Today we (Maru, Viplav and me) arrive to the end of our journey, a long journey with a lot of phases and dangers, I have to think now in Usysses and his journey to Ithaca, with a lot of challenges to face.
Here is the result:
But that is really only the tip of the Iceberg of a long process, in which we use different tools of the net to collaborate in an autonomous and connectivist way to arrive to a especific goal: The video presentation in Splashcast upload to youtube. That is easier to realize if you look at our wiki.
THANK YOU VERY MUCH TO MARU AND VIPLAV FOR A SO GOOD WORK TOGETHER, FOR THE TRUST AND FOR THE GENEROSITY AND EFFORTS TO FACE THIS LAST PHASE OF THE LONG CCK08 JOURNEY TOGETHER. IT WAS GREAT!!!
Today I read a post about zombies in educative institutions, (yes, really, it exists), his author Gabriel Bunster makes me really thinking and I spent the rest of my peaceful Sunday with this horror image in my head: Zombies walking in the educative institutions all around. The resistance to the change to a more free, open, active, dynamic, fair, interesting, interactive and better education are THE ZOMBIES.
I felt that I need more information about this scary argument. What I did?... Wikipedia of course and I found some useful information about my topic: educational zombies... The idea of p-zombies: Philosophical zombies. And then I was really scared:
...it is possible that there is a world exactly like ours in every physical respect, but in it everyone lacks certain mental states, namely any phenomenal experiences or qualia. The people there look and act just like people in the actual world, but they don't feel anything; when one gets shot, for example, he yells out as if he is in pain, but he doesn't feel any pain
A world that is so really like our world but without "conscious experience". I don´t want to go in a deep discussion about philosophical concepts. I like Philosophy but I am not so good to discuss about it in an appropriate level. Not like "Old socs", "I Kant", "L Tzu" and all the others philosophers in our Moodle forums. In any case the idea of the educational zombies and his philosophical reflection let me in a very extreme pessimistic position: There are not solution, there are not opportunities to change nothing, because we are maybe selves the zombies and we don´t know. What to change then?
But if we are not, if we are the good guys, the "Ed-tech survivors/fighters" (...?) the avantgard of a new open, free, decentralized... better world thanks the social media in the Internet, than the question is HOW. We can use this tech "to make fundamental and systemic changes" in our classes, in our teaching and in our learning. We can apply a more connectivist approach to our daily doing. OK, that is a way, and the second part is hopeful. The hope that a "viral process" transform our zombie-environment in something "vital", in life. Education becomes life. "we have to gain our voice. We have to speak for ourselves. To reclaim our language, reclaim our culture". (S.Downes, Reusable Media...). :
Right, that can be an opportunity: The open social media in the Internet, and the use that an active individual working in network do with it, and in this way hope to gain some influence on the institutional practice of education and that means on the future our societies. Because against the hard critic that the idea of a Fifth Estate receive in the forums of our CKK08 I still support the idea of W. H. Dutton:
...the network of networks, the Internet is enabling the development of a Fifth Estate that is enhancing the accountability of many sectors across all societies, from Burma to Britain, and from the press office to the classroom
The most important thing that we can learn from voices of resistance against a change is two things:
1. The most powerful voice of resistance is sometimes in ourselves.
2. The resistance is normally not really a conscious resistance against do things better, but a zombie resistance, a resistance from the ignorance of the existence of a practical alternative way, an opportunity, and from the election of false opportunities that improve any real change but only the continuation of old corrupts practices in a new high-tech-envelope.
In any cases I know how to act now with zombies thanks to the people of "Commoncraft Show":
I am also very interesting in the practical application of the ideas of networks in the "formal class" and I see also in the blogs a very good tool for that. I want to show us a little schema of 4 differents uses of blogs for the courses, it is in my CCK08 blog It is made with "paint", that means not very impresive ; ) But I think that can be interesting.
In the past I use blogs like I describe in model A: An only teachers Blog for all the group, but this year I try to practice some new "connectivist ideas" and I start with model B: Each student have his/her own blog. Now I am in model C: An internal network of students and teacher Blogs and try to implement the model D: An open network of Blogs with all possibles external nodes.
