How I see the world of learning based on connectivism – Personal Reflection

This is my reflection on learning based on connectivism – learning through networked learning.  I have written this post a week ago, but would like to reflect more before my posting here.

If we are to base upon each of our current “rational and logical” and “patterning of knowledge” thinking pattern in the initial discussion (the left brain critical thinking, metacognitive skills, and right brain sensemaking of pattern recognition and way finding), then you (as a reader) and I are likely basing on the cognitive processes of learning. Our behavior and how we learn is not only a function of the environment, but also involves mental events, mental representations (mind maps), our beliefs, expectations, emotions and intentions.

So are we employing a mixture of behaviour, cognitions?  This would be starting from me or from you, responding by you or me, then bounce back to you..and so on etc., construction and co-construction (under constructivism in this conversation), exchange of ideas or interaction with you, resulting in the co-construction of “knowledge patterns” or ontological sensemaking (critical thinking and pattern recognition together) all summed up with the connectivist synergy – wayfinding, sensemaking and patterning with Complexity and Chaos Theoretical principles all embedded. You could call such “process” of pattern recognition and sensemaking the basis of emergence theory.

I think the adoption of a connectivist approach could exhibit some of those behaviours of “I think this is right, and you think this is right, or no this is not, let me share with you what’s right, and then let’s be connected and let’s interact, discuss and explore” under behaviorism – cognitivism – constructivism and connectivism. I think most of connectivism (so far) carries a lot of educational philosophical concepts in its package, and a heavy overtones of what we call philosophy in general (no one single answer, it depends on interpretation, and perceptions) – a complete opposite to behaviorist learning models which focused on associative (or classical) and instrumental learning (or operant) learning (or the traditional teaching on a didactic /uni-directional/expert teaching approach). 

Effective communication and strong relationships are keys to a healthy learning ecology: 

Communication transforms a collection of individuals into a strong, mutually supportive team.  Communication builds the important ties that bind people together-inside the organisation as well as outside (Webber 1993, p7)

A key process to facilitate communication and to build relationships is the art of conversation.  Conversations involve the exchange of ideas, view and information between two or more people in a way that is non-confronting, egalitarian and open (Stewart,2001).  They are a vehicle for generating, sharing and processing knowledge.  Conversation is therefore a core business activity for knowledge work:

Through conversation, knowledge workers create the relationships that define the organisation.  Conversations – not rank, title, or trappings of power – determine who is literally and figuratively ‘in the loop’ and who is not (Webber 1993, p7).

Conversations are integral to daily organisational activity and a source of rich learning.

In some respects, these align well with the right brain ” thinking and learning”, the emotional and social intelligence that are encouraged in the global networks of communication, cooperation and collaboration.  These are critical intelligence required for development amongst people, and especially the leaders,  through networking, community of practice and team working over the net and organisation.  Tacit knowledge and emergent learning may be the emergent outcome of the conversation and interaction. In other respects, these align well with the left brain “thinking and learning” where scientific analysis and logical thinking is the basis of explicit knowledge construction and cognitions.  This is also the basis of verification of knowledge using scientific and empirical methods throughout  formal education and research (within the University courses in higher education in particular).

I think an empirical approach to connectivism will also be examined under such a microscope, since the experimental or survey approach is really testing the hypotheses set up, then collect data from a cohort of people, analyse them and generalise them as possible. We may still have to go through the interactive discussion and cognition processes with further participants (based on individual reflections and group sensemaking and patterning – like what we are doing in small group), then in larger groups…. then all these in continuous cycles in order to forsee the patterns. Again, this is only seeing the patterns of the patterns of the patterns, as I have explained in other areas – where learning is just one pattern of the whole education, and education a pattern in the whole development of people, society and civilisation. Is this a meta-theory of every learning?

Relating to the  induction and deduction methods mentioned by Daniel in his post on computer science researchers, since I have written this post last week, I would like to post my views here.

So, is this also a cycle of induction and deduction followed by induction and deduction etc.? See my other posts on the cycle on Complexity and Chaos Theory. This start off with the I statements followed by the induction (a method of logical reasoning that obtains or discovers general laws from particular facts or examples)- the survey, and deduction (the process of reasoning from general principles to a particular case)-the literature review and action research, that it’s what I or we (or each of us in this group) think the world thinks, then the world (samples of the population) reflecting back what I or we think (through our survey research here) and this is then followed by induction plus deduction with a larger cohort or others – bloggers, academics, researchers etc, and continue on and on….Is this the Folksonomy approach combined with the Taxonomy of knowledge and learning under the adaptive digital learning ecology?

