User:Vtaylor/Connectivism and Connective Knowledge

Connectivism and Connective Knowledge

• CCK08 - wiki, groups, blog, moodle
• people - Stephen Downes, George Siemens
• Connectivism Cohort in Second Life (limited enrollment, if you're interested, sign up soon!
• research MOOCs Massive Open Online Courses) wiki page +1400 signed up
• my blog @ posterous

Concept Map - Due: November 24, 2008

what is there to know, why would I know this, how would I learn this, who knows this, where is this knowledge / information

• connectiveism - theory, practice, network, connections, concepts
• framework - knowledge network of information and resources, learner, guides, communities

learnable / knowable

• web pages, links, RSS feeds, blogs, tags, annotation
• OER repositories - adoption, changes, maintenance, reciprocation
• program / outline - overview, basic/general, in-depth - rated, pathways, sequences

learner

• learner - knows, almost knows, needs to know, wants to know
• ways of knowing - making connections, reflecting and blogging, critical thinking
• reading, writing, storytelling, scenarios
• self-reliance, self-discipline, interest, motivation, understanding, sense-making, skills, attributes, responsibility, abilities
• categorize, order, prioritize, rank
• creativity, imagination, ideas
• notetaking, reflection, recollection, summarization, ?? memorization
• to-learn lists - what's on it, source of list items, priority

transitions, pressures

• fear of failure, urge to conform

communities and guides

• community - interest, necessity, collaboration
• guides - subject matter expert, learning sequence, difficulty rating, trusted source, similar objectives, objective
• study-buddy, mentor, tutor, facilitator, guide, expert, adviser, assessor, evaluator
• learning guide - subject area, frame of reference, focus, breadth and depth
• adjustor - assess progress, feedback, suggest alternatives

influenced by Dave

Week 10

Cluetrain Manifesto

Erin Brewer

Filter, repurpose, remix, feed forward

Brian Lamb "Go fast, go cheap, and let it go" - and this is hard for educators. "Let it go out of control."

non-financial incentives often require that the act of sharing resources take place in a community, as many of the factors that motivate sharing may only be produced within a community.

Volunteers, moreover, need organizing, and the form of organization must be such that it recognizes and promotes the volunteers' motivations for sharing. Thus, as Horton (2005) observes, a volunteer organization needs a clear overall vision, strategy, and roles for participants. For example, consider the manner in which the Apache Foundation - an explicitly self-styled "meritocracy" - organizes its volunteer staff (Apache, 2005).

sustainability and scalability are problematic only when people rely on others to do things for them (e.g., when a site gets slashdotted). Scalability and sustainabilty happen more readily when people do things for themselves (e.g., the same content distributed by bittorrent). Centralizing open educational services is less scalable / sustainable. Decentralizing them is more scalable / sustainable. Wikipedia has two employees and well over a million articles in multiple languages. We need to learn this lesson if open education is really going to reach out and bless the lives of people." (Wiley, 2005)

Week 7: Instructional design and connectivism (October 20-26)

Grainne Conole four key characteristics of learning – thinking and reflection, conversation and interaction, experience and activity, & evidence and demonstration.

Anne reflects on Cristina thoughts about The role of people’s enthusiasm in learning

Week 6: Complexity, Chaos and Randomness (October 13-19)

my post - CCK08 Non-Linear Learning on Renata's research with professional development and picked up good ideas for arranging learning activities

• Tom groups first for structure then networks maybe in high school, wonders if your core personality type force you to gravitate more towards groups or networks for the PLN’s - no question, it does IMHO
• Dave talks about knowledge management failures -- problems that arose because critical knowledge transfer never took place. The "cost of not knowing" is staggering.
• Aiel making sense and being true aren't the same, knowledge as a river rather than a well
• Lisa looks at communications and learning then and now

Video Lecture: Complexity Science

Complexity and Information Overload in Society .pdf

The new dynamics of strategy: Sense-making in a complex and complicated world (.pdf)

Week 5: Connectives and Collectives: Distinctions between networks and groups (October 6-12)

• concept map - needs 3D or 4D representation, otherwise my list works ok for now

• learning by wandering around : groups, networks, Dave P - great questions but they extend beyond connectivism and could be summed up as How sentient beings decide who they are and what they want from life? There is no easy answer to "What do I have to do to get an A?" which is a good thing IMHO, best if learner works it out. I agree with David still needs to be guidance or paths or frameworks with hooks, Arielion It is about getting to a bigger picture, Sarah sees chaos is a major challenge for students (direction, sensemaking) and teachers (control), Mike worse - motivation arises from lesson plans and grade assessment Ariel No less passion, just a different vibration, the difference between a grunt of a hug and a song to come join. Eric success of the phone network Roy each node in a network gives you a different, unequal, and unequivalent 'site' from which you can see, access, and interact with the rest of the network.

