Ruminate

Last week we had George Siemens, czar of Connectivism, on-site at the Center for Distance Education as our most recent visiting scholar.

Except for a disagreement about Marc Prensky (I think he’s a polemicist/provocateur/gadfly who deserves a tip of the hat in passing; I suspect George would happily put him in a head crusher) I found that most of what George presented to and discussed with us resonated with my evolving view of education, teaching and learning. That’s no surprise given that I’ve been talking about Connectivism and Connected Knowledge since their early days (this dialogue between George and Stephen Downes is another part of the puzzle, as are some of the conversations that took place during the online Connectivism Conference, such as this Challenge to Connectivism thread). If nothing else I knew it had to be a good thing for faculty and staff to hear some of these ideas from someone other than me!

Despite all that, and it being my suggestion that we try to bring George up, I was a bit skeptical. I’m naturally suspicious of all good ideas that are not my own, particularly when they come under the umbrella of a clever coinage, and George is a seemingly tireless presenter. Frankly, I was concerned that he might be more salesman and sophist than educator and theorist.

My concerns were for naught. I’m sympathetic to Bill Kerr’s continued questioning of Connectivism, particularly these three basic queries (as I would rank them in ascending order of importance):

1. is Connectivism really a learning theory
2. have the important parts of Connectivism already been covered (and possibly covered better) by earlier thinkers such as Papert and Vygotsky
3. does Connectivism misrepresent constructivism and other earlier pedagogical theories

But I’m not sure that resolving those questions matters as much to me as the productivity of Connectivism as a lens for examining and transforming educational practice. George made regular, accurate references to those that had come before (his ability to do so on the fly while making relevant points without just throwing citations around and name-dropping as some do was impressive) and I see what he is promoting as building upon– not throwing away– earlier theories. All I can do is continue my own investigations and if something dissonant comes up I’ll ask him about it.

Connectivism in practice is the key question. As I said, the theory/model resonates with me and fits with my experience not just as teacher, but also as a learner. The latter might even be more important. I see Connectivism as an essential part of a fabric that includes social networks, learning communities, information fluency, and Third Places. But what does it mean to a faculty member on the ground teaching class X to a diverse group of students? How specifically can they engage (or take into account) Connectivist theory? What will students be doing and how will they be assessed?

We’re working towards answers to these questions with individual course development efforts and it might be that generalized answers aren’t possible beyond those many of us are already promoting: educational conversation, collaboration, network resource building, etc. Educational blogging (the practice encapsulating micro-publishing, syndication, and subscription)– for learner and educator alike– is certainly a fundamental practice, a platform upon which we can share the answers we discover…

I’ve been singing the same tune as Hugh MacLeod in classes and at conferences for a while. If people are blogging less now it is only because so many other ways of being present and participating are available, each of them particularly suited for a particular kind (or granularity) of expression.

Twittering and Tumbling and Facebooking aren’t preventing people from blogging… they are creating new ways for people to express themselves in ways that blog engines– in all their variety– fit only approximately at best. Something that fits well as a Twit is going to be at best wedged into the stream of blog entries. If one can share something through a Facebook widget satisfactorily, then the impulse probably didn’t need to find its way (at that point) to a blog entry or wiki page.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that people have mistaken a single kind of tree for the forest. I’m guilty of hand-wringing about the death of publishing when publishing continues to see explosive growth when what I am really unhappy about is the lack of publication of the writers and kind of writing that I have grown to have a particular interest in. Let’s forget about the dying of the blog and start paying attention to the incredible wave of lightweight, frictionless, gatekeeper free participation mechanisms that are now at our command for utterances large and small.

Does the word “blog” really mean anything anymore? When a term encompasses sites from BoingBoing to Borderland, and MetaFilter to Quantum Gravity in the Lab, how is the term useful? Saying “I don’t like blogs” is really saying “I don’t like the net” or “I don’t like things being published.” I doubt most who use those words actually mean that.

Blogging was never the point– participation, presence and publishing were. There’s a reason so many of us were blogging before there were any blogs and now spend time trying to make others see the publishing revolution that is at-hand and of far greater impact than the word “blog” can hope to represent.

Chris Watson has some thoughts about what makes a serious student/learner. A few things I think any learner should be doing (i.e. be taught how to do):

• Connect - finding the people and resources that they can learn from and creating their learning network.
• Collect - managing materials, links, resources and artifacts in a trusted collection system with social, connecting features where appropriate.
• Reflect - intellectual engagement demands explicit reflection… even Einstein, famous for his thought experiments, wrote thousands of letters, thousands of discarded papers, and hundreds of journals.
• Participate - a serious learner is an active learner and an active learner participates… and the network effects that make todays learning environment special are only realized through participation.

I also wonder about the dangers of being too serious… in my experience there’s not that much distance between serious engagement and psyche-altering obsession, between wanting to know as much as one can about everything and staring into the abyss of all that one person can never know. I constantly struggle with maintaining my balance not just with how much there is I don’t know in even my chosen specialties (which fosters helpful humility) but to accept that it’s healthy to have activities in which I will always be a decided amateur, even a dilettante. There are many good reasons to pursue various hobbies and interests which have nothing to do with becoming the best, or being a professional, or even being very good at them.

I’m not above jumping onto a meme-train, though I have to think that this particular item is completely whack (and not in a good way, and not just because it tried to put a “cash advance” link in the result).