Communication in the blogosphere

At the connectivism conference George Siemens responded to my posts on 'communication while using technology in education'. Here is the link to his blog. I haven't worked my way through the post and interesting comments on his blog completely yet, but it captures a number of important issues. I cannot see a true dialogue in blogging: online communication is not a true two-way conversation, but people posting messages, putting forward their own viewpoint, the things they are interested in. The medium is not as well suited to communicating as a face to face environment and people only half-listen to the other persons point of view (especially when they are as long as the ones on his blog) or do not respond at all.
The problem with not responding at all is that the blogger becomes an information source in broadcasting mode, rather than a source of knowledge. I can understand that people at the centre of networks, the 'experts' (and I do believe this is the way the networks develop, not random nodes, but communities with expert(s) at the centre) cannot always continue to communicate; they will move on themselves as they learn more. Where does that leave the people at the periphery of the network? I would say with lots of information to digest and a need to not only mull it over in their own heads, but to comunicate with others.

Connectivism conference

The connectivism online conference is underway. I just ended a conversation with 180+ people and still can't let go and participate in the discussion. If you don't know what connectiviism is, Stephen Downes described it as follows on one of the discussion forums:

'At its heart, connectivism is the thesis that knowledge is distributed across a network of connections, and therefore that learning consists of the ability to construct and traverse those networks. It shares with some other theories a core proposition, that knowledge is not acquired, as though it were a thing. Hence people see a relation between connectivism and constructivism or active learning (to name a couple). Where connectivism differs from those theories, I would argue, is that connectivism denies that knowledge is propositional. That is to say, these other theories are 'cognitivist', in the sense that they depict knowledge and learning as being grounded in language and logic. Connectivism is, by contrast, 'connectionist'. Knowledge is, on this theory, literally the set of connections formed by actions and experience. It may consist in part of linguistic structures, but it is not essentially based in linguistic structures, and the properties and constraints of linguistic structures are not the properties and constraints of connectivism. In connectivism, a phrase like 'constructing meaning' makes no sense. Connections form naturally, through a process of association, and are not 'constructed' through some sort of intentional action. And 'meaning' is a property of language and logic, connoting referential and representational properties of physical symbol systems. Such systems are epiphenomena of (some) networks, and not descriptive of or essential to these networks. Hence, in connectivism, there is no real concept of transferring knowledge, making knowledge, or building knowledge. Rather, the activities we undertake when we conduct practices in order to learn are more like growing or developing ourselves and our society in certain (connected) ways. This implies a pedagogy that (a) seeks to describe 'successful' networks (as identified by their properties, which I have characterized as diversity, autonomy, openness, and connectivity) and (b) seeks to describe the practices that lead to such networks, both in the individual and in society (which I have characterized as modeling and demonstration (on the part of a teacher) and practice and reflection (on the part of a learner))'. As you can imagine quite some discussion is taking place as the concept of connectivism is controversial in itself. I am not convinced that we can leave behind concepts such as 'information' and 'knowledge' as we have known them for centuries. There are networks out there producing mis-information and half-truths. People will always look for likeminded people, diregarding critical examination of the network's ideas. How would this work in an educational sense? What would the role of the tutor be? Refuting mis-information, or being the expert and providing content?

MIT laptops project is gathering momentum

The project by MIT to develop laptops and facilitate equality in ICT access between children in developing and developed countries is gathering momentum. The test phase will start in February.
This seems a massive step in the direction of unleashing the creative potential of people in communities and countries whose voices have been marginalised for so long.

Will the laptops end up and stay with the people they are being designed for? The production cost might be low in Western terms, but in developing countries one laptop would feed a lot of empty stomachs! Link

Connectivism conference

This month an online conference will take place on connectivism. All Canadian 'talkers' and 'thinkers' in the field of learning technology are involved: Stephen Downes, George Siemens, Terry Anderson, Diana Oblinger so it should be an interesting event.
You can find out more and register at the conference web site.

I think it is great for educationalists to talk about new developments. It is a shame though that not more research is carried out in the use of these new technologies to see if the ideas thought up by crystal-ball gazing would actually work in a learning situation. Their actions are not always consistent with their talk.

Stephen Downes for instance talks a lot in his blog and papers about how connecting people will enhance the learning and knowledge creation. He carries a tutorial on how to include RSS feeds on blogs on his website (I am still working on adding one to this blog), but then he has taken down all his RSS feeds and has moved to an email distribution in broadcasting mode for his blog. I presume it has to do with protecting against spam attakcs, but it is a contradiction in terms with the writing on his blog. Chat and discussions don't work, so it seems that from Web 2.0 he has moved back to Web 1.0. I have for quite some time been impressed with the way his blog has become a community of practice of learning technologists, but find it disappointing that people can no longer comment and communicate in an easy and straightforward way.

Future Lab

Over the past few weeks I have read a number of publications by Future Lab and they are all very interesting. A number of people are looking at 'personalisation' and at 'networked and connected learning' . They also just started a blog called Flux

My only problem with their papers, as with most other papers on these subject, is that they are speculative, rather than based on research.

Happy New Year to you all. I have recovered from my holiday in Gran Canaria over Christmas and New Year and of writing my literature review for my PhD. I feel I am still on a roll, so I have already taken new books out of the library to start the chapter on research methods.

Comm.unities.of.Prac.tice 2.0

I just read some of the work by Martin Kloos in The Netherlands, who wrote a thesis on the use of blogs, wikis and social bookmarking in learning, in communities of practice. Fortunately I read Dutch so I am working my way through it and it it brings up a number of questions. Link
I am also working on some research amongst my MA in Lifelong Learning group that worked on the module 'ICT and Society' this term. They have used a group blog, a group wiki and made extensive use of del.icio.us. I will soon report back on this.