Hello, LRND 6820 students. I hope you had a great Thanksgiving holiday and are coming back from the break rested and ready for an interesting conversation this week.
As you recall, we briefly touched on connectivism early in the semester through our reading of a couple of chapters from Siemens’ book Knowing Knowledge, in which Siemens contextualized connectivism by comparing it with other major learning theories including behaviorism, cognitivism, and constructivism. (If you need a little refresher, it might be helpful to re-skim Breanna and Wesley’s summary of that reading, which I’ve pasted below.)
Melissa will be serving as our discussion facilitator this week. To start things off, she has created a Prezi in which she summarizes key points from the article and offers some conversation questions. A copy of her Prezi is embedded below. We’ll use Melissa’s blog as the hub for our conversation this week, but, as always, feel free to use Twitter to share and comment as well. Since connectivism is a popular topic right now, comments on Twitter may draw in perspectives from outside of class, which is always welcome. (Melissa, please keep an eye on your blog comments queue and Twitter this week.)
I know that, outside of this class, some of you have participated in some discussions about connectivist ideas in Terry’s class. However, if this is a brand new topic to you, you might enjoy the CommonCraft-style YouTube video below by Wendy Drexler, which provides a brief introduction to connectivism from the perspective of a hypothetical “networked student.”
Since, as always, we’re looking at connectivism through a lens of learning design, I’d also like you to explore a couple of additional resources that explore the theory introduced in the primary reading from “applied” points of view.
The first is a presentation by Stephen Downes, who has been a partner of Siemens in introducing and developing the theory of connectivism. In this set of slides, he discusses “pedagogical foundations for personal learning.”
I like this presentation for a couple of reasons. First, it helped me develop a clearer mental picture of how connectivist principles could be embodied in real learning situations. Second, it focuses heavily on personal learning environments, so I thought it might inspire some additional reflection on your own PLE projects give you some ideas for continuing the development of your PLEs. (As a “heads up” to those of you enrolling in my research methods class in the spring, we’ll spend some time on integrating research-related activities into your PLEs, so, beyond your own informal learning, there will be value in maintaining and refining your PLEs beyond LRND 6820.)
A link to an MP3 file in which Downes narrates and expands on the text and graphics in the slides is below the embedded slideshow. You might find it helpful to listen as you read.
Finally, I’d like you to take a look at Wendy Drexler’s article The networked student model for construction of personal learning environments: Balancing teacher control and student autonomy, in which she outlines an instructional model inspired by connectivism, expanding on the idea of the “networked student” introduced in the YouTube video and introducing a concept of a “networked teacher.”
As you read it, try to put yourselves in the proverbial shoes of both the student and the teacher, and think about how “design” could help you succeed in each role. In other words, drawing on Roy Pea’s ideas about “embedded intelligence,” how could you “embed” scaffolds in tools you might offer to students or trainees learning in a connectivism-oriented learning environment?
Coming Up
Believe it or not, we’ll arrive at our last set of readings for the semester next week as we explore a pair of articles from Scardamalia and Bereiter exploring the potential role of technology in helping students not only “learn” pre-existing knowledge and pre-defined skill sets, but in helping them become creative problem solvers and active participants in the process of creating “new” knowledge. (A positive way to end a semester, I think, and also a nice transition for those of you gearing up to focus on knowledge creation yourselves via your masters projects and theses.)
Finally, remember that your final projects/papers are due by midnight Sunday, December 12. You can either submit these via e-mail or (preferably) post them to your blogs or to the course wiki so that others can view them. Later this week, I’ll post a sign-up page for time slots for your presentations of your presentations during BGSU’s finals week.
That’s all for now. I hope you enjoy this week’s readings. I look forward to chatting with you about them online and to reading your summary blog posts at the end of the week.
As always, if you have questions, feel free to e-mail or Skype me, or pose your question via Twitter using the #LRND6820 tag.
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