I don´t take care about the possibility to measure the "speed" of the student in learning (speed in sense of efficience use of the learning network in internet). For me it is only important that he/she does it. I think that each student is very different and "measures" need allways too many "stardards" or general points of reference, and that is not my first goal in teaching. I know that the evaluation and feedback is very important for the students, but I see it in so personal sense as possible. Of course I have to "note" my students, but that is for me not the most important. I do it, because I have to do it, that is all. The real feedback that I give them is not a note, it is a critic comment or a suggestion. What each person of the group (and yes, for me the group is very important) learnt autonomously is different. And the "complexity" of all this "personal interactions" between the persons in the group, the group, the network, and the collective, are the "orbit" (the Connective Knowledge) of my interpretation of Connective Learning (I remeber now the so long discussion about "what is connectivism" in Moodle...). That means for me that there is not an "orbit" before the start of the process of learning. The students do the "orbit" for a concret topic, in my case spanish learning is the topic, but the possibles orbits are infinite (Chaos, yeah ; ) I think that we have not to encourage speed in the "normal sense" of the word, but we have to encourage some "efficiences uses" of a chaotic network. Learning is a personal and individual process, I speak not here of "connectivist learning" really, I know, but we can use the network and the collective to generate learning and, of course, "connectivist Knowledge", but these "connectivist Knowledge" per se is also not the goal. That is the reason why I find the idea of PLE (Personal Learning Environment) so interesting, and that is my way to improve the "connectivism" in my class.
Now how I do it at this moment:
I try that the students work voluntary with personal individual blogs and I link these blogs later in a "central blog". That is only the "group", that is the class, I know, but in a more open context in time and space: the internet, a virtual group paralel to the "formal presential group". The next steep in this process is the "group/network". All the students are going to surf in the PLE of the other students and in the central blog. The last steep is to open this "group/network" to the "internet/network". The students look for interesting "nodes / contacs" in the web. They learn with these nodes and they integrate in this fashion the new external nodes in the "group". In this last moment the group is open to the external network. The groups feelings/emotions are allways there, but the interaction with the external nodes let see that in a secondary position. That is my practical approach to "my idea of connectivism". If I am wrong in the "theoretical-conceptual explication" or not is for me not so important. The thing is that this new form of learning works fine so in my class in this chaotic world of ephemeralization. ; )
My conclusion in this moment about the possible practice of informal connectivist learning in formal groups is this image:
How to bring some "Connectivism learning" in the "formal learning" at the school? That is the question that Emanuela Zibordi and me have in the Moodle cours CCK08
The formal class has to integrate the informal autonomous learning of the students and motivates it.
(We can give it the name of "atomic learning" jajjaja...)
Just now is finished the discussion in Illuminate with the prof Terry Anderson... And I think in all what I listened about the network, the groups and the web 2.0, and I remember one book of a spanish philosoph (1929), especially when I saw the titel of the book: "The wisdow of Crowds" (James Surowiecki)... I had to think in Ortega y Gasset and his critic to the "mass-man" in his book "The rebelion of the masses" I know that it is not exactly the same idea of mass... But the relationship between the web 2.0, the amateur web, and the "mass-man" is clear for me.