• CCK08 : Stephen - Groups Vs Networks: The Class Struggle Continues education, freedom, identity, responsibility, accountability and authenticity - consequences; in groups entities are similar, networks more like an ecosystem where nature and number of entities isn't relevant - idea of the network, there is this idea of distinctness and diversity in an environment where people are encouraged not to be the same, but to be different. -- it's a Canadian thing. This is huge. As a Canadian living in the US, I'm frequently reminded of this significant difference.

• Stephen - That Group Feeling - Group at any risk, well yes, but... a bit harsh on groups, but some are so closed and harmful to insiders and others - it is an ugly side of human nature, Downes Interview: Groups and Networks watched this earlier, some are clear distinctions between groups and networks, some aren't.

• Collectives, Networks and Groups in Social Software for E-Learning - Terry Anderson and John Dron - I hate pdfs, too bad "collective" brings the sinister Borg to mind because it is a good word and not "groups" or "network" which don't quite work for connectivism and learning, though network may be closest. Interesting diagram with web 2.0 tools at the intersections of group, network and collective - not sure that I fully understand, but it is something to think about

Week 4: History of networked learning (September 29-October 5)

Readings A History of the Social Web the internet has always been social, interesting overview, some new details on people and dates, Dave good questions about our own learning, Jonathan 5 processes, Nellie learning must be purposeful and reflective, Bradley, Bee

A Brief History of Networked Learning George - 5 stages of network development, social networks

Stephen A Folk History of the Internet events by year, some pretty obscure

Are we there yet? - my short paper - position on Connectivism - clarify and state your position on connectivism. Is it a new theory of learning? Or is the concept of theory distracting? What are the weaknesses of connectivism as formulated in this course? What are the strengths? Does connectivism resonate with your learning experiences? If so, how? What are your outstanding questions? ... oops no citations/links to support your position. .. more of a narrative and observation than a defense.

Week 3: Properties of Networks (September 22-28)

Networks for Newbies .ppt

Stephen Downes: Learning Networks: Theory and Practice .ppt and audio

George Siemens Introduction to Networks

Pageflakes - I just don't see how this is wonderful - 3 boxes with local weather, 4 boxes with the same news item, 3 boxes of advertising

ecological environment - interesting, need for additional terms - niches, meaning cues, action traces ... interrelations between communities, the environment and the culture left there by people - the traces of meanings (Llora, Yasui, Welge & Goldberg, 2006) and the traces of activities... JSB link, lurk, try and my Eureka - Thanks, JSB post

Week 2: Rethinking epistemology: Connective knowledge (September 15-21)

My comment to Nellie Generosity: What's the theory? which prompted my thoughts - CCK08 comment on blog post / FOC08 open vs closed communities

concept map - examples network diagram ?? mine

FOC08 / CCK08 double-dipping - my post prompted by Stephen on Community Blogging

Moodle discussion forums I hadn't been here since the Introductions, but the assignment included a visit. My gosh - what a wild assortment of topics. There are way too many to read them all, but I picked a couple.

• my comment - They're hiding Yes, I think learners would be interested in the metrics. But many instructors / facilitators / mentors don't use the metrics either. That is partly because they are hard to use in most learning management systems including Moodle. Some of the commercial hosting and commerce packages have amazing metrics with visuals, and they encourage administrators to use the information. I guess we like to think everyone is special and resist reducing education to charts and graphs. Too bad...

• Catherine suggests Jaron Lanier's essay "Digital Maoism", Lisa's history lesson - a delightful description of changes including Gutenberg's press ...If it expanded anything, it was visual communication, because block printing enabled illustrations to be part of the book, for little extra cost. Diagrams aren’t textual.

