Social Networks
Entries related to social networks, group psychology, anthropology, and really any of the social sciences.
#CLMOOC - Found PLN
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 07/24/2016 - 20:22”Sometimes,
the voice of the world”
is an
”Epic Night! Featuring Rufus Wainwright + 1500 Singers [who] sing HALLELUJAH!”
and being
a LIVE node on the network
as we Reciprocate with Gratitude and Generosity.
From Jacques du Toit,
via Aaron Davis,
I discover my Personal learning network
something I didn’t even know I had,
something I grow and nuture
through CLMooc.
What if
each of us reached out to a few (five?) unconnected nodes and connected up with them,
perhaps through poem, song, or
Escargot Mail (Without the Garlic)?
Vacation, #CLMOOC, #PokemonGo, #TinyHouses and more...
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 07/15/2016 - 17:06When I get busy, I typically leave windows open on my computer; webpages I want to bookmark or write about, documents I haven’t finished and will save later. Ongoing conversations in instant messenger programs, and so on. Eventually, it gets to the point where I just have to close out everything I’m working. Sometimes it is because things stop working. Sometimes it is simply because I need to tie things up. Today, it was a little bit of both.
I am starting vacation and I want to have as clean a slate as possible. There was a lot to close out, because it has been a particularly challenging week, mostly because of #CLMOOC starting and because of Pokemon Go.
I’ve saved all kinds of thoughts and links in various documents, and some of this needs to come together into a blog post. First #CLMOOC
The starting point for CLMOOC is this page. It isn’t too late to join in. One way of joining in is to simply jump in. CLMOOC is divided into Make Cycles. The first Make Cycle is around getting to know one another. Make Cycle #1: Make with Me: Who Are We?
An important part of CLMooc is the connections, reusing and mashing up content. Some of the posts that jumped out at me, not in any particular order, included Ronald Rudolf’s variation on Jennifer’s Poem, RON LEUNISSEN’s reuse of art-cards, Jeffrey Keefer mind map in Who Am I? A CLMOOC UnIntroduction (which inspired some of my writing this past week), Sarah Honeychurch’s Who am I this month? and Deanna Mascle’s<./a> Notable Notes: Exploring Identity with/in #CLMOOC. For those exploring mapping, Deanna’s post points to one of Jeffrey Keefer’s post, one of my posts, and several others. I also want to highlight Kevin Hodgson’s poem about vocal harmony in a world of so much disharmony in the world around us.
Deanna’s comments about my post hit on another big topic for me this week, Pokemon. She provided a link to two great articles, 14 reasons #PokemonGO has a future in education; or, Why #PokemonGO deserves the thoughtful, creative, attention of schools and teachers and Pokémon Go Has Created a New Kind of Flâneur
Another really important article, I thought, was Ezra Klein’s Pokémon Go isn’t a fad. It’s a beginning.
Meanwhile, at work, we’ve been talking a lot about Pokemon. In a blog post, Pokémon Go: In, Near, and Around the Health Center, in Mark Masselli’s LinkedIn post, Pokémon Go and Community Health, in a Facebook Album, Pokemon GO at CHC, and in various news articles: PokeMon at CHC New Britain and
Pokemon Go gaming craze has players getting outside to find Pikachu.
So now, I’m heading off to vacation. I’ll see what is available for Pokemon on Cape Cod. I’ll stop at the 2nd BIG Tiny House Festival in Concord, MA on the way, and hopefully, I will get time to read, relax, and maybe even get more writing done.
#PokemonGo and #clmooc in the context of Underhill’s Mysticism
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 07/12/2016 - 19:40As I drive, I’m listening to a Librivox recording of Evelyn Underhill’ Mysticism. Her comments about the phenomenal world and the transcendental world, that which is around us that we don’t normally see, makes me think of the various Pokemon characters that everyone is busy capturing in Pokemon Go. I think of it in terms of the networks and super-networks we are part of and how they shapes who we are. How does the network of roads, of food distribution networks, of electronic communications, of our social connections all connect with one another and shape the way we live and learn?
All of this is part of a spectrum of the phenomenal, the electronic, the social, and the transcendent. There is also the aspect of hallucinations, whether drug induced, or induced by other means. How do we know the validity of our perceptions, both of those things we receive and those that we don’t notice?
