#CCK11: Week 1 Highlights - Connectivisim Defined

Given below are the highlights from the readings for the first week of the CCK11 course. 
Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age

1. Know-how and know-what is being supplemented with know-where (the understanding of where to find knowledge needed)
2. In today’s environment, action is often needed without personal learning – that is, we need to act by drawing information outside of our primary knowledge.
3. What adjustments need to be made with learning theories when technology performs many of the cognitive operations previously performed by learners (information storage and retrieval)?
4. …chaos states that meaning exists – the learner's challenge is to recognize the patterns which appear to be hidden.
5. The capacity to form connections between sources of information, and thereby create useful information patterns, is required to learn in our knowledge economy.
6. Learning (defined as actionable knowledge) can reside outside of ourselves (within an organization or a database), is focused on connecting specialized information sets, and the connections that enable us to learn more are more important than our current state of knowing.
7. Connectivism also addresses the challenges that many corporations face in knowledge management activities. Knowledge that resides in a database needs to be connected with the right people in the right context in order to be classified as learning.
8. Connectivism presents a model of learning that acknowledges the tectonic shifts in society where learning is no longer an internal, individualistic activity.

What Connectivism Is

1. Connections form naturally, through a process of association, and are not 'constructed' through some sort of intentional action.
2. Hence, in Connectivism, there is no real concept of transferring knowledge, making knowledge, or building knowledge.
3. What you are talking about as 'an understanding' is (at a best approximation) distributed across a network of connections.
4. “To teach is to model and demonstrate, to learn is to practice and reflect.”

Connectivism and its Critics: What Connectivism Is Not

According to Connectivism:

- learning occurs as a distributed process in a network, based on recognizing and interpreting patterns

- the learning process is influenced by the diversity of the network, strength of the ties

- memory consists of adaptive patterns of connectivity representative of current state

- transfer occurs through a process of connecting

- best for complex learning, learning in rapidly changing domains

The learning process is influenced by the four elements of the semantic condition:

• Diversity
• Autonomy
• Openness
• Connectedness

Learning is not a process of ‘transfer' at all, much less a transfer than can be caused or created by a single identifiable donor.

 

What is the unique idea in Connectivism?

1. Tools augment our ability to interact with each other and to act. Tools are extensions of humanity, increasing our ability to externalize our thinking into forms that we can share with others.
2. Connectivism is the application of network principles to define both knowledge and the process of learning.
3. Connectivism focuses on the inclusion of technology as part of our distribution of cognition and knowledge. Our knowledge resides in the connections we form – whether to other people or to information sources such as databases.
4. Connectivism recognizes the fluid nature of knowledge and connections based on context. As such, it becomes increasingly vital that we focus not on pre-made or pre-defined knowledge, but on our interactions with each other, and the context in which those interactions arise.
5. Making of coherence in a subject matter one is new to is about dialoguing with other learners. Make conversations a priority and let learners interact with the content, with each other, with the technology they will use for sense-making.

What is Connectivism?

1.       Connectivism focuses on:

• Our need to externalize to make sense
• Our need for frameworks/structures for sense-making
• Our need to socialize and negotiate around knowledge
• Our mind is a patterning mind: we are attuned to note, recognize and draw patterns from complex systems
• Our desire to extend our humanity through technology

2.       The experience of learning is one of forming new neural connections and conceptual frameworks.

3.       Learning occurs in continually fluctuating space.

4.       Connectivism is focused on the primacy of connections and networks.

5.       Types of networked learning:

• Neural-biological: neuroscience and AI states that learning is the formation of new neural connections.
• External-Social
• Conceptual

 6.    Connections create meaning: how we put together ideas is our conception of a particular field or state of knowing in that field.

 7.   Learning in a network sense is a function of:

• Depth and diversity of connections
• Frequency of exposure
• Integration with existing ideas and concepts
• Strong and weak ties (weak ties bridge separate worlds)
• Different types of networks with different types of attributes will serve different types of learning needs

Technology increases our ability to dialogue with others which results in a complexification of opinion.