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CCK08

• Connectivism & Connective Knowledge Blog
• CCK08 Participants (Technorati search)

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• Dekita Kitchen - Getting to know each other
• Dekita Kitchen - Recognition of skills and experience
• Dekita Kitchen - How will you engage in the course?

Dekita Kitchen Chef Blogs

• Janet Hawtin : Weblog
• My Connectivism Blog
• adVancEducation
• Connectivism by the Nile
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CCK08 Participants (Technorati search)

• Daily Bookmarks 10/31/2008

  Posted: October 31st, 2008, 8:30pm GMT

  October 31, 2008 ZaidLearn: 8 Free Screencasting Tools For Tony! Tony Karrer bumped into his limit for a free Jing account, so he asked for other free tools. Zaid Ali Alsagoff provides some options to check out. tags: screencast, tools Half an Hour: Things You Really Need to Learn Like several other people, I just found this 2006 post from Stephen Downes on 10 things you should learn that you won’t be taught in school. Great thoughts for lifelong learning, wherever you are in life. tags: le

  
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• Those boring virtual worlds

  Posted: October 31st, 2008, 12:08am GMT

  Remember the discussion about students/youngsters who don’t like the creative use of Second Life and instead prefer gaming and even griefing? Another element in the debate, pointing in the same direction: on Kapp Notes, the following recurrent question is reported: It seems that students find virtual worlds boring. None of my students “hang out” in-world except for class activities, and my students rarely go into virtual worlds after the semester is over. How can I get them more into virtual w

  
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• Connectivism Course (CCK08)

  Posted: October 30th, 2008, 9:38pm GMT

  For those interested in the connectivism course, but haven’t been directly following the flow of conversation, here are a few links of potential interest: Live Session Recordings Main Site Course outline and weekly activities Moodle Site

  
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• Control Issues - CCK08

  Posted: October 29th, 2008, 5:08pm GMT

  This weeks issue on Control has been hotly debated and discussed and complained about. That tells me it is an excellent issue and was given to the participants in this course in exactly the right way. My original post on this subject was a gut reaction to having been forced to archive many conversations that I did not ask for. Did I learn something in the process? Of Course. Many of us have been in our warm fuzzy little networks, we have grown use to certain expectations, and we do not like

  
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• Question Authority

  Posted: October 29th, 2008, 12:55pm GMT

  QUESTION AUTHORITY Originally uploaded by Wurz This week in CCK08 covers the topics of power, control, validity, and authority in distributed environments and I’m quite interested to see where the discussion takes us; especially in light of yesterday’s excitement in the Moodle forum. The week began with an authoritarian decision to force everyone in the course to subscribe to the week’s forum thread - whether they wanted to or not.  Downes’ preliminary post to the thread read as follows:

  
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• CCK08: reactions of students

  Posted: October 29th, 2008, 10:54am GMT

  (versione in italiano) Just to answer briefly to some CCK08 friends who asked me about the reactions of students to the freedom they have in the blogroom. Some numbers and students reactions of last year are available in an older post. Here just some partial ongoing reactions. Emotional reaction Admittedly, I work very much on the emotional side, believing that real learning takes place only in presence of some kind of emotional involvement. Perhaps this relates to some reflections about emotion

  
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• CCK08 Week 6-7: Complexity, Connection and Learning

  Posted: October 29th, 2008, 4:35am GMT

  I'm a week behind in my weekly Friday writing about the connectivism MOOC, but last week's subject was complexity, which is interesting, so I'll post about it now and then skip a week. I've written a lot about complexity here, so just to recap for the uninitiated: systems/processes/networks tend to be simple, complicated, complex, chaotic, or some combination thereofsimple and complicated systems/processes/networks are 'ordered'; it is possible (and in simple systems/processes/networks, easy)

  
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• Do As I Say - Not As I Was Taught - CCK08

  Posted: October 29th, 2008, 3:18am GMT

  This week started off as any other week, get up, make breakfast and check my e-mail while eating… However this week I was forced into a Moodle Forum beyond my control. Before I rant and rave like many before me I must say that I usually follow the current week and unsubscribe to past weeks to ensure that I am staying current, as well as filtering many many messages that would enter my in box. In the short time that everyone still in the course was forced to participate, I like many ot

  
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• Forks In The Road - A CCK08 Mind Map

  Posted: October 29th, 2008, 2:48am GMT

  As the seasons change, the leaves fall, and winter slowly hints with deep cloud filled breaths our updated Connectivism Mind Maps are due to be posted once again. I have redone this Mind Map several times: I tried to link various maps together between themselves with no central location I tried to link various maps together between themselves with a central location Realized the above was nearly impossible to keep track of, so combined them all together Below is the combination, t

  
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• Rhizome Project, or, what have they done with Dave Cormier?

