Multilitteratus Incognitus

It's been a while since I've blogged about...anything, really! After a lot of writing, feedback, editing, some more feedback, some more editing, my dissertation is finally ready to be defended.  Since Dissertation Defense is a "DD", it reminded me a bit of the Dunkin' Donuts logo, so here's my New England mind thought it would be fun to create a logo to riff off the Dunks logo (how locals refer to Dunkin' Donuts). The first date of available availability was July 7, and I took it.  The 07/07 was a nice reduplication.  In retrospect, I should have chosen the 14th, so I could have 07/14/21 😂. Oh well, maybe for the next doctoral degree (ROFL). At the moment I am spending time reviewing what I submitted, taking notes, making a plan for the presentation, and getting ready for the 2 hours of questions.  With five (5) people on my examination committee and 20 minutes given to each member (and another 20 for me to present), that's going to be a long one. Mor...

  Wonder what's in this... It's been a crazy seven days.  As part of my narrative inquiry into collaborations that occurred in rhizo14 and rhizo15 (or collaborations that sprung up from the work that started there), I am writing a fictional account of a newbie rhizo-learner (sort of how I was a newbie back in rhizo14) who gets to meet rhizo-alumni from past courses and ask them about their collaborations.  This newbie is simultaneously my avatar, but also a persona that encapsulates some common features of the people I connected with to learn more about their experiences. I find the flexibility that narrative inquiry affords a bit freeing.  I can more easily change names, places, and situations, but I still can get to the main ideas that emerged from my conversations with rhizo14 alumni and collaborators.  Anyway, my fictional rhizo course that takes place in 2022 (June 2022, to be exact). I could have made up all the weekly provocation titles, and the course t...

It's been a busy October thus far in dissertation research land .  How do I know?  My memo doc for October is already at 40 pages (single-spaced) in length, and it's only October 6th! The September and August memo docs are sparse by comparison! Just as a "previously on AK's Dissertation Adventure", I am examining collaboration in Rhizo14 (and to some extent Rhizo15) using Narrative Inquiry as my method. Memo documents are my interim texts, which are essentially my ongoing analysis, reflection, thoughts, and quarantining my own views as a researcher; but they sound cooler when using the Narrative Inquiry lingo of interim texts .  I like the term because I feel like it denotes something on-going, reflective, iterative, and in the midst;  whereas "data analysis" feels more sterile. Anyway, my free time is spent looking at field texts (my "data"), making notes in the margin, jotting down names of actors, actions, plots, motivations, and thoughts. ...

It's been quite a while since I last shared a few thoughts.  I guess time flies even if you aren't having fun 😆. In the past few weeks I've been contemplating the direction of my dissertation proposal.  I am not changing topics (now THAT would be silly, and an unnecessary amount of work), but I am considering the framing of my argument.  The topic (just to refresh your mind) is "Why do we collaborate?" and it's an exploration of the emergent groups that formed in Rhizo14 and rhizo15 to conduct some sort of academic work in order to figure out why we did this (after all, everyone hates group work, right??? 😜) This academic work wasn't part of the original Rhizo-course plan†, so why the heck did we band together to do this type of work? The question, I should point out (again) wasn't originally mine - I just took an interest in it.  Rebecca H. had originally asked this question of our MobiMOOC team back in 2011/2012 - but we all went (sort of) ou...

It's been a few weeks since I wrote anything about the NRC01PL cMOOC that was running last month, and that I caught up a bit on and wrote a few posts about.  The final week of the course was labelled applications and extension, but I didn't see any content for the course posted.  Not that one necessarily needs content (I think the Rhizo MOOCs showed that), however you do need something. This got me to thinking, and more specifically about Terry Anderson and his interaction equivalency theorem , which... In a nutshell the theory posits that if any one of student-student, student-teacher or student-content interaction is of a high quality, the other two can be reduced or even eliminated without impairing the learning experience–thus creating means of developing and delivering education that is cost affordable for all of us. Peer-to-Peer interaction was a bit problematic for NRC01PL from the start. It seemed that gRSShopper didn't really work, and I only got a few ...

