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Contents contributed and discussions participated by Keith Hamon

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Is Connectivism a New Learning Theory? | Learner Weblog - 2 views

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    It could be argued that many (or majority) of the participants of MOOCs (in some cMOOCs, and most xMOOCs) are learning based on an instructivist approaches (behaviorism and cognitivism), and not on social constructivism and connectivism.  Why?  There are good reasons that I would be able to cover in this short response.
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The Sociology of Academic Networks - ProfHacker - The Chronicle of Higher Education - 1 views

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    Collins … theorizes about the rituals by which people interact with others, from large groups, to person-to-person relationships, to the imaginary conversations that a person engages in his or her mind. … When people interact their shared attention trains each other to be in a group with a shared purpose.
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What the science of human nature can teach us : The New Yorker - 1 views

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    We are living in the middle of a revolution in consciousness. Over the past few decades, geneticists, neuroscientists, psychologists, sociologists, economists, and others have made great strides in understanding the inner working of the human mind. Far from being dryly materialistic, their work illuminates the rich underwater world where character is formed and wisdom grows. They are giving us a better grasp of emotions, intuitions, biases, longings, predispositions, character traits, and social bonding, precisely those things about which our culture has least to say. Brain science helps fill the hole left by the atrophy of theology and philosophy.
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Connectivism: Why faculty don't have to be quite so concerned about Wikipedia #CCK11 - ... - 1 views

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    As I begin a class on a learning theory referred to as Connectivism, I consider how greatly our collective abilities to access to information have transformed in recent years, while our teaching methods in the university environment have barely changed at all. I ponder how much more advanced our abilities are to locate and share information, while our educational methods in the university setting have barely progressed beyond the overhead projector.
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#cck11: Connectivism and Social Constructivism - what's the difference? | Life through ... - 3 views

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    So what distinguishes a connectivist perspective from social constructivism? The difference is fairly subtle. As far as I can see, connectivism resonates with similar principles as social constructivism does, but acknowledges a greater degree of complexity in the nature of knowledge and learning, enabled by advances in technology.
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Teaching in Social and Technological Networks « Connectivism - 3 views

  • The largely unitary voice of the traditional teacher is fragmented by the limitless conversation opportunities available in networks. When learners have control of the tools of conversation, they also control the conversations in which they choose to engage.
  • For educators, control is being replaced with influence. Instead of controlling a classroom, a teacher now influences or shapes a network.
  • we find our way through active exploration. Designers can aid the wayfinding process through consistency of design and functionality across various tools, but ultimately, it is the responsibility of the individual to click/fail/recoup and continue.
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  • “To teach is to model and to demonstrate. To learn is to practice and to reflect.”
  • Without an online identity, you can’t connect with others – to know and be known. I don’t think I’m overstating the importance of have a presence in order to participate in networks.
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    Given that coherence and lucidity are key to understanding our world, how do educators teach in networks? For educators, control is being replaced with influence. Instead of controlling a classroom, a teacher now influences or shapes a network.
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Learning or Management Systems? « Connectivism - 0 views

