Ethics for MOOCs: Assertive Humility

So in my last post I introduced the idea that engagement of complex spaces such as in cMOOCs requires ethical choices. We must define the open, shifting space to make sense of it, deciding what is valuable and what is not, what is in, what is out, and how it should be arranged.…

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Ethics for MOOCs: Complex vs. Simple Learning

I’ve just written two things that have left me dissatisfied, and both of them had to do with ethics. The first was a long comment on France Bell’s post Cycling between private and public in researching Rhizo14 about the recent article she wrote with Jenny Mackness, Rhizo14: A Rhizomatic Learning cMOOC in Sunlight and in Shade.…

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The Unconscious Reality

The second slippery aspect of the question do we know all of Reality refers to how we conceive knowledge. If knowledge is something conscious and mostly intellectual, then I don’t think we can know all of Reality, or even much of Reality.…

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Why Rhizomatic Learning? #etmooc

Okay, so I enjoyed the conversation about rhizomatic education over at Christina Hendricks’ blog, You’re the Teacher. In the conversation, I’m definitely championing rhizomatic, connectivist education, but why? I’ve been writing about this for a couple of years now, but can I state my point of view succinctly and reasonably clearly?…

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Boundaries and the System

A fourth concept that Morin discusses in The Reform of Thought is the system, or organization. If I understand Morin correctly, then he means by system any self-organizing entity that pulls itself together  in such a manner that allows it to function as an entity and that provides the organized substrate for the emergence of properties and capabilities not necessarily inherent in the individual …

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Boundaries and the Holographic Principle

I’ve been thinking of boundaries as included middles, or zones of engagement, which transcend the separation of entities into discrete units required by the classical logic of the excluded middle—A is A, A is not non-A, and there is no entity T which is both A and non-A.…

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Boundaries and the Loop of Circular Causality

A second characteristic to emerge from thinking of boundaries as included middles is circular causality, or the feedback loop. In The Reform of Thought (2008), Morin begins his explanation of circular causality by quoting Pascal: “I hold knowing the whole to be impossible if I do not know the parts nor can I know the parts if I do not know the whole.”…

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Boundaries and the Dialogic

The included middle of Lupasco and Nicolescu gives me a convenient handle for understanding Edgar Morin’s concept of the dialogic, which I first encountered in his book On Complexity but which is also discussed in his Seven Complex Lessons in Education for the Future (1999) and in his article The Reform of Thought, Transdisciplinarity, and the Reform of the University (in Nicolescu’s …

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