Comments on: Consciousness and non-linearity

By: Clark

Clark — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 20:35:50 +0000

It’s very clear classrooms are an aberration. Gary Woodill has been talking about the history of classrooms emerging out of Prussia a couple of hundred years ago or so. Before that, the apprenticeship model was in place. I can see a reason for a slightly more scalable model than individual mentoring, but the didactic approach is broken. Rhizomes, like Siemen’s connectivist model, have some appeal, but I think there’s a tension, e.g. there’re things I’d like my kids to know how to do, or know *not* to do! And I do believe narrative is powerful; it may be co-created, but I still like reading books. The power of a master storyteller isn’t just an aberration, in my mind.

By: bfchirpy

bfchirpy — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 17:22:19 +0000

Interesting post. Reminded me of Deleuze and Guarrari and their idea/metaphor of rhizomatous learning.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhizome_(philosophy)

“Gilles Deleuze and FÃ©lix Guattari used the term “rhizome” to describe theory and research that allows for multiple, non-hierarchical entry and exit points in data representation and interpretation. In A Thousand Plateaus, they opposed it to an arborescent conception of knowledge, which worked with dualist categories and binary choices. A rhizome works with horizontal and trans-species connections, while an arborescent model works with vertical and linear connections.”

Not so much that the ‘long-held narrative forms’ themselves are out of date. But that they will now be negotiated, mutable, personal, local, [insert webby buzzword epithet here].

I can’t remember who said it, but I remember reading that it’s TV and cinema and novels that are the true aberrations, in the grand scheme of things – not the web. Historically, all art and stories have been participatory (and thus in a constant state of hyperspatial flux). It’s only in our lifetimes that humans have ‘sat back’.

Perhaps, teachers and classrooms are a similar aberration?

By: Joan Vinall-Cox

Joan Vinall-Cox — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 16:19:10 +0000

I find his font aggravates my fairly mild dyslexia so that it’s like the font is pouring into a whole in the middle of my focus.

By: Aaron

Aaron — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 20:14:32 +0000

First of all, very cool where you’re going with this, Clark. Your model of “non-cognitive feedback, that could train your responses” — would you consider this to be a reinforcing model? I ask because there’s parallels to be drawn from things like “shock therapy” where you’re conditioning someone at a subconscious level (though cognitively aware of the pain) to respond to a stimulus in a certain way.

With the example of pilot training, being in a simulator gives you the feeling of spinning out of control and enough experience with it impresses pilots to get a feel for the plane leading up to an unplanned event. Kinda like getting a feel for the signs of trouble early on. You have some pilots, like Capt. Sullenberger who read the signs and just “knew” what he had to do to get the plane down safely.

Simulators, though, are really expensive, which is a constraint. The tacit, experienctial learning is the kind of thing we want to enable with Virtual Worlds, because (pragmatically) if they can be effective, they’re a whole lot more accessible and a lot less expensive. Right?

You got me thinking, Clark… I got question-fog now…I need get to clearer questions to articulate…