The section of Underhill’s Mysticism that I’m listening to right now is about introspection and the practice of contemplation; how you put yourself into a space where you can observe the transcendent. It seems to relate very well to levelling up in Pokemon Go or related augmented reality games. It seems as if the same applies to connected learning; practicing of being connected, of think about how our connections shape us and those around us.
So, I am spending time levelling up in my augmented reality games. I am spending time in contemplation. I am exploring my connections online and the learning opportunities they relate to.
For my CLMooc friends, how does this relate to your learning?
#clmooc - Exploring the Liminal Landscape
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 07/11/2016 - 20:47I try to wrap my mind
around
a tribe of connected learners
sharing their introductions
and reactions
to other introductions
with words,
pictures,
and maps.
I am a new comer
to the tribe
not yet acclimated
oriented
as I look at the maps
of physical space
and mental space.
In one mind map
the word
“liminal”
jumps out at me.
This is a liminal space for me
at this liminal time in my life.
Connected to the word
is the question,
“How do we make meaning
when we are most confused?”
Is there any other way?
The words Beckett gave to Pozzo
echo in my mind:
“They give birth astride of a grave,
the light gleams an instant,
then it's night once more.”
All life is liminal
taking place
between
birth and death,
and perhaps the best we can do
is map the rhizome
spreading through
the liminal landscape.
Kidney stones, #Birthday, #Ingress #PokemonGO #CLMooc
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 07/10/2016 - 20:27The pains returned Friday night. It had been a few months and I was hoping that maybe the kidney stone had passed, undetected. Nope. It was a painful sleepless night, leading up to my birthday.
So, as I sat in my chair, shifting my weight, trying to find ways to get comfortable, I started thanking friends who have wished me a happy birthday on Facebook. Last time I checked, it was 378. It is interesting to think about who shared greetings. Conservatives and liberals, priests and atheists, people whose houses I went to over fifty years ago and people that I’ve only met online through shared interests, white, black, Hispanic, gay, straight, trans, cis.
After this past week, where there has been so much violence, it is good to feel connected to all of mankind.
Some friends share a link to Choir, Choir, Choir, a large group of people gathering together to sing inspiring popular music, sort like massive karaoke on steroids, people connected to one another, like at Falcon Ridge, or, I imagine, at Miranda’s Hearth gatherings. I’ve been listening to a bunch of their recordings on YouTube.
Meanwhile, my youngest daughter has started playing Pokemon Go. For those who’ve missed it, Pokemon Go is an augmented reality game played on your smartphone, where you go to specific locations in real life and interact with objects in the game there. It is based on Ingress, which I’ve been playing for years. As such, the locations I go to for Ingress are the same locations that Fiona goes to for Pokemon Go. It is interesting to see the strong popular interest in Pokemon Go, when compared to the niche geek interest in Ingress.
All of this leads nicely into Connected Learning MOOC. It starts today, Sunday July 10th and goes til August 6th. I will try to participate as much as I can, although during this period I will be on Cape Cod for a week, and later at a folk music festival for several days.
The first Make Cycle asks, “Who are we?” During this coming week, I look forward to finding out who else is participating on CLMooc. Who will I be excited to connect with? What thoughts, projects, and ideas will we want to pursue?
I’m excited about the poetry part of CLMooc. For those interested, you can read some of my poems in the Poetry section of my blog. I’m also interested in mysticism. I’m currently listening to Evelyn Underhill’s Mysticism during my commute, and reading some of St. Teresa of Avila’s The Interior Castle. All of this will probably feed into my poetry. It is fed by my religious journey in which I am exploring the possibility of becoming an ordained Episcopal priest. I’m very interested in online learning around religious and spiritual matters.
I heard about CLMOOC from RHIZO15. I’m very interested in a connectivist model of learning, the work of Deleuze and Guattari, and a bunch of other writers I lump together in the same larger group, from Lacan to Foucault. I work in social media in health care, and I’m working on an online health care professionals learning environment.
So that was my birthday, with kidney stones, and lots of interesting connections as part of my introduction to #CLMOOC 2016. I look forward to connecting.
