An ex-student came to my class, he has become a successful manager in IKEA in Clermont Ferrand. He came to talk about his experience. We sat down in the comfy chairs in our learning space. His presence resulted in an extraordinary moment of connection. He told the story of how he had been at a cross-roads in his life. He had lived a crisis, he made a conscious decision to live, rather than to die.

The person is often only aware of feeling of constraint. We pick away at those constraints little by little. Meaningful time spent with one person has a viral effect on other students who are witnesses to the uniquely meaninful dialogue. Such moments of connection become virtuous, viral messages.

We attempt to make meaningful connection with each person.

We have gradually built up a story.

Terry, in his solitary picnic, talked of the difficulty of creating the conditions in which his students will want to connect with others in the CLAVIER network.

Marcin and Laura joined me on Thursday to talk about translating CLAVIER into their local cultures. They helped me, we are helping each other attempt to make that translation.

Mia talked about translating meaning through boxes, inside boxes.

8 minutes left.

I can work with you, these guys and not feel that I am selling myself, ourselves short. That feels like freedom.

I thought the joy in my eyes and the spontaneous victory sign were appropriate. We are in movement.

I sent a DM to Terry, what do you think about these guys inviting me? I trust Terry implicitly.

I responded to the invitation with confusion and then refound the voice which comes from somewhere. A blog post wrote itself, a familiar voice helped me find my feet. Dodger, my alter-ego helped me through the crisis of trust.

This week Mia Zamora, surprised me by inviting me to join the facilitation team of Connected Courses. To say that I was taken aback by her email, and the ensuing one coming from Claudia would be an understatement, to put it mildly. We need recognition for our particularity. I was not expecting an Oscar from my peers. That's frankly how I felt.

4 years, that is like twenty minutes, nothing in the time it will take to transform education.

We have experienced so many of these moments of panic, of fear over the past 4 years.

My colleagues were freaking out and this inspired the post Nature Regains Ground.

I was losing sleep about CLAVIER and the hashtags.

I decided that I would respond to Terry's bravery and speak to the world 'ad hoc' in my turn and have faith in whatever came out of my mouth accompanied by a picture on the wall.

I have fifteen minutes left.

I have known for perhaps fifteen years, first as a student and then as a friend.

I am just listening to Terry Elliott talking in a solitary #clavpicnic after having spent lunch with a friend of mine

I have lived it through exchanges of tweets, blog posts, emails, Twitter DM's, conversations with colleagues, students, ex-students, friends, my family online, offline around me and walking our dog Jazz.

but I am deciding to limit it to the time.

Reaching out.

My distant close friends are my fellow explorers in these new spaces of humanity.

What does this say about our desire to connect, to search for meaning?

We are as if amputated from those that we attempt to communicate with.

I am becoming aware of the prosthetic aspect of language, of digital technology.

I have nothing to sell to anybody.

Half a life later, I am investigating those elements which connect us to the other, which enable us to journey a while with a fellow learner.

I never regret the eleven months which hardened my resolve, to go beyond 98 'Nos' to get to the precious, unexpected 'Yes's'. I was nobody, I was selling nothing, I could be nobody selling anything.

Back to the presence I suppose this is what Maha was talking about as "3rd Discourse"? 

I realized that what sold was not the script but the connection of excitement, the acceleration of a heart beat, the comic tone, the sudden absurd eruption in the life of another.

For the next eleven months, first thing Monday morning, I listened to the moustachioed sales manager reeling off the figures before disappearing into his office. Each week, there were those whose heads dropped... There were those whose heads dropped over a period of two or three weeks consecutively... There were those who would suddenly be absent...

For the next eleven months, I was deafened by the drone of a robot. Every twenty minutes or so, the robot would stand up with a pre-contract and head off down the corridor to notch up a new sale.

The people on the other end were targets. They were nothing. They were nobody.

I decided to colour the numbers black with a Bic biro to make dialling more of a challenge.

For the next eleven months, I dialled the dial on the grey phone one hundred times per day, to make two sales.

Cold calling, no product to see, contract sent in the post as soon as they said 'Yes' at the appropriate moment.

There was nothing. I was nobody. I resolved myself to make the box a job.

There was a grey dial phone, a scruffy copy of the yellow pages, a script in small print on one plastic covered piece of scruffy A4. "If you sell two ads in this magazine for civil servants, in the next two days, you have a job." "Small basic salary, the rest commission."

