Iāve been a fan of Dave Cormierās work for a long time (eons, in fact, in blog years), and Iāve been following his thinking around Rhizomatic Learning with a great deal of interest. The idea that learning follows different, unpredictable pathways just like the roots of a plant, and that those pathways oftentimes intersect with the learning roots of others is an apt and workable metaphor for the way Iāve come to think about whatās possible for learning in the access rich world many of us now inhabit. Even without the Web, the metaphor works. But no question, the internet amplifies the opportunities to learn with others in personally meaningful, unplanned, self-organized ways.
Daveās cMOOC āRhizo15ā kicked off last week, and Iāve spent the better part of the day reading and trying to catch up with the conversations so far. As you can guess, itās less a ācourseā than it is a quickly expanding pool of conversations and resources that center, for now, on the topic of how learning happens and on how we as learners make sense of an ever expanding pool of conversations and resources that are there for the picking. And itās hard.
Itās hard because no oneās telling me what to read or when to read it.
Itās hard because thereās no one text, no central collection place for ALL the associated thinking with the course.
Itās hard because I worry about what Iām missing.
Itās hard because there are no due dates.
Itās hard because I donāt know if Iām doing it āright.ā
Itās hard because despite the fact that Iāve been learning online informally for almost 15 years, I still have a lot of āold schoolā baggage built in when I hear the ācourse.ā (By the way, if you want a lesson in how long it takes to unlearn old habits, watch this.)
In other words, ārhizomatic learningā is all about me, what I choose to read, when I choose to read it, whether I choose to respond, how I choose to respond, what I choose to create and share, who I choose to connect with, and so on. I have complete autonomy and agency in the process. I can āquitā any time I like.
This weekās challenge from Dave is to see learning as a ānon counting noun.ā He says learning āis not something we should think about counting, itās not something we should worry about countingā and that trying to measure learning ādoesnāt make any sense any more.ā Yet, he asks, āWhat are we going to measure? What can we measure?ā
I canāt help (again) to harken back to Seymour Sarason and his definition of āproductive learning.ā Simply put, productive learning is when āthe learning process is one which and engenders and reinforces wanting to learn more. Absent wanting to learn, the learning context is unproductive or counterproductive.ā (See page X.)Ā
So for me, thatās what Iāll be measuring. Do the interactions in #rhizo15 make me want to learn more? I know thatās 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. And those are all based on my own ālearning subjectives,ā as Dave calls them. (āObjectivesā are too concrete for this work.) Those questions that I want to answer as I dig around the roots. Questions like:
What changes do learners experience as they move from straight line learning to roots and shoots learning?
What new literacies are required to, as NCTE suggests, āmanage, analyze, and synthesize [the] multiple streams of simultaneous informationā that the ācourseā will no doubt supply?
And, maybe most pressing, how can we down here in the K-12 world embrace some of these new learning contexts in our work to prepare our students for their own āRhizo15ā like journeys?
Much to learn, no doubt. Up to me to learn it.
