Connectivism and Connected Learning Course

Principles of Design for New ways of learning

lizrenshaw — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 05:09:49 +0000

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Search and use of a pool of quality-assured, open access content

Provides support for learners adopting independent learning

Opportunity for reuse and repurposing

Lifelong support across different learning goals

Provides students with access to ‘captured’ expertise in content

Includes a variety of activities and interactivity

Offers opportunities for in-built formative feedback

Potential for teachers to adapt and embed in their teaching

Provides conduit for sharing learning designs

Supported through informal social networking tools

Knowledge mapping and visualisation to aid understanding

Opportunities for presence indicators to support different communities

Dialogue through tailored content-focused forums

Channel from informal to formal learning

Opportunities for student-generated content

Good pedagogical design embedded in content

Personalisation through discrete stand-alone units of learning

Aggregates learning opportunities, resources & opportunities

Instructional design and connectivism

lizrenshaw — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 01:52:41 +0000

Learners have increased control over content and interaction what does this mean for design

Knowledge is to be in a state of connection.What is learning ? – creation of new connections, ( neural) can lead to stronger and more integrated connections. ( disciplines ) social – how we are connected to other people and sources of learning.

Design of the space and ecology of learning

Creating a SPACE in which networks and connections can occur. Who has control of the class ?

Ecologies-spaces in which networks occur – broad range of connections

CONTEXT - different contexts need different responses – situation of learning

students, time, factors, space time , skills of teachers, etc budget. technologie

Building capacity to ADAPT needs the development of different mindsets and skills

MINDSETS – patterning , way finding ( darking) sense making

Learners – variety of contact points – via a range of distributed means.

Its about a message in a distributed manner and evaluate that outcomes have occured

Cloud concept of design elements

http://elearnspace.org/media/InstructionalDesignConnectivism/player.html

What is wayfinding

http://elearnspace.org/media/InstructionalDesignConnectivism/player.html

Moving around the Blogs – Week 4

lizrenshaw — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 04:00:52 +0000

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.

History of Web – Week 4

lizrenshaw — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 05:51:28 +0000

Ive been experimenting with different ways to work with the resources from this course. Surfing about the blogs I found someone who went this way- read the resource and make a brief comment. So here goes..

Starting with the history of the web2.0 I was blown away with by the comprehensiveness of this broadreaching view of the webs history. Looking within the history context its good to see the pathway to day and the key players. Interesting to note that the telegraph created feelings of euphoria and too much information for the beginning users.. much the same responses to learners I have in my work groups.

http://www.collectivate.net/journalisms/2007/9/26/a-history-of-the-social-web.html

Seeing the players at different spaces in society, the graduates, the ferals, the dom com kings, and the international favour helps to move us from seeing everything as coming from the states. Interesting to see the way that different social networking tools have gained acceptance in different countries and to think why this might be. I didnt know that some spaces are hard to leave because you cant take your creations with you. Are these sites actually controlling people and content in web- prisons?

The creation of authoring tools, aggegrators, social networking sites, media sharing areas is happening what seems to feel like lightening speed, that it supports the idea that only through effective networks will we be able to access the information to help us find ones that work for our purposes.

The rise of the participatory community is another theme that emerges strongly as initially the technology was in the hands of a few often in specialised services such as the military but now we are seeing that people are accessing tools, creating their own content, and sharing as they want.. there has been a democratisation of internet. Certainly the rise of open source ware, free access to tools and services and open courses such as this one are revolutionising the way we go about learning .

Some tensions

1. Commercial and open access activities

2. Control/captivity vs open access

3. Copyright right and creative commons issues

4. Civic action and government/institution control

Great to see that some sites were developed by women eg Bebo but still a landscape dominated by males. Why?

Week 2 Meanderings

lizrenshaw — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 01:40:47 +0000

Am experimenting with some different ways to organise the information. What about uploading key documents to my blog? Give it a go.

shifting-and-knowledge-siemens

Learning Technologies Centre

lizrenshaw — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 05:33:48 +0000

I have been thinking about why orgs are creating LTC as opposed to having e learning centres/managers/units?

Having a look at Manitoba LTC this is a direct quote…. link to come

Overview

Now in its second year, the goal of the Learning Technologies Centre is to provide faculty and graduate students the resources and collaborative support to research, develop, and create pedagogically and technologically sound teaching and learning resources. The underlying philosophy of the Centre is based on the following four principles:

be learner centered
focus on effective teaching and learning strategies
offer teaching faculty development opportunities and resources on a broad range of technologies and levels of expertise
foster scholarship in the area of teaching with technology.

What do I like about this concept?- Underlying philosophy is about :

learner centred – a shift from teacher centred/business orientated/elearning

collaborative support – connectivism in action

talking about pedagogies and technologies – not TOOLS

not making money!

ConnectivismMap-Sept2008

lizrenshaw — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 03:41:24 +0000

http://www.flickr.com/photos/actionhamster/2850879730/

Connection of PIPES

Decision Time

lizrenshaw — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 03:06:08 +0000

After much deliberation Im going to try and enrol officiallly in the course and give it a go.

Challenges

So much information- knowing where to start

Feeling totally overwhelmed

Time/space/finances – getting into a zone where this was possible.

Another qualification or a future direction?

Actions to Do

Summarise other blogs to this one- consolidate information

Set this up as Personal Learning Environment

Learn about TAGS

Hello world!

lizrenshaw — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 01:27:16 +0000

Hello Readers

Im Liz . Im a real thought junkie. Only really happy when I have ideas to explore.! This course is a real challenge however we need to think differently in this interconnected world.

A real impetus for me was I attended the Knowledge Building Conference in Toronto recently and came in close contact with this theory and practice of looking at knowledge in a very different way. this course will help me to unpack some of those floating ideas im having about education in the future.