Having read George Siemens’ Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age and listened to his podcast interview with David, I have begun to think about the implications of connectivism as a model of learning for designing learning activities, particularly using blogs and wikis. These are a few notes to expand on later ... maybe.

GS says the new (social?) technologies have developed by reflecting the changes, the key shifts, in society. He then maps these new technologies onto a pedagogy that meets the needs of a particular model of learning - connectivism. Is this the way humans generally learn? Or is it also new; a new way of learning that has been necessitated by the social changes GS outlines? GS says that on the whole educational design has lagged behind the social shifts and the new technologies and their uses, and that there has been a tendency to force them into the service of old outmoded models of learning. However, the new technologies enable educational designs that are in tune with the social shifts and meet the needs of the connectivist learning model. But other models of learning are still appropriate to certain stages of social development (theocracies e.g?) and for certain types of practical knowledge.

But student centred teaching styles and educational designs based on constructivist ideas are resisted as much by many students as by traditionally orientated academics and teachers. They want to be 'taught' and too often all we want to do is 'teach' them. Perhaps Connectivism as a learning process needs to be taught (induced, introduced,enabled?) and does not come naturally to students. It is not a 'hard wired' attribute. So educational design cannot simply be based upon the model of connectivist learning. It must also take into account that this style of learning is a possibility for students rather than 'natural' and already acheived. Connectivist educational design needs to create a learning ecology that teaches the connectivist learning process rather than assuming that it is what students already do. Maybe the structures and constraints I build into my educational design must de-traditionalise (is this a contradiction?) the students learning styles and encourage and motivate them to consciously embrace the connectivist learning model and see it as appropriate, and buy into it. How do I do this?

Supporting learners in recognising their own learning is a proposed heading in the usecases wiki http://careo.elearning.ubc.ca/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?elgg/usecases. Recognising their own learning in the sense of their own existing styles of learning and the potential for developing and exploiting the connectivist style and the appropriateness of this in the 'information age'?

Browsing for useful stuff emerging from ALT-C 2005 (with many thanks to colleagues here on Elgg for reports as I couldn't go this year). To be added to....

The National Center for Academic Transformation

Resources at the University of British Columbia (currently hosting Elgg wikis)

What is a weblog?

Showcase of examples of uses of blogs http://weblogs.elearning.ubc.ca/home/showcase.php

Intro to RSS http://weblogs.elearning.ubc.ca/home/archives/intro_to_rss.php

Article By Brian Lamb of UBC on RSS http://estrategy.ubc.ca/news/update0308/030813-rss.html

One thing that has surprised me a little is how writing for a blog introduces a new sort of self-consciousness into my writing, and I think this is to do with the ambiguities of audience. Thinking of Charles Cooley's notion of the looking glass self, I am usually clear and self-confident about the audience I am writing for (students, fellow academics, family, etc.) and have a fairly clear idea of how they see me and what their expectations of me are (no doubt somewhat mistaken at times!) and what I am trying to acheive - to teach something, to influence, to impress, etc. With a personal blog the entries are sometimes for me but others have a variety of putative audiences, some unknown. I don't know if this is common but some of my blog entries, including this one, are saved as 'private' to begin with so I can develop them a bit, spell check, find a url, etc. before making them public. Others I just post without much hesitation. It is often the ones for which I am not sure about the audience(s) that lead to the most hesitaion about going public. Some never see the light of day!

I assume I am not alone in this. I also assume that it is something to be taken into account when introducing students to this type of writing and encouraging and motivating them.

George Siemens' ideas on connectivism as the process that underpins a particular pedagogy and model of learning that fits well with the potentiality of certain internet social technologies has given me a very useful platform for thinking about educational design. On broadly constructivist lines, students already have an internal network of knowledge with which new knowledge must negotiate – new learning connects with and modifies existing knowledge. Another idea George introduces that I think is crucial for designing for learning is the notion of an educational ecology, a learning ecology. I see this as a reminder that learning is a process of interchange with an environment and that the interchange between ‘organisms’ and ‘environment’ sustains and modifies both.

George talks about students' internal knowledge networks being interconnections of nodes of different types, some central and strong and others weak and peripheral, even to the extent of being dissonant in some ways. Existing knowledge is held at different levels of consciousness - some is explicitly known and can be articulated fairly easily, but some knowledge is less well known in the sense that it is less consciously used, is more tacit. Some knowledge is conceptual, some practical, and the two types are often linked via practices which merge both conscious and subconscious forms. And often consciously held beliefs and knowledge depend upon rarely inspected assumptions but only make sense because of those assumptions. (I need to sort this out a bit: I have suddenly introduced the word 'beliefs').

