learning and education | Frances Bell

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…

Reflecting, recollecting, research – Auf wiedersehen #rhizo14

I have been enjoying seeing traces of rhizo14ers reflections and recollections over the last few days. Thanks Dave for hosting the longest party I have ever attended and thanks to all the rhizo14 folks from whom I have learned and will learn so much. All participants will see changes in themselves and their networks as…

You can’t have one without the other

Over the last few weeks on Rhizo14, I have been troubled with the either/or nature of some of our weekly tasks. We could argue about whether or not that was intended but at least some of the students have perceived concepts as being presented in opposition to each other: Cheating as Learning , Enforcing Independence, Is Books…

Is Books making us Stupid? or what I found in our study

Correction:The Book Lost for Words was actually written by Paddy Creber. If you spent eight precious minutes of your life watching this video, I would be thrilled if we could continue the conversation here.

Cool webs for rhizo14?

Wandering across smooth and jagged spaces – bring a blanket and beware the Chief ants

Short cut Apologies in advance – this is a long post. You could just skip it altogether, or look at the pictures and watch the video. Thanks for getting this far. Textiles for Nomads – feeling it for felt This week I have been engaging with De Leuze and Guattari’s ideas of the Nomad and…

Student activity exploring relation view of power

Background On #rhizo14 today, @teachnorthern asked for permission (not actually needed) to use the post http://francesbell.wordpress.com/2014/01/26/dimensions-of-power-knowledge-and-rhizomatic-thinking/ with teacher training students. I agreed and offered her a student activity that I had used over several years with Masters students who were starting to look at theories of power and how they might be applied in practice. I offered…