Women Who Wear Makeup Get Paid More:

The Beauty of an Even Playing Field

    As Ty Kiisel points out here, humans tend to judge and get judged, consciously, or unconsciously, by our appearances. He references this article by Aaron Gouveia, citing research that our appearances affect

many things at work, e.g. tall people get paid more, fat people [his words, not mine] get paid less, women who wear makeup get paid more, etc. Brian Tracy, a "personal success authority" says: 
"Your clothes are responsible for 95 percent of the first impression that you make on someone because, in most instances, your clothes cover 95 percent of your body. Your grooming, your hair style and the other ways you can determine your appearance from the neck up also exert an inordinate influence on the way that you are perceived, on your ethos with someone. "

[I realize these may be U.S.-centric examples, but I don't want to speak of things I don't know anything about. So please add your own cultural examples in the comments if you can.]

What is my point?


Connected Courses such as #rhizo15, #CLMOOC, #connectedcourses, etc. create a playing field more even than most f2f learning situations.  We interact with people primarily for the value of their work, their humor, their interactions, their willingness to share and be vulnerable, their willingness to connect reciprocally.  It has little, very little, to do with anything superficial, such as what they look like or wear.

I would like to think that happens in most real life learning environments, too.  But I am not that naive.

Fortunately for most of us, in connected courses, we can work and interact with each other in our pajamas, our farm duds, with babyfood smeared on our hijab, or muddy dog prints on our jeans, no make-up, hair uncombed.


If you met me in person, you would know that I have nine tattoos, short grey hair, and dress pretty androgynously.

This week Kevin made a cartoon version of me, which I loved.  He got the hair pretty close, but I never wear skirts/dresses, and let's just say sweaters don't look that good on me, and we'll leave it at that (LOL).

I have on many occasions been judged for my tattoos, my lack of feminine attire, etc.  But those things are not a factor in courses like Rhizo and CLMOOC. We find out about each other in dribs and drabs, already having had valuable interactions that are far more important than finding out someone has tattoos.

I don't know if you are heavy or skinny, masculine or feminine, sloppy or neat, disheveled or tall or short.  It points out how unimportant our actual appearances are to our interactions.

Many of us have, at different times, made cartoon versions of each other.    

However, I am always mindful of the potential for cultural ignorance (in myself), so I always ask the person directly, if I am in doubt.  We recently made a happy birthday video for Kevin, our cartoon master.  I made cartoon superhero versions of participants, and didn't want to do anything to Maha Bali's character that would be culturally offensive. This is what I ended up with, after consultation with her:

It is rather freeing, really, to be judged by the quality of one's work and the reciprocity of one's interactions. And not by the weight of any other scale.

As you find out more about what someone in an online course looks like, does it change how you think of them? Does it change how you interact with them?

[Maha and I have chatted about how other things aside from physical appearance affect our perceptions of each other, but she has written about that far more eloquently than I could.]

Now I am going to go put on pants.

Chocolate Lava Cakes: A Guide to Rhizo

What is Rhizo: A Culinary & Oceanographic Metaphor

Rhizomatic Learning is a grass-covered archipelago, each isle  an atoll dotted with a series of chocolate lava cakes and connected by ocean waves.

Each cake emits a unique signal, and is able to sense and synthesize unique signals from other cakes when conditions are right.

Each time a chocolate lava cake receives a signal, it gains an ounce+ of molten chocolate, as well as an enhanced signal of its own via the addition of more coral and more life in, under and around.

See below: Cakes on Atolls

Each atoll, with a base of coral, is weak when it first begins to emerge. But as more chocolate is added, the atoll becomes stronger and deeper.
Under and around it, beauty lives and swims, and tendrils die when tossed aside or neglected.

Southern Atolls, Maldives - Underwater World Part 2 from Eunjae Im on Vimeo.

Some atolls become too deep when overwrought, like this D&G atoll, spotted in the South Pacific:

[Such atolls are noted for losing signals and a subsequent decrease in chocolate content.] #data

Other atolls share so many unique signals that they become greater than the sum of their parts. One example is this Tahitian Rhizo Archipelago:

Note the chocolate overflowing on each side.

A few rhizo atolls are more idiosyncratic, like this atoll dubbed the "Simon"atoll:

Finally, as seen in the example below, when rhizo signals are neither sent nor received, the atoll disappears and is no longer a vessel of delicious chocolate.
 

Each cake is delicious on its own. But an archipelago of interconnected, cross-communicating chocolate lava cakes becomes an idiosyncratically beauteous entity, with incredible life hidden within and below the surface.

