The elephant in the fire hose

The Elephant in the Fire Hose
Vance Stevens
MultiMOOC: What was that all about?
Feb 23, 2014 in Moodle MOOC 3

Jim Buckingham and Vance Stevens
conceived this regular weekly Learning2gether
event is as a report and reflection on
• badges
• the latest foray into chaos in learning
wrought by the EVO session #MultiMOOC,
• and what has been learned from it
This presentation is a vestige of EVO and the
Rhizomatic Learning MOOC #Rhizo14, and takes
place as a part of Moodle MOOC 3
Vance Stevens MM3 23rd Feb 2014

What do Rolling Stones have
in common with teachers?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZnIn_QIZII

Rolling Stones and super star teachers
Rolling Stones
• Excellent performers
• Practicing their calling for
decades
• Touch a huge percentage of
the world’s population
• Feel privileged to be in the
same space with them

Star teachers either
– up and coming stars
– experienced. slick performers

• Clearly passionate about
what they do
– What they do is second
nature

• Touch hearts and minds
– Enable change in young and
old
– Appreciated by all who
encounter their work face to
face, in writing, or online.


Conferences Past and Present
Time with star educators
was scarce
• Had to attend
conferences to have
moments with star
educators
• Educators took role of
sage on stage
• Audience in position of
deference

Time with star performer
educators now abundant
• Exponentially increasing
opportunities for teachers
all around the world to
connect with
acknowledged star
performers
– Now, on an almost daily
basis if they wish
– Next year perhaps on an
hourly basis


Star performer educators are
discovered in this ecosystem
– Star performer educators were always present in the
deferential crowd around the podium
– Nowadays real stars more like guides on the side,
configure MOOCs and events to
• Encourage voices from those present
• Encourage open mic conferences
–
–
–
–

GEC conferences
Nellie Deutsch’s conferences with open Google Doc schedules
Webheads in Action Online Convergences pioneered in 2005
K-12 Online conferences from 2006,

These encourage participants to simply sign themselves
up, giving rising star performers their own podium

Speak ‘with’ audience, not ‘to’
• Try to model
meaningful learning
• It’s for learners, not
the teacher
• Superstar teachers
lead with a good riff
but recognize the
jazz musician in each
student and
teaching peer, and
invite them to join
in, to create a
learning experience
in concert
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdF48wmHydo

Visualize a network of fire hoses

http://evomlit.wordpress.com/2014/01/22/revisiting-the-question-of-tagging/

Situation chaotic and unfathomable
Do you feel that learning takes
place best
• when teachers are present?
– to call attention to what is
important
– make the process more
efficient by relieving learners
from distractions inherent in
the fire hose.

QUESTION?

Or do you feel that
• this is exciting and
stimulating
• not a problem really
• deep learning can only
derive from meaningful
attempts at resolving
chaos?
– George Siemens says that for
teachers to do the filtering
that learners should be doing
for themselves “eviscerates”
the learning process.


Elephants in the fire hoses
• MOOC geared toward learning from the fire
hose by discerning and piecing together in a
personal process of closure the parts of the
elephant as they (the elephants) stream past.
– Like salmon swimming upstream
– Berry bush metaphor of Scanlon and Scanlon


Connectivism
Learning theory for the digital age because
• Especially capable of addressing needs of
individual learners
• Learners learning through networks have
knowledge accessible as needed
• Content echoes through nodes on network, so
most important knowledge rises to the top
• Most obscure can be found through its metadata


Lurkers are Good 
We all lurk
• We are all dedicated in something,
• We have limited time to spend on our
passions
Wenger calls them peripheral members,
• Healthy to a community because
– it connects that community with other
communities in which the lurker is quite possibly
passionately active

What have we learned so far this year?
•
•
•
•
•

In EVO
In CO14
In MM3
In Rhizo14
Or whatever
MOOC you have
participated in?


1. Google+ Communities
From
superstar
educator
Shelly
Terrell and
her team
at Crafting
the
ePerfect
Textbook
https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/108458862109297898812

Content through Listly Arrays


2. Diagraming a Twitter tag network

http://evomlit.wordpress.com/2014/01/22/revisiting-the-question-of-tagging/

Diagram for #Rhizo14

http://hawksey.info/tagsexplorer/?key=tDHgQeSbHR3fcvN81EHnxQQ&sheet=oaw

3. Provoking discussion
From
Superstar
educator
Dave
Cormier

https://p2pu.org/en/courses/882/content/1796/

4. About badges from Jim Buckingham


For more, slides at
http://slideshare.net/vances
And read a draft of
The Elephant in the Fire Hose here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1e0J3DaaQ4W_boJUjtGF7YuHjbXIzb
MtWBDybWoR0QpY/edit

The elephant in the fire hose

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