http://francesbell.com/2008/10/24/cck08-networks-entities-and-
CCK08
In this, only my second reflective blog post in 7 weeks, I want to draw out s
ome threads from the information I have absorbed, the discussion in which I have engaged on CCK08, Moodle forums and others’ blogs. It was always going to be well-nigh impossible, particularly at this very busy period of the academic year, to keep track of the readings and personal contribution, and so my engagement has been a combination of targeted reading and serendipitous finding of pearls, and the irritant grains of sand that may yet become pearls.
Originally uploaded by tuija
Entities
The use of learning as a verb rather than as a noun has already been noted http://www.situativity.org/archives/000141.html and http://ltc.umanitoba.ca/wiki/Situating_Connectivism. It has struck me that in discussion on the CCK08 forums, the word network is usually a noun, casting network as an entity rather than an activity. I found the discussion on Groups and networks to be quite frustrating. In Stephen Downes’ talk http://www.downes.ca/post/42521, groups and networks are presented as a dualism (either/or) with value-laden attributes to each. If we were thinking about behaviours (group behaviour and networking) we could think about a duality of practice (think participation and reification in Wenger). Some of the discussion in this thread made me recall my thoughts on the ‘Humpty Dumpty’ nature of this terminology - a term like group was interpreted very differently by participants in CCK08. To me the term group is fairly generic term (having meaning in contrast to ‘individual’) that operates as a gateway to the various ways that individuals organise themselves- institutions, clubs, networks, etc. The overarching term ‘group’ is quite as hard to pin down as that other ‘fluffy’ term community. Interestingly, a difference that I had observed between Stephen Downes’ and George Siemens’ views of groups and networks in particular, and epistemology of knowledge in general, was confirmed in George’s mid course review video.
This got me thinking about an excellent chapter I read in a book called ‘Data and Reality’ many years ago.
“So, at bottom, we come to this duality. In an absolute sense, there is no singular objective reality. But we can share a common enough view of it for most of our working purposes, so that reality does appear to be objective and stable.
But the chances of achieving such a shared view become poorer when we try to encompass broader purposes, and to involve more people. This is precisely why the question is becoming more relevant today: the thrust of technology is to foster interaction among greater numbers of people, and to integrate processes into monoliths serving wider and wider purposes. It is in this environment that discrepancies in fundamental assumptions will become increasingly exposed.” http://www.bkent.net/Doc/darxrp.htm#Chapter12
These ideas are relevant to CCK08. Although participants share a common interest in connectivism, they have wide range of fundamental assumptions. The discrepancies in these assumptions are exposed on the forums and it can be hard work to achieve dialogue where participants are open to changes in thinking.
Practices
A more productive way forward than thinking about networks as entities may be to examine the practices of people within their own networks. It could be argued that this privileges human nodes over non-human nodes but I am more interested in learners than objects (oops my social constructivism is showing). Looking at a learner’s own network, we would see them navigate and traverse between network-as-entities. In this perspective the learner’s and others’ interpretation of the quality of nodes and connections becomes as or more important than the general frequency of connections.