Group items tagged

This is an excerpt from the book by Etienne Wenger, Communities of Practice: Learning, meaning, and identity. In it, Wenger details that communities of practice are found everywhere in our lives, from a very young age (daycare!) on up. For many reasons, modern societies are concerned that valid learning takes place and Wendger hopes to contribute. He points out that "a social theory of learning is...not exclusively an academic enterprise." It is all around us. Wenger is not discounting the many other theories of learning that have been developed in the past. His theory is in addition to these.

Andrea, thank you for finding this. I thought I'd found everything available on the internet for Wenger. I had been vacillating back and forth about purchasing "Communities of Practice: Learning, meaning, and identity." Having now read this chapter, I think I'll have to go ahead and buy the book. I love Wenger's writing, especially his straightforward prose used to support his argument for the Communities of Practice theory. Here's a fine example: "What if we assumed that learning is as much a part of our human nature as eating or sleeping, that it is both life-sustaining and inevitable, and that - given a chance - we are quite good at it? And what if, in addition, we assumed that learning is, in its essence, a fundamentally social phenomenon, reflecting our own deeply social nature as human beings capable of knowing?" That's very nice.

Stevens, V. (2008). Trial by Twitter: The rise and slide of the year's most viral microblogging platform. TESL-EJ: Teaching English as a Second or Foreign Language, 12(1). This article did not focus just on Connectivism or just on communities of practice but provided a clear example of both after my previous readings. If you think about the basic fundamental of twitter it would be easy to discount at first whether or not it would be successful. I'm sure along the way some may have even felt that it was a fad destined to fail or fade. Who would want to be limited to only one hundred and fifty characters to get out a complete thought and why would anyone be interested. Well right now according to this article twitter is the most popular microblogging tool that has existed. I found it interesting if you have read my previous articles especially about linguistics in communities of practice that twitter type has made its way into our everyday vernacular, such as saying hash tag in actual dictation. Interesting that a change in our speech and actions are indicators of belonging to a certain community of practice, much like how some groups say 'lol' instead of actually laughing out loud. This article draws these dots that are easily linked together to show Connectivism. The author spends time explaining when he "got" twitter, or when it dawned on him this is an excellent tool. From there he uses some great analogies to describe the connected world twitter produces for millions of users a day. My favorite quote from his article "To 'get' twitter, you have to have your finger on the pulse of what is pumping lifeblood through the Internet, and that is the people on it and how they come together (Connectivism), connect, and relate to one another (communities of practice) in virtual learning networks". (Stevens,2008)

I didn't realize Twitter had been around as long as it has - I also didn't know it's origins. Lost most of the social media sites it's changed a lot since the beginning!

Great post and I was cracking up at "The Twitter Curve" image. It gave a good explanation to me about what makes Twitter so powerful and its benefits but am also glad it touched on things to be leery of.

I did not know that the government required schools to filter information if taking part on an E-rate discount. A simple article but has a lot of important content.

A combination of PLN and connectivism that shows why we need this more than ever in education.

This is great. I really like the video format and how Johnson brought all of his ideas together and is really talking about connectivism. He never said the word, but he's talking about connectivity and innovation. He's talking about PLNs and CoPs. The video was very helpful

There is an office space in Fayetteville that I feel is built around this premise. The space is set up to facilitate connections and foster innovation. http://www.fayettevilleflyer.com/2012/01/24/the-iceberg-the-stage-is-set/

Two more of those "C" words- helping to discern between them. The argument here is that connectivism is new, thus the misspelled word suggestion every time I type it in, whereas Constructivism is the "old" term and connectivism brings in more social media use to let people be more connected. I'll have to book mark the other blog they mention so look for that to be posted soon.

Mark, I agree with your point, although my thought is that Siemens and others associated with the theory would not discount the importance of offline interaction (traditional social constructivism) but rather highlight the new opportunities to learn that until now where being ignored in formal educational settings.

This blog talks about online education specifically science in an online environment. The blog post attached here talks about connectivism vs. constructivism. The post runs through how both of these learning theories discuss how students learn. The blog then goes into his takes on constructivism and connectivism.