  Posted: October 28th, 2008, 3:19am GMT

  Earlier this year, I edited an issue of Innovate on the future of education. One of the most frequently cited articles from that issue is Dave Cormier’s article on Rhizomatic Education. If the discussion in CCK08 is any indication, the rhizome metaphor resonates with people. Today, I encountered this site - Rhizome Project - on the same theme. Surprisingly, no mention of Dave’s work or article. It seems unlikely that they wouldn’t have been aware of the article (it’s one of the first several re

  
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• Rhizome Project, or, what have they done with Dave Cormier?

  Posted: October 28th, 2008, 2:17am GMT

  Earlier this year, I edited an issue of Innovate on the future of education. One of the most frequently cited articles from that issue is Dave Cormier's article on Rhizomatic Education. If the discussion in CCK08 is any indication, the rhizome metaphor resonates with people. Today, I encountered this site - Rhizome Project - on the same theme. Surprisingly, no mention of Dave's work or article. It seems unlikely that they wouldn't have been aware of the article (it's one of the first several re

  
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• Academic Upstarts

  Posted: October 27th, 2008, 8:00am GMT

  The latest book from Clay Christensen and his team, authors of The Innovator’s Dilemma and others, is Disrupting Class, where they examine education. Tom Haskins reviews the book and provides his own perspectives in Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and finally his own assessment on the value of college diplomas. Tom thinks that the value of a diploma will decrease because knowledge in one field will not be enough for a generation facing multiple job changes and that the economies of scale offered by phy

  
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• Teaching the second little pig - rhizomatic knowledge, MOOCs and other open things

  Posted: October 26th, 2008, 3:34pm GMT

  As previously mentioned here… I was asked by Steve Warburton (congrats on the (nicely named) new project steve!) to do a presentation on MOOCs for the evolve community. This has sent me off on a wild tangent trying to come to grips with the implication of open education and the rhizomatic knowledge model (or, say, some people’s interpretation of connectivism) This is a weird kinda journey… but stick with me if you can. The Third Little Pig About 4 mornings a week my mother tells my 2 1/2 year

  
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• CCK08 - Connectivism at work

  Posted: October 26th, 2008, 10:51am GMT

  To me, it’s hard to make sense of connectivism as a learning theory. So, since the course started, I often have been searching examples of connectivistic situations in my daily work. Here another little story of daily life connectivism: Background: Since weeks, I’m struggling with the writing of a research paper. The work is proceeding quite slow.. Unfortunately I’m not so well inspired.. The story: Yesterday afternoon, I was NOT working at the chapter nor had desire to do it… Instead

  
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• CCK08: On writing posts for italian students in english

  Posted: October 25th, 2008, 8:38am GMT

  We met 10 times with about 200 students of 18 curricula distributed in 7 classes, so far. We have discussed with the students all the options they have as well as the first steps they must take to begin the course. Among other things we agreed that my posts with their assignments and suggestions will be written in english because they may be seen as contributions to the Connectivism and Connective Knowledge Online Course that I’m trying to follow, in some way. It’s interesting that the students

  
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• Jeffrey’s Twitter Updates for 2008-10-23

  Posted: October 24th, 2008, 3:59am GMT

  Just finished our monthly project team meetings. People brought up a lot of good ideas. # I wonder why sometimes I click the #coComment link to follow some comments, and it opens without following anything. RRrrrrrrr. # What a beautiful afternoon outside. The leaves are finally turning in Manhattan. Glad I already enjoyed seeing them in the Catskills. # @gsiemens Interested to hear more about the transsformative effects. Have been looking for some research in this area. # @arjunsingh We can cer

  
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• EMC Post-Innovation Conference Tweet-Up

  Posted: October 23rd, 2008, 1:14pm GMT

  The last two days EMC held its 2nd annual Innovation Conference, right in the Education Services building. I was lucky enough to be given a last-minute invite to the conference. I attended last year’s conference (as a judge, not sure how that happened!), and both times the event has been very energizing and encouraging. You may be thinking: wait! This blog is all about education! Why would Gina go to a geeky engineer science fair? Well, I am a geek. Our group writes technical training, so all

  
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• Building On Swampy Land - CCK08

  Posted: October 23rd, 2008, 3:58am GMT

  What is it with Monty Python and finding those excellent analogies needed to get a point across simply and accurately, with the just perfect amount of humour. This week in CCK08 we are discussing the concept of Instructional Design, and how in our new world of new world literacies (if you believe in that kind of stuff), how we present (I mean guide students) information needs to be rethought and redeveloped from the ground up in many cases. That is an excellent notion, however we ar

  
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• The Role of the Educator and Institution in a Changing Educational Landscape

  Posted: October 22nd, 2008, 10:16pm GMT

  In response to my post on collaborative spaces, Gina Minks over at Adventures in Corporate Education posted her thoughts on what she sees are some issues with my argument. I posted an initial response as a comment, but wanted to follow up with further elaboration here. The main question her post brought me to consider is that of the role and purpose of institutions in an age of increasingly open access to course materials, portability of information, and hyperconnected learners. Significantl

  
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• George Siemens Talks Dirty...and I agree with him...

