CCK11: Wrapping up; the long and short of it

I feel like I’ve just gotten started; how can CCK2011 be ending? I’m going to argue two contradictory perspectives on timing here because I keep waffling between them; then I’m going to finish up by promoting the idea that George and Stephen shouldn’t facilitate CCK next time but instead form a granny cloud of well-wishers.

Why CCK2012 should be longer

The next iteration of CCK should last for 18 weeks. With the lengthened time comes more opportunity to engage at a deeper, ongoing level with the materials that we have been given and that we’re finding on our own. The reading list may end up being filled with the same content, but some of that content—perhaps most especially the readings at the beginning that are quite dense and set up the course—could be spread out a bit to give us time to digest.

In graduate school, courses were 3-4 hours long each week, with intense discussions of what we were reading; that gave me the opportunity to carve out time to talk about the materials and really shake down what I thought about them and how I could use them. The hourlong discussions on Elluminate do not grant us a lot of time (although I hear the FaceBook group has online discussions that go deeper than what we’re able to achieve on Elluminate) and at least a third of them are about listening to guest speakers. Don’t misread me: I love those. But I would have enjoyed, say, another hour after Cable Green’s presentation to talk about all the information he gave us about the work he’s doing. And blogging, which I’ve tried for the first time for this course, doesn’t give the same sustained conversation as real life can.

And because this is not graduate school, which some of us may be used to, having a longer course may allow us to settle into the format before the course starts winding down. I know that just a couple weeks ago was the start of feeling like I had a rhythm to my work for the course: after reading the materials over the weekend, I check the Daily, go to the CCK site to navigate the blog posts and pull out what interests me, read it, click links in it, click around looking for new stuff, etc., on Tuesdays in preparation for Wednesday’s online session. On Thursday or Friday I might start a blog post about it (some of which have never been posted for general consumption).

In addition, a longer course would have allowed a few lulls along the way. Perhaps the Week 4 dropoff in participation could be planned for and accommodated; that is, at Week 5 we take a break to chew over things a bit so that at Week 6 we’re reenergized and raring to go. At Week 10 or 12, same thing. At that point, too, we could have a break to start thinking of our final projects and what we want to create as our artifact for the course. Right now I want more mulling time to think about my project, but I’m running out of days.

Why CCK2012 should be shorter

The next iteration of CCK should last for six weeks and should cull down the weekly readings into two at the most. This gives participants, most of whom are working adults, the time to use those limited readings to jump into their own explorations of content. Exploring on one’s own, making those connections to what you find, is an important part of the experience of a distributed course. Shorter, intense bursts of energy and activity are the way that some people approach a new learning opportunity. I have seen adult learners obsess about a topic, say kabuki theater or bonsai (I’m using my husband as an example here), and gorge on every piece of information they can find…and then move on to a new intensity.

A shorter CCK would also allow a more intense focus for the time we do share. The fourth week dropoff in participation has been mentioned in writings about MOOCs, and I think that with a finish line more closely in sight at six weeks, people may be more likely to pull up their big girl panties and keep up the intensity. For instance, these last 3 weeks or so, my life has been crowding in on any time I can dedicate to this experience. Many people’s initial enthusiasm cools a bit, not because they’re not interested but because the experience is now more “known” than it was before.

In addition, I think a shorter course would help the facilitators manage their time and efforts, too. They could give it more attention knowing that there is a shorter range of time that it will take and could arrange it to happen during part of a year that is for them not as busy with other commitments. A longer break between courses also allows them to help find/foment new content that they could bring back to the learning experience.

Lighten the load

I think I could also write about Why CCK2012 Should Be Taught by a Different Team. Not because George and Stephen didn’t do a good job, but because in that way not only is the course content and participation distributed but also the teaching is distributed. That’s not really a radical model; we did that a lot in graduate school, where each week a student was responsible for leading the discussion about whatever we were doing. They’ve done the course; they’ve collaborated to make it work three times now. Perhaps a cohort of former students could take on its next design and delivery? We could scope for new materials, especially out of the artifacts of prior courses, or create what we think we might need. Six or seven people could take different microtopics and continually develop them.

