This summer, major advocates for the potential of the Internet - including the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Mozilla, the National Writing Project, and others - are putting Connected Learning into practice. The Summer of Making and Connecting organizes hundreds of events, projects and programs in communities across the nation, around the world, and online to help youth connect learning to their interests and to enable teachers to learn from and network with their innovative peers.
People perceive what they are looking for, and often only what they are looking for, and our well-intentioned attempts to guide their cognition could just as easily lead to participants missing the information most important to them.
Similarly, we did not attempt to define how participants should interact with each other, but instead focused on supporting an environment that would be responsive to whatever means they chose for themselves.
they would instead reflect the perspective or world view of some organizer telling them what their objectives should be, what they should learn, what counts as success.
Participants, for example, could experience the course as a series of lectures, and some did, but many skipped the experience. Others treated the course as project-based, creating artifacts and tangible products. Others viewed the course as conversation and community, focused on interaction with other participants.
We were, for example, criticized for offering lectures, because it did not follow good constructivist pedagogy; our response was that connectivism is not constructivism,
and that it was up to those who preferred to learn through constructivist methods to do so, but not appropriate that they would require that all other participants learn in the same way.
Openness also applies to the content of the course, and here the idea is that we want to encourage participants not only to share content they received from the course with each other (and outside the course), but also to bring into the course content they obtained from elsewhere.
Learning requires perception, not only of the thing, but also of its opposite.
In a connectivist course, for example, lurkers are seen as playing as equally important and valuable role as active participants
I aggree that as teachers we need to realize that technology has changed instruction and the way that our students learn and the way that we learn and instruct.
Technology has always changed the way we live. How did we respond to changes in the past? One thought is that some institutions, some businesses disappeared, while others, who took advantage of the new tech, appeared to replace the old. It will happen again and we as educators need to lead the way.
With technology our students brains are wired differently and they can multi-task and learn in multiple virtual environments all at once. This should make us think about how we present lessons, structure learning and keep kids engaged.
Rubbish. The idea that digital native are adept at multitasking is wrong. They may be doing many things but the quality and depth is reduced. There is a significant body of research to support this. Development of grit and determination are key attributes of successful people. Set and demand high standards. No one plays sport or an instrument because it is easy rather because they can clearly see a link between hard work and pleasure.
Information development was slow.
Many learners will move into a variety of different, possibly unrelated
fields over the course of their lifetime.
Informal learning is a significant aspect of our learning experience.
Learning is a continual process, lasting for a lifetime.
Technology is altering (rewiring) our brains.
Connectivism is the integration of principles explored by chaos, network,
and complexity and self-organization theories.
Principles of connectivism:
Learning and knowledge rests in diversity of opinions.
Learning is a process of connecting specialized nodes or information
sources.
Learning may reside in non-human appliances.
Capacity to know more is more critical than what is currently known
Nurturing and maintaining connections is needed to facilitate continual
learning.
Ability to see connections between fields, ideas, and concepts is
a core skill.
Currency (accurate, up-to-date knowledge) is the intent of all connectivist
learning activities.
Decision-making is itself a learning process. Choosing what to learn
and the meaning of incoming information is seen through the lens of
a shifting reality. While there is a right answer now, it may be wrong
tomorrow due to alterations in the information climate affecting the
decision.
So what does this look like? I feel that when I attempt this, evaluators and administrators don't necessarily understand. They want a neat, quiet, well-managed, orderly classroom.
If new learning approaches are required, then why are we still being evaluated in a linear way?
John Seely Brown presents an interesting notion that the internet leverages
the small efforts of many with the large efforts of few.
The pipe is more important than the content within the pipe. Our ability
to learn what we need for tomorrow is more important than what we know
today.
Knowledge
is growing exponentially
amount of
knowledge
is doubling
every 18 months
To combat the shrinking half-life of knowledge, organizations
have been forced to develop new methods of deploying instruction.”
(the
understanding of where to find knowledge needed).
know-where
learning
a persisting change in human
performance or performance potential…[which] must come about as
a result of the learner’s experience and interaction with the world”
Learning theories are concerned with the actual process of learning,
not with the value of what is being learned.
The ability to synthesize and recognize connections
and patterns is a valuable skill.
knowledge is no longer acquired
in the linear manner
What is the impact of chaos as a complex pattern recognition process
on learning
An entirely new approach is needed.
Chaos is the breakdown of predictability, evidenced in complicated arrangements
that initially defy order.
Meaning-making and forming connections
between specialized communities are important activities.
Chaos, as a science, recognizes the connection of everything to everything.
If the underlying conditions used
to make decisions change, the decision itself is no longer as correct
as it was at the time it was made.
principle that people, groups, systems, nodes, entities can be connected
to create an integrated whole.
Connections between disparate
ideas and fields can create new innovations.
Learning is a process that
occurs within nebulous environments of shifting core elements –
not entirely under the control of the individual
decisions are based
on rapidly altering foundations
The ability to draw distinctions between important and unimportant
information is vital.
Behaviorism, cognitivism, and constructivism
do not attempt to address the challenges of organizational knowledge and
transference.
The health of the learning ecology of the organization depends
on effective nurturing of information flow.
This cycle of knowledge development (personal
to network to organization) allows learners to remain current in their
field through the connections they have formed.
This amplification of learning, knowledge
and understanding through the extension of a personal network is the epitome
of connectivism.
Diverse
teams of varying viewpoints are a critical structure for completely
exploring ideas
An organizations ability to foster, nurture, and synthesize the impacts
of varying views of information is critical to knowledge economy surviva
As knowledge continues to grow and evolve, access to what
is needed is more important than what the learner currently possesses.
Access is not enough. Prior knowledge and understanding is needed. Processing is needed. Evaluation of processing and outputs is needed. Feeding that back into the "system" is needed.
learning is no longer an internal, individualistic
activity
learning is no longer an internal, individualistic
activity