  Posted: October 22nd, 2008, 12:00pm GMT

  George Siemens (elearnspace & CCK08) asserts that P2P University is "foreplay when we need consummation." I think he's right. The good news is that at least we're dating. So P2P University says that it offers: "scheduled "courses" that run for 6 weeks and cover university-level topics. Learning takes place in small groups of 8-14 students. Each course package contains the syllabus, study materials and a schedule. See this page for more detail on what it is like to learn in a P2PU course.

  
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• The cost of supporting Collaborative Project Spaces

  Posted: October 22nd, 2008, 10:26am GMT

  In one of Mike Bogle’s posts the topics of learning ecosystems and “walled gardens” comes up. The main idea I took away from his post is that now it’s so easy to make and access information. While that is a good thing, it brings up the issue of not being able to get to all of this information, and perhaps missing the most important information. The one thing he doesn’t address is cost. For example, he said: From the standpoint of the individual, the barriers to entry and participation in what

  
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• Social Interaction in SecondLife

  Posted: October 22nd, 2008, 3:58am GMT

  This is a reflective post on an experience I had in SecondLife this afternoon. For all the posts I’ve devoted to the virtual world, all the screenshots and the video clips, I have had very few of what you could call “social conversations” in SecondLife.  Virtually all of my previous experiences have been exploratory in nature, conducted with colleagues from my department, or at most observational attendance of in-world presentations (which has only happened twice).  The only exception perhaps

  
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• Whose Design Is It Anyway - CCK08 Style

  Posted: October 22nd, 2008, 3:29am GMT

  I am going to start this post by saying it is going to be a short one. The ideas are percolating, I just have not yet formed the final thought, I just thought I would briefly share the direction I am going looking for input. After reading this weeks papers and watching the presentation by George and thinking of Connectivism as overall encompassing theme for Education (I have had to rework my Mind Map by the way, original concept did not work, here it is…) But h

  
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• The Institution and the PLN

  Posted: October 21st, 2008, 10:51pm GMT

  A comment by David Elliot on my last post yielded a train of thought that I think is worth discussing. Initially I had posted the following thoughts as a reply to his comment, but the thought occurred that this is tangential enough from the original post that it warrants a dedicated one in its own right. David raises the topic of Personal Learning Networks versus Virtual Learning Environments, and asks “How can we bring institutions back into the Connectivism picture as foci of collaboration w

  
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• CCK08: Instructional Design, Social Objects

  Posted: October 21st, 2008, 11:11am GMT

  I am going through one of the CCK08 readings for this week, “Cloudworks: social networking for learning design”. (I would reference the author but I can’t find one on the given materials - only clue is the document title conole_ascilite). The paper provided a quote from Engestrom that really struck me: The term ’social networking’ makes little sense if we leave out the objects that mediate the ties between people. Think about the object as the reason why people affiliate with each specific oth

  
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• Still pushing through the CCK08 woods

  Posted: October 20th, 2008, 7:12pm GMT

  I don’t know if some others have felt the same way that I have about this course but I am still sifting through the content, still going here and there with random and no particular direction. I have done quite a bit of reading, listening, and traveling from one link to another. I still feel like I should be completing something or at least posting my thoughts but my thoughts are still very scattered and really “just forming”. I tell myself that it is OK if I don’t post or participate but I sti

  
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• Daily Bookmarks 10/19/2008

  Posted: October 19th, 2008, 8:30pm GMT

  October 19, 2008 Main Articles: ‘New Schemas for Mapping Pedagogies and Technologies’, Ariadne Issue 56 Schemas for categorizing the use of pedagogies, learning theories, and technologies. For example, Table 1 maps learning theories (behaviorism, cognitive constructivism, social constructivism, and situated learning) against types of technologies. Online communication tools offer more potential for social constructivist interaction and joint construction of knowledge. This article also sugges

  
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• CCK08: Six down; Six to go

  Posted: October 19th, 2008, 12:02am GMT

  This fall at school has been a blur both as a teacher and as a student. At reaching the mid-point in the CCK08 course, I'd like to share a number of observations, each of which might have become a blog post would time have been available. Engage Real World Colleagues... I would encourage attendees to augment their online activity with discussions in the real world. Although it may not be easy to find interested colleagues, or for course facilitators to track such participation, the ability to

  
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• Michael Wesch strikes again - must see video about innovation in higher ed

  Posted: October 18th, 2008, 7:33pm GMT

  I’ve been aware of Michael Wesch’s work for quite some time, and I loved both The Machine is Us/ing Us and A Vision of Students Today. The last movie, I showed in a class I taught about higher education around the world. It also inspired me to try to have students use Google documents to collaboratively author class notes during class, which failed (I hate collaborative authoring sites that require each user to establish an account). Recently he gave a presentation at University of Manitoba ab

  
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• Social Media Classroom

  Posted: October 18th, 2008, 4:23am GMT

  In a recent report by Sarah Perez over at ReadWriteWeb we discover Howard Rheingold has been busy making the Social Media Classroom.  This may have a significant effect on Moodle, another open-source project for a CMS (Classroom Management System). Although they are different, with SMC focusing on communication, and Moodle focusing on Management, I foresee that both will rapidly start looking more and more like each other.

