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Engage or enrage, always a choice to default to connect.

Teaching Beyond Tropes Lightning on the sand. A must read post by @EatcherVeggies

Working Toward the Wedding Feast of Canaan and Less of the Buffet at CiCi's Pizza

3 min read

A response to Mia Zamora's call to lure the lurkers with guilt free learning repasts

Isn't it more likely that those who lurk will need special help to engage?   is going to involve a lot of hands on hardware/software/self-hosting work. Is it more or less likely that folks will jump in late to that 'situation'?  I suppose it depends upon how you characterize the average lurker.  Are they beginners who are reluctant to show their ignorance? Are they autodidacts who enter when they want something and leave when they have gotten it?  I have always advocated the openness as a profound value, but I also see it as a bit euphemistic.  How open will this course actually be for a n00b.  I mean,  you can put the food down where the goats can get to it, call it food for all, but that doesn't mean it is really open.  So many open questions here.  Declaring it a guilt free zone is a great flourish and encouragement is one of the most important pieces of facilitation in a course like this, but access is always for the privileged.  I know this is a much larger issue, one that you didn't intend to address here, but to be open you not only need truly open initial conditions.  Not sure ours are more than very partially open.  I am really drawn to Ta-Nehisi Coates' experience with learning French.  Anyone can learn French, right?  It is totally open for anyone.  Just what?  This video really brings home for me the burden of openness and of its dear friend, privilege:

That's the complement part of my comment.  Here's the compliment part:

-taking back 'lurking' as a positive trait, like curiosity.

-driving fear from the digital space, thanks Saint Patrick Zamora

-saying out loud that lurking is valued

One more thing:  I can't prove this, but I think that lurkers are the dark matter and energy of the internet.  They make up most of the invisible mass of the Internet universe and we are only beginning to know who they are.  They are way more than the marginalized ancillaries of what we will do on .  We need to find more ways to connect to their nodes.  I think in the end that what appears to be an important and large hub,, is really another node in the larger scheme.  I think unveiling our connections to the lurkers is the future of learning.  Removing fear is only part of that equation.  Extending 'philia' in concrete ways, I would like to see more of that. And I would love to discuss further how we might go beyond putting the guilt-free buffet out as a way to transform the dark energy of the Internet.

Kevin's Meandering Mind|#CCourse Comic:Hemmed in by LMS @dogtrax Tweeted usng Known

Any word for this?

1 min read

Is there any word for the sad/disappointed feeling you get when, for example,  you want to be at an online conference to learn something worth learning, but you know for sure that you will not be able to. It is depressing to know that you need to know more.  Sigh. You can't. Anger bubbling.  What is the word for this internal state of affairs?