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The main idea of this article is to explain how and why he and George Seimens offer MOOCs to the world. Downes believes that all learning is about connections made among the learners, just we are the neurological connections that our brains make every second. He does not believe knowledge is acquired or transmitted, but rather experienced. One of his most telling statements is his belief that the process of taking the course is more important than what people may happen to learn from it--which is at the heart of what he believes connectivism is.

I was very excited to find this article! In it, Stephen Downes, Canadian Education Technology Research Specialist, describes his and George Siemens,' Associate Director, Technology Enhanced Knowledge Research Institute, free course, 'Connectivism and Connective Knowledge' -- or CCK11. It is a twelve week course of readings and online seminars, where learners are invited to read selected materials and study the content with a connectivist's approach. Downes says, "What is important about a connectivist course, after all, is not the course content. Oh, sure, there is some content -- you can't have a conversation without it -- but the content isn't the important thing. It serves merely as a catalyst, a mechanism for getting our projects, discussions and interactions off the ground. It may be useful to some people, but it isn't the end product, and goodness knows we don't want people memorizing it." I want to register for the next one!

This is a blog post from Steven Downes about the courses on connectivism he offered with George Siemens. It offers a good argument for taking the connectivist approach to learning and explains what connectivism is. It offers an explanation for connectivist teaching and learning falling into the 4 major activities of aggregation, remixing, repurposing, and feeding forward. He stresses that connectivism is a pedagogy based on the realization that knowledge is not something you can solidify into a single perfect product to pass along because different people/communities will always interpret/learn from it differently.

George Siemens and Stephen Downes provide online courses call 'Connectivism and Connective Knowledge' to over 2,000 educators on the philosophy of teaching and learning they instill in their learners. http://cck11.mooc.ca is a twelve week course that is free for those who register. They disclose attributes to connectivist teaching and learning. Aggregation provides a starting point. Remixing draws connections to others. Repurposing is practicing the concepts learned, not just repeating them with route memorization techniques. Feeding forward consists of sharing with others and being able to collaborate on others' projects to use them as your own.

What I find really cool about this is that the content of the course is not what is important, but rather the fact that they are connecting and networking. The networking is more powerful than the content is what seems to be the focus.

I found this quote interesting, "So what a connectivist course becomes is a community of educators attempting to learn how it is that they learn, with the objective of allowing them to be able to help other people learn." I like that there is no distinction between the "teacher" and the "student". Instead, everyone is seen as both learner and educator. However, I have some concerns about how this works with middle school or high school students. Are they mature enough to really take on that role and stay on task? How do you ensure the respect and authority in the class when you are putting yourself on nearly an equal foot with the students? Kids are so used to a traditional direct instruction class they they often get confused or rebel against anything different.

This is one of the resources listed in the video I posted earlier. It is an introduction to the Connectivism and Connective Knowledge course. It explains how the core aspects of connectivism are built into the course and gives a description of each aspect.

This article introduces the term connectivism as a "network-based pedagogy" Through the article the author makes references to a course that he will be providing. Overall though there is some really good information about connectivism from both the teacher and learner perspectives.

Along with George Siemens, Stephen Downs is one of the intellectual leaders of connectivism, which he describes in this article. One of the things I really like about this article is the fact that it is written for a wide audience via an outlet like The Huffington Post, rather than an exclusively academic audience.

I enjoyed this article because it identified 4 connectivist "activities." They are aggregation, remixing, repurposing, and feeding forward. It explains these concepts clearly while also giving a succinct overview of connectivism, and their relationship to connectivism.

This article provided me with a clearer understanding of the Connectivist approach and the four activities that surround it--aggregation, remixing, re-purposing, and feeding forward. It was interesting to read under the Aggregation portion that Siemens and Downes have to tell participants to pick and choose what they read for the course. We are still very pre-conditioned to want to read and study everything that is handed to us and regurgitate it back. There is something about Connectivism that bothers me. It seems a little "loosey goosey" at times. I like the idea of people being able to gather and share ideas and make meaning from them, but I wonder if one can become a true expert in something by just solely using this approach.

I love Educause! They do great work, and this quick overview of PLE shows why. Great overview from a great organization.

An overview of the Personal Learning Environment.  Begins with a great example of the power of a PLE.  It then breaks down the idea of PLE.  Excellent starter resource on the topic.

This article gives a brief overview of personal learning environments and discusses the following seven topics: 1) What is it? 2) Who is doing it? 3) How does it work? 4) Why is it significant? 5) What are the downsides? 6) Where is it going? 7) What are the implications for teaching and learning?

The entire Educause 7 things you should know about . . . series is fantastic. This gives you a quick, clear explanation of PLE's that anyone could understand.

With topics like what is it, who's doing it, why is it significant, where is it going, and what are the future implications for education, this article provides a good primer for someone who is being introduced to PLEs for the first time.

I love the simple straight forward layout of this article. Educause is pretty cool. 7 really valid points to consider. I especially like learning about schools that are utilizing PLEs.

Angela another great pick. I think the biggest key to this resource is a practical demonstration of a PLN for us to utilize. As information is presented we should not only be able to explain but use the resources! Living the theory is just as important as knowing it.

This is a very thorough breakdown of what makes up a community of practice. Also some good links in there (though a few were broken which I find common in Wiki's). Thanks to you posting this site/CoP which I had never heard of http://www.tappedin.org/.

Angela, While doing the research I came across this site as well but did not incorporate it my finds. I'm a big fan of Wikipedia and use it quite a bit for definitions and attaining public domain images. This Edutech Wiki is very complete with definitions and examples. A great resource.

I've never seen the edutech wiki site. I will have to remember this. I also like using wiki from the basics like definitions. This has some great definitions and break down of communities of practice.

I love to gather information from WIKIs. CoP networks are present in almost everything we do. Thanks for sharing!

I really like how it describes the cycle of knowledge development. Ideas are connected and then information is cycled back in and the cycle continues while expanding the circle with new information that adds to previous knowledge.

Debi, I find this idea of helping students to manage networks as very provocative. I see daily student misuse or illuse of networking sites. While I agree that they should be free to be social, learning how to manage these networks more efficiently to represent themselves and their interests seems a much better use of time. Thanks.

Great article Molly. I had the opportunity to go through a two-day training with the DuFours this past fall. IN their workshop, just as in this article, they stressed these two ideas: 1) emphasize learning instead of teaching, 2) hold teachers (and admins, and students) accountable for the learning. As DuFour states in this article, "Professional learning communities judge their effectiveness on the basis of results."

I agree with you that this was a great source to see the difference between PLEs and PLNs. I think it was set out in a straight forward way that was easy to read and figure out.

I liked this source because a majority use PLEs and PLNs as synonyms, and while they are closely related; they do have differences. The article was relatively short and a great resource for outlining the differences between the PLEs and PLNs.