  
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• CCK08 - Week 4 - Groups, Networks and Collectives

  Posted: October 17th, 2008, 4:51pm GMT

  A little premise: I’m following the CCK08 at my own pace.. So I’m still working on week 5 stuff… I’m very impressed by the Dron & Anderson’s paper on groups, networks and collectives. The authors succeed to detect the key concepts on which most network technologies are grounded. While reading, my internal connections lead me to remind a very nice diagram by Scott Wilson. Maybe it’s not so popular as his first one about PLE (the well-known Future VLE graph) but to me this new version is

  
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• CCK08: Hidden connections?

  Posted: October 17th, 2008, 3:20pm GMT

  Amazing, really. I read Developing Online From Simplicity toward Complexity: Going with the Flow of Non-Linear Learning and what I have found is a perfect description my experiences with the blogroom I have quoted in other posts here. In the short paper 1 I said that often one has the feeling that ideas flourish just because the context is mature. Here again. Renata Phelps is a professional and I’m not, coming recently from other fields. I heard nothing about such ideas in my entourage here. I

  
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• Poor Italy …

  Posted: October 17th, 2008, 1:27pm GMT

  Italy’s economy is struggling. Among the cost-cutting measures we have a bill proposed recently to dispose of about 2000 temporary research staff, who are the backbone of the country’s grossly understaffed research institutions. The bad new is so bad to appear in a note of one of the most important scientific journals, Nature 455, 835-836 (16 October 2008), where we are reminded that Italy spends barely 1.1% of its gross domestic product after having signed up to the European Union’s 2000 Lisbon

  
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• As Complex as We Wanna Be… CCK08

  Posted: October 17th, 2008, 4:40am GMT

  First off I would like to mention that I appreciated the extra paper by George (especially for this week), it helped sum up the ideas of the other papers (and video) wide concepts and refocus them back on the course, providing us a focus that we can then expand on as we need too. As mentioned repeatedly in this weeks readings the following concepts Chaos, Complexity and at times Emergence are used incorrectly, which leads to general confusion for the rest of the population. I am n

  
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• Groups into Networks New Curriculum Needed - CCK08

  Posted: October 17th, 2008, 4:40am GMT

  To quote a really good movie from my childhood “What About Bob?”, Baby Steps… Baby Steps… That I how see the networks and groups divide that we have explored this week in class. I agree that we will always have these social structures within our societies. Groups represent uber-strong ties, where networks are mostly weak ties. With an online and ever growing community both groups and networks can exist with growing popularity. But as an educator what should I start with first? Per

  
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• Buddhism, chaos and complexity theory

  Posted: October 15th, 2008, 7:21pm GMT

  I’ve only just broached the topics of chaos and complexity theory, which we’re covering this week in CCK08, however in reading George Siemens thoughts as expressed in his Google Document, I’ve been brought to a train of thought I want to explore.  This is in the form of an analogy. At least according to my understanding of it, in Buddhism the concept of the individual and the soul do no exist; in fact they are refuted.  Nor is there an inherent sense of me-ness that can be distinguished or seg

  
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• Those Generalizations…

  Posted: October 15th, 2008, 4:23am GMT

  [photo by Michael Sarver] … they were a kind of solution. From a recent post by the inimitable CogDog, spurred by current CCK08 discussions on complexity and chaos: “In addition, I am growing more snarky with tacit generalizations (all but using the dead tired “natives/immigrants”) that “younger = desires more complex / older = desires linear”. I am not wanting studies, but some appreciation that the range of teachers and learners is just as complex as this week is supposed to address. I d

  
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• Instructional Design

  Posted: October 14th, 2008, 9:49pm GMT

  Instructional Design , presented by Paula Carolei and Andrea Filatro , will be the next meeting (of a series) organized by Praxis. Once a month, actors from various institutions of the educational scene here in Sao Paulo get together f2f  to network and talk about our practice. Although we are all highly connected  and/or very much interested in new technologies, the online exchange is still incipient, centralized on a Moodle platform mostly used as a message board and list, with very little le

  
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• CCK08: Complexity is Complex, Ain’t It?

