Footprints of Emergence: Metaphors for emergent learning

Colby, sounds fascinating. Can you talk us through an example?

Mapping emergent learning (or, more specifically, mapping the balance between emergent and prescriptive learning) is, to start with, an individual reflective exercise - would each person generate their own framework, layers and sectors? And what would 'content' of learning process look like??

I have worked with mind-maps (and more specifically CMaps) to get people to generate mapppings of concepts and fields, and - most importantly - to map out the (layers of ) relationships between them, and I guess we started with a mind-map kind of format for visualising emergent/prescriptive learning.

But then it developed into something a bit different - one person said, when we showed him a footprint of a course that he was familiar with: yes, that looks like that kind of course. We took that as confirmation that the shape, the gestalt, the footprints as a whole (the way the 'blob' is pulled this way and that) - can make sense at that, immediate, and hopefully intuitive - level (as well as at more detailed levels of granularity). I'm wondering how all these different kinds of mappings and frameworks, and generative processes align - or resonate.

Any thoughts?

Re: Metaphors for emergent learning

by Scott Johnson - Monday, 13 December 2021, 7:45 AM

Roy, Maria, Jenny, Colby

Not sure where this goes but it does suggest metaphores. Found in my files I'm not sure where it came from:
Connectivism: 21st Century’s New Learning Theory
http://www.eurodl.org/?p=current&article=579#ref11

Abstract
Transformed into a large collaborative learning environment, the Internet is comprised of information reservoirs namely, (a) online classrooms, (b) social networks, and (c) virtual reality or simulated communities, to expeditiously create, reproduce, share, and deliver information into the hands of educators and students. Most importantly, the Internet has become a focal point for a potentially dynamic modern learning theory called connectivism. Like any learning theory, connectivism has its share of supporters and critics. Unlike any other learning theory, connectivism attributes learning through cyber nodes specifically rooted in social networks. The purpose of this article is to introduce or reacquaint readers with three of the largest reservoirs of information attributed to the principles of connectivism. In addition, it aims to examine these information reservoirs through modern empirical studies in order to determine if their findings carry sparks of likeness or alignment with the principles of connectivism.

And because you never find just one interesting thing on the net:

Pawel Althamer: Nomo from Mars, 2011

http://www.phaidon.com/store/collectors-editions/pawel-althamer-nomo-from-mars-2011-9780714864037/

Pawel Althamer (b.1967) originally trained as a sculptor, but today he combines his object-making with pioneering work in social, collaborative and participatory art. For the ongoing project Common Task, begun in 2008, he enlists his Warsaw neighbours, whom he outfits in golden space suits, to travel with him to distant lands. Through the fantasy of space travel, he reframes mundane reality as a zone of mystery and possibility, expanding the act of art-making to encompass the activities of the entire group.