Butterflies and Open Learning

Photo by David Clode on Unsplash

Over the last few weeks I have been working with a variety of Indigenous Elders. Randy Bottle of the Blood tribe (Kainai First Nation), shared that butterflies are an important symbol in Blackfoot dreams.

This was especially important to me because butterflies have been a common metaphor and symbol throughout my MALT, MET and EdD studies – the butterfly is very important to me in terms of how one learner’s access to knowledge can influence others.

In fact, I would say that the butterfly is a symbol of my research – as it came to me during my MALT research when I was influenced by Margaret Wheatley’s work when I read about the butterfly: http://www.shkaminski.com/Classes/Readings/Wheatley.htm

I weaved the butterfly into two blog posts that I wrote for different projects:

I used the butterfly to explain open learning in some blog posts for the K-12 Multiplying K-12 OER project  http://bolt.athabascau.ca/index.php/2017/03/31/the-butterfly-effect-k-12-oer-and-open-learning/

AND a post of literacy and open learning https://www.literacyworldwide.org/blog%2Fliteracy-daily%2F2018%2F08%2F31%2Fbuilding-an-open-narrative-with-open-learning

When you start to see patterns in your “life’s research and understanding of building of knowledge – what does that mean? When Randy mentioned the symbol of dreams as a butterfly – I had chills – good chills, but chills nonetheless.