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Writing reflection from #rhizo15 & #HPJ101

After years of lurking around various communities, I decided recently to share a lot more of my work and interests with others. As a major lurker in #rhizo14 last year, I decided in March that I was going to do something everyday during the #rhizo15 course, even if it was a series of slides with pretty clusters and nodes and such. Leading up to the course I did a lot of writing in my journal trying to sort out what kinds of things I may be able to contribute. In the first week of the course I even wrote a blog post centred loosely around Learning Subjectives with a hint of Wassily Kandinsky.

As part of #rhizo15, I encountered a lot of fun people and decided that I wanted to start engaging these people in a more frequent and somewhat more formal manner. Somewhere around this time there was a Hybrid Pedagogy call for editors and I thought I should throw down my digital gauntlet(s). And so I did.

From May 12-18 I participated in the #hpj101 pseudo-open online course with 50+ participants who submitted to the Hybrid Pedagogy call. The course consisted of several forum discussions, two live twitter chats (which were awesome!), collaborative editing on two documents, a picture assignment, and a reflection on writing. Essentially HP was trying to get a feel for a group of people who would compliment each other and add some interesting perspectives to the journal. It was a very fun week of sharing and I feel like many things are still sinking in. There are so many awesome people and ideas out there dontcha know?

So there is our preamble-esque thing :)

Inspired by Gregory Zobel openly sharing his writing reflection from #hpj101, I thought I would do the same. So here it is, originally submitted as a Google Doc, with yet another preamble of sorts :)

I find this piece of writing interesting because it started thinking about #rhizo15, but ended up being used in #hpj101. For those of you following along as a rhizo-er, to some extent this piece became an invasive literary piece, interwoven between two simultaneous events which contained many of the same people and ideas. Does this then qualify, to some extent, as a practical artifact for #rhizo15?

~ ~ ~

taken from my moleskine journal – March 30, 2015

began as words to push me to write more, then transformed into a pseudo slam poetry piece that i never thought i’d write

slightly reformatted to read better as a google doc :)

~ ~ ~

write more

and more often

write with

various utensils

write using

many fonts & colours

write on lines

on graphs, on empty spaces

write everyday

something

anything

everything

~

write lies, lists, lessons

write feelings, fights, figures

write worlds, wars, wrongs

write songs, sonnets, sonically

write quietly, quickly, quizzically

~

write until you know that every

possible space inside has been

devoured and explored en route

to the negative and/or positive

spaces created by your writing

~

write as though you feel that

someone, somewhere, sometime

will read the spaces you’ve made

and will gradually feel as though

something, somehow, sums up

their situational dream-mare

~

write because you can and

because you should and

because you can’t stand

not doing it anymore

~

write for the lovers, the

haters, the makers, the breakers,

the thinkers, the fakers,

the players, the teachers,

the doctors, the lawyers,

and the movie stars

and write for the writers

~

write for you, me, and everybody we

(wish we could) know

~

write for / about / through /

as / around / after / before / of / on

all of us

~

write in the sun

write under the moon

write over a table

write until you are beside yourself

~

write before you fall asleep & you fail to keep

awake forevermore

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13 Comments

  1. Wow, I love this. I am so glad you stopped lurking. It’s going to be a lot of fun collaborating with you :)

  2. Thanks Sarah! I am totally pumped for whats to come as well. After so long lurking, I have a lot to get out :)

  3. Glad to see & read your reflection, too! And glad you stopped lurking!

  4. I am so glad you stopped lurking also!

  5. That is great Daniel. Your poem is a moving piece (in every sense of the term). I have really enjoyed working with and alongside you. I look forward to more…writing and playing.

    Thank you

  6. Thanks Greg. Looking forward to working with you.

  7. Thanks Susan. Nice to hear from a “stranger” on here.

  8. It has been a great couple months, and indeed I think we will keep making some weird things together. Looking forward to it!

  9. Love your reflection on writing … so eloquently said …

  10. wow wow wow so so so beautiful and moving and everything at once, and a window into your personality I did not have before even though we’ve known each other for some time. I may quote you sometime soon :) or assign this to my students!

  11. Maha – thanks a lot! All the positive responses I’ve received here and around the internetz has me thinking of posting regularly now. This kind of thing is common in my journal(s) and I think I’m finally ready to share a lot more of the things I used to view as very private.
    Let me know if you do assign to your students. I would be available to clarify things if possible :)

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