  Posted: October 14th, 2008, 7:01am GMT

  With travel, work-load, and self-imposed laziness, I maintain my firm position on the very far edges of participation in the Connectivism & Connective Knowledge. But as I intuit from the Stephen and George show, that really does not matter, and we need to get over that. photo credit: Pulpolux !!! Week 6 is Complexity, Chaos and Randomness, topics I can say I “grok”, though the grokness this week (with more travel Wednesday) may turn to grogness. The first reading, Developing Online From S

  
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• CCK08: There *are* rules to engagement

  Posted: October 14th, 2008, 2:40am GMT

  After  publicly declaring my angst over filters being put in place in the CCK08 class, Stephen Downes pretty much spelled out the rules for engagement in the Daily today when he said: “It is not simply about saying you agree or disagree with the authors and leaving it at that. It is about relating your present experience with your past experience, looking at what you are seeing and reading now from the perspective of things you have learned in the past. Because this part learning is unique, yo

  
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• CCK08: 'Group' Semantics

  Posted: October 13th, 2008, 9:45pm GMT

  Groups emphasize sameness; Networks emphasize diversity; Groups emphasize order and control; Networks emphasize autonomy; Groups emphasize borders and membership; Networks emphasize openness; Groups emphasize additive, cumulative knowledge; Networks emphasize emergent knowledge. In reaching consensus around the connectivist definitions of these terms, I find myself wishing that we had more examples of networking in nature. Even so, the animal kingdom offers us many parallel words that ca

  
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• Conceptual Uncertainty and Rudiments of my PLN

  Posted: October 13th, 2008, 9:37pm GMT

  Over the last few weeks I’ve been particularly bad about posting my reflections for CCK08. In fact this post may represent the very first one I’ve done so far. I’m beginning to realise the grasp I have on reflective writing may not be nearly as firm as I previously thought; and what I had been considering “reflective” wasn’t, it was topical. This post, therefore, is my attempt to start rectifying the vacuum. Background Last week’s reflection topic asked us to consider the following: “Have

  
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• The spectre of e-learning is haunting London

  Posted: October 13th, 2008, 9:06pm GMT

  Now that banks are being nationalized in countries formerly known as capitalist nations, it seems appropriate to introduce a variation on the Communist Manifesto: A spectre is haunting universities and companies: informal learning networks transform organizations, subvert hierarchy and work hand in hand with disruptive technologies. This is my much less eloquent version of the original text of the Manifesto: “A spectre is haunting Europe - the spectre of Communism. All the Powers of old Europ

  
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• CCK08: A couple of questions

  Posted: October 12th, 2008, 9:17pm GMT

  Yes, let’s go for a walk in a wood and relax as many times as you like and with the passing of time you will know that wood in your own way. This means you will be looking for something there and you will disregard the rest. Jørgen asked me if I’m establishing valuable connections in this course. Yes, I do. Moreover, patterns begin to emerge and it is easier to choose what it is worthwhile to follow but the choice is personal, depending on its own interests and needs. As far as my connections ar

  
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• CCK08: How are we conditioned to learn, and more on CCK08 filters

  Posted: October 12th, 2008, 5:58pm GMT

  So I am wondering: are there filters being imposed in the CCK08 class? I know I am applying my own filters. I decided early on I would keep up with blog posts and posts from the CCK08 twitter network. I stay away from the Moodle boards because they are very busy, and for at least the first couple of weeks they were also very negative (from my filtered view at least). However, I click and read all the links sent via the daily as well as links from blog posts that come via my google alert. Vilpa

  
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• CCK08 Week Five: Groups vs Networks vs Communities

  Posted: October 11th, 2008, 10:47pm GMT

  Week 5 of the Connectivism MOOC is about the distinction between groups and networks. One of the key readings for the week was written by my friend Stephen Downes when he was obviously high on something (possibly New Zealand, which will do that to you). The point of the lesson is to distinguish groups, which are apparently inherently homogeneous and hierarchical, from networks, which are apparently neither. Members of both are connected to each other. George Siemens asserts that most organize

  
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• Not an Island?

  Posted: October 11th, 2008, 10:18pm GMT

  I like virtual worlds because they are the most dramatic example of how we can come together in an immersive way  regardless of where on this planet we live. Of course there are other ways to connect and to reach out, maybe ways which do not involve the high tech wizardry of virtual worlds. Like, for instance, videos captured by relatively cheap means such as cell phones or consumer camcorders, or by webcams, like Howard Rheingold explains on his blog, in this video: A beautiful example of s

  
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• One Relevance of Groups

  Posted: October 10th, 2008, 11:45pm GMT

  In considering the concept of groups, networks and collectives a bit further the thought occurred to me that project work is an instance when a group model would or could be more appropriate than a network one. In the case of my current project regarding SecondLife for example, we have been tasked with exploring and assessing the educational uses and applications of the virtual world.  That in and of itself is a fairly broad topic, however when factoring in additional requirements and conditio

