I have been reflecting for a long time now on what is the online voice that is emerging as I navigate open education practices on the web outside my ‘home’ space in ‘DS106’. What has been lovely about joining #ccourses is to work with educators who really care about ‘this learning stuff’. I have enjoyed adding to the flow and helping get things started. I realise this is the thing I enjoy the most about open online experiences. For me it is less about the content and more about seeing the interactions and the sub groups under a hashtag form.
I came to life online at the end of a successful academic career. I no longer work full-time, I only teach courses I want to teach and write as much or as little as I want. I am an independent learner and educator with weak links to many organisations but not one organisation can determine how or what I teach. I have also made a choice to live life as an 8-precept contemplative with a possible future of life in a monastery. This implies many things but one thing that is relevant here is this: I am an honest broker with no personal agenda as my work online is simply one of service and personal interest. No more publication targets, climbing career ladders, no need to work at hard at being Someone as my practice is now one of ‘being nobody and going nowhere’
In reflecting on #whyIteach over the last few days, I realise that I am no longer teaching in the sense I would have understood it when I was affiliated full time to an academic institution. I realise that the reason I am drawn to being an open educator, learner and researcher is that open practices enable me to do the one and only thing I have ever been motivated to do wether I am teaching or learning – ask why. Mike Wesch calls it ‘soul making’ and I resonate with that.
To be honest, I now feel that this distinction between my ‘why’ in the classroom or outside is a little artificial. Every conversation I have, if attended to, is soul making for all involved. This is my intent with every tweet and every blog comment. I see myself as a human open educational resource (OER) in relation to the people I meet online. I also keep asking more high nerd questions such as: How can we better use the web to augment our intellect? How do we best interact to shape the notion of the distributed mind or ‘inter-being’?
Our answers come from the domains we have expertise in. For some, it is about how technology can augment mind. I am more interested in exploring how the psyche gets in the way of the augmented mind. We humans have individual agendas and blind spots. It is this very selectivity that make us valuable as human OERs. We wonder, we have passions, we have hobbies….And we also have views we keep seeking to confirm; some of us know this is true of all of us and others of us still believe ‘it’s not me but the person sitting next to me’ that is a slave to her cognitive biases.
A lifetime of meditation practice has taught me a little humility. I know that mental patterns are hard to shift and that technology can only augment mind if I am able to disagree with myself often – that is, be self critical. What technology does more often is ‘collude’ with our dysfunctional patterns and allow us to play them out in a distributed virtual space. Our project over at the still web aims to offer a resource to help people who see this side of reality and want to learn more about digital contemplation. It is only just starting.
Here is the thing. I like depth. I like to find sources. I like to understand what people need and get to know them as people. This takes time and I have the time. But if and only if I let go of self-imposed dysfunctional patterns such as the pressure to respond or the fear of missing out or my need to behave like a rat on a variable intermittent reinforcement protocol pressing that lever for one more +1. I am a little uncomfortable with learning spaces set up to ‘gamify’ life. Are we designing learning systems to test positive for addiction? Is being addicted to cMOOCs any better or worse than being addicted to heroine? I need to reflect on my own part in this.
Howard also reminded us that we can think of this course a a stream not a queue and that means I can sample the stream any time. So I am texting #X to #ccourses.
I have been feeling pressured to move on from looking under the hood. After all, there is such abundance of riches under the #ccourses hashtag. And Jonathan is next and he is so dreamy 🙂 And there is the un-conference where many a great conversation will be had and an anonymous board to heckle Howard 🙂 And….
I have decided to stay under the hood for a while. As I have listened to Blog Talk over the last few days, I have stopped arguing with myself for and against having a domain of my own. I now hear a different thread in the Brothers’ conversations.
