This week I decided to check out some blogs. Im mainly connecting through google alerts and then following up connection on those blogs. Seems to be finding patterns of interest for me.

Through a different lens, – that of shades of grey on Possibilities abound . Lanis thoughts sent me wandering off thinking about the possibilities and barriers to connectivism in the classroom. Mike Bogles post highlighted the issues

“You cannot empower learners and encourage them to seize hold of their own learning experiences while at the same time controlling what they learn, how they interact, who they listen to, the networks they form, the way they are exposed to the information, and the time frame in which they are expected to learn it. You can’t both give away control and keep it at the same time.” –Tech Ticker

As an educator in adult literacy area in Vocational Education and Training I am looking around the small box that is called my professional institutional domain, with its ever shrinking curriculum choice, drive to achieve course completion, unrealistic demands to produce increases in learners macro skills in short time frames, very limited choice of technology subjects  not to mention the accountability demands. I am concerned that the worldviews that are driving our delivery are better suited to a past world.

Learners enter our courses for many personal reasons including wanting to gain literacy, language and numeracy skills, social disadvantage etc but they come as adults who have been operating in the real world, rising children, supporting sick parents, being employed, unemployed and using technology in their everyday life. As an educator with a creative spirit i have always looked for ways to provide learning that is rich, empowering, imaginative and rewarding but the organisational strictures/structures are choking hard

Connectivism is really guiding me in seeing a way to break free of the bonds that bind, I am ready thinking about learner networks that are emerging around me and the potential they offer for shaping informal networked learning experiences that are :

eg past student are using facebook to stay connected and looking for informal support to update resumes , connect back to their learning community.

Younger people connecting through our youth group wikispace through friends who are formally enrolled. Those disconnected/disadvantaged are finding ways to connect informally.

I am reminded of the need to ‘look for these networks’  similiarily today on the Elluminate session I was connected to Viv Evans who is doing some innovative work on learning for sustainability Http://learningforsustainability.wetpaint.com .

I think we are in an exciting transition period which is seeing the rise of the highly creative educator ( Richard Florida The Rise of the Creative Class for inspiration) http://creativeclass.com/richard_florida/books/the_rise_of_the_creative_class/

Educators have always found ways around, up, over, through, the organisational constraints and learning networks is offering a powerful vehicle for ‘ breaking the shackles that bind’ …

Next blog I visited Lets Connect
p://lcolombo.wordpress.com/2008/09/30/cck08-the-diapason-the-iceberg-and-the-learner/#comment-12

This blogger made some really interesting comments about still feeling like we need to ‘produce’ on this course. We have been living and working in this context for many years so the drive dies hard..!

I am judged by what I produce! I have just done

some great reading on informal learning in which I actually tried to

map the implicit learning that was happening as Icompleted a formal

task for assessment. For me this equated so well with your iceberg

analogy. My implicit learning was so rich, engrossing and consuming -

far more meaningful in helping me make sense of the ‘above iceberg’

territory. By necessity this great course is very fast and I am really

struggling to gather,synthesis, evaluate and integrate … For me I am

using the multiple metaphor framework in which some times I am busy in

the acquiring metaphor zone, gathering info, reading etc and other

times i am in the participating metaphor zone - Thanks for your post it

really helped me to think and try and integrate some stuff. 

My third blog stop was Learning in a sandbox

Joost Robben about learning, organizational change and technology : Joost has kindly shared his thesis on the netgeneration and learning. Still reflecting on this one. Last night my net gen was on Myspace and creating I was reading about the net gen…. this told me something. Net gens CREATE us others Digital nomads see things as a production and need to shift to a work in progress.