  
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• The Connected Economy

  Posted: October 10th, 2008, 11:53am GMT

  The economy is front and centre in most conversations these days. It's far to early to evaluate the full scope of impact. We'll see a decade of analysis in movies, books, and journals - what when wrong, who is to blame, what's the impact of world power relationships, etc. I'll leave others who are better informed (and hopefully stay away from the current bread of "I told you so's" - why is it that when people are suffering most, clowns appear centre stage to declare "this philosophy is dead" or

  
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• Preliminary Plans for SecondLife Project

  Posted: October 10th, 2008, 2:18am GMT

  I’m in two minds regarding whether it’s appropriate to post this presentation here (and may opt to remove the post if I change my mind, or am asked to do so), however given the fact several of my fellow students of CCK08 and FOC08 have indicated they are researching - or interested in researching - the educational uses of virtual worlds, I thought it worthwhile to share this. This presentation outlines my preliminary thoughts on the SecondLife project I’m currently working on. Much of the co

  
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• Thinking about motivation and blogging

  Posted: October 9th, 2008, 3:27pm GMT

  I have been traveling about on the many and diverse blogs of the participants of this course. Cristina wrote a thoughtful post about The role of people’s enthusiasm in learning. She wonders, “Where does the motivation come from? Where do we get our inspiration from? Why do some of us get “high on” learning? why doesn’t everyone react the same way?… I’ve wondered the same things. Then she shared her thoughts on an online meeting with Carla Arena’s new class on the use of blogs. The consensus see

  
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• CCK08: Connectivism, Equity, and Equality

  Posted: October 9th, 2008, 2:52pm GMT

  October 9, 2008 In Groups Vs Networks: The Class Struggle Continues, Stephen Downes makes this statement about assessment: I want to change the system of assessment in schools because right now we have tests and things like that that are scrupulously fair, particularly distance learning where we outline the objectives the performance metrics and the outcomes and all of that. I want to scrap that system. I want testing to be done by at random by comments from your peers and other people and str

  
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• More on Groups and Networks

  Posted: October 8th, 2008, 10:37pm GMT

  my last post, I argued that Deadheads are a network and not a group.  The author of An Educational Technology Blog disagrees (”CCK08 - More Networks and Groups or Why Stephen May be Right“), saying: “Something like Deadheads is  trickier.  Since members of the group self select and identify (nobody defines deadhead until social scientists start researching them), finding the boundary of the group is difficult.  Nevertheless, my instinct wants to call Deadheads a group.” In my interpretation of

  
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• Groups and Networks; Fraternities and Deadheads

  Posted: October 8th, 2008, 12:30pm GMT

  Consider this a brain dump of a post.  I don’t know exactly where I’m going to go with it; I only know I’ve been unsuccessfully trying to carve out time to write this week and want to get my thoughts down.  In all likelihood I’ll expand on elements of this later. In the context of the discussions on groups and networks I have had several epiphanies I’d like to explore regarding my personal experiences interacting in these entities/structures.  This can be succinctly summarised by saying, in my

  
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• CCK08: Networks, groups, nodes

  Posted: October 8th, 2008, 8:41am GMT

  Life struggles to emerge from the inexorable increase of entropy stated by the second law of thermodynamics with two legs: groups and networks. As usual, we tend to dichotomise the discussion. Groups and networks are synergic. Nodes are not a sort of dimensionless points but have structure. Internal structure of nodes is related to their functionality within the network. Nodes “are” groups. I mean, Nature creates groups to function as nodes in networks. Nodes require internal structure and hiera

  
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• Properties of Networks

  Posted: October 7th, 2008, 9:23am GMT

  Networks are made up of entities, connections and signals which can be represented mathematically using graphs and tables.In social networks, entities are the people who make up the network, connections are the paths through which information is transferred and signals are the actual messages or bits of information being shared.Broken down and represented in this way, a social network appears to be a very simplistic process, however, understanding the relationship between each of these component

  
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• CCK08 - week 3 – Properties of networks

  Posted: October 7th, 2008, 9:17am GMT

  Readings:Networks for Newbies .pptStephen Downes: Learning Networks: Theory and Practice .ppt and audioGeorge Siemens Introduction to NetworksOther useful resources for this week:CCK08: Valdis Krebs on NetworksIntentionalism and Meaning – Stephen DownesEmergent Networks PDF – Valdis KrebsOptional ReadingIntroduction to social network methods - Chapter 7 - Connection and Distance – Robert A Hanneman (Dept of Sociology, Uni of California, Riverside and Mark Riddle (Dept of Sociology, Uni of Nthn C

  
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• CCK08: A Unifying Theory of Learning

  Posted: October 6th, 2008, 11:51pm GMT

  Writing is such a ‘School 1.0’ tool, yet as a vehicle for communicating information from one person to another, it continues to stand the test of time. In providing evidence of my understanding of connectivism, these characters on the page are as much reflective of the idea of connectivism, as they are a coalescent artifact that demonstrates my current understanding. In order for my thoughts to hit this hypertext page, a vast amount of information has had to move between and within a great num