Whatever we decide to do about a domain, it is our responsibility as online educators to understand what is under the hood. Or, perhaps less starkly, as Alan puts it,
#ccourses “Oh if people were not afraid of doing a little detective work and bump their web literacy” https://t.co/iXdL0GLAmG @Medium Fix it
— ϻɑℜɪɑɳɑ ғuƞҽՏ ★彡 (@mdvfunes) September 28, 2014
or,
The web is a fabric. You can just sit on the fabric or you can weave the fabric http://t.co/9AcRBORBob #sharefest14
— Alan Levine (@cogdog) September 28, 2014
I said to Howard in a comment the other day when he asked us ‘How is it going?’:
I think you are all doing a great job and I love the role modelling I see around the team of educators involved in the facilitation of #ccourses. It has motivated me to create a WP multisite, export/import various blogs, play with php files, install Known and create my own site there, even if I may conclude after the experiments that I do not want to spend my days doing this type of work. The great value is having embodied experience of what it means to be the sys admin of your own domain (shamefully <smile> I admit I have the technical skills, have had my own domain for many years yet have always paid others to do the implementing). But then I only recently made the decision to work as an open educator – to be ‘of’ the web rather than just ‘on’ it.
I will be over at my garage in marianafun.es building my car, learning how to be a mechanic and working on letting go of my dysfunctional patterns. Feel free to drop in for chat there and do ask if there is something specific you want me to do to help #ccourses. But forgive me if, in needing time to absorb this content before I move on, I do not get around to commenting on the content everyone is crafting as much as I would like.
I am going back ‘home’ to DS106 to develop my understanding of telling ‘the story of me’ through a sandbox domain. So what is next for me? A sequential read of WordPress tutorials as I enjoy breaking things in my new virtual home.
And by the way, how stunning is that domain name I found thanks to the Blog Brothers insistence that I get my own car?
#x
doublemirror 
October 4, 2014 at 8:13 am
Hi Mariana – like Laura and Joe – I think this is a wonderful post. It resonates with me on so many levels, although I always have felt that in the big scheme of things I am ‘nobody going nowhere’. It’s not so much that I would like to be ‘Somebody’ – but more that I would like to understand myself better – I think that would help me understand others better. For me, as I have said in many a blog post, identity development is what learning is all about.
As someone who has in the past spent years and years of almost daily standing up in front of and speaking to small and large groups of people, what I enjoy about online work is the distance it puts between me and others. This allows some possibility of standing back, observing, reflecting and hopefully learning from these observations. This, I am sure, is completely contrary to what ccourses is all about, but for me it’s the only way to achieve that ‘depth’ that you talk about. It allows me to be selective about who and what I want to be connected to.
These days I spend more and more time ‘under the hood’, but interestingly since starting to work openly online in 2008, I have made my closest working and friendship connections – a handful of people rather than hundreds – people who have really helped my learning.
Hope you are enjoying your time under the hood at marianafun.es. It’s looking great 🙂
October 4, 2014 at 9:51 am
Hi, Jenny.
You put another perspective on connection so clearly and succinctly. Thanks for helping me clarify how I choose to be online too. I have spent a career working with large groups of people and facilitating group work. Yes, I see that online has the potential for reflection and insight as we can stand back and observe. Sadly, it seems to me, in the majority of spaces (both online and offline) quantity and breadth are valued over quality and depth. This is why I teach in higher education – to teach students how to disagree with themselves often rather accept the quick answer and seek to confirm their world view at the cost of genuine dialogue. It is mostly an uphill struggle against the ‘easy button’ these days. I think that ‘standing back, observing, reflecting and hopefully learning from these observations’ is something that the virtual classroom can support. Yet, it seems that rather than hold the tension of ‘not knowing’ some of us prefer to push one ‘right’ way of relating that seems more suitable to a ‘hollywood party’ than a learning space. Unfortunately, we are too busy rushing to stop and notice habitual patterns that may not be serving us or some of the people we come into contact with. I am reflecting deeply about the ‘tyranny of open’ and may be for the first time understanding faculty I teach who is resistant to my ‘new toy’. Thanks for your support. I appreciate it a great deal as I know you know 🙂
September 29, 2014 at 4:09 am
As someone who is trying to join both the #cccourses and the #DS106 communities for the first time this fall (and keep my regular full-time job), I feel keenly this distracted, overloaded, pressure to be Someone in those communities. Thank you for the reminder that those communities don’t need Someone – they need me, authentic and available without pressure to Do It Right. Frankly, that is also what I need from them – not a space to Perform, but a space to relate. Thank you for helping me identify and articulate this.
That’s a grand new domain name, by the way.
