#CCK11 Connectivism and Connective Knowledge Week 1

This is my third round of joining Connectivism and Connective Knowledge (after CCK08, CCK09).  This CCK11 would be another exciting learning journey for me, as I would like to spend more time in applying what I have learnt at work this year.

Why would I do this CCK11?

I am still exploring and learning about Connectivism and Connective Knowledge, as there are lots of areas that I think I would like to develop further learning on:

(a) Learner autonomy and its impact on learning (as shared by Jenny in her numerous posts here of First Thoughts about Stephen Downes Model of Autonomy ) and Stephen’s post on Autonomy

(b) How learners perceive Connectivism and Connective Knowledge in their learning journey and networked learning.

(c) How the properties of networked learning: autonomy, diversity, openness, interactivity and connectedness would impact on individual and social learning.

(d) How Complexity (based on Complexity and Chaos Theory) would impact on individual’s connective learning.

How would I achieve the above?

(a) By participating in the networks and conducting research through course readings and reviews, and reflecting on the learning and research findings.

(b) By creating and composing artifacts and research articles reporting on the above, within the next 3 months

(c) By applying what I have learnt through the course at work or with people of other networks and communities

Here I would start with:

I love reading Jenny’s post on the start-up and having watched and listened to the recording of the First week Wednesday session, have come to an understanding that:

(a) The course is designed based on a decentralized learning space and platform where each participant feels free and comfortable to choose and decide upon. This CCK11 would attempt to steer away from LMS (based on Moodle discussion) and would fully embrace the spirit of PLE/N in the networks.  There is a all discussion threads here for participants who want to raise topics for discussion.

(b) In this course wiki Stephen highlighted the important activities involved through this How the course works :

Aggregate

Remix

Repurpose

Feed Forward

The expectations of the facilitators are: Do feel free to Create, Interact and Track throughout the course.  George, the facilitator in his suggestion on “what to expect?” included:

(1) A bit of confusion at the start

(2) Don’t try and read everything: skim & dive

(3) Take what’s relevant now – the archive will be here for later.

(c) So in the diagram of How Learning Occurs:

It involves: Educator and Learner in the Process of:

Aggregation – Integrated services (iGoogle), RSS Readers, gRSShopper

Curation – The Daily, Course resources & Readings, Interaction around learner artifacts

Interaction – Asynchronous Interaction, Quasi-Synchronous Interaction, Synchronous Interaction

Creation of Artifact – Individual, Collaborative

In response to questions about how knowledge is created through the artifacts, George emphasized the importance of growth of knowledge, rather than the creation of new knowledge.

I would like to reflect on Stephen’s post in the Elluminate Session: “George and I don’t have an agenda of ‘content’ that we want to ‘teach’ as implied by course objectives.”  My interpretation is that Stephen is encouraging participants to learn through the open sharing of multiple perspectives, artifacts, participation and interaction with each others (where participants could also be playing the role of the educators and learners from time to time, under certain situations, like blogging with explaining of what has been learnt through personal readings, reflection or commenting on the resources, artifacts, or other blog posts), whereas the facilitators are just one node of the network, and so wouldn’t be “teaching” to the content  as typical in a traditional online course.

In summary, I appreciate George and Stephen’s great start in CCK09, where the course is now designed with open and diversified elements – like decentralized learning space and media, choice of tools and media, learner autonomy, normative and negotiated learning strategies (aggregate, remix, repurpose, feedforward)  and a whole set of new and emergent ideas (for new comers) (in terms of connectivist principles of learning as the forming of connections, construction and navigation of distributed knowledge, and that knowledge is distributed across networks).

As I am still working on the research findings and literature review on the Design and Delivery of MOOC-PLENK, I would need some time to consolidate my learnings from the research.

I will come back to the sharing of the first 2 weeks’ of readings of the course at a later time.