Part of an educational strategy I think this points to is to help students become more consciously aware of their existing network of knowledge, what is central, what peripheral, what conscious and explicit, what is relatively unconscious and implicit, what assumptions much of it depends on, what nodes of the network are loosely attached possibly because they tend to be dissonant, and so on - students as 'knowledge engineers', mining their own knowledge network(s).

In the context of teaching the sociology of the environment, I am trying to visualise and list the various sorts of knowledge that students will have already that the ideas and content of the module can explicitly link to. The following is a very provisional list. Practically any item on the list could be expanded into extensive sub lists. (Attempting this has put me very much in mind of the sort of mind mapping processes that Tony Buzan writes about. I think this is worth a look as Buzan's model of the learning process seems to rest on something very close to connectivism. There may be some useful mileage in this).

Elements of students’ prior knowledge relevant to the environment, environmental issues and problems and the connection between individuals and society and the environment:

• Sociology; relation of individual and society, individuals and societies the product of socio-historical processes


• The nature and logic of capitalism


• competition, destructive innovation (Joseph Schumpeter), built in obsolescence, profit motive, competition, free markets, exploitation of natural and social resources


• The nature of industrialism


• Processing and transformation of materials, production, marketing, waste and pollution, industrial production in the context of a capitalist economic system


• Culture


• consumer society, consumerism, status by material possessions, conspicuous consumption, leisure and holidays, marketing


• Globalisation; relations between developed and less developed nations, 'mercantile colonialism', global systems of production and consumption, globalisation of western culture and life styles


• Identity formation, life style, class, status, relations of production,


• Environmental social movements and interest groups


• Ideologies and political systems


• Everyday experience of: consumerism, fashion, the 'manufacture' of identity and desire, transportation systems travel, cars, cheap flights, shopping, food, clothing, gadgets and gizmos etc., the affects of advertising


• The news media on environmental issues, radio, TV, WWW


• Exposure to local issues, ideas of parents and friends

And I am sure a great deal more, representing a massive resource of existing knowledge that can have explicit connections made to it by systematic sociological and scientific knowledge re: the environment. So I need concrete strategies (exercises, assignments, activities, etc.) to exploit this, bring it to the surface and connect to it.

http://elgg.net/dtosh/weblog/1731.html David Tosh's post on 'What is Elgg'.

http://elgg.net/tour_1.php Tour of Elgg (features and how to sign up, posting, access control, forming communities of shared interests, file store and access contol to it, etc).

http://elgg.net/tutorials.php Elgg demonstration tutorials.

http://eradc.org/index.php e-portfolio research and development

http://eradc.org/papers.php papers on learning landscape and e-portfolios

http://eradc.org/description.php terminology and definitions, e.g. blogs, wikis, etc.

A survey of British taxi drivers, pub landlords and hairdressers -- often seen as barometers of popular trends -- found that nearly 90 percent had no idea what a podcast is and more than 70 percent had never heard of blogging.

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/technology/archives/2005/09/28/walking_

Is there a way fof getting the url above to simply be shown as a live link? Or do I still need to hand code it - Walking the Blog

A few days ago I posted to Pedagogical Impacts http://elgg.net/pedagogy/weblog/2410.html to try to get some ideas on specifying a VLE purely on the grounds of pedagogical considerations (i.e not technical, admin, managerial, etc.). And I got some really useful feedback.

One intriguing comment from Graham Attwell was that "Long term I am convinced the VLE is dead but short term it looks a neat solution for college managers". I have heard this before, or at least I think it has been hinted at. Derek Morrison at Bristol, for instance, seems to imply as much I think in some of his posts on Auricle http://www.bath.ac.uk/dacs/cdntl/pMachine/morriblog_more.php?

If this is so, what do we see as replacing the VLE? I assume we would need most of the functionality VLEs offer. If the VLE is dead in terms of being the best way to get that functionality, what takes its place - a number of different loosely, if at all, integrated OS 'modules'? What is the vision emerging in the e-learning community post VLE?

It feels a little presumptuous to go around nicking other people's friends but I find this a really useful aspect of Elgg. So, whether they like it or not, quite a lot of people are going to find they are friends of mine!

I have become very interested in e-portfolios since I have been wandering about in Elgg. I think they (what ever they turn out to be) are ideal tools for progressing some key aspects of our life-long learning agenda (students as self-activating, reflective life-long learners, 'expert students'), and our attempt to integrate the development of information literacy skills across the syllabus. So, I am befriending anyone who posts on e-portfolios.

Now I am off to see if I can find an e-portfolio community I can join.