from the Diigo #rhizo14 group (weekly)

…first try with Diigo auto-blogging feature works nicely, even if format aesthetics leave something to be desired. No pictures but I can "fix" that by remembering -- or trying -- to post a few images during the week and, especially, one Saturday evening. There are also a lot of links and annotations, making for a long post. What I need to do then is come on Sunday morning -- like now -- to add a head note, image, page break, whatever...

By way of quick recap, this is Week 1 of Dave Cormier's Rhizomatic Learning ("the community is the curriculum") on P2PU. Our mission for this week has been to declare, connect and get acquainted, with a special assignment, cheating to learn. "Headquartered" (pomo irony intended) -- extreme oxymoron alert) on Dave's Educational Blog ("education, post-structuralism and the rise of the machines") and the P2PU course page linked above, Rhizo L has outposts (colonies? independent affinities?) on G+, Facebook, multiple blogs (like this one among many others) and throughout the twittisphere at the #rhizo14 tag. A rhizomatic network indeed!  

PS the next mission (this week's, starting today) is to mobilize our twitter-connecting and review Week 1. And now...onto the abundance of links, annotated pages (some at least), tags, discussion (in the Diigo group)

a new look for work & life

…I took down the barbed wire and changed the graphic to reflect re-purposing, not that W&L was ever 'purposed' in the first place. The barbed wire didn't background bother me but did raised the occasional reader cringe outside southwest rancher country. Besides, it hardly fit Rhizomatic Learning (essence of free range, don't-fence-me-in openness), MultiMOOC or anything EVO

So first comes the re-purposing, then the redecorating, introduction (of sorts), and the declaring. That post is underway....busy spreading roots... popping around to the FB groups and G+ Communities, populating my feed reader with #rhizo blogs, noting and greeting familiar faces. 

About.me/VCV and the more visual/Vizify vcv bio should cover that while I'm trying to figure out what I'm doing here anyway...let alone wtf was I thinking? signing up for a clutch of x's

#Learning: Work or Life?

…This blog needs a job, so I assigned (drafted) it to be my #POTcert blog. It fits blog title and mission: teaching and learning have been such a significant part of my life that I can't let of them even in retirement. Learning, like digital ankle biting, makes a fine retirement obsession. Better than tatting or quilting. Besides, who knows, I just might do some good with both.

POT = Program for Online Teaching; whereas, "cert" is for the certificate I am not interested in. The course cover tools and pedagogy of teaching online. I expect discussions and links garnered from G+ to further illuminate course reflections.

After two years following, I missed the 2103 fall semester due to access and connectivity problems. Now I have high speed (cringing at the prospect of installation and winter heating bills decimating my SS pittance) and am looking forward to catching up with the edtech I could not always access let alone run. Both courses will be sources of help with glitches and answers to questions.Overall, the EVO (Electronic Village Online) workshops tend to a more congenial atmosphere because they are less workshops or courses that part of a Community of Practice.

Between Empowerment & Patronization: 40 Years IT

… a look back by Matthias Melcher + cautionary tale as subtext

In summer semester 1973, I took my first programming course. This is now forty years ago — time for a retrospect. What were the most impressive steps forward?

....Many of the great novelties ignited hopes that were bigger than the reality emerging later. This was especially the case when the first personal homepages promised a big democratizing effect. I dreamt that these (after being registered in the various decentralized branches of a virtual library) would offer me a direct glimpse onto the book-(mark) shelves of scholars across the globe — without mediators, gatekeepers, or pay walls. Then later, RSS seemed to be another try on this any-to-any topology. I should have known that this was at odds with monopolizing interests whose patronization and stultification goes so far....No doubt, these 40 years were exciting.

