Estimated reading time: 1 minute, 47 seconds

hey Keith, writing clarifies my thinking for me, too, and writing publicly or at least sharing with others helps even more because of the interaction. This is a wonderful thread, I think.
Now there are three thoughts on my mind now:
1. I like the legalistic/affectionate tone – though to be honest, my own contractual teaching is heavy on the affection 🙂 I’m sure people who are naturally affectionate teachers are like that, too. But I get what you mean there, it makes sense.
2. The thing about covenant vs. rhizomatic community that confuses me is this: the way I understood covenant at first, it seemed paternalistic, like the kind of relationship the facilitator might have with participants, but not the participants with each other. As you explained it, it sounded different and resonated more with how I saw community. The other aspect of it is that I felt what happens in a cMOOC is that facilitation and that kind of relationship becomes distributed and ever-shifting. Some participants (probably because Dave asked them) were clearly facilitating a bit (I don’t know who they were, maybe you and people like Jaap and Jenny? not sure) but all of us sort of did that at some point. would it have happened if we weren’t educators and naturally inclined to do this? I don’t know.
3. D&G: I think one of my main reasons for not getting around to reading them (other than the difficulty) is that I am not sure how closely their writing resembles my experience. Dave’s writing on rhizomatic learning, I can resonate with. Your interpretation of D&G, yes, lovely 🙂 D&G themselves, I feel like I’d have to sift through a lot and read more closely and make connections and then it still may or may not be useful 😉 I’m enjoying reading Howard Rheingold, though. Much more accessible, obviously 🙂 So anyway,that’s why I’m asking you to help me identify parts of D&G that would help me with what I need. Because I know you know them better than I.