Fifteen minutes.

Fifteen minutes.

Ditch the post.

Self-satisfied twaddle. 

Ten minutes.

Pitch the sale.

Five minutes.

Found a photo.

No time for fancy.

Self-conscious reflection.

Post it anywhat, anywhereway.

Someone will ask.

Someone will wonder.

"Why?"

Found the hook.

Five minutes.

Slash.
Stop.
Sentence.
Over.

Extraction.

I am immensely privileged.

I am fully employed with an interesting profession.

I have been able to invest time in this amateur activity of blogging.

I have been able to invest time in this amateur activity of cmoocing.

I have been privileged to be able to learn in the company of others from whom I have gained enormously.

These others come from wildly different contexts and have a variety of objectives.

I spent some of this last week learning about "blockchain".

I would probably not have invested the energy in the venture had it not been for my peers.

I have worked in a wide number of activities either thanks to not needing money as I was alone and could get by with little or because I have had a job which has enabled me to organise myself to do other things for free or to do irregular  but attractive "gigs" for money.

The way things are moving, there are more and more people who will be doing irregular "gigs" not out of choice but out of necessity.

More and more will be "self-employed" "entrepreneurs"...."journeymen."

A quick browse of the internet this morning and I fall upon
an article by Howard Jarche entitled "Hierarchies in Perpetual Beta - A post-job economy."

I was reading reactions to "rhizomatic learning" on Facebook coming from Torn Halves who was suggesting that it was "personalized learning":

So this is personalised learning, is it not? A simple term. No need to trek across a thousand plateaus in order to get an idea of what is being talked about. If a spade is a spade, why call the personalisation of education rhizomatic?


Well I think he makes a valid point.

You could argue that as each person maps their own learning - such a map might include badges or blockchain credits which might be used to validate their efforts in order to monetize them.

I could list the different competences that I have developed over a period of practising "connected learning" or is it "rhizomatic learning"- another term to which Torn Halves might say:

If a spade is a spade, why call the personalisation of education connected learning?

One might remark Dave Cormier's negative reaction to this iteration of blockchain technology

So whatever i thought we could do with blockchain... it's the opposite of this:

after all, isn't "rhizomatic learning" applicable to formal education? 

Isn't one role of formal education to enable people to exchange their learning for qualifications, badges, blockchains whatever, for monetary rewards? 

Isn't that what Dave Cormier is doing with this e-book draft in which he talks of grading contracts: 

"Making the Community the Curriculum." ?

It is all very well for me to say that learning is not about money. 

Indeed if Dave is doing #rhizo14/15/16 it is related directly to his salaried profession which allows him to do the activity for free.

Others are able to monetize their research into rhizomatic learning.

We could talk of other learning experiences used for credit in formal education. Here's an article entitled: "Custom Learning Contracts."  

So kids are doing all sorts of activities for credit - that is not so far away from what kids are already doing in apprenticeship training.

I return to the question of "normativity" in "rhizomatic learning" in answer to a remark from Torn Halves, I suggested that there is no "normativity" in "rhizomatic learning".

Well I think that Torn is right to challenge that.

If we say there is "no normativity" that is in itself "normativity".

All of this brings us back to the question of "Making the Community the Curriculum."

If we make the community the curriculum that is not the same as a personalisation of learning.

We can have personal learning in service to a community which may enable emergent learning which may benefit all.

Such learning will surely not happen if we concentrate on the "personalization of learning" based on algorithms with expected outcomes.

Algorithms might help. Hashtags might help. Data contained in blockchains might help.

This is more than "personal learning" focused on the individual.

There have been many cases where the learning has not simply been personal but communal -for example the experience of writing the untext for #rhizo14 Writing the unreadable untext .

That is not personalized learning.

There is certainly a "normativity" within the "rhizo14/15/" groups - there are values which are not simply commercial.

There are clear educational values.

The question of extraction of value is crucial to address.

I regret that we cannot ignore "learning for credit" questions related to rhizomatic learning - even if we are not directly interested in it for vulgar monetary gain...

Gophers, gofers, muggles and magicians.

Gophers, cute dancing gophers.

I don't know about you but...

My disbelief is not suspended.

It's a bloody glove puppet isn't it?

Put the gopher down.

I suppose it might have thrilled the kids of another age.

MAGIC ACADEMY

We reach the university's hallowed halls in awe.

Wow, I am "coming up to" university.

Come up

To arrive as a student at Oxford.

For hallowed halls read HOGWARTS....

COR BLIMEY

We will build Hogwarts franchises everywhere. 

YES! 

A MAGICAL COMPANY!

Provincial universities.

Aside

Does one come up to a Kentucky University? (or is it only Oxford?)

Enroll here:

"You'll be a magician rather than a muggle."

"It'll be a great investment."

Who's the MUGgle now?

IS COLLEGE WORTH IT? 

Too many degrees are a waste of money. 

The return on higher education would be much better if college were cheaper

The Economist 2014

Focus group.

"We have a great product..."

I gasped.

What was the professor talking about?

A broom? 

A wand?

NO!!

He was talking about a program in the Hogwarts franchise...(the university).