  • Two broad approaches exist for learning technology implementation: The adoption of a centralized learning management approach. This may include development of a central learning support lab where new courses are developed in a team-based approach—consisting of subject matter expert, graphic designers, instructional designer, and programmers. This model can be effective for creation of new courses and programs receiving large sources of funding. Most likely, however, enterprise-wide adoption (standardizing on a single LMS) requires individual departments and faculty members to move courses online by themselves. Support may be provided for learning how to use the LMS, but moving content online is largely the responsibility of faculty. This model works well for environments where faculty have a high degree of autonomy, though it does cause varying levels of quality in online courses. Personal learning environments (PLEs) are a recent trend addressing the limitations of an LMS. Instead of a centralized model of design and deployment, individual departments select from a collage of tools—each intending to serve a particular function in the learning process. Instead of limited functionality, with highly centralized control and sequential delivery of learning, a PLE provides a more contextually appropriate toolset. The greater adaptability to differing learning approaches and environments afforded by PLEs is offset by the challenge of reduced structure in management and implementation of learning. This can present a significant challenge when organizations value traditional lecture learning models.
  • Self-organised learning networks provide a base for the establishment of a form of education that goes beyond course and curriculum centric models, and envisions a learner-centred and learner controlled model of lifelong learning. In such learning contexts learners have the same possibilities to act that teachers and other staff members have in regular, less learner-centred educational approaches. In addition these networks are designed to operate without increasing the workload for learners or staff members.
  • Instead of learning housed in content management systems, learning is embedded in rich networks and conversational spaces. The onus, again, falls on the university to define its views of learning.
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  • Two key areas are gaining substantial attention: (a) social software, and (b) personal learning environments (PLEs). Social software and PLEs have recently gained attention as alternatives to the structured model of an LMS. PLEs are defined as: “systems that help learners take control of and manage their own learning” (van Harmelen, 2006, ¶ 1). PLEs “are about articulating a conceptual shift that acknowledges the reality of distributed learning practices and the range of learner preference” (Fraser, 2006, ¶ 9). A variety of informal, socially-based tools comprise this space: (a) blogs, (b) wikis, (c) social bookmarking sites, (d) social networking sites (may be pure networking, or directed around an activity, 43 Things or flickr are examples), (e) content aggregation through RSS or Atom, (f) integrated tools, like elgg.net, (g) podcast and video cast tools, (h) search engines, (i) email, and (j) Voice over IP.
  • For an individual used to Skyping, blogging, tagging, creating podcasts, or collaboratively writing an online document, the transition to a learning management system is a step back in time (by several years).
  • LMS may well continue to play an important role in education—but not as a critical centre. Diverse tools, serving different functionality, adhering to open guidelines, inline with tools learners currently use, may be the best option forward.
  • As these learners enter higher education, they may not be content to sit and click through a series of online content pages with periodic contributions to a discussion forum.
  • Involve all stakeholders (beyond simple surveys). Define the university’s view of learning. Critically evaluate the role of an LMS in relation to university views of learning and needs of all stakeholders. Promote an understanding that different learning needs and context require different approaches. Perform small-scale research projects utilizing alternative methods of learning. Foster communities where faculty can dialogue about personal experiences teaching with technology. Actively promote different learning technologies to faculty, so their unique needs—not technology—drives tools selected.
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    The initial intent of an LMS was to enable administrators and educators to manage the learning process. This mindset is reflected in the features typically promoted by vendors: ability to track student progress, manage content, roster students, and such. The learning experience takes a back seat to the management functions.
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Thinking out loud about Connectivism « iterating toward openness - 0 views

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    Explores 2 questions about connectivism.
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connectivistlearning [licensed for non-commercial use only] / Home - 0 views

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    Web 2.0 & Connectivist Learning will focus on utilizing new technologies to connect, collaborate, create, and share.  The primary focus will be on teacher professional learning and building a Personal Learning Network.  We will explore in depth how web 2.0 tools like blogs, wikis, podcasts, vodcasts, social bookmarking, social networking, microblogging, and others can be utilized both for personal professional growth and how these tools might be used in the classroom.
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Half an Hour: Connectivism and Transculturality - 1 views

  • you need a mixture of materials, you need a collection of different perspectives, different points of view, in order to come to any new understanding.
  • Communities have to be open, they have to have some source of new material coming in, whether its raw material, resources, ideas, etc., and then they have to have some place where they can send their creative product, the things that they make, the ideas that they have.
  • A third criterion that distinguishes a community defines as a network from a community defined as a group is autonomy. And what that means is that each of the members of that community are working toward their own sense of values, their own sense of purpose, their own goals or endeavours.
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  • When I say 'interactivity' I say the knowledge in the community is created by the interaction of the members of the community rather than created in one person and then spread through the community.
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    Our knowledge, our intelligence, must be based on something emergent from the connective activity of many individual neurons, can't be based on the content of a neuron, has to be based on the pattern of connectivity of these neurons. We replicate that in connectivist teaching.
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Connectivism & Connective Knowledge » Narratives of coherence - 0 views

  • narrative of coherence
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    In a traditional course, the educator hacks the trails to complex information landscapes. The educator's bias influences what is included and excluded. What we're talking about here is the ability for each learner to create their own narrative of coherence.
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Week3_Networks - 0 views

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    Siemens provides an overview of networks and outlines the implications for Connectivism.
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Connectivism Technology Web 2.0 Education Learning and Research - Connectivism, Technol... - 0 views

