Rhizomes and CCK08
A copy of my post to the section on rhizomatic knowledge:
Thanks Pierfranco - that’s a very useful metaphor - not least because it gives me a useful antonym to describe the traditional canonical concept of knowledge i.e. it is “arborescent”.
I think this also illustrates the strengths and weaknesses of developing knowledge rhizomatically. There is something that appeals to me about a wide-ranging (but perhaps superficial) knowledge in that it can lead in various and unexpected directions. Who knew when I began a course on connectivism that I would learn that rhizomes are a stem and not a root. I don’t know that it will be useful information for me, but I’m glad I know it.
A weakness perhaps is that there are no experts, or perhaps the expert statements are difficult to find amongst a wide range of people exchanging opinions or personal reflections. That’s not to denigrate anyone (all I’m doing here is offering opinions, I don’t really know anything about rhizomatic knowledge). I do notice though that working in this way means I can spend so long looking at stuff that’s not in-depth that it takes me longer to find the things that take me to the heart of a subject and thereby acquire the information to make sense of it quickly. As a case in point, I’m on the editorial board of Innovate, but have only now read Dave’s paper on rhizomatic knowledge as a result of being on this course. Somehow I missed it when it was published.
The strength of developing rhizomatically is that eventually you do come across the key concepts. The concept of rhizomatic knowledge is itself a rhizome. I was at a conference earlier in the year and it was mentioned there (by someone who was not aware that the concept was in widespread use) and it formed a link in my mind to hypertext and so on - one of my colleagues was reading the book on A Thousand Plateaus and recommended it (I was put off by the authors’ inability to correctly form the plural of plateau but that possibly demonstrates the superficial nature of my own sense-making mechanisms) but now I’ve made the link to that. It’s come at a useful time because I’m reflecting on the way I constructed the literature review for my PhD and the rhizome metaphor fits exactly.
Possibly then the most difficult things to learn in making the transition from arborescent to rhizomatic forms of knowledge-building is patience (that it just takes a bit longer to build the key things you need to know) and confidence (that you will one day get there). And to take pleasure in all the incidental bits of stuff you will come across along the way.
Tags: CCK08