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Bobbing along – water as a medium of participation in learning

I spent yesterday finding and reading papers about community learning and MOOCs, and working on our lovely data from #rhizo14. Eventually, I felt that I was going around in circles and decided to search for images to help me make some sense of what I was reading and thinking. I found lots of great ‘water’…

Getting another perspective

This post is a progress report on the research that we (Frances Bell and Jenny Mackness) have been conducting following our participation in the open course Rhizomatic Learning: The community is the curriculum in January 2014. This research to date has included an online survey, email interviews and a conversation with the convenor of the…

Ice Bucket Challenge – the woolly liberal version

I suppose it’s almost inevitable that once you comment on people doing the Ice Bucket Challenge, you have raised your head above the parapet and should expect to catch a bullet. In my case it was my dear sister-in-law Moira Richardson, a recent entrant to Facebook, who challenged me. Although I am rather too old…

Reflections on community in #rhizo14 – more questions than answers

These are some reflections on community in #rhizo14 inspired by the research that Jenny Mackness and I are doing, and my engagement with Maha Bali’s post and the rich comment stream that followed. I just wanted to capture my thoughts as they are currently but would be really pleased to engage through comments. One of the issues that…

Strong as silk

Silk is natural, light, prismatic, gossamer. We know no fibre stronger than silk. One cocoon yields over 700 yards of filament. Silk can be reeled, spun, woven, sewn, knitted, patterned by weaving, printing, stitching, piecing, made into beautiful artefacts, to wear and to enjoy. Silk is beautiful and multiple. Silk can be chiffon, organza, crepe,…

Response to Simon Ensor’s comments

Answers by Cavale https://www.flickr.com/photos/cavale/5439074678 CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 Jenny Mackness and I are giving a presentation at the MOOCs – which way now event on Friday 27 June. To accompany our presentation (aware that we have too much to cover) we have published a series of blog posts. The first post was – The Rhizome as a Metaphor for…

Ravelry: a knitting community as a site of joy and learning

“That lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne “ The Parliament of Fowls by Geoffrey Chaucer Evidence that learning starts in the womb is revealed when babies hear lullabies that they will respond to after birth; and learning continues throughout life, as Chaucer says of love. We can all remember from an early…

The Best Laid Plans …

“The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men, Gang aft agley, An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain, For promis’d joy! Still, thou art blest, compar’d wi’ me! The present only toucheth thee: But Och! I backward cast my e’e, On prospects drear! An’ forward, tho’ I canna see, I guess an’ fear!” Robert…

Ethics and soft boundaries between Facebook groups and other web services

As part of a MOOC on rhizomatic learning that performs itself in many different spaces (Facebook, P2PU, G+, Twitter and others), I am a member of an ‘open’ Facebook group. It is endlessly fascinating, and has given me a lot of scope for reflection about back channels and the exchange of information between open and…

Wonderful Women I follow on Twitter

To celebrate International Women’s Day, I trawled through those I follow on Twitter to create a list of women I follow on Twitter, then create a composite image of their avatars. This was quite a labour-intensive task but was time well spent as it made me think about these women. I am impressed -they are…