John

#PLENK2010 Connectivism

Below is the comment in response to Stephen’s post on What Connectivism is

Hi Stephen, After reading your excellent post and all comments from others, I am more than convinced on the approach towards connectivism, in that it could add a new dimension towards learning, and help in understanding how we learn in a networked environment, especially the complex digital adaptive ecology.
First, as you have stated in various presentations, connectivist approach encourages and builds on connections, where learning is viewed as ontology rather than a static view. Second, different views under a connectivist approach is a healthy one, which to me also encourages each of us to reflect more deeply on the values of communication and interaction, and the importance of sharing of tacit and explicit (views/knowledge) in the learning process. Your example on chess playing illustrates the importance of pattern recognition, not mere knowledge per se. I resonate your views when I played with Chinese Chess. It’s the strategy that wins and the establishment of pattern which is the fun behind, not the one or two steps that lie ahead that determines the pattern, or the “knowledge” in playing chess.
May be what makes a fundamental difference with connectivism to all other approaches or theories would be that its application in external digital and virtual social networking and educational networks in particular, where we may not be seeing each other face to face, and so all those “meaningful learning in a traditional teaching” doesn’t translate into a reality.
I could sense the friction coming out of some of the interactions above, especially with the notion of techno-communism from CatFitz point of view, which sounds interesting.
I would applaud Stephen in sharing this important message on connectivism, where technology is accelerating and enhancing the mode of learning across the networks and individuals, even if people don’t want to see or accept connectivism as a new learning theory. Time will tell.
John

Commented here.

Connectivity, information overload metaphors

This relates to my past post and my response to Jenny’s post and George’s post on Quora

My confusion with information overload, that may be the result of filter failure is that under the web and internet information space and media landscape, each of us could flap our wings, raise our “voices” in our connections and interactions, and so most of the surprises are unpredictable, like the weather, and are emergent..even with the patterns that emerged.  So connections create meaning (at social level), but the meaning is in the networks (at neural or neuronal level).  The connections only make sense in “meaning” when it is perceived and interpreted by the connectors (nodes) or networks upon interaction.  That sounds complicated, and even complex – or further confusion…(even with aggregators and curators) because every one could interpret these aggregated and curated information or artefacts differently.  So, my view is: each of us could interpret connectivity in learning  (connectivism) differently, depending on your angles, your emotions, your context, and your attitudes towards connections, and networks, people.

How about the metaphor of a coin as a way to connect under connectivism?

In a coin, the 2 sides (top and bottom) represent the yin and yang of our voices, and the rim represents the multiple perspectives of each of us (both tacit and explicit ones).

When each of us interact in the networks, as shown in this piling up of coins, we could all see and sense that it’s yin and yang interacting with each other, surrounding us with more perspectives of the networks.  The emergence would be: toppling of the coins, or alignment of all coins.  However, if the coins are all piled up too high, then sooner or later, the whole pile could collapse.  This is similar to the information or connections overload, when too many coins are in “connection” with each other.  So we may need to focus on the similar coins, and pile the coins with care to maintain stability.  Would that explain why limited connections is better for us?

Another metaphor that could be useful to illustrate this would be connectivism as magnets – the polarity of nature, that magnetism exhibits on earth and in ferrous alloys.

Such polarity of views and perspectives (or different voices of individuals) could also be represented in the form of yin yang or the north and south poles.  Like poles repel and unlike poles attract.

The compass is where all these “connections” are connected to show the directions.  In this case, the context, the actual position and the actors (people, tools, resources, artifacts) are all inter-dependent and important in guiding us.

What are some techniques and strategies in handling information overload?

In this managerial information overload:

The more structured techniques for information handling required to manage information overload can be achieved at three levels of specificity:

Tools and Techniques. Knowledge workers need better tools and techniques to structure and retrieve information more effectively from both internal and external sources.

Organizational Design. Second, because changes in contemporary organizational structure have contributed to the explosion of information overload, organizational management needs to account for information overload in organization design.

Capacity for Inquiry. Third, these organizations need to address information overload issues at the level of the individual knowledge worker. People may perceive overload because the information they receive does not fit their mental models of reality.

Are these techniques and strategies effective in an open learning environment such as social networks or media?

I have found some of the following useful:

(a) Use of PLE/N

(b) Adoption of reflective inquiry in networked learning

(c) Immersion and inquiry in networks

(d) Research into PLE/N