With just a few well-aimed signals, you end up with, at the very least, a small bit of tasty rhizo chocolate lava, some clear ocean waves, and a living microcosm. 

#ShareYourChocolate

Remix - add ice cream, illegibility, whipped cream raspberries, octopi, irony, sarcasm, curiosity, doubt, optimism, eels, a rudder.

Elsie Cow and Small White Dog (Explicating the Inexplicable)

Forking Deleuze and Guattari,what one finds is that the data fall as such:

There are clear intersecting patterns and similar vertices.  Of note, there are 5034 vertices and 68 million unique edges.

Looking at the data from another angle, we can clearly see that Elsie cow (far left) has 65 edge duplicates, a clear distinction in opposition to Clara (far right). Or as D&G would say, there is a clear topography of strawberries aligning themselves with both smooth and striated spaces.

Finally, we can see the geodics number rising in the graphic at the right. Subject and text are clearly distinct, as Lolly the small white dog stands as a clear but deceptive invasive species.  Note the stark contrast to the striated spaces beneath the Lowes garden soil.

Thoughts?

Zombies Ate My Rhizo15

Read this blog.

Here ye, here ye!

I bring to your attention some

Zombies reading Exquisite Corpse,

Out of a hunger for

More human brains.

And they dance the macabre

To remember that their stigmergy 

Insists on 

Co-Labor-A-Tion.

Laughing as the echo chamber

Encroaches

And filter bubbles squish the brains,

"Rhizo15," they moan, "NO ALGORITHMS please.

Nah! Nah! Nah!"

Icing on the cake would be

Neverending, chaotic, aggressive and unrestrained

Gambling with the tendrils of invasion.

Angela Brown quotes Martin Shaw: "At least a third of the notion of community should live entirely in the imagination and shouldn't continuously be wrestled into the literal."

Daveless, Less Dave, Lest Dave, Let Dave

Do we need Dave?
Can/should we get rid of the idea of 'Dave'?
Dave asks, "...what is the role of the facilitator/teacher/professor where we are using learning subjectives, where learning isn't measured and where content is actually other people?"

Well...Dave could be this-

Milquetoast

Or this:

Or this:

Or this:

Or this:

Or this:

Or this:

Or this:

Or this:

However, he's more like this:

(with maybe a little of the crazy chihuahua thrown in.)

My point is - I don't think that we can get rid of Dave, or the idea of Dave.

Dave is the fertile soil in which the rhizome began to grow.

Dave is the smart, flexible, creative instigator.

Even in (and maybe especially in) an environment of "more formal education" that he proposes we reflect upon, the individual, the kaleidoscopic faceted person (or people) who have the vision and get it moving are not only integral to what evolves: they are the first domino to lean, they are the farmer who throws out the seeds, they are the painter who tosses the first splash of paint.

I have worked for 23 years as a teacher.  One thing I have learned is that the one who leads, the ones who instigate, are intricately & idiosyncratically critical to the development of anything truly new and real.

There is a dearth of pedagogical leadership in many of our day-to-day academic experiences.

There is too often a lack of unique and diverse voices willing to show passion and push us to think in new ways.

We need Daves.

Intersecting Overlapping Interlocutors: Webs of Most Excellent Comments

I am waiting.  I want my homework.

Dave's weekly post comes.

I read the homework.  I think about the homework.

Primarily, I LIVE the homework. As I make my way through my day, filled with teachers and 13 year-olds, I live it. And reflect.

So, this week - content.

A busy week in this context is good. It means others will have written about this before I was able to. They can help me understand, perceive, and reorient my thinking.

So, I read and read and read. 

Google+.
Facebook.
Twitter.
Blogs.
Links from blogs.
Blogs from links.
Something else I probably forgot.

And then confusion sets in.  If I liked your Facebook post, and then comment on your blog, should I also comment on your Facebook post?  If I +1 your comment on Google+ and then read your blog, should I also favorite your tweet? If I favorited your tweet, does that mean I already read your post?  Or that I will?  If I comment on Twitter, should I also comment on your blog? And on Facebook? And on Google+? 

I just want you to know that I am reading!

And these Intersecting Overlapping Interlocutors and these Webs of Most Excellent Comments will not defeat me.

Welcome to my Torture Chamber

Welcome to my torture chamber.

Come on in, I will be your PARCC test proctor.

I will force you to go against every fiber that makes up a 13 year-old boy.

Please read the directions on your screen and follow along as I read them aloud.