"Of course," he went on...

"We need to look into the training of community managers..."

"There is a growing need for these guys in companies."

"Yes, they need to be able to handle the tools..."

Community management.

For a reason that escapes me, somebody passed me the microphone to speak.

"I hear the word community," I said, "juxtaposed with the word management."

"I hear the word 'product' to talk of 'education', " I went on.

"I am sorry but I do not consider education to be a product."

"I hear you talking about community management...

What are you doing to er 'manage' this educative community here?"

There was a rather long silence.

Focus group.

A student, perked up with another question:

"Would you say that this (y)our university program is obsolete?"

Someone spoke:

"Our knowledge, our education is constantly obsolete, it's the nature of the world we live in," he said.

"For example kids started playing basketball in the street in the town where I work, it was a nuisance so we ended up having to give them a space to play 'street basketball'. We are constantly having to adapt and we can never foresee how things will move."

I felt a cry of hallelujah emerge from deep within me.

I am not a religious man.

It was a bloody miracle.

Gofers.

I used to work flogging double-glazing. 

The conman, the 'sale representative' who 'trained' me explained:

"You'll see there are some people and we call them gophers..."

"Gophers," I said, not understanding what he was on about.

"Yeah, Gofers, they gofer this, they gofer that, they buy everything, they gob anything. Gobble, Gobble", he gaggled.

Speaking with the students standing around the hall, this story came back to me.

Students have long been treated like "gofers", we sell them a product - content.

They once believed that if they gobbed the prescribed content they would become one day a magician...

They would have powers that other mere muggles wouldn't have.

They would graduate into the elite with the privileges that their standing brought.

They are coming to realise that we have all been MUGgles all along.

Some of them are not mugs any more.

They are not buying it any more...except perhaps in the real Hogwarts (Oxford).

Let's drop the pathetic pretence. 

The bloody dancing gofer was a glove puppet all along.

Education is not a product.

You don't manage a community.

Magicians are muggles in disguise.

“We do not need magic to transform our world. We carry all the power we need inside ourselves already.” 

J.K. Rowling

Black wholes in time.

What is this madness?

What the hell were we doing watching Luton against  West bloody Bromwich Albion?

I suppose it passed the time.

It took our mind off other things.

There we were watching the most boring game of football (soccer) of recent years (ever) and then with a little change of the rules we were both on the edges of our seats. 

My friend introduced me to the concept of spread-betting.

There are markets for everything. 

You decide how many corners there will be in a match and then you place money on your best guess.

I googled 'spread-betting' and the writers of the page had obviously read my blog.

Football spread betting with Spreadex can turn even the most uninspiring 0-0 draw into an edge-of-the-seat experience. Spreadex offers a multitude of football spread betting markets on hundreds of games played around the world each week.

http://www.spreadex.com/sports/get-started/football-spread-betting/

It was one of the most memorable crap games of football (soccer) that I can remember and the score?

0 - 0 draw.

What is it about numbers, about counting which drives us crazy?

HOW MUCH DO YOU LOVE ME?

Dave Cormier in his week 2 prompt of #rhizo15 asks us to count and my mind is spinning from Schizophrenia to Quadrophenia to Rhizo-degradable tshirts.

What the hell is going on?

 I have already blogged about this insanity.

Here are just four posts which refer in some way to the numbers game, whether it be money, grades, teaching, mountaineering.

Give me money.

Disciplined minds

Mind the gap.

Because they are there.

At heart.

Numbers are infinitely generative of ideas, dreams, energy, games, plastic surgery, homicides...

Why on earth are we so obsessed with our measurements?


I slept on the question.

We escape one black hole to fear falling in another.  The night was long...

THANK YOU GOD I WOKE UP.

I woke up and came to the conclusion that it must be to do with the black holes which await us.

Our days are numbered.

Our fate is singular.

I looked at seventeen generations on my family tree.

Do you know what they had in common?

BLACK HOLES.

Whatever they had done, however many steps they had taken, however many places they had seen, they had all disappeared into some black hole.

My end is nigh.

"Time"

Time - He's waiting in the wings
He speaks of senseless things
His script is you and me boys

Time - He flexes like a whore
Falls wanking to the floor
His trick is you and me, boy

Time - In Quaaludes and red wine
Demanding Billy Dolls
And other friends of mine
Take your time

The sniper in the brain, regurgitating drain
Incestuous and vain,
and many other last names
I look at my watch it say 9:25 and I think
"Oh God I'm still alive"

We should be on by now [x2]
La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la [repeat]

You - are not a victim
You - just scream with boredom
You - are not evicting time

Chimes - Goddamn, you're looking old
You'll freeze and catch a cold
'Cause you've left your coat behind
Take your time

Breaking up is hard, but keeping dark is hateful
I had so many dreams,
I had so many breakthroughs
But you, my love, were kind, but love has left you
dreamless
The door to dreams was closed.
Your park was real dreamless
Perhaps you're smiling now,
smiling through this darkness
But all I had to give was the guilt for dreaming

We should be on by now [x5]
La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la [repeat]

Yeah, time!