Moving along in NRC01PL, here are some reflections of what was presented in week 3 of the Personal Learning MOOC.  It's been rather busy at work, and at Athabasca as I am wrapping up my semester, so I haven't really gelled with anyone else in this cMOOC.  I think that the topic would be interesting to discuss in connectivist fashion, but I have not yet (satisfactorily) done any wayfinding . I see some friends from other MOOCs in the twitter stream (like Autumm and Jupidu), but don't see much in the place of discussion.  Maybe once I "catch up" I'll pay more attention to what others are doing?  I am getting a similar vibe now to the one I got in the Wiley MOOC on OpenEd (#ioe12)  - I am in a museum tour, and I am a few rooms behind the group.  Good opportunity for mischief and creative exploration, but it's always fun to have another friend around to share the experience with. In any case, in week 3 the topic was the (curious) case of the cMOOC, wher...

In a MOOC a long time ago, in an internet far, far, away, a rag-tag team of starry eyed researchers got together to research about MOOCs (hey, I've got to setup an interesting getting together story, otherwise how are we going to get a movie deal? ;-)  ). All joking aside, back in 2011 the 3rd MOOC I participated in was a MOOC organized by Inge de Waard called mobiMOOC. I participated as a member, probably a 'memorably active participant', based on the categorization of participants we had in mobiMOOC, and near the end something crazy happened - there was a call for collaborative research! This was unsual since my mental model of academics is that they (we?) tend to just keep our toys/research for ourselves so that we can claim all the glory.  This wasn't like that. It was an open call to put together a paper based on the MOOC we had just participated in, which was really cool!  In the end we had a few of us working on this paper, which earned us a prize at the Mobil...

I was thinking of CLMOOC, and more specifically my participation in it this past summer.  I still see some posts in the Facebook group for clmooc, which draw my attention to the MOOC that I really didn't participate in, and I have a look at the posting from time to time. CLMOOC  (2015) in theory had all the raw ingedients for me to be active in a MOOC.  There were people there I knew from previous MOOCs, noticeably rhizo14 and rhizo15; it had/has a Make Bank , which is similar to the bank items  in DS106 where a participant can choose projects in various media and pursue them, so you can scaffold yourself with projects that are "easier" for you and move on to more challenging things, and it had a way to notify me of new things, namely the facebook group notifications and the blog hub , which would allow me see what's new, and perhaps get inspired by others - considering that I don't consider myself a "maker" an my general feeling toward raw materia...

The other day I came across a post on someone's blog on group work, and I saw this funny (but true, at least to most of my experiences) graphic on group work.  One of the soft skills required to graduate in the MEd program I teach in is to be able to demonstrate the ability to work with others on projects and joint efforts.  This is quite broad as it doesn't specify whether someone is cooperating all the time, collaborating all the time, or choosing the situation and working accordingly. So, given my experiences working with others, in school, at work, and through extracurricular activities like Rhizo, I thought that it would be good to have a mix of individual activities and group activities in the course I just finished teaching.  This seemed to have worked out well enough.  As with any team project no one seems to come out of the activity without some minor bruising; working with others is a contact sport, at least as far as the ego is concerned†.  So,...

I am finally catching up with my Pocket reading list, again!  This seems to be a fool's errand since it just keeps filling up again with interesting things to read and ponder ;-).  In any case, Rebecca recently was pondering on her blog if Collaborative Autoethnography (CAE) is an appropriate method for a dissertation.   Rebecca, as far as I know, is currently ABD and looking at wrapping up her degree - I have no doubt that soon she will be Dr. Rebecca :-). I think that there are many reasons why CAE is a good approach to researching certain things. I am introducing my own bias here when I say that I prefer working with others on research projects and on publishing.  I've written some things myself, and there is a benefit to the lone researcher with his readings, literature reviews, data crunching, and data analysis.  It's sort of like going to the gym on your own and working out on your own.  It has its place.  That said, despite the fact that ...

