rhizo14 w5

find intro, multiple accesses, and all 6 weeks here:

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rhizo w5

via http://blog.sloanconsortium.org/2014/02/11/moocs-as-a-gathering-place/

Access to information, however, is not the real transformative change that excites me about learning on the Internet. Information is cold, pre-processed stuff that, at one time, came from a human. As Socrates so elegantly put it in the Phaedrus;

once its written defend defend

Now, we can reach out and find the person behind the information. We can reach people and

hear their thoughts while they are still uncertain,

while they still maintain their complexity.

The real transformation that has happened is a near unlimited possibility for connection to actual people.

reading Dave’s post above while hearing the below…

we keep trying to reduce complexity to something we can understand, & thus control–

Peter Senge – @presencing_inst #globalforum #ego2eco

more from Dave’s post – dave’s campfire analogy:

In my hometown the easiest way to start a gathering from amoungst those connections was to light a fire on the beach. We’d rustle together some driftwood, stack it up high and set a match to it. People saw it from further down the beach or from the road. At first, they gathered round the fire in order to find their bearings. Then they would look from face to face in the firelight, listen in on conversations and gradually gravitate to a group. As the evening wore on, the groups would start to separate a little more and standing away from each other.

The fire became less central. This was because the fire was not the purpose of the party; it was the catalyst for connection.

This massive potential for connection prompted by openness was what I meant by the word MOOC when I first used it.

They are people who would have probably never met, never run across each other, but for the fire on the beach, which is our course.

..We have, for years, created communities around passions and ideas. Communities are hard to join; they have exclusive histories that can make it difficult for new people to make connections. Sometimes you just need to light a match on the beach and invite everyone over.