That way, Stephen and George could swoop in periodically and give us all a cheer. I’ve written about granny clouds before, and Stephen and George could visit our blogs as benign mentors just to say “Hi. I stopped by to see that you’re writing about really interesting things. Keep it up, and best wishes!” They could see the course morph into something they hadn’t expected, perhaps. Alternatively, they could lurk under assumed identities and stir things up a bit by disagreeing with everything.

CCK11: Concept map

Welcome to my Concept Map, assignment #3 for our Connectivism and Connected Learning course. It’s hard to read this small, but I kinda like the over / view. Can you see it?

I tried to make sense of the unique parts of connectivism as a theory of learning in the digital age. I also deliberately tried to keep it extremely simple and clear with few nodes and identified connections.

To create this, I tried a new software, VUE from Tufts University. Although this is a quite basic diagram, VUE seems to have more powerful elements within it. I always like to try new software, and sometimes I get in the try-and-discard mode, running to collect and know about all the latest shiny toys. (Funny, though—I never really did that with toys.)

I believe if you click the image, the large version will come up in your browser. I don’t know whether any of the embedded notes or links will work in this saved version.

CCK11: Educational and other despair

I just started reading Diane Ravitch‘s new book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Undermine Education. Ravitch has been very influential throughout the last few decades in shaping educational policy in the United States. A former supporter of the No Child Left Behind Act (the No Child Left Untested Racket), Ravitch has since decided that she was, in fact, wrong about NCLB and school choice. In her first chapter, as a response to readers wondering why she has switched her position, she quotes John Maynard Keynes: “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” She has always been a firm proponent of liberal arts, so she states, “Doubt and skepticism are signs of rationality.  …It is doubt that shows we are still thinking, still willing to reexamine hardened beliefs when confronted with new facts and new evidence.” (See her interview with Jon Stewart. Funny!)

While I have not always agreed with her, I have always respected her willingness to attend to what’s actually going on in the real world as opposed to the ideological one. This book is no different; she amasses a great deal of evidence from real school systems, studded with historical insights and examples, to tell readers what those of us who are parents, citizens, and educators already know: modeling education on business principles does not work for anyone. Top-down decisionmaking, strong arm staffing, rewards based on spurious indicators (student assessment scores? really??), and “competition” among schools (i.e., “school choice,” charter schools) has resulted in…well, nothing. A lackluster educational system with overtested, underchallenged students and teachers constrained from exercising their professional knowledge by having to teach to the test.

I’m only halfway through the book now, but I’m hoping she connects the school system to the larger cultural system to talk about poverty and the income gap, declining neighborhoods, and weird sense of entitlement on the part of parents who want schools to do everything for their child but do not want to pay for it. I’m also hoping she clarifies how schools have changed since, for instance, I attended them. Inclusion policies, whereby a child is placed in the least restrictive environment, strain schools’ and districts’ budgets. Low-performing students with IEPs (individual education plans) are monitored by two teachers devoted just to that paperwork, for example, rather than being in a classroom. SBH (severe behavioral handicap) students are attended to all day, every day; in-school suspension runs all day, every day, supported again by one staff member dedicated to just that…. It’s actually quite startling the myriad of things that schools have to deal with. And now the budget in a rural school 5 miles from me is so strained that they’re doing away with art, music, physical education, recess, and lunch periods as well as laying off teachers and other staff (not administrators though).

