YouTube - The Inner Life Of A Cell (HQ)
Pew Internet - Teen Content Creators and Consumers Annotated
elearnspace - Knowing Knowlege - Book Annotated
elearnspace - Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age Annotated
The 2007 Online Connectivism Conference is in the books although the wrap-up event will be held at 11 CST/noon EST on Monday, February 12th. As a tool for myself but for others who would find this helpful, I’ve compiled the links to most of the PowerPoint presentations, audio files (mp3), video files (m4v), Elluminate sessions (when they worked) and Chat Text. Feel free to delve into these rich conversations, but if you want more, check out the Moodle site at: http://ltc.umanitoba.ca/moodle/
Thanks to Jim Coyle and Stephen Downes for the audio files, Thomas Bernhardt for the Google Video files, George Siemens for posting the chat text, and thanks to Elluminate for hosting the recorded sessions. And a big thanks to all the presenters who offered up their PowerPoint presentations for us to reference in the future. This type of open sharing in a wonderful community of practice sets a terrific example for others to follow.
[tags] connectivism, occ2007, siemens, richardson, oblinger, downes, anderson, kerr [/tags]
powered by performancing firefox
The opening session to the 2007 Online Connectivism Conference
just concluded and my head is spinning (In a really good way). There was so
much investment in this room, over 190 participants in the Elluminate session.
The message board was rolling, the discussion thought-provoking (even if,
especially with the differing opinions), and my hands couldn’t keep up with my
thoughts!
I came away with a number of things that I need to think more about:
The driving question for many of us
attending the Online Connectivism Conference is:
What is
connectivism and how does it apply to education?
Please check it out. Better yet, join the Moodle
and dive into this community of practice! We look forward to learning with you!
This is food for thought… And I’m starving!
[tags]occ2007, connectivism, siemens [/tags]
powered by performancing firefox
This one is on my virtual calendar!
The Learning Technologies Centre at the University of Manitoba is hosting the Connectivism Online Conference. Thanks in large part to the efforts of George Siemens, this wholly online (oh and did I mention, FREE!) conference runs from 2-9 February 2007 and will feature the likes of Stephen Downes, Terry Anderson, Bill Kerr (link to presentation material) and Will Richardson as well as George Siemens himself.
This event will employ both Moodle and e-lluminate and will cover such areas as:
“…trends in K-12 sector, trends in higher education, research and net pedagogy, technological and societal trends, and connective knowledge and connectivism.”
I am looking forward to this event and hope that you will join me there!
Note: Bill Kerr’s link has been updated to reflect his new location and he kindly offered a link to his presentation material.
[tags]occ2007[/tags]
technorati tags:occ2007, connectivism, learning, online, conference
Blogged with Flock
My five-year old son Hunter is a philosopher, he just doesn’t know it. I find myself constantly amazed by the things that I learn from him.
Take yesterday for example, I’m driving my kids to my daughter’s basketball game and Hunter is in the backseat making some sort of vehicle with his Legos™. Holding up something he has built he says to me:
Hunter: "Dad, look what I made. It’s a ship."
Me: "Wow Hunter, that’s pretty wild."
Hunter: "I had to take something else apart to make it because I don’t have enough pieces."
Me: "That’s ok Hunter, that’s the best thing about building with Legos. You can make things and then take them apart and make new things."
Hunter: "I know Dad, I do that a lot. I like building new things, but sometimes I don’t like it when they break."
Me: "Yeah, that happens to me sometimes too. I try to find another way to build them that is stronger."
Then silence, Hunter was back in the zone.
It got me to thinking that knowledge and information are a lot like Legos. We acquire all of these various bits and pieces, which alone are useless, but can be combined to build incredibly intricate designs and constructs. Then we can break them down, and build them back up into something new - based on whatever new problem is thrown our way. Sometimes our designs have flaws and what we build falls apart when we test them. We deposit this experience into our knowledge bank, and then go back to the drawing board and either strengthen our construct or rebuild it from scratch.
Thanks Hunter!
technorati tags: legos, learning, knowledge, philosophy, connectivism
After my post about the Chronicle article yesterday I started to think about the perception that appears to permeate the educational "industry" (from K-12 through higher ed); a paradigm which treats knowledge and learning in an almost proprietary sense. When I say proprietary I mean two things: 1) that knowledge and learning are accepted and recognized by our culture as occurring primarily, if not solely, in a formal environment and transmitted by a particularly small subset of that culture and 2) that curricular content is "owned" by the institution and/or its members.