He led me to a melamine walled box. Inside, there was no sign of  a person having spent any time there.

He cared for nothing about my story.

I opened the door to the Victorian office block and prepared myself for interview.

Expertise in jigsaw puzzling didn't pay well. 

It was all that I could do to put the pieces together on the carpet. I have no memory of whether I finished the puzzle.

a giant jigsaw puzzle.

I was left in my doorless empty box,

There were no prospects of advancement mentioned. I had no choice. I had no means. The door of the flat had been ripped off by thieves, the possessions taken.

I tend to find myself feeling embarrassed for not having read them, for blogging off the top of my head without reading first

system B, I think Terry called it? too structured?)

I keep wanting courses to not require me to read anything...

I am beginning to extend my circles of empathy, I am beginning to see that I am part of a much wider world.

Star-hopping I start thinking about how I navigate the blogs, how I navigate Twitter, how I smile when I click on recognisable avatars.

Who do children identify with? Superman? Spiderman? Ironman? Barbie? Gandhi?

We need security of signal in a world of complexity, in a world of noise and nonsense.

I identified immediately with their show. I reckon that this must be like Mr Benn. We need characters who somehow capture our imagination.

Time-planning I suppose I have to look up in the schedule to see when they are on.

I like their blogs. I like their comments.

I like Spaceman Howard's hat.

Click, Link, Embed. Whatever happened to the three guys. I am already missing their program.

That comes as a bit of shock. There are suggested readings, links, that comes as a bit of a shock. This is a course, I had forgotten what a course was. I make a mental note. Please try harder to remember that this is a Course.

I come back to earth, I look back at Connected Courses home page and look at the blog/twitter feed. I note a talk between Mimi Ito and others I don't know. I start watching that, a bit distracted by my thoughts.  I click around, I see Gordon's Comment grabber. Cool work Gordon!

I noted other Spacemen, Arthur, Ronald perhaps who had been listening in to our conversations, unknown to us while we were travelling through space connected by some virtual, umbilical tube.

I frantically flicked a few switches on the dashboard. No means of connection, frustration felt and noted.

There was one of my best friends Blaise, in Cameroun who spent last Christmas with us.

I frantically flicked

desperately seeking

A light lit up on the Spaceship's dashboard. It was Susan. Could she connect too? I have no means of picturing Susan's space at the moment she asked that. I scrolled through Susans desperately seeking Susan.

I am not at all sure where we can say we are? I have the impression that it is like being 3 spacemen in spaceships on journeys through the universe who are desperate for connection to others who have meaning for them.

The picnic was clearly not in the Tribble Valley as the cockerels, (roosters  as Terry says) were calling in dawn, Keith was sun-tanned in Florida, Terry was all backlit Dutch painting.

Meanwhile back at the picnic spot, Terry and Keith had turned up. It was six and seven o'clock in the morning for them and they had dropped everything to spend a little time at a picnic to chat with friends.

Marcin and I's relationship has no doubt been enriched by visiting each other's homes and countries this year, a dream for many people who have extended online personal networks and the ties which bind us I feel are profound - perhaps because of the distance.  There is a part of Poland in me now.

but the immediacy of being in a room in Krakow, from a room in Clermont Ferrand was absolute, to the extent that I was able to butt in to respond to questions from the people attending our conference..in Poland.

(I shall make a mental note for next time not to forget to mute the headset - metaphor to remember - it's just like the translator's cabin that I used to work in for the Short Film Festival in Clermont Ferrand REMEMBER to MUTE)

to Keith in Florida who had turned up in the picnic.

I was in the room with him from my learning space in Clermont Ferrand. I could hear the bad acoustics of the room in which he was/we were?. We were sharing the slides on the screen in Krakow inside the slide share of our hangout on air.

I continued the day with a picnic, a #clavpicnic at for me lunch-time. When I arrived at the picnic spot (a hangout) nobody had turned up.

It is a shape-shifting space.

This is clearly not Second Life or the World of Warcraft but a space much more liminal, much more fluid, much more powerful.

My only way of assimilating what was going on was to imagine a fictional environment in which these characters met, interacted, and played.