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    To share & discuss education, learning and research in Connectivism, Technology, Web2.0, e-Learning, PLE, K-12, Higher and Open Education
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Rhizomatic Education: Community as Curriculum | A JISC U&I Stream funded project - 0 views

  • Neither of these theories, however, is sufficient to represent the nature of learning in the online world. There is an assumption in both theories that the learning process should happen organically but that knowledge, or what is to be learned, is still something independently verifiable with a definitive beginning and end goal determined by curriculum.
    • Keith Hamon
       
      The problem here is with the reliance upon an independent, external authority to validate new knowledge, or in the language of D&G: "The point is that a rhizome or multiplicity never allows itself to be overcoded, never has available a supplementary dimension over and above its number of lines, that is, over and above the mulitiplicity of numbers attached to those lines" (ATP, 9).
  • The rhizome metaphor, which represents a critical leap in coping with the loss of a canon against which to compare, judge, and value knowledge, may be particularly apt as a model for disciplines on the bleeding edge where the canon is fluid and knowledge is a moving target.
    • Keith Hamon
       
      I'm wondering if it isn't time to dispense with the notion of a canon altogether and replace it with the state of the conversation at present.
  • The combination of these origins suggests a relationship of knowledge, power, and agency that is grounded in both the social and the political spheres. Knowledge represents “positions from which people make sense of their worlds and their place in them, and from which they construct their concepts of agency, the possible, and their own capacities to do” (Stewart 2002, 20).
    • Keith Hamon
       
      Very much a process of cartography and decalcomania.
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  • The role of the instructor in all of this is to provide an introduction to an existing professional community in which students may participate—to offer not just a window, but an entry point into an existing learning community.
    • Keith Hamon
       
      This is a role I've not much played, but that should be a part of each faculty.
  • What is needed is a model of knowledge acquisition that accounts for socially constructed, negotiated knowledge. In such a model, the community is not the path to understanding or accessing the curriculum; rather, the community is the curriculum.
  • Knowledge can again be judged by the old standards of "I can" and "I recognize." If a given bit of information is recognized as useful to the community or proves itself able to do something, it can be counted as knowledge. The community, then, has the power to create knowledge within a given context and leave that knowledge as a new node connected to the rest of the network.
    • Keith Hamon
       
      What counts as knowledge in the sense of cartography and decalcomania is that which enables me to do something or to recognize something, and this knowledge has value for me within some social network.
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    The rhizome metaphor, which represents a critical leap in coping with the loss of a canon against which to compare, judge, and value knowledge, may be particularly apt as a model for disciplines on the bleeding edge where the canon is fluid and knowledge is a moving target.
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Choice Learning: Connectivism Online Conference - George Siemens - 0 views

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    Knowledge today is complex, ever changing, and information is overabundant. Knowledge no longer resides in a place, in a brain, in one person or a cadre of experts - it is in the connections we make, our networks of learning.
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Jan05_01 - 0 views

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    George Siemens advances a theory of learning that takes into account trends in learning, the use of technology and networks, and the diminishing half-life of knowledge. It combines relevant elements of many learning theories, social structures, and technology to create a powerful theoretical construct for learning in the digital age.
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Reflections on open courses « Connectivism - 0 views

  • MOOCs reduce barriers to information access and to the dialogue that permits individuals (and society) to grow knowledge.
  • Knowledge is a mashup. Many people contribute. Many different forums are used. Multiple media permit varied and nuanced expressions of knowledge. And, because the information base (which is required for knowledge formation) changes so rapidly, being properly connected to the right people and information is vitally important.
  • MOOCs share the process of knowledge work – facilitators model and display sensemaking and wayfinding in their discipline. They respond to critics, to challenges from participants in the course. Instead of sharing only their knowledge (as is done in a university course) they share their sensemaking habits and their thinking processes with participants. Epistemology is augmented with ontology.
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    Siemens' thoughts about the impact of open courses on learning and the Academy.
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Connectivist and Constructivist PLEs « Viplav Baxi's Meanderings - 1 views

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    Is the PLE a connectivist construct or a constructivist construct? Or both? Or neither, just influenced by many theories? A statement by Wendy Drexler in her paper prompted this question.
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Connectivism - Knowledge Federation - 0 views

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    An overview of connectivism.
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