September 29, 2014 at 6:43 am
Hey! So glad you visited. My experience of you so far is that you are all the things you aspire to be. I have enjoyed getting to know a little better on both spaces. It has been a lifetime journey for this body and mind to learn not to turn every space physical or virtual into a place to perform. Online I have had great help from the wonderful people I meet who open up a myriad of possibilities and that very thing is the thing this mind has to work to let go of now in order to learn at a pace that works. This is the beauty of the open web, we can always jump back into the stream when we are ready. Come over and comment on my ham fisted attempts to make a site, feedback welcome. And yes, the ego grew large on finding the domain name :o) let’s keep talking.
September 29, 2014 at 2:19 am
Mariana, yet another beautiful post, very very very much one of the puzzle pieces I need to fill in my own picture. LOTS to think about here… to be honest, I had kept the meditative/contemplate part of my life very separate from my energetic, go-go-go Internet life and now you have got me thinking, hmmmmmm, just what might happen if I let these different sides of my life intersect…? I’m honestly not even sure WHAT would happen… but somehow I am thinking it could be good.
Anyway, SO GLAD we have connected, and thanks again for giving me the PERFECT reading material to work on for this Unit 2. 🙂
September 29, 2014 at 6:36 am
Hi, Laura. I am so loving your energy and dedication to your students. I remember well the uncertainty of ‘truly’ not knowing what would happen. Of course, impermanence is the nature of things and we create the illusion of knowing in everyday life to cope with it. I found it tough to fond a way to navigate it all. I still do as I get to know my demons, now amplified online :o)
September 29, 2014 at 1:40 am
For me, the beauty/power/resonance of “Being Nobody, Going Nowhere” is about letting go of my ego and just participating fully, whatever “fully” means for me, without overthinking or worrying about how I am perceived. I am Nobody, Going Nowhere, in many senses, in all senses, in no senses, and I am fine with all of that. The beauty of #ccourses is that all works. The nonlinearity, the enmeshed web of participants, it all works out the way it is supposed to, according to no plan and every plan. IMHO. 🙂
September 29, 2014 at 6:32 am
Thanks for stopping by. My attention these days is less on the external conditions for things to ‘work’ and more on the internal ones. This mind needs a lot of work before being able to speak in universals that apply to ‘all’ or even considering that it can ‘let go of the ego’ off to the garage now :o)
September 29, 2014 at 12:36 am
Being Nobody, Going Nowhere is a wonderful mantra for my current life stage. I feel we have more than a few things in common, Mariana. We were both enraptured by ds106. We love being learner-teachers. I have two terriers — a Cairn and a Westie — and my meditation on the breath happens most often when I let them off the leash on the forested path where we walk almost daily. I’m 67 and I came to teaching after a career as a writer and communicator in other media — from age 23, when I decided to take that path. I’ve been teaching at the university level for about 10 years and I feel that it’s time to move on, so I’m saying goodbye to Stanford this Spring. It’s mostly a matter of time. Although I only teach one class, I estimate that it takes up about 2 1/2 days a week — one full day on campus, plus another day and a half on prep and on participating in conversations with students. I want that time for my own learning and making. I’m not very disciplined about meditation, but I do it. And I’m feeling that it’s time to detach my concerns from my career. If I had NOT been concerned, I’m not sure I would have been able to pay my bills. But at this point, I’m not going to write a best-seller, I’m not going to make a fortune, and I don’t really care as much as I did when I was younger. I recently re-read Marquez’ 100 Years of Solitude, and while I never led 30 unsuccessful revolutions (maybe a few), I definitely relate to Colonel Buendia’s wish to retreat to his workshop and make little silver fishes. Hence, the resonance of “Being Nobody, Going Nowhere.” I don’t think that title would have resonated for me so strongly even a few years ago. I also rang like a bell at your reference to distributed mind being related to interbeing. I had not thought of that before. I need to reflect on it. In any case, thank you for being a lead learner in Connected Courses.
September 29, 2014 at 12:45 am
It is late and I will respond more fully another time, but here I wanted to say thank you for reading and encouraging.It is a strange new way to see life take 2, I have only recently started to feel very lucky to have learnt the value setting a life path to go nowhere and be nobody. It is freeing but requires good infotention as you so often say. Genuinely touched by your kind words. Much resonance.