electro-textual

The fabulous choc-o-Nancy White was speaking about all manner of things today, including:

• how to facilitate in a massive online course, and the implications of trust in large networks;
• the range of identity and boundary from the personal, through communities to networks;
• new and emerging roles and practices;
• the value of “appreciative change”, which is related to the appreciative inquiry championed by Marie Jasinski and Maret Staron in ’07 research. Recognise people’s strengths as a starting point for the learning process.

Ideas came up around the responsibility of adult learners in a course such as this. In small groups teaching adult literacy, for example, we might gradually teach people how to become more responsible for their own learning, through explicit instruction, groupwork activities and reflective discussion.

But here, in a massive course involving educators, there was a suggestion earlier that participants would already have the skills of self-directed learning. Is this true, and would it change the demands on our facilitators? Of course it would .. in this environment you model other ways to cross-connect, eg forums, comments on blogs, using the chat in live sessions etc ..

Here are Nancy’s slides:

Christy Tucker posted her summary of the earlier session;
and so did Diego Leal.

Thanks to all these people for sharing their knowledge ;-]

So it’s week 6 already, halfway through the course, and i must sheepishly admit i’ve been ignoring my responsibilities as a student.

i’ve been following some of the forum discussions, and some of the connected bloggers, and Stephen’s dailies .. i’ve even made some notes and saved up a few delicious bookmarks.

But i haven’t posted any reflections or readings here on the blog. Oh blimey.

So i’ve listened to some audio/video recordings, i’ve read a couple of articles, i’ve finally made it into the forum areas .. and most importantly, i’ve put myself on the map.

Rodd (the Clever Sheep ..from Canada i think) set up a shared map within the google-o-sphere, and created a neat screen cast to show the rest of us how to join in. Yay Rodd. (Yes i did have to watch the video to work out how it is done.)

A few fellow Australians already there, including Howard Errey, Alison Miller .. but strangely enough people who posted at different times appear on different “pages” of the map. So Clint Smith is on page one, but others of us are on page three. Still can’t quite get my head around it ..

But for some reason, wordpress won’t let me embed the map on this page. Such irritating behaviour from a renowned CMS .. i had expected better.

Well this is extraordinary. Nearly two thousand people involved in a massive online course on Connectivism; a course that will go from now until November-ish, and takes place on thousands of different sites around the world. Have to join in, don’t i!

Stephen and George are among my favourite writers, and yes, i’ve missed a couple of courses i wanted to attend this year (eg Leigh on facilitating).. so it’s time to dive in and experience.

Got no idea what connectivism is really .. well it’s somewhere in there with Social Constructivism and Post-Structuralist, De-Constructionism .. Let me see if i can say:

Connectivism is all about the networks. Internal neural networks, and external social networks.

Apparently, we make sense of the world through our frameworks and structures, and knowledge is negotiated through socialising in our distributed networks. Connection creates meaning, the mind is a patterning agent, and all this takes place within increasingly complex spaces involving more and more technology.

(Mind map above links to full version.)

i may have heard someone say that knowledge resides in the network. Provided your network is working properly that is .. how many organisations suffer when key personnel depart?

It’s only day one, and already the goog has over 6000 links to CCK08+Connectivism.
Some of the many course links:

• wiki (week one),
• blog for regular updates,
• pageflakes (collecting all resources),
• getting started presentation,
• twitter for micro updates,
• Stephen’s Daily,
• people introduce themselves in moodle,
• Stephen’s intro on the Ustream TV site.

i wonder how long before i’m completely overwhelmed  ;-]

Yep, already.

image and photo credits: licensed under creative commons at flickr:
Thanks very much: fdecomite