Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Connectivism and Connective Knowledge

I'm taking George Siemens' and Stephen Downes' open Connectivism and Connective Knowledge course through the University of Manitoba. My blog is coming back to life with thoughts and questions based on the experience. Hopefully, you will see a deeper understanding begin to evolve. George posted a number of supporting documents for review, one of which was a comparison chart that differentiates connectivism from various other learning theories. This is helpful as I am still trying to grasp the concept of connectivism.

A couple questions came to mind as I read through the comparison chart.

  • If learning is distributed within a network, how do you centralize understanding? In other words, each participant only holds a piece of the complete puzzle.
  • Are the tools that help put those pieces together the new tools of learning?
  • Shouldn't motivation be included as an influencing factor? My personal experience with online learning communities is that levels of contribution vary greatly. Learning therefore depends on individual participants' motivation to support and contribute to the group.
More to come.

2 comments:

Emanuela Zibordi said...

I wrote something similar on my blog
http://tinyurl.com/5mxuua
:-)

Anonymous said...

Hi Wendy,
I saw you on-line at the Elluminate discussion and that you were in St. Petersburg. I'm newly arrived in Dade City having spent many years in Hong Kong at the secondary level as a Tech Coordinator.

Your comment on motivation seems so important yet sometimes hard to create. I still can't conceive that 1/3 of the students in Florida don't graduate from High School. Is motivation just personal or can educational networks create and develop motivation (like video games)? Does unstructured non-linear learning enhance motivation or not?