Mindmap #12: Connectedness

connect visualization

Last week’s mindmap took into account most of what we’ve read from Castells, so I did not add any more to the Castells nodes. Preparing for end-of-term assignments, however, I started thinking about the network ecology I’ve created in the mindmap in order to identify some trends. So I pulled out what appear to be…
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Mindmap #11: The Network Society

global society illustration

Castells represented 500 page of network goodness, and I savored (quickly) every morsel. I struggled to limit what I planned to include in this week’s mindmap, settling on a tried and true method: I use the table of contents to organize my new nodes. I linked Castells to Foucault, Latour, and aspects of ecology. I…
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Mind Map #10: Seeking Homeostasis

Narrative Ecology Framework flashcards photo

The ecology of my mind map seeks homeostasis, a natural balance among its many theories. My mind map has become, in Charles Darwin’s words, a “web of complex relations” (cited in Spellman, 2007, p. 4).  Well, maybe not as complex as all of nature, but if we follow the formula for the value of a…
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Reading Notes: Ecology and Distributed Composing

Composition notebooks - photo

I plowed through all of these readings in a single sitting, which did not help much with comprehension, but which did affect my experience reading. I’m a composition teacher who prefers to grade all assignments in a single sitting, an web manager who prefers to make changes that affect multiple parts of the navigation structure…
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Mind Map #9: Ecology, Environment & Affordances

I sense the least connection between the two concepts of ecology and affordances this week, likely because I don’t feel I gave these readings justice. One issue is the reading affordance – I’m using iPad rather than print, and the readings this week were not great scans. As a result, I didn’t annotate as completely,…
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Mapping the Ecology of My Classroom: Jepson G20

Jepson Hall G20 photo

On Wednesday nights this semester I teach ENGL 201U, Critical Writing and Research, at the University of Richmond School of Professional and Continuing Studies. The class is offered face-to-face for 15 weeks, although there are online requirements. I teach the class in Jepson Hall G20, a collaborative computer lab originally designed for English writing classes…
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Reading Notes: Ecology & Affordance

heat scan of Mohave Desert visualization

Bateson Bateson, G. (1987/1972). Steps to an ecology of mind: Collected essays in anthropology, psychiatry, evolution, and epistemology. Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, Inc. To separate the individual from the society, or the individual mind or thought from the global mind or thought, is to deny the ecological unity of creatura, of the creative self. Individuals…
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