Make Cycle One: My UnIntroduction

stone_inuksukWe are finally up to our First Make Cycle in #CLmooc!

With this challenge, I will again reply with a poem, (following what I did here and here), maintaining my own response to our instructions (invitation!):

So, what’s the first thing you usually do when you enter a room of folks with some familiar and unfamiliar faces—you introduce yourself, right? So let’s unravel “the introduction” to dive into the Connected Learning principle of equity. The theme this week is Unmaking Introductions. Let’s consider the ways we name, present, and represent ourselves and the boundaries or memberships those introductions create. How do we name ourselves in different contexts—personally? professionally? online? What happens when those contexts converge? How might we take apart our introductions to answer some of these questions? What will happen when we put them back together again to share them in CLMOOC?

So, given the frame and boundaries the #CLmooc Overlords provided, or at least those that I choose to work with, here is my poetic reply to the invitation to Introduce Myself.

Make Cycle One: My UnIntroduction

Make Cycle One: My UnIntroduction
Who Am I?
Who has not asked or heard that before?
We answer,
or not,
based on the ratio of disclosure to expectation.
I am invited to introduce myself. Again.
Boundaries cleared, or blurred,
for another community, online,
in which to learn and teach, or teach and learn.
Can educationalists ever not not learn?
Inside or outside #CLmooc,
I manage, I learn, I research, I write,
and I share, support, collaborate, and read.
With actor-networks,
onward and upward we go,
never alone, and always with.

At least, this is my reply for today. Tomorrow may most certainly be different . . .

18 thoughts on “Make Cycle One: My UnIntroduction”

  3. “Always with.” That’s the thing, isn’t it? We are all in this together. I’m still mulling over my un-intro.

  6. Very nicely written. I particularly like the way you ended with ‘always with’. Imagine if a student in secondary school did that, you rebel.

  7. I, too, was struck by “never alone, and always with.” I am often moved by unique phrasing in poetry. It sticks with you. I wonder if “never alone, and always with” are two different things. In a sense, I think they could be, since, to me, there seems to be more to “with” than meets the eye. Perhaps I need to write a piece on “with.” Wait…I think I know an educator who wrote a piece about how “with” is messy….Oh my, this was years ago. Stephen Davis: http://www.rushtheiceberg.com/the-messiness-of-with/ and then my response: http://developingwriters.org/2011/10/05/we-learn-with-with-is-messy/ .

    1. Thanks, Kevin. Though I have not posted any new work yet this week, I am thoroughly enjoying writing these things. Strange feeling of creative freedom with them that I have not really experienced elsewhere.

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