Yesterday, I started the day with a blog post entitled 'In the Tribble Valley' inspired by a series of tweets between people who I had never met

to my students (they are unaware of that for the moment unless the one Tweep has done his job for the masses and sent it viral in Clermont Ferrand STAPS).

In thirty seconds, their singing was on the internet winging its way to Egypt, and the USA, and Brazil, and Australia...well wherever.

Then it was Maha's Birthday, why don't we sing 'Happy Birthday' I thought, - well why not?

during the week we had students reading my blog, seeing their snow hat from last winter being commented on by people all around the world and retweeted by Rihanna (a robot - I kept that quiet not to spoil the effect) on Twitter.

First day in class, we had students chatting with a friend of mine working on a Ski Resort in Australia,

Today as a teacher I am working with the UK, Poland, Italy, Sweden, Finland, Japan, the USA, Brazil, Cameroun. 5 years ago, I was only concerned with a room of twenty five students at one moment, today I am concerned with perhaps something over a 1000 or more students and teachers who are all over the place.

I have indeed succeeded in my ambition, I even referred to Mr Benn in a conference I did in Plymouth in 2011 entitled "In Search of Nomad's Land".

I am now perhaps half French.

I have been a researcher as long as I can remember. Now they say I am a researcher. (what took them so long to recognise me?)

I have been a teacher: of farmers, factory executives, secretaries, technicians, scientists, teachers, unemployed, computer analysts, sports-people, world-record holders, builders, painters, sculptors, soldiers...

a writer...(now, I come to think of it, I could say that now, I had never assumed that costume before)

I wanted to have adventures, change costumes and live many lives.

At the back of the changing room, I open a door and suddenly find myself in a new country/[planet]/[town]/[village]/[landscape] (choose appropriate) and embark on a new adventure in which I will meet the inhabitants and learn to adapt myself to their/my/our? world.

The Spaceman Episode

Meanwhile Teresa Mackinnon has been able to represent our rhizomatically evolving project in the UK and elsewhere got it accepted as a case study by a European Project.

e are still looking for a place to publish the article. So if anybody has some bright ideas?

In August 2013, with my colleagues Christine Rodrigues and now Marcin Kleban we presented again at Eurocall in Portugal a study, Telecollaboration in Historical Spaces, looking at the barriers and openings  to widening connected learning among teachers and learners.

Suddenly people in my institution appeared to be taking what I had to say seriously..to almost trust me.

I met with my friend Marcin Kleban. After a twenty minute discussion we started a project of 40 language teachers and learners, he trusted me.. I met with my friend Blaise Ngandeu, I was able to learn about Nexus Analysis from my friend Maritta Riekki.

research mentor Christine Rodrigues, she trusted me (I didn't know how some of you guys do research stuff) (I didn't know how to use the library) I was able to get a presentation, a study on social networks of language learners online, entitled Building Bridges, accepted at Eurocall in Sweden. We still have to find the time to write the article.

They trusted me!  

With only an hour face-to-face meeting with my friend Claude Tregoat we set up connections for 500 students in a project which would become to be known as CLAVIER.

It was thanks to his blog that I learnt that I could comment safely, the perhaps that I might even blog. I felt as many do I had nothing to say. I could never contribute anything. I still lived with the words of an ex-boss in PR,

I met Catherine Cronin, I think first in London and then again in Plymouth, I met Mary Anne Reilly, we spoke over dinner about Nomads, about Rhizomatic Learning. I felt connected. I felt that I could communicate, I felt nurtured. I was not al

I wrote about this experience here in Swings and Roundabouts.

There were not many people present but the voices of Alec Couros and another person who spoke with me after, reassured me. I felt connected, I felt supported. I could take risks, safely.

I came out in the open.

Rounders, the ball comes my way, I give it a big wallop and then run round, sort of.

Here's a sort of wallop:

I was in Nancy in November 2010, for a conference which I blogged about in "What are you?".

I felt, perhaps wrongly as a result of my own fear, that I wasn't in the company of learners.

I felt unable to connect.

I was in Clermont in 2008, a maverick, to talk about using social networks in teaching 

my mother had just died,

I was over the edge.

The words of one of my students, one of my fellow learners helped me continue. Those words, some of them, are translated here in this post Nagasaki mon amour.

I didn't know I didn't have to write an article. I was able to write an article, to come so far because of my colleague Marie Christine Rustan.

