hubbell
  • "we are the content, and what we say and what we think are diverse and complicated packets of thought. If we are the curriculum, we are also the content. We've been filling this space with content, but how it connects and how it all moves us through our learning paths and root systems, is not content but the result of the content and the curriculum moving in orchestra."; "the content - which I always discuss in terms of coffee (content), and the cup which is everything else (form, ethos, pathos, logos, audience, time, place)." Ron Samul
  • "Where content is given for learning there will be gaps and spaces to explore." and "By looking at boundaries and things that form the edge of the content you can better understand and focus on the content or add another angle. What I like about this style of Rhizomatic Learning is that you are free to find the non-content to create the content". Wendy Taleo followed by Sarah Honeychurch's comment "The holes are vital to the whole."
  • "Using the word 'content' rather than 'text' creates an illusion, I feel, that meaning is a stable Thing, which exists independently of the representational forms by which we 'express' it... it makes it seem as though language is just some kind of packaging for the 'real' stuff, the 'substance', the 'meat' that lies waiting to be discovered within". Emily Purser
  • "That's what I mean about knowledge, about content. It isn't a collection of stones to transfer, but a weather system that enfolds us". Keith Hamon
  • "For me, the word “content” has long become a rhetorically loaded word, attached to all sorts of professional journals and textbooks and advertising from every publishing company hoping to get either my money for their books or my words in a book review." Kevin Hodgson
  • "content is people simply because content is produced by people. As such, content is political. Which content we choose, how we choose it, which people produced it in the first place, all has political connotations. And letting students choose their own content, bring their own context, is also a political choice." Maha Bali
  • "What I am particularly interested in is how content, however broadly defined, can develop curiosity. How what or how we learn and teach can result in questions and discovery. Not just for those who already know how to be curious, but for everyone.... Being curious makes things more interesting, makes us ask more (questions) of content." Maren Deepwell
  • "looks at content as a means to an end (curiosity, creativity, critical thinking, etc) but not an end to itself. When you see content as a means to develop these other attributes (skills? qualities?) then the specific content you use is less important than whether it can be useful in the development of meta skills" and "Not all content is equal. Not all content is needed by all students. Content is a means to an end not an end itself. Measuring the acquisition of content is a lot easier but not the point". Patrick Misterovich
  • "Content is not the end of instruction, developing expertise with using the tools is the end. Content is not the means of instruction, as developing expertise only happens through exercise with the tools, using them repetitively to develop these “muscles.” But perhaps content is the motive force of learning, and maybe content is the element that engages the students and inspires them to stick with it and do the long, hard work required for mastery. Moreover, content can be the human element that enables students to see themselves in their learning and to imagine their own possibilities/potential in shaping and forging the outlines of their future." Raymond Maxwell
  • "my idea of ‘content’ is not so much me telling – it's discussion, seminars and presentations - a bit of ‘doing’ things – so perhaps not too bad." Sandra Sinfield
  • "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.";  "How can I transform content from something cold, solitary and unhuman to something which is embodied?"; 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." Tania Sheko
  • "These online worlds we occupy are pails of content yet we want them to be rhizomatic, where everything is in the middle and nowhere simultaneously, uncontained and uncontaining." Terry Elliott