  
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• Daily Bookmarks 10/06/2008

  Posted: October 6th, 2008, 8:30pm GMT

  October 6, 2008 Groups Vs Networks: The Class Struggle Continues ~ Stephen’s Web ~ by Stephen Downes Transcript of a talk about the differences between groups and networks. Downes situates networks between individuals and groups, as a place where individuals are associated and connected but more diverse than groups. Interesting ideas for assessment and supporting diversity. tags: connectivism, cck08, networks, learning, assessment, diversity Those of you who’ve taken political science know t

  
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• Financial crisis and networks

  Posted: October 5th, 2008, 11:03am GMT

  I have been reading A History of the Social Web, a draft essay by Trebor Scholz we have been reading in the CCK08 course. It is very much a work under construction and the author even tried to take the text down - but it is not that easy to make texts disappear on the web. Anyway, it is an interesting text to read, making me think about smart mobs and evil mobs, about how great electronic social networks are when they bring people together and make geography collapse but also about the dangers

  
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• CCK08 Week Four: What 'Good' Is It? -- Putting Connectivism to Work

  Posted: October 5th, 2008, 5:53am GMT

  A remarkable synchronicity this week has me thinking about the Purpose of connectivism. I spent an extraordinary three days this past week with about thirty other facilitators from across North America at a retreat on Bowen Island BC, honing our craft. The work of these people is enabling meaningful conversations in the workplace and with customers and the public, directed to making work more effective and ultimately to making the world a better place. At the same time, at my own work I have b

  
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• Learning Paradigms as Philosophies of Practice

  Posted: October 4th, 2008, 11:30am GMT

  In the online class I am teaching, Principles and Practices of Online Course Creation and Instructional Design, I introduced the class to various learning paradigms, which we (and our text) referred to as Philosophies of Practice. These include progressive, behaviorist, radical (critical theorist), constructivist, connectivist, and such. While Creswell speaks about four different “worldviews”–postpositivism, constructivism, advocacy / participatory, and pragmatism–and Guba speaks about–positivi

  
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• Media Literacy: Making Sense Of New Technologies And Media by George Siemens - Oct 4 08

  Posted: October 4th, 2008, 8:33am GMT

  How do you know whether the information you are searching for online has been verified and comes from reliable sources? Are you getting into the mass-media habit of taking for granted whatever you read online? Is your critical evaluation attitude miserably fading? Photo credit: Stephen Downes George Siemens, MasterNewMedia official guide to education technologies and media literacy, scouts and reports from his ongoing research key future scenarios where the increased adoption of collaborative a

  
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• CCK08: When connectivism doesn't work

  Posted: October 4th, 2008, 7:18am GMT

  I have been thinking all week about connectivisim, and acknowledge that my online network plays a huge part in my learning these days. However, I am also conscious that there are a lot of people who do not want to engage with the concept for whatever reason.Pre-conditions required for networked learningShelly Q has done a great job of summarizing some of the pre-conditions that need to exist before networked learning can flourish including a willingness to trust the other nodes of the network, w

  
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• CCK08: Learning networks for health professionals

  Posted: October 4th, 2008, 6:19am GMT

  I have been asked to give a presentation at the 2008 Community Care Conference in Surfers Paradise, Queensland in November. The conference theme is 'Beyond Today-Shaping the Future'. I have been asked to talk about how Web 2.0 and networking can be used for professional development and life-long learning. The premise being that if health professionals feel supported and feel they are learning and growing in their jobs, they will feel greater job satisfaction which will turn will improve recruitm

  
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• CCK08 Weekly Chat #4

  Posted: October 3rd, 2008, 10:25pm GMT

  CCK08 Weekly Chat #4 Submitted by admin on Fri, 2008-10-03 22:25. Other Shows cck08 59:04 minutes (27.04 MB) Connectivism and Connective Knowledge Online Course Week#4 Discussion October 3, 2008

  
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• CCK08 - Prerequisites, or Advance Organizers?

  Posted: October 3rd, 2008, 5:31pm GMT

  I listened to the CCK08 ustream discussion this morning, moderated by Dave Cormier.  Dave mentioned his recent blog post about his thoughts on the course at the quarter mark.  He discusses the need for Prerequisite Literacies: Prerequisite Literacies I think this kind of course needs a very specific description of what people are goign to need to know in order to be able to participate effectively. This might also include go forward models in terms of how people might go about doing that. For

  
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• CCK08 - Short Paper 1 - Position on Connectivism

  Posted: October 3rd, 2008, 2:37pm GMT

  Well, it ’s time to write the first short paper. I take this assignment as a welcome advice from the facilitators because, despite I found nothing interesting to say regarding the issues of weeks 2 and 3, I now need to verify where I am.. So, my position on connectivism… Easy! I feel literally immersed in connectivism! But it’s a feeling, something “instinctive”, as Andreas says. Perhaps it is natural, since I am a professional in networking, communication, education. It’s easy for me to be c

  
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• Innovate: Downes on MOOCs and CCK08

  Posted: October 3rd, 2008, 1:39pm GMT

  Over the last several weeks, we have seen a substantial amount of conversation on open education, open teaching, and accreditation. Rather timely then that Stephen Downes' article in the latest issue (free registration required) of Innovate is focused on our Connectivism and Connective Knowledge course. He details how the course is set up, technologies used, participant contributions, language translations, and other delivery modalities (in Second Life, for example).