Well, I have not a "position" really about the idea of connectivism. If it is or not a new learning Theory is not the most relevant for me. (OK,that´s my position, of course ; ) The strength in the connectivist idea is the concept of network. It is easy to see that the network idea in "broadly meaning" is a very old and used one. The information networks were very important for the polices of all modern states for example. The relationship between the networks idea and the computer technology is not so old, but also not a new new one. Trebor Scholz in his essay "A History of the social web", a basic reading for me in this course, gives several examples of authors and thinkers who writing since the birth of the computer about social network online. But the connectivism has in the idea of network a new concept of knowledge. S. Downes speaks about it in his post: "Types of knowledge and connective knowledge" when he says that "connectivism is a new type of knowledge". That means a radical new point of view. We have not only to see then the connectivist idea like a new approach to what is and how works knowledge learning, but to think in an "all", in the whole wood and not only in the trees (nodes). The knowledge exists in the network but not in a passive and permanent form, not like content, and that is why "when you impact that network in some way, the connections between the objects in the network change". And then I guess the knowledge has to change too. That is for me the new and the strength in the connectivist idea: the emphasize of the network in the sense that G. Siemens gives to it in "A brief history of networked learning". How this emphasize of the network in connectivist affects to the learning experience in the "real life" is a difficult topic. If we accept the connective knowledge (and I do ; ) is necessary to think how this knowledge evolves in a society where the WWW is giving to the people the technical capacity to create and join networks all around the world. (That is a logic and propositional conclusion, I know). Facebook, MySpace, Orku, Twitter, Blogger, Delicious, etc. All this "new" Internet tools permits to the users to construct networks and to traverse those, and this ability is that connectivist learning in words of S. Downes. This perception of a qualitative change in the nature of knowledge is in relationship with a historical process of technological "progress" of the Internet. It is the people who are/were changing their type of network with the use of the "machine". It is the mix and therefore a new reality in the communications networks and in the power of knowing and the capacity of learning. And here is for me the weakness of the actually connectivist point of view: to try to be a learning Theory in "classical" sense. That doesn´t make sense in my opinion, because if you accept that exist a new type of knowledge and a quantitative process with a finally qualitative change in the human social life, then it is necessary to think in a new idea of learning. If the connective idea of learning has to be different. It is here where I see more problems to speak about a new Theory. That is why I wrote in my last post in this blog the quote of Robespierre, not because I like the fanatical Robespierre, but because it is always the same problem with the new revolutionaries ideas: Do you want a revolution without revolution in the way of thinking? Maybe we have now to try a more practical approach to the learning and teaching in the new context of the web. Less theory and more speaking about how can we use the networks way of thinking to learn and teach "nodes", and that in the actual real context of an institutional world (I like the ideas of I. Illich about deschooling the society but I can see it now only like a positive utopia, not like a reality around me).
« Citoyens, vouliez-vous une révolution sans révolution ? » Maximilien Robespierre
I read in the course a lot about connectivism like a new "learning revolution" and I ask me... Is it really possible today?... That was a "rhetorical question" because I think that yes, it is possible. But I think also, that we need a new way of thinking about the acreditation of this learning, and here we have only two ways...
1. The society doesn´t give any more importance to any form of formal acreditation.
or
2. If we think that we need still some form of acreditation we invente a new one.
Like ideal I like the first one, but I can´t see it really in our society (capitalist and competitive). My imagination is not so big. Sorry. In the second option I see more possibilities: A new form of acreditation for your knowledge, for example a connectivist one: The acreditation from the network.
On the top I write a quote of Robespierre, this dead man is now in connection with this post ; ) (Lisa in Networks of dead people, Robespierre was the man of the "virtue": the idea of a virtuous self, a man who stands alone accompanied only by his conscience. (Wikipedia) Robespierre did terribles things in the name of the "virtue", and I remember him allways when I read now about the "open courses and the credits". I pay fot this course and I am happy that it is an open and free course at the same time. Sarah speaks about it in her blog: "Who owns the knowledge". But to discuss about what is better: pay or not pay, makes not sense for me. If you pay is because you need some form of official acreditation, but that doesn´t mean that you are for or against the idea of an "open course" (look the last post of G. Siemens "History of open content". I think all the people who enrolled this course are in general for an open education, and some who pay, like me, is because they need (or think to need) the credits for their resumé. That´s all.
I like this sentence, because I think that is an important point in "connectivism" and in the "normal life" of everyone: We share to help others or we share really because we need it? Now it finished the illuminate discussion of today and I don´t know really why someones are so worried about the participation of the others. Control... Filters... Ey! "Let the people alone"... If I don´t participate, it is my problem, and it is maybe because I can´t or I don´t want, but that doesn´t mean that I am not learning. I learn... when I can and what I can. Finally if I am in a network is not to work more... it is to work less or to work more efficiently. The magic word is "autonomy".
In this beautiful sunday I decide to start a blog for the course... I know that we are now in the fourth week, but really I was very very busy and "on the road" all the time, moreover I thought that my Blog: http://segundoorden.blogspot.com would be enough. But now I see that really I need a place "to handle my learning chaos". So here I go.