Given the situation in my state, where today it’s likely that the legislature will decimate public unions and then accept a state budget that creates havoc for local districts…maybe connected, online learning is the answer. At least for adults. But my excitement about the potential of some of these online networks and tools is increasingly overshadowed by my despair about the direction of my state and country. Yes, it will directly affect me and my family, given that my husband is a well educated teacher with a dozen years’ experience in a very challenging district (after his stint as an Army Ranger in his younger years…yes, we’ve done everything the “right” way: education and hard work). But how can we seriously expect that the increasing gap between the rich and the poor makes for a stable society for anyone? The question of access to these amazing new learning tools isn’t one we can continue to brush aside if we are really interested in learning, unless we’re interested in learning only for those who can afford it—as my husband’s recent protest sign pointed out, under Governor Kkkasich, some pigs are more equal than others—while we leave behind the growing population of those who cannot.

Addendum: 

Who’s Bashing Teachers and Public Schools and What Can We Do About It?

 http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/25_03/25_03_karp.shtml

By Stan Karp

The short answer to this question is that far too many people are bashing teachers and public schools, and we need to give them more homework, because very few of them know what they’re talking about. And a few need some serious detention.

 Some information from Mother Jones about U.S. distribution of wealth and income gaps:

CCK11: Openness and sustainability

A small caveat: it’s been a rough couple of weeks, so I haven’t blogged for our course much, nor have I commented on other folks’ posts as I try to do regularly. My apologies. Between a large increase in my freelance work and the additional time I’ve spent in crowds of teachers, firefighers, police officers, public health workers, prison guards, etc., who are trying to keep their jobs…I’m exhausted.

As I mentioned in my last post, which was my submission of Assignment #2, lately I’ve been chewing on an idea to provide low-cost computer tutoring flashcourses to the kids in my local school district who aren’t getting those skills in school. The trick is to provide these opportunities at extremely low cost but at a cost that is a decent trade for my time. I’m looking at this as a potential Day Job instead of the one I have…it could potentially give me an income that along with all the freelance I do would sustain me and my family. I’m not opposed to making it a nonprofit company—in fact, I have a lot of experience and knowledge about nonprofit organizational setup due to some past employment—but I would need to cover the expenses of the computers, the server, the space, and the equipment as well.

It’s a good time to be reading and discussing openness, then. I need to ask myself some hard questions about the reasons I’m thinking about this project and how it could be both open and sustainable.

For instance, if I create a website with the schedule of courses and so on, that website could also hold any materials I create for a particular course. A standard way of doing this would be to allow those who are taking a course to log in to the site for a specific amount of time after their course ends. An alternative way would be to allow anyone to use those materials, regardless of whether they log in or register for a course. Those materials would be created by me and I would be likely to create them to be used in conjunction with the course. That means that they might not be as helpful on their own. A third alternative would be to set up courses in the way that CCK2011 is set up—that is, the materials are simply links to material freely available already on the web. Anyone could get to them, use them, because they are already there on the web. The value of taking the course is that I’m there to help navigate.

These are kids I’m thinking about, ages 8 and above. Maybe a few even younger. Maybe some adults, too. A person’s reasons for taking a “live” course as opposed to just surfing around looking for stuff is the hands-on, instant help that a navigator/educurator can provide. Parents may enroll their children because they don’t feel comfortable themselves with technology. So it seems as though a combination of alternatives two and three would be ideal. The course materials are online for anyone who wants them. They make sense with or without going through the course. What I would be banking on, literally, is the desire for the hands-on help I can provide. This approach circumvents what George Siemens calls the scarcity approach to information.

However, I also have another layer of concern: how do learners take charge of their learning? On the one hand, this is about the actual flashcourse itself: what happens in the space, how I set up a schedule that allows for play and wandering, what learners learn from each other and how I can make that happen, etc. This is a classroom management approach issue that I feel confident handling. On the other hand, this is about these open materials: how could learners add what they find on their own to the official reading list? How could I manage that so that it does not get out of control—for instance, (illogically) assuming an explosion of interest, perhaps 100 different participants could add 200 different links to other materials, and then exponentially that list increases to 400, to 800…and then by doing so a lot of repetition in what they find and add needs to be cleaned up…which adds enormously to the time I’m putting in…. (Maybe that is why CCK2011 participants can link to other things on our blogs and send them to each other but cannot add to the official [cck11.mooc.ca] list?)

