Connectivism revisited

I have really enjoyed reading and listening to George Siemens on connectivism. I always say to people that I’m so glad I don’t live in a vacuum (often in response to hearing a great idea), and I think that really sums up the concepts highlighted by connectivism.

He stressed that knowledge is a moving target now–adaptive and emergent. Different skills are required to deal with knowledge as a moving target rather than a stationary target; we need to manage knowledge as a process rather than a product. This leads to one of his main points: “We have defined our students with skill sets that enable them to be relevant in a world that existed about 20 years ago.”

With knowledge being so fluid, he urged that our capacity to know more must be nurtured because it is far more important than putting our intellect in stasis by clinging to what we know today without the skills to continually build on it. To this end, he noted that content is the conduit for conversation and we must find ways to utilize this conduit in developing the capacity to know more.

Although I only heard 10, he said that there were 11 key elements comprising the nature of learning today with which the educational system is at odds. I’ll list 9 of them here because the 10th was an ad for his blog:

1. Anchoring (reduce mutiple stimuli and distractions, be disciplined in thought)
2. Filtering (peer review)
3. Connecting (connect to the right sources & info to keep us current; being personable and human with technology as well as with face-to-face interactions)
4. Creating & deriving meaning (what does it mean to me and to what I’m doing?)
5. Authenticating and validating information (how do we know it’s true?)
6. Critical and creative thinking skills (both in balance)
7. Pattern recognition (how to move through it all to what is needed)
8. Accepting uncertainty (are we prepared to accept a fuzzy truth instead of a simplistic falsehood?)
9. Contextualizing (some people just promoting one’s own perspective instead of listening to another’s perspective; where was the person coming from when they generated their bit of information?)

He didn’t say it in the list, but he earlier noted that we should seek diversity in our information. Not just the extremes, which he said comprise around 20% of the population and define the boundaries of a given subject’s range, but the rest of the 80% who span the entire spectrum. Seeking diversity, rather than sticking to our echo chamber, helps us be informed individuals.

These all point to something else he said and which we discussed at length in the last class session: “The reverse of knowledge happens when we have too many choices… We know how to break knowledge apart… what we need now is to know how to bind it together… so that it’s meaningful for us.”

I think that what he’s really saying is that people need to learn how to develop an intuition for finding relevant and contextual information in general, not just their knowledge domains. As knowledge is decentralized, we must be discriminating in what we choose to consume without confining ourselves to our own specific niche or opinion.

lively class

This is the more serious and reflective post…

This week’s class session was pretty lively and fun. There were several things that seemed to really stand out as far as how the class views Web 2.0 in general and in relation to transferring knowledge or information.

As we spoke about the topic of connectivism, it was hard to escape the idea that truth exists externally and is constructed internally. Other learning theories might have made this external/internal relationship seem mutually exclusive, but there’s no reason for this to be the case. Web 2.0 technology is educationally useful in that the associated tools contain inherent knowledge. Also, use of the tools enable a sharing of knowledge. Instead of knowledge being unidirectional, going from one to many, it now is pan-directional, going from all to all (or many to many).

Validity seemed to be the unanimous issue, so I won’t say much about it here except that just because something is posted doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s true or that the information is valid.

We are bombarded with information and we need to sift through it to find the facts. More importantly than ever, people need to learn how to learn effectively as early as possible. The ability to think critically and to define one’s own learning goals and educational agenda are necessary.

Personally, I really liked the analogies!

Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age

I can really relate to this quote in the article we were assigned to read, Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age , by George Siemens:

Connections between disparate ideas and fields can create new innovations.

It’s something that my husband and I jokingly argue about because he says that innovation comes from the abuse (of a thing or knowledge), whereas I believe that it comes from its misuse (or misapplication). My view stems from the synergistic relationship between the arts and the sciences. For example, a lot of science fiction books draw from existing science, but also act as a driving force for exploration.

That’s why I read a lot of really disparate books and blogs, because they give me ideas. As I muse on them, different connections are made.

As far as chaos and emergence are concerned, though, I’m not sure where the author is really going. Sensitivity to initial conditions has an effect on what pattern emerges. Do we just stand back and watch things emerge? Or do we try to do something about those initial conditions, trying to somehow alter or affect the emergent pattern? I believe that the latter is virtually impossible. I mean, we can have an affect, but we’d be sorely disappointed if we were actually attached to a particular outcome.

I really love the idea and phrase, “This amplification of learning, knowledge and understanding through the extension of a personal network is the epitome of connectivism.” I think that “amplification” is an excellent choice of words. I think that amplification of learning (or knowledge) is very closely tied to communities of practice as well as to interdisciplinary collaborative teams. It reminds me of an article from the book What is Intelligence, called The Role of Language in Intelligence, by Daniel Dennett. He says:

…our brains are in effect joined together into a single cognitive system that dwarfs all others. They are joined by one of the innovations that has invaded our brains and no others: language…each individual human brain, thanks to its communicative links, is the beneficiary of the cognitive labors of the others in a way that gives it unprecedented powers.

I really like Seimen’s concluding statements to the article. It echoes why I am excited about being in the ITEC program and what I hope to gain from it:

How people work and function is altered when new tools are utilized. The field of education has been slow to recognize both the impact of new learning tools and the environmental changes in what it means to learn.