  
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• Online Professors for Free

  Posted: October 3rd, 2008, 6:21am GMT

  New York Times has an article about the best of online professors. Now that many universities are making their lectures available online for free, sometimes directly and sometimes through services like iTunesU, the next logical step is to separate the wheat from the chaff. Who are the best? Read the article.

  
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• The CCK08 MOOC - Connectivism course, 1/4 way

  Posted: October 2nd, 2008, 3:02pm GMT

  To the best of my knowledge, the term “MOOC” comes out of a skype chat conversation I had with George Siemens about what exactly he would call this thing he and Stephen Downes were doing so I could call it something for the ETT show were were planning on the subject. We threw a bunch of possibilities around, and I dropped MOOC into the connectivism wiki, and, yesterday, someone asked me to do a presentation on the topic. 3 months. crazy. I’m not going to dial down into specifics of how the cour

  
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• Open courses, certificates and accreditation

  Posted: October 2nd, 2008, 1:45pm GMT

  This article by Jeffrey Young started a quite large discussion about open courses, more or less hacked certificates, accreditation of informal learning etc. I feel so much implicated, since Jeff specifically mentioned me as a case of a person who, after having attended the almost famous (or should I say notorious? ) OpenEd2007 course, received a home-made certificate from the instructor (with some doubt, as Jeff says, also on the legitimacy of this act…), put it in his/her CV and/or used it

  
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• CCK08 Short Paper 1: Your position on Connectivism

  Posted: October 2nd, 2008, 9:29am GMT

  To read about connectivism is somewhat funny for me. Something like … { learning { what I was feeling to know { that knowledge is not propositional } in some non-propositional way } in propositional form } My position on connectivism is in some way instinctive. With a physical sciences background it is difficult to cope with all the discussions focused on accepting conne

  
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• My Position on Connectivism

  Posted: October 2nd, 2008, 1:25am GMT

  What follows is my submission for CCK08 Short Paper 1 Connectivism is a new theory of learning and knowledge that seeks to explain how the scale and scope of information, depth and levels of discourse and interaction, and technological opportunities that have emerged in the wake of the Digital Age have affected the learning process. Connectivism can be classified as a learning theory due to its embodiment of five key principles (Siemens, Sept. 2008): We have a need to externalise to make sen

  
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• The Pre-Grading Golden Age

  Posted: October 1st, 2008, 11:23pm GMT

  [photo by Thomas Levinson] I couldn’t find the thread George mentions, but questions about our grading system and the invocation of William Farish are interesting to consider. The history of grading as we know it, as laid in the article that George links to, can use some expansion. In that article, we learn that Farish instituted his grading system in 1792 or later. But there is an interesting parallel (?) development outlined in a 1993 Educational Forum article: The history of grading in

  
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• Community

  Posted: October 1st, 2008, 7:21pm GMT

  In 1993, Howard Rheingold referred to a "virtual community'' as a place where community members meet, collaborate, and support one another emotionally. I wonder in how many virtual communities are you considered a member?I am a member of the Edtechtalk community (a rather annoying one at that), a member of a Twitter group, a member of The Bloggers' Cafe in Second Life, as well as several other SL groups, and a member of the NECC virtual attendees badge-carrying club (ok, just kidding).I have h

  
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• CCK08: Who owns the knowledge?

  Posted: October 1st, 2008, 11:58am GMT

  If my experiences in open courses like 'Facilitating Online Communities' and 'Connectivism and Connective Knowledge' are anything to go by, I could be forgiven for saying that online open access education had well and truly arrived. Indeed, educators such as Graham Attwell, who has talked about the 'explosion of open learning' in his latest blog post, appear to agree. And my own boss, Phil Ker has recently announced that my institution, Otago Polytechnic, will be anchoring an International Centr

  
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• Open Learning is here - where next?

  Posted: October 1st, 2008, 9:10am GMT

  First we had open educational resources. This was a step forward but the resources were variable in quality, hard to find and were often tied to courses which made them hard to use for self study. Those issues haven’t gone away but improvements in search technologies and a wider general conciousness about the value of self publishing open resources means it is increasingly easy to find what you want. And now we are witnessing an explosion in open learning. Of course there are the big publicity

  
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