I wrote Rhizome-plosion about a year ago while attending #etmooc. It was my first opportunity to hear Dave Cormier share his thinking and at that time I was struck by the theme of shifting power – changing the dynamic between instructor and learner.
Still am. Still will be a year from now, no doubt.
But Cormier has carved out another opportunity to focus on this idea during his P2PU course Rhizomatic Learning – The Community is the Curriculum. This then is my introduction. Hola everyone.
The course kicks off with “Cheating as Learning” and the following challenge:
Week 1 Challenge – Use cheating as a weapon. How can you use the idea of cheating as a tool to take apart the structures that you work in? What does it say about learning? About power? About how you see teaching?
Cheating as a weapon. Take apart the structures. Bingo.
The question I came to this course with is this: What is teaching presence – when your instructional goal is to shift power? And I think of teaching presence largely as a construct in the sense of the Community of Inquiry (CoI) model (which also includes social presence and cognitive presence). CoI resonates a lot with the way in which I teach, but it is not how I define myself entirely.
And so: The exploration. What is teaching presence? (Or maybe – what can it be? should it be?).
Off now to think about teacher as chief cheater. More later.
Jeff Merrell 
Hi I like your teacher as chief cheater. What would that be? Is it teaching as guerilla in the school system? Waiting for your blogpost about it.
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Thanks – laughing. I’m also looking forward to my blog post about teacher as chief cheater. Have no idea where that will take me at the moment.
But I’m thinking more along the lines of pedagogy and setting class culture (within a single class). I teach in higher ed at the graduate level, so my world is a bit different than having to work within the context of a whole school system. And I am lucky enough to be in a program that allows some flexibility because we are all learning geeks here.
The piece that intrigues me is the mindset of intentionally disrupting the “assumed” power structures when you begin a class…in the hopes of establishing a class culture where more self-determined/motivated/directed learning evolves.
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Yes – you’re right: as the ‘teacher’ it’s not just about disrupting ‘the system’ – i.e. the institutional system in which you work – but also your students’ expectations and mindset about what learning and teaching is. Because unless they’re willing to come with you on the adventure of directing their own learning (and the learning of other participants) and co-directing the learning experience, you’re probably not going to get very far….
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Not sure about cheating- Conning or Stinging the system would be more to my taste.
Wolf in sheep’s clothing anyone?
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