Here, you reader, you: help me out: Is it “openness versus sustainability” or is it “openness with sustainability”? Can a person like me do both?

CCK11: Educurator?

To fulfill Assignment 2 of the Connectivism & Connected Knowledge course

Connecting Curation and Education: Emerging Needs, New Model, Changing a Traditional Role

Teaching and learning are changing; as students in traditional schools engage in social media online, they leave some of their teachers far behind. Frankly, many teachers are resistant to using the technological tools that are available. But I agree with Dean Shareski that “to ignore or deem [Web 2.0 technology] superfluous is nearing educational malpractice” (2010). So here I wish to outline how I could apply some of the most helpful insights of connectivism in a real (potential) teaching space, a nontraditional learning experience in an Ohio town (USA). Children and their parents will understand the more-traditional descriptions of my role (teacher/tutor) and the offered learning opportunity (course/class) in response to an emerging need (computer knowledge) that the school system is unable to offer: In advertising, I will ask, “Is your child learning enough about technology?”¹ But how I approach the experiences will, I hope, reformulate some of the traditional expectations and results. Also, it will be affordable to people who would normally believe “tutoring” is beyond their family’s budget.

Hence, Ohio Computer Tutor is gestating with connectivism in mind.²

As a teacher/tutor, I will

create the space where learning can happen. Literally, I need a physical space that will hold approximately 5–6 computer workstations and other equipment (like this). Figuratively, the space must be warm, open, welcoming, diverse, and not dismissive of learners’ experiences or backgrounds/identity (McPherson, 2008, p. 18: “Nodes are often easier to see for those doing empirical work, but these approaches can also miss larger systemic issues”). In addition, parents are welcomed into it as learners/teachers/cheerleaders.

create conditions that highlight know-how and “know-where.” Quick hit, short targeted flashcourses; one piece of one task is modeled. We emphasize how to find the skills you want to use (Siemens, 2005) and how to validate what you find (Cormier, 2008). I share and model my thinking so the search and evaluate process is transparent (and replicable). No learning opportunity is scheduled for more than one hour. If the learners stay for two hours, they are teaching each other while I am present (see below).

welcome learner interests. This may include actually making the following offer: if you find at least six kids who want to know this (skill, thing, technique), I’ll create a new learning opportunity for that group and any other learners who want to join. Or we’ll do it now.

curate materials that learners may not know. Many children in this area lack basic computer skills on traditional platforms and software, even as they text incessantly on smartphones. To start, I gather materials (traditional text, videos, modeling, blogs) that help us think about the task or that model some possible outcomes.³

model and demonstrate particular skills or approaches (Downes, 2006). As a skills-based learning experiment, the approach has elements of demonstration, but like a workshop approach only demonstrates briefly to get learners started on their own projects.

enable learners to reflect and practice those skills or approaches (Downes, 2006). Provide an enormous amount of time in the schedule when I am not talking but am wandering around looking at what the learners are up to.

allow learners to teach each other (and me). Following Sugata Mitra, I do not supply each child with one computer; instead, they pair and triple to learn together (or pair with a parent), pushing and nudging to make space (Mitra, 2010).

am extremely busy being present.  Most important to me: My role does not end at model and demonstrate. Teachers connect again and again. From a welcoming acceptance of learners’ experiments (like Sugata Mitra’s “granny cloud,” to an exploratory question at the right moment, to staying one step ahead of the chaos, an attentiveness to the network itself is part and parcel of the new educator. As Stephen Downes offers, “[B]e the sort of person you want your students to become” (2006, printed page 13). If I want students to become engaged, inquiring, and really smart, then that’s what I have to be, too. At the end of the day, the teacher in a networked, connected, distributed somewhat chaotic new learning environment should be exhausted.