Are we also exhibiting those butterfly effect and behaviour in our blog postings?  We are now all flapping our wings, and who knows when, where and how the tsunami or hurricanes will happen? Do you feel the turbulence? Will this take us to another virtual flight to meta-connectivism?

Comments?

Global conversation – what are the implications?

In this post
A powerful global conversation has begun. Through the Internet, people are discovering and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed. As a direct result, markets are getting smarter—and getting smarter faster than most companies.

What are the implications of such global conversation, especially on our personal learning and our organisation or institution learning?

What style of blogger are you?

I have just tried the Type Analyser and found this:

Enter a blog
The writing style reflects the persona used by the blogger.

New: what archetype is that blogger? and the secret agenda behind this research!
http://
The analysis indicates that the author of

http://suifaijohnmak.wordpress.com

is of the type:

INFJ – The Protectors
The thoughtfully creative and empathetic type. They are especially attuned to thinking up new and better ways of helping people get their needs met. They can be fiercely independent and can work tirelessly to achieve their goals. They often need a friendly reminder not to take themselves too seriously and enjoy the process as well as the achievement.

They like working in an environment where they can set goals and help people grow. Since they often are so good listeners and have strong integrity they often end up very appreciated leaders.

Is it me?  You are the judge!

Thanks Jenny’s Researching in a Team, you mentioned yourself as a Thinker.  Have I made the right guess?

Thanks also to X28’s reference.

This sort of games using technology are just amazing.  I just wonder how they did it?  Are there any one who knows how it works?  Who could crack their secrets?

Let me guess: when I tried the MBTI (Myers Briggs Type Indicators) you need to pick the key words and then you could be identified with a particular style.  I think this software is doing a similar job by checking the number of times those key words appearing on your blog posts and your own comments.  This will then deduce the style based on the frequency of words that appear to match for a particular style.  Another trick is to check the number of links included in the blog posts.  The more links there are, the greater is the possibility of a Scientist (who used to link up all resources).  The thinker are more inclined to raise questions, so by checking the number of questions (or qustions marks), one could identify those thinkers.  As for the protectors, the search of  words like imagination, goals, needs and the counting of number of comments left in one’s blog could be another way of identifying them.

Am I right?  Would you please tell me?

John

Is networked learning always in alignment with organisational learning?

I think this is a fundamental question that most people would like to know the answer but rarely dare to ask.

What is intriguing is that individual networked learning could be in conflict with the organisational learning.   This is especially the case at this time of financial crisis.

Ethics:

During the 2002-04 period, it seemed as if most days brought to light another case of corporate lying, misrepresentations and financial manipulations.  What happened to managerial ethics?

This important aspect of managerial behaviour seems to have been forgotten or ignored as some managers put their self-interest ahead of others who might be affected by their decisions.  Take, for example, the ‘Enron Three’ (former chairman Ken Lay, former CEO Jeff Skilling and former CFO Andy Fastow).   All behaved as if the laws and accounting rules did not apply to them.  They used greed, manipulation and collusion to deceive their board of directors, employees, shareholders and others about Enron’s worsening financial condition.  Because of these managers’ unethical actions, thousands of Enron employees lost their jobs and the company stock set aside in their retirement savings became worthless.

Although Enron seemed to be the pivotal event in this corporate ethics crisis, executives at a number of other large companies were engaging in similar kinds of unethical acts.  In Australia, there was the HIH collapse in 2001 which ultimately led to HIH directors Ray Williams and Rodney Adler being found guilty in 2005 of criminal charges in relation to the collapse.  Ray Williams was found guilty of considerable abandonment of duty and was jailed for a minimum of two years and nine months.  Rodney Adler was found guilty of making false or misleading statements which the sentencing judge describe as displaying an appalling lack of commercial morality. …

What would you have done had you been a manager in these organisations? How would you have reacted?  One thing we know is that ethical issues are not simple or easy!  Make one decision and someone will be affected; make another and someone else is likely to be affected.  In today’s changing workplace, managers need an approach to deal with the complexities and uncertainties associated with the ethical dilemmas that arise.

Source: Robbins, S   Management  4th edition 2006 (p57-58)

As an educator and learner, are we also facing similar ethical issues in the learning ecology?  What are those ethical issues? As a blogger, what are the implications if the information that we are sharing with others were originated from an incorrect information source?  Are we able to discern those sources with lying, misrepresentations and manipulation of information?  Are we responsible for the provision of accurate, up-to-date information in our blogs?  What learning ethics do we adopt in our communication and interaction with other bloggers or readers? 

What happens if our learning practice is not aligning with our organisation’s mission and vision?  Examples include when organisations have banned the use of social networking tools such as Facebook, YouTubes or My Space, whereas you as an educator is continuing to teach your learners using those tools.   Is it a concern to you?  Is it a concern to your organisation or institution?