Without her, nothing would have happened. I would have remained isolated probably, unhappily in a disconnected classroom.

She helped me with my French

trusted me. 

This is a tribute to my wife, my two sons, two daughters who help(ed) me with my French, miscellaneous cats, dog and fish and all my family spread out around the world and elsewhere.

Aikido taught me to respect the other as myself.

I spoke, I was in tears at all the frustration I had felt, the people in the room were touched.

The accompanying portfolio/website would be Taches de Sens

I started a blog. This would be this  Touches of Sense I didn't really know why or if I would ever write more than one post. To boldy go represents the first. It will also represent the last.

I was able to go to Learning without frontiers in January 2011 in 2012.

I began to feel really connected. I was no longer alone. I might be a maverick, a one-off. I was no longer weird. I wasn't completely crazy.

I felt able to experiment, to venture into Nomad's Land.

In April 2012, I fulfilled my ambition to speak at the Plymouth Enhanced Learning Conference.

I learnt what Twitter was about.

For whom am I enabling them to be digitally literate?  How will their paths be traced on the internet for whose ends? What is my responsibility in opening my students to a world through the lens of a globalised world vaguely glimpsed on a screen, where culture is squashed into bits through a browser?

I have been using Google's tools for over five years now. I am asking myself more and more questions as to the ethics of this.

But I think this sort of site (Facebook) could help us by bringing together students around affinities, allowing us to connect with researchers in our fields, to work on common projects."

'What do we have to do?' 'We have to do...' I rarely hear students say, 'I want to do something.'

"Creating social networks in education could reveal to be a major development...As a student, I know one of the attractions of the university is the notion of Freedom, Free-will, Motivation, Equality.

Where did he imagine he was heading?

What movement was my ancestor participating in?

I am a child of Empire, I am a child of evangelists.  In 2010, after 142 years I heard my great grandfather's voice for the first time. He was 24 years old, he was on a ship bound for Nagasaki. He was to be the first Anglican missionary to Japan. It had taken years of research to track down his ship's journal hidden in a database in a university library somewhere on the internet amongst an enormous archive of missionary society papers, unread except no doubt by specialist historians.

Also Bonnie Stewart’s idea of growing to be more inclusive of those that are wanting to be more resident online is something that resonates with me.

I feel very strongly that the first step will be to identify them and articulate explicitly on which side our intentions exist.

Yet I see the paradox. I see how the community can be a barrier to itself. How the recordings can bring people in and yet still shut others out. How the celebrity can simultaneously be challenged and perpetuated.

If VC can facilitate conversations to these ends and contribute to the commons through broadcasting and recording that conversation while we are doing it I feel it is all the better.

I have often seen many attending conferences rush to the front of the room to get a few moments with the speaker be it a session speaker or keynote speaker. This is not as possible at really large conferences where the speaker prepares and retires to a backstage area with a green room of sorts. Those are usually the kind of conferences where the stage is lit up like a rock concert. However,I have only ever seen this at the largest of corporate sponsored conferences and find that this is often not the case.

Challenging or Promoting?

There is much beauty in our patchwork existence.

Science bound? No we are darkness bound.

I question the authority of the astronomer who pronounces that mine is a lesser star in the universe.  I may question his choice of 'telescope', I may question his obsession with stars when what binds us is darkness.

If I let others tell my story, I am not respecting myself.

Before now, I never had the competences to participate openly in connectivist MOOC's but that doesn't mean that I wasn't participating, it doesn't mean that I wasn't trying to make sense of 'blog', 'network', 'community'...

These connections, these lines, these patterns are not haphazard, they have meaning for me even if that meaning changes over time, even when scribble emerges as stream of consciousness. Until now these patterns would have been unobservable...even to myself.

I have been working with the idea of 'community as a curriculum' for at least 8 or 9 years when I worked at building 'community' with an ever evolving group of unemployed language learners. It has been a constant feature in my pedagogy.

I escaped to meet up with other like-minds at the 'Learning without frontiers" conference  London in 2011, I learned to use Twitter, I began to build my network, I began to blog...

Over a period of maybe 5 years I had lurked, I was on the periphery, I followed, I dared to comment on Steve Wheeler's blog 'Learning with e's", and then it built momentum.

I can fully relate to Dave Cormier's upset that others took his work as their own. It was only in 2008 that I decided that I must learn to use others arms to defend and to make public my own perspectives.