"Fractured Spock" - by me and Net Art Generator, for #clmooc Over the past couple of years, since the silly acronym "SPOC" was invented to denote a course that was the antithesis to the MOOC, a Small Private Online Course , I've had issues with the acronym, and took exception to this new discovery  on the part of schools that newly invented  this form of education, considering that there are schools that have been doing it since the early aughts. In any case, I was finally going through my Pocket account today, trying to read as many things as I've saved for later reading since Rhizo15 when I came across a couple of articles that really made me roll my eyes a bit and made me want to facepalm... The first article is a featured article in Harvard Magazine, July/August issue, titled Is Small Beautiful? This was a fairly quick read, but I couldn't help but think that this was mostly a PR piece on the part of Harvard and Harvardx. There is a lot ...

Drumroll please!  This is it!  The final Latour conversation (at least as far as his book Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory goes.  It's been fun, Latour, but I have a pile of MOOC articles that aren't going to read themselves (note to voice technology people. I need a computer to read things to me like Majel Barrett does in Star Trek - voice of the computer.  The mechanical voice on my Android keeps mispronouncing things...)  So, the theme of this final write up is Connecting sites ... With ANT, we push theory one step further into abstraction: it is a negative, empty, relativistic grid that allows us not to synthesize the ingredients of the social in the actor’s place. Since it’s never substantive, it never possesses the power of the other types of accounts. But that’s just the point. Social explanations have of late become too cheap, too automatic; they have outlived their expiration dates—and critical explanations ev...

Alright!  Just as #clmooc is starting, I am finishing off Latour!  Here is part 2, of a 3 part wrap-up on Latour's Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory.  Once he discussed 5 uncertainties, now we're looking at re-assembling the social. Just as before, I've pulled one some quotes that made me go "huh!" when I was reading  the book (finished it a few weeks ago), and I am reacting to them more fully now - that is if I can remember why something made me go "huh!" This section started with the term  glocalization.  I just wanted to start off this post by saying that I hate the term glocalization. It is meaningless, and this comes from someone with an MBA background. It's just one of those buzz words thrown around - but anyway, don't let my cranky-pants attitude spoil this post ;-) How is the local itself being generated? This time it is not the global that is going to be localized, it is the local that has to be re...

Alright! This is the final countdown for Latour!  I've reached Part II of his book, which discusses the points of rendering associations traceable again.  This continuing exploration of Latour deals with and Actor-Network Theory (in case you didn't remember). I've selected quotes that got me thinking when I first read the book, and now I am providing some current reactions (2 weeks later) to those quotes ... The adjective ‘social’ designates two entirely different phenomena: it’s at once a substance, a kind of stuff, and also a movement between non-social elements. In both cases, the social vanishes. When it is taken as a solid, it loses its ability to associate; when it’s taken as a fluid, the social again disappears because it flashes only briefly, just at the fleeting moment when new associations are sticking the collective together. So...I guess according to Latour, the Social is both solid and fluid at the same time?  Maybe some sort of slushy substance that...

Alright! Here we are! I am continuing the exploration [and one-sided dialogue] with Latour and I have reached the fifth [and final] source of uncertainty. This first part of the book has tried to describe Actor-Network Theory by describing the negative space around it, by offering up metaphors and examples, and by giving some small snippets into what ANT is (or tries to accomplish).  As with the previous posts, I have picked out quotes that resonated with me (3 weeks ago) when I read the chapter. Now I am re-reading them and responding to them [if needed]. This introduction to ANT begins to look like another instance of Zeno’s paradox, as if every segment was split up by a host of mediators each claiming to be taken into account. ‘We will never get there! How can we absorb so many controversies?’ Having reached this point, the temptation is great to quit in despair and to fall back on more reasonable social theories that would prove their stolid common sense by ignoring most ...