• Catherine comments on Forums ...there are a growing variety of threads for all interests and tastes, and people can duck in and out of them as they see fit and start new ones. Even with 2000 people, all the threads aren't unmanageable or raucous as you seem to fear. They're rather bland in fact.

del.icio.us - my 10 CCK08 tags out of 565 as of 2008.9.17 ... Rodd's Google map, Mission to learn quote in emapey about the value of MOOC

http://technorati.com - CCK08 search

• Jay Stephen’s paper covers a lot of ground. Too much, in fact. His well-reasoned arguments would have a better chance of changing the world were they stated in five articles rather than one. I just barely made it to the end! A minor quibble. ... I concur with Jay on this

• Christy Downes argues that connective knowledge is not either empirical or rationalist, but a third type of knowledge. He uses a metaphor of carbon in different forms: carbon atoms connected differently can be coal, graphite, or diamonds. It’s the same atoms, but the connections are different. ... See, everyone needs to study basic science.

• mortgage information Good points. Need for reflection and guidance to make "better" connections than general learner interest-driven pattern formation. Some of the "good" social knowledge might never occur to the individual so these need to be part of the directed connection forming (or learning)... too bad the post format is stream-of-consciousness - take a breath, paragraph breaks are cheap and the readability improves 100%

What is Connectivism? (September 8-14)

Downloading CMAP was VERY slow. Too complicate to just pop in and whip up a diagram. I'll be back...

Wow - almost 2000 participants Matthias' CCK08 overview diagram - amazing! CCK08 really is that complex, MOOC and Mookies: The Connectivism & Connective Knowledge Online Course ~ Stephen Downes nice overview slide presentation

iLeonardo CCK08 notebook / collection test drive

• 2008.09.10 - elluminate session 80+ participants. definitions vs how to use survey mixed responses but yes to both was not an option, so I voted that doing was more important, just to get the show on the road. The theory will still be there when we come back, if it is any good.

• What is Connectivism - my thinking ... my reply to Marcel as Leigh suggests in his comment

• Christy thinks about build vs grow networks comments by Gina on Stephen's article, with comments by George, Stephen and others.

• George in Connectivism: Learning as Network-Creation same great content, formatted for much easier reading ... motivation, emotions, exposure, patterning, logic, experience ...references two of my personal favorites - Chickering and Gagne ... Meaning is transferred in a rich but messy process, incorporating the content, the context of learner and resource creator, as well as the cognitions and emotions of the learner at the time of knowledge acquisition.

• Comparing Connectivism: Reactions ...the primacy of connections in learning - whether seen as biological (neurons connecting), conceptual (how concepts are related), or social/external (the networks we form with others and with information sources). Understanding how and why connections from [form?] as well as the contexts in which networks optimally develop (and their key attributes) is important for educators.

I thought Stephen hated PDF files. I know I do...

• Little Boxes, Glocalization and Networked Individualism (.pdf)

• What is the Unique Idea in Connectivism?

• What connectivism is

• Learning Theory or Pastime of the Self-Amused? (.doc) ... Learning is more than the acquisition of information. Our capacity to accept new information is hindered by existing mindsets and understandings. In a sense, what we believe influences our capacity to know more.

• Bill Kerr - Critique of connectivism - some content is more important than other content. ... OLPC - Papert is upfront about bypassing adults and going straight to the children ... overcome the Occupational Health and Safety mentality that promotes fear and squashed innovation

Pre-work

• moodle intro post, reply 1, blog intro post, reading

Learn more...

• What is Web 2.0? Ideas technologies and implications in education (.pdf) - changes as a billion users are connected, not really anything new, just expansion and use of original ideas

• Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture (.pdf) They spent $50 million to figure this out? good paper with good observations about new / evolving behaviors, participation, learning

• Teens and Social Media (.pdf) - no big surprises here

• Media Multitasking Among American Youth (.pdf) - I question the methodology of use diaries. My kids don't even write down their homework assignments, so why on earth would they accurately record their use of media? Hard to imagine such conscientious study subject kids being representative of their generation.

• learning communities / networks - individual learning path, reading list and recommendations, ratings by other learners and subject matter experts ? del.icio.us, digg
  ... Gabriela We’re coming up against the one significant challenge that faces us online: decentralization is vital for allowing individuals to create their own context of learning…and centralization is vital for making sense of the larger whole (at least for most people).

• What is the unique idea in Connectivism?