Nobody would have known that Dave Cormier was fairly early on a distant twinkle in my star-map, in my world. I was not sure at that time whether it was an asteroid...

My secret activity, my pattern-making would have been invisible to all those who would not have noticed that I signed on to the first MOOCs set up by Stephen Downes but did nothing more.  Nobody would have read anything that I had written or thought before 2008.  They might have seen an anoynmous presence of a reader on their blog.

As one moves within the universe, one gains new potential for pattern making.

As one gazes at the movement of the stars one gains new interpretations on their relationships.  As one moves within the universe, one gains new potential for pattern making.

I would say that it would be very difficult to determine at which time a person was acting as a member of one or another community, particularly as a tweet for example might include a number of  tags #clmooc, #rhizo14 #clavier

Another problem as to how communities may be defined is the questions of longevity of connection. Heli Nurmi illuminates us on some of the pre-existing connections which existed before the course started.  It became clearer and clearer for me as I played in #rhizo14 how these powerful relationships affected activity within the course.

If we are to study the 'emergence of community' are we going to be stuck with a particular 'pattern of community' which doesn't necessarily reflect the diverse perspectives of what constitutes 'community' or 'membership to a community'?

I remember here an image of Apostolos's of a desert flower and his "creativity in arid environments" week.

Is it appropriate when studying rhizomes to concentrate on 'flowers'?

whose story are we telling 'objectively'?

"We also have to beware over-interpreting the views of others and making assumptions about their thoughts and opinions." Indeed, this connects to my suspicion about 'science' and 'research' - whose story are we telling 'objectively'?

I don't like being part of a 'guild'.

to satisfy my curiosity to learn to play others' games

to feel valued on my terms,

I am very happy to feel attachment,

I have never felt very comfortable with tags, labels, categories for myself.

I have not made any particular decision as to whether I am a member of any 'community'.

In the case of #rhizo14 or the rhizomatic learning course, when did the 'community building' start?

Where does one draw the 'community lines'? How much do people need to 'care' for each other to be part of a 'community'? Who decides who is in and who is out? What are the criteria? I am getting the distinct impression that 'community' is a problematic pattern  which hides more than it reveals

All this brings me to the troublesome question of community.

So with social networking graphs, we will be able to get a better view on connections and their movement in the #rhizo14 constellation.

Another star discovered with my brother's telescope might have made a blemish in their cultural landscape...

Their patterns framed their spiritual existence. 

How do other people see the stars, I mean other people apart from my brother and his big blue American map?

As I am writing connections are sparking. 

Frankly, it didn't really make an impression on me at all until I started writing this retitled post spurred by Frances Bell's "Reflections on Community in #Rhizo14 - more questions than answers."

connected learning course I have been actively lurking in

Constellation, was an image I picked up just now from Kevin Hodgson (@dogtrax)

I only saw twinkle twinkle little stars, and that was enough.

With carefully trained eyes and an imported telescope by brother was able to recognize the constellations and point them out on his star map.

guess we are talking the backchannel here and all our Slack channels are open.

However, status in the real world is not a factor in VC

So much happening offline or in the backchannel that helps build a sense of community within the team,

And our mission is in enhancing the virtual experience for those not privileged enough to be at events.

We are definitely not covering conferences in Chemistry or History.

We need to be clear on what our shared passion is.

VC may be an affinity space for a particular kind of virtual experience and not for everyone.

be not very welcoming of new people in terms onboarding to the team and not be clearly welcoming to new participants because we look to be an “us” that they don’t feel part of. 

affinity space

“Humans do not learn anything deeply by force. Humans do not learn anything in depth without passion and persistence” p. 25

Almost all our conference presentations ABOUT VC involve other people from the team. 

There’s still an impression and certain people get more credit for this movement (I’m looking at you, mirror) when it’s really based on the coordinated work of a good number of people PER SESSION, let alone per event or as a whole.

And that, i feel, is the case for VC.

This is particularly relevant to VC in the sense that many people who are highly respected within VC aren’t really high status in their f2f context. But like Bonnie Stewart’s research about Twitter, this really just creates a parallel hierarchy type of thing. It’s not the same people as in f2f, and it’s definitely more fluid and permeable, but there are still status differences, inevitably.