How would you deal with the ethical issues in networked learning and organisation learning?  If you have found some ethical issues that are in conflict with the organisation practice, how would you deal with them? 

Comments?

Love Story

Love Story
Is it your love story?

I would like to thank Maru for showing me the link.

Amazing technology – You type and he/she speaks

I just got it from my dearest sister.
It’s really amazing ! Don’t forget to turn your speakers on!

You can type your name or anything and then click. This is quite amazing. Try it and see!!
Turn up the volume.

She (or he) will say anything you type.

I don’t know how they do this! When you move the mouse around, the eyes follow the pointer.

When you write something in the left space and then click on ‘Say it, she (or he) will do it!

You can change persons doing the talking and the language they speak.

http://www.oddcast.com/home/demos/tts/frameset.php

How will this impact on social networking, education, learning and research?
http://Connectivismeducationlearning.ning.com

Towards a Theory of Connectivism – Learning Principles Part 1

You may treat my ATM metaphor as follows:

ATM – denotes Computers – hardware/software, etc any internet, ICT, Learning Management Systems (LMS), Search Engines, Web 2.0 tools – blogs, social networking tools: Youtube, Myspace, wiki, Ning, Delicious, Twitter & Tweeter, FB, and many others emergent technologies or tools like Cloud computing, Mobiles, (non-human appliances).
Money – denotes the resources resided on the internet or social networks (or even our own networks (brain?, conceptual networks?) if there are connections and interactions of these networks)- information, links, articles, extracts, aggregates of “knowledge” or any artifacts – on-line or hard copy of books, e-portfolios etc.  So fake money could include fake information, incorrect information or spam.
However, you could also use abstract concept of these like virtual ATM, virtual money (such as internet banking) to represent the concepts behind learning – the immersive virtual learning ecology and SL with Linden as the Money etc.. This could be linked to all the learning concepts as introduced by Stephen Downes – where learning is ontology, non-propositional, emergent, and a continuous process that DOES NOT MEAN the acquistion of knowledge BUT merely as a networking process….which to me would be another way of looking into learning, from a more CONNECTIVIST and philosophical point of view.
Would this be a “connectivist” approach towards connectivism where all different approaches (all the metaphors suggested as per the posts, including Roy, Ulop, Frances (ANT), and many others from Instructivist, Cognitivist, Constructivist, Connectionist approaches and those of Stephen and Georges’ Connectivism principles are connected and interacted to reveal an emergent pattern of knowledge and learning? I don’t know!
Though there may be a lot of uncommon or “seemingly conflicting” views amongst them, I could see a lot of common grounds connecting them together, just like the metaphor of the digestion system in our human body.

Towards a Theory of Connectivism – Learning Principles

This is my response to Ulop and Roy on our Community Network on Connectivism:

Great that we have come to some common themes on learning.
I think it’s imperative to distinguish human learning from the learning “that may reside with non-human appliances”.
An example is when you go to ATM to get money. The ATM has “learnt” how to issue the correct amount of money you have keyed in and issue you with the money with receipt. So the ATM processes your order based on an algorithm and a process run by the machine and computer, and that is taught by human. Such processing of money for you is similar to concepts adopted by artificial intelligence. Now, what happens if someone put fake money into the ATM. So you will also receive those fake money when you use those ATM. For the ATM, it has “learnt” to give you the money you have requested, but it hasn’t learnt to check if the money stored was fake or not. So, if you receive the fake money, it isn’t the “fault of the ATM” and the ATM is 100% accurate in learning and “highly intelligent” in accordance to our human initial design.