Accomplishing this vision for Ohio Computer Tutor could mean producing slight ripples in the local system of education: I imagine things like schoolchildren wandering over to work together on a worksheet (gasp), helping teachers learn about interesting and useful tools such as Prezi and GoAnimate, offering ideas for how they could use the tools for assignments and homework, teaching each other informally…and dozens more scenarios than I can imagine.

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References

Bouchard, P. (2011). Network promises and their implications. The impact of social networks on teaching and learning; Revista de Universidad y Sociedad del Conocimiento (RUSC), 8(1), 288–302.

Cormier, D. (2008). Rhizomatic education: Community as curriculum. Innovate, 4(5), article 550. Retrieved January 30, 2011, at http://www.innovateonline.info/index.php?view=article&id=550

Downes, S. (2006). Learning networks and connective knowledge. IT Forum. Athens, GA: University of Georgia. Retrieved January 30, 2011, at http://it.coe.uga.edu/itforum/paper92/paper92.html

Downes, S. (2006). That group feeling. Half an Hour blog. Accessed January 31, 2011, at http://halfanhour.blogspot.com/2006/10/that-group-feeling.html.

Downes, S. (2007). What connectivism is. Half an Hour blog. Accessed January 19, 2011, at http://halfanhour.blogspot.com/2007/02/what-connectivism-is.html

McPherson, T. (2008). In T. McPherson (ed.), A rule set for the future. Digital youth, innovation, and the unexpected. The John D. and Catherine T MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1–26.

Mitra, S. (2010). The child-driven education. TED talks. Retrieved October 11, 2010, at http://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_the_child_driven_education.html

Shareski, D. (2010). Sharing: The moral imperative. Preconference keynote at K12online 2010 Conference, Saskatchewan, Canada. Retrieved March 3, 2011, at http://k12onlineconference.org/?p=610

Siemens, G. (2005). Connectivism: A learning theory for the digital age. International Journal of Instructional Technology and Distance Learning, 2(1). Accessed January 18, 2011, at http://www.itdl.org/journal/jan_05/article01.htm

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Notes

¹ I need to leave aside for the moment the huge question of student motivation. Given that my spouse is an eighth grade (i.e., 13-year-olds) science teacher, I know a lot about the lack of student motivation in urban middle schools. However, I will also say that he has made some progress by introducing his better students to cool tools they can use (e.g., Prezi, GoAnimate) for their projects.

² Per Downes: “The objective of a theory of learning networks is to describe the manner in which resources and services are organized in order to offer learning opportunities in a network environment” (2006, printed page 9). The characteristics of a helpful network are diversity, autonomy, connectedness, and openness.

³ I also need to leave aside the needs assessment that I am actually developing right now. In it, I identify a few basics of computer use and knowledge that many children do not know. Because I know quite a bit about the classrooms in the elementary schools in the area, I already have some data gathered that demonstrate the lack of skills among both children and their parents.

Learn to have fun

Fat Tuesday in New Orleans, 2011 ..at least he has the legs for it 🙂

Happy Mardi Gras to all the hardworking CCK2011-ers. On Fat Tuesday I had posted here the live camera at the start of the parade in New Orleans.

That’s over now, but visit www.nola.com for some pictures of the costumes and creativity of people in the area, which is still trying to recover from Hurricane Katrina.

Who doesn’t like a holiday where grown men have the opportunity to dress in drag…or something close to it?

Who doesn't like Spongebob socks with a nice barmaid uniform?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Clark Kent retired to New Orleans

CCK11: Network thinking

Sparky says, Throw this stick I've brought you!

An article that will be appearing in Organization Science sometime this year discusses some aspects of network-based inquiry that might be interesting to folks in CCK2011 (note: although it’s not up yet, the DOI will be 10.1287/orsc.1110.0643). The experiment may not be directly related to our course, but I think some of its implications may be worth pondering.

