Fuller Week 4: Peeragogy, Community of Inquiry, and Artistic Appropriation

Wow! Thank you, Remi, for directing us to this amazing Peeragogy Handbook and related materials. I took the time to really dig in to the work to better understand and imagine ways in which I could implement it with my high school team of colleagues and my students.

Ethics? and the WHY?
As I worked through the material I kept coming back to ethics and the WHY of what we do as learners and educators. 

I love TED talks and happened across Simon Sinek in the past.  When I saw that Cornell and Johnson referenced Sinek in their section on "Convening a Group"  I revisited his talk.  Here he is with his idea of the “Golden Circle” and How Great Leaders Inspire Action:

Sinek says that the why? of the who, what, when, and where questions is at the center of the thinking of great leaders. He certainly said it better than I can.  It is our beliefs that cause us to take action.

Constraints
Given that peer learning means that everyone can be a contributor--student, teacher, field expert, higher education researcher--there still must be constraints in place for the best kind of creativity to occur.  Assumptions for design and structure of the group should be established at the beginning (http://peeragogy.org/convene/) along with a healthy openness. This is not to say that the group can't change over time--indeed it should.  

In the Handbook section about research it suggests that the quality of the learning model is determined by the quality of the underlying representation of domain or disciplinary knowledge.  (http://peeragogy.org/to-peeragogy/researching-peeragogy/)  

Like the constraints on the design of peer learning and its groups, so must this blog be limited.  I wish to draw a parallel between our learning around "communities of inquiry" and appropriation in contemporary art.  

Connectivism, Crowdsourcing, and Hacking>---<Appropriation in the Arts
In the Handbook section on research they used a citation from Peter Sloterdijk to support their view that practice is the best way to learn.  I followed that lead to hear Sloterdijk speak about a project called Ruhr. The goals for this project are collaborative and aim to reduce carbon consumption by 50% in 2020.  Sloterdijk talked about the idea that people don't want to wait generations anymore for change.  

A post by Gigi Johnson in the organizing section of the Handbook cites a project called Change11 as an example of a cMOOC, or a connectivist MOOC.  MOOCs are already evolving!

In this interview Howard Rheingold talks about our need for a "crap detector" when using the Internet: (see 9:06-11:32.) I think this is a point about why it's important to have facilitators or guides in peer learning.

Collaboration, constructivism, connectivism, crowdsourcing, hacking, and peeragogy. These are all concepts that have been important to our learning in Ed Tech.  I can see a connection between these ideas and appropriation in the arts.

In New York a couple of years ago I listened to and viewed a keynote at the National Art Education Association conference. The presenter was a contemporary artist who used the famous image by NickUt of the burned girl, Phan Thj Kim Phuc, within her own art.  She did not cite Ut as the original artist.  I was disturbed, and questioning the ethics of her use of that photograph, and at the same time, I understand that it is common practice for artists to "sample" from other works of art whether music, literature, film, or visual art. I think the keynoter confidently used the iconic image because she believes in contemporary art and her intention was not to steal, but to make something new, to invite conversation.

My first awakening to appropriation was through Warhol's Marilyn silkscreen prints.  

Here are the Beasty Boys with Pass the Mic.  They were sued for sampling from another artist's music, but they were found not liable.

A few weeks ago Remi was a keynoter at the iiE Gathering in Ann Arbor.  Remi's presentation was enhanced by his use of photos of graffiti to illustrate his point.  Graffiti artists "tag" on public and private property--a kind of hacking.

Is it right? Wrong? Art? Not art? Do they do this out of malice, or to create something new? Are the "originals"--Marilyn, Ut, and JJ Walker's "dyno-mite!" contributors even if they are not the distributors?

So, What's the Point?  Wild, Wild West
I see parallels between artistic appropriation and the ideas of connectivism, crowdsourcing, and hacking.  I'm not saying that people involved in peeragogy are thieves :-)  I'm saying that appropriation in contemporary art and peeragogy are kind of like the wild west.  The artists and peeragogists are daring.  They see connections as bridges to new ideas, new art, collaborations, and evolved learning.

Is there really a new idea that has no roots in old ideas?  Can we really escape "old" ideas?

Peeragogy and related concepts are tried by people who are passionate about the why of learning.  They see value in making connections and in collaboration. Like artistic appropriation the boundaries may not always have clean lines. Within both realms the best creativity will come when each community of inquiry begins with people who possess relevant underlying knowledge.