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"Lots has happened since then, so George graciously agreed to let me interview him once again about the theory of connectivism.  Since we last talked, George and Stephen Downes have famously created and offered some very important MOOCs (massive open online courses) to thousands of participants, and both of them have learned a great deal about connectivism in the bargain and shared what they've learned generously."

So, in summary, the absence of specific learning objectives and outcomes has earned the "criticism" for constructivism as "inefficient and ineffective". This may equally be a challenge for Connectivism to be adopted as a mainstream pedagogy. Unless the specific learning objectives and outcomes (based on competency-based learning) are adequately addressed and resolved, it seems both Constructivism and Connectivism would still be operating in a hand-in-hand "networked" informal learning "paradigm" waiting to be absorbed as new and emergent pedagogy.

"Connectivism and Connective Knowledge Essays on meaning and learning networks May 19, 2012. Connectivism is the thesis that knowledge is distributed across a network of connections, and therefore that learning consists of the ability to construct and traverse those networks. The bulk of this work is devoted to tracing the implications of this thesis in learning. Yes, this could have been a shorter book - and perhaps one day I'll author a volume without the redundancies, false starts, detours and asides, and other miscellany. Such a volume would be sterile, however, and it feels more true to the actual enquiry to stay true to the original blog posts, essays and presentations that constitute this work."

In this article, I highlight current theories of learning and critically analyze connectivism within the context of its predecessors, to establish if it has anything new to offer as a learning theory or as an approach to teaching for the 21st Century

"'CCK08' was a unique event on Connectivism and Connective Knowledge within a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) in 2008. It was a course and a network about the emergent practices and the theory of Connectivism, proposed by George Siemens as a new learning theory for a digital age. It was convened and led by Stephen Downes and George Siemens through the University of Manitoba, Canada. Although the event was not formally advertised, more than 2000 participants from all over the world registered for the course, with 24 of these enrolled for credit."

"At the Ed-Media conference, I attended a session by Sarah Schrire of Kibbutzim College of Education in Tel Aviv. In her discussion of Troubleshooting MOOCs, she noted the dificulties in determining her own direction in offering a MOOC in the "Stanford model" MOOCs versus the "connectivism" MOOCs. I found myself breaking it down into three categories instead."

"Do you know the actual theories of learning? A learning theory is an attempt to describe how people learn, helping us understand this inherently complex process. There's sub-levels of each theory, behavior and other categories … it's complex. But it's worth understanding. This helpful infographic does a solid job of breaking down the basics of learning theories in a visual and understandable format. I personally enjoy the part about connectivism in the digital age. "

"Should MOOC be designed to support specific personal learning objectives, whilst not compromising the specific course (or commercial) objectives?"

"The two MOOCs at Coursera discussed here are representative of the clashes between the views on how people learn. And people do want to learn, are motivated; are eager to take charge of their learning, make connections, expand their network and construct knowledge. The Web as a classroom creates opportunities for learning and teaching like never before. As the learner's needs change, so does the role of the instructor, and if he or she implements appropriate pedagogical methods for the learning context, both will have opportunities to expand knowledge consistent with their own learning goals and needs."

"To, "moocify" k12, the connectivist opportunities need to come out in stages and be student centered with a humanistic focus.  Based on this information, I have suggested a, Continuum of Open Learning and an instructional design model, called the Open Classroom Model, for future consideration.  The next steps are demonstrating how K12 learning environments can be "MOOCified" by connecting, collaborating and creating."

The search to find a new job must include networking and social networking. The idea is to get yourself in front of a decision maker, the person who can hire you. Rich Kenny, Senior Operations Manager with Kelly Services comes into the Fox 2 Job Shop to share his thoughts on how to use social media to your advantage in hunt for a new job. Do you have a Facebook, Twitter and Linked-In account? If the answer is no to any one of three, your limiting your resources and the potential network to finding a new job.

"Wirearchy is an emergent organizing principle that informs the ways that purposeful human activities and the structures in which they are contained is evolving from top-down direction and supervision (hierarchy's command-and-control) to champion-and-channel … championing ideas and innovation, and channeling time, energy, authority and resources to testing those ideas and the possibilities for innovation carried in those ideas."

Current & Archived Synchronous Sessions

""Feminism and Technology" is trying to take a few MOOC elements, but then to change them in ways consistent with feminist pedagogy to create a distributed open collaborative course or DOCC (pronounced "dock"). The DOCC aims to challenge MOOC thinking about the role of the instructor, about the role of money, about hierarchy, about the value of "massive," and many other things. The first DOCC will be offered for credit at 17 colleges this coming semester, as well in a more MOOC-style approach in which videos and materials are available online for anyone."

The dichotomy she describes is a lot like the conceptual move from merely connecting with other educators to collaborating on specific projects. The internet has greatly enhanced educators' capacity to connect with one another, something that only used to happen during professional development or at conferences. But taking that ability to the next level, using it to innovate and produce something new, would mean collaborating beyond districts or even national boundaries.

"I have argued the futility of continuing to call the connectivist-style online courses by the term MOOC. In popular culture MOOC means Udacity, Coursera or EdX, and Andrew Ng's keynote on Wednesday showed the tone-deafness of the dominant paradigm. At #OpenEd13 debate continued among the group of experts (and this conference was full of experts) regarding how we properly define a MOOC, akin to the debate at Educause where Mathieu Plourde argued that every term in the acronym is negotiable. My argument at #OpenEd13 is that such thinking is counter-productive to the political and cultural conversation about distance, online and open education: those of us in that world are still arguing about the definition, but in the mainstream the ship has sailed, and we need to accept that the term MOOC no longer means what it did in 2008."

"A quick aside: If you've done screencasts of educational technology before, let me ask you this: have you caught an intense, unscripted moment of learning on them? Probably not, right? The weird thing is with federated wiki this happens ALL THE TIME. "