This dogma is being challenged furiously by what has been termed informal learning - not only are we no longer place-based learners (then again have we truly ever been) but our access to information and our ability to learn from a higher quality of social network has come to mean that we no longer place formal learning on the pedestal upon which it has so long resided. And as George Siemens illustrates in his theory of connectivism, between the sheer quantity of human knowledge and the impact of technology on our ability to access, process and remix that knowledge to create new understanding our culture is at a crossroads. If the education industry desires to remain competitive and viable, it must adopt a new business model rather than a model based on knowledge scarcity and knowledge as a commodity. The divide is growing, and our educational industry must rise to the challenge.
It brings to mind the lyrics from a song by one of my favorite groups, the Glengarry Bhoys.
"I fear that everything is changing.
I fear the world is spinning, around and round and upside down.
And I fear my ship is leaving and I can’t get it off the ground."
technorati tags: knowledge, learning, connectivism, formal, informal, proprietary
As I mentioned in an earlier post, the focus of my M.Ed. is on educational technology, specifically the prescriptive application of the appropriate technology to achieve or improve an educational experience. Over the past 6 months or so, I have found myself exploring an explosion in innovative web-based applications which have been assigned the unofficial moniker of Web 2.0. Blogs, podcasts, wikis, social bookmarks, aggregators and virtual communities (the online equivalent of social networks) are just some of the latest trends in the online experience. That is all well and good you might say, but why is this important to me as an educator?
Two recent research studies have led to some startling revelations about our current generation of young learners. In early November 2005, the EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research (ECAR) published the ECAR Study of Students and Information Technology, 2005: Convenience, Connection, Control, and Learning in which they describe the characteristics and aptitudes of the generation that has been termed the “digital natives.” Other monikers include the “net generation,” the “twitch generation” and the “Millenials.” Around the same time, the Pew Internet & American Life Project published their report, “Teen Content Creators and Consumers.”
Each of these studies identified trends in this generation of learners that are important for educators to bear in mind. The ECAR report shows that among the participating colleges and universities:
One important item to note is that while students self-reported that they were sufficiently versed in computer and internet technologies, ECAR data
“…suggests that students are possibly rating their skills higher than they ought. Students report difficulty with new kinds of applications or technology, and troubleshooting their computers.”
As educators we should bear in mind that comfort with computers and applications does not necessarily imply an ability to employ those skills for academic purposes. In addition, a technology proficiency gap already exists between the skill levels and technology preferences of the incoming freshman and outgoing seniors. In a span of only four years, there is already a significant difference in the aptitudes and comprehension of our learners. This gap is borne out, at least allegorically, by my experiences working with students at both ends of the spectrum in my role as the coordinator of the Technology & Learning Center on my campus. Couple this with the fact that sum of our human knowledge has grown more in the past ten years than at any other point in our history and according to the American Society of Training and Documentation (ASTD) continues to double every 18 months (Siemens 2004), it is clear that if this is a challenging time to be an educator, just imagine how overwhelming it can seem to our learners.
Unlike the ECAR report which identified trends in students’ use of and comfort with technology, the Pew Report examined the role of teens in content creation on the internet and summarizes their findings as follows (this is a national study; I have not yet found international statistics for correlation):
While ECAR identified four themes in student expectation of information technologies: convenience, connection, control and learning, we will, for the purposes of this project, focus on the aspects of connection and learning as they apply to educational technologies. The prevailing theme in the Pew Report is that our millennial learners are no longer satisfied with being content consumers, they are becoming content creators. These trends, connection and learning, and content creation, will become pivotal as we explore the potential impact that Web 2.0 applications can have on facilitating the learning process for this digital native generation.
technorati tags: web20, web, 2.0, learning, technology, educause, ecar, connectivism, philosophy, theory, social, software, networking, ed506
11/06/2005 - 8:20 pm
I’ve been listening to an EdTech Talk podcast hosted by Jeff Lebow and Dave Cormier, who were interviewing George Siemens and Jay Cross.
George is best known to me for his advocacy of connectivism and has a website which further explains this concept. What stood out to me in his brief introduction was the concept that networking, in the sense of connectivism, is learning. Our learning, our sense of what is known is tempered, refined and refuted by the filters of those in our network. In an age where we are inundated with data, input and white noise, it is impossible for any one person to understand fully the whole of any subject. Leveraging connectivism allows us to aggregate the collective knowledge, experience and insight of our social networks thereby refining and improving our own understanding.
Jay’s perspective was focused on informal learning, what goes on beyond the classroom walls. He spoke about our ability to survive being totally dependent upon our ability to adapt. Learning, or rather the application of our ability to learn, is one of the best adaptive response tools we can employ.
More in a bit, I needed to get this posted as it has been sitting in my Google Desktop scratch pad for the past few days.
EdVentures in Technology is authored by John Martin, communication and collaboration consultant with White Mountain Technology Services.
If I'm not online right now, feel free to
Skype me: EdVentures
Tweet me: edventures
EdVentures syndicates its posts and comments using a technology called RSS (Real Simple Syndication) through the Feedburner service.