In the paper I’m editing, the authors set up two experiments to discover how people activate their social networks in the face of the threat of job loss and whether that activation is related to their social status. Aside from the conclusions of the experiments, what’s interesting to me on the level of theory  is that they suggest that cognitively activating these netowrks is a precondition to mobilizing them. They suggest that given a certain kind of threat/opportunity, a person can invest in activating certain network segments in response that she may not have activated given another kind of threat/opportunity.

This suggests, then, that the social network also resides as a perceptual network.  And it can help explain why people vary their network-based responses in different situations. The researchers postulate that this may account for varying study results in research on social networks. It explains why the construction of a certain kind of study can “prime” study subjects’ conception of their networks that cause variations in response.

So do networks also live in my head? If so, how can I possibly conceptualize something so vast as, say, the internet? And here is where connectivism could help; the idea that “know where” is the key to knowledge, not “know what,” in a digital age. I can’t possibly “know” what’s in the internet, the thingness of every node—but I certainly have the sense that everything is within reach with potentiality. I like this aspect of connectivism because it honors the connections as knowledge. So what lives in my mind as “the internet” is not a static network but something more akin to a sense of the firings between network nodes.

The authors of the study I’m editing only account for human-based social networks, but I think the insights can be called upon here to talk about something that’s been bothering me about connectivism as a theory: agency. The contention that we do not create connections (and therefore knowledge) isn’t a premise, I guess, that I’m willing to accept. What I’m gradually concluding is that I am at least partly a constructivist; those theoretical insights generally give me what I’m looking for, which is a way to account for human agency, desire for change, thirst for knowledge, whatever you want to call it. What I’d like to do is take the best of both theoretical worlds: nonstatic, nonlocated knowledge coupled with intentional agency.

P.S. To posit agency doesn’t mean that it always works. For instance, Sparky incessantly brings me a stick (or a basketball, a Kong®, a squirrel corpse, a Frisbee®, and so on) and tries to create a series of events whereby he gets to chase the toy because I’ve thrown it. Sometimes, his agency has the expected result; sometimes, it doesn’t. Does he ever give up? No, because there’s a greater chance of getting the outcome he wants by taking action versus taking no action. And why my husband and I have been chanting outside of the Ohio Statehouse this week.

CCK11: Connectivism in action?

The following is a lovely story of how one middle-aged woman learned enough about XHTML, CSS, and WordPress in eight weeks to build a website.

I have a client who wanted an email newsletter last spring; I investigated the possibilities, chose Constant Contact, and started sending monthly newsletters I’d research and write. Worked great. Easy software. Then my client asked, could you build just a little website, just a landing page, so we have a web presence? No problem. I know a little bit of HTML and, more importantly, know an easy software program (CoffeeCup) that would build a page.

This winter I was asked to do something much bigger. In my defense, I suggested at that point that they get an actual professional. But it was too late; they liked me. So I spent time trying to learn about the different content management systems (paid/unpaid) and tried Joomla for awhile; at the end of the year, I investigated WordPress (the .org version) and decided to learn it. The blog I have here for CCK2011 was my first use of the engine. And it’s great and quite intuitive. The .org version gave me fits, mostly because [tip coming!] Yahoo won’t support installing it at the root, so if you choose a funky theme with bells and whistles, it ain’t gonna work right. [Another tip: don’t pay for a theme design; get a free theme where you can pay to join the support community.]

I learned a lot, which is always fun for me even when it’s incredibly frustrating. I learned what plugins were, how to make menus, ways to upload images WordPress says are too big, and how to embed videos and podcasts (uh, plugins again!). At one point I tried something new and managed to shrink the whole front page down to a 10 x 10px square. That was cool. Then I messed with the PHP functions (bad idea) and wiped out the whole thing; I had to start over from that point, but I had sure learned not to do that again.