Once you realise such problem of fake money, you may then re-design the ATM so that it could check for fake money. So, you would then teach the ATM to check the fake money (bank notes) before it issues any money. Through this process of learning by you and your re-design of the ATM, the ATM is learning through you as human how to ensure that only real money is issued to the customer. The ATM itself can only learn how to do the job through human intervention. By itself, it isn’t as smart as human. And sometimes, the ATM may fail to check whether the bank notes are fake or not if there are changes in the design of the bank notes or there could be mistakes made due to the malfunction of the “ultra-violet” detector (say due to failure of the detector) of the ATM. So, you may then rely back on human to check if the money is fake or not.
The above metaphor is again trying to illustrate how smart human are as compared to machine. Similarly, I don’t think there has been any machine that is built which could similate our digestive system so far, as we could cleanse any toxins through our body organs and egest waste which are useless for us. I would like to learn if such a machine exists in this world which could do all these!
This ATM example illustrates that:
1. Human learns through a biological and a neuro process with the brain (just like the digestion metaphor), and it is different from machine learning in that the machine can ONLY learn when the human teaches it (even if it’s artificial intelligence). You may claim that a machine can do some “learning” by itself, but as the above example illustrates, it must start from human. And a machine may fail to learn if the human doesn’t teach it to learn properly – fake money will be issued to customers without notice or warning, though the ATM is functioning 100% effectively and efficiently.
2. In human learning, there are some common learning principles with non-human learning (animals or even appliances). These include the observable – the Stimulus-response classical conditioning by Pavlov. Classical conditioning is the study of learning which involves reflex responses, in which a neutral stimulus comes to elicit an existing reflex response. Please note that Pavlov’s work on the physiology of digestion, begun in 1879, earned him the Nobel Prize in 1905. He first became aware of reflexes by reading Sechenov’s work while still at seminary, but his own research on what became known as classical conditioning did not begin until about 1902. At this time, while still studying in digestion in dogs, he noticed what he called ‘psychic salivation’ – a dog would salivate before it was actually given food. Since Pavlov believed that digestion involved series of reflexes, he set out to determine what controlled this anticipatory response. Ultimately, his work on conditioning overshadowed the research which had earned him the Nobel Prize.
3. I try to distinguish the human from non-human learning to avoid the confusion arising out of the studying of the non-human appliances, ants, spiders, pests in their life cycle, its ecology from human, especially when we are referring specifically to learning over the digital ecology, the net, virtual networks, and communities. There may be a lot of learning embedded in such social and ecological studies, and so I will leave it to the Biologists, Sociologists and Social Scientists or YOU to investigate. Sometimes, there might be a similar pathway in adopting the “behavioural” approach by observing the behavior of those creatures and generalising them on human. Would this be what Pavlov had tried to do? However, I do think we have overlooked his work on the physiology of digestion. I have now used digestion as a metaphor on learning. I must admit that I don’t know all his work on signal conditioning (and have forgotten what I have read years ago) until you asked me now. Please see Approaches to Psychology by William E. Glassman 2000 (that I bought more than 8 years ago).

Ulop and Roy, I am interested in learning how these could be further explored. I think it could lead to a great concept map which deploy all the learning components as cited by Roy and your critical analysis of learning. Let’s continue…

Research Productivity

In this Research Productivity: Some paths less travelled  B. Martin writes:

Conventional approaches for fostering research productivity, such as recruitment and incentives, do relatively little to develop latent capacities in researchers. Six promising unorthodox approaches are the promotion of regular writing, tools for creativity, good luck, happiness, good health and crowd wisdom. These options challenge conventional ideas about research management.

Martin concludes:

Finally, it is worth noting the side-effects of different approaches to research productivity. Selecting for talent and providing incentives fit into a competitive mindset, with the negative consequences of stimulating envy and discouraging those who lose out (Kohn 1986). In contrast, regular writing, techniques for creativity and using crowd wisdom are more likely to encourage a sense that everyone can be a valuable contributor. Good luck, happiness and good health are worthy goals in themselves.

In reflection, I appreciate how the 6 approaches that were mentioned have been adopted in our research team, especially on the importance of using tools for creativity.  This resonates strongly when I conducted research on Edward de Bono’s Creative Thinking, which was also explained in this Research Productivity: Some paths less travelled.  I would also like to refer to my previous posts on Transformational thinking- additional hats to thinking and Parallel thinking – the 6 hats in blog discussion  on my experience.

I am sure that our research team is having regular writing and good luck.  For me, happiness and good health is of great importance to keep me moving on with the research.  I surely benefit much from the crowd wisdom of our research team.

How about your research experience?

Think thrice before one acts – under Connectivism

I fully agree with Mike’s views on “Engage Brain Before Opening Mouth“. This resonates with the motto:”Think thrice before one acts”.

Communicating on line means that one is already exposing his or her identity there. Every single move or behavior might be monitored under the “surveillance” of the different search engines or RSS. One could check using the Google search engines (Google Reader), RSS, Delicious, or the social networking tools – twitters, FB, MySpace, YouTubes etc. One could also be checked by his/her weak connections, strong connections – close friends or relatives. Any comments left on a blog, Ning, wiki, FB, YouTubes could stay there for “life”, and there is no way of “deleting” them permanently. Even the ones that I am writing to you could be traced easily with Google, as long as Google is available.

May I adapt from the lyrics of the song? Santa Claus is coming to town “You better watch out, you better not cry(or lie), you better watch out, I’m telling you why, internet surveillance is out there for you!” So, is the internet surveillance the Santa Claus?  Are you both an educator and a Santa Claus?

Carmen mentions: “adults/educators/facilitators/etc. have a responsibility to fully understand and model social media use themselves in order to mentor well.”, so true.

Are we risking ourselves when posting on-line?

What are the implications of leaving messages in your connections and interactions on-line?