Stop squirming. 

There will be many tools at your disposal: highlighter, answer eliminator, calculator, etc.

You will sit still for 80 minutes then you will sit still for 75 minutes.  No talking.  No moving. No help. No interaction.

Please enter your unique test code and password.

Please stop talking, squirming, asking.

Stop telling me you are frustrated. Please be quiet.  This is a torture chamber, not a playground.

There will a series of questions, symbols, equations.  

Stop telling me you don't know how to do this.  Stop drawing. This.is.serious.

I will keep track of the time.

No, it is not time to stop.  You must keep going. Keep going. Keep going.

Please enter the seal code written on the board.

Quite. Quiet. 

Please stop drumming.  Please stop tearing a hole in your sleeve for your thumb.  Please stop drawing. This.is.serious.  

You may use a calculator.

Welcome to my torture chamber.  I want to let you out.  But I can not.

You may review the section you completed, but don't go on to the next section until directed to do so.

Welcome. I can not.

Welcome.

Measuring Beyonce's Butt -- Psyched, siked, siced (contains profanity)

This week's #rhizo15 task asks us to count. "What can we measure that isn't learning? Think about all the other facets of the human experience..can we do better?" Dave ends by begging us to grade him.

What the hell is he talking about? My grade for the clarity of this task is a D-.

My feeling about the fact that he is asking these questions is an A+. I embrace the mess.

Since I don't really understand the question, here's my take on trying to measure something that's rather non-linear/amorphous/constantly evolving/impossible to pin down. Like #rhizo15.

A WTF Face-Palm moment happened recently in my classroom, during which I realized we have reached the End of Times Apocalypse stage in student vocabulary.

A student was writing a story, and she wanted to say that the character was "psyched" about something, meaning excited.  However, she insisted that the word was "sīced" and pronounced with a soft c - as in slīced, without the "L." Yes.  Sīced.

I assumed she was simply making an error in pronunciation, but she (and several other students) explained to me QUITE OBNOXIOUSLY with great vigor that I was a complete moron I clearly did not know how to say or spell the word. 

The level of screwed-up-ness non-learning in this was baffling. [I did not make the following meme. The fact that it existed at all made me feel there was hope for the world less alone in my chagrin.] 

So I felt compelled to figure out how my students came to believe this.

Around the 1970's in the U.S., the term "psyched" came into common use as a way to show excitement or enthusiasm. As indicated below, its use steadily climbed through the 80's and 90's, hitting a high in the year 2000.

Shortly after that, the term "to psyche out," meaning to undermine someone's confidence, came into common parlance.

This morphed in "psyche!" Which meant "I tricked you into believing something."  In his 1983 album Comedian, comic Eddie Murphy includes a skit called "Ice Cream Man," in which he taunts a friend who has no ice cream, pretends to offer him some, then yanks it away and yells, "Psyche!" (Skip to 3:50 to see that part.)

Teenagers heard the word so often without reading it that they thought it was spelled "sike." In the 90's and 2000's, this became a common spelling in student notes and written assignments in my classes. It became such a common usage that it replaced the spelling psyche entirely in most teenagers' vocabulary.

Jump ahead 15 years to today. Student writing rarely uses the term "sike" to indicate tricking someone. My students are using the word pronounced "sīced" with a soft "c" to mean excited. They have no idea that it is actually spelled and pronounced psyched, or siked, or that "sike" actually did NOT mean excited, but rather, "I tricked you." And it is now spelled AND pronounced "sīced" by many teens as a result of some process of reverse-evolution.

As someone posted in Urban Dictionary:

Or you could spell "siced" wrong,

only in a different way:

Of course, since I love words, and am watching this information change in slo-mo like a train wreck, I had to see in what other ways this slang has "evolved."

And finally, to bring it full circle:

There is much more to discover, but I will leave further research to you.

Other facets of the human experience? All of my students have been expelled from their home schools. They have been measured and mismeasured. 

I embrace the way language changes. It fascinates me. It's when it goes terribly, erringly awry within a subset-vortex of illiteracy that I am perplexed at how to begin to start. There is no pre-test for this as it unfolds around itself.  

It is a microcosmic symbol of the millions of ways life has failed so many kids.

I respect my students and their experiences. I am heart-broken that their literacy experiences are so deficient.

And I can laugh at the ridiculousness of a word being used in a permutation so far removed from Latin or Greek that it has an ugly beauty of its own.

But...
I have to go get sīced about cooking dinner so I don't have to syce some food from the store, so please don't slice my syce.