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The Multiliteracy Project is a national Canadian study exploring pedagogies or teaching practices that prepare children for the literacy challenges of our globalized, networked, culturally diverse world. Increasingly, we encounter knowledge in multiple forms - in print, in images, in video, in combinations of forms in digital contexts - and are asked to represent our knowledge in an equally complex manner.

ighlight two related aspects of the increasing complexity of texts

(a) the proliferation of multimodal ways of making meaning where the written word is increasingly part and parcel of visual, audio, and spatial patterns; (b) the increasing salience of cultural and linguistic diversity characterized by local diversity and global connectedness .

Polling of parents often shows that socialization is a key concern

“The Big Think” as an alternative to Facebook, the popular social-networking site that causes angst for many brick-and-mortar schools over online bullying that can spill over from the site into school hallways. The Big Think is a closed social-networking site open only to K12 Inc., students and their parents

cyber students were rated significantly higher by both parents and students themselves in various areas of social skills, though teacher ratings for those students did not differ significantly from those for students in traditional public schools. Problem behaviors among online students, as rated by the parents, teachers, and students themselves, were either significantly lower or not significantly different when compared with national norms.

The quality of the online program is a factor in socialization, as is the type of student enrolling, she said

For a student already lacking in socialization in a traditional school setting, online education could be even more isolating. And for low-achieving students taking online classes, Ms. Minke said, families may not be as involved as they need to be to ensure their children are “academically progressing and to monitor their social development.”

From a larger, societal perspective, she said, online students may not be exposed to the diverse viewpoints or communities they might see in a regular school.

I’d worry that [online students] might not have the diversity of positive adult role models.”

Adding a layer of socialization to cyber school can make the difference in a student’s experience.

“This gives them the opportunity to collaborate on their work or mingle and become more invested in the educational process,

“We want to build a student-student relationship as well as a relationship with a teacher,”

methodology of "collaboration by difference"

how we both thrive as creative individuals and understand our contribution within a network of others

What is new with constructivism today is that these principles are being (have been) coupled with existing calls for educational reform

calls for increased learner control

From whence does connectivism originate?

1. Tools augment our ability to interact with each other and to act.

“carriers of patterns of previous reasoning”

all technology carries an ideology.

2. Contextual/situated nature of learning.

3. Social learning theory

4. Epistemological views: all learning theory is rooted in epistemology

5. Concept of mind.

6. We also find a compatible view of connectivism in the work of new media theorists such as McLuhan

7. We also find support for connectivism in the more nebulous theories of complextiy and systems-based thinking

8. Network theory

The Unique Ideas in Connectivism

1. Connectivism is the application of network principles to define both knowledge and the process of learning.

2. Connectivism addresses the principles of learning at numerous levels – biological/neural, conceptual, and social/external

3. Connectivism focuses on the inclusion of technology as part of our distribution of cognition and knowledge.

4. Context. While other theories pay partial attention to context, connectivism recognizes the fluid nature of knowledge and connections based on context

5. Understanding. Coherence. Sensemaking. Meaning.

learners are a diverse group

uniformity of university program tracks masks the differences of learners.

In an open course, participants aren’t filtered in the same way.

Higher education generally homogenizes learners through pre-requisites or subject streams (programs).

we begin to connect with those who respond favorably, we gravitate toward those who we find interesting (but not so interesting that we feel no connection),

One of the primary ways of connecting with others in an open course is through creating and sharing artifacts of sensemaking.

When our learning is transparent, we become teachers.

Essentially, we form small sub-networks that connect (lattice-like) to other sub-networks

technology

‘complex’ phenomena as different from ‘complicated’ phenomena

dependence on a large number of ‘weak ties’ in knowledge networks

connectivist notion of knowledge and learning existing outside the individual human brain

web of nodes and connections

Bonkers.

transient content