The Conduit is King
It’s 80 degrees, sunny, and there is a slight breeze that keeps the drapes flowing in the room. I should be outside. Instead I have a wrist cramp, a tight back, and my eyes feel like they are filled with sand. Yep, chronic laptop use syndrome and I blame Jeff Utecht… this time.
In Jeff’s post, Pedagogy Defines School 2.0 (revisited) he speaks of connectivism, a theory that, I must admit, I had never heard of. In fact, I just had a conversation with my super about using technologies to support constructivist practices. Oh boy…
Fortunately, George Siemens, the mind behind connectivism (Jeff please correct me if I am wrong) acknowledges that it is impossible to know every angle on a given piece of information. Even better for us, he advocates just letting some things be until all of the connections can be made to achieve a perspective.
George Siemens authored Knowing Knowledge in 2006. I haven’t finished the e-book (pdf download), nor have I been able to get a good grasp on how to articulate the information it contains, so I suppose this is more of an advertisement than an original thought.
E-books, like Knowing Knowledge (Siemens) and Coming of Age (Freedman et all), represent an interesting shift in what is considered text. These “books” are authored by experts, but they are not products. The authors are setting up the content so that it can be current and continue to flow. By attaching blogs, wikis, and in Terry’s case a ning, the authors have started the learning process from their point of view and are allowing the information to evolve as more perspective is introduced.
Is this the responsibility of the expert in our age of information? You present information, allow others (trusted individuals) to process it, re-define ideas based on new perspective and present again. Meanwhile ”the others” are presenting the information in their networks allowing their members to add perspective. (Okay, I am working it out, I think.)
Bottom line in a world flooded with content, the process becomes more important than the content.
Here are some interesting quotes or ideas from Knowing Knowledge.
“The problem rests largely in the view that learning is a managed process, not a fostered process.”
“Conversation is the ultimate personalization experience.”
“A product is a stopped process.”
“We have become the filter, the mediator, and the weaver.”
Okay, I need a break. I will come back to this as I mull through it…hopefully with Jeff’s help and now yours. Connectivism anyone?