Between Empowerment and Patronization: 40 Years IT | x28’s new Blog

David Graeber, ‘On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs’ »

David Graeber, ‘On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs’ »:

But rather than allowing a massive reduction of working hours to free the world’s population to pursue their own projects, pleasures, visions, and ideas, we have seen the ballooning of not even so much of the “service” sector as of the administrative sector, up to and including the creation of whole new industries like financial services or telemarketing, or the unprecedented expansion of sectors like corporate law, academic and health administration, human resources, and public relations. And these numbers do not even reflect on all of the people whose job it is to provide administrative, technical, or security support for these industries, or for that matter the whole host of ancillary industries (dog-washers, all-night pizza deliverymen) that only exist because everyone else is spending so much of their time working in all the other ones.
These are what I propose to call “bullshit jobs.”

…in Strike! Magazine.

How can one even begin to speak of dignity in labour when one secretly feels one’s job should not exist? How can it not create a sense of deep rage and resentment. Yet it is the peculiar genius of our society that its rulers have figured out a way … to ensure that rage is directly precisely against those who actually do get to do meaningful work. For instance: in our society, there seems to be a general rule that, the more obviously one’s work benefits other people, the less one is likely to be paid for it. Again, an objective measure is hard to find, but one easy way to get a sense is to ask: what would happen were this entire class of people to simply disappear? Say what you like about nurses, garbage collectors, or mechanics, it’s obvious that were they to vanish in a puff of smoke, the results would be immediate and catastrophic. A would without teachers or dock-workers would soon be in trouble, and even one without science fiction writers or ska musicians would clearly be a lesser place. It’s not entirely clear how humanity would suffer were all private equity CEOs, lobbyists, PR researchers, actuaries, telemarketers, bailiffs or legal consultants to similarly vanish…

On definitions: Retirement

…what is it? For that matter, what is work? What is your time worth? Is compensation (someone else's valuation) the only way to measure the worth of your time? Validation by others, even those you have no respect for?

These questions I put to myself every time I fill out a form or choke back reaction to statements implying my time is worthless (and thereby of less meaning so I should be happy to be imposed on and exploited). So evocative of attitudes expressed about the Victorian angel of the hearth or 50s homemaker…but implying even less value for also being lazy, old or both. 

I'm in the market for a new term altogether: I'm not retired, I'm _____ …what? Repurposing or reinventing myself. I've used "curator of myself" and rather like it. Retirement is when you get to decide both what your time is worth to you and what to do with it. 

In economics, “retirement” has no definition.  Or rather, it has several definitions, none of which are any good. 

First off, there’s self-defined retirement. When do people say they’re retired? Turns out it depends, and it depends on a lot of things....People can still be working and say they’re retired. People can be out of work and say they’re not retired. As people get older the lines between unemployment and retirement start to blur.

nicoleandmaggie (proprietors of Grumpy Rumblings) continue

Anyhow, this is all to say that we at grumpy rumblings think it is lame ...[to] argue about what the definition of retirement is. There is no technical definition. They don’t own the term.  Nobody really does. Except, of course, the self-defined version, and we social scientists know that the self-defined term means different things to different people. 

And that’s ok.

On definitions: Retirement | Grumpy rumblings of the (formerly!) untenured

#ocTEL, Friday April 5

Another large online course to get lost in and never quite up to speed, literally or figuratively.

Finally found my password, logged in and updated my profile ~ now catching my breath  for reflections and first impressions and exploring the forum. Considering mailbox confusion of the past few days, made worse by a sluggish (uncooperative) computer, multitasking may not be my best strategy.

Mail chaos not withstanding (or forums), I like the atmosphere. The organizer has a good (and realistic) handle on structure/ design, is laid back and neither prescriptive nor worried overmuch about disorder ~ "messy is part of the process." Scott is here. Otherwise, I haven't noticed anyone else I know but may turn out to be wrong. Helen might be too.

I'm trying to read through as many introductions as possible to get a feel for the group, which may be less than realistic. So far there seem's to be a preponderance of IT managers. I'm watching for participants with similar interests. I thought my own were getting clearer and more solid but, yet again, the closer I get or think I am getting, they loose both clarity and substance... as though solidity "melting into air." By the time I get to keyboard or notepad... it's gone, vanished into the mist.