Over the last four weeks I have spent probably close to 100 hours on this project. But I suspect it would have been 100s more had it not been for the knowledge in the Web. I was able to post some questions on the support forum of the developer who created the theme I chose (Justin Tadlock, www.themehybrid.com; awesome work). Justin answered some direct questions, and so did some other members of his community. What didn’t get answered there, I managed to find on or cobble together from a variety of sites that have free tutorials about XHTML/CSS/PHP and a whole lotta other stuff. Also, his code is commented all over the place, so I could follow along and consult tutorials about things I didn’t understand. Finally (way too) late last night, the one tiny detail I couldn’t figure out…I figured out (how to float that tube image). Eureka!

I consciously thought about connectivism as I did this because I do think that our new era requires this kind of traveling around the web to learn. That’s the part of the theory I’m definitely subscribing to. So I wondered about what I could do to sort of pass on my learning, put another path or at least a picnic bench up there. I’m doing that a bit here; but also as I got the answers I was looking for, I went back to Justin’s support forum and posted the answers to my own questions and the code I used.

“Programming is the new literacy of the digital age.”

Postscript: In the human field

Today I’ve been home from the Day Job trying to get caught up on my freelance work; one huge project is doing some ghostwriting for a scientist who wants his ideas put in more popular form (in order to get somewhat famous, maybe go on Oprah). What I’ve been up to most of the day is transcribing and taking notes on videos he’s sent me.

In a curious digression into learning, he remarks (paraphrased), “Nothing but an underlying foundation of human connection is really going to serve us in a culture where information is being generated so quickly. If you don’t deliver your information grounded in that connection, you eventually won’t be listened to.”

I’m not sure I agree with him, but in the context of what I am thinking about it’s interesting to wonder whether that human-ness will be a kind of educational currency.

CCK11

CCK11: In the human field

It seems to me that one of the points of having a theory of learning is to be able to apply it, that is, to be able to find skillful ways to support and nurture learning. Many people in our MOOC who are teachers keep asking these kinds of questions, and I’m unclear whether we’re settling on answers.

For instance, let’s talk about proximity to those people (nodes) that keep you firing. One of the high points in CCK2011 so far has been the Elluminate sessions that I can attend “live.” It’s all virtual, of course; most of us aren’t in the same room. But because we’re in the same virtual space (that is, creating that space) at the same time, there’s an energy there that is not available to me when, well, for instance, now as I’m just typing a blog post. Last week I opened by saying I thought it was kinda neat that we all shared our weather reports: sure, I learn what weather is like all over, but there’s more of an indefinable firing of the property of “humanness” (trying to speak in connectivist terms here) that gets activated in me. We are not in the same room, but my sense that you are (you exist) is heightened. 

All this talk of energy and such is probably beyond the interests of many people in the course, but I’m interested in field theory in biology and physics. Think of an undifferentiated new cell, a stem cell. They can become anything, really, but mostly they become what the others cells around them become (an arm, an eye). Rupert Sheldrake and others posit the existence of biological “organizing fields” that “impose patterns on otherwise random or indeterminate patterns of activity” (prior link has this quote). The concept of network that connectivism relies on seems as though it could be enhanced with  some thinking around this concept. Could bring in some quantum mechanics and nonlocality, too.

It kind of harkens back to a blog post I wrote previously, about hidden nodes. In many equations, a random error or hidden variable is included to account for stuff that the rest of the equation isn’t interested in or cannot account for. (And forgive me: just a writer and editor here, not a mathematician or economist or physicist.)  Similarly, the role of the “granny clouds” (prior post)  in children’s ability to traverse networks (learn) seems to me unquantifiable but undeniably there. I’m thinking that some of this might be helpful to the learning theory of connectivism to help formulate something more satisfying to me that accounts for the humanness element of some nodes; a je ne sais quoi that contributes to the field, the context, and thus the resonance. For me as a learner, it would explain why I still value the creation of a space of learning, virtual or otherwise; for me as a teacher, it would help explain why I still value that role. But that’s just me; how would it be helpful to the theory? Could we design an experiment whereby we measure learning within a network with stronger connections (and there I’d mean, connecting on the property of humanness) versus